Is it a Dragon?

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF THE FREE PROMOTION OF THE REPTILE WARS.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Reptile-Wars-Earth-ebook/dp/B00JPL5SKM/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1402329028&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/The-Reptile-Wars-Earth-ebook/dp/B00JPL5SKM/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1402329028&sr=8-2

Here is an excerpt from this medieval fantasy, ispired by a real historical figures - El Drac, an Arabic warlord, and King James of Aragon.  At this point in the story of The Reptile Wars, something is spotted on the brow of the hill.

Suddenly, something dark blocks the moonlight.  It’s there.  We see something for a split-second, then it’s gone.  Was it on the top of Bartholomew Hill or in the sky?  There’s nothing to see now.  “Tom, did you see that?” I say, scanning the horizon.  Still lapsing into my old ways of thinking, I figure: a paraglider, plane, helicopter, drone?  No, of course not.  Tom’s mouth is open, but he doesn’t answer.

“There it is again,” I say.  Ellyn sees it too.  They all see it.  Like a black sheet being shaken in front of the moon and the sound of a sudden gust of wind.  Then something like a crack of angry thunder.  This is followed by a glow.  An orange glow.  It should be a pleasant, gentle reddening of the sky, but there’s something sinister and wrong about it.  Something unnatural.

Geoffrey can’t stop the tremors taking hold of his body.  “No,” he mutters, crossing himself.  “No.  Oh, please, Lord, protect us.”  He breaks loose from us, steadies himself on the solid trunk of a gnarled tree, and starts to moan before falling to his knees and trying to pray.  Tom’s dog whimpers and cowers beside him.

We stand and watch as the orange-red glow grows deeper and stronger and becomes a blaze of spitting, crackling light.  It breaks out in other places, somewhere behind that hill.  Astryd grabs the man by the shoulders.  “Geoffrey!”  she cries, trying to shake some sense out of him.  “Do you know what’s going on?  What’s happening over there?”  He can’t answer.  His distress and agony are too much.  But Astryd persists.  “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you!  Didn’t you!”

The night sky itself is turning scarlet.  Deerwood is on fire.

“I wanted you to be safe.  I wanted us all to be safe.  You and Ellyn and Vincent and Tom.”

“But our houses!  The others!  What have you done?”

Ellyn is crying pitifully.  Astryd pulls her close.  But then we all throw ourselves to the ground.  There’s a rush of wind like some kind of cyclone that breaks branches and scatters brushwood everywhere.  The two horses that pulled the wagon buck and panic and flee, turning the whole thing on its side before breaking free.  For out of the smoke and flames comes something black and unidentifiable.  Bigger than any bird but shapeless.  It soars across the brow of the hill, swoops low over our heads, just a wingbeat away, and disappears over the treetops into the night.