Everran's Bane

by Kelso, Sylvia

  The square had barely reformed when Hawge banked, folded its wings, and catapulted into a dive. It plummeted down like a monstrous misshapen falcon stooping straight on the square’s center and so fast I thought it would break its own neck as well as theirs.

  The sarissas shot up. I looked to see them all crushed bodily, no steel sting could repulse such a charge. Then the wings backed with a slam like thunder; the dragon braked impossibly and unleashed a spout of fire just above their heads.

  The square vanished in foul black smoke, the dragon roared like a furnace and shot by just above it, the tall green banner toppled, I heard shouts, screams, Inyx and Beryx roaring through the din. The dragon doubled up, leant in on a wing, and spouted again.

  The uproar crescendoed. Easily now, the dragon lifted away.

  The smoke convulsed and battered itself. Then, from its depths emerged, not scattered, broken fugitives, but a bank of haphazardly pointing spears.

  Slowly the square coalesced beneath. The men staggered, some supporting others, coughed, choked, swiped at their eyes. Their bull-hide armor steamed like kettles and they beat their arms frantically to and fro. The sarissa ranks were ragged, the lines worse than doglegs: but they were intact. Even as I looked, a sooty green rag jerked upward in their midst.

  Hawge’s scream could have pulverized rocks. The square dressed ranks with frantic fumbling haste while the dragon whipped round and round overhead, re-stoking its fire. Beryx wrestled his maddened horse. Inyx was still roaring, hoarse with smoke. As the dragon turned over into its next dive, the sarissas opened and a flight of arrows met it high above fire-range.

  Hawge swerved in mid-plummet, screamed with rage, and tore up into the higher air.

  The square swayed as men propped themselves on others’ shoulders. Some were running back into the smoke, retrieving sarissas, tearing home as the dragon dropped once more.

  This time the arrows did not deter it. Three times it scourged them with flame, and three times the square sustained it, emerging disordered and distressed but unbroken beyond the smoke. But the sarissas were thinner, broken or burnt, and as the square moved, many wounded or disarmed men were helped along in its midst. I was hoarse with futile shouting, and my stomach had grown cold. How long before they faced the dragon, weaponless?

  Once more Hawge dropped in that catapulting dive. This time the sarissas stayed upright, but a shining hail shot up from their midst full in the dragon’s face.

  In the midst of the volley Hawge twisted and shot out its wings. One got out of time. Beat wildly, un-coordinated. Seemed to crumple. Its own momentum slid Hawge sidelong down the sky as it made a desperate recover, lost it. And hit with a thump that shook the earth, amid a barbaric yell of triumph from three hundred smoke-parched throats.

  Very clearly, in the comparative lull as the dragon floundered, I heard Beryx’s order. “Present—sarissas. Charge.”

  The front rank sarissas came to the horizontal. The square moved.

  A phalanx charge is not the cavalry’s delirious thunderbolt. It is delivered at a walk, measured, deliberate, and irresistible as death itself. I could picture my friends’ faces: Iphas, Errith, Thrim, Asc, all cold with vengeance about to be assuaged.

  Hawge had blundered to its feet. It waddled a few steps, clumsy as a grounded albatross, looking over its shoulder as it went. The square came on. Hawge’s eyes revolved. Its head snaked along the ground. Then it turned and began lumbering forward too.

  Fifty yards. Forty. I could hear Inyx calling them off, steady as if on parade. My fingernails had pierced my palms. Thirty. My throat ached with the expectation of fire. Hawge was breathing it, short pants, oily black smoke shooting above its head. Twenty yards. Inyx yelled, “Go!” And as the ranks broke into a trot to gain momentum the dragon swung its tail.

  I think—I hope—most of the front rank died instantly. They were my friends. The tail mowed the entire rank down, smashing them into the ground, hurling them in the air like toys, crushing rib-cages and pelvises inside the bull-hides that could foil fire but not such giant blows. The second rank, trapped in the charge, fell over the bodies with sarissas going all ways as they tripped, the square sides spilt helplessly outward round the fallen, and with a tremendous brazen bellow Hawge lashed fire into the chaos and followed it in with sting and tooth and nail.

  I cannot describe the rest: it is blotted by smoke and tears. I remember stray sarissas beating in the murk, the dragon’s back that surfaced like a spiny whale, geysers of red-hearted black dust. A sweep of the tail flinging two bodies thirty feet into the air, the flash of steel as someone, in gallant despair, tackled it with a sword. A running archer caught by a fire-blast and turned to a falling meteor. A monstrous claw coming out of the smoke to dig in and twist as the dragon pivoted, and blood spouting from a body—dead, I pray—under the nails. The hideous, hideous noise.

  And Beryx, with a sarissa for lance and his cloak over his horse’s eyes, hurling them both at the dragon like some mortally wounded, pain-demented boar.

  The sarissa pierced Hawge. I saw its head go in, somewhere at the root of a wing. The dragon let out a screech that muted all the others and whipped its head about on a gout of flame, the horse screamed as horribly as only horses can and tried to rear over backward with its front legs seared completely away, the dragon’s tail caught it in mid-fall and hurled them both skyward like scarecrows, whiplashing to catch Beryx as he came down and hurl him away again like a catapulted stone. Then the smoke veiled it all.

  Chapter III

  Sunlight was beating on my head. The rain had passed, to leave a brisk, fair, brightening afternoon. Only my face was wet.

  Gradually I realized I was seated, hands clenched between my knees, braced against cold uneven rock. I could smell only rain-washed air. Hear only an aching silence, punctured by faint, derisive yarks.

  Painfully, I opened my eyes.

  The fires had died. The smoke had blown away. Below me on the silent battlefield, Hawge was dining upon its spoils.

  I have never purged that image. Some things should not be sung. I can still see it, though: the clear blue sky, the nude black earth, the pitiful debris of torn, broken, strewn bodies, red flesh and glaring new-bared bone amid the sheen and stare of broken weapons, the sepia blotches of sodden bull-hide, the thick red blots that marked pools and pools of drying blood. And the vast black bulk of the dragon couched full length among it, only the head moving as it scavenged. Idly, daintily, here and there.

  No telling how long I sat there. Horror erases time. But presently I noticed the body of a horse, lying apart from the rest, and that reminded me of the Geat king whose horse died with him. And that connection shot me to my feet like a red-hot spur.

  To do what I did then you would have to be beyond fear: this is not a boast, merely a note that beyond certain points fear ceases to exist. I walked down the hill, out over the blackened earth, up to the carnage, and within earshot I stopped and spoke.

  “Hawge,” I said.

  The dragon’s side loomed over me, monstrous as a ship, black, moving slightly as it breathed. Hawge did not bother to rise, or to turn its head. But one eye revolved, to take me in a green, crystalline, inhuman gaze.

  I looked down. I knew the danger of a dragon’s eyes. There were bodies at my feet. I remember wondering if Asc was one, lying here smashed and twisted with the impossible suppleness of the dead.

  The dragon exhaled, a lazy, furnace draft.

  it replied.

  The voice was curiously puny for so large a beast. Indeed it was more of a rasping whisper, hardly vocalized at all. It waited for me to go on. And what I must say next rose in my throat like bile.

  “If my lord pleases,” I said, “I should like to make a song, about this famous victory.”

  Hawge’s head came round. It is quite true that dragons are very human: vain, with a sense of humor, delighting in riddles, power, gold and death. There was humor in that lidless eye which dwelt on me, but there was
also an acuity to chill the blood.

  asked Hawge,

  After a moment to gather my wits I answered, “My lord has many... many...” I gestured around. “All that I ask is one.”

  Hawge pondered for what seemed an eternity. Then it sank its head, and blew a puff of rose-pink fire. And presently asked,

  Ridiculous to say, I don’t know yet. Perilous to reply, The one who wounded you. Hawge waited. In desperation I said, “It will be a famous song.”

  Hawge rolled over. The crystalline eye roved from me to the corpses and back, and I felt it pierce through all the subterfuges to my very soul. Then the chin sank on the ground and the vast whisper said above me,

  As I turned in flight, a thin tongue of flame licked my calves and Hawge breathed after me,

  * * * * *

  With music or not, that search must remain unsung. There were men still breathing in that charnel house, and I could not, dared not succor them...

  Beryx lay just inside the further edge. I saw the wink of steel amid the matted bull-hides, then a blood-red helmet plume. He was face down, legs doubled and twisted under him, arms flung wide as if he had tried to roll with the impact, face buried in the corpses beneath. The corselet was shattered like hammer-struck glass. All his right side was a ghastly mess of broken steel and bone splinters and raw flesh and crusting blood, with a frightful welling pit halfway down his ribs: the mark of the sting.

  When I could see his face I did not recognize it, for all of it was black and half of it was burnt. I remember standing there, half-weeping as I sought a way to carry him, to carry him alone, to carry him with the honor he deserved.

  Finally I got him over a shoulder, limbs dangling round me, and staggered drunkenly away. Hawge revolved a single eye to watch me go.

  If the climb to the watershed was bad, the descent was worse. I kept slipping, and Beryx grew heavier and heavier. Nothing weighs like a lifeless man, and he was a tall one, and I am slight. Finally I had to rest. I set him by the track, thinking that now I could at least lay him out decently, trying not to think of the infinity between me and Astarien, left with no space to think of grief.

  It was near sunset. The sky was full of wind-cloud, long plumes of fiery rose and lambent apricot tousled against halcyon blue. The air had chilled. My shadow was long. As I bent over Beryx, another shadow crossed it and I leapt to my feet.

  He studied me across the body: a stocky, black-haired, gray-eyed Stiriann, with a farmer’s coarse blue shirt and breeches and a most unfarmerly naked sword. Imagining looters, I was ready to fly at him like a faithful, futile dog. But he jerked his free hand downward and said, “Who’s that?”

  “Beryx,” I said. “The king.”

  He frowned down at the body. I said, “Who are you?”

  He answered without looking up, “Stavan. Coed Wrock.” Almost belligerently I demanded, “What are you doing here?” And he responded in key.

  “You’re on my land,” he said.

  “Air and Water!” No doubt I was hardly a model of aplomb. “The quintessential pharr’az! ‘You’re on my land!’ Well, there are three hundred other dead men and a dragon also on your land, and if I had a bier I’d be more than willing to get this one off!”

  His eyes had not left Beryx. Now, not deigning to answer, he dropped on a knee, and I nearly leapt before noticing he had put down his sword. He went on staring. Just as I prepared to wring his neck, he sat back on his heels and began to pull off his shirt.

  “In the Four’s name!” I bawled. “He doesn’t need a blanket, he needs a bier! And if you got off your behind and signaled Astarien you’d be more use than you’ve ever been in your—”

  He lifted those passionless gray eyes and said as if I had not spoken, “Undo that flap-coat of yours while I cut some saplings. It’s a litter he needs.” And, as I went quite rabid, he pointed to the welling pit in Beryx’s ribs and said, “Blood’s wet. Heart’s pumping: see how it makes? He’s alive.”

  * * * * *

  Whatever else befalls me, I shall number that week in Astarien as the worst in my entire life. It was not enough to be the sole survivor of a holocaust, nor to totter back with a king slung on a couple of shirts and saplings at the point of death, nor that I must bring him into that lunatic’s stewpot of a town where the local government could not make itself heard, or try to nurse him in chaos worsened by scenes of insensate grief, all with the dragon still lying on my friends’ bodies within wingbeat. I, a mere harper, had a kingdom landing round my ears. “Take it to the king.” That week I learnt just how much they took.

  Evacuees were still coming. Gerrar was beside himself: half the towns of Everran were asking where to put and how to feed them, every governor north of Saphar wanted to know what the dragon would do and what he should do next. The levy commanders in Saphar were ramping to sacrifice their green troops, the Guard wanted to give Inyx a military funeral. Quarred enquired if it were safe to summer their sheep in the Raskelf, the lords had illicitly raised the wine price, the Regent did not know what to tell Estar and Hazghend, and the farmer holding the phalanx’s horses wanted to know for how long and who would pay for it. There were only three rays of sun: Kelflase, intact, in touch, sending the commander Sarras up next day to Astarian. Stavan. And the nurse.

  It was Stavan who got us through Astarien, up to Gerrar’s house, into a bedroom, and before I thought how to strip the king’s armor had produced a thin, leathery, white-haired woman imperturbable enough to be his mother: which in fact she was. She took one look at the bed, the king, the household women in spasms around him, told me, “Clean sheets. Hot water. Lamp.” Told Gerrar, “Get them out.” And told Stavan himself, “Los Nuil. Wild honey. All you can rob.”

  Undoubtedly Thassal saved the king’s life that night. She had his armor off with minimal disturbance, the surface splinters out, and the blood sponged off before Stavan reappeared with a bucketful of wild honeycomb, that we were instantly set to crush and sieve, before she bandaged it in a huge poultice over the entire wound.

  Next she bade us find hethel oil: that night in Astarien, finding whiskers on a baby would have been a lesser enterprise. With that she soaked the burnt side of his face and bound it up in silk scarves annexed from the wardrobe of Gerrar’s wife. And at midnight, when the spreading stain on the poultice made it clear the sting-pit had not closed, she undid the bandages, bent down, and sucked the wound.

  As she spat in the nearest basin, I could not restrain a cry. She merely said, “If it don’t clot, won’t matter if I suck him dry.”

  Clot it did. When I said in wonder, “How did you know that?” she looked at me as if I were an idiot, and replied, “It’s in all the songs. Dragon poison thins the blood.”

  For three days after that he lay at the river’s brink. Considering the handling I gave him, it is a Sky-lords’ gift that he lived so long. Thassal applied fresh poultices, and fed him honey thinned with water and mixed with yeldtar juice, which she made him swallow by stroking his throat. “Yeldtar to keep him quiet. Water because he’s bled. Honey’s quick strength.”

  Unlike me, she never despaired. “He’s a fighter,” she said, watching his death-white face against the pillow. “He’ll fight.” And, as the cocks crew in Astarien’s bleak dormitory-like streets four mornings later, he opened his eyes.

  Thassal promptly pushed me behind the lamp. “You he knows.” She fed him again, quietly but relentlessly making him finish the whole cup, then gently lowered his head. But when his eyes had closed, she stood there a long moment, and then she said a curious thing.

  “So,” she murmured. “They are green.”

  She probably saved his life times over as he mended, for a more fractious patient never filled a bed. He was hardly conscious when he tried to talk, and the smoke must have held poison, for it had seared his throat. Then nothing would do but wax tablets and stylus, and of course, being right-handed, he could not write. When he
started to beat the bed-clothes Thassal hauled me upstairs, commanding, “Tell him the tale. Naught else to do.”

  So I told him. He turned his face to the wall and lay the rest of the day like a skinned pup, with Thassal seated silently by the bed. Coming up at lamp-time, I heard when she finally spoke.

  “King,” she said, “this won’t do. Live folk need you. Those don’t.”

  He did not move. But next morning he was propped up with the tablet against his knees and his lopsided turban making him look like a mad Quarred sheep lord, as he doggedly, grimly taught his left hand to write.

  * * * * *

  His first demand was a move to the lookout tower. Thassal shrugged. “He’ll fret silly else.” With that achieved, he summoned Sarras and Gerrar and me to a council, and then I had to contend not only with the rest of Everran but with a demonically active king.

  First he summoned engineers, then ordered them to build a catapult. “We’ll jam stones in the bastard’s gullet.” Informed that, unlike the dragon it would be immobile, he wrote in furious jagged capitals, “Then build one that’s not!” While they digested that he sent for armorers to forge unbreakable sarissas, herb-doctors to compound a dragon-poison, hunters and more engineers to design a dragon pit, and Four knows what else. Between times he took over the evacuation, deployed the levies, dismissed the Regent, summoned the Council to Astarien, set a permanent dragon-watch, quelled the lords, expelled the royal physician who had been slung in a mule-litter and sent north so fast he was only fit to wring his hands, threw his tablets at me for suggesting he should rest, and requisitioned Gerrar’s scribes so he could deal with the Confederacy.

  After he regained his voice things speeded up. But when, not a month after the battle, he announced he was ready to get up, Thassal calmly demolished him.

  “You have no clothes,” she told him from the tower door. “And no one will bring you any. And if you try to get some I’ll take that nightshirt off you as well.”