Last night Serana, Shadowmere and I set off to Mount Anthor to do a little dragon hunting and pick up a word of power. When we get there the Ancient Dragon perched on top of the word wall attacks and we very nearly smite him, but the he beats a hasty retreat over the mountains, allowing me access to the word wall.

Not feeling quite satisfied, we walk a short distance away and wait a day. We return and find our cowardly friend back on his perch licking his wounds. We engage and again after a brief fight, he turns tail and flees the area. I repeated the process several times always with the same result.

The previous Ancient Dragons I've encountered were pretty tough. Anybody else experienced similar?

It could be he saw something else to attack. In my experience dragons suffer from ADD. I regularly have a dragon that's attacking me suddenly fly off and attack a random mudcrab hundreds of meters away.

this. and its frustrating haha. I shout a dragon with Dragonrend and they fly off to land and attack mudcrabs. By the time I run over to it, its flown off again.

Maybe he followed the Way of the Voice and really didn't want any trouble.

It's kind of frustrating as the Mount Anthor area is mountainous and no easy to traverse quickly...and I really want his soul and his bones to make more weapons.