by Guy Haley
“Quinn?” I said. My voice was real weak, barely a whisper.
“I am Quinn, Knight of Atlantis. Begone from this place! Leave the boy! I command you by the authority of the angels!”
The whining stopped. The dragon retreated from me. I opened my eyes.
I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in my nightmares. Think you know what a dragon looks like? Think again. Think you’d see scales, and claws, and a snout like an alligator? Wings and frills and all that? None of it.
Part of it was animal, thick legs dense with muscle, heavy feet tipped with three silver claws. But at God’s command the devil had given it a thick suit of armor of shining metal, moonbright and glorious. The plates of it were cleverly made, sliding over each other without a sound. This harness sat on its hips and shoulders, clad the lower parts of all four legs, covered its belly and its spine. There were anchoring plates to which the rest attached, and they grew right from its body, knurling the skin where it grew over the metal. What flesh I could see was leathery and dark, gray-brown, thick as a mastodon’s, free of scales and furless.
A long scorpion’s tail tipped with a scimitar blade arched over its back. There were wings, flexing bat things like in the stories. Dense and leathery skin webbed silver fingers sharp as needles, but I don’t think it could fly. Six limbs, just like a dragon. In every other respect it was nothing like any picture I have ever seen.
Where its neck and head should have been was a crop of thrashing tendrils, twenty of them, forged of banded steel in the workshops of hell. A red eye of glass tipped each one. There was an opening beneath that, a mouth of sorts, lined with hooked teeth. From this vented spurts of blue and green infernal fire that burned everything it lit upon, be it rock or flesh.
How it ate, how it lived or bred, I could not say. This was a creature of Satan himself, coughed up from the pits of hell to ruin the lands of men. God’s judgment on the sons of Adam for his perfidy and pride. Heed the good book, listen to your pastor. God watches us always, and he has no mercy for sinners in this life.
“A knight? A knight! One servant seeks to command the other. See thou that I am mightier. Begone or burn in my fires,” the dragon laughed; a harsh, diabolical racket.
“Release him. I command you!” shouted Quinn.
Quinn’s horse reared and whinnied and Quinn raised his arm. In his upheld hand light flashed pure and silver. The image of the seal leapt up and out, magnified many times over but just as perfect as before. The angel with a bowed, cowled head, wings spread wide. The four ships, sails billowing, began their track around it.
“I do not answer to the angels of the ocean. Thy kind’s day is done. Go back to wherever thou hast hidden thyself these last and sorry years, and leave me to my meal.”
“I have the right of passage through all the angel’s lands. Your fury is unjust.”
“And the twain that rode with thee, sir knight? Who are these trespassers? Where is their token of passage?”
“They rode under my protection.”
“None might pass these lands. They are under the view of the angels. I am their eyes and the might of their arm. Their punishment is upon this land. I am the curse of pride.”
“The boy is innocent of any crime. He has no pride.”
“He is a son of Adam. All are tainted by sin. He will suffer for the emperor’s misdeeds, as all should suffer.”
“I will not quit the field.”
“Then thou art doomed.”
The dragon’s whining roar began again, and it took into itself a great draft of breath. It leaned backward, bunching up the chest and the mouth set there.
The dragon lunged forward, and a jet of brilliant flame roared from its slotlike mouth.
Quinn spurred Parsifal, and the great white horse leapt off the road. The dragon turned, chasing the knight and his steed with his fire. Straw and grass and everything the fire touched on burst into flame. The ground steamed. Stone shattered under its caress.
Quinn flashed by me, and I saw there was something attached to his belt, a crushed mass of gray metal strips.
The dragon’s fire ceased. Quinn galloped around the back of the judging stone. Parsifal’s hooves thundered on stripped fields, drawing away, but I couldn’t credit that he’d abandon me for real.
The dragon’s eye stalks swayed, and turned as one to glare at me.
“If thou art the one he would release, then thou shalt die immediately,” said the dragon. “Let that settle our contest.”
It came toward me. The eye stalks parted, and I saw in their midst a second mouth set within a fold of flesh. It thrust forward, like the head of a turtle but eyeless and bald. Cruel, interlocking teeth parted, exposing a cavernous throat.
Hooves drummed again. Quinn came in fast from the right, his lance now in his hand. The dragon, intent upon me, turned too late to avoid the knight. The tip of Quinn’s lance pierced the creature’s flank, sliding neatly between plates of armor. The tip penetrated a good arm’s length before the lance shivered into pieces. The creature bellowed in anger and pain, and turned swiftly. It swiped with a heavy forelimb. Parsifal reared, and was knocked over. Quinn fell from the saddle and rolled free. Parsifal staggered up to his feet and ran, his eyes rolling with terror. Quinn was unhorsed, and at the dragon’s mercy.
I could do nothing as I watched these two agents of the angels battle one another. Why would God release evil upon us, you might ask. The answer is that all punishment is by nature evil, and the greater the punishment required, the greater the evil inflicted. And the dragon, well, he was a great punishment indeed.
Quinn took out his longsword. The dragon swiped at him with a crushing paw. Quinn dodged. If he were to block such a blow it would achieve nothing, his sword would break or be driven back onto him, and he would surely die. He danced backwards in a low crouch as the dragon’s stabbing tail slammed into the ground twice. The dragon howled in anger.
“Thou defiest me in my own land. For that you will die, agent of the Dreaming Cities or not.”
The dragon drew in its breath once more, preparing to incinerate the knight. Quinn stood his ground as the whining of the inhalation built, lifting the crumpled mass of metal from his belt. He passed his longsword to his left hand, and held the ball ready in his right.
I found my voice. “Quinn! Look out!” I could not understand why he did not move!
The dragon released its fires. A cone of white heat blasted out toward the knight. Quinn leapt to the side, and ran directly toward the dragon, right alongside the borders of the creature’s flame. He stood the heat, but not without injury. The dragon lumbered round, trying to catch Quinn in its breath. Quinn stayed always outside it.
I screamed. The dragon’s fire was sweeping inexorably toward me as Quinn dashed at the beast.
In four strides Quinn came within a spear’s length of the dragon’s mouth. He drew back his arm, and threw the ball of metal into the heart of the inferno, then dived aside.
The dragon screamed. A hideous noise, loud and potent with misery. The fires shut off. The dragon curled in on itself and writhed upon the floor. Sparks and fire shot from the joints of its armor. Several of its eye stalks fell limp, the lights in the red eyes dying. It screamed and screamed, a weird crackling and popping coming from within its gut.
Quinn walked toward it. The dragon’s eyes danced, and the beast tried to rise, but it flopped back down with a rattling moan of agony. Quinn sidestepped the flailing tail, kicked aside an enfeebled paw and drew back his sword. With a turn of his hand he thrust the blade deep into the nest of tentacles above the creature’s upper mouth. With another smooth motion, he twisted and withdrew his blade. Thick vapors boiled off black blood that coated the sword end to end.
The dragon let out a hiccupping sob. The eye tentacles rattled against one another, and fell limp. The lights went out in all of them. The dragon drew in two slow breaths and lay still. The glow in its lower mouth flickered out. Its fires died, and its heat began to
diminish.
Quinn turned to me. His threw down his longsword onto the smoking grass, and drew out his falchion as he strode toward me.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
In my terror, I thought he meant to kill me.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you! Turn your head! Close your eyes!”
He struck through one chain, a blow no normal man could make. In a shower of yellow sparks the chain parted.
“Your edge,” I said stupidly.
Quinn gave me that quirk-mouthed look. The side of his face was raw and blistered. The secondhand heat of the dragon radiated off him. I’m pretty sure none but a knight could have withstood that temperature. A normal man would have cooked in his armor. “Damn the edge, son. I’m making a point.”
He pushed my head to one side. “Close your eyes again.”
Another chop and the second chain parted. I was free, and the dragon was dead.
Quinn Departs
FROM THE EAST, the south, the north and northwest, the eyes of the angels gathered thickly, twenty or more of them, all in different heraldry and form. Miniature angels flew alongside strange machines and eagles with mechanical heads. Whatever their shape, they were of the same purpose, spies of the Dreaming Cities, and they gathered over the dragon like buzzards.
“They’ve come to mourn the dragon,” I said.
Quinn nodded. He rode Parsifal, Clemente clopping along behind. I walked with him, jogging a little to keep up.
“Will they punish us for its death?”
“I killed it. Angels won’t risk another war among themselves over that. Their rules mean something, leastaways where their own affairs are concerned.” Quinn’s face had healed unnaturally fast. But for a faint reddening on his right side, his hurts had all disappeared.
We fell quiet. We didn’t have much to say to one another. I was safe, he was leaving.
“How did you kill it?” I asked at last.
“Lead strips,” he said. “Those in the Gone Before used them on their houses. I was gone awhile because I had to find them. Bundle them up, toss them in. The dragon’s fire melted it.” He smiled in a small and private way. “Lead is a real good conductor of electricity. Once it got into the innards that’s that. No more dragon.”
“I don’t understand.”
Quinn shrugged. “Dragon runs off electricity. Most things do, even you and I in part.”
I still didn’t understand. Even now, I don’t.
“Thank you, Mr. Quinn.”
“You ain’t got nothing to thank me for, boy,” he said. “I’m sorry about your mother. I tried my best.” He tossed my mother’s purse down at me. It was much heavier than it should have been.
I opened it. “You’ve returned too much!” I said. “Half of this was for you,” I said. I held it up to him.
“I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain, so there’s no need for you to. I took half of what we agreed, that leaves you three-quarters of your mother’s bride price. The fee for one person delivered safely. I’d give you it all, but even a knight needs money. Keep it close by you, don’t be tempted to spend it. You might need it one day.”
“Where are you going?”
“Like I said, I’m headed for Columbus.”
“But there ain’t nothing but plains of glass there,” I said, echoing the postmaster’s words.
“There’s always more to something than what’s on the surface.”
The road broadened out. It disappeared into the forest at the far end of the valley, the beginning of the Northern Wildlands.
“Quinn?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you going all the way out there?”
“I got business there. Unfinished business. I’m looking for someone, son.”
“Who? Is it your oath, your badge? What happened, Quinn?”
He reined Parsifal in, bringing the horse to a sharp stop. He frowned down on me. Dust curled around us.
“You gotta learn when a man’s done giving answers.”
“But . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know what I was saying. Knowing what he was doing wasn’t the important thing. What was important was that I didn’t want him to go. A dozen overlapping notions made up my yearning. He was the last connection to my mother; he’d saved me from a dragon. I was safe with him, and now he was abandoning me for real.
I felt sorry for him, yeah, that too. He didn’t have anybody. I could’ve been somebody to keep him company.
I couldn’t say any of that, and if he sensed even a part of it, I couldn’t see it in his face.
“Son,” he said more kindly. “I don’t like no one knowing my business. I prefer to keep it that way. I’ve told you more than I tell most, be content with that.”
He clicked his tongue and urged Parsifal into a quick walk, leaving me behind. But then he stopped and turned back to look at me one last time, this knight. He was the closest thing I’ll ever get to meeting an angel. Closest thing I’ll ever get to God, in this life anyways. He smiled but his eyes were sad, and I wondered if God smiled like that—sorry for the creation he had made. “Stay safe, Abney. The world’s a terrible place, it needs more people in it with good hearts.”
“Quinn!” I shouted.
The knight wheeled his horse around.
“Hyah!” he said, digging in his heels. Parsifal set up a gentle canter, not too fast for his smaller companion to keep pace, but fast enough. Within a few minutes Quinn had reached the end of the valley, and then he was gone into the trees. I watched the empty road for minutes. Dust hung on the morning, flour white.
That time, when he left, that was the only time he ever used my name.
I never saw him again.
Reluctantly, I turned my back on Quinn’s road, and made for the castle, Winfort, this place. After the dragon was killed, they let me stay, and it became my home. Matthew raised me, as good as he could. He was a kind man. Amos taught me. I tried to get a wife, but none would have me, so I became a priest. Not long after that, Amos died.
And I’m still here, aren’t I?
The sun treated us to a crisp fall evening as it fell by degree toward the west. In that clear light, the angels’ eyes flocking around the dragon’s corpse danced round one final time. They were speaking. “Quinn, Quinn, Quinn,” they said, a sad music. Blue light played from them across the dragon’s corpse, and the thing just faded out of existence, vanished like mist under a strong sun. The eyes of the angels soared away, each in a different direction.
So what’s the point of all this, you young ones might think. The mumblings of an old man whose time has run out, you’ll be thinking. Well they ain’t.
The point of this goes so: you think you can find a place to mind your own business, to raise your crops and your family. That if you choose your spot well, and the Lord smiles on you, then you can live your life free of the meddling of mighty men like the emperor.
That just ain’t the case. Minding your own business is not a choice open to us. No matter how you try, no matter where you hide, what great men does affects you. Twenty years after the emperor roused the wrath of the Pittsburgh angels, the plague of dead they unleashed wiped New Karlsville off the face of the Earth. Twenty years on! What our fault was in that, I cannot say. Think on this too—the angels gave land to Lord Corn, and then put a dragon on his doorstep. They said they were punishing another man, the emperor. It never looked that way to Corn, and it don’t look that way to me.
Angels aren’t to be trusted. But that don’t mean that they are evil. I’ll tell you why. Remember this. If the Lord moves mysteriously against you, and at times his doings seem unfair, then remember that no man is without sin. Not you, nor I, nor the highest lord or the lowliest farmer.
Not the knights either.
And that includes Quinn.
Time’s getting on for me now. I reckon this here will be one of the last times I tell of how I came to Winfort, met a knight, and survived a dragon. The story of my life is nearly done. I got a win
ter left in me, maybe two. Here I bow out. I can’t say I’m sorry. Pain’s a terrible good friend to a man my age. He’s outstayed his welcome, and I’d dearly like to see the back of him. I’ve watched things get better for folks. No man can ask for more than to see his people prosper, and so I’ll go to the good Lord with a light heart.
The likes of Quinn though, their stories never end. Heroes don’t ever die. I know that, out there, Quinn carried on his search. Who was he looking for, I don’t know. It bothered me for years that I never found out, but I guess I’ve made my peace with that. Maybe he found him, maybe he didn’t. Whatever fortune did to Quinn, wherever he went, and why, I’m sure as the good Lord is enthroned in heaven that someone, somewhere knows what happened to Quinn next. And if one of you young ones grows up, and goes out from Winfort, up toward where Columbus was and now there’s only glass, someone, somewhere might tell you. I sure hope they do. If you find out, stop by my grave and whisper it to the earth when you come home, it’d be much appreciated.
The story of Quinn ain’t over yet, not by a long chalk.
About the Author
GUY HALEY is the former deputy editor of SFX magazine and the former editor of Death Ray and Games Workshop’s White Dwarf. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son, where he now spends his time writing novels full time.
guyhaley.wordpress.com
Also by Guy Haley
THE RICHARDS AND KLEIN BOOKS
Reality 36
Omega Point
Champion of Mars
Crash
WARHAMMER NOVELS
Baneblade
Skarsnik
The Death of Integrity
Valedor
The End Times: The Rise of the Horned Rat
Horus Heresy: Pharos
NONFICTION
Sci-Fi Chronicles
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