The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  "I won't listen to this!"

  "You have no choice," the dragon said complacently. "The door is locked and you cannot escape. Moreover. I am larger and more powerful than you. This is the lex mundi, from which there is no appeal."

  "You lie! You lie! You lie!"

  "Believe what you will. But. however got, your mortal blood is your good fortune. Dwelt you not in the asshole of beyond, but in some more civilized setting, you would surely be conscripted for a pilot. All pilots are half-mortal, you know, for only mortal blood can withstand the taint of cold iron. You would live like a prince and be trained as a warrior. With luck, you would be the death of thousands." The dragons voice sank musingly. "How shall I mark this discovery? Shall I...? Oho! Yes. I will make you my lieutenant."

  Will picked angrily at the scab on his wrist. "How docs that differ from what I am now?"

  "Do not despise titles. If nothing else, it will impress your friends."

  This was a calculated affront., for Will had no friends, and the dragon knew it. Not anymore. All folk avoided him when they could, and were stiff-faced and wary in his presence when they could not. The children fleered and jeered and called him names. Sometimes they flung stones at him, or pottery shards or once even a cowpat, dry on the outside but soft and gooey within. Not often, however, for when they did, he would catch them and thrash them for it. This always seemed to catch the little ones by surprise.

  The world of children was much simpler than the one he inhabited.

  When Little Red Margotty struck him with the cowpat, he caught her by the ear and marched her to her mother's hut. "See what your brat has done to me!" he cried in indignation, holding his jerkin away from him.

  Big Red Margotty turned from the worktable where she had been canning toads. She stared at him stonily, and yet it seemed to him that there resided in her eye a glint of suppressed laughter. "Take it off and I shall wash it for you."

  Her expression when she said this was so disdainful that Will almost peeled off his trousers as well, flung them in her face for her insolence, and commanded her to wash them for a penance. But with the impulse came also an awareness of Big Red Margotty’s firm, pink flesh, of her ample breasts and womanly haunches. His lesser self swelled, filling out his trousers so that they bulged.

  This, too. Big Red Margotty saw, and the look of casual scorn she gave him then made Will burn with humiliation. Worse, all the while her mother washed his jerkin, Little Red Margotty danced around Will at a distance, holding up her skirt and waggling her bare bottom at him, making a mock of his discomfort.

  On the way out the door, his damp jerkin draped over one arm, he stopped and said. "Make for me a sark of white damask, with upon its breast a shield: argent, dragon rouge rampant above a village sable. Bring it to me by dawn-light tomorrow.''

  "The cheek!" Big Red Margotty cried. "You haw no right to demand any such thing!"

  "I am the dragon’s lieutenant, and that is right enough for anything."

  He left, knowing that the red bitch would perforce be up all night sewing for him and glad for every miserable hour she would suffer.

  Three weeks having passed since Puck's burial, the healing-women decided it was time at last to dig him up. They said nothing when Will declared that he would attend - none of the adults said anything to him unless they had no choice - but, ragging along after them, he knew for a fact that he was unwelcome.

  Puck's body, when they dug it up, looked like nothing so much as an enormous black root, twisted and formless. Chanting all the while, the women unwrapped the linen swaddling and washed him down with cow's urine. They dug out the life-clay that clogged his openings. They placed the finger-bone of a bat beneath his tongue. An egg was broken by his nose and the white slurped down by one medicine woman and the yellow by another.

  Finally they injected him with five cc. of dextroamphetamine sulfate.

  Puck's eyes flew open His skin had been baked black as silt by his long immersion in the soil, and his hair bleached white. His eyes were a vivid and startling leaf green. In all respects but one, his body was as perfect as ever it had been. But that one exception made the women sigh unhappily for his sake.

  One leg was missing, from above the knee down. "The Earth has taken her tithe," one old woman observed sagely. "There was not enough left of the leg to save," said another. "It's a pity," said a third.

  They all withdrew from the hut, leaving Will and Puck alone together.

  For a long time Puck did nothing but stare wonderingly at his stump of a leg. He sat up and ran careful hands over its surface, as if to prove to himself that the missing flesh was not still there and somehow charmed invisible. Then he stared at Wills clean white shirt, and at the dragon arms upon his chest. At last, his unblinking gaze rose to meet Will's eyes.

  "You did this."

  "That's not fair!" Will cried. "The land mine had nothing to do with the dragon. The Scissors-Grinder would have found it and brought it into the village in any case. It is the War that brought both dragon and bomb to us, and the War - surely you will acknowledge this - is not my fault." Will took his friend's hand in his own. "Tchortyrion...," he said in a low voice, careful that no unseen person might overhear.

  Puck batted his hand away. "That's not my true name anymore! I have walked in darkness and my spirit has returned from the halls of granite with a new name - one that not even the dragon knows!"

  "The dragon will learn it soon enough," Will said sadly.

  "You wish!"

  "Puck..."

  "My old use-name is dead as well." said he who had been Puck Berrysnateher. Unsteadily pulling himself erect, he wrapped the blanket upon which he had been laid about his thin shoulders. "You may call me No-name, for no name of mine shall ever pass your lips again."

  Awkwardly, No-name hopped to the doorway. He steadied himself with a hand upon the jamb, then launched himself out into the wide world.

  "Please! Listen to me!" Will cried after him. Wordlessly, No-name raised one hand, middle finger extended. Red anger welled up inside Will. "Asshole!" he shouted after his former friend."Stump-leggity hopper! Johnny-three-limbs!"

  He had not cried since that night the dragon first entered him. Now he cried again.

  In midsummer an army recruiter roared into town with a bright green-and-yellow drum lashed to the motorcycle behind him. He wore a smart red uniform with two rows of brass buttons, and he'd come all the way from Brocielande, looking for likely lads to enlist in the service of Avalon. With a screech and a cloud of dust, he pulled up in front of the Scrannel Dogge, heeled down the kickstand, and went inside to rent the common room for the space of the afternoon.

  Outside again, he donned his drum harness, attached the drum, and sprinkled a handful of gold coins on its head. Boom-Boom-de-Boom! The drumsticks came down like thunder. Rap-Tap-a-Rap! The gold coins leaped and danced, like raindrops on a hot griddle. By this time, there was a crowd standing outside the Scrannel Dogge.

  The recruiter laughed. "Sergeant Bombast is my name!" Boom! Doom! Boom! "Finding heroes is my game!'' He struck the sticks together overhead Click! Snick! Click! Then he thrust them in his belt, unharnessed the great drum, and set it down beside him. The gold coins caught the sun and dazzled every eye with avarice. "I'm here to offer certain brave lads the very best career a man ever had. The chance to learn a skill, to become a warrior... and get paid damn well for it, too Look at me!" He clapped his hands upon his ample girth. "Do I look underfed?"

  The crowd laughed. Laughing with them, Sergeant Bombast waded into their number, wandering first this way, then that, addressing first this one. then another. "No. I do not. For the very good reason that the Army feeds me well. It feeds me, and clothes me, and all but wipes me arse when I asks it to. And am I grateful? Am I grateful? I am not. No. sirs and maidens, so far from grateful am I that I require that the Army pay me for the privilege! And how much, do you ask? How much am I paid? Keeping in mind that my shoes, my food, my breeches, my snot-rag" - he pul
led a lace handkerchief from one sleeve and waved it daintily in the air - "are all free as the air we breathe and the dirt we rub in our hair at Candlemas eve. How much am I paid?" His seemingly random wander had brought him back to the drum again. Now his fist came down on the drum, making it shout and the gold leap up into the air with wonder. "Forty-three copper pennies a month!" The crowd gasped.

  "Payable quarterly in good honest gold! As you see here! Or silver, for them as worships the horned matron.'' He chucked old Lady Favor-Me-Not under the chin, making her blush and simper. "But that's not all — no, not the half of it! I see you've noticed these coins here. Noticed? Pshaw! You've noticed that I meant you to notice these coins! And why not? Each one of these little beauties weighs a full Trojan ounce! Each one is of the good red gold, laboriously mined by kobolds in the griffin-haunted Mountains of the Moon. How could you not notice them? How could you not wonder what I meant to do with them? Did I bring them here simply to scoop them up again, when my piece were done, and pour them back into my pockets?"

  "Not a bit of it! It is my dearest hope that I leave this village penniless. I intend to leave this village penniless! Listen up careful now, for this is the crux of the matter. This here gold's meant for bonuses. Aye! Recruitment bonuses! In just a minute I'm going to stop talking. I'll reckon you're glad to hear that!" He waited for the laugh. "Yes. believe it or not, Sergeant Bombast is going to shut up and walk inside this fine establishment, where I've arranged for exclusive use of the common room, and something more as well. Now, what I want to do is to talk — just talk, mind you! — with lads who are strong enough and old enough to become soldiers. How old is that? Old enough to get your girlfriend in trouble!" Laughter again. "But not too old. neither. How old is that? Old enough that not only has your girlfriend jumped you over the broom, but you've come to think of it as a good bit of luck!

  "So I'm a talkative man, and I want some lads to talk with. And if you'll do it, if you're neither too young nor too old and are willing to simply hear me out, with absolutely no strings attached...." He paused. "Well, fair's fair and the beer's on me. Drink as much as you like, and I'll pay the tab." He started to turn away, then swung back, scratching his head and looking puzzled. "Damn me, if there isn't something I've forgot."

  "The gold!" squeaked a young dinter.

  "The gold! Yes, yes. I'd forget me own head if it weren't nailed on.

  As I've said, the gold's tor bonuses. Right into your hand it goes, the instant you've signed the papers to become a soldier. And how much? One gold coin? Two?" He grinned wolfishly." Doesn't nobody want to guess? No? Well, hold onto your pizzles. I m offering ten gold coins to the boy who signs up today! And ten more apiece for as many of his friends as wants to go with him!"

  To cheers, he retreated into the tavern.

  The dragon had foreseen the recruiter's coming from afar and rehearsed Will in what he must do. "Now do we repay our people for their subservience." he had said "This fellow is a great danger to us all. He must be caught unawares."

  "Why not placate him with smiles?" Will had asked "Hear him out, feed him well, and send him on his way. That seems to me the path of least strife."

  "He will win recruits — never doubt it. Such men have tongues of honey, and glamour -tones of great potency."

  "So?"

  The War goes ill for Avalon. Not one of three recruited today is likely to ever return."

  "I don't care. On their heads be the consequences." "You're learning. Here, then, is our true concern: The first recruit who is administered the Oath of Fealty will tell his superior officers about my presence here. He will betray us all, with never a thought for the welfare of the village, his family, or friends. Such is the puissance of the Army's sorcerers."

  So Will and the dragon had conferred, and made plans. Now the time to put those plans into action was come. The Scrannel Dogge was bursting with potential recruits. The beer flowed freely, and the tobacco as well. Every tavern pipe was in use, and Sergeant Bombast had sent out for more. Within the fog of tobacco smoke, young men laughed and joked and hooted when the recruiter caught the eye of that lad he deemed most apt to sign, smiled, and crooked a beckoning finger. So Will saw from the doorway. He let the door slam behind him.

  All eyes reflexively turned his way. A complete and utter silence overcame the room.

  As he walked forward, there was a scraping of chairs and putting down of mugs. Somebody slipped out the kitchen door, and another after him. Wordlessly, a knot of three lads in green shirts left by the main door. Bodies eddied and flowed. By the time Will reached the recruiter's table, there was no one in the room but the two of them.

  "I'll be buggered," Sergeant Bombast said wonderingly. "if I've ever seen the like."

  "It's my fault." Will said, flustered. He hugged himself with embarrassment.

  "Well, I can see that! I can see that, and yet shave a goat and marry me off to it if I know what it means. Sit down, boy. sit! Is there a curse on you? The evil eye? Transmissible elf-pox?"

  "No, it's not that. It's..." Will flushed. "I'm half-mortal."

  A long silence.

  "Seriously?"

  "Aye, There is iron in my blood. This why I have no true name. Why, also, I am shunned by all." He forced himself to look the recruiter straight in the eye, and saw to his amazement that the man believed his every word. "There is no place in this village for me anymore."

  Bombast chewed his thumb, thinking. Then he pointed to a rounded black rock that lay atop a stack of indenture parchments. "This is a name-stone. Not much to look at, is it?"

  "No. sir."

  "But its mate, which I hold under my tongue, is." He took out a small, lozenge-shaped stone and held it up to be admired. It glistered in the light, blood crimson yet black in its heart. He placed it back in his mouth. "Now. if you were to lay your hand upon the name-stone on the table, your true name would go straight to the one in my mouth, and so to my brain. It's how we enforce the contracts our recruits sign."

  "I understand." Will placed his hand upon the black name-stone. He watched the recruiter's face, as nothing happened. There were ways to hide a true name, of course. But they were not likely to be found in a remote river-village in the wilds of the Debatable Hills. Passing the stone's test was proof of nothing. But it was extremely-suggestive.

  Sergeant Bombast sucked in his breath slowly. Then he opened up the small lockbox on the table before him, and said. "D’ye see this gold, boy?"

  "Yes."

  "There's eighty ounces of the good red here — none of your white gold nor electrum neither! — closer to you than your one hand is to the other. Yet the bonus you'd get would be worth a dozen of what I have here, if, that is, your claim is true. Can you prove it?"

  "Yes, sir. I can."

  Now, explain this to me again." Sergeant Bombast said. "You live in a house of iron?" They were outside now, walking through the silent village. The recruiter had left his drum behind, but had slipped the name-stone into a pocket and strapped the lockbox to his belt.

  "It's where I sleep at night. That should prove my case, shouldn't it? It should prove that I'm ... what I say I am."

  So saying, Will walked the recruiter into Tyrant Square. It was a sunny, cloudless day, and the square smelled of dust and cinnamon, with just a bitter under-taste of leaked hydraulic fluid and cold iron. It was noon.

  When he saw the dragon, Sergeant Bombast’s face fell. "Oh, fuck." he said.

  As if that were the signal, Will threw his arms around the man, while doors flew open and hidden ambushers poured into the square, waving rakes, brooms, and hoes. An old hen-wife struck the recruiter across the back of his head with her distaff. He went limp and heavy in Will's arms. Perforce, Will let him fall.

  Then the women were all over the fallen soldier, stabbing, clubbing, kicking, and cursing. Their passion was beyond all bounds, for these were the mothers of those he had tried to recruit. They had all of them fallen in with the orders the dragon had given with a readi
er will than they had ever displayed before for any of his purposes. Now they were making sure the fallen recruiter would never rise again to deprive them of their sons.

  Wordlessly, they did their work and then, wordlessly, they left. "Drown his motorcycle in the river,'' the dragon commanded afterward. "Smash his drum and burn it, lest it bear witness against us.

  Bury his body in the midden-heap. There must be no evidence that ever he came here. Did you recover his lockbox?"

  "No. It wasn't with his body. One of the women must have stolen it."

  The dragon chuckled. "Peasants! They'd steal the fillings from their own teeth, if they could. Still, it works out well. The coins are well-buried already under basement flagstones, and will stay so indefinitely. And when an investigator comes through looking for a lost recruiter, he'll be met by a universal ignorance, canny lies, and a cleverly planted series of misleading evidence. Out of avarice, they'll serve our cause better than ever we could order it ourselves."

  A full moon sat high in the sky, enthroned within the constellation of the Mad Dog and presiding over one of the hottest nights of the summer when the dragon abruptly announced, "There is a resistance."

  "Sir?" Will stood in the open doorway, lethargically watching the sweat fall, drop by drop from his bowed head. Me would have welcomed a breeze, but at this time of year when those who had built well enough slept naked on their rooftops and those who had not burrowed into the mud of the riverbed, there were no night breezes cunning enough to thread the maze of huts and so make their way to the square.

  "Rebels against my rule. Insurrectionists. Mad, suicidal fools."

  A single drop fell. Will jerked his head to move his moon-shadow aside, and saw a large black circle appear in the dirt. "Who?"