From the ground, the camp might have been hard to find. But from aloft it was trivial to pick out the tents and the anthros among the trees, and Ashar flared his wings, banked, did a quick circle while he sought out a good place to land, then abruptly he folded his wings and dropped. He was barely above the trees when the snapped open again, flapping hard to slow himself, and he touched down on hind paws first to absorb the shock before settling down onto all fours. At first the anthros looked at him in shock, a couple already reaching for weapons, before he dipped his head to them in a friendly way.

"Is Captain Rosen here? I have a message for him from Hyress." His head cocked to one side, and he looked around expectantly. A captain usually wore...

A horse ducked out of a large tent on the edge of the clearing where he'd landed. "I'm Captain Rosen." He looked the much larger dragon up and down, his ears flicking to the side, then said, "who sent you? I didn't know of any dragons in our forces."

"I was hired to courier a message out to you." Reaching beneath his wing for one of the courier-bags on the harness he wore, he opened up the pouch and withdrew a rolled, sealed paper scroll and held it out. "They gave it to me this morning, and now here I am."

Some of the other soldiers in the camp seemed astonished, and he couldn't help but arch his neck smugly. Such speeds were routine for a dragon as swift as he, but to the ground-bound anthros they were surely beyond comprehension!

Captain Rosen seemed less impressed; his ears flicked back, and he held out his hand. "Then I'm sure it must be a matter of some urgency. Here."

The dragon passed him the scroll, and he inspected the seal briefly before pulling it apart and scanning the letter. It was evidently a short letter: Ashar barely had time to settle on his haunches to preen before the anthro folded the paper and looked back to him. "You said this was written this morning?"

"That's right."

"Arch, order the men to break camp. We need to be moving in an hour, no more. Dragon, I'll have a reply for you to take back to the capital, so hold fast for a few minutes."

Ashar stopped his preening and straightened back up, rustling his wings. "Certainly. Give me the message and 20 gold, and I'll be glad to."

Rosen's ears tilted farther back. "You said they sent you to carry messages!" A few of the bipeds stopped their dashes to their tents to watch, but that didn't stop Ashar from giving his usual sales pitch.

"Your general paid me to carry a message [i]to[/i] you. If you'd like, you can hire me to carry one back. I fly fast, and out of reach of any of your kind who might wish to intercept it."

Whatever the first message had said and whatever the captain wanted to send back, it must have been urgent: he sighed, but bobbed his head almost at once. "All right. All right. 20 gold, you said?"

He could sense the need for haste easily enough, so he went for his higher offer: it'd be tiring, but the treasure he'd get for it would be substantial. "20 gold and I'll find a safe place to hunt, and sleep, and see your message back to Hyress by tomorrow afternoon. For 50, I'll fly through the night to get it there as soon as possible."

The horse ground a hoof into the grass, snorted, and turned to go back to the tent his aides had already begun to take down. "50 it is, it's the king's coin anyway. But I'm putting in my reply that you said you'd get there by morning."

"Not a problem." Smirking, Ashar resumed his preening and stretched a little while he waited for the captain to draft his response. Playing courier for the bipeds was turning into quite a lucrative business!

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TheOwlette strikes again with another pretty commission of one of my dragons! Ashar is really putting on maximum smug here, hard to imagine a dragon more proud of how fast they can fly than he is! I love how it came out. Will add a link if/when she posts it to her gallery!