Dragon Shield

by Charlie Fletcher

  Will pulled the wallet from between her fingers and snapped it shut. Jo looked at him.

  ‘Anyone could come along and nick it,’ he said, feeling a bit silly. She took it from his hand and slid it into her mother’s pocket.

  ‘I don’t think anyone else is moving except us,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he asked. Her chin came up in a defiant way he knew only too well. He grinned, though he didn’t feel like smiling at all. ‘Yeah. Well. I bet I’m more scared than you are.’

  She tried to smile back at him but didn’t quite manage to.

  They were both too busy trying to be brave for each other that they didn’t hear the creak in the tall tree across the road in the park.

  They didn’t see the angry silvered eyes peering through the thin canopy of leaves at them. They didn’t see the metal talons gripping the tree, scarring the bark as they squeezed in anticipation. They didn’t see the dragon at all.

  But it saw them.

  It was watching them.

  Waiting to jump.

  4

  She-who-is-powerful

  There was another place in London where there were sounds, another building in which there was movement. But what was moving through its galleries was not human, nor was it made of flesh and blood.

  Deep in the endless rooms of the British Museum a large dog was growling, making a deep, almost sub-sonic rumble. Anyone walking through the museum would have read the label on the wall behind him and believed that his name was ‘Molossian Hound’.

  Not that anyone one was walking through the museum. All the people under its roof were as unmoving as most of the statues and exhibits they had come to see.

  His name was not Molossian Hound. That’s just what the museum called him. He knew his real name, though no one living now did. His name was Filax. He knew this because that is what the sculptor who spent months of his life freeing him from the block of Italian stone in which his shape had been hidden had called him as he chipped patiently away with his chisel.

  True artists and craftsmen put something of themselves into everything they make, and the man who made Filax was the truest of artists. He set out to make a deep-chested guard dog with a rough mane of hair around his neck and shoulders, and that is what he produced, but more than that he was a man who loved dogs for their great hearts and their loyal friendship, and so he made a dog that had an inner spirit that was both staunch and playful.

  Filax had one other characteristic of real dogs. He had the ancient, unthinking hatred of cats. And that was why the hair on his back was standing on end, and why his lip was curling back, revealing his powerful teeth.

  There were cats prowling the galleries, and they were getting close to him. He could sense them. He could smell them. He could see a strange blue light moving closer, sending shadows scuttling across the walls. And above all, he could hear them talking.

  ‘Dog,’ said a voice, a scratchy voice, half hiss, half yowl. ‘Careful sisters. There is a disgusting dog in the dark.’

  The ancient, unthinking hatred works both ways.

  The movement stopped. Filax listened to the sound of the silence listening right back at him.

  He rumbled another warning, deep in his chest.

  ‘He is growling,’ said a new voice, much like the first.

  Filax lowered his head, ready to spring at whatever was about to turn the corner and enter his space.

  But what he saw was not a cat. It was a woman’s legs, a woman made of black stone that both shone and sucked in light. And then the legs of three more stone women walked in and stood around him in a half circle.

  Filax smelled cat, more cat than he had ever smelled in one place, but the human bodies confused him. And then he looked up and saw there was something wrong with their faces.

  It was hard to see exactly, because their eyes blazed a blue light that dazzled him, but he could tell they were not human heads. They were the faces of lionesses, and their great cat-heads wore Egyptian headdresses that fanned out behind them like cobra hoods. The hoods matched the single small snakehead that topped off each headdress, vicious mini cobras that sat above their brows moving from side to side, hissing as they did so.

  The cat-women looked at him.

  Filax growled.

  The lion-women didn’t move. One of them laughed.

  ‘Bad dog,’ she purred.

  ‘Careful sister’ said another, reaching out and gripping her arm. The first one shrugged off her grip.

  ‘He is made of stone,’ she snarled. ‘Everything made of stone can be made to obey us now. We have awoken. Our power has returned’

  Another one nodded and stepped closer. She had a stick in her hand.

  ‘He will obey,’ she said, and hefted the stick. Filax could see she was preparing to beat him. He could hear the happy anticipation in her voice.

  ‘Not us,’ said the cautious one. ‘Not this one. Not even though he is made of stone. He cannot obey us. He is dog.’

  ‘He is dog,’ agreed the fourth. ‘He is filth.’

  ‘Bad dog,’ said the first, turning to the cautious one. ‘What would you have us do then, sister?’

  ‘Chase the dog,’ she answered, fast and vicious. ‘Hurt the dog.’

  ‘Hurt the dog before it hurts us,’ agreed the one with the stick.

  ‘Hurt the dog!’ they all snarled.

  The stick moved so fast the dog had no time to dodge it. It smacked into the side of his head and sent him sprawling back into the corner of the wall. The lion-women moved in.

  The stick whipped back for another blow, almost fast as sight.

  Filax was not made to be beaten. He was not made to be scared. He was made to protect. And he knew that these creatures meant him harm, and so the first thing he had to protect was himself.

  He came out of the corner low and hard. He didn’t look for a gap in the wall of stone legs blocking his escape route. He hit them like a rocket and made his own hole. He heard the stick whistling through the air as he passed and felt the pain of it biting into his side.

  He spun on his heels and snapped his jaws on it, gripping hard and then twisting round on himself as he sprung back towards the exit to the gallery.

  The lion-women were snarling and falling over themselves to get at him, but the power in his shoulders yanked the stick-holder off her feet, and the other two tripped over her tumbling body.

  Filax ran for the door, dragging his attacker behind him. She did not let go of the stick until her head hit the edge of the archway as he ran through it. There was a crunching noise, and then he had the stick and no attacker, so he spat the weapon out and ran for the big space at the centre of the museum, a huge courtyard covered by a glass dome, at the centre of which stood a cylindrical stone building with wide stairs rising on both sides.

  Without thinking he bounded up them, taking five steps at a time.

  Behind him he could hear a howling and the smack of feet on stone as the lion-women ran after him.

  He was almost all the way up the stairs before the first of them burst into the Great Court behind him. He reached the top landing and turned, ready to throw them back down the stairs if they followed him.

  But they didn’t.

  ‘STOP!’

  A great voice boomed round the courtyard. It was a deep woman’s voice.

  The four women with the lioness heads stopped as one, as if yanked by an invisible string.

  They turned in on each other. The voice did not come from any of them. It seemed to come from everywhere. It was almost as if it was all their voices, speaking as one.

  ‘NO TIME FOR SPORT!’ the voice roared. ‘DOG HUNTING CAN COME LATER.’

  The four nodded. A small cat emerged from the shadows and walked amongst their legs, sinuously rubbing itself on them. They paid it no attention, staring in hatred up the steps towards their prey, who growled back at them.

  ‘What has happened?’ said the one who had now regained her stick.
>
  ‘THE DRAGONS ARE HUNTING,’ said the voice.

  There was a flutter from the dark door to the gallery beyond the lion-women, and a large stone hawk flapped out and landed between them. Its head flicked from one to the other, its eye a perfect white circle with a large dark centre. The jerky movements of its head and the fact that the eye did not ever blink gave it a mad look, as if it was trying to figure out from which of these four figures the everywhere-voice was coming.

  ‘The dragons guard the city . . .’ said the cautious lion-woman. The other three looked at her, the blue light blazing from their eyes casting giant shadows against the pale stone-clad walls of the courtyard.

  ‘THE DRAGONS WORK OUR WILL’ said the everywhere-voice. ‘WE CHOSE THEM FIRST BECAUSE THEY GUARD THE CITY. WHO WOULD CONQUER A CITY SHOULD FIRST CONTROL THOSE WHO GUARD IT. THIS STRANGE COLD CITY HAS DRAGON GUARDS. WE TOOK THEM. THEY BECAME US. WHO FLEES A DRAGON WORKS AGAINST US. WE WILL NOT ALLOW ENEMIES TO SURVIVE.’

  ‘Who is the enemy?’ said the cautious one.

  ‘WE WILL SEE,’ said the voice. ‘HORUS THE HAWK WILL BE OUR EYES!’

  There was a flash, and then the stone hawk’s white eye glowed blue, the beam cutting into the gathering gloom like a searchlight.

  ‘GO,’ said the voice.

  The hawk flapped its wings and clawed its way into the air, picking up speed as it climbed. It spiralled once round the great central building and then hit one of the triangular panels that made up the dome. Stone hit glass, and glass lost, smashing into glittering shrapnel that splashed and tinkled to the paving stones below, so that for an instant the four lioness headed women and the small cat twining between their legs were caught in a glass shower that bounced off them without any harm.

  As one their eyes looked up, the beams of blue light meeting at the new hole in the roof, just for a moment making the outline of a pyramid.

  ‘FEAR US ALL WHO HEAR,’ said the everywhere-voice. ‘WE ARE SHE WHO IS POWERFUL. WE ARE THE CLAWS OF BAST THE MIGHTY HUNTRESS. TOO LONG HAVE WE BEEN PENNED IN STONE. NOW WE WALK AMONGST YOU AGAIN. ALL SHALL OBEY AND THOSE WHO CAN NOT WILL BE DESTROYED, FOR WE ARE ALSO SEKHMET, THE FIERY EYE OF DESTRUCTION. PRAY WE DO NOT LOOK UPON YOU!’

  The little cat stepped between them and also looked up, just for a moment, before looking away with a feline shrug of disinterest and padding off towards the curving stairs at the centre of the courtyard.

  At the top of the stairs, hidden by the curve of the building, Filax felt the hairs on his neck rise again, but this time he killed the growl in his throat before it escaped. Filax the fearless heard the words of the everywhere-voice, and for the first time in his long existence felt something new: Filax the fearless felt frightened.

  5

  The Dragon’s Shield

  Will and Jo both tried pulling at their mother, but though she was soft and warm as ever, she was also as immoveable as if she had iron roots anchoring her to the spot.

  They couldn’t budge her at all.

  They didn’t talk as they tugged at her, but they kept catching each other’s eyes across her unmoving body, and each could see how uncomfortable this was making the other.

  ‘Do you think she can see and feel what we’re doing?’ said Jo. ‘Do you think she’s like those paralyzed people who can take everything in but not move?’

  ‘No’ said Will. ‘I don’t think she’s working at all. I think everyone is frozen like in a freeze-frame in a video or something. There’s no pulse.’

  Jo nodded. Her eyes were wet.

  ‘Where—?’ she began.

  She didn’t finish. Because at that moment the top of the tree in the park cracked and splintered as the dragon launched forward and erupted from the canopy in an explosion of leaves and twigs.

  They spun, horrified, and saw it slam onto the tarmac in front of them with a monstrous impact that sounded like a garbage truck dropping out of the sky.

  It was an ugly dragon.

  Its brow overhung hot, angry little eyes.

  It might have been the same dragon from the hospital. Its mouth made the same cruel curves around its fangs, and the red-painted tongue that flopped back and forth like a wet, barbed snake with a mind of its own was familiar.

  It clanged its heavy metal shield on the ground, then shook it angrily at them.

  ‘It’s trying to scare us,’ said Will.

  ‘It’s doing a pretty good job,’ said Jo, her voice shaky. ‘We should run—’

  ‘Where to?’ said Will. ‘It would get us before we got five paces.’

  ‘Got a better plan, then?’ said Jo.

  ‘Talk to it?’ he said.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she said. There was a short beat of silence. ‘Mind you, so’s all of this . . .’

  They looked at each other. She shrugged. Her face looked pinched and tight with fear.

  ‘Might as well give it a go.’

  He swallowed. Just because it was his idea didn’t mean it was a good one. How do you talk to a dragon, really? It wasn’t something they’d covered in school.

  He raised his hand, palm up. Trying not to let the wash of dread in his guts wobble it too much.

  ‘Er . . .’ he said.

  ‘Brilliant . . .’ said Jo under her breath.

  She could be really annoying.

  ‘Er . . . hi,’ he said.

  The dragon cocked his head, like a dog.

  ‘. . . but go on,’ said Jo. ‘I think he’s listening.’

  ‘Listening’s good,’ said Will. ‘Right?’

  ‘Well,’ she hissed, ‘It’s better than the alternative. Keep going!’

  Will tried not to think of what the alternative might be, but the more he tried not to think of it the more words like ‘eating’ or ‘slashing’ or ‘burned to a painful crisp’ kept rushing into his head.

  ‘We didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said. And then cleared his throat. ‘I mean if we did. If that’s why you’re angry . . . ? It was a mistake . . .’

  ‘You can’t talk to it, boy. It just hates you.’

  The voice came from behind him. He turned to see Ariel floating there. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on the dragon.

  ‘Why does it hate us?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a Taint,’ she said. As if that explained anything.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Our word for a statue that isn’t human. They hate humans, and they hate us.’

  ‘Us?’ said Jo. Ariel looked at her and shook her head as if talking to a very dim child.

  ‘Spits,’ she said.

  ‘Spits?’ said Will, watching the dragon again. It was gulping in air, and its throat was beginning to swell. Not good, he thought.

  ‘Spits are statues that are made to be like you,’ said Ariel. ‘To look like the spitting image of regular humans . . .’

  ‘Why do they hate . . .’ began Jo.

  Ariel gave a short snort.

  ‘Do you think now is quite the time for a lesson, silly little girl?’

  Jo looked at the dragon.

  ‘No,’ she gulped.

  ‘No indeed,’ said Ariel. ‘This time, when I say run, run and don’t stop until you get out of the city.’

  Will could see she was tensing her muscles and bunching her fists, ready to move.

  ‘Why are you helping us?’ he said.

  She snorted again.

  ‘Oh, I’m not helping you because you’re anything special, boy,’ she said, laughing lightly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’m “helping” you because she’s a Taint and I’m a Spit, and I like them as little as she likes me. Like cats and dogs. And she wants you, so it’s my pleasure to make sure she doesn’t get what she wants . . .’

  ‘And you’re going to fight her just because.’

  She flashed him a quick look that was sharp as an axe.

  ‘I told you to run. I’m not going to fight dragons for you.’

  ‘Then what are you going to do?’ said Will.

  The Dra
gon was gulping in air in great whooping breaths now, and its neck was swelling like a bird’s crop. He noticed that it was beginning to glow, as if there was fire kindling inside it. He was, he realized, too scared to run, because if he turned his back he was sure the dragon would leap on him.

  ‘Oh I’ll just distract it,’ sighed Ariel. ‘Dragons are easy to distract. Especially with gold . . .’

  She looked down at herself.

  ‘And why, I’m practically made out of gold. They get strange feelings when I’m around. Sometimes, at night when I’m spotlit on my roof I look down and see them looking up at me. I look very fine, and they look very . . . covetous. Like they want to possess me. Nothing a dragon likes more than a hoard, and nothing looks better in a hoard than gold. And to tell the plain truth nothing looks better in gold than me. Now look out and run—’

  And before he could say anything she had pushed him aside and flown straight at the dragon.

  The dragon wasn’t expecting that. Its little eyes widened, it made a strangled choking sound – coughing out a black smoke ring – and then, at the last moment, it ducked.

  Ariel flew in low over the lip of the shield, over its ducking head, straight through the centre of the smoke ring. She reached her hand down, grabbing its tail as she went. The dragon squawked in surprise, face-planting on the pavement and dropping its shield as she yanked it and flew straight upwards, pulling its tail after her.

  She wasn’t strong enough to keep hold for long, but she did manage to keep a grip as she climbed about thirty feet into the air. It swung beneath her like a very angry pendulum, trying to twist back on itself and get its fangs into her arm. She laughed and let go as it reached the very end of its arc, swinging it away from Will and Jo, throwing it back into the park beyond the railings. It was tumbling upside down, and there was not enough room between Ariel’s hand and the rapidly approaching ground for it to right itself and get its wings sorted out before it bounced on the turf, leaving a gouge as it tumbled backwards into a wide and bulbous tree trunk.