The Dragon on The Border

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Jim nodded; balancing the lance on the pommel of his saddle before him, he whirled Gorp about and put the horse as quickly as he could into a gallop straight toward the Worm.

  The distance between himself and the creature was not all that much now. He had time only for one thought, and in this moment it was about Angie.

  Nearly two years ago, after the battle had been won at the Loathly Tower and Angie had been rescued, he had gained enough magic credit with the Accounting Office so that Carolinus had said he could use it, if he wanted, to take them both back to their own world.

  Jim had assumed then that Angie would want to return; and it was a surprise to him when she would admit only to wanting to do what he wanted to do.

  The truth had been then, that he, himself, had wanted to stay. He felt himself challenged by this medieval existence. It was only after he admitted as much to himself, that he understood, somewhat slowly, and bit by bit, that Angie had felt likewise challenged.

  So, stay they had.

  But he had realized later, after the decision was made, that he had taken Carolinus too lightly, when the Mage had told him that if they did not go back then, it was very probable they could never go. Jim had not thought to inquire why it would be so difficult.

  Now he knew. He would have to become a magician of Carolinus's level to get himself not only the magical credit, but in the necessary position with regard to the factors that governed this world—Chance and History—in order to ever return them home.

  Achieving both things would take him years at least—if he was lucky. Now, effectively, they were stuck here; and that meant that it was only his life and his magic that stood between Angie and being in a very bad position.

  True, she would still be mistress of the Castle de Bois de Malencontri. But in this world, in this time, and without Jim's magic, it would be almost impossible for her to hold it alone.

  The only solution offered by this fourteenth-century society was that she could marry again to someone who would become Lord of the Castle, and the Lord of her. Some fourteenth-century man who had no idea of all the things that she knew and remembered.

  In short, if the Worm killed him now—as was somewhere from possible to likely—Angie would be the one to really suffer.

  —But now the time for thinking was over. He was already all but face to face with the Worm. To be exact, he was some thirty feet away from the creature; and this was as close as he planned to get—for now at least.

  He and the Worm had met out beyond the area of the main battle where the ground was fairly clear. Jim, in spite of his good reflexes and his high rating as a volleyball player back on his own world, was someone who depended more on his mind than his muscles. In this particular instance, he had seen only one hope.

  The Worm moved slowly—that is, it moved its body as a whole slowly, forward. If the pace at which it was coming was about the fastest it could go—and certainly, the Worm at the Loathly Tower had moved no faster than this—then perhaps he had a chance. He turned Gorp's head away from the Worm and began to ride around the creature, in a circle.

  Gorp, who on closer view had decided he did not like the looks of the Worm after all, was only too glad to turn so. The Worm turned to face them as they moved; but gradually Jim speeded up, from the trot at which he had advanced, to a canter, to a gallop—until he was circling the Worm at high speed. By this time the Worm had made several rotations in place, stopping its forward movement.

  But, as Jim had hoped, he was able to circle the creature faster than it could turn to face him. He continued circling, with the Worm trying to keep facing him, but falling steadily behind in its turning, until Jim on Gorp was finally in a good position, a little behind and at a right angle to the creature's side.

  "Now, Gorp!" Jim shouted out loud. He lifted the reins and spear; and, once more, for the second time in Gorp's experience with him as a rider, drove the sharp points of his spurs into Gorp's flanks.

  Gorp literally leaped at the sudden pricks, and, having leaped, galloped directly at the middle of the Worm. Jim clamped his arm tightly around the butt of the lance, concentrated on what he was doing—and prayed.

  There was nothing harder than to direct the point of a ten-foot lance while riding on the back of a galloping horse; when every movement of the horse made your point waver up and around and from side to side, like the upper tip of a flexible wand fastened upright on the edge of a turning record.

  He concentrated on making sure that the point was as low as possible. Better to run the danger of driving it into the ground than have it slide over the beast's back entirely.

  All this took place in a matter of seconds. Almost immediately Gorp was upon the Worm with no choice but to jump it, after his next couple of galloping strides. Jim clung to his point and aimed it directly at the rear middle side of the Worm.

  The next second they hit and the spear went in.

  Then Gorp was jumping over the Worm to get to open country at the far side; and Jim had had to let go of the spear as he felt its point go in, for fear of being kicked clear out of the saddle by its butt end.

  On the other side of the Worm, Jim fought to slow his panicked horse. When he got Gorp under control and circled back, it was to see the lance broken off by the Worm, now rolling over and over on the ground. It was desperately trying to reach back far enough with its head to seize in its mouth the protruding end of the broken-off lance that had penetrated it. But it could not; the broken-off part had gone clear through it.

  It definitely must, he thought with sudden exultation, have hit some of the vital organs within. It could not have missed at least one. Internal bleeding had already to be at work to aid him.

  But now came the hard part. It was hurt by the lance, but showed no immediate evidence of being seriously hampered in fighting. Jim managed to pull Gorp to a skidding halt some thirty feet from the Worm. As the horse stopped he leaped from Gorp's back, holding his sword in its scabbard and his shield on his arm.

  He drew the sword and slapped Gorp with the flat of the blade to send the horse away. Then he was running at an angle toward the back end of the Worm; to approach from its rear, as much as was possible, the place where the lance had transfixed the creature. He ran with his sword held high, the point glinting in the sunlight like one of the Little Mens' spear-points.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  He ran with all his strength. If he could just use his sword to enlarge the wound the lance had made… he reached the Worm, which had now stopped rolling, and hit its mottled brown skin with the sword's point, with all his running, armored weight behind it. It went in a good third of its length, only inches from the entrance place of the broken-off lance.

  He tried to work the blade in deeper and was suddenly hammered against the side of the Worm with a force like that of a wrecker's swinging ball demolishing a standing wall.

  His shield slammed him against the mottled side, well behind the forepart of the Worm, which had just struck at him. His left shoulder boss and leg greave kept it from doing any but minor harm. But the top metal edge hit his cheek hard enough to start it bleeding; and he could feel it also, against his teeth, inside.

  With that brassy taste of his own blood in his mouth, he began to work at the sword he had put in, back and forth to push it deeper and also to enlarge the opening he had made.

  The swordpoint had now gone in even farther. Mostly, this had been with the impact of the Worm's front end, slamming back against his shield; and the sword's hilt-end being driven forward from the resultant impact of his breastplate. But part of it was the result of his efforts.

  The forepart of the Worm hit him again.

  He kept on working.

  He was aware of the suckerlike mouth champing away sideways toward his shield, unable to get past it.

  Again he was struck; and again. Concentrating on his work, he finally wriggled the sword loose and drove it back down again, deeper, at an angle, striving to meet the lance-shaft. Meanwhile
the image of that ugly mouth and the deadly tiny teeth within it stayed in his mind, in spite of the fact that the wound of his swordpoint was now very close to the embedded lance-shaft fragment.

  Finally his blade jarred against something hard. He had reached the wood. Still working the sword back and forth in the Worm's flesh, he struggled now to slide the swordpoint down the shaft toward the vital parts far within. Meanwhile, the Worm hit him again. And again. Until his mind blurred, and he could no longer remember why he was doing what he did; but only that it had to be done.

  So he worked on; and the blows from the Worm's forepart continued. Jim's helmet was knocked partly around on his head, so that he could no longer see what he was doing. But he continued to work by feel. The world was a world of sweat, struggle and the receiving of incredible blows. It went on, and on and on…

  The shield was dented and hammered now by the terrific blows against it, until it had begun to fit itself to his body, to touch at nearly all points against the chain armor on his side and the plates upon it. He now felt the impact of every blow clear through to him, almost as if he was wearing no armor at all.

  The blows seemed more and more powerful. It was incredible that the Worm, hurt as badly as it must be by the lance through it and by his sword which was now nearly three-quarters of its depth down inside it—its point must be long since through the hide to the interior parts—and continued to strike with such incredible force. The blows were damaging Jim, now. He felt his ribs on his left side give, to one of them.

  The next blow smashed the broken ribs again. He felt the damage being done, he felt the shortness of breath as the lung, undoubtedly pierced in several places, began to lose its function as an oxygen-processing organ. The blows continued.

  He was being killed. The Worm was being killed. It was merely a matter of which one would die first. His sword blade was almost fully buried in the creature.

  He lost all sense of what he was doing. He was deaf, dumb, blind, and being hammered flat on an enormous anvil by a mad and giant blacksmith. There was nothing left in him but a relentless urgency—he had even forgotten the reason for it—to keep pushing downwards on his sword as long as he could. He pushed. He pushed. He pushed…

  He was aware of something stopping him. Of someone unfolding his clenched hands from the hilt of his sword, to which they seemed to have grown. Somehow, the hammering had stopped, for which he was grateful.

  But he was still blind and all but unconscious. Vaguely he was aware of being upheld, lifted and carried away. He wept a little inside the darkness of his helmet, for he had been kept from finishing what he had started out to do, after all.

  Then the helmet was turned straight forward and the visor lifted. He looked up into the face of Carolinus seated beside him on the ground where he lay flat on his back. The faces of Dafydd, Herrac and one of his sons wavered in and out of focus at the edge of his vision. Carolinus was bending over him and holding out to his lips a blue glass.

  He tried to lift his hands to push it away from him, but his hands now weighed tons. He could not move them. He felt the edge of the glass pressed against his lips and some of the liquid in it sloshed past the lips into his mouth. At the taste of it, he was suddenly aware of a terrible thirst. He gulped greedily, as Carolinus carefully tilted the glass to let the liquid flow into him.

  Then the glass was empty. He sat, wanting more, but without even the strength to ask for it.

  Then, slowly but steadily, the world changed. A glow seemed to spread from his stomach out through him, bringing new strength and energy. He felt his ribs pull back and the lung mend so that he could breathe deeply again. His helmet was lifted off; and his view became wide. He was half-lifted to a sitting position; and he saw that he sat in a field, with elements of empty armor and clothes scattered about it in the near distance and reaching away toward the cliffs. Twenty feet away lay the Worm.

  But it lay still. The broken lance-shaft still stood out of its side; and beside the lance-shaft, driven in to the hilt, was his sword.

  A magic fire was running through his veins, now, and he was waking up. It was as it had been before, when Carolinus had given him the milk to drink from a blue glass. The magic fluid was giving him back a strength he thought he had lost. Correction: a strength he had lost; but which was now magically being resupplied to him.

  He looked up at Carolinus and tried to speak. This time his voice came.

  "What happened?" he croaked. "What…"

  "You won, James," said Carolinus gently. He produced the bottle and began to incline it toward the blue glass, then changed his mind, put the bottle away again and the glass with it, somewhere inside his robe. "I think you can stand up now, if you try."

  "Help me," Jim said. His growing appreciation of the enormous difference between the magic of which Carolinus was capable, and the simple stuff that was all he had so far been able to do, lingered now with the taste of the magic milk in his mouth. Hands lifted him to his feet.

  He looked around the field.

  "Eshan?" he asked.

  Dafydd took him by the arm and led him off to one side until he had a different angle on the end of the cliffs. Then the bowman pointed.

  Jim looked. For a moment he did not make it out. Then he saw a suit of armor lying still just beyond the end row of boulders where the cliffs ceased to be. It lay on its back with just a few inches of the feathered end showing above its breastplate. He stared at it for a long moment.

  "But he's still alive!" said Jim. "Look!"

  They both stared, but the figure was still. Then an armored forearm moved slightly, as if it would reach up to pluck at the arrow that pierced its chest.

  Without any further words, Jim and Dafydd ran toward the figure; followed more slowly by Herrac and his sons. The sons would have galloped past the two running men, but Herrac sternly called them back. They followed at a distance of about ten yards.

  Jim and Dafydd reached the Hollow Man and knelt beside him. The visor of the armor was down but Jim lifted it, and looked at the emptiness within.

  "Eshan ... ?" he asked.

  There was a moment's pause. Then a voice spoke hollowly out of the emptiness.

  "They're all gone, then," Eshan's voice said, sounding distant and very weary. "All of us dead—but me?"

  "Yes," said Jim.

  A sigh came from the emptiness of the hollow helmet followed by the ghost of a brief chuckle.

  "Then I am last," he said. "At least I have that honor. But now I die too—and this ends us all. It is high time."

  "High time, say you?" said Dafydd.

  A wordless rattle, as if Eshan was trying to clear his throat of something sounded faintly from within the helmet.

  "Yes," said Eshan, "it has been a long, long time. I have been weary. We have all been weary…"

  The voice began to fade.

  "But now, at last… we will rest…"

  The voice of Eshan fell silent. There was nothing to mark his dying; but to Jim it was almost as if he could feel the life passing away from the armor below him. Suddenly it was only so much jumbled metal.

  Slowly, Jim and Dafydd got to their feet. Carolinus was standing beside them.

  "Now they are gone, indeed," said Carolinus.

  He turned away, and Jim and Dafydd turned with him. They started to walk back toward Herrac and his sons, just a short distance away.

  "The last of them dead, then?" asked Herrac.

  "He died as we listened to his final words," said Jim. "I think they were all tired of what they called life—all the Hollow Men. Perhaps all like Eshan, who died here, are grateful to us."

  There was a long moment of silence, not only by those around Jim, but among the Little Men and the Borderers who were still at the edge of the field. A strange stillness as well as silence; then Jim suddenly realized that the evil wind had ceased blowing.

  Unexpectedly, Carolinus chuckled, breaking that silence. Jim turned to look at him, surprised.

  "The
Accounting Office!" Carolinus explained fiercely. "They've been trying to get through to me for some time! Now, I'll let them reach me—soon!"

  He rubbed his hands together, almost as gleefully as Brian looking forward to a battle.

  "But not just yet. One more small thing to do. I suppose you want to get back to Castle de Mer and see how your friend Brian is?"

  "Yes!" said Jim, suddenly conscience-stricken. He had completely forgotten Brian for the moment. "Is he all right? I mean—?"

  He did not want to put into words his fear that Brian might have been somehow more badly hurt than they thought, and now be dead.

  "No, no," said Carolinus testily. "Go see for yourself. Back to Brian's sick-room with you!"

  There was a blink and Jim found himself standing in Brian's room in the Castle de Mer. A couple of servants were standing waiting in the corner, and Liseth was hovering over the bed. Brian was not only not dead, he was propped up and talking.

  "—And wine!" he said. "As well as some meat and bread at least! I could eat a horse!"

  "I don't know whether Sir James would approve—" Liseth started to answer, but found herself broken into by Brian's interruption as his glance went past her to see Jim.

  "James!" he said. "You're here. You're back from the battle! What happened? What of the Worm—"

  "The Worm is dead," said Jim flatly.

  "How? How?" cried Brian excitedly, looking as if he would clamber out of the bed unless he got an answer right away.

  "Well," said Jim, "he was killed. I was lucky with the lance—"

  "You killed it!" shouted Brian gleefully. "And with a lance? I knew you would!"

  "In spite of knowing how poor my lance-work was?" Jim could not resist the dig.

  "James!" said Brian reproachfully.

  "Well, you're right," Jim relented. "I put my lance through it, but had to do the real killing with my sword."

  "Oh, I knew you'd find a way," said Brian. "Now we must have wine, you and I. We must drink together; and, Liseth, you must drink with us. The Worm is dead!"