But the blood had continued to run.
The smell of it, reptilian and strangely rich, filled his nostrils. The insects that had been buzzing around his head forsook him for this flowing feast. They clustered around the wound, feeding greedily. The trickle of blood became a scarlet rivulet down the dragon’s shoulder. It dripped from the animal onto the trampled ground. A small puddle started to form. In the moonlight, it was black, and then as he stared at the deepening pool, it reddened. It gleamed scarlet and crimson, the two reds swirling like dyes stirred into water, separated only by silver edging. He felt drawn to it and crouched by the puddle, entranced by the color.
His gaze lifted to the thin stream of falling blood that fed the puddle. He put his hand out, touched two fingers to the flow. The stream parted and ran over his fingers like silken thread. He pulled his fingers back, watching the unimpeded flow and then set his bloody fingers to his mouth and licked them.
He recoiled from the touch of dragon’s blood on his tongue, shocked that he had obeyed an impulse he couldn’t even recall having. The taste of the blood flooded his mouth and filled his senses. He smelled it everywhere, not just in his nose but in the back of his throat and in the roof of his mouth. His ears rang with the scent, and his tongue tingled and stung. He tried to shake the remaining blood from his fingers, then wiped his hand down his shirt front. He was covered in blood and mud now. And still the dragon bled.
He stooped and cupped a handful of mud-and-blood. It was both warm and cold in his hand, and he felt as if it squirmed there, a liquid serpent coiling and uncoiling within his hand. He plastered it over the injury. When he lifted his hand, the tiny trickle of red burst forth afresh. Another handful of mud and another one, and the last one he held hard against the dragon’s throat, panting through his mouth both in fear and with the effort. He tasted and smelled only dragon, he felt dragon inside his mouth and down his throat. He was a dragon. There were scales down his neck and back, his claws were sunken in mud, his wings would not unfold and what was a dragon who could not fly? He rocked on his feet dizzily, and when he staggered back from the dragon, the flow of blood had finally ceased.
For a time he had stood there, his hands braced just above his knees, breathing the night air and trying to recover. When his head had cleared a bit, he straightened and felt instead of dizziness, a rush of horror at how badly he had managed this. What had happened to his stealth and his “leave no sign” intentions? He was covered in mud and blood, and the dragon was lying in a pool of blood. How subtle!
He kicked mud over the blood, tore marsh grass loose and spread it there, and then kicked more mud over it. It seemed to take him hours. By moonlight, he could not tell if any red showed through his efforts on the ground or on the dragon’s neck. The creature slept on. At least it would have no recall of him.
He went back to the barge and attempted to reboard it. He spent an agonized near hour in the shadow of the bow. Above him, Leftrin and Alise talked softly about knots, of all things. When finally they moved away, he clambered up the rope ladder and fled to his cabin. There he had changed hastily into clean clothing and hidden his precious blood and scales in his case. It had taken him three furtive attempts before he was able to clean his muddy, bloody tracks from the deck of the barge. Leftrin and Alise had nearly caught him in the act of throwing his soiled clothing and ruined boots overboard. If they had not been so completely engrossed in each other, they would surely have discovered him.
But they had not. They had not, and the vial of blood that he now held in his hand was his prize for all he had gone through. He stared at it, at the slow shifting and tangling of the trapped red stuff inside it. Like serpents twining round one another, he thought, and a ghostly image of sea serpents wrapping one another in the dim blue of an undersea world invaded his thoughts. He shook his head clear of the fancy, and he resisted the sudden urge to uncap the flask and smell the contents. He had sealing wax in his case. He should melt some over the neck of the flask to seal it securely. He should. He’d do it later.
The sight of his treasure left him oddly calmed. He put the flask back into the secret drawer and took up a small shallow box made from cedar. He opened the sliding lid and looked inside. The scales rested there on a shallow bed of salt. They were slightly iridescent in the dim light of the cabin. He closed the lid, replaced the box in the secret drawer, and shut and locked it. They’d probably find the brown dragon dead. They wouldn’t suspect him, he suddenly knew. He’d covered his tracks well. He’d smeared the blood away, and the wound from his knife was so tiny that no one would find it. He hadn’t killed the beast, not really. Everyone saw that it was nearly ready to die anyway. If his bleeding of the dragon had hastened its death, well, that didn’t mean he’d killed it. It was only an animal anyway, despite how Alise might moon over it. A dragon was only an animal, just like a cow or a chicken, to be used by a man in any way he saw fit.