by David Drake
Veleda stood beside them. Together, the knotted killers' arms reached out and drew her close. The blonde woman's touch was cool and clean in a way that nothing they could remember had ever been.
Mael croaked, "You said you couldn't kill it."
"Alone, I couldn't have,'' Veleda replied. She nuzzled the bloody armor on the Irishman's chest. "I wasn't alone."
Starkad looked past her to the dragon. It was no longer thrashing. Scales were already sloughing away from the huge body. "What's happening to it?" the big man asked.
Veleda followed his eyes. "It grew on this earth a thousand times faster than was natural," she said. "Now that its reality is death, it decays the same way it grew. There won't be anything left by morning—except perhaps as much dust as a large salamander's skull would leave."
"We'd better get away now," Mael said. "Before Arthur learns what happened to his pet. Do you think you can ride as far as the nearest fishing village, friend?"
"Oh, I can do anything," Starkad grumbled. "Haven't I proved that already? But I don't see what you're worried about. We had to kill the thing, even Arthur's tame wizard—" the axe gestured toward where Merlin had been standing, but there was no one there now—"could tell hi—Oh. Yeah. Could tell him. But sure as Hel won't, not and admit how bad he'd fouled up. Hel and Loki, another damned ride."
"Well, maybe we can find a wagon at one of those farms," Mael said as they stumbled toward their mounts. "I've still got that warrant to commandeer anything in the kingdom. We can get a boat and sail for Ireland—"
"Spain, I remember the women."
"Well, wherever . . . ."
"Wherever god wills," said Veleda. She threw her arms about the waists of both men and began to laugh.
Epilogue
The war standard snapped in the breeze.
The walls of Arthur's tent had been rolled up, leaving its roof as an awning against the bright sunlight. Even after a week, smoke from the Saxon village tinged the air, though by now it was more an odor than a haze. Merlin lay in the dust between Gawain and the seated king. The lithe Companion toed the wizard, saying, "I brought this one back, but the others were gone. If there was ever a dragon, I couldn't find a sign of it. I'd have chased after the Irishman, but I figured the boat he and his friends stole would carry him farther than I wanted to go."
"So," Arthur said quietly. He stroked the arms of his high-backed throne. "Where is the dragon, wizard?"
Merlin raised his haggard face. "Gone. Dead. Finished."
"So," Arthur repeated.
He stood up, his scabbard knocking against the oak of the chair. The surrounding guards and courtiers stiffened. "But I haven't failed," the king said. His eyes were on nothing but the eastern horizon. "The Saxons, the world. They'll know me, know me!"
Men looked at their hands or at the ground or even, in horrified fascination, at their Leader. Only Merlin seemed oblivious of the king. The wizard was scratching at the dust with a fragment of willow twig.
"Do you hear me?" Arthur shouted to the world. "I will not die!"
Beneath the king, Merlin gestured and an image shimmered between his fingers. It was a silver chalice, jeweled about the rim. For a moment the sunlight haloed it.
Then the grail tumbled and fell back into the dust from which it had sprung.
THE END