Dragon At Heart

Chapter 10

10. Stuff of Legends

Iroh was incredibly worried. While moving up the little mountain path that led to the Shrine he had seen a hint of light behind the treetops. His ostrich-horse. Haystack, had become restless. These were all signs that something was out of place.

Iroh hurried his mount to go faster but the animal refused to co-operate, so he decided to go the rest of the way on foot.

Iroh was soon out of breath, but his determination kept him going.

Should do more exercise, he made a mental note.

Suddenly Iroh could here sounds of movement ahead of him. To be on the safe side, he left the path for a moment to hide in a shadow of a crooked tree.

Coming down the path was a group of maybe twenty or so Earth Kingdom soldiers riding on ostrich-horses. They seemed to be in a great hurry to be elsewhere, none of them stopping to look around. They did not see Iroh behind the tree.

In fact, they probably wouldn't have noticed me even if I'd have been standing in the middle of the road, such is their distress. They might have just ran over me. I do wonder what is the reason to such a rush?

The last of the soldiers came maybe a hundred meters behind the rest. His ostrich-horse was giving him a hard time.

As much as Iroh was in a hurry, it was wise to gather intel on what he was about to walk into.

Iroh lifted a fallen branch from the ground and embraced himself. The rest of the troops were already out of sight but quite possibly not out of hearing range.

Still, something told Iroh that the odds of the troops turning back to come to their fellow soldier's aid were on Uncle's side.

When the soldier was passing him, Iroh jumped from the shadows and knocked the man down from his ostrich-horse with the branch.

The man, a boy, really, made a terrified squeak. His ostrich-horse, crazed by fear, ran away.

The boy Iroh had knocked down didn't even attempt to get up and fight him. He just stayed on the ground, covering his face with his hands and mumbling something that sounded like 'don't eat my soul'.

Iroh decided to try to comfort the man so as to get sensible answers out of him.

"Don't worry, son, I'm not going to hurt you. Everything is alright", he said as calmly and friendly as he could, and that was pretty calm and friendly.

Slowly, the soldier caught on to Iroh's tone and lowered his hands.

"I'm Iroh" Uncle said and smiled at the man, "What's your name?"

"K... Kwan."

"It's nice to meet you, Kwan. I'm sorry that I knocked you down from your ostrich-horse, but I needed to exchange a word with you. You see, I'm looking for my nephew, who I believe could be in trouble, and I was wondering if you'd seen him. He'd be about your height with dark clothing."

Looking at the boy's terrified eyes, Uncle was not entirely convinced the poor soldier understood his words. Eventually, the man did manage to stammer out: "I... you... I..."

Suddenly he grabbed Iroh's hand and said: "NO! You can't go there! There's a monster there! You go there and it'll eat you!"

"It's alright, no one's going to hurt you now", Iroh continued to calm the nerve-wrecked soldier, "Could you tell me what type of a monster you are exactly referring to?"

"A... a dragon", the man stammered, his voice shaky.

Oh no, Uncle thought to himself. It sounded like trouble had already found his nephew.