Fire and Water by V. Greene

Heat Rating: Fire

Content Warning: GLBT-homoerotica, Happy For Now ending.

Sir Campion thinks his dragon-slaying quest is probably a bust. What he finds jolts him out of his complacency.

A daydreaming knight on a dragonslaying quest finds something he wasn't counting on. Stripped of his usual self-defining belongings, he must ask himself what he really wants--and what he can do about it.

Sir Campion's saddle smacked him on the bottom as his horse shied. He returned the favor smartly between the brute's ears, his armor clattering. He missed his last warhorse, much better trained and much better tempered, but Brutus had taken a lance's splinter to his hind leg and bled to death on the spot six months ago. This one, he was about to give up and rename Dinner.

Dinner, here, wasn't going to be much use on the current quest, if quest there was. Rumor had come of a dragon near a village, toasting the livestock and demanding the usual parade of virgins. Campion had experience with rumor. He fully expected a large adder. Still, a young knight could hardly scoff at the orders of his king, so here he was getting spanked by this brute of a horse for days on end. His squire had abandoned him two villages ago, there one minute and gone the next. Campion now hoped the dragon was only an adder. Not all his armor could be put on without help, and some clanked in rigged-up ties to his saddlebags.

He was getting close, if the dodgy map was any good at all. The hills came together just so, and the stream flowed beside the road more or less as promised. He could see a campfire's smoke ahead and wondered if some other knight had beaten him to the scaled menace whether dragon or snake. The sun was getting low, so a campfire and the company it promised was all the more welcome to him.

He would have preferred an inn, and a willing innkeeper's daughter--or son. Being a squire had taught Campion not to be choosy; being a knight had taught him it was better to give than receive. Perhaps whoever had the campfire would be in a cooperative frame of mind, and they could pass a bit of the evening--Campion snickered to himself--playing Hunt The Adder.

He pressed on, leaving the road to wind through the scrubby trees. They seemed stunted and often made him crush himself down beside his horse's neck. The smoke was no longer visible; the sky itself was barely visible. He'd set himself on a good course, though, and felt confident of his direction. He began to smell his goal.

The growth grew thicker, full of the plants that like more sun. Though Dinner balked, Campion heeled him sharply through the blackberry canes. The infernal beast had a breastplate for protection, after all. The horse broke into a clearing of tumbled stone. Before Campion could fully register what he was seeing, Dinner screamed in panic and reared. Its left hind hoof slipped on a stone. Campion was thrown free, thanking his lucky stars in the instant before he met the ground that the horse seemed to be going the other way. His helmet rang with the impact against a rock, rang right through his skull, blackening out the world. He had an instant to think he hurt, and then nothing.