“Very well, but I’m sending two men out with you.”
Konstantin shook his head as the Captain turned to leave.
“Not a chance. They’ll give away my position too easily.”
Ushakov didn’t bother turning around.
“It was not a suggestion, Corporal Voskresenskii.”
It only took Konstantin a few minutes to gather all the supplies he needed, but he was forced to wait for nearly an hour while Captain Ushakov decided whom he was going to send with him into the forest. When Konstantin was finally introduced to Privates Blagoi and Lanskovich, it was plain why they’d been assigned to him.
Private Blagoi’s soft face looked like it had never felt the touch of a razor. He carried out his every order with the enthusiasm and eagerness that could only be found among the ranks of naïve enlisted peasants. The very thought of questioning an order probably gave him a stomachache.
The other soldier, Private Lanskovich, was a bit older and looked to have seen his share of combat. His face was grimly set, but his eyes were lively, eagerly darting around as if in anticipation of something unseen. Konstantin noted how he carried his rifle sling lower than was normal, making it easier to swing it up to a firing position. Everything about Lanskovich’s manner and appearance marked him as a killer. The army loved men like him, men who wouldn’t hesitate to fire into unarmed crowds of filthy peasants who strayed too close to the Tsar’s brilliant palaces.
Even if he succeeded in killing the dragon, it was likely that one of those men, perhaps both of them, had been ordered by Ushakov to set a bullet aside for him.
The western forest was not so dense as it appeared from a distance. Very little underbrush impeded their progress along the gently rolling terrain. Konstantin walked a few yards ahead of the others, his eyes scanning for signs of the dragon’s passage. He spotted freshly broken limbs among the tallest trees where the beast had slithered past to remain unseen by its prey earlier that morning. They were moving in the right direction.
The trail in the trees led them deeper into the forest. Soon the snapped branches could be found closer to the ground and Konstantin saw dark marks along the trunks of the trees where the dragon’s scales had rubbed against them. A few trees had actually been snapped in two about halfway between the ground and their highest branches. To the untrained eye, it looked as if they’d been struck by lightning.
Konstantin said nothing of his observations and his two companions asked no questions as he guided them through the wood. On two occasions he lost the dragon’s trail completely and wandered aimlessly for several minutes before he picked it up again but neither of the soldiers seemed to notice.
It was getting late in the day when Konstantin found what he was really looking for. He stopped and knelt to examine a patch of underbrush. Although the thorny branches were without leaves or blossoms, they looked vibrant and alive compared to a tangle of limbs near the center of the bush that were black and withered. There was no ash, but a sickening, burning stench clung to the cold air. Konstantin listed carefully and heard no sounds of any living creatures apart from them.
“Sir?”
It was young Blagoi who spoke, his voice very nearly trembling. He hadn’t made a sound since Captain Ushakov introduced him and Konstantin wondered if he’d spent the last few hours working up his courage to speak.
“Keep your voice down,” Konstantin said. “What is it?”
“What are you looking at, sir?”
“Do you see this spot?” He pointed to the patch of withered branches, which was about two feet in diameter. Blagoi walked up alongside him for a better look.
“What is that? It looks like its rotted or something.”
“No,” Konstantin said, “it’s a burn mark. The saliva of most dragons is like an acid; it burns through just about anything given enough time. Helps them digest things better, so I’ve been told.”
Lanskovich spoke up with his gravelly voice.
“Great. So what does that mean for us?”
“The acid loses its potency after being exposed to air for a few seconds. Usually, you only find traces like this in places it’s been feeding. This area is probably its hunting ground.”
Lanskovich went for his rifle, eyes scrambling for signs of danger.
“Calm down,” Konstantin said. “If it was anywhere nearby, we’d know about it.”
“You mean we would hear it?” Lanskovich asked.
“No, I mean we would be dead. Come on, we have to try to find its lair before it gets dark.”
Konstantin pressed on as the shadows surrounding them slowly lengthened.
“So I guess it’s true what they say about you then, sir?”
Konstantin didn’t bother to look back at Blagoi.
“That depends. What have you heard?”
“Word is that you used to hunt dragons in the Caucuses before you were reassigned here.”
“Word travels fast.”
“Do you know where they come from? Are they the work of the devil?”
“No, they’re just animals, don’t let any fool priest tell you differently. I’ve seen them bleed and die without the help any divine intervention.”
“This one must be the work of the Chinamen’s sorcery,” Lanskovich said. “Those brutes are dumb enough to summon forth a creature like this.”
“Listen to me, there’s nothing magical about it,” Konstantin said. “You can’t just make one appear out of thin air by burning some incense and talking in tongues. They’re like any other animal, they just want to live their lives and be left alone.”
“But if that’s true, why does this one keep attacking us? We’ve done nothing to harm it!”
Now Konstantin turned and looked back at Blagoi.
“Haven’t we? We’re building a railroad line across a stretch of country that’s been untouched by the modern world until now. Between the noise of the trains themselves and the blasting we’ve been doing, is it any wonder that it’s mad at us?”
Lanskovich just shrugged, but Blagoi appeared to take what he said into consideration. Konstantin returned his attention to the dragon’s trail, which wound through the forest for another half mile until they emerged from the forest and found themselves upon the shore of a small lake. A thick layer of ice covered the surface of the lake, save for one area along the shore a few hundred feet from them. Konstantin cautiously made his way over to the hole, which proved to be much larger than it appeared at a distance.
The hole was about thirty feet across and extended some twenty feet into the lake. Small pieces of ice floated on the surface of the water inside, but they were too thin to be a part of the original ice layer. The edges of the hole were rounded and smooth; there was no sign of the jagged edges that would indicate that the ice had been broken through.
“This is it,” Konstantin said.
“This is what?” Lanskovich asked.
“Its lair must be at the bottom of this lake. You see how this part of the lake hasn’t frozen over? It never had a chance to because the dragon is always coming and going.”
“Is it in there now?” Blagoi asked.
“No way of knowing,” Konstantin said. He turned away from the hole in the ice and examined the forest behind them. There was a small hill at the edge of the tree line farther down the shore. The underbrush and tree canopy there were particularly dense.
“This way.”
He led them down to the hill and made his way up to the top. It wasn’t very high, but it was the only elevated ground in the area that afforded a clear view of the ice hole. Rifle at the ready, he carefully lowered himself into the tangle of dried branches and, when he lay flat on the ground, took aim. From that position he had a clear shot at the entire area surrounding the ice hole. Satisfied, he stood up and removed the heavy pack he’d been carrying all day.
“We’ll wait here. If it’s not in the lake, we’ll catch it when it comes back.”
“And if it’s in there?” Lanskovic
h asked.
It was Konstantin’s turn to shrug.
“Well, it has to come out sometime.”
The already cold temperature plunged after the sun went down and the three soldiers huddled together on the ground beneath several layers of blankets in an attempt to keep warm. Lying on the ground helped them avoid the worst of the increasingly strong wind, but such knowledge was far from comforting considering that they faced the very real prospect of freezing to death before even catching sign of their intended target.
Konstantin refused to start a fire, knowing that the dragon would be able to spot its light from miles away. Somewhere above the thick clouds, a full moon shone brightly, giving off just enough light to make the frozen lake visible. His eyes and rifle remained fixed on the hole in the ice that led to the dragon’s lair. Despite waking before dawn and surviving an arduous day, he felt little fatigue. Anticipation gnawed at his muscles and his nerves remained tightly coiled. He kept his mind focused on target, both the one in his sights and the one that must eventually appear.
Lanskovich had fallen asleep within an hour of lying down. Blagoi fared better, but his eyes were heavy and Konstantin felt his body occasionally relax only to snap to attention within seconds.
“What’s your name, private?”
“Pavel, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Pavel. If I didn’t have experience with problems like this, I would have been discharged or shot long before I became a corporal.”
“Why is that?”
Konstantin smiled.
“Something one of my previous commanding officers called ‘gross insubordination and a lack of respect for his royal majesty so great as to border on treason.’ He seemed to regard the second offense as the greater of the two.”
“What did you do?”
Konstantin did not answer immediately. His mind turned over the circumstances of the events a few times before he felt confident enough to recount them.
“I was stationed in St. Petersburg when Tsar Alexander died. My commanding officer there was a fat aristocrat who’d never seen a battle at a distance closer than a mile. He had me beaten because I didn’t show for the funeral procession, though it was a wonder I was missed considering how badly the Tsar’s idiot son botched the whole affair.”
“Why weren’t you there?” Blagoi asked. “Have you no love for Tsar and country?”
“Not for the Tsar, especially the fool we’re stuck with now. Alexander might have been an ogre, but at least he was competent. As for love of country, that depends on your meaning. If you mean love of fellow Russians, then yes, I’ve a great deal of love for my country. But if by country you mean the Empire, then no.”
“You don’t feel pride over what we’ve accomplished in so short a time? Surely the coming century is destined to be remembered as Russia’s, don’t you think?”
Konstantin laughed.
“You’ve been listening too much to the generals. Look past all the bluster and you’ll find that the Empire is losing its grip. Someday soon we’ll go to war with Japan over our meaningless holdings here in the east. We couldn’t supply an army in the Crimea, so how do you expect one to function out here with only a single railway?”
“We’ve always overcome such challenges in the past,” Blagoi said. “We’ve faced hardships, to be sure, but we are still here in the end. Look at our situation here! Threatened by a monster known only through legend and yet even a cynic such as you still hopes to prevail.”
Konstantin shook his head.
“You miss the point. There will always be dragons. Whether they come at you with fire and claw, rifle and bayonet, or speeches and pamphlets, they will always be there. Slaying dragons is a dangerous business and, sooner or later, one of them will be the death of you.”
Blagoi did not respond and said nothing for several minutes. Konstantin couldn’t tell what caused his silence, the thought of Russia’s inevitable collapse or the very real prospect of their own deaths.
Finally, the young solder spoke up.
“Will this beast never show itself?”
“Patience,” Konstantin said. “Dragons are seldom in a hurry to do much of anything unless they’ve set their minds to destruction.”
“But you’re certain it will be here at some point, right?”
“The ones I’ve encountered spend most of their time sleeping and they emerge only to eat every few weeks. But once their regular routine has been disturbed, they become much more active, sometimes forsaking their lair completely for days at a time.”
“So it could be miles from here, then?”
“It’s possible. But this dragon could follow a far different pattern.”
“Why do you say that?”
“This one is different from the ones in the Caucuses. It looks and moves differently. There could be less obvious differences as well.”
“Such as?”
Konstantin made to answer, but as he opened his mouth, he detected a slight ripple upon the water below.
“Quiet,” he said. “It’s here.”
The dragon pulled itself out of the water with slow, deliberate movements that did not resemble those of the airborne monstrosity that descended on Konstantin that morning. But there was no mistaking the color of its scales and the shape of its ornate horns. Konstantin was certain that it was the same dragon.
He slipped his finger over the trigger of his rifle and moved the iron sights over the monster’s head. More than half of the dragon’s body was visible when Konstantin finally got a clear view of its eye, the only spot on its body vulnerable to a bullet. It would be a difficult shot in full daylight, but he found some reassurance in the fact that the wind had died down. There would only be an opportunity, he knew, for a single shot. If he were to miss, the dragon would immediately take to the air and either flee or attack. Since most tended to be of a particularly aggressive bent, at least in his experience, he fully expected to be engulfed in a burst of flame within seconds of an errant shot.
Pushing aside thoughts of a fiery death, Konstantin held his breath and made final minute adjustments to his aim before he pulled the trigger.
A shot rang out in the night air.
Konstantin’s ears rang from the unexpected report of the rifle to his right. In his preoccupation with aiming, he hadn’t heard Lanskovich awaken.
“Lanskovich, you idiot!” he said, turning to stare incredulously at the soldier.
“But I hit it! I hit it right in the head!”
Konstantin realized his mistake the instant he glanced back to where the dragon had stood.
It was gone.
“Move! Now!” he said as he scrambled to his feet. He seized Blagoi by the collar and half dragged him along as a grout of flame crashed down upon the hilltop. As they moved he heard Lanskovich scream for one brief instant before the flesh was blasted away from his bones by the firestorm.
The flames ignited the underbrush and trees atop the hill to cast blinding light several dozen yards in every direction. Although he could now see their path through the forest quite clearly as they ran, the illumination prevented Konstantin from seeing anything beyond it’s reach. He only glanced to the sky once and seeing nothing but a black void, he gave up trying to locate the beast until they were far enough from the burning hilltop.
A monstrous roar caused him to slow his relentless pace. The dragon was somewhere ahead of them.
He nearly pulled Blagoi off his feet when he wheeled to his left with the young soldier in tow and charged deeper into the forest. A lance of fire cut through the treetops just behind them and would have incinerated them had they not changed direction a moment earlier.
Konstantin guessed that they would have only a few seconds before the beast slithered about in midair to position itself for another deadly pass. So long as they remained among the trees, he would never get a clear shot at it and it would eventually chase them down. He had to get back to the clearing around the lake, he knew, if he wanted to ma
ke any sort of stand against the dragon.
Blagoi gasped for breath alongside him as they ran. The soldier was tired and probably in a mild state of shock after what he’d seen. Konstantin knew that he had no chance of getting back to the lake if he had to drag Blagoi along with him. His eyes darted around in search of some hiding place and they quickly spotted a small outcropping of rock at the foot of a hill. There was just enough room among them for a man to crouch down.
“Get to those rocks over there!” he said, giving Blagoi a shove in their direction. The young soldier stumbled towards them and finally dove behind them just as another streak of fire tore through the treetops. Taking a deep breath, Konstantin dove to the ground and rolled behind a thick tree trunk just as the flames swept across the forest floor. The firestorm sucked the oxygen from the air around him instantly and to take another breath would have seared his lungs. A wave of intense heat struck him as eager, fiery tendrils spilled around the base of the tree and missed him by a matter of inches.
When the dragon’s fire abated, it left the area around Konstantin in flames, but the fire didn’t possess the same hellish, concentrated heat. Still holding his breath, he leapt out from his hiding place and dashed towards the lake. He finally gasped for air when he cleared the burning trees, the dragon shrieking somewhere behind him.
By some miracle of chance, the monster appeared to have lost sight of him as he raced over the uneven ground of the forest, for he reached the lake without having to avoid another bombardment of dragonfire. He emerged from the forest some distance from the burning hilltop where they’d first been spotted. The illumination from the flames were not so great as to spoil Konstantin’s view of the night sky and he quickly spotted the dragon sweeping back and forth just above the treetops.
He raised his rifle, took aim, and fired.
The shot missed, which he had expected considering the distance and the motion of the target, but it got the beast’s attention as he’d intended. It spiraled into the air several hundred feet, then straightened itself and launched towards him like a monstrous living arrow.
Distant Worlds Volume 1 Page 12