Not Exactly The Three Musketeers

by Joel Rosenberg

  "Fly away," Durine bellowed, daring the dragon with his words as he threatened it with his sword. "Do it: fly away and I'll be rolling her head around the ground like a child's ball when you return. Fly away, and I'll have her guts for garters when you come back. Fly away, and I'll be toasting her heart over a fire and slicing off tasty tidbits."

  *No. I won't let you hurt her. I won't.* The wind from its wings whipped dust into the air, and sent Durine tumbling back on the hard, rocky ground, his sword flying from his hand.

  Pirojil had never seen Durine drop his sword before, ever.

  He was never sure whether Durine was already dead when the dragon lunged forward and its good forepaw crushed the big man to a bloody pulp, as easily as Pirojil could have crushed a raw egg. It was all clear to Walter, but clarity wasn't the prize here. Survival was the only reward, life was the only medallion, and as the dragon shrugged off the rockslide and then mashed Durine against the hard stone, Durine had lost the prize just as surely as the two of the baroness's guards who had been buried in the rubble.

  It was only a matter of moments until the dragon was airborne, and then it would be Ellegon's turn to win or lose the only prize available. But this smaller dragon moved so fast - could it fly faster than Ellegon? With enough of a head start, Ellegon, still wheeling high in the sky, surely could get away, but did he have enough of a head start?

  Thirien had kicked Kethol away, and was on his feet, running away. But he wasn't important now.

  Ellegon. Go, Walter Slovotsky thought. Run away. Fly, as fast and as high as you can.

  *It wouldn't do any good,* came back. *It's a crazy one, and it's younger and faster than me. On the ground, yes, I could outrun it But not in the air. I can't outfly it, and I can't outfight it. I will try to draw it away from the rest of you - *

  It was then that Walter Slovotsky heard Erenor muttering words that could only be heard and not remembered: harsh, almost inhumanly guttural sounds that vanished on the ear, like a fat snowflake hissing and dying on a hot frying pan.

  While Kethol grabbed at his bow, Erenor stood his ground, alone, his tunic stripped off, leaving his powerfully muscled chest bare, his arms spread wide, obscene syllables spewing from his mouth in a vomitous torrent.

  Walter had thought of Erenor as more comical than anything else, but the wizard seemed to grow in dignity as the syllables grew in speed and volume.

  And then, in an eye-blink, Erenor was replaced by a dragon.

  Yes, Walter Slovotsky's mind told him that it was only a seeming, but Slovotsky had seen seemings before, and this one was different.

  Better.

  The false dragon stood easily half again Ellegon's size, huge and brown, each of its tens of thousands of rippling scales finely detailed, and Walter would have sworn that he could smell the sulfurous reek of its breath as it raised itself up on its tree-trunk hind legs and roared at the other dragon, a roar that was deafening in Walter's mind, not his ears, but nonetheless powerful for that.

  It was all that Walter could do to keep control of his sphincter.

  Its teeth were jagged yellow swords; its paws thundered against the ground as its wings spread wide, covering half the sky.

  The smaller dragon leaped into the air, its wings beating so hard they blurred like a hummingbird's, almost vanishing from visibility as the dragon took flight and launched itself up the slope toward Erenor's seeming, only to be knocked from the air by a small sliver of an arrow launched from Kethol's bow.

  It screamed, a horrible, high-pitched sound that rang in Walter's ears and his mind.

  And it screamed again, and yet again as two other shafts sprouted from its hide, and it fell to the ground with a thump that almost shook Walter from his feet.

  He had to cover his ears. But there was no way he could close his mind to the way the dragon's screams echoed in his mind, and the silent sobbing brought tears to his eyes that could not be washed away.

  *Please,* it said.

  And then its massive form shuddered into motionless-ness, and its screams faded into a black silence.

  What had it been asking for? Slovotsky shook his head. He would never know.

  Kethol's face could have been carved from stone as he lowered his bow.

  But a scream from a different direction spun him around, as it did Walter Slovotsky. There is a reason that wizards like to stay out of battles. It isn't cowardice, although certainly wizards can be cowards. A Wizard, Walter liked to explain to young soldiers, is like the man on the battlefield with a flamethrower - knowing full well that they would ask him what a flamethrower is.

  It isn't that the flamethrower can kill you any more dead than a bullet or a sword or a bolt or an arrow dead is dead, after all - but the thing about the flamethrower is that it draws attention to itself. Everybody on the other side immediately gets very interested in the future of the person operating the flamethrower.

  Or the wizard operating the spell.

  Now, Erenor wasn't much of a wizard. Walter had known some powerful ones in his time, and Erenor's tricks and slights and seemings were well done, certainly, but really trivial. After all, it wasn't as though he could have turned himself into a dragon, or called lightning bolts down from the sky, or caused the earth beneath their feet to turn to lava.

  It had just been a seeming. Nothing more than that.

  Yes, it had turned the tide of battle, it had lured the young dragon into range, leaving Ellegon safely sweeping through the skies above.

  But it had just been a seeming.

  Still, Erenor was a wizard on a battlefield, and perhaps Thirien didn't know or care that he wasn't much of a wizard, as the huge seeming of a dragon vanished, to leave Thirien standing behind the wizard, Erenor's hair in his hands, the not-much-ofa-wizard's throat quite literally slashed from ear to ear, dark red blood pouring out in a slow fountain.

  *Healing draughts in your saddlebags,* a familiar voice sounded in Walter's head.

  Ellegon came in fast and low, just a few feet above the ground, wings spread wide as it swept across the face of the hill, riding in ground effect until one clawed foot snatched Thirien up and away, the dragon's leathery wings now beating hard against the air, taking its prey up and into the sky, leaving little more than a scream behind.

  "Move it, old man," Kethol shouted as he buried his hands in the wizard's blood.

  I'm getting too fucking old for this, Slovotsky thought as he ran for his saddlebags. Everybody else seemed to have at least a half-step on him.

  *If you'll spend all your energy on running instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you might be able to get Erenor healed up before he bleeds out. Under the circumstances, that might be a nice thing.*

  Walter Slovotsky ran.

  Chapter 27

  Burials

  Pirojil surveyed the battlefield. In the end, they were all the same: bodies stinking in the sun. One of the beat-up old horses had been clawed by the small dragon, its hip slashed to white bone and yellow fat. It limped back and forth as it tried to escape the corral, a slow stream of dark blood pulsing rhythmically down its leg. Pirojil shrugged, and he pulled out his flintlock - the stupid thing might as well be of some use - cocked it, and tracked carefully before he shot the horse through the head.

  It whinnied once, then died.

  Ellegon loomed over him. *Remind me again why I like humans,* the dragon said.

  Maybe it was talking to Pirojil. Or maybe not.

  "There's a spade over there," Kethol said. "We can dig a grave for Durine."

  "I'll start," Erenor said. If you didn't notice the tremor in his voice or the matching one in his fingers, you would have thought that he was his usual self.

  Burying Durine was the right thing to think about. It was practical. It was good to think about practical things right now. And not about the woman cowering in that cave, hoping that they would forget about her.

  Or, more likely, covering another spear in dragonbane, to make another try at Ellegon. Not that it
would do her any good now, not without a fast young dragon to deliver it.

  Ellegon pawed at the ground. *I'll dig his grave, if you'd like,* the dragon said.

  Pirojil's jaw clenched so hard he thought his teeth might break. "We bury our own, dragon."

  Erenor nodded; after a moment, so did Kethol.

  *I thought you might.*

  For a moment, Pirojil thought about their cached savings that were strapped to Durine, under the rags and the blood, and how they would need to recover it. He thought that he should be ashamed of himself for thinking such practical thoughts at a moment like this, then he gave a mental shrug.

  Gold in the ground never did anybody any good. The ground was the place for dead bodies and growing plants.

  And these other bodies?

  Pirojil spat. Let them rot in the sun. Let their stink draw the vultures and crows to peck at their eyes.

  Pirojil had left enough men lying in the sun to be eaten by carrion birds before.

  But he and Kethol would bury Durine themselves.

  No: it would be Pirojil, Kethol - and Erenor. The wizard was, for good or ill, one of them now. You bleed enough together and the blood and mind get mixed up as they get mixed together. Pirojil didn't have to like the wizard to recognize that Erenor had made himself Pirojil's companion in arms the moment he raised bis arms and drew the attention of an attacking dragon to protect Pirojil and those Pirojil was sworn to protect.

  Erenor. Pirojil didn't like having Erenor be one of them, but as usual it didn't much matter what Pirojil did or didn't like.

  Erenor. As though Kethol's mindless heroics weren't enough of a problem, Pirojil was now saddled with Erenor. Erenor was no substitute for Durine, for huge, reliable, stolid Durine. Durine, who bore adversity without complaint, who in a fight was better protection for your back than a stone wall. Durine, who had tried so hard and so unsuccessfully not to like Erenor, so that he wouldn't be bothered when Erenor died.

  Well, perhaps Durine wouldn't have seen it as a failure. After all, Durine wasn't bothered, because Durine was the one who was dead.

  Pirojil smiled for just a moment, declining Walter Slovotsky's inclined-eyebrow request for an explanation with a shake of the head.

  It wasn't that Walter Slovotsky wouldn't understand. It was that he would understand, he would understand all too easily, and all too well, but Pirojil didn't want him to. You were allowed to keep some things private, even if all you were was an ordinary soldier, and Pirojil was the most ordinary of soldiers.

  Hmmm... what to do about the body of the small dragon? It looked peaceful lying there, stretched out on the ground. Of all the dead, it was the only one that hadn't voided itself in the dying, and while the air was filled with the shit-stink of death, none of it was from the dragon.

  Well, that wasn't Pirojil's problem.

  *You are not the only one who can take care of his own,* Ellegon said.

  The massive head eyed the cave opening.

  What would be the right punishment? Pirojil thought. As though there could be a proper punishment for what Elanee had done. For what they all had done.

  Humans lived a short span of years; dwarves and elves more; but absent being killed - and dragons were notoriously hard to kill - dragons lived, well, they lived a long time...

  *The word you are looking for is "forever."* Ellegon's words were coated in cold steel. *She - she and you - she and you and I robbed it of forever.*

  The long saurian head ducked briefly, and a river of flame shot out into the cave mouth, quickly drowning out the screams inside.

  Yes, the dragon could have made it hurt worse. It could have turned Elanee over to Pirojil, Kethol, and Erenor, and they would have obeyed its instructions, whether they involved a quick thrust of a sword or threading her, anus to mouth, on a stick in front of a fire.

  But, in the end, would she have been any deader?

  *Make sure she's dead,* Ellegon said as it lumbered toward the body of the fallen dragon, then stood astride it. *I'll count on you for that.*

  Pirojil snorted. As though anyone could have survived that fire.

  *I am not asking your opinion,* the dragon's mind said, its mental voice inhumanly even. *I am telling you to make certain that she is dead.*

  Pirojil nodded. Understood.

  The dragon had no desire to foul itself by touching the corpse, and Pirojil couldn't quite blame Ellegon for that. Pirojil could finish the baroness off, if it came to that; there was a death warrant in his pouch, signed by the emperor. Perhaps that was why Ellegon had chosen him.

  *No. I chose you because you are here.*

  It wasn't a warrant that had made Durine and the dragon and Elanee dead, but stone and steel and flame.

  *As it always has been, eh?* Ellegon's claws and legs clamped tightly on the dead dragon's torso, dead eyes the size of dinner plates not complaining at all about the snapping and cracking as wing members gave way under the pressure of Ellegon's grip.

  And then Ellegon's wings started to beat, hard, and harder, until Pirojil couldn't keep his eyes open and had to close and cover them with his hands to keep the dust out.

  As the wind and dust began to ease, he opened his eyes to see Ellegon climbing slowly into the sky, clutching the dead dragon beneath its massive bulk.

  Pirojil thought about trying to say something to Ellegon before the dragon got out of range, but instead he just shrugged, and turned away.

  Part IV

  Chapter 28

  Uneasy Lies the Head

  The emperor's dreams were light and gentle this night. He was out riding - as he had indeed been that very afternoon -and with this Lady Leria from Keranahan that there had been so much fuss over - as he had indeed been that very afternoon.

  Of course, in the dream, he wasn't saddlesore the way he had been at the end of the real ride.

  There was nothing at all wrong with that. Dreams were allowed to improve on life, after all. He would be sore enough in the morning, of a certainty - but that would be from his real ride of the afternoon, and not from his one.

  Dreams were free.

  "Do you get to do this often?" she asked, as she had that afternoon.

  "No, not very often at all," he said, as he had said. "Until lately."

  "Oh?" In a dream or in real life, it was polite to follow such an opening, particularly if the person leaving you the opening was the emperor. "And why might that be?"

  "I think things have finally quieted down," the emperor said.

  After all, if you couldn't lie to yourself or to a pretty young woman while you were dreaming, well, then, when could you?

  Lady Leria smiled.

  END