Dragonslayer

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  Of course, it might all be legend. The document was irritatingly vague, and ever described things in the most general of ways. Many of the documents the Unified Church had rescued from the burning of the mages’ colleges had proven to be fantastical nonsense, and Amaury could easily imagine the arrogant Chevaliers embellishing their reputation. That he heeded the document at all was testimony to how concerned he was. He stood, leaving the parchment on his desk, and walked to the window. He tried to imagine what the citadel would look like with a dragon hovering above, blasting everything with flame, and shuddered. He had no great love for the citizenry, but if Mirabay and all its great buildings were reduced to ash, all he had worked so hard for, all his wealth, power, and influence, would count for nothing.

  Returning to his desk, he looked at the document again. Each Chevalier, up to the present day, underwent a secret initiation ritual presided over by the incumbent Chevaliers. They had joked and laughed about it, always hinting at its mystical nature to others, but never elaborating. He thought it unlikely there was still anything magical about the ritual—the Intelligenciers would have dragged the Chevaliers off if there had been. However, as he was learning from the documents and the Spurriers’ experiments at the Priory, its headquarters in an old monastery in the north of the city, you didn’t necessarily need to know you were doing magic to do it. Words focussed the mind. Intent and desire focussed the mind. A focussed mind shaped magic.

  Because of that, somehow, Guillot dal Villerauvais might now be the answer to his country’s problem. He was the last surviving Chevalier of the Silver Circle.

  He had sent a man to fetch Gill as soon as Commander Leverre had returned with news of the dragon. It had been a knee-jerk reaction and the thought of their shared history gave him some concern. His hip ached when he thought on it. What troubles, he wondered, would Guillot dal Villerauvais bring him this time?

  CHAPTER

  6

  Ever the enterprising one, Guillot solved his problem by siphoning off half a dozen bottles from the tanks in the fermenting hall on the edge of the village. The wine was weak and tasted terrible, but by the time he had drained the second bottle, it had chased away most of his demons. When it grew dark and Villerauvais quieted for the night, he was left with his memories and his thoughts—a poisonous combination. He slouched in an easy chair in his room by the window and looked out over his small village as he filled and drained glass after glass, pushing memories away and making thought difficult.

  The night was clear; he could see the moon and the stars. The pale moonlight was blotted out for an instant, so briefly Guillot almost missed it. His heart began racing before his mind had absorbed what he’d seen. He stood and rushed to the back window, pressing himself against it to get the greatest field of vision. After a moment of searching, he spotted it, a great, unmistakable shape blotting out the stars as it moved lazily through the night sky.

  Guillot watched it disappear, then sat. From the feeling in the pit of his stomach, he knew it was Philipe’s “shadow.” He suddenly felt very sober, and was not one bit grateful for the fact. It was the bottle. It had to be the bottle. There was something wrong with the fermenting tanks—mould, perhaps. That was the obvious answer.

  No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, he knew that in the morning, there would be a knock at his door to tell him more livestock had been killed. As he drifted toward a troubled sleep, slouched in his chair, he prayed it would only be livestock.

  * * *

  The small farms made it easier for Alpheratz to feed. He did not have the stamina to go chasing through the mountains after ibex or chamois, but with sheep, goats, and cattle parcelled out in pens or small fields, the farms allowed Alpheratz to gorge without having to exert himself. He fed each night, then spent the morning gliding over the mountains, seeking out others of his kind. So far he had not even seen a hint of their presence, and he began to despair that what he had felt in his gut from the moment he woke was the truth. He was the last of his kind.

  Only when he was exhausted—though his stamina grew each day—did he return to his peak to rest, forlorn. Each afternoon when he woke, he felt stronger than the day before, but still hollow at the thought that all those he knew and cared for were gone. He knew in his bones that they had all died violent deaths and consoled himself with the fact that it would not be long before he could start to exact revenge.

  As he lay down at the mouth of his cavern, waiting for the night, he studied the valleys before him. In the distance, he could see the twinkling lights of another village, and wondered if he should visit there the next day. He knew the humans would eventually learn to hide their livestock from his nightly attacks and would eventually call their soldiers for help. One or two more trips to the village he had visited three previous times would clean it out completely. He would strip it bare, then destroy the human population and move on to the next village, satiating the hunger created by years and years of slumber. He smiled at the twinkling lights out on the horizon. The people who lit them had no idea what was coming.

  The only thing extending his patience was the feeling in every limb that his body was growing strong again. He hungered for the moment when he burned the first large town to ash. Only then would the humans understand the pain and suffering their greed had caused. Only then would they learn the price of their arrogance.

  * * *

  There were the mornings, after he’d consumed a particularly bad vintage, when Guillot could think about nothing other than how ill he felt. There were mornings when he woke thinking of nothing at all—those were his favourites. Then there were the mornings when he woke with the past ten years forgotten, and looked to his left, expecting his wife to be there in the bed beside him. Those were the worst.

  That morning, his first thought was of the shadow. How it moved silently, blotting out the stars as it went. His dreams had been of fire and destruction. The notion that alcohol was finally driving him to madness was actually welcome. The alternative, that something from children’s myths was wreaking havoc on his demesne, was too difficult to cope with.

  One way or the other, Guillot knew he could not sit idle. He had been so careless in his responsibilities that a neighbouring lord was collecting taxes in his demesne. Worse, he could do nothing about it. Now his vassals’ livestock were being killed. If they ran him out of town, he couldn’t blame them. The peasants and villagers of Villerauvais were his responsibility, and he had to take action. Half a dozen villagers regularly trained at arms, his levy should the king ever call upon him to satisfy his feudal obligations. They had not been mustered since his father’s time, and he had no idea if any of the able-bodied men required to answer the call would respond. Nonetheless, that was his next step—he needed eyes and ears on the ground to report what was happening.

  When he finally managed to rise from his bed, he headed to the village hall to see the mayor. The building had pride of place next to the church with its tall steeple, overlooking the small galleried square that formed the centre of Villerauvais. As seigneur, he had the right to enter unannounced, but knocked first regardless. The mayor, René, was also the village’s winemaker, and Gill knew he wouldn’t be popular considering Lord Montpareil’s recent tax raid. The sense of shame he felt as he entered took him by surprise, and it occurred to him that the last time he’d been in the village hall was when he was a boy, with his father. Little had changed—a long table sat in the centre of the room, surrounded by chairs on the flagstone floor.

  Windows fronting onto the square let in some light, but not enough. In the absence of a village meeting, René had foregone the expense of lighting any candles, so the interior was dim. The Villerauvais coat of arms was carved into the wall at the back of the hall. It loomed over Guillot like a great shaming statement.

  “Is this about the slaughtered cattle or the wine?” René said. He looked up from the pile of papers spread before him, delicate wire spectacles perched precariously on the bridge of his
nose. “Jeanne said she’d geld me if I give you a bottle from the barrels.”

  “The cattle,” Gill said. “Something needs to be done.”

  “I agree. Richard’s herd was attacked last night. Three head gone. Things will be tough on him and his family without them. Alain, Philipe, Richard, and I have agreed to patrol the fields around the village from dusk until midnight for the next two evenings. I’ll make a report of our findings and send it on to Trelain. I’m sure the duke will send soldiers.”

  “I, well, it’s good to know that everything’s in hand.” Gill stood there a moment longer, a sickening feeling of disappointment in his gut. What had he expected? That they would sit around in the forlorn hope that he would get himself together?

  “So, about that bottle?” he asked. “Is there any chance at all?”

  * * *

  Anger replaced disappointment as Guillot walked away from the village square without the bottle he had been hoping for. It seemed the mayor was just as afraid of Jeanne as everyone else. He saw dal Sason lurking outside his townhouse, so executed a quick right turn to avoid being spotted. The lane he found himself on led out of the village and toward his family home, Villerauvais Manor. His father had run the seigneury from there, maintaining a lofty distance from his tenants and only venturing into town if he had good reason. That was the more traditional way of doing things. Guillot knew he was far from the perfect lord, but he liked to think the people felt more comfortable around him than they had with his father.

  Guillot rarely called at the manor house. It was overly grand for the demesne it presided over, and from the look of the ruins scattered about its grounds, it had once been grander still. Parts of the building were very old, with more recent extensions here and there. His father had claimed that the oldest parts of the house dated back to Imperial times, but Gill had never believed that. Claiming a direct connection to the very ancient past seemed to be a mark of pride for nobles, as if estates, wealth, and fine houses were not already enough. The place had never been much of a home to him; he’d been sent to school in Mirabay at a young age, and from there directly on to the Academy. He had always thought he and his wife, Auroré, would turn it into a home and start a family. The gods had other plans, however.

  The current caretaker was the family steward, an old banneret called Yves, who did his best with it, but with limited resources and an absent lord, he could be forgiven for allowing the upkeep to slide. It was a bit of a walk from the village, but without anything else pressing on his time, it seemed as good a destination as any.

  Gill breathed a little harder than he would have liked by the time he arrived, but felt as though the walk had done him good. His head had cleared somewhat and his body felt more like it was his own. The double doors creaked as Guillot pushed them open. The shafts of light that followed him in illuminated a soup of dust floating through the air.

  “Hello!” Guillot said. There was no response, so he waited a moment, then called out once more. Perhaps the old house had finally become too much for old Yves.

  Yves appeared out of the gloom a moment later, clutching a bundle of papers. “Come to deal with the correspondence, my Lord?” he said.

  Being called “my Lord” after his visit to the village hall felt particularly damning. Guillot nodded, trying to give a purpose to his meandering attempt to avoid dal Sason, and took the proffered bundle of papers. Yves had seemed old when Guillot was a boy, but he did not look to have grown any older in all the years since. Tall and wiry—the perfect build for a swordsman—he was meticulous about his appearance, as many old soldiers were.

  Guillot followed him into the study, where the caretaker had already laid out a pen and fresh bottle of ink—he must have seen Guillot coming up from the village. The pair enacted this routine a couple of times a year, beginning when Guillot moved back to Villerauvais. For the first few years, Yves had regularly asked when Guillot intended to move back to the manor house, but he no longer did.

  There were bills to be paid, accounts to be signed off, and numerous other pieces of less formal correspondence to deal with. Guillot had made a great deal of money during his time in the city, and despite his best efforts, he’d squandered very little of it. Even in this, it appeared he was a failure.

  He looked at a smaller bundle of sealed notes. Despite the scandal of his disgrace in Mirabay—from which he’d been exonerated thanks to his skill with a sword—he was still a bachelor, with lands capable of generating a good income. For the second or third daughter of a nobleman, Guillot remained a reasonable marriage prospect. Well, he thought, perhaps not reasonable. Tolerable. As such, he regularly received a number of invitations to balls, garden parties, and all the social niceties of Mirabayan aristocracy. He ought to decline them politely but instead ignored them.

  The rest of the tedious work always took the better part of the day. Without anything to drink and a worsening hangover, it was more tedious still. That was ever the problem with drinking—life tended to intrude long enough for a hangover to take hold. Yves closed the door quietly and left Gill alone with the ghosts of his father and all the other Seigneurs of Villerauvais who had occupied that office. Despite the distraction the paperwork provided, he couldn’t shake the troubles in the village from his thoughts. The last thing he wanted was to return and discover there had been another attack.

  When Yves brought him lunch at midday, Guillot was not even halfway through the paperwork, and the optimistic notion that he might be done before nightfall was fading.

  “Is there anything in the cellar to wash it down with?” Gill asked.

  “I had everything sent down to the house in the village,” Yves replied.

  “Yes, of course,” Gill said. He had long since drained the cellar of both properties. “Yves, your family have been in the region a long time, haven’t they?”

  “Even longer than yours, my Lord.”

  “Do you know if there are any dragon stories specific to the region?”

  “Nearly all of them,” Yves said.

  Guillot raised an eyebrow.

  “The limestone mountains are full of caverns. Some say this was where they first appeared, before spreading across the world. It’s no coincidence that your family were granted this land. A Villerauvais lord was one of the founding Chevaliers and this land was your family’s reward for their service. Make no mistake—this was dragon country.

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, I have everything that I need.”

  “Will you be spending the night?”

  Guillot thought for a moment. He didn’t reckon dal Sason would spend the whole day waiting outside his house. “No. I’ll head back to the village when I’m done.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  It was close to midnight before Guillot finished the final piece of correspondence and let himself out of the manor house; Yves had long since retired for the night. There was a chill in the air, as there often was in those parts on a clear night. His hand ached from all the writing, and had grown so sore that by the end of the task he had started initialling letters.

  It sounded like the wind was getting up, which was unseasonal for that time of year. Gill pulled his cloak tightly around him. He was glad it was still summer. In the winter, the winds funnelled into the valleys and made life a misery for three or four days at a time, tearing slates from roofs, shutters from windows, and making walking in the open nearly impossible. Although he could hear the wind, he couldn’t feel it. That was strange enough to make Gill stop and listen more carefully.

  Might alcohol withdrawal also make him imagine things? It seemed you were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t. Too much wine and you see things, too little and you hear them. Which was worse? The night was completely still, yet he could definitely hear the swoosh of the wind. Almost a whistle. He looked up in time to see a great, dark shape pass overhead. His stomach twisted as he was gripped by a fear so primal that he thought he would be sick. The
shadow.

  The whistle became piercing as the sky lit up with a bright flash. A great stream of fire appeared in the middle of the sky and raced to the ground, striking with a thundering crash and a spray of sparks. For a moment, it illuminated its source, a shining black mass. It had eyes. And teeth. And wings. And claws. A dragon.

  Guillot was running before he knew what he was doing. Once he’d been called the bravest man in the kingdom, a title that was certainly exaggerated, but he had never been a coward. Nonetheless, he ran, and he couldn’t make himself stop.

  He glanced back at the place where the fireball had landed. The flames had subsided and he could see nothing. There was sound, though. The sound of a beast feeding. He assumed that some unfortunate goats or cows had been on the receiving end of the flames, until he remembered that Mayor René and the others were patrolling the fields.

  * * *

  The bright jet of flame had ruined Guillot’s night vision, so though the night was clear and the moon a decent size, he could see nothing. Also, he was unarmed, and even if he had been carrying a sword, there was little he could do now. Whatever the flame hit was well dead by now. Nothing could be gained by remaining where he was, so Guillot continued toward the village as fast as his legs would carry him.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had run anywhere, but it must have been some time ago, as his lungs and legs were burning long before he reached the village square. What to do next? He looked around. Alain, Richard, and Philipe all lived outside the village. Only René had a house within it. What would he say to René’s wife? He felt sick. Was there more he could have done? Would being a more diligent lord have made any difference? He tried to convince himself that it wouldn’t have, but deep down he knew he had left the defence of the village to a winemaker and some farmers. Had he taken control of things, he with the finest military education that could be had and over a decade of soldiering experience, it could very well have been different. He was a Chevalier of the Silver Circle. Slaying dragons was supposed to be his primary function, if the old stories were to be believed. With what he had witnessed that night, he was very much a believer.