Dorothea skittered along the branch, glancing hurriedly between Sam and the beast, impatient and terrified, occasionally screeching some encouraging words that she hoped didn't sound as desperate as she felt. She yowled in surprise when the beast's face suddenly appeared just below Sam, and its great teeth snapped at her feet, its hot breath damp on her ankles. The monster snorted and turned away, circling the tree with its red eyes upturned hungrily.

"It's a Jockal," Dorothea answered Sam's question, once she was sure her friend was mostly safe and her own heart had slowed down a bit. "They're sort of legendary for eating young maidens." She set her claws in the bark and climbed halfway toward Sam, purring in an attempt to soothe her eyes open. "I wish you'd climb up just one more." Their long necks and pliant bodies made them able to reach farther up a tree than they might seem to be able to. She looked out at the Jockal again, and she didn't say aloud that she knew it wouldn't leave them alone anytime soon. She fully expected to be trapped in that tree well after nightfall, if the monster didn't reach them before then.

August watched, infuriated, as his guards hightailed it back to the lair, not even looking back in their race for their own lives. It was just as well -- he knew he could never have trusted them to watch his back.

The Jockal continued circling the tree restlessly, occasionally digging its claws into the trunk and craning its neck to get a better whiff of Sam. It bared its teeth, set its paws down again and continued circling. It had no interest in anything else.

The Marshal, glaring hatefully at the creature, began shedding armor. His gauntlets hit the ground, then his chainmail, even his boots. The Jockal was big enough that it could finish him in two bites: armor meant nothing, and he needed all the speed he could get. When all his armor was piled shining in the leaves, he was still dressed in the Queen's violet and gold, still hateful and stone-eyed, but he appeared smaller than he had been before.

He stepped forward without a word, and he watched the beast circle round and round the tree; it was completely ignorant of him in favor of Sam. The third time it passed by him, August waited for its scaly tail to skid past in the leaves. He raised his sword high and swung it down like a guillotine -- he lopped off the very tip of the monster's tail.

While the Jockal screeched a blood-curdling cry, the Marshal shouldered his sword and ran, leaping over rocks and fallen logs, faster than he'd ever run before, back toward the Queen's hollow. The stories of knights that slayed dragons single-handedly were only stories. The truth of the matter was that the slowest got eaten and the quick got away. At the very least he could distract it while the princess escaped -- but he had no intention of being eaten, either.

The Jockal, mad with rage, abandoned Sam and the tree; with a snarl and a rush and a crash of leaves and branches it galloped after August's retreating form, its tail thrashing saplings from their roots, destruction in its wake.