Dragonslayer

by Wayland Drew

  In the courtyard that had been so peaceful and bucolic only an hour earlier, mayhem reigned. The white animals had vanished, replaced by a melee of running people, all glancing fearfully upward at the crumbling walls. Morgenthorme’s gate was already open, and knights and retainers alike were dashing through it to the safety of the surrounding fields. Galen was on the point of running to join this exodus when he was stopped by a glimpse of a figure that was not running, a figure utterly still.

  Tyrian.

  Black against the pale wall, the centurion gazed over the heads of the scurrying peasants, searching. Galen shrank back, but he was not quick enough; Tyrian had seen him. The big man seemed in that instant to grow bigger. His back straightened, his shoulders swelled, his right arm dropped to the hilt of his great sword.

  He advanced with the feline grace with which, Galen remembered all too clearly, he had descended after the slaying of Hodge; and as he came his blade, Tendrun, flashed from its sheath. Its magical amber and crystal pendants caught the pale sun. Tyrian carried it to the side, in the manner of a berserk warrior who, beyond himself, longed only to cut a swath through the insignificant foe. The stream of fleeing servants split, flowed around him. Galen could see the cold fury in his face, and could see too that he was speaking, although he heard nothing but the hubbub in front and the rising tumult of the two trapped horses behind. And then Tyrian was suddenly close enough to be heard: “Meddler!” he said with a horrible vehemence. “Little, meddling fool!”

  Galen stood paralyzed with terror. He watched the sword rise, he watched Tyrian’s left hand swing across to the hilt to strengthen the slashing blow at his neck. He ducked. He heard the blade sing above his head, heard its clangor on the stone door-frame, heard Tyrian’s curse.

  Several things happened then in swift succession. Off balance, Tyrian reeled backwards. At the same instant the earth trembled again, and this shock sent the remaining two horses racing frenziedly for the stable door. Still crouched, Galen heard them coming and he leaped back just in time to let the first one through. Tyrian was less lucky; the horse’s shoulder dealt him a glancing blow on the chest and sent him sprawling in the manure heap. As the second animal crossed the threshold, Galen saw his chance. He grasped the bridle of the horse—Tyrian’s own black stallion, still haltered from the night’s ride—leaped and swung aboard. By the time Tyrian had sat up and found breath to shout to Jerbul, who was lurking near the gate, Galen was halfway across the courtyard. Jerbul reacted quickly, however. He seized a pike, a vicious barbed, hacking instrument on a long pole, and aimed it with lethal skill at the boy and the stallion lunging toward him. The horse slowed, hesitated, balked, reared. Jerbul took two grim steps forward and would, the next moment, have opened its belly with a single blow, just as he would cleave with the following blow the thrown and sprawling Galen, if a shrieking white shape had not plummeted down and attached itself to Jerbul’s face.

  “Gringe!”

  Jerbul’s cry joined the raven’s, but what began as a shout of rage turned to agony as keen talons pierced his eyes. The next moment, the stallion’s pawing forehooves had snapped Jerbul’s neck and caved his chest, and Galen and the horse were across the drawbridge and on the open road to Swanscombe.

  For only a moment, Galen’s thoughts dwelt with gratitude on the raven before they rushed ahead to Swanscombe and Valerian. He assumed the bird was with him; but Gringe followed only briefly before veering away and rising high enough to get a panoramic view of several hectares of Urland. Directly below lay Morgenthorme, with its inhabitants still milling out into the furrowed fields. Far to the southeast lay Swanscombe, its thatched roofs tranquil under the noon sun. Between lay the Blight. Gringe looked there last, for he sensed a direness far more grave than the threat of Jerbul. From the Blight the earth-shaking radiated, and in its center arose a plume of smoke and furious steam. Even as Gringe watched, the earth yawned in a ragged, fresh split, out of which rose a wing, and then another, and then a screaming head. Suddenly, the whole hillside surrounding the dragon was molten, glowing with a radiance that rivaled the sun.

  Gringe could not bear to watch. Fretting quietly, he sank in a gentle spiral back to Morgenthorme and to the white figure of Elspeth who had emerged from her chambers and was crossing the ruined courtyard . . .

  Two hours down the road, Galen smelled smoke. It was not the musky smoke of peat fires, nor the hot clean smoke of a stick campfire. This smoke was thick and heavy, laden with the odors of dry grass, and smoldering timbers. As he rode, bits of ash and ember fell at the roadside, threatening despite the rain of the previous night to ignite the forest debris. But when he reached the crossroads where a branch led east toward the Lake of Passages, and where the chalky figure of an old Celtic bird or bat rose balefully from the forest, he saw the thick plume itself and knew what must be burning. Another short, hard ride brought him to the first of the hill hamlets in Swanscombe Valley. The whole place was ablaze. Each flaming building added its heat and smoke to the conflagration that swirled upward in massive billows. Cattle screamed. People either stood on the hillside, too shocked to move, or howled their outrage and fear and lifted fists at something in the heavens Galen could not see. The crops were burning, as were the woods behind; and even as Galen watched, a copse of oak beside him burst into flames. His horse shied, twisting snake-like in tight circles of terror. He gave it its head and was off again toward Swanscombe, choking, his eyes streaming and his belly full of dread.

  The road lay straight and empty. No birds fluttered across his path, no rabbits bounded away, no squirrels ran chattering through the branches. For several leagues he and the horse were utterly alone.

  Then, without being able to tell how, he was suddenly aware of another presence. His back felt cold and vulnerable, as if his shirt and jerkin had been ripped off by invisible hands, and his neck and the back of his head were also chilled, paralyzingly chilled, as if talons of ice had brushed them. He hunched over the horse’s mane and glanced back, right, left, saw nothing—nothing but the flicker of a shadow on the road, and other shadows, hundreds, moving at various levels across the trees and bushes of the forest. Only after he had looked ahead again did the grim truth strike: they were all the same shadow! The same! An undulating, speeding blot on the forest. The horse, foam-flecked, had already sensed some approaching horror, and it was galloping in tremendous bounds, its neck flattened and straining against the reins, the bit clamped in its teeth, its breath welling up in wheezing gouts. All its efforts were futile, for the chilling shade crept relentlessly forward, edging up Galen’s spine, across his shoulders, falling like a cowl over his head and onto the neck of the stallion. The terrified creature wheeled and reared, blindly flailing the air. Galen was almost thrown, but he flung his arms around the horse’s neck and stayed on. In this position, dangling helplessly, he first saw Vermithrax.

  The dragon came low, so low that when the tips of its black wings moved they almost touched the trees. And it was so slow that in a moment of surpassing panic Galen believed it was on a gliding descent toward him and would land with an obscene and gentle scraping on his face. He imagined himself smothered by the scaled underbelly of the creature. He screamed, and his cry blended with the wretched shrieking of the horse.

  But the dragon did not land. Nor did it exhale flames. Vermithrax’s rage had caused it to spew much fire in its rampage; at the moment when it chanced upon Galen, it was restoring that fire, building it for an onslaught on the next village, which it could already see ahead. Besides, it had sensed no threat from this fleeing man-thing, no latent force in or around him.

  In Morgenthorme, on the other hand, it had sensed real challenge. It had been strangely drawn there after its emergence from the cave, and it had circled for several minutes above the castle, uncertain whether to descend for combat. Something lay there, something deep within the castle walls, that caused Vermithrax’s inner eye to flicker with a vision from the lake of fire. But at last the dragon had glided off to t
he southeast, spewing gouts of defiance that exploded on the hillsides in fiery blooms.

  Here there was nothing. Less than nothing. A screeching man-thing and a screeching horse. As it passed overhead, it released the high trumpeting of primordial dragon challenge.

  The horse cowered. Its knees buckled and it collapsed, still facing the dragon and allowing Galen to clamp himself more firmly on its shuddering back. Gaping, he watched the awesome body pass above, saw the slippage of scales as the skin undulated, saw the crusted places where scales had been torn away, saw the convulsions of the belly as the creature readied itself for another vomiting of fire. And then, just as the loathsome vent passed overhead, dripping indescribable offal, the most terrifying event in the whole incident occurred: the tail, moving as if it had its own life, dropped as the dragon itself lifted to clear a copse of oak, and its splayed tip trailed down so low that it actually touched the nose of the cringing horse, stroked its neck with obscene gentleness, draped like a heavy leaf on the top of Galen’s head, slid down his back, down the horse’s back, and was gone, leaving behind a hot dampness, an odor of rot and smoke.

  Galen’s scream again blended with the horse’s. The top of his head was covered with threads of slime. It reeked horribly. Shaking, retching, he dismounted and cleaned the horse and himself as well as he could with roadside bracken before falling to his knees and vomiting into the ditch. By the time he was able to continue, the dragon was several leagues ahead, a ragged black dot beginning to descend in a shallow glide toward Swanscombe.

  Galen remounted and dug his heels into the stallion’s ribs. Still trembling, the horse had also found its legs and although it did not at first relish the prospect of moving in the same direction as the dragon, at last it did so under Galen’s prodding.

  In a few minutes they topped the rise that overlooked Swanscombe valley, and Galen’s fear was confirmed—the village was in flames. The dragon had made two passes. The swaths of fire were cross shaped, with the Granary at the center. That building, the scene of Galen’s triumph, was now engulfed by huge spasms of flame, as if, like a tortured and writhing animal, it yearned to consume itself. On all sides, barns and houses were burning and villagers were scrambling for water from the river. Most of their efforts were in vain. Even from his distance, Galen could see that the fired houses were doomed, and that there was only the slightest hope of saving the others. Again he prodded his mount, and the horse plunged downhill in a half-slide, half-canter. In a moment he had traversed the hay fields that were being ignited by random embers and was in the village.

  Through flame and smoke he saw both heroism and horror. Men risked their lives to bring old women from blazing huts; men teetered on precarious ladders, hurling water; men and women formed ragged bucket lines stretching to the river. In some doorways lay the bodies of those overcome by smoke before they could escape, and in the streets lay the smoking carcasses of unfortunates caught outdoors by Vermithrax’s scathing attacks. Stiff-legged animal corpses smoked in the stable yards. And everywhere there were crying children, some whole, some terribly burned, all turning toward Galen as soon as they saw him, the man on the horse, the man with power. It was not misery he was witnessing now; that would come later. That would come when the insulating, kindly shock wore off and agony began. Rather, what he saw on many faces, even some of the severely burned, was disbelief very like amusement, the fixed grin of incredulity: It cannot happen here! We have taken all precautions! But it HAS happened here!

  Galen’s vision blurred. Acrid smoke burned in his mouth and nostrils. Have I done this?

  “You!” Greil limped toward him, his hunched shoulders heavy with menace. “You have a nerve to come back here after what you did!” He stooped for a cudgel, got a firm grip on it and continued his advance. Malkin and Xenophobius appeared behind him in the smoke, both picking up clubs when they saw Galen.

  “Get out!” Malkin hissed. “Go!”

  Galen turned the horse into the village.

  Simonburgh was also on fire, although, because it was set apart from the rest of the village, it had escaped the full brunt of the dragon’s attack, and only one corner was smoldering. There was no sign of either Valerian or her father. He wanted to dismount here, to dash inside; but he was aware that Greil and Malkin had blocked his path. He could not go back. Choking and blinded by the smoke, his eyes streaming, he rode upwind, splashed across the river and reined up in the meadow on the other side.

  “Join the party!” The shrill voice struck him like a lash. He wheeled the horse, tensing for a stabbing attack from the side. But there was no one near. “Come to the party!” The voice was thin, bitterly mocking, cracking with outrage. It came from a figure on a little knoll to Galen’s right, a figure brandishing a crooked staff. He was cowled and grotesquely thin.

  “Jacopus!”

  “Come! Celebrate! Isn’t that what you told me to do? ‘Come with us, Jacopus. Celebrate the death of the dragon!’ Do you remember? That’s what you said. That’s what you all said! Well, is this your party?”

  Galen could not answer. His mouth was dry. He was exhausted. His belly was lead. He gazed weeping through the shifting curtains of smoke upon the mayhem and pain across the river. His first impulse was to plead ignorance, to say that he had not known that this would be the effect of calling down the boulder. Then he recalled how proudly he had taken credit when it appeared that the dragon had been slain.

  Crouched like a large insect, Jacopus was waiting for an answer.

  It seemed to Galen that never had it been more important to tell the truth. “Yes,” he said at last. “I have done this.”

  Jacopus bobbed with satisfaction. “You sought to do good.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it twisted into horror, into Evil.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I tell you why?”

  “Because,” Galen said, so softly that Jacopus did not hear, “I’m no sorcerer. I’m not Ulrich.”

  “Because,” Jacopus said, “you do not have Grace.” He laughed abruptly. “Poor fool! How could you help anyone without the Faith, without the Word? You have done all you could have done—brought terror, and death, and burning children!”

  “And your Faith, would it have stopped the children from being burned?”

  “Yes!”

  “Would it have stopped the terror?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would it have killed the dragon?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  In a transport of ecstasy and anger Jacopus again brandished his staff, waving it overhead.

  At that instant, as if summoned, a shadow drifted over him. Jacopus and Galen looked slowly upward together. High, high, at an altitude where the plumes from many fires joined and became one with the clouds, they glimpsed a proud-headed and unmistakable silhouette.

  Vermithrax was returning to the Blight.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Miles around, the countryside was blazing. The plumes from a hundred fires rose and mingled aloft. Soaring high among them Vermithrax was coming home. It paid scant attention to the figures near its lair. Its thoughts were far away, far to the west and north, where it was still possible that other dragons would see this grand havoc and, rejuvenated, come.

  In this hope Vermithrax had soared much, much higher than usual; so it was that the shadow which fell across Jacopus was tiny and diffuse.

  “Well,” Galen said, looking back at the priest, “you’re going to have your chance.” He assumed that Jacopus would shrink from confrontation with the dragon, and that his declarations were mere posturing. But he was wrong. He saw that the other man’s raised face was transformed. Jacopus wanted this. In fact, he had already begun to move like a euphoric sleepwalker toward the dragon’s lair. The little crowd of villagers that had followed Galen to the river’s edge halted, sensing what was about to occur.

  With a fearsome dignity, Vermithrax descended. At one thousand feet, the dragon became aware of the smoking village, at five hund
red feet, of the Blight and the altered entrance to the lake of fire; at three hundred feet, it passed above a horse and rider, and twinges of familiarity plucked at its innards; a bit farther on, very low, it passed over an oddly gesticulating human thing moving toward its earth. A hero. Vermithrax grunted, and two tendrils of flame cascaded earthward. With an instant of hovering, the dragon settled at the entrance of its lair and turned.

  Jacopus had meanwhile broken into a hopping run. He had lost his sandals in his eagerness to reach the Blight, and he limped and leaped as thorns and sharp stones jabbed him. Awed and fascinated, Galen prodded his horse and trotted along on a course parallel that of the priest. He was filled with premonition. He wanted to call out to Jacopus: Don’t do it! You will prove nothing! You have no real power! You will die! And yet, strangely, he felt in this crazy priest, this filthy and scrawny outcast, power in the making. What if there were a hundred Jacopuses, a thousand, all with the same fervor, with the same wild eagerness to sacrifice?

  In the center of the Blight, unearthly and magnificent on its crag, Vermithrax perched immobile. Floating blankets of smoke, spirals and gouts of wind-whipped smoke, tortured the sun and sky into creatures alive and agonized.

  Jacopus did not pause at the edge of the Blight but plunged recklessly on up the scree. The paths converged there, and Galen was close enough to see that the priest’s feet were cut and bleeding, the lacerations sufficient to have brought a less transported man to his knees. And Galen could hear that the priest had begun to mumble, to shout occasionally, emphasizing these shouts with thrusts of his staff toward the dragon. Galen faltered at the edge of the Blight. To go farther, he knew, would be to associate himself with Jacopus. The horse did not want to go. It balked, grunting and skittering sideways. It had had enough for one day. It could see and smell all too clearly the looming shape on the crag, and its terror on the road, when the great tail had slithered over them, had returned.