Sword Play

by Clayton Emery

  Only slightly higher, twenty feet or more, was the shelf and cave. Here below the shelf were great, heaped mounds of brown-black gunk that reeked of sulfur and sewage. By luck, rain had dampened the odor, or it probably would have poisoned him.

  “Well,” grunted the barbarian, “bears don’t dung up their caves. Why should dragons?”

  Holding his nose, breathing shallowly, he cast about to the right and left and finally found a crack he could follow up to the shelf. He was actually in a hurry, he thought ruefully. Anything to escape this stink. A random thought intruded: now he knew why dragons moved their caves occasionally. Too bad he’d probably never tell anyone.

  Picking over an older pile of dung bleached tan by wind and rain, he saw something glitter amidst the dried clumps. Kicking with his foot, he overturned a fluted helmet—with a brown-stained skull still inside. Ruellana’s words about leaving the cave only as dragon shit came to mind and wouldn’t go away.

  Still, he had no choice but to persevere, ignoring the idiocy of what he was about to do. On shaky legs and trembling hands, Sunbright crawled up the crack and reached the fabled shelf.

  And the yawning cave behind.

  The cave mouth was tall enough to take a ship under full sail, wide enough to admit spread wings. After about twenty feet, the interior grew dark. From inside came twin smells, nauseating as they tried to overpower one another: a hot, brassy stink like rust burning off an iron pan, and the sweet, cloying, throat-gagging odor of rotting flesh. Holding his breath, the barbarian detected the faintest tiny hint of a sound, as of wood being sawed: snoring.

  Shaking all over, Sunbright nearly sliced off his own ear clumsily drawing Harvester from its back scabbard. He took a step, then remembered to turn and wave at the puny orcs and men in the middle distance. They waved once, and hurried away.

  Crouching in the icy rain, Sunbright admitted the cave would at least be warm and dry. Funny though, how the old legends never mentioned the heroes were afraid. Perhaps, then, he’d never become a legend. Just another skull in a heap of dragon dung.

  And with those cheery thoughts, he walked in.

  Advancing a short inch at a time, Sunbright had too much time to think. As a wilderness-trained hunter, he knew he could sneak through territory so not even foxes would scent him. But dragons were said to have acute senses, could even read minds. Supposedly they could hear a potential thief just thinking of robbery at fifty leagues. He didn’t believe it, but that in itself wasn’t much help.

  Of course, he rattled in his head, he needn’t actually slay the dragon. He had only to enter its cave and retrieve—steal—a big book with a ruby in the cover and get away safely.

  Even if the dragon was asleep, the chances of his sneaking in successfully were remote at best. So … if he couldn’t sneak in, or leave without the orcs hunting him down and flinging him back inside crippled, or kill the beast, what was left?

  Not much.

  He stopped, and waited, and wondered what to do. To advance and die seemed the only option.

  So, how to die? Creeping like a rat? Or charging with sword outthrust and a battle cry ringing loud?

  Would he be burned to a crisp, bitten in half, or simply be crushed by a scaled claw, like a demented mouse rushing a cat?

  Then a rustle sounded behind him. And a voice.

  “Sunbright! Wait!”

  Chapter 11

  The barbarian turned and squinted up to where something fluttered in the round, gray rim of outlined sky.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  The raven cocked its feet, folded its wings, plunked to a landing, and clacked its black beak. “Stinks. Where are you bound?”

  “Why should I tell you?” Sunbright’s emotions were churning inside him, and anger boiled up. “Who failed to tell me when bandits were about to attack my party and ended up killing three of us?”

  The bird tipped its head to present first one, then the other beady eye. “I can’t know everything.”

  “You flew right over the road! You could have warned me!”

  “I told you where to find that four-prong buck in the birches, did I not?”

  The barbarian piffed. “A hunting dog could have done that! I expect a magic raven to reveal more than the weather!”

  Ignoring the criticism, the bird pointed its beak toward the back of the cave. “Why?”

  Sunbright sighed, anger winking out, despair returning. He related the story of the One King holding Greenwillow.

  Oddly, the raven commented on what was, to Sunbright, an inconsequential thing. “A book? You’re to retrieve a book? With a ruby set in the cover?”

  “So what? All the treasure of the world might be in there, for all the good it will do me. What color are rubies, anyway?”

  The bird muttered something that sounded to the barbarian like “damsys” then croaked, “Red. What do you know of this dragon, Wrathburn?”

  “It’s a big red dragon packed to the eyeballs with dung.” And armor and bones, he added mentally. The young man cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, but heard only a tick in the snoring. At least the stink was lessening, or else he was adjusting to it. He’d probably smell like death and dragon till the day he died.

  “Wrathburn …” The raven hopped, nailed a cockroach from the stone floor, and gulped it down with his head back. “Very strong, devilishly wicked, inordinately vain, as I recall. And not too bright.”

  “Bright? You mean its scales?”

  “No, its intellect!” groused the raven. “You’re an apt match for it.”

  “What?” Sunbright warily watched the darkness for hints of advancing dragon. With his luck, he’d get stomped on without ever being seen. “That doesn’t sound very helpful. How about a soft spot, you know, a white scale where a knitting needle would penetrate? Near his tail, perhaps?”

  The raven shook his beak. “Sorry, no. But Wrathburn does have a reputation for being vain. In a man, that’s usually the most damning quality. More men have lost kingdoms to vanity than to any other vice. Remember the lesson you learned on the road from Dalekeva.”

  In a burst of feathers, the raven hopped into the air and plunged away, out the yawning cave mouth into the drizzle.

  “Hey, wait! What lesson …?”

  Sunbright clamped a hand over his mouth. Here he was shouting like an idiot in the marketplace while, within spitting distance, a dragon slept.

  Or …

  Silent, hardly breathing, he listened.

  The snoring had stopped.

  Desperately, Sunbright tried to think. The road from Dalekeva? Walking to Tinnainen? It had been a long road with many minor adventures. The only true danger he’d faced was when he and Greenwillow had bumped into patrols of orcs. Of course, he’d wanted to skulk through unseen, but she’d insisted the quick and sensible way was just to clutch their pass and march down the middle of the road.…

  A while later, Sunbright came swinging down a slope, sword at his shoulder, whistling jauntily. The floor of the cave was smooth from a dragon dragging its iron-hard belly scutes along the floor. The barbarian was guided by the flickering flame that welled from the nostrils of the dragon as it slept—or pretended to—and by the reflected light from the monstrous pile of gold, silver, gemstones, and other precious artifacts that made up the dragon’s bed. Sunbright couldn’t guess the treasure’s value, but the hoard rose above his head in some places. The cave sprawled in many directions, the distances lost, but the treasure pile had been scooped out in the middle to make a resting place for the dragon, like a kitten in a pile of mittens.

  The dragon was immense. Its head was longer than a rowboat, frilled with horns like stalactites, its neck like a stone bridge, its back like a low hill. Details were indistinct, but its scales seemed as big as a man’s hand, overlaid so tightly they bristled outward. The beast’s pointed ears drooped at the tips, and its nostrils were flame-blackened around the edges. Sunbright stopped and planted himself right in front of those nostrils and trie
d not to think about how hot they were.

  His whistling trailed off, like birdsong fading into the forest. He bit down on his quivering stomach and willed his legs to stay steady. His bravado had almost failed him as he entered this vast cavern, for he’d passed the rotted remains of a dozen corpses of all sizes, including endless fragments wedged in cracks to rot to nothingness. But at least he’d gotten this far, which was farther than those unfortunates. And he had a ghost of a plan, which was something.

  Still, those nostrils were as big as caldrons, and the flame that winked within hotter than any forge. He could feel the heat a dozen feet back. He hated to see the flames well out of that awesome nose, but on the other hand, when the dragon breathed in, the cave became pitch-black, which was even more disconcerting.

  Then the slanted yellow eyes opened, and Sunbright knew what it was to be a mouse being stared down by a cat. The dragon’s black pupils were bigger than his head.

  Yet he held his ground and boldly called “Good day,” his voice a bit shrill.

  Without lifting its head, the dragon opened jaws that could swallow a man whole. “You pick a painful but noteworthy suicide, fleshy morsel.” The rumble of Wrathburn’s voice, like a stone boat over a wooden bridge, made Sunbright’s breastbone tingle.

  “I’ve been sent by the One King to slay you!” he announced in what he hoped were cheerful tones.

  The dragon moved like a glacier, rearing upward to tower over Sunbright and better aim his nostrils. The barbarian heard plinks and clatters as jewels and coins cascaded from the beast’s scaly hide in a precious rain. The dragon inhaled deeply, like a blast furnace being stoked.

  “But after seeing you, I cannot even imagine harming such a beautiful creature!”

  Wrathburn gulped as he swallowed fire. “Beautiful?”

  “Truly!” Sunbright assured him. “Unparalleled beauty and unspeakable magnificence! Never have I beheld such a wonder, and never could I lay a hand on such a fearsome, awe-inspiring being! You are truly the most marvelous creature in all of Toril! Why, you take my breath away!”

  Confused, the dragon mulled over the compliments. He wasn’t used to flattery. Screaming, begging, crying, whining, yes, but not compliments.

  Still alive, neither flinders nor cinders, the barbarian dropped his sword dramatically and slathered on the praise with a trowel. “As long as I live I shall sing the praises of this most magnificent sight, the glory and grandeur of the king of all skies, the noblest creature in creation, who looks down upon the world with his fearsome gaze, knowing every being to be his inferior!”

  Summoning every scrap of story and song he’d ever heard, the young man waxed eloquent for what seemed like hours, until his voice began to creak and his tongue grew numb and stumbled. And repeated itself, at which point Wrathburn grew restless and began to swish his tail back and forth amid the gems and gold. He wanted new praise, an endless stream of it. But Sunbright knew eventually he’d run out of words and then be dinner. So, drawing a mental breath, the barbarian took a leap into unknown territory.

  “But oh, the perfidy of the One King!” Sunbright threw his arm across his eyes in mock horror. “To think, to think!”

  “Think?” rumbled Wrathburn. He twitched his tail harder, flattening a suit of silver armor. He didn’t want to hear about some king, but about himself. “You mentioned this king before. What about him?”

  “To think he would send me to slay you!” wailed Sunbright. “How could one man be so heartless as to think of assaulting something so proud, so famous! Why, better to command that I put out the sun than cause the world to lose the glory of Wrathburn the Magnificent! I would become the most hated man in existence! And yet …”

  “Yet what?” Flames flickered all around the dragon’s snout, throwing black shadows across the crags of his face.

  “Why, the One King must be jealous! That’s it! He’s sat too long on his throne, accumulated too much power, and has come to think he’s the equal of Wrathburn. Consumed as this petty man is with jealousy, he’s sent me, the most insignificant of warriors, to slay the light of the world! How cruel, how callous, how blind of this lowly beast-man, to challenge the might, the divine right of rule inherent in the noble breast of All-High Wrathburn.…” The barbarian trailed off, panting. He would have killed for a slug of ale; his tongue was practically hanging out.

  Fortunately, Wrathburn took his cue. Pointing a long, whiskery snout at the distant cave mouth, he asked, “Where lives this One King?”

  Sunbright pounced. “I can point the way!”

  “Then do.” Picking up a foot as large as the One King’s throne, the dragon crushed coins and made the cavern shake, jarring Sunbright’s bones.

  Scurrying out of the way, the young man took one last gasp and called, “There is one more little thing, if it please your greatness?”

  The head swiveled to aim nostrils like matched volcanoes at the human. “Yes?”

  “A book.”

  * * * * *

  Eyes closed, Sunbright gasped for breath and hung on with all his might. He didn’t look down.

  Hurricane winds tore at his face, yanked his topknot, whistled in his ears, and pressed his tackle so hard against his body it dented his skin. By the time they landed, he’d be blind, deaf, and bald. If his arms didn’t fall off first. As long as he lived—which at this point he figured might be a little past sunset—he’d never even climb to the second story of a building.

  For he was miles in the air, soaring faster than the wind. He perched standing on Wrathburn’s neck, which was as slippery as sleet-slick flagstones. Both arms were wrapped tight around one of the horns rimming the dragon’s frill. After careful consideration, he’d chosen this one for the craggy folds in the scaly skin at the base of the horn. These handholds, such as they were, had seemed adequate at the time. Now his fingernails ripped from his flesh as he tried to hang on, he pressed his face into the crook of his elbow to breathe, and he tensed his legs to the breaking point to remain in one spot. If he slid an inch, he thought, even a half-inch, he’d be flung into space like straw from a barn swallow’s beak. And the last—and only—time he’d dared to look, the mountains below looked like gray smudges in a tablecloth.

  Sunbright hadn’t meant to be here. He’d hoped to “point the way” to Tinnainen, then run like hell over hill and dale to get back to what remained of the city. Trotting and walking without stopping to sleep, resting only occasionally, he had reckoned it would take a long day. But the dragon had a different idea about what “pointing the way” meant.

  Wrathburn had been gracious enough to allow this poor mortal to ride his neck into battle. Never before, in the eons of his existence, had the dragon allowed such a thing. Usually, he explained, he dealt with average men by biting them in half. Troublesome types, knights and paladins and such, he often swallowed whole, armor and all, that they might awake in his churning stomach and so die slowly, proving their folly. Sunbright had smiled tightly and marveled aloud at the dragon’s creativity, brilliance, and droll sense of humor, as befit a godlike being. Then, as commanded, he’d hastily grabbed a handhold, felt a rippling run like an earthquake, and watched the earth—and his lunch—recede until the mountain was a mere pinhead below him.

  And the blasted dragon didn’t even fly well! He didn’t swoop like a hawk or glide like an albatross or soar like an eagle. He pumped his short red wings up and down like a drunk in a saw pit, like a demented duck, like a lopsided windmill. Dragons weren’t meant to fly at all, the human judged. They were an anomaly in the air, just as bats were winged mice who flailed the air just to stay aloft. And all this flying must be giving the beast a tremendous appetite.

  But he might never know. Chilled to the marrow and fatigued beyond endurance, Sunbright felt his numb fingers slipping. He’d reach earth before the dragon ever did. It might be worth it to get out of this damnable roaring wind.

  Then the air was warmer, rushing upward. Sunbright erred by opening his eyes and saw a sq
uare lump like a child’s sand castle. Then the dragon struck the earth with a gut-wrenching wallop that shook both of them. The barbarian unclawed his hands and crashed onto the rocks with his shoulder. For a moment, he hurt so much all over he didn’t care if the dragon trod on him. Then he realized the great ruby-studded book was wedged against his back, grinding his kidneys, and he recalled his mission.

  He’d done it. Maybe he’d be a legend after all.

  Staring upward while willing life and warmth into his frozen muscles, he saw the sky suddenly occluded by a whiskered, horned head. The dragon peered down into his face, so close Sunbright breathed sulfur but dared not cough.

  “Uh, thank you for the thrilling ride, O wise and beautiful Wrathburn!

  “How looks this One King?” The earth shivered under Sunbright. “Humans appear much alike to me.”

  “He is tall and yellow-faced and wears a long robe and that wondrous crown I spoke of.” Wrathburn had listened intently when Sunbright talked of the platinum and gem-studded masterpiece. “He is usually to be found in the biggest room in the largest building in the city.” The barbarian levered himself to one elbow, inadvertently banging Wrathburn’s snout with the other. “You can see the roof of the building above that wall!”

  Yellow eyes pinned Sunbright like a butterfly. “You do me great service to warn me of this viper so close to my bosom. You will wait here to accompany me back to my cave for your reward. Look forward, lucky human, to a long and illustrious career as song-singer for Wrathburn the All-High!”

  Sunbright’s face split into a grin like that of a dried skull. “Joy!”

  Then the dragon tromped off, tail dragging a furrow, like a ship come aground in a hurricane.

  Rolling upright, Sunbright wiped his face with both hands and took what seemed his first breath of the day. He watched as the dragon thundered toward Tinnainen. The beast had landed on a flat stretch of lichen-covered rocks and tufted grass not far from the road. Sheep and goat pens lined the road on both sides, and the animals sent up a pitiful bleating at the sight and smell of the giant predator. From the small town surrounding the city, terrified homeowners either fled down the road, into the hills, or toward the gates of the city, shoving orcish and human guards aside to gain sanctuary. The frightened guards tottered like puppets, some fleeing, some fainting, some dropping to their knees to pray. And all along the gray city walls, Sunbright saw heads pop up to see the dragon, then disappear, only to pop up again. The smart folks, he decided, were seeking the deepest cellars to burrow into.