by Philip Reeve
He looked up. Above him, the narrow path they’d tried to follow spidered up between big rocks and vanished over a sort of shelf. Above that, the sky was blue as Mary’s robe, and blessedly empty of dragons. There was a rushing noise. He’d heard it in the night, but then he had thought it was just the wind. Now there was no wind, and he could see that the sound was made by a white cataract that plunged down the mountainside not far from the crack they had sheltered in. It threw out a cloud of spray, and the sun shone through the spray and made a rainbow. It looked like a promise from God.
Else stirred and moaned. Brock’s armor grated as he tried to work a cramp out of his leg. Ansel squirreled in the saddlebag and found them breakfast: stale bread, dry mutton, a slurp of bitter wine washed down with water from a nearby rill. He wished that he could show them his rainbow, but the sun was climbing fast and it had already faded.
“Up,” said Brock. The rising sun was warming his armor, and he seemed to draw strength from it. He started up the path, not waiting for Ansel and Else.
The worst of the climb was behind them. The path went up in three last steep zigzags, then led them over a crag’s brow onto a broad snowfield. Black outcroppings of rock jabbed up through the snow, and in the rocks’ lee, where the snow had not lain, brownish grass rustled in the breeze. Despite the snow the air was warm and the sun beat upon the whiteness of the snow, which shone its warmth back at them, until Else loosened her sheepskin shawl and Ansel pulled his mittens off. His numbed fingers burned as the feeling started coming back to them.
The ground sloped upward to a broad-backed ridge. They reached its top, and looked down into a bowl of rocks where a gray lake lay. Along the shore the lake water had frozen in big, rippled, whitish plates. Farther out, patches of open water were being ruffled into wavelets by the rising wind. No reeds fringed that lake; no lilies lay on it; no birds sang over it. Beyond it, the mountain went up again, an arc of rock and snow, a blinding white summit hanging high above. Clouds were brewing behind the mountain, but otherwise the sky was empty, innocent. Maybe the dragon was hunting on the other side of the mountains that morning. Maybe it was sleeping off its feasts of the day before.
“More bad weather’s coming,” said Else, turning her face to the sun, making the most of the warmth, which she knew would not last. Brock watched her with a curious expression. His eyes kept darting to the heights of the mountain.
They untied themselves from one another, cutting the tight, sodden knots that their numbed fingers could not undo. Ansel tied the lengths of rope together and coiled them around him as they started on.
It took several hours for them to make their way around the lake to the crags on the far side. There they picked up the path that Else’s father had told her of. Faint and faded, it dropped giddily down slopes of scree and shale into a steep-sided valley. Spiky crags crowned with starved-looking clumps of pine thrust out into the valley, and at their feet lay the glacier. Ansel had not quite believed in it when Else and Brock talked about it — a river of ice, creeping forever down the mountain. Yet there it was, vast and cold, hatched all over with crevices and chasms, and though he could not see it moving he could hear it: the faint grinding and grumbling as it dragged its way over the rocks, and sometimes a crisp icy crack from the fractured surface.
Beyond it, on the valley’s far wall, a snowy track showed white across the face of a steep black cliff.
“That’s the path,” said Else.
“Good,” said Brock. “But we are not going down yet.”
Ansel looked at his master. Brock seemed barely to have noticed the terrible way down, or the enticing glimpse of the path at the bottom of it. He had turned his back on it, and he was studying the crags and spires of the mountain above them as if it were a castle and he was planning to storm it.
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Else.
“I mean that I have a dragon to fight.”
His words faded into the wind and the sunlight. Else didn’t speak, and Ansel couldn’t. They looked at each other, and Ansel shook his head a little to show that he didn’t know what Brock meant either.
“It must be up there, somewhere,” said Brock. “Up in all that snow and stone. Its nest. Its eyrie. But how do we call it down?”
Again the wind took his words away, across the valley. Again Ansel and Else exchanged a look. This time, Else ventured to question what Brock had said. “We don’t want to call it down, sir,” she said. “We want it to stay up there till we’re far away.”
“No,” said Brock. He smiled at her. His eyes had a wild shine to them. “No. Don’t you see? That’s why we’ve come here. The other path was shut to us, so we had to climb up here, close to its lair. So that I can kill it. It’s fate. God’s hand. Call it what you like. I’m not starting down until that worm is dead. I’ll take its head. That should be proof enough….” He switched his gaze back to the mountain. “I thought we might climb up to its lair, but it may be beyond the reach of any man. Those towering cliffs …”
Ansel felt the same way he had the previous day, when he saw that the landslide had swept their path away. He’d thought Brock strong and hard as a mountain. Now it seemed something had shifted inside the dragon hunter. He had toppled into one of his own stories.
“Why just the head?” Brock asked himself. “I’ll take its whole carcass down the mountain with me. It’s a flying beast, so it must be light, like a bird. I expect there are learned men who would pay me well for the hide and bones of such a prodigy…. Damnation, perhaps I’ll set up as a learned man myself. I’ll boil its bones and dry its skin and set it up on a cart. It’ll be the talk of every town from here to the sea!” He turned showman suddenly, pulling his leather cap off, bowing to a pair of ravens that were circling above a nearby crag. “Observe, My Lords and Ladies, a Survivor from the World before the Flood. Johannes Von Brock’s Great Worm, the only genuine Dragon ever seen. (Or wyvern. Or whatever it be.)” He saw Ansel staring at him, and reached down to ruffle his hair. “What? Surely you don’t want to go home without a prize?”
Ansel wondered if the cold that had got inside his fingers and made them numb and clumsy had done something similar to his master’s brains. Brock seemed to go straight from wanting a thing to believing he could have it. Had he forgotten the dragon’s jaws and its claws? Had he forgotten how easily it had torn up his horse and wolfed down his comrade? Had he forgotten that this was the dragon’s mountain, not his? Ansel didn’t want a prize to take back to the lowlands. He’d be happy just to get down with his life.
But Brock wanted the worm, and Brock had a plan. He’d been turning it over in his mind all morning, while they crept along that lakeshore, slowed down by Else with her torn boots and bloody feet. At first she had angered him. He had wished that Flegel was still with them, so that the friar could explain to him why God had chosen to lumber His champion with a lame girl. But then, as if God himself had leaned down out of Heaven and whispered it in his ear, he understood.
Else saw the greedy way that he was looking at her. She tried on a smile, in the hope that it would please him, but he just kept staring. She edged backward, retreating from him the same way she would from a dog she wasn’t sure of. “What, sir?” she asked. “What is it?”
Brock caught her wrist in his gauntleted hand to stop her going any farther. “Rope!” he said. He said it to Ansel, though Ansel didn’t understand and he had to say it again. “The rope, boy, or have you turned deaf as well as dumb?”
Ansel shrugged himself out of the coiled rope and passed it to Brock, who took it with his free hand.
“Don’t!” said Else, straining away from him.
“Don’t wriggle so, girl,” said Brock.
Else looked past him at Ansel. “Make him stop!”
Ansel hesitated, torn between pity for her and loyalty to his master.
“He’s gone mad,” she said. “Can’t you see? Men lose their wits on the heights sometimes. The thin air addles them.”
�
��Don’t heed her, Ansel,” Brock warned. “I know what I’m about. I’m here to slay this beast, remember. Trust me, boy. All’s well. No hurt shall come to Else. You have my word on it….”
He quickly looped the rope’s end around her wrists and started to knot them. Ansel wanted to tell him to stop, but the words faded away, as usual, before he could wrestle them out of his mouth. He ran forward instead, and tugged on Brock’s cloak.
Brock shoved him aside. “Leave me alone, Ansel. Don’t you see? Those peasants had it right. They left her up here as bait. Like St. George’s princess. That part of the story must be true too. That’s how you lure these beasts. Like tethering a lamb to lure a wolf. Except to lure our worm we must offer it a choicer morsel. A good, wriggling Christian maid. It is evil, you see, and it cannot resist her innocence.”
“No! You can’t!” Ansel shouted, but he shouted it inside himself, and of course Brock couldn’t hear.
“No, no, no, no!” Else was saying. Her eyes showed white all around, like Snow’s had when the dragon got her. When Brock took no heed of her she started screaming. “No! No!”
Brock laughed. “That’s right, girl!” he said. “Scream! Scream, Else! Let the worm hear you!”
He looked at the sky, scanning it quickly for approaching wings. Nothing. Else, afraid now to cry out again or even speak, fell on her knees in the snow. Brock lifted her upright again. “You will be all right!” he told her. “I promise you. I don’t mean to sacrifice you to this beast, like your heathen neighbors tried to. You are bait, that’s all. This time, I will be ready for it when it comes. I shall kill it before it can harm you.”
Talking steadily to her, he coaxed the roped girl uphill to a broad slope of clear snow between two rock towers. There he tied the end of her halter tight around a snag of stone and retired to the shelter of those tall rocks to watch and wait.
ANSEL DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. HE WANTED TO RUN and unhitch Else, snick the rope with his knife and free her. Brock might be his master, but when he looked at Else, grizzling at the end of that leash, waiting for the dragon to drop on her, he knew he couldn’t let Brock use her like that. She made him think again of poor Brezel. He had to save her. He fidgeted, turning this way and that as he wondered what to do.
“Keep still!” hissed Brock. He sat in a nook of the rocks with his sword stuck upright in the ground in front of him. He said, “If you wriggle more than Else, the worm might take you instead. Is that what you want?” He looked away from the tethered girl for a moment, staring deep into Ansel’s eyes. He could see Ansel’s small thoughts in them as plain as tadpoles in a pair of puddles. “Ansel, it will be all right.”
His attention went back to the girl, and the crags beyond the girl, and the empty sky. Ansel sat still, wishing he had a voice, so that he might try and make Brock see how wrong he was. But as he sat there he started to realize that sitting still might be the best thing he could do. Here among the rocks, Brock had finally found shelter from the wind. The sunlight was hazy, but there was still warmth in it. The rocks soaked it up, and they grew warm too. Brock, in his skin of tin, must have been warmer still. He stared past his sword at Else, who had sunk to her knees out there on the rope’s end, silent under the merciless sky.
“You need not fear for her, Ansel,” said Brock. “I’ll not let it take her. I’m ready this time. Always before, it’s had the advantage of us. At the cave yesterday I was too startled to think. I was scared, I admit. It stunned me. That’s how it took poor old Snow. And when it dropped on us at the landslide, I couldn’t get close enough to fight it. But I’m close enough now, and I’m not scared anymore. All I need do is watch. And you’ll watch with me. You’re a brave lad. I might need your help, come the time.”
Brock watched. Ansel watched. The wind ruffled the grass. No wings shadowed the cliffs. It was almost possible to think that yesterday had been a dream and there were no such things as dragons, after all.
After a while Brock’s head dipped. He caught himself, frowned, blinked, ran his eyes around the rims of the sky. Else flopped on the snow, beaten but uneaten. Clouds darkened the air behind the mountain, but Brock’s hide baked in sunshine. His head dipped again, and then again, and the next time he did not lift it.
A minute more, and Ansel heard a soft snore. He made himself stay where he was till he was sure. Brock was asleep. Brock was deeply asleep, worn out by the scrambling and clambering of the previous day. Ansel envied him. He was tired too, but fear kept him awake. He let the hunter snore, snore, snore, then carefully, silently he slipped from his perch and edged past Brock and tiptoed away, following the rope across the snow to Else.
She looked up when he reached her. She didn’t look as grateful as he’d imagined she would. Maybe she was wondering why he had waited so long. He tugged his knife out and began sawing at the rope.
“Quickly!” she whispered.
Ansel smiled to show her it was all right, and nodded at Brock, to make her see the dragon hunter was asleep.
“I don’t care about him! What about the dragon?”
The rope parted. She stumbled up, holding out her hands for Ansel to cut the knot that still tied them together. Just then, a shadow fell over them.
It’s come for us! thought Ansel. This is our punishment for doubting Brock.
But when he looked up, there was no dragon there. Just a scarf of black cloud, spilling off the mountain. A cold wind came ahead of it, driving white foam across the lake. Already the cliff where Brock believed the creature laired was smudged out by curtains of snow.
“Brock will wake!” said Else. When Ansel had freed her hands she turned and ran, and he ran with her. Their feet rasped and crunched and squeaked in the thick snow. When Ansel looked back to see if Brock was following, he saw — nothing at all. The rocks, the mountainside, the armored man, all were hidden by a deep whiteness. He started shoving Else toward shelter.
“No!” she told him. “He will find us there! We must go down!”
Ansel thought about the downward path. The scree and then the boulders and then the cliffs of ice. He would rather have faced the dragon. But fear of Brock’s madness kept him running, stumbling along beside Else toward the top of the screes. The snowstorm broke around them. Snowflakes whirled up, down, sideways, furring their sleeves and mittens. Else stopped to tug her fleece-cloak tighter. She shouted at Ansel over the sudden rush of the wind.
“Brave as a hero, you were. You could’ve run, but you stopped and saved me.”
Ansel, in spite of everything, grinned. He knew he wasn’t all that brave. Not brave enough to go away and have to live with the memory of leaving her as dragon bait. It had been just selfishness, really, that made him saw that rope through. He was glad of her thanks, though. It made him feel a bit less bad about betraying Brock.
Else kissed him in the middle of his snow-wet forehead, the way a mother might, or a big sister at least. Then, taking their best guess at the way, they set off together blindly down the steepening slope.
Brock woke in the snow with a shout no one heard. He had been dreaming, but now that he was awake, he could not remember what the dream had been about. There was a sour taste in his mouth.
He looked for Ansel and found him gone. He found his way to the rock he’d tied the girl to. The rope was still knotted around it, stretching away from him into the vortex of the snow, but when he tugged at it, there was no Else on the other end. He reeled it in and stared at the frayed end. Bitten off? Had the dragon taken his bait while he slept, like a fish outwitting a dozy angler?
No, not the dragon, he realized. The boy. Ansel. He felt something that was part anger but mostly pity, because surely God would not let the boy live long now that he had broken faith with His champion. “Ansel!” he bellowed into the blizzard. “Else!”
No reply, only the mad wailing of the wind. What a fool he’d been, letting himself sleep! It was the air up here. It wasn’t thick enough for a man to breathe. He groped for his sword, sheathed it, and wou
nd the long rope quickly around his body, knotting it there in case he needed it for his descent. By God, this snow had come on quickly! Every direction looked the same now. Whichever way he turned there was nothing but a rushing whiteness.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ansel! Where are you?” he shouted, and then remembered that the boy couldn’t answer.
“Else?”
Something seemed to lurch and move, behind the snow. It wouldn’t be hunting in this blizzard, would it? Jesu, was that only a dragonish crag crouched there in the whiteness? Or was it a craggy dragon?
“Ansel!” he bellowed. “To me!”
The snow spun around him. He stumbled in a deep drift and fell, floundering. When he raised himself up, the dragon was a few feet off, watching him.
Down, down, down. The first part of the scree slope lay in the ridge’s lee, sparing them the worst of the wind and the snow, but they had no more idea of where the thin path ran than if they had been stumbling blindfolded down it in the midnight dark. The stones of the slope were frozen into one cold mass, and perhaps that saved them. Down, down, down they went, and dislodged no more than a handful of pebbles and small boulders, which vanished into the whiteness ahead without any sound that Ansel ever heard.
Else kept shouting things, quite close to his ear, but he couldn’t hear her either.
Farther down the slope the snow lay thicker, drifted over large boulders and small outcroppings of rock. It became hard to tell whether they were going up or down. Ansel fell and dropped the saddlebag he had been carrying, and could not find it again. Then boulders began to emerge out of the whiteness all around them, like grease spots soaking into linen. They blundered into the faint shelter of a barn-sized stone whose surface was carved with swerving, fluted lines, like the grain of wood. There they slapped and shook the matted snow off their clothes, shuddered, clapped their chilled hands, hugged each other for warmth. The wind snarled. The snow rushed past horizontally, giving Ansel the giddy feeling that he was still moving.