by Mike Ashley
Next he rummaged around in his battered old saddlebags, which some folk whispered held things it were best not to talk about. Out came an owl’s head, a bottle of blue goo, several preserved dead scorpions, three eagle feathers bound together with Zuni fetishes, and similar debris. He reached in a little further and withdrew a shiny metal bar. It was five pounds of enriched tumbaga, a gold alloy made by the Quimbaya Indians of the southern continent, composed of roughly sixty-five percent gold, twenty percent copper, and the rest silver. This he set carefully down in the center of the inscribed symbols.
Lastly he pulled the rifle from its fringed and painted holster. The holster had been fashioned by one of Sacajawea’s daughters. Good gal, that Sacajawea, he mused. Some day when they were both ruminating in the Happy Hunting Ground he hoped to meet her again.
The rifle had an eight-sided barrel, black walnut stock, and a breech large enough for a frightened cottontail to hide inside. It was a Sharps buffalo rifle, fifty caliber, with a sliding leaf sight adjustable to eleven hundred yards on the back. It fired a two-and-a-half-inch-long cartridge loaded with a hundred grains of black powder, and could drop a full-grown bull buffalo in its tracks at six hundred yards. The bandoliers draped across Mad Amos’s chest held three-and-a-quarter shells packed with a hundred and seventy grains of black powder.
The Sharps was a single-shot. But, then, if you could fire it proper without busting your shoulder, you only needed a single shot. To Mad Amos’s way of thinking, such built-in caution just naturally led to a man bettering his marksmanship.
He loaded it with more care than usual this time, paying special attention to the cartridge itself, which he carefully chose from the assortment arrayed on his chest.
Then he settled down to wait.
The moon was waning and the sky had been temporarily swept clean of most clouds when he heard the wings coming toward him out of the west, out of the mountaintops. Soon he was able to see the source of the faint whistling, a streamlined shape dancing down fast out of the heavens, its long tail switching briskly from side to side as it sniffed out the location of the gold.
It landed between the river and the camp and stalked toward the lonely man on feet clad in scales of crimson. Its neck was bright blue, its body mostly yellow and gold, its wings and face striped like the contents of a big jar stuffed with assorted candies. Moonlight marched across scimitar-like teeth and its heritage burned back of its great eyes.
“Whoa up, there!” Mad Amos called out sharply in the dragon tongue, which is like no other (and which is hard to speak because it hurts the back of the throat).
The dragon halted, eyes blazing down at the human who had one foot resting possessively on the golden bar. Its tail switched, flattening the meadow grass and foxgloves, and the tendrils bordering its skull and jaws twisted like snakes with a peculiar life of their own. Its belly ached for the cool touch of yellow metal, its blood burned for the precious golden substance which purified and helped keep it alive.
“Oh-ho!” it replied in its rasping voice. “A human who talks the mother-tongue. Admirable is your learning, man, but it will not save you your gold. Give it here to me.” It leaned forward hungrily, the smell of brimstone seeping from its garishly hued lips and parted mouth.
“I think not, Brightbodyblackheart. It ain’t that I resent you the gold. Everybody’s got to eat. But you scared the wits out of some good people hereabouts and killed a couple of others. And I think you’re liable to kill some more afore you’re sated, if your appetite’s as big as your belly and your desire as sharp as your teeth. I’m not fool enough to think you’ll be satisfied just with this here chunk.” He nudged the bar with his foot, causing the hungry dragon to salivate smoke.
“You are right, man. My hunger is as deep as the abyssal ocean where I may not go, as vast as the sky which I make my own, and as substantial as my anger when I am denied. Give me your gold! Give it over to me now and I will spare you for your learning, for though gluttonous I am not wasteful. Refuse me and I will eat you, too, for a dragon cannot live by gold alone.”
Casually, Mad Amos shifted the rifle lying across his knees. “Now this here’s a Sharps rifle, Deathwing. I’m sure you ain’t too familiar with it. There ain’t the like of it where you come from, and there never will be, so I’ll explain it to you. There ain’t no more powerful rifle in this world or the other. I’m going to give you one chance to get back to where you come from, hungry but intact.” He smiled thinly, humorlessly. “See, I ain’t wasteful, neither. You git your scaly hide out of this part of the real world right now, or by Nebuchadnezzar’s nightshade, I’m oath-bound to put a bullet in you.”
The dragon roared with amusement. Its horrible laughter cascaded off the walls of the canyon through which the Laramie runs. It trickled down the slopes and echoed through caves where hibernating animals stirred uneasily in their long sleep.
“A last gesture, last words! I claim forfeit, man, for you are not amusing! Gold and life must you surrender to me now, for I have not the patience to play with you longer. My belly throbs in expectation and in my heart there is no shred of sympathy or understanding for you. I will take your gold now, man, and your life in a moment.” A great clawed foot reached out to scratch contemptuously at the symbols so patiently etched in the soil. “Think you that these will stop me? You do not come near knowing the right ways or words, or the words you would have uttered by now.” It took another step forward. Fire began to flame around its jaws. “Your puny steel and powder cannot harm me, Worm-that-walks-upright. Fire if you wish. The insect chirps loudest just before it is squashed!”
“Remember, now, you asked for this.” Quickly, Mad Amos raised the long octagonal barrel and squeezed the trigger.
There was a crash, then a longer, reverberating roar, the thunderous double boom that only a Sharps can produce. It almost matched the dragon’s laughter.
The shot struck Brightbodyblackheart square in the chest. The monster looked down at the already-healing wound, sneered, and took another step forward. Its jaws parted further as it prepared to snap up gold and man in a single bite.
It stopped, confused. Something was happening inside it. Its eyes began to roll. Then it let out an earth-shaking roar so violent that the wind of it knocked Mad Amos back off his feet. Fortunately, there was no fire in that massive exhalation.
The mountain man spat out dirt and bark and looked upward. The dragon was in the air, spinning, twisting, convulsing spasmodically, thoroughly out of control, screaming like a third-rate soprano attempting Wagner as it whirled toward the distant moon.
Mad Amos slowly picked himself off the ground, dusted off the hollow cougar skull which served him for a hat, and watched the sky until the last scream and final bellow faded from hearing, until the tiny dot fluttering against the stars had winked out of sight and out of existence.
From his wallow near the riverbank, Worthless glanced up, squinted, and neighed.
Mad Amos squatted and gathered up the tumbaga bar. He paid no attention to the coterie of symbols which he’d so laboriously scratched into the earth. They’d been put there to draw the dragon’s attention, which they’d done most effectively. Oh, he’d seen Brightbodyblackheart checking them out before landing! The dragon might bellow intimidatingly but, like all its kind, it was cautious. It had only taken the bait when it was certain Mad Amos owned no magic effective against it. Mere mortal weapons like guns and bullets, of course, it had had no reason to fear.
He used his tongue to pop the second bullet, the one he hadn’t had to use, out of his cheek, and carefully took the huge cartridge apart. Out of the head drifted a pile of dust. He held it in his palm and then, careful not to inhale any of it, blew it away with one puff. The dust duplicated the contents of the bullet which had penetrated Brightbodyblackheart: mescaline concentrate, peyote of a certain rare type, distillate of the tears of a peculiar mushroom, coca leaves from South America, yopo – a cornucopia of powerful hallucinogens which an old Navajo had
once concocted before Mad Amos’s attentive gaze during a youthful sojourn in Cañon de Chelly many years before.
It was not quite magic but, then, it was not quite real, either. The dragon had been right: Mad Amos had not had the words to kill it, had not had the symbols. And it wasn’t dead. But it no longer lived in the real world of men, either. In a month, when the aftereffects of the potent mixture had finally worn off and Brightbodyblackheart could think clearly once more, it might wish it were dead. Of one thing Mad Amos was reasonably certain: the dragon might hunger for gold, but it was not likely to come a-hunting it anywhere in the vicinity of Colorado.
Carefully he repacked that seemingly modest pair of saddlebags and prepared to break camp, casting an experienced eye toward the sky. It was starting to cloud over again. Soon it would snow, and when it started it again it wouldn’t stop until April.
But not for two or three days yet, surely. He still had time to get out of the high mountains if he didn’t waste it lollygaggin’ and moonin’ over narrow escapes.
He put his hands on his hips and shouted toward the river. “C’mon, Worthless, you lazy representative of an equine disaster! Git your tail out of that mud! North of here’s that crazy steamin’ land ol’ Jim Bridger once told me about. I reckon it’s time we had a gander at it . . . and what’s under it.”
Reluctant but obedient, the piebald subject of these unfounded imprecations struggled to its feet and threw its master a nasty squint. Mad Amos eyed his four-legged companion with affection.
“Have t’do somethin’ about that patch on his forehead,” he mused. “That damn horn’s startin’ t’grow through again . . .”
MEBODES’ FLY
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove (b. 1949) is probably best known for his science fiction, particularly his long alternate-history sequence, the Videssos Cycle, starting with The Misplaced Legion (1987), which exploits his deep knowledge of Byzantine history by creating an alternate Byzantine world where magic works. He began by publishing fantasy, starting with Wereblood and Werenight (both 1979) under the alias Eric G. Iverson, and he occasionally returns to the fantastic in his short fiction. He used the Iverson name on the first of his stories featuring Clever Rolf, “Blue Fox and Werewolf” (1983). This is the second story in the series.
Viviane thought Clever Rolf the scribe was reckoning up accounts for the baron of Argentan. The baron thought he was doing the same for Herul, who owned the Blue Fox, the best tavern in town. Herul didn’t know where he was, or care.
In fact, Clever Rolf was pleasantly horizontal in a little upstairs room at the local sporting house, for which he also kept accounts. He took his pay there, not in the baron’s silver or Herul’s ale, but in the place’s stock-in-trade. Viviane talked too much, and it wasn’t as if she owned him.
His pay sat up, jiggling prettily, and reached for the wine jug on the rickety nightstand by the side of the bed. She did not talk too bloody much, he thought, and certainly did not bring up the size of his belly, which dear Viviane was all too apt to do these days.
The girl offered him a cup of wine. “Thanks, Aila,” he said, and reached over the edge of the bed for a coin from his trousers. The wine was not free. He found another small bit of silver. “This is for you, and don’t tell that old harridan down below you got it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “As if I would.” They drank together, well pleased with each other. Aila’s sandy hair flipped up and down as she suddenly nodded, remembering something. She put a warm hand on his arm. “Somebody was up here the other day, asking for you.”
Clever Rolf scratched his head. “Easier ways to find me than that. Who was he? What did he want?” He wondered which one of his little schemes had gone wrong. Had the baron found out he was involved with the sporting house? Surely not – if old Bardulf wanted to make something of that, he knew well enough where the scribe lived.
Alia said, “I didn’t see him myself, and I’m glad of it; from what Mintrud told us afterward, he was cruel. He looked it, too, she said: tall, skinny, somber, with a great hawk’s beak of a nose. He spoke with an Easterling accent.”
“A rogue born,” declared Clever Rolf, who was no taller than Aila, pudgy (too much good beer at the Blue Fox, he always thought), and snub-nosed. “Not a rogue I know, though. What name did he use?”
“Wait. She said it. Let me think. Mi— Ma— Mebodes; that was it . . . Rolf, what’s wrong?”
She sprang up quickly, but not as fast as Clever Rolf, who was already scrambling into his breeches. He put on his tunic back-to-front, and never noticed. A scheme had gone wrong, all right, but no little one – Mebodes was the wizard from whom he’d stolen Viviane. Having lived with her awhile, he was perfectly willing to give her back, but he feared that wouldn’t be good enough. Nobody knew much about Mebodes, but his reputation was black. And wizards, black, white, gray – pink, for that matter – enjoyed revenge.
“What will I do?” he mumbled in despair. “What will I do?”
He took the stairs two at a time and dashed through the reception hall, angering the madam and frightening a couple of customers (which angered her more). He was past caring. In blind panic, he flung the door open, crashed it shut after him.
“How kind,” a cold voice said. “The mouse runs into the cat’s jaws.”
Cruel, Aila had told him. He discovered how little weight a word has, next to reality. Mebodes loomed over him. The wizard’s eyes were huge, yellow, and unwinking as a falcon’s. Clever Rolf saw himself reflected in them. His reflection did not look clever; it looked small, disheveled, and scared. The reflection, he thought, did not lie.
“I m-meant no harm,” he quavered. “I c-can explain—”
“What care I for your lies?” Mebodes’ hands twitched in anticipation of the torment Clever Rolf would know. His fingers were long, pale, and many-jointed, like a cave spider’s legs. He filed each nail to a point.
“But—” Clever Rolf squeaked.
The wizard spat in front of him; his spittle steamed, as if boiling hot. “Had you owned to your crimes, I might have given you a quick, clean ending. But as you snivel like an insect, I think it only just that insects bring you your fate. Sometime soon, they shall. Until then, your life will be— interesting.” With a mocking bow, Mebodes stepped round the corner into an alley.
More terrified of standing frozen than of moving, Clever Rolf darted after him, to beg forgiveness one last time. The alley was empty.
He started for home, his knees still knocking. Halfway there a wasp buzzed out of its nest of mud, stung him on the back of the hand, and flew away. He yelped and cursed and plunged his arm into the cool water of a horse trough, none of which did much good. His head went up like a hunted animal’s – was that the ghost of chilling laughter on the breeze?
He snarled at Viviane when he got back, and she screeched at him. It might have turned into a nightlong brawl, but the good smell of mutton stew was rising from the pot that bubbled over the fire. Viviane made a couple of pointed remarks about his caring more for his stomach than for her, but served him a big bowlful. Whatever her other faults, she could cook. Maybe that’s why I don’t heave her out on her rump, he thought, digging in with his spoon. He raised a big chunk of meat to his mouth.
Pleasure turned to horror as he began to chew. Instead of the savor of fat mutton, an acrid taste filled his mouth. He choked, gagged, spat, then gaped at the tabletop, his eyes bulging and stomach heaving. In place of the meat he had put into his mouth, there was a gob of little brown ants, most of them dead, but some still feebly moving. More tiny legs kicked against his tongue and the inside of his cheeks.
He rinsed his mouth again and again with ale, wondering each time if it would turn to scorpions as it passed his lips. Viviane was, for once, speechless. “Remind me not to go rescuing damsels in distress,” Clever Rolf wheezed when he could speak again. “Your precious Mebodes has a sense of humor I don’t care for.” He told her what had happened.
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sp; She paled. “You wouldn’t hand me back to him, would you?” She had come to know him well enough to make it a serious question.
“He didn’t show any signs of wanting you back, my sweet,” said Clever Rolf. Viviane glowered at him; no woman cares to hear she is unwanted. Clever Rolf was too caught up in his own fear to worry about her feelings. He went on: “And if he did try to take you, I don’t know what I could do to stop him. No, he’s after vengeance now, and all from me, all from me.”
The scribe sat with his head in his hands, staring at the bowl of stew in front of him. “Do I dare?” he muttered. At last, with trembling hand, he raised another spoonful to his mouth. He gulped it down, as if hoping to swallow before he could find out whether it had turned dreadful.
Nothing happened. He ate more, with growing confidence – maybe Mebodes was still loosing warning bolts from his catapult. Then, with no warning at all, Clever Rolf bit down on a mouthful of beetles. They crunched between his teeth.
He kept shuddering long after the noxious taste was gone – he wouldn’t be able to trust another bite of food for as long as he had left. This was no fun at all. Never had one of his finaglings come home to roost so disastrously.
He got through breakfast next morning without catastrophe, but only wondered what Mebodes had waiting for him. Jamming a disreputable hat onto his head, he hurried out the door. For one, he really did have to see to the baron’s books.
Mebodes was waiting for him. “Why hello, my friend,” he said, though his voice made the word a lie. “I trust you enjoyed your evening meal.”
“Screw you,” Clever Rolf said. It was not courage, or even defiance – more on the order of having nothing left to lose.