The Dragon At War

by Gordon R. Dickson

  His face was pale. He turned his attention back to the slit.

  "I fear me he will faint from the loss of all that blood," said Giles.

  "That does it!" roared Brian, jumping to his feet. He would have been exposed to the enemy now, except that the shelter built for Dafydd blocked their sight of him. "By Saint Edmond, Saint Richard and Saint Oswald, shipmaster! Lay me alongside that vessel—or your own life be on it!"

  He had drawn his sword and dressed his shield.

  "Sir knight," said Edouard, still crouching below the protection of the forecastle, "be sensible, I pray you! The oar is lashed, and it would take a seaman to undo it. But if I or any of my lads tried to reach that oar, that crossbowman would have us dead within feet, if he has crossbows readied to his hand. Get down again, I beg you, and wait. They will bring themselves alongside soon enough!"

  "Tied!" shouted Brian. "Then I will cut it loose and steer for the enemy myself!"

  He turned and ran to the oar in the bow of the ship. Almost within seconds Giles was following him. A crossbow bolt struck Brian, but he was running with his shield held over as cover for his right side; and the bolt only partially penetrated the shield, then dropped. As Brian reached the steering oar and swung around, he swung the shield with him. Giles reached him then, also with his shield up, and placed himself between Brian and the enemy's ship.

  Beyond Giles they could see Brian's blade flash overhead briefly in the sunlight and then there was a chopping sound as if an ax was hitting wood. A moment later the ship yawed; and as Brian and Giles stood back from the steering oar, it could be seen that Brian had half cut, half broken in half the oar itself, so that it now no longer guided the ship.

  "I knew it!" cried Edouard. Half bent over, to stay as far as possible below the bulwarks, he ran toward the stern of the ship himself. But, strangely, no crossbow bolts flew at him. Jim was about to follow him, then realizing there was little he could do there, he swung back to look at Dafydd.

  Dafydd was lying on the deck within his enclosure. Jim leaped onto the upper deck as the ship began to swing around, giving a view of the other vessel almost upon them coming prow foremost. Ignoring this, Jim ran to Dafydd, who looked up at him with a pale smile.

  "I got him—the last one," whispered Dafydd. "All of them are down that can use the crossbow. Forgive me, James. I would help you now, but…" His eyes closed.

  Ignoring everything else that was happening around him, Jim dropped on his armored knees beside the bowman and rapidly began to tear Dafydd's clothes into strips to make bandages and tourniquets around the wounds that were leaking Dafydd's life out on to the deck.

  He cast one desperate glance at the skies over the land ahead, to see if there was any sight of the dragons coming. He was sure that if Secoh could get no one to help him, the mere-dragon would come back himself; but the danger was that he would get involved in too much time-consuming argument in collecting the other dragons to get them here in time.

  Jim thought he saw some specks in the sky, but could not be sure. With his dragon sight he could have made sure, but there was no time for magic now. There was time only to finish bandaging Dafydd. He tied the last piece of torn cloth about the other's left leg, which had taken several cuts, then pushed himself to his feet, drew his sword and ran to help the others.

  He was a little too late for the moment in which the two ships ground their sides together. The shock of it threw him and everyone else off their feet; and probably did the same to those on the other boat. By the time he was up again Brian was leading not only Giles, but Edouard and his three crewmen, over the joined bulwarks, now held together by grapnels and ropes thrown from the larger vessel.

  Edouard and his seamen were armed with what looked like very long-handled axes, having also a metal point fixed to the thick part of the top of the blade. Such a weapon, swung over some distance, would be as devastating to armor as any knight's weapon could be. Also, whether it was Brian's example or not, the seamen were wielding them like madmen.

  As for Brian, he seemed completely demented with the urge to do battle; and Giles appeared to have caught fire with him. They were literally carving their way through most of the men before them; and Brian was shouting at the top of his voice. For a moment Jim could not understand what he said, so many other voices were shouting at the same time. But his familiarity with the timbre of Brian's voice and a notion of what he was trying to call out allowed Jim to finally piece together the words he was using.

  "To me, Sir Bloody Boots!" Brian was crying. "To me!"

  If Brian and Giles had been literally carving their way through the mass of more lightly armed and weaponed opponents before him, so, to his surprise, was Jim himself. He realized suddenly that, dressed in full armor as they three were, and showing their knighthood by the arms upon their shield, they represented opponents too threatening for anyone but perhaps the pirate captain to willingly take on in combat.

  Jim had had enough experience with melees like this, few as they had been, to spin around every third step, each time turning in an opposite direction; and so he was able twice to catch individuals who were trying to slip up beside him with a long dagger and find a joint in his armor into which they could plunge its point. But largely, he was occupied by pushing his way through the crowd of their opponents, and striking down or aside only those who had the hardiness enough to stand before him.

  At this moment, a new factor entered the situation. A bull-like voice could be heard roaring, even over all the tumult.

  "Out of my way, damn you all!" the voice roared. "Out of my way and let me to him!"

  It was the voice of Bloody Boots. For the first time, Jim caught sight of him. He was not a giant in the same terms as the Ogre had been at the Loathly Tower—Jim had estimated the Ogre to be at least a dozen feet tall. Still less was he a giant in the sense that the Sea Devil Rrrnlf was. But he was well over six feet and powerfully built. As he and Brian came together, it looked like a man face-to-face with a half-grown boy; for Brian, stretch as he might, could barely lay claim to five feet seven inches of height.

  So as those around them were swept away, not merely by Brian's blade but that of Bloody Boots, who evidently did not scruple to use his weapon even on his own crew, to clear himself fighting space; the general combat slackened, so that everyone, from both ships could watch the encounter.

  Bloody Boots swung his great sword over his head and brought it whistling downward. Surely, it seemed, nothing could stop that sharpened iron from literally cutting Brian in two. But when it struck Brian's shield, instead of carving it apart, it glanced off; still with almost the same force behind it, so that it struck its point deeply into the wood of the deck and stuck there.

  Brian had just demonstrated one of the tricks at which he was such an expert, and which he had striven so hard to teach Jim—the art of slanting his shield to make a blow against it glance off as Bloody Boots' had just done. The giant swore and tore with all his strength at his sword handle, to get his blade loose.

  He succeeded, but there was a moment in which Brian could strike at him. And if it had not been for the fact that the pirate captain was armored from the knees upward as well as Brian was in steel mail—a woven shirt of metal links, reinforced with plates and with pieces of armor on his legs and arms—Brian might even have ended the fight there.

  Certainly he tried, for his own broadsword swung not at the armored part but at the giant's legs, where they were unprotected above his wet and sloshing calf-high leather boots and below the metal protection just above it.

  But Bloody Boots, apparently, was as skilled in the matter of protecting his unarmored area as Brian was in angling his shield to deflect blows. His shield had already gone down to intercept Brian's blow, even as he cursed and tugged at his sword. The result was that Brian's blade dented and drove the shield cruelly back against the big man's knee, but did no large damage. Meanwhile, Bloody Boots had gotten his own blade free. He swung it up and returned to the att
ack.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Little by little, the other battling members from the two ships had become a ring of spectators that followed Brian and the pirate leader as they moved backward and forward across the upper deck of the larger ship, striving to both get at each other and at the same time protect themselves.

  Brian's advantages lay not only in his ability to angle his shield but in his ability to start to seem to swing his sword at the other's upper body, only to have that swing change into another blow at the unprotected legs. Also, he was much more agile than the big man, and could literally leap out from under a blow of Bloody Boots' sword; and be attacking almost from the side of the larger man before the other could get his shield and himself around to face Brian.

  On the other hand, Bloody Boots' advantage was still that tremendously heavy and long weapon he swung. He had swung it first as lightly as a slim stick of wood. But, the grunts that followed his misplaced blows, that ended against the deck, the mast, or some other place than Brian's armored body, bore witness to the effort he was putting into his swings. Now Jim saw the perspiration starting to stand out on that part of his face that was visible—for he wore his visor up, even in the heat of battle. Jim found Giles standing beside him, and murmured to the other knight out of the comer of his mouth.

  "If Brian can just keep him working like that for a while longer," Jim said, "he may outlast the man. Big as he is, he can't swing that large a sword forever."

  "I am of the same mind," murmured Giles.

  They watched.

  It became clear to Jim—and he was sure it must have become clear to Giles also, if not to the others around them—that Brian in his leaping around was essentially forcing the big man to follow, which meant also forcing him to carry the weight of his armor and his sword more than perhaps he might have liked in such a one-on-one battle. From what Jim could best judge of Bloody Boots, he seemed to be the sort who liked to plant himself with a wide-legged stance and simply clear the space around him with unstoppable swings of his sword.

  In fact the same idea seemed to have occurred to Bloody Boots too, because now he roared out at Brian.

  "Stand still, sir flea!" he thundered. "Are you a knight, or a mountebank dancer? Stand to it and fight, if you have a heart within you!"

  Brian made no answer. Nor did he change his tactics. By this time they had covered most of the upper deck, that was the roof of the forecastle on this larger vessel.

  Also, because it was a larger ship, the vertical drop from that upper deck was closer to five feet than the three feet that it was on Edouard's ship. It was not the kind of a drop that any man dressed in armor might like to take in a jump.

  Aside from the fact that the impact would come with between forty and sixty extra pounds of weight from the weight of the metal they wore and carried, there was the fact that an armored man jumping down, and clumsy in his protective covering, was almost certain to lose his feet. In that case, the one who was slower to regain an upright stance would be almost at the mercy of his opponent.

  Consequently, the upper deck had become something like a cockpit, which neither man dared leave, even if the circle of spectators around them had parted to let them through.

  On his part, Bloody Boots was clearly trying to drive Brian either backward against either side of the ship, or back against the mast which rose directly against the forecastle. Pinning Brian in either way would curtail his movement to a certain extent.

  Then, with Brian so hampered, perhaps that great sword could manage to overcome the effect of the slanted shield, particularly since the shield itself was becoming beaten into dents and hollows, so that there were now places that the big blade might catch.

  Brian had so far managed to dodge being cornered against either bulwarks or mast. But now a sudden lumbering run from the giant, who so far had contented himself with long strides to corner Brian, forced him to dodge toward the edge of the drop-off from the forecastle.

  As Bloody Boots swung to follow him, the pirate was panting heavily; but Brian was also breathing hard within his helmet; and both men could be heard clearly in the silence of the watching crowd. If Bloody Boots was showing a slowness with which he now heaved up his heavy sword to bring it down, so Brian also appeared to be more ready to dodge to avoid the impact of the blade than to take it cleverly on his shield and shunt it aside.

  "A good big man against a good little man," said somebody in the crowd not far from Jim, "who can doubt, then, which way the fight will go?"

  A murmur of agreement ran through those others nearby—a murmur of agreement which Giles and Jim met with an obstinate silence.

  But it was undeniable that Brian was being backed toward the edge of the drop-off. If he was first to go over, the other man might lower himself more cautiously, and so be sure of landing on his feet. Brian dodged sideways along the edge now, and within a few steps found himself backed against the mast.

  "Hah! Now!" grunted Bloody Boots' deep voice breathlessly; and then he swung upward his blade for a down-blow that would catch Brian between a sharpened steel edge and the mast itself.

  In that moment, Brian moved with a speed that gave the lie to the slowness he had been showing for some little time now. He jammed his shield upward in Bloody Boots' face, dropped his sword with his gauntleted right hand and reached across to snatch the long poignard from the other side of his sword belt. Drawing it in one swift movement, he thrust it home, in the moment in which the pirate's arm was upheld, revealing the unarmored space at his armpit. The blade buried itself in that unarmored space, deep into the other's body and lungs.

  Bloody Boots seemed to soar upward, then crash down, delivering the blow he had already begun. But it was now unaimed and a reflex rather than a planned action. Its edge bounced off the lower edge of Brian's shield and the point of the weapon buried itself for a last time in the wood of the deck. Bloody Boots fell.

  He collapsed like a stone statue that has been struck by a sledgehammer behind its knees, breaking the sculptured legs. He went down to a kneeling position, dropping the hilt of his sword, rocked there a moment and then fell on to his side, rolling over onto his back. Brian stood above him and placed a foot on his breastplate to hold him where he lay.

  "Yield you!" panted Brian.

  "I… yield…" gasped the man on the deck, "but I am slain. Come down to me. Let me at least make what confession I can to you before I go. Or are you… no Christian?"

  For answer Brian let his sword fall from his hand and dropped upon his metal-clad knees beside the fallen man.

  "My worst… sin," panted the giant as a twisted smile crossed his lips, "is that… I've always planned… that I would never… die alone!"

  With that, he thrust upward, with his own poignard, on the hilt of which his former shield-hand had been lying. The weapon was a ballock-dagger, its hilt connecting to a needle-pointed triangular sliver of blade, designed specially to pierce chain armor. He drove it with all his remaining giant strength into the chain mail between two of the plates that guarded Brian's breast.

  The force of the blow was such that it half pushed Brian to his feet, and his legs drove him the rest of the way, as he tried to avoid the blade. But the point went into him a good handsbreath.

  "Recreant!" he shouted. "False knight—to strike a blow after yielding!"

  He scooped up his sword in one swift movement and, throwing all his weight behind it, drove its point in between the top of Bloody Boots' breastplate and the bottom of his helmet, where a pale strip of flesh showed, nailing the larger man to the deck and all but decapitating him.

  He straightened up, and stood over his late opponent, swaying, breathless. Giles spoke for him.

  "So dies your master!" Giles shouted to the crowd around him. "So will you die also, if you continue the fight against us! Are you ready for another storm of arrows, from our bowman behind his security on our ship, even as the rest of us work our will on you?"

  His words, however, instea
d of making the pirate crew drop their weapons, seemed to bring them out of their trance. Also, just at that moment, after standing for a few seconds, Brian fell and lay still. His fall seemed to put new life into the pirate crew. Rather than drop their weapons, they clutched them and turned on Jim, Giles, Edouard and his men.

  "Guard yourself, James!" Giles just had time to shout, before the first wave of attackers hit them.

  At that moment, however, came an interruption that nobody there expected, but Jim should have; except that he had been so caught up in watching with fascination the battle between Brian and the pirate captain.

  There was a crack like thunder over their head. They all looked up to see the shape of a dragon, which Jim recognized as Secoh, checking himself on his wings just above their mast, the long, leathery spread of them casting a shadow over all below. In the same moment he had begun to fly again; and was moving away from the vessel. But almost in the same second there was a second thunder-crack; and another dragon, obviously a young dragon from his size, appeared next above them for a moment, then fled.

  For a moment, as even the second dragon was followed by a third and, looking up, Jim saw other specks falling swiftly toward the vessel they were on; his heart rose and he thought the day was won. But at that moment a voice from somewhere in the crowd shouted over all their heads.

  "It is the devil himself loose among us!" the voice cried. "Fight for your lives, for there is no safety for us otherwise. If we kill and clear these from our decks, perhaps the dragons will leave us alone!"

  The body of pirate seamen wavered. There was muttering among them; and for a moment it seemed that they swayed back and forth between action and inaction. Then as another dragon opened his wings with a clap above them, they gripped their weapons more tightly and began to move toward the upper deck, where Bloody Boots lay dead and Brian lay fallen beside him.