by Andre Norton
15. DRAGON SLAYER
"Ayeeee!" Sheer defiance, not only of the beast he fronted, but of theWyverns as well, brought that old rallying cry to his lips--the callused on the Dumps of Tyr to summon gang aid against outsiders. Fork-tailhad crouched again for a spring, but that throat-crackling blastappeared to startle it.
Shann, blade ready, took a dancing step to the right. The thing wasscaled, perhaps as well armored against frontal attack as was theshell-creature he had fought with the aid of the wolverines. He wishedhe had the Terran animals now--with Taggi and his mate to tease andfeint about the monster, as they had done with the Throg hound--for hewould have a better chance. If only the animals were here!
Those eyes--red-pitted eyes in a gargoyle head following his everymovement--perhaps those were the only vulnerable points.
Muscles tensed beneath that scaled hide. The Terran readied himself fora sidewise leap, his knife hand raised to rake at those eyes. A brownshape with a V of lighter fur banding its back crossed the far range ofShann's vision. He could not believe what he saw, not even when asnarling animal, slavering with rage, came at a lumbering gallop tostand beside him, a second animal on its heels.
Uttering his own battle cry, Taggi attacked. The fork-tail's head swung,imitating the movements of the wolverine as it had earlier mimicked theswaying of the disk in the Wyvern's hand. Togi came in from the otherside. They might have been hounds keeping a bull in play. And never hadthey shown such perfect team work, almost as if they could sense whatShann desired of them.
That forked tail lashed viciously, a formidable weapon. Bone, muscles,scaled flesh, half buried in the sand, swept up a cloud of grit into theface of the man and the animals. Shann fell back, pawing with his freehand at his eyes. The wolverines circled warily, trying for the attackthey favored--the spring to the shoulders, the usually fatal assault onthe spine behind the neck. But the armored head of the fork-tail, slunglow, warned them off. Again the tail lashed, and this time Taggi wascaught and hurled across the beach.
Togi uttered a challenge, made a reckless dash, and raked down thelength of the fork-tail's body, fastening on that tail, weighing it toearth with her own poundage while the sea creature fought to dislodgeher. Shann, his eyes watering from the sand, but able to see, watchedthat battle for a long second, judging that fork-tail was completelyengaged in trying to free its best weapon from the grip of thewolverine. The latter clawed and bit with a fury which suggested Togiintended to immobilize that weapon by tearing it to shreds.
Fork-tail wrenched its body, striving to reach its tormentor with fangsor clawed feet. And in that struggle to achieve an impossible position,its head slued far about, uncovering the unprotected area behind theskull base which usually lay under the spiny collar about its shoulders.
Shann went in. With one hand he gripped the edge of that collar--itsserrations tearing his flesh--and at the same time he drove his knifeblade deep into the soft underfolds, ripping on toward the spinalcolumn. The blade nicked against bone as the fork-tail's head slammedback, catching Shann's hand and knife together in a trap. The Terran wasjerked from his feet, and flung to one side with the force of thebeast's reaction.
Blood spurted up, his own blood mingled with that of the monster. OnlyTogi's riding of the tail prevented Shann's being beaten to death. Thearmored snout pointed skyward as the creature ground the sharp edge ofits collar down on the Terran's arm. Shann, frantic with pain, drove hisfree fist into one of those eyes.
Fork-tail jerked convulsively; its head snapped down again and Shann wasfree. The Terran threw himself back, keeping his feet with an effort.Fork-tail was writhing, churning up the sand in a cloud. But it couldnot rid itself of the knife Shann had planted with all his strength, andwhich the blows of its own armored collar were now driving deeper anddeeper into its back.
It howled thinly, with an abnormal shrilling. Shann, nursing hisbleeding forearm against his chest, rolled free from the waves of sandit threw about, bringing up against one of the rock pillars. With thatto steady him, he somehow found his feet, and stood weaving, trying tosee through the rain of dust.
The convulsions which churned up that concealing cloud were growing morefeeble. Then Shann heard the triumphant squall from Togi, saw her brownbody still on the torn tail just above the forking. The wolverine usedher claws to hitch her way up the spine of the sea monster, heading forthe mountain of blood spouting from behind the head. Fork-tail fought toraise that head once more; then the massive jaw thudded into the sand,teeth snapping fruitlessly as a flood of grit overrode the tongue,packed into the gaping mouth.
How long had it taken--that frenzy of battle on the bloodstained beach?Shann could have set no limit in clock-ruled time. He pressed hiswounded arm tighter to him, lurched past the still twitching sea thingto that splotch of brown fur on the sand, shaping the wolverine'swhistle with dry lips. Togi was still busy with the kill, but Taggi laywhere that murderous tail had thrown him.
Shann fell on his knees, as the beach around him developed a curioustendency to sway. He put his good hand to the ruffled back fur of themotionless wolverine.
"Taggi!"
A slight quiver answered. Shann tried awkwardly to raise the animal'shead with his own hand. As far as he could see, there were no openwounds; but there might be broken bones, internal injuries he did nothave the skill to heal.
"Taggi?" He called again gently, striving to bring that heavy head up onhis knee.
"The furred one is not dead."
For a moment Shann was not aware that those words had formed in hismind, had not been heard by his ears. He looked up, eyes blazing at theWyvern coming toward him in a graceful glide across the crimsoned sand.And in a space of heartbeats his thrust of anger cooled into a stubbornenmity.
"No thanks to you," he said deliberately aloud. If the Wyvern witchwanted to understand him, let her make the effort; he did not try totouch her thoughts with his.
Taggi stirred again, and Shann glanced down quickly. The wolverinegasped, opened his eyes, shook his miniature bear head, scatteringpellets of sand. He sniffed at a dollop of blood, the dark, alien blood,spattered on Shann's breeches, and then his head came up with areassuring alertness as he looked to where his mate was still worryingthe now quiet fork-tail.
With an effort, Taggi got to his feet, Shann aiding him. The man ran hishand down over ribs, seeking any broken bones. Taggi growled a warningonce when that examination brought pain in its wake, but Shann coulddetect no real damage. As might a cat, the wolverine must have met theshock of that whip-tail stroke relaxed enough to escape serious injury.Taggi had been knocked out, but now he was able to navigate again. Hepulled free from Shann's grip, lumbering across the sand to the kill.
Someone else was crossing that strip of beach. Passing the Wyvern as ifhe did not see them, Thorvald came directly to Shann. A few secondslater he had the torn arm stretched across his own bent knee, examiningthe still bleeding hurt.
"That's a nasty one," he commented.
Shann heard the words and they made sense, but the instability of hissurroundings was increasing, while Thorvald's handling sent sharp stabsof pain up his arm and somehow into his head, where they ended in redbursts to cloud his sight.
Out of the reddish mist which had fogged most of the landscape thereemerged a single object, a round white disk. And in Shann's clouded minda well-rooted apprehension stirred. He struck out with his one hand, andthrough luck connected. The disk flew out of sight. His vision clearedenough so he could sight the Wyvern who had been leaning over Thorvald'sshoulder centering her weird weapon on him. Making a great effort, Shanngot out the words, words which he also shaped in his mind as he saidthem aloud: "You're not taking me over--again!"
There was no emotion to be read on that jewel-banded face or in herunblinking eyes. He caught at Thorvald, determined to get across hiswarning.
"Don't let them use those disks on us!"
"I'll do my best."
Only the haze had taken Thorvald again. Did one of the W
yverns have adisk focused on them? Were they being pulled into one of those blankperiods, to awaken as prisoners once more--say, in the cavern of theveil? The Terran fought with every ounce of will power to escapeunconsciousness, but he failed.
This time he did not awaken half-drowning in an underground stream orfacing a green mist. And there was an ache in his arm which was somehowreassuring with the very insistence of pain. Before opening his eyes,his fingers crossed the smooth slick of a bandage there, went on toinvestigate by touch a sleep mat such as he had found in the cavernstructure. Was he back in that web of rooms and corridors?
Shann delayed opening his eyes until a kind of shame drove him to it. Hefirst saw an oval opening almost the length of his body as it wasstretched only a foot of two below the sill of that window. And throughits transparent surface came the golden light of the sun--no green mist,no crystals mocking the stars.
The room in which he lay was small with smooth walls, much like that inwhich he had been imprisoned on the island. And there were no otherfurnishings save the mat on which he rested. Over him was a light covernetted of fibers resembling yarn, with feathers knotted into it toprovide a downy upper surface. His clothing was gone, but the singlecovering was too warm and he pushed it away from his shoulders and chestas he wriggled up to see the view beyond the window.
His torn arm came into full view. From wrist to elbow it was encased inan opaque skin sheath, unlike any bandage of his own world. Surely thathad not come out of any Survey aid pack. Shann gazed toward the window,but beyond lay only a reach of sky. Except for a lemon cloud or tworuffled high above the horizon, nothing broke that soft amber curtain.He might be quartered in a tower well above ground level, which did notmatch his former experience with Wyvern accommodations.
"Back with us again?" Thorvald, one hand lifting a door panel, came in.His ragged uniform was gone, and he wore only breeches of a sleek greenmaterial and his own scuffed-and-battered boots.
Shann settled back on the mat. "Where are we?"
"I think you might term this the capital city," Thorvald answered. "Inrelation to the mainland, we're on an island well out to sea--westward."
"How did we get here?" That climb in the slab, the stream underground....Had it been an interior river running under the bed of the sea? ButShann was not prepared for the other's reply.
"By wishing."
"By _what_?"
Thorvald nodded, his expression serious. "They wished us here. Listen,Lantee, when you jumped down to mix it with that fork-tailed thing, didyou wish you had the wolverines with you?"
Shann thought back; his memories of what had occurred before that battlewere none too clear. But, yes, he had wished Taggi and Togi present atthat moment to distract the enraged beast.
"You mean I wished them?" The whole idea was probably a part of theWyvern jargon of dreaming and he added, "Or did I just dreameverything?" There was the bandage on his arm, the soreness under thatbandage. But also there had been Logally's lash brand back in thecavern, which had bitten into his flesh with the pain of a real blow.
"No, you weren't dreaming. You happened to be tuned in one of thosehandy little gadgets our lady friends here use. And, so tuned in, yourdesire for the wolverines being pretty powerful just then, they came."
Shann grimaced. This was unbelievable. Yet there were his meetings withLogally and Trav. How could anyone rationally explain them? And how hadhe, in the beginning, been jumped from the top of the cliff on theisland of his marooning into the midst of an underground flood withoutany conscious memory of an intermediate journey?
"How does it work?" he asked simply.
Thorvald laughed. "You tell me. They have these disks, one to a Wyvern,and they control forces with them. Back there on the beach weinterrupted a class in such control; they were the novices learningtheir trade. We've stumbled on something here which can't be defined orunderstood by any of our previous standards of comparison. It's franklymagic, judged by our terms."
"Are we prisoners?" Shann wanted to know.
"Ask me something I'm sure of. I've been free to come and go withinlimits. No one's exhibited any signs of hostility; most of them simplyignore me. I've had two interviews, via this mind-reading act of theirs,with their rulers, or elders, or chief sorceresses--all three titlesseem to apply. They ask questions, I answer as best I can, but sometimeswe appear to have no common meeting ground. Then I ask some questions,they evade gracefully, or reply in a kind of unintelligible double-talk,and that's as far as our communication has progressed so far."
"Taggi and Togi?"
"Have a run of their own and as far as I can tell are better satisfiedwith life than I am. Oddly enough, they respond more quickly and moreintelligently to orders. Perhaps this business of being shunted aroundby the disks has conditioned them in some way."
"What about these Wyverns? Are they all female?"
"No, but their tribal system is strictly matriarchal, which follows apattern even Terra once knew: the fertile earth mother and herpriestesses, who became the witches when the gods overruled thegoddesses. The males are few in number and lack the power to activatethe disks. In fact," Thorvald laughed ruefully, "one gathers that inthis civilization our opposite numbers have, more or less, the status ofpets at the best, and necessary evils at the worst. Which put _us_ at adisadvantage from the start."
"You think that they won't take us seriously because we are males?"
"Might just work out that way. I've tried to get through to them aboutdanger from the Throgs, telling them what it would mean to them to havethe beetle-heads settle in here for good. They just brush aside thewhole idea."
"Can't you argue that the Throgs are males, too? Or aren't they?"
The Survey officer shook his head. "That's a point no human can answer.We've been sparring with Throgs for years and there have been librariesof reports written about them and their behavior patterns, all of whichadd up to about two paragraphs of proven facts and hundreds of surmisesbeginning with the probable and skimming out into the wild fantastic.You can claim anything about a Throg and find a lot of very intelligentsouls ready to believe you. But whether those beetle-heads squattingover on the mainland are able to answer to 'he,' 'she,' or 'it,' yoursolution is just as good as mine. We've always considered the ones wefight to be males, but they might just as possibly be amazons. Frankly,these Wyverns couldn't care less either; at least that's the impressionthey give."
"But anyway," Shann observed, "it hasn't come to 'we're all girlstogether' either."
Thorvald laughed again. "Not so you can notice. We're not the onlyunwilling visitor in the vicinity."
Shann sat up. "A Throg?"
"A something. Non-Warlockian, or non-Wyvern. And perhaps trouble forus."
"You haven't seen this other?"
Thorvald sat down cross-legged. The amber light from the window madered-gold of his hair, added ruddiness to his less-gaunt features.
"No, I haven't. As far as I can tell, the stranger's not right here. Icaught stray thought beams twice--surprise expressed by newly arrivedWyverns who met me and apparently expected to be fronted by somethingquite physically different."
"Another Terran scout?"
"No. I imagine that to the Wyverns we must look a lot alike. Just as wecouldn't tell one of them from her sister if their body patterns didn'tdiffer. Discovered one thing about those patterns--the more intricatethey run, the higher the 'power,' not of the immediate wearer, but ofher ancestors. They're marked when they qualify for their disk andpresented with the rating of the greatest witch in their family line asan inducement to live up to those deeds and surpass them if possible.Quite a bit of logic to that. Given the right conditioning, such asystem might even work in our service."
That nugget of information was the stuff from which Survey reports weremade. But at the moment the information concerning the other captive wasof more value to Shann. He steadied his body against the wall with hisgood hand and got to his feet. Thorvald watched him.
"I take
it you have visions of action. Tell me, Lantee, why _did_ youtake that header off the cliff to mix it with fork-tail?"
Shann wondered himself. He had no reason for that impulsive act. "Idon't know----"
"Chivalry? Fair Wyvern in distress?" the other prodded. "Or did the backlash from one of those disks draw you in?"
"I don't know----"
"And why did you use your knife instead of your stunner?"
Shann was startled. For the first time he realized that he had frontedthe greatest native menace they had discovered on Warlock with the moreprimitive of his weapons. Why had he not tried the stunner on the beast?He had just never thought of it when he had taken that leap into therole of dragon slayer.
"Not that it would have done you any good to try the ray; it has noeffect on fork-tail."
"You tried it?"
"Naturally. But you didn't know that, or did you pick up thatinformation earlier?"
"No," answer Shann slowly. "No, I don't know why I used the knife. Thestunner would have been more natural." Suddenly he shivered, and theface he turned to Thorvald was very sober.
"How much do they control us?" he asked, his voice dropping to a halfwhisper as if the walls about them could pick up those words and relaythem to other ears. "What can they do?"
"A good question." Thorvald lost his light tone. "Yes, what can theyfeed into our minds without our knowing? Perhaps those disks are onlywindow dressing, and they can work without them. A great deal willdepend upon the impression we can make on these witches." He began tosmile again, more wryly. "The name we gave this planet is certainly amisnomer. A warlock is a male sorcerer, not a witch."
"And what are the chances of our becoming warlocks ourselves?"
Again Thorvald's smile faded, but he gave a curt little nod to Shann asif approving that thought. "That is something we are going to look into,and now! If we have to convince some stubborn females, as well as fightThrogs, well"--he shrugged--"we'll have a busy, busy, time."