Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan; Marianne S. Jablon

  It was the last gleaming golden hour of day when we set off.

  The valley was fertile and sheltered. The westering light caught and flashed in the trees and out of the streams. Already there was a sort of path stamped smooth and kept clear of undergrowth. It would have been a pleasant journey, if they’d been going anywhere else.

  There was sunlight warm on the sides of the hills, too. The sky was almost cloudless, transparent. If it hadn’t been for the tainted air, you would never have thought anything was wrong. But the track wound up the first slope and around, and up again, and there, about a hundred yards off, was the flank of a bigger hill that went down into shadow at its bottom, and never took the sun. That underside was bare of grass, and eaten out in caves, one cave larger than the rest and very black, with a strange black stillness, as if light and weather and time itself stopped just inside. Looking at that, you’d know at once, even with sun on your face and the whole lucid sky above.

  They’d brought her all this way in a Roman litter which somehow had become the property of the village. It had lost its roof and its curtains, just a kind of cradle on poles, but Niemeh had sat in it on their shoulders, motionless, and dumb. I had only stolen one look at her, to be sure, but her face had turned mercifully blank and her eyes were opaque. What I’d given her started its work swiftly. She was beyond us all now. I was only anxious everything else would occur before her condition changed.

  Her bearers set the litter down and lifted her out. They’d have to support her, but they would know about that, girls with legs gone to water, even passed out altogether. And I suppose the ones who fought and screamed would be forced to sup strong ale, or else concussed with a blow.

  Everyone walked a little more, until we reached a natural palisade of rock. This spot provided concealment, while overlooking the cave and the ground immediately below it. There was a stagnant dark pond caught in the gravel there, but on our side, facing the cave, a patch of clean turf with a post sticking up, about the height of a tall man.

  The two warriors supporting Niemeh went on with her towards the post. The rest of us stayed behind the rocks, except for Caiy.

  We were all garlanded with flowers. Even I had had to be, and I hadn’t made a fuss. What odds? But Caiy wasn’t garlanded. He was the one part of the ritual which, though arcanely acceptable, was still profane. And that was why, even though they would let him attack the dragon, they had nevertheless brought the girl to appease it.

  There was some kind of shackle at the post. It wouldn’t be iron, because anything fey has an allergy to stable metals, even so midnight a thing as a dragon. Bronze, probably. They locked one part around her waist and another round her throat. Only the teeth and claws could get her out of her bonds now, piece by piece.

  She sagged forward in the toils. She seemed uncon-scious at last, and I wanted her to be.

  The two men hurried back, up the slope and into the rock cover with the rest of us. Sometimes the tales have the people rush away when they’ve put out their sacrifice, but usually the people stay, to witness. It’s quite safe. The dragon won’t go after them with something tasty chained up right under its nose.

  Caiy didn’t remain beside the post. He moved down towards the edge of the polluted pond. His sword was drawn. He was quite ready. Though the sun couldn’t get into the hollow to fire his hair or the metal blade, he cut a grand figure, heroically braced there between the maiden and Death.

  At the end, the day spilled swiftly. Suddenly all the shoulders of the hills grew dim, and the sky became the color of lavender, and then a sort of mauve amber, and the stars broke through.

  There was no warning.

  I was looking at the pond, where the dragon would come to drink, judging the amount of muck there seemed to be in it. And suddenly there was a reflection in the pond, from above. It wasn’t definite, and it was upside down, but even so my heart plummeted through my guts.

  There was a feeling behind the rock, the type you get, they tell me, in the battle lines, when the enemy appears. And mixed with this, something of another feeling, more maybe like the inside of some god’s house when they call on him, and he seems to come.

  I forced myself to look then, at the cave mouth. This, after all, was the evening I would see a real dragon, something to relate to others, as others had related such things to me.

  It crept out of the cave, inch by inch, nearly down on its belly, cat-like.

  The sky wasn’t dark yet, a Northern dusk seems often endless. I could see well, and better and better as the shadow of the cave fell away and the dragon advanced into the paler shadow by the pond.

  At first, it seemed unaware of anything but itself and the twilight. It flexed and stretched itself. There was some-thing uncanny, even in such simple movements, some-thing evil. And timeless.

  The Romans know an animal they call Elephantus, and I mind an ancient clerk in one of the towns describing this beast to me, fairly accurately, for he’d seen one once. The dragon wasn’t as large as elephantus, I should say. Actual-ly not that much higher than a fair-sized cavalry gelding, if rather longer. But it was sinuous, more sinuous than any snake. The way it crept and stretched and flexed, and curled and slewed its head, its skeleton seemed fluid.

  There are plenty of mosaics, paintings. It was like that, the way men have shown them from the beginning. Slender, tapering to the elongated head, which is like a horse’s, too, and not like, and to the tail, though it didn’t have that spade-shaped sting they put on them sometimes, like a scorpion’s. There were spines, along the tail and the back-ridge, and the neck and head. The ears were set back, like a dog’s. Its legs were short, but that didn’t make it seem ungainly. The ghastly fluidity was always there, not grace, but something so like grace it was nearly unbeara-ble.

  It looked almost the color the sky was now, slatey, bluish-grey, like metal but dull; the great overlapping plates of its scales had no burnish. Its eyes were black and you didn’t see them, and then they took some light from somewhere, and they flared like two flat coins, cat’s eyes, with nothing—no brain, no soul—behind them.

  It had been going to drink, but had scented something more interesting than dirty water, which was the girl. The dragon stood there, static as a rock, staring at her over the pond. Then gradually its two wings, that had been folded back like fans along its sides, opened and spread.

  They were huge, those wings, much bigger than the rest of it. You could see how it might be able to fly with them. Unlike the body, there were no scales, only skin, mem-brane, with ribs of external bone. Bat’s wings, near enough. It seemed feasible a sword could go through them, damage them, but that would only maim, and all too likely they were tougher than they seemed.

  Then I left off considering. With its wings spread like that, unused—like a crow—it began to sidle around the water, the blind coins of eyes searing on the post and the sacrifice.

  Somebody shouted. My innards sprang over. Then I realized it was Caiy. The dragon had nearly missed him, so intent it was on the feast, so he had had to call it. Bis Terribilis—Bis appellare—Draco! Draco!

  I’d never quite understood that antic chant, and the Latin was execrable. But I think it really means to know a dragon exists is bad enough, to call its name and summon it—call twice, twice terrible—is the notion of a maniac.

  The dragon wheeled. It—flowed. Its elongated horse’s--head-which-wasn’t was before him, and Caiy’s sharp sword slashed up and down and bit against the jaw. It happened, what they say—sparks shot glittering in the air. Then the head split, not from any wound, just the chasm of the mouth. It made a sound at him, not a hissing, a sort of hroosh. Its breath would be poisonous, almost as bad as fire. I saw Caiy stagger at it, and then one of the long feet on the short legs went out through the gathering dark. The blow looked slow and harmless. It threw Caiy thirty feet, right across the pond. He fell at the entrance to the cave, and lay quiet. The sword was still in his hand. His grip must have clamped down on it involuntarily.
He’d likely bitten his tongue as well, in the same way.

  The dragon looked after him, you could see it pondering whether to go across again and dine. But it was more attracted by the other morsel it had smelled first. It knew from its scent this was the softer more digestible flesh. And so it ignored Caiy, leaving him for later, and eddied on towards the post, lowering its head as it came, the light leaving its eyes.

  I looked. The night was truly blooming now, but I could see, and the darkness didn’t shut my ears; there were sounds, too. You weren’t there, and I’m not about to try to make you see and hear what I did. Niemeh didn’t cry out. She was senseless by then, I’m sure of it. She didn’t feel or know any of what it did to her. Afterwards, when I went down with the others, there wasn’t much left. It even carried some of her bones into the cave with it, to chew. Her garland was lying on the ground since the dragon had no interest in garnish. The pale flowers were no longer pale.

  She had consented, and she hadn’t had to endure it. I’ve seen things as bad that had been done by men, and for men there’s no excuse. And yet, I never hated a man as I hated the dragon, a loathing, deadly, sickening hate.

  The moon was rising when it finished. It went again to the pond, and drank deeply. Then it moved up the gravel back towards the cave. It paused beside Caiy, sniffed him, but there was no hurry. Having fed so well, it was sluggish. It stepped into the pitch-black hole of the cave, and drew itself from sight, inch by inch, as it had come out, and was gone.

  Presently Caiy pulled himself off the ground, first to his hands and knees, then on to his feet.

  We, the watchers, were amazed. We’d thought him dead, his back broken, but he had only been stunned, as he told us afterwards. Not even stunned enough not to have come to, dazed and unable to rise, before the dragon quite finished it’s feeding. He was closer than any of us. He said it maddened him—as if he hadn’t been mad already and so, winded and part stupefied as he was, he got up and dragged himself into the dragon’s cave after it. And this time he meant to kill it for sure, no matter what it did to him.

  Nobody had spoken a word, up on our rocky place, and no one spoke now. We were in a kind of communion, a trance. We leaned forward and gazed at the black gape in the hill where they had both gone.

  Maybe a minute later, the noises began. They were quite extraordinary, as if the inside of the hill itself were gurning and snarling. But it was the dragon, of course. Like the stink of it, those sounds it made were untranslata-ble. I could say it looked this way comparable to an elephantus, or that way to a cat, a horse, a bat. But the cries and roars—no. They were like nothing else I’ve heard in the world, or been told of. There were, however, other noises, as of some great heap of things disturbed. And stones rattling, rolling.

  The villagers began to get excited or hysterical. Nothing like this had happened before. Sacrifice is usually predict-able.

  They stood, and started to shout, or groan and invoke supernatural protection. And then a silence came from inside the hill, and silence returned to the villagers.

  I don’t remember how long it went on. It seemed like months.

  Then suddenly something moved in the cave mouth.

  There were yells of fear. Some of them took to their heels, but came back shortly when they realized the others were rooted to the spot, pointing and exclaiming, not in anguish but awe. That was because it was Caiy, and not the dragon, that had emerged from the hill.

  He walked like a man who has been too long without food and water, head bowed, shoulders drooping, legs barely able to hold him up. He floundered through the edges of the pond and the sword trailed from his hand in the water. Then he tottered over the slope and was right before us. He somehow raised his head then, and got out the sentence no one had ever truly reckoned to hear.

  “It’s—dead,” said Caiy, and slumped unconscious in the moonlight.

  They used the litter to get him to the village, as Niemeh didn’t need it any more.

  We hung around the village for nearly ten days. Caiy was his merry self by the third, and since there had been no sign of the dragon, by day or night, a party of them went up to the hills, and, kindling torches at noon, slunk into the cave to be sure.

  It was dead all right. The stench alone would have verified that, a different perfume than before, and all congealed there, around the cave. In the valley, even on the second morning, the live dragon smell was almost gone. You could make out goats and hay and meade and unwashed flesh and twenty varieties of flowers.

  I myself didn’t go in the cave. I went only as far as the post. I understood it was safe, but I just wanted to be there once more, where the few bones that were Niemeh had fallen through the shackles to the earth. And I can’t say why, for you can explain nothing to bones.

  There was rejoicing and feasting. The whole valley was full of it. Men came from isolated holdings, cots and huts, and a rough looking lot they were. They wanted to glimpse Caiy the dragon-slayer, to touch him for luck and lick the finger. He laughed. He hadn’t been badly hurt, and but for bruises was as right as rain, up in the hay-loft half the time with willing girls, who would afterwards boast their brats were sons of the hero. Or else he was blind drunk in the chieftain’s hall.

  In the end, I collected Negra, fed her apples and told her she was the best horse in the land, which she knows is a lie and not what I say the rest of the time. I had sound directions now, and was planning to ride off quietly and let Caiy go on as he desired, but I was only a quarter of a mile from the village when I heard the splayed tocking of horse’s hooves. Up he galloped beside me on a decent enough horse, the queen of the chief’s stable, no doubt, and grinning, with two beer skins.

  I accepted one, and we continued, side by side.

  “I take it you’re sweet on the delights of my company,” I said at last, an hour after, when the forest was in view over the moor.

  “What else, Apothecary? Even my insatiable lust to steal your gorgeous horse has been removed. I now have one of my very own, if not a third as beautiful.”Negra cast him a sidelong look as if she would like to bite him. But he paid no attention. We trotted on for another mile or so before he added, “And there’s something I want to ask you, too.”

  I was wary, and waited to find out what came next.

  Finally, he said, “You must know a thing or two in your trade about how bodies fit together. That dragon, now. You seemed to know all about dragons.”

  I grunted. Caiy didn’t cavil at the grunt. He began idly to describe how he’d gone into the cave, a tale he had flaunted a mere three hundred times in the chieftain’s hall. But I didn’t cavil either, I listened carefully.

  The cave entry-way was low and vile, and soon it opened into a cavern. There was elf-light, more than enough to see by, and water running here and there along the walls and over the stony floor.

  There in the cavern’s center, glowing now like filthy silver, lay the dragon, on a pile of junk such as dragons always accumulate. They’re like crows and magpies in that, also, shiny things intrigue them and they take them to their lairs to paw possessively and to lie on. The rumors of hoards must come from this, but usually the collection is worthless, snapped knives, impure glass that had spar-kled under the moon, rusting armlets from some victim, and all of it soiled by the devil’s droppings, and muddled up with split bones.

  When he saw it like this, I’d bet the hero’s reckless heart failed him. But he would have done his best, to stab the dragon in the eye, the root of the tongue, the vent under the tail, as it clawed him in bits.

  “But you see,” Caiy now said to me, “I didn’t have to.”

  This, of course, he hadn’t said in the hall. No. He had told the village the normal things, the lucky lunge and the brain pierced, and the death-throes, which we’d all heard plainly enough. If anyone noticed his sword had no blood on it, well, it had trailed in the pond, had it not?

  “You see,” Caiy went on, “it was lying there comatose one minute, and then it began to
writhe about, and to go into a kind of spasm. Something got dislodged off the hoard-pile—a piece of cracked-up armor, I think, gilded—and knocked me silly again. And when I came round, the dragon was all sprawled about, and dead as yesterday’s roast mutton.”

  “Hn,” I said. “Hnn.”

  “The point being,” said Caiy, watching the forest and not me, “I must have done something to it with the first blow, outside. Dislocated some bone or other. You told me their bones have no marrow. So to do that might be conceivable. A fortunate stroke. But it took a while for the damage to kill it.”

  “Hnn.”

  “Because,” said Caiy, softly, “you do believe I killed it, don’t you?”

  “In the legends,” I said, “they always do.”

  “But you said before that in reality, a man can’t kill a dragon.”

  “One did,” I said.

  “Something I managed outside then. Brittle bones. That first blow to its skull.”

  “Very likely.”

  Another silence. Then he said:

  “Do you have any gods, Apothecary?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Will you swear me an oath by them, and then call me ‘dragon-slayer’? Put it another way. You’ve been a help. I don’t like to turn on my friends. Unless I have to.”

  His hand was nowhere near that honed sword of his, but the sword was in his eyes and his quiet, oh-so-easy voice. He had his reputation to consider, did Caiy. But I’ve no reputation at all. So I swore my oath and I called him dragon-slayer, and when our roads parted my hide was intact. He went off to glory somewhere I’d never want to go.

  Well, I’ve seen a dragon, and I do have gods. But I told them, when I swore that oath, I’d almost certainly break it, and my gods are accustomed to me. They don’t expect honor and chivalry. And there you are.

  Caiy never killed the dragon. It was Niemeh, poor lovely loving gentle Niemeh who killed it. In my line of work, you learn about your simples. Which cure, which bring sleep, which bring the long sleep without awakening. There are some miseries in this blessed world can only end in death, and the quicker death the better. I told you I was a hard man. I couldn’t save her, I gave you reasons why. But there were all those others who would have followed her. Other Niemehs. Other Caiys, for that matter. I gave her enough in the cup to put out the life of fifty strong men. It didn’t pain her, and she didn’t show she was dead before she had to be. The dragon devoured her, and with her the drug I’d dosed her with. And so Caiy earned the name of dragon-slayer.