The Dragon At War

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "But then…" Secoh broke down and stammered a little, "m'Lord, I shall be at least half an hour's flight from you at a time when I could help you in this battle against these george pirates. Are you sure you want me to go?"

  "Yes," said Jim, "because then you can see about getting help for us. I want you to go immediately to the caves of the Cliffside dragons and gather at least half a dozen, if not more, of the dragons there to come back and help out."

  "They aren't likely to come just because I ask it," said Secoh doubtfully. "You know those fat cave-dwellers as well as I do, m'Lord. They will not fight, except to save their own lives. If this invasion of sea serpents comes, they will fight, of course; but anything less than that…"

  "Ah," said Jim, "but I want you to get together your recruits from your friends among the young dragons. And I don't expect them to fight!"

  Secoh, as Jim knew, had become very much a favorite of the younger dragons of the Cliffside. A dragon was considered a child until he had lived at least fifty years; and a wet-eared youngster after that, until he was a hundred or more. Younger dragons were consequently used to being shouldered aside and ordered about by their seniors, who treated them as if they were not only useless, but in the way most of the time.

  Secoh, because of his mere-dragon ancestry, under the original blight that had come out from the Loathly Tower, and the lack of food in the meres while he was growing up, even at the age of two hundred and ten years was scarcely bigger than most of the fifty-year-old dragons and smaller than some of the slightly older, young Cliffsiders. Moreover, he was exciting to the young dragons.

  Not only was he brave enough to face up to any of the other dragons, no matter their size, in the Cliffside community; but was apparently unafraid of anything. Moreover, he knew stories, particularly the one about the fight at the Loathly Tower, where he had been one with Jim, Brian, Dafydd and Smrgol, the grand-uncle of Gorbash—the dragon whose body Jim was inadvertently occupying at the time.

  It was, in fact, together with Smrgol—already partly crippled by a stroke and his great age—that he had fought and eventually helped slay the renegade dragon Bryagh, who had abandoned all else to enlist in the services of the Dark Powers that controlled the Loathly Tower.

  Second, Secoh had had further adventures, as well as learning, word-for-word, some of the tales that Smrgol had been able to tell. When Smrgol had been alive, even though the older dragons always groaned in mock protest when he started to tell one of these they were the ones who tucked a keg of wine under one of their forelimbs and took all the choice spots right next to Smrgol, crowding the youngsters to the outskirts. With Secoh, the youngsters had their own tale-teller. Also, they were more adventurous than their elders; and might be tempted by Secoh into engaging in a real-life sort of adventure such as they had heard about.

  "Get me half a dozen or more of the young ones, particularly the eager young ones, who've done a lot of flying because they haven't put on a great deal of extra weight yet."

  "I suppose…" said Secoh doubtfully. "But—"

  "You needn't get them into the actual fight at all," said Jim. "You know how hawks like the peregrine falcon dive on their prey? They close their wings and simply fall like a stone; then spread their wings at the last moment to check themselves just before they hit whatever it is they're after on the ground?"

  "Oh, yes, m'Lord. Any dragon knows that," said Secoh.

  "Well, you get your youngsters to do the same. Back where I come from there was a time when it was called dive-bombing. The only difference is, you tell these young dragons to stop a good fifteen or twenty feet above the masthead of the ship Bloody Boots is in."

  Secoh's face lit up.

  "Oh, yes," he said, "the young ones'll like that!"

  "Meanwhile," Jim went on, "Brian, Giles and I will have done our best to put out of action any crossbowmen that Dafydd has left still able to fight; so your friends should be in no danger. I'm pretty sure that not one, but a whole wing, of dragons like that should scare Bloody Boots off completely. But, you mustn't waste time! Go right away. Now!"

  Secoh crowded himself between the bodies of the men, found the ladder and climbed it. For a moment his body filled the entrance. Then he squeezed through out onto the deck; and a moment later with a noisy flap of wings he took off, just above the deck and through a gap between the lines that ran from the taffrail of the ship to its mast. Crowding together up the ladder, they had a faint glimpse of him flying away some thirty feet or so above the waves.

  "I hope he stays low," said Jim. He turned back to putting on his armor.

  Giles and Brian had been busy getting their own armor on, and were all but ready to go on deck. Now both of them lent Jim a hand in getting dressed and armed. Shortly, they all clumped up the ladder; and, crouching down below the roughly three-foot rise which was the front of the forecastle above the lower deck, they peered ahead at what was going on in the bow.

  Up where the two sides of the vessel came together in a sharp point, Edouard and his three crewmen had built a sort of three-sided, half-roofed shed about six and a half feet tall. It was of double thicknesses of the same sort of rough planks the shipmaster had pulled out to make a runway by which the horses could be brought aboard.

  The planks had been tied together rather than nailed; and Jim saw that the steering oar had been lashed in position, so that the ship sailed itself on course before the steady, following wind.

  In the shelter they had built was room for Dafydd to stand, with his quiver of arrows hung on a nail in front of him. He could shoot out both ahead and to his sides, through eight long slits some three to five inches in width. He stood now, with an arrow fitted to his bow; but was not shooting as they approached.

  The four shipmen turned as Jim, Brian and Giles clumped toward them; and Edouard started, then froze suddenly at the sight of the device on the shield hanging from Jim's left shoulder. His crewmen had turned also, at the sound of the noise; and at seeing him react so, they looked wonderingly at him and stood still in turn, gazing from him to the shield and back again, as if half in puzzlement and half in fear.

  Jim had opened his mouth to speak to the shipmaster, but Edouard beat him to it.

  "My Lord!" he said. "I did not know—are you indeed the Dragon Knight?"

  "Yes," said Jim, "only I didn't expect you to recognize me."

  "I am English more than French, m'Lord," replied Edouard. "But even if I were only French, word of your doings has reached at least this part of France. Your arms are as well known there as in England. You have been on French soil before, if I mistake it not?"

  "I," said Jim, "and these gentlemen with me. Have you heard of them, too?"

  Edouard looked at the shields of both Brian and Giles, swung his eyes back to stare at Dafydd—who, however, was paying no attention to him but concentrating on his view through the slit in his protective planks that was most directly ahead. Edouard looked back at Jim. There was a strange expression on his face.

  "Mage," he said, "it is an honor for me, even at this moment, and once in a lifetime, to meet all of you. But mostly to meet a magic worker of your repute and rank."

  "I shouldn't be addressed as Mage," said Jim wearily. How many times and to how many people had he tried to explain this? "As a magician I'm very low in rank. The term 'Mage' should be only for those who have reached the highest possible rank. You would address Carolinus, my master in magic, as 'Mage' and be correct; or you would have so addressed Merlin if you had lived in his time. Call me simply m'Lord, as you've been doing."

  "if you wish it," said Edouard. "Still, I am enheartened to have such knights of legend about me. It gives me some hope that we may win through after all."

  "Don't expect too much," said Jim. "We're only men, after all, and can't do the impossible. It may be this Bloody Boots will overwhelm us; the same way the men-at-arms would have done, if Secoh hadn't changed himself back into a dragon."

  "It was that that first made me suspect you
might be more than ordinary mortal man," said Edouard. "But do you mean that dragons can change themselves to humans and back again like werewolves? That is something I did not know."

  "Not without help, they can't," said Jim. "Meanwhile, since the subject of Secoh's come up, I want to tell you that when you saw Secoh fly off right now, I sent him to see if he could get us some help from other dragons. Without that help, I don't know what chance we have."

  "It's true I had no hope at all at first—" began Edouard; and was interrupted by a heavy thud that seemed almost beside them.

  "They have crossbow bolts to spare, evidently," commented Dafydd, still with his eyes fixed on the view beyond his slit. "I have less than thirty shafts, and each one must take out its man, because once they are all shot, I am no longer a bowman; but only one more man with a knife."

  "Why do you not shoot, then?" asked Edouard.

  Without a word, Dafydd pointed upward into the half-ceiling that roofed his enclosure. The sharp metal end of a shaft protruded perhaps an inch and a half through the wood. Edouard swore softly.

  "And that through two thicknesses of plank!" he said. "At close range they will come right through. But why do you not shoot back, bowman?"

  "Do you not see that the bolt struck downward upon us?" answered Dafydd. "It was fired as high as the crossbowman dared aim it, and still not have it fall short of this ship. It came as far through the wood as it did, as much from its falling as from its original force. But since what comes down once went up, it is true that at close range these crossbow bolts may not merely pierce the planks, but come through. It is a powerful weapon, the crossbow, if a slow and clumsy one. As for why I do not shoot back, look you through this slit, shipman."

  He stood back a little and Edouard took a step forward to peer out through the aperture.

  "By all the saints," he swore, "it is still at some distance from us."

  "Just so," said Dafydd. "Now, from here, with my bow and my skill I could hit any man of them; but I could not be sure of killing whoever I aim at. So, since I have less than thirty shafts, as I said, I will hold them until each one will do its task. Stick to your ship, Master shipman, and leave the bow-work to me."

  Edouard stepped back.

  "I will so," he said. "I crave your pardon for seeming overeager, Master bowman."

  "Granted," said Dafydd, once more with his eye on the slit. "I will shoot when I am ready."

  Edouard turned back to the others.

  "Best we all stay hidden until we're closer," he said. "In these light airs my ship can sail no faster; and in any case, even if we could go faster, he can sail faster yet. It is a bigger boat, with a larger sail and a faster hull for speed through the water than mine."

  The sense of this was so plain that no one else said anything. Jim, Brian and Giles, as well as Edouard and his three crew members, went back to the edge of the forecastle and dropped down to the lower deck level, settling with their backs on the three-foot-high forecastle wall; and so becoming invisible to the crossbowmen.

  Brian lifted off his helmet. Jim and Giles followed suit. Their visors had been open all this time; but there was considerable difference in comfort between a helmet with an open visor and no helmet at all.

  "Now, Master shipman," said Brian, "it is time you began to tell us what you now believe the numbers to be of the foe we shall encounter in the ship approaching us, what manner of arms and armor they will have, and how they will attempt to board us—unless we board them first."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Edouard stared at him for a second.

  "For a moment, sir knight," he said, "I had forgotten who you were. Surely no one but paladins would speak of boarding a ship such as that, in the face of the numbers aboard her."

  "Come, man!" said Brian, somewhat sharply. "You are about to give us your best estimate of those numbers and the other things I asked you."

  "I may have made the guess earlier," said Edouard, "but if so I now repeat it. I suspect he has between twenty and thirty men aboard, mostly Scots like himself. He will be the only knight among them, but the rest will be mostly armored in all sorts and fashions, and carrying all sorts of weapons, from daggers to spears. He, himself, it is said, carries a heavy, long, two-handed sword called by some outlandish Scots name—cly… clid…"

  "Claihea mor," said Giles, harshly, "in ordinary speech, you would say 'great sword.' "

  "Exactly. 'Claymore,' " went on Edouard. "He is a giant among men and it is said no man can stand against him when he uses that weapon."

  "Hah!" said Brian. "There are ways of shield and ordinary broadsword to deal with such an oversize blade. It may be I shall show you and him some of them today."

  Their talk had been interrupted by several more thuds of crossbow bolts hitting the shelter around Dafydd. Jim, who had now been listening, had also three times heard the twang of his bow. But now Giles twisted about from where he was sitting with his back against the forecastle wall, and lifted his head above it enough to look toward the bow.

  "Dafydd is scratched," he said.

  They all looked. The latest crossbow bolts to come in were coming clear through the wood at least half their length if not more. One of these had angled down and come through far enough so that its tip had cut Dafydd's thigh. As they looked now, he leaned against the protruding crossbow shaft with his knee to break it off. It snapped close to where it emerged from the plank. The movement of the leg seemed to indicate he had not been seriously hurt, but the hose of his left leg was now dark with blood for most of its length, so that the wound was bleeding freely.

  Brian swore.

  "It is not right," he said, "that knights should hide behind a naked man with only a bow."

  Edouard risked standing and peering beneath his hand at the approaching pirate ship. He sat down again quickly as a crossbow bolt hummed past him, clear across the width of the vessel and over into the sea beyond.

  "It is close," he said.

  "How long?" snapped Brian.

  "Not long," said Edouard. "We have time to say our prayers, perhaps, provided our sins are not too great."

  Somewhat to Jim's startlement—although he told himself almost in the same instant that he should have known it—everyone there except himself proceeded to do exactly what Edouard had said; crossing themselves, joining their hands, in some cases closing their eyes and beginning to mumble to themselves.

  After a moment's indecision, Jim decided to join them. As a magician, perhaps it might not be expected of him. On the other hand, solidarity was always a cheering thing. He closed his eyes, joined his hands and tilted his head downward. He could not bring himself to pretend to pray, since it was not a natural act for him; and he felt that falsity at this moment could be carried too far. At any rate, he composed himself to wait until the others should stop.

  One by one, they did. Giles and Brian were first to lower their hands and lift their heads. But after them came Edouard, then two of the crew. Surprisingly, it was the youngest who prayed the longest and most earnestly. For the first time it struck Jim what it must be like to be young and in a situation like this where death was being almost accepted by his captain and crewmates.

  Jim wondered that he himself was not more fearful at the moment. The odds against them seemed insurmountable. Also, it was anyone's guess whether the dragons would arrive in time; or would have any effect in saving their lives even if they did appear.

  But he found himself strangely unmoved; and now that he thought back on it, except for the moments when he had been in an actual fight, such as at the Loathly Tower or against the Hollow Men on the border of Scotland, or at tight moments on their previous visit to France, he had not really felt any great deal of fear—except perhaps for a few moments just as combat was joined. Then once into the fight, he was apparently too busy to think of it.

  He found himself wondering. Perhaps his knowledge that he was a magician gave him a false sense of security? Or perhaps the reason was even more fa
r-fetched. That somehow to him, even now, this world did not seem as real as his original twentieth-century world; and consequently it did not seem as if he could really die here—in the essential meaning of that word. Unobtrusively, he pinched the skin of his left wrist with the fingers of his right hand.

  He almost jumped at the bolt of pain that shot up his arm. He had forgotten he was wearing metal gauntlets. This world was real enough. But there was no time to think more about that now.

  The thudding of the crossbow bolts upon Dafydd's shelter had become almost steady; and other bolts were zipping across the deck at a height that would endanger any of them who stood up. Some of these also thudded into the sides of Edouard's vessel.

  "The poor lad bleeds heavily, now," said Giles. He had turned around once more to look at Dafydd.

  They all turned to look. What he had said was no less than true. A number of bolts had come most of the way through the woodwork around Dafydd, and others were now coming clear through, although they usually fell to the deck, spent, once they had penetrated. But Dafydd, while he had taken none into his upper body or arms, had been cut by several of them; and it seemed that there was no part of his clothes, except that part of his body protected by his hauberk, that did not seem soaked with blood. The quiver in front of him now held only two or three arrows.

  He was supporting himself now with a knee on one of the crossbow bolt shafts that had penetrated. Apparently that first leg to be hit had been hit again, and he found it either too painful or too unsteady to rest his weight on it. As they watched he took another arrow, fitted it to his bow, drew it to its head and let it go out through the side slit to which he was now devoting his full attention.

  The impact of the bolts had now lessened in number; but almost at regular periods one struck the shelter.

  "I have all but their last crossbowman," Dafydd said over his shoulder. His voice was calm, but weak. "There are others loading and cranking extra crossbows for him, which is why his bolts come so steadily. And others stand in front of him, so that I cannot get a clear shot at him. But I will get him yet."