When Garth had eaten his fill he rose, tossed a gold coin on the table, and walked back out into the plaza. The circle of villagers parted before him, then coalesced into a single mass and followed him out—all save the innkeeper. He had not expected to be paid, and took a moment to hide the coin before joining his fellows.
Half a dozen villagers were watching in fascinated revulsion as Koros licked the blood from its paws. They were maintaining a safe distance, Garth noted; he was pleased by that. It showed that they respected the beast’s power.
“Whose goat was it?” he demanded loudly.
A woman timidly raised a hand in an affirmative gesture. He tossed her another of his gold coins, which she caught deftly and quickly pocketed.
A boy at her side whispered something and was hushed. Garth noticed men and women staring at him, at the warbeast, and at the broadsword on his hip and the battle-axe slung on the saddle. He looked around, but the spokesman was nowhere in sight. Choosing a man at random, he remarked, “I take it you see few warriors around here and fewer overmen.”
The man gaped at him, then gathered enough wit to reply. “Yes, my lord. Very few. The dragon keeps them away. No overmen, ever.”
“I would think that many would come to try their skill at dragon-slaying.”
His unhappy respondent glanced to either side, but saw no sign that any of his townspeople were willing to take over the burden of the conversation.
“No, my lord,” he replied, “not anymore. Long ago there were some, but the dragon killed them all, and after a time they stopped coming. There were never overmen, though; only the men of the Baron of Sland, or roving mercenaries and adventurers.”
“They stopped coming?” Garth said, encouraging him to continue.
“Yes, my lord. After all, there is no reward offered, no great prize to be won.”
“Nothing but a chance for fame and glory, and the risk of death, more easily found elsewhere, to be sure.” Garth nodded, then swung himself up into the saddle.
“Forgive me, my lord,” the man said, gathering his courage, “but why ... ah, why have you come here? Why do you bother with our accursed and wretched valley?”
“Your valley does not seem wretched to me, man. I have come here out of boredom, people of Orgûl; I grew weary of a life of quiet and decided, on a whim, to come here and aid those the dragon oppressed. I have lived for more than a century and adventured in many lands, but never before have those I came to aid tried so hard to turn me away.”
“But, my lord,” someone protested, “we seek only to prevent the loss of another brave—”
“Enough, human,” Garth interrupted. “Tell me, now, which road is most likely to lead me to this vile monster?”
Reluctantly, the man pointed to the western road, and with a word in the warbeast’s triangular ear, Garth rode on.
Chapter Three
The road he took from the plaza appeared to run through the village’s commercial area; the houses on either side held small shops, displaying fine rugs and fabrics in their many-paned windows, or delicate carvings, or gleaming pots and kettles, or other goods. A blacksmith’s forge trailed smoke into the blue of the sky, but the smith was not at work as the overman passed.
Even though the people he encountered shied away from him, averting their eyes and hurrying out of sight, he enjoyed the ride. This village, it seemed to him, was more the sort of place he might have liked to live in, if he were to live among humans, than the wastelands of the north. Skelleth might be flourishing, but it was still cold and dirty and gray, huddled on a barren plain against the long harsh winters; this village was bright and cheerful, trailing off without a border into the surrounding green of field and forest, rather than being chopped off short by a ruined city wall. The sunlight was warm on his back, the breeze fresh with the smells of abundant greenery.
Garth found it quite impossible to believe that this was the home ground of a dragon as terrible as the one he had heard described. He puzzled anew at the Orgûlians’ insistence that he turn back.
Looking about, he wondered idly whether overmen had ever lived in this delightful valley, back in those long-lost legendary days before the Racial Wars, before his people were driven into the barren Northern Waste. For centuries the overmen of the Waste had believed themselves to be the only ones to have survived those bitter wars, but recently Garth himself had discovered that others still lived on the Yprian Coast, a region nearly as desolate as the Waste itself. Could there be more, scattered about the world? Might some still linger in the hills around Orgûl? Garth found that an appealing fancy; this country was one he would have enjoyed calling his home, and it pleased him to imagine that it might not wholly be wasted on humans.
His musings were interrupted when his eye caught a sudden movement in one of the village shops; he turned to see what had drawn his attention.
The last of the buildings that lined the street was a strange little shop on the left, its mismatched windows full of whirling, whirring clockwork toys. Fascinated, Garth stopped his mount, swung himself to the ground, and went over for a closer look. He was in no real hurry, he told himself; the dragon had reportedly gone its way for decades, and another few moments would surely make no difference.
The shop’s display held dozens of intricate toys, full of gears and springs, which did amazing and delightful tricks. An armored warrior, with head and hands of china, swung a miniature sword in long, swooping strokes, narrowly missing the bent-over back of a mechanical smith striking sparks from a half-formed steel rake with a stone hammer—the head of which, Garth realized, must be flint, a clever method of creating the sparks that so resembled those of a real blacksmith at work. Nearby, a toy dog wagged its tail, its tongue moving as if panting, and a plaster witch stirred a tiny copper cauldron. Elsewhere dancers whirled, acrobats leaped, and animals paced, in a glittering festival of copper and brass and silver and ceramics. A few devices had no recognizable form, but were unabashed machines, tossing arms and gears about in complex and fascinating patterns.
Garth had never seen so fine a display of machinery; northerners, either the humans of Skelleth or the overmen of Ordunin, had little time for such inessentials. Clockwork was used for clocks on ships, which needed accurate timekeeping for navigation, but was seldom used elsewhere.
He could not resist a broad grin as he studied the things; he hoped that no one noticed it, lest it destroy the image he had been cultivating of the implacable inhuman warrior. Anyone who saw it, though, might not recognize it for what it was; humans were not always able to identify the expressions of overmen, being distracted from the fundamental similarities by the hollow cheeks, thin lips, and noseless slit nostrils. The two species reacted somewhat differently to various situations and emotions, furthering the confusion. To the uninitiated man or woman, Garth’s happy smile might appear to be a ghastly grimace, his delight in the clever toys and machines to be bitter disgust.
The shop window was not lighted, and Garth’s own shadow blocked out a measure of the morning sun; he peered in, trying to make out the shapes that flopped and fluttered in the dimness at the back of the display. A brass rooster crowed, with a flapping of wings, and he marveled anew.
“Would you like to buy one, my lord?”
Startled, Garth whirled to face the owner of the pleasant little voice that had interrupted his studies. A small, whitehaired man stood in the door of the shop, squinting and blinking in the bright light of day; he smiled, revealing a jawful of randomly assorted gold and white teeth.
The overman stared at the man for a moment, then back at the window, where the swordsman’s blade continued to miss the smith’s broad back and swinging hammer by the breadth of a few hairs, where the yapping dog bounced merrily along and the plaster witch grinned gruesomely.
“I think I might, yes,” Garth said at last. “Are they expensive?”
“Oh, no,” t
he little man replied. “I don’t need much to live on. I have a pension of sorts—I suppose you could call it a pension. Enough to make do, at any rate. But it does get so dull! So I keep making these toys, to amuse myself. The children seem to like them. Have you any children, my lord?”
“Five; two sons. They’re grown, though, old enough for families of their own.”
“Grandchildren, then?”
“Not that I know of; I haven’t been home lately.” He smiled wryly to himself at that.
“A pity, a pity.” The old man shook his head, looking downcast, as if it were the greatest tragedy of his life that this fine overman should have no grandchildren and should be so long away from home.
Garth’s smile became a little less bitter; the man was amusing. “Did you say that you find this village dull? What of the dragon, then? Does it not provide enough excitement for you?”
“Oh, the dragon...” The man shrugged, as if the legendary monster were beneath his notice. “I meant that doing nothing for myself was dull, not that there had been no excitement in my life. I like to keep my hands busy when the dragon is not about, my hands and my mind.” He gestured, wiggling his fingers to show that they were still agile.
Garth decided that he liked this fellow. “Have you children yourself?” he asked.
“Oh, all long since grown, like your own, my lord; even my grandchildren are married now, some of them.” He glanced at the shop window. “Tell me,” he said, “which do you like the best?”
Garth turned back and studied the collection; his gaze wandered over ships and horses, men and castles, women and machines. The swordsman had run down, frozen in midstroke with his sword thrust out before him.
“I cannot say,” Garth replied. “I have not seen them all run. Some are not displayed to their best advantage here.”
“Come inside, then, and I will show you more closely any that interest you.” The toymaker grinned and beckoned, and Garth followed him.
The building’s interior was dim and smelled strongly of metal and oil and herbs. A narrow passage led between two great tables that held the two window displays; beyond, a fair-sized room contained a fireplace and oven, a table, a few chairs, and a workbench. The last was cluttered with gears and wheels and snippets of copper, chisels and scissors and knives, powders and pastes, jars and vials, a potter’s wheel, and a pedal-driven lathe. At the rear another door stood slightly ajar.
Garth looked over the two tables; dozens of toys were displayed, perhaps a hundred or more. The toymaker wound up a spider that danced in circles as the cauldron-stirring witch ground to a halt.
Everything was a maze of arms and legs and wheels, plaster faces staring in the waxed-paper windows of wooden castles, and Garth could not imagine picking a single favorite from the muddle. He let his eyes roam, and found himself staring at a glistening copper shape that gleamed in one corner.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing. The object stood out because of its smooth, curving surface, unbroken by flailing arms or whirling gears.
The old man followed his pointing finger and fetched the object in question out into the light that poured through the window. It was a copper sea gull; two eyes of smoky quartz stared unseeingly from its tapered metal head, and its wings were polished to mirror brightness. “Ah, my lord,” the old man said, “you have excellent taste.”
“What does it do?” Garth asked.
“Why, what else would a bird do but fly?” He pulled a silver key from somewhere, inserted it in an opening in the mechanical gull’s back, then gestured for Garth to follow him back outside. “Let me show you.”
The overman followed and watched as the toymaker turned the key. With a small click, the key stopped; the old man pulled it out and, with a proud smile, cast the gull away.
Garth instinctively reached out to catch it, to keep its graceful curves from being scarred or broken by its fall, but it did not drop into his waiting hands. Instead, its metal wings caught the breeze and flapped once, twice, lazily, with the languid grace of a living sea gull, and it swooped away. Riding the wind, it glided upward, then looped back and circled slowly overhead. Garth gaped in astonishment.
For several long minutes the gull soared overhead, flapping smoothly now and then, gleaming golden in the morning sun; then, gradually, it settled lower and lower, until at last, with a rueful smile, the toymaker reached up and plucked it out of the sky.
Garth heard a click and a final soft whirr, and the gull was still.
Garth stared at the man with deep respect. “It is very beautiful,” he said. “I was not aware that such things could be built of mere metal.”
The toymaker looked down, obviously embarrassed. “Well, actually,” he admitted, “they can’t. I cheat. It’s not just clockwork.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I use magic.”
“Oh,” Garth said knowingly. He had seen magic before, more of it than he liked. At least, he thought, this magic was harmless.
“I didn’t originally—at least, I don’t think I did. I started off using just clockwork when I was an apprentice, but I found right from the first that I could make machines that no one else could understand, things that worked when by all rights they should not have. Even when I built my clocks and toys in the usual ways, mine would run far longer and more smoothly than any of the others. I got better and better at it, too, until I was doing things that were plainly impossible to do with just clockwork. I had no idea how I did what I did back then; it simply came to me, as naturally as breathing, without my ever thinking about it. When I realized what was happening, I studied sorcery briefly; even though my teacher said I had a real talent, I didn’t care for it. It seemed too dangerous, too uncertain. I went back to clockwork, but now I know a bit more about what I’m doing. I even use spells intentionally now, though I still make them up, rather than follow the old formulae. As I said, I have the knack for it. A fellow who came through here last year, fleeing from Sland, a wizard by the name of Karag, told me that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. He said that there are a lot of minor magical talents like mine scattered about; probably one of my ancestors back in the Twelfth Age, when magic was widespread, was a wizard of some sort, and I inherited a bit of his lingering power without knowing it.”
“I had no idea it could work that way,” Garth said.
“Neither did I when I was young, but it seems that’s just how it does work. That gull wouldn’t fly if anyone else had made it. I’ve shown other tinkers and craftsmen how to make flying toys, and they’ve done them just as I do, but theirs don’t fly at all, they just fall.”
Garth reached out, took the gull from the toymaker’s hands, and turned it over, studying it. “Magic or not, it’s a beautiful thing,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” the toymaker agreed.
“Do you wish to sell it?”
“Of course; I have no use for it. Besides, I have others and I can always make more. Would you like it?”
“Yes, I think I would; it’s a wondrous device, whether clockwork or magic. What is your price?”
The man named a figure; Garth declined politely. After a brief and mild bout of bargaining, a price was settled upon as fair to both parties.
“Will you take it with you now, then?” the toymaker asked.
“No,” Garth answered, handing it back, “I think not. I am seeking after the dragon at present; were I to take the gull, I fear that it might be broken in the fight. I will stop here and buy it on my way back, at the price agreed upon, if that will suit you.” After a second’s pause, he added, “Assuming, of course, that I come back; the stories I have heard of the dragon imply that I may not.”
“The dragon?” Surprise and concern were plain in the toymaker’s face. “You’ve come to slay the dragon? Oh, dear. That’s most unfortunate.”
“Is it?” Garth asked as he moved t
o mount his warbeast. “It may prove unfortunate for the dragon; it has never faced an overman before.”
“Well, that’s true,” the old man admitted, “but still...” He fell into a confused silence and stood watching, the metal bird in his hands, as Garth rode on past him and out of the village.
Chapter Four
Garth rode for an hour through peaceful groves and flourishing farmland; on all sides blossoms were giving way to budding fruit and grain, and it was obvious that, barring some disaster, there would be an abundant harvest at summer’s end. He could still see no sign anywhere of a dragon or a dragon’s depredations. He did see, to his surprise, recent footprints, all human, on the road he followed; they were wide-spaced, as if the men who made them had been hurrying. They all seemed to run westward, the same direction in which Garth was bound. He wondered if the makers of the marks had been fleeing from the dragon. The villagers had seemed quite certain that it was awake and active and somewhere west of the town; perhaps they had seen it pursuing some of their countrymen along this highway.
There was no trace of the dragon itself, however. Garth scanned the horizon.
To the north and east he saw nothing but trees. To the south a few clouds hung in the sky above green fields. To the west the hills reared up before him; the valley was narrow at this, its northern end, and he had already crossed half its width.
To the southwest a thin trail of smoke was curling upward, blue smoke almost invisible against the blue of the sky.
He signaled Koros to stop, to allow him a better view; the warbeast obeyed, and Garth stared at the faint wisp. It seemed to be growing thicker as he watched.
Dragons, it was said, breathed fire. Garth had never taken that aspect of the monster’s description very seriously; legends tended to be distorted in the retelling. Still, there was general agreement that much of a dragon’s destructiveness resulted from fires. Garth had assumed heretofore that the creatures might produce some sort of highly combustible substance, a venom or vapor, perhaps.
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