Blood of an Exile

by Brian Naslund

  “Why do you ask?”

  Bershad spat into a cluster of ferns to the right of the forest path. “What can you tell me about the dragon?” Bershad asked. His steps were changing—becoming more fluid and energetic. His eyes were no longer bloodshot, but alert and clear. It was hard to believe this same man had been passed out with his face on the table fifteen minutes earlier.

  A night of drinking did not flee so quickly from most men.

  “It’s a Needle-Throated Verdun. Male. Young, but fully matured physically. Migrated down almost a moon’s turn ago to warm himself on the rock slabs in these foothills. We usually get one or two stopping off in spring before finishing the journey east for the Great Migration. Vicious monsters.”

  “He’s just trying to survive, same as us. Keep his belly full and his body warm. To him, we’re the vicious monsters showing up with spears and pitchforks.”

  Morgan glanced at Bershad and raised his eyebrow. “I would not have figured you for a philosopher.”

  “I’m full of surprises.” Bershad scratched at his messy beard. “The Verdun’ll be gone in another month.”

  “That’s true,” Morgan said. “But he’s cutting further into the herds of our shepherds each day. And it’s only a matter of time before he gets curious about the village. Otter Rock suffers enough as it is without an encroaching lizard, and with a dragonslayer such as yourself so close by—”

  “I’m not blaming you for putting out the writ,” Bershad interrupted. “And I’m not trying to avoid the thing. Just saying he’ll be moving on soon. You don’t need to issue another writ if it kills me. What else do you know about the dragon?”

  “A beet farmer who saw him up close says he only has one eye. The other is sealed up by scar tissue.”

  “Someone else took a pass already?”

  “Took it and missed, I’d say. But he’ll be blind on that side.”

  “He’ll also have an idea about what I’m up to,” Bershad said.

  “Needle-Throated Verduns are not known for their intelligence. Perhaps he has forgotten the previous incident.”

  Bershad grunted and seemed to mull that idea over, but said nothing.

  They walked for the better part of an hour. It was a clumsy procession—Bershad, Rowan, donkey, Master Morgan, Jolan, and a noisy crowd of farmers and peasants. Hardly a discreet hunting force.

  Jolan could hear some of Otter Rock’s citizens complaining about the pace, and others complaining about the danger of getting so close to the dragon. But none of them turned away.

  When they cleared the forest, Bershad stopped. Surveyed the long field of dead wheat that ended at the rock slabs of the Green Tooth foothills. There were oak and pine trees on either side of the field with trunks covered in moss. Thick shrubs blanketed the ground.

  “This it?” Bershad asked.

  “He’s made his lair just beyond this field,” Master Morgan said. “There’s a tunnel dug out between the place those two rock slabs come to a point. He sleeps there, and roams along this line during the day. There used to be a hundred sheep grazing this field.”

  “Fucking death trap,” Rowan said, mostly to himself.

  “Yeah,” Bershad agreed. “Let’s get ready.”

  Rowan unbuckled an oak trunk from the donkey’s flank and thumped it to the ground. He opened it and began removing pieces of armor, then passing them to Bershad, who cinched all the belts and straps himself. Jolan noticed the precision with which they performed the task—no words or wasted action—and figured they had done it hundreds of times. Bershad donned a hauberk made of black chain mail, a light lamellar breastplate the color of forest moss, matching greaves, gauntlets, bracers with thin bands of steel sewn into their sides, and a small steel gorget around his throat.

  In the poems and stories, a warden donning his armor was a ritual full of honor, pride, and yellow light glinting off polished steel. The wardens were the protectors of Almira—well-trained and tasked by a lord or even a king to protect the realm with sword and horse. Commoners looked up to wardens as heroes and beacons of valor, and the nobility of Almira relied on their personal armies of wardens to control their domains.

  But the Flawless Bershad was no warden, and he was no lord. Not anymore. He armed himself with the weary precision of an old farmer milking a cow.

  Rowan moved behind Bershad and pulled a few final straps tight.

  “What good is such light armor against a dragon?” Jolan whispered to Morgan, eyeing the thin breastplate and chain mail.

  “Not much,” he admitted. “But neither is a full set of steel plate when it comes to a dragon’s claws or teeth. And it’s far heavier.”

  Jolan nodded along, but if he had to fight a dragon, he’d want steel-plate armor.

  The last piece was the mask. In battle, Almiran warriors always wore wood-and-leather masks that were cut into the shape of a god. Dragonslayers surrendered all lands and possessions when they were banished, but Bershad had been allowed to keep his mask. It was carved into the coal-black likeness of a snarling jaguar with crimson blood dripping from its mouth.

  Most wardens preferred an animal’s face, especially in a battle when it was hard to separate enemies from allies. But Jolan had seen all kinds—wild visages made from twisted bones and gnarled wood. The gods of Almira had no names, and they followed no rules.

  The mask was attached to a black half-helm that protected his skull. Bershad pulled it over his face and adjusted everything. The two eye slits were large like a cat’s, and Bershad’s pale green eyes glowed within the darkness. Looking at the mask gave Jolan an uneasy feeling in his stomach. The same feeling he got when he was walking back to the apothecary late at night, heard a strange noise in the forest, and had to convince himself it was a prowling fox, not an imaginary forest demon.

  Rowan pulled the two ash spears free from their place on the other side of the donkey and handed them to Bershad. He tested the weight of both and seemed satisfied. Then Rowan produced an ivory war horn from a saddlebag. It was the size of a boy’s chest and had a hemp cord looped around two hooks. He checked the mouthpiece once for cracks in the wax lip and then tossed it to Bershad, who slung it over one shoulder.

  Jolan had seen three dragon slayings in his life—none of them successful. Each man had approached the task a little differently, but all of them had used a horn. The report of an ivory horn created a low vibration in the inner ear of almost all dragon species, which flushed them out of their lairs. It also pissed them off. Jolan had been ten when he saw his first slaying attempt. The dragonslayer had been exiled because he was caught raiding a village that belonged to a small lord who was favored by the king. That was always a fast way to earn a pair of blue bars. He had dressed in full plate armor, mounted his donkey, and trotted around blowing a war horn as if it would call his old comrades into battle behind him.

  But he had waited too late in the day. The dragon snatched the lord off his donkey, flew a thousand paces straight up into the air, and then dropped him on some rocks, splattering the dragonslayer open like a seagull cracking an oyster.

  “Why don’t they just sneak into the dragon’s lair at night?” Jolan had asked Morgan while they carried the dragonslayer’s smashed body back to the apothecary to weigh the organs, which Morgan did obsessively. His liver notebook alone was nearly two hundred pages long.

  “Many have tried,” Morgan had said. “But dragons are cunning with their lairs. Lots of dead-end passages and switchbacks. It takes half the night just to find out where the beast is sleeping, and by then they usually aren’t sleeping anymore—they’re very sensitive to uninvited guests. Sneaking into a dragon’s lair at night is about as suicidal as trying to sneak into its belly. At least outside you can die with the sun on your face.”

  Bershad took a few steps into the field, eyes focused on the ground. He stabbed the dirt with the tip of his boot a few times, kicking up clumps of soft black earth.

  “Need the rock?” Rowan asked.

  �
�Definitely.”

  Rowan nodded, and went back into the saddlebag. He pulled out a white rock that wasn’t much larger than a fist. Despite the size, the sinews of Rowan’s forearm strained as he picked it up. There was a cylindrical depression bored through the middle of the odd stone. Rowan passed it to Bershad, who held it with a similar kind of effort.

  “Try not to get killed,” Rowan said lightly. Bershad grunted and turned to Morgan.

  “Do not chop off pieces of my body trying to save my life. If it’s that bad, give me some opium and let me die smiling. Preferably with some tits in my face.”

  Bershad pulled a blue-and-yellow seashell from behind his breastplate, rubbed it once, then tucked it back against his heart. Then he was off, taking long confident strides toward the dragon’s lair.

  Bershad moved fast for a man who was wearing a full set of armor, carrying two spears in one hand and a heavy rock in the other, and who had spent the night drunk. When he was thirty or forty paces from the lair, he stopped. Slammed his spears into the ground. Then he wandered around a bit, eyes fixed on the earth at his feet. After almost two minutes of searching, he dropped the strange rock in what seemed like a very specific place. Adjusted it once with his boot.

  He went back and pulled one of the spears out of the ground, lifted the mask off his face, and put the horn around to his lips.

  Bershad only blew once, but he made it last. A long call that was soft at first and grew louder. He held the note for what seemed like several minutes, until a shrill cry echoed from beneath the mountains. Bershad stopped the call, threw the horn far to the side, lowered his mask, and raised his spear. The dragon was awake.

  A geyser of pebbles sprayed into the clear morning sky. The villagers gasped behind Jolan. Some of the rocks landed five paces from Bershad’s feet, but he didn’t even flinch. Just stood there like an armored scarecrow erected by a farmer. For a moment there was nothing, and then another, larger blast of rocky shrapnel burst into the air.

  Before the pebbles landed, the dragon shot out—green hide darting toward the field, his tail kicking up more stones.

  Even with his wings folded back, the dragon was the size of a large wagon. He coiled up behind a boulder at the edge of the field and eyed Bershad. Despite the distance, Jolan could make out the single, glowing orange orb of the dragon’s remaining eye. He had red spikes jutting from his throat that twitched and vibrated with aggression.

  Bershad wedged the butt of his spear into the rock and angled the point toward the sky.

  Jolan had heard the same stories about the Flawless Bershad as everyone else: that when he fought, it was he who moved like a demon, and the lizard who slouched along like a man. That he killed dragons with a single, flawless spear throw. That he pissed on their carcasses and laughed at them when it was done.

  The reality was different.

  Jolan blinked, and the dragon was in the air, somehow summoning the energy for a pounce despite the early hour. Bershad crouched, hands clamped around the spear. The dragon rushed toward him—claws outstretched and gaping mouth filled with razor-sharp black teeth.

  Bershad dove away at the last second as the dragon’s snout slammed into the earth, throwing up a shower of dirt and wheat. The spear was nowhere in sight, but the dragon began twitching and thrashing. His tail beat against the ground in a random, angry rhythm.

  Bershad was slow getting up, but once he was on his feet he moved fast—sprinting back across the field, arms pumping hard. He ripped the mask off as he ran.

  Jolan expected to see terror on his face, something like the expression men got before Master Morgan amputated a limb. Instead, Bershad’s face was painted with a wild kind of joy. Jolan had never seen it before.

  It didn’t last very long.

  The dragon spun in a circle, his tail curling into a whip that lashed Bershad in the back of his left leg and sent him spinning through the air like a tossed coin. He landed fifteen paces away, bounced, then didn’t move. The dragon didn’t go after Bershad, just stood there licking at the dirt and sniffing.

  Jolan squinted at the dragon. He could just barely make out the white rock, still with the butt of the spear wedged in it, lodged almost entirely inside the dragon’s remaining eye.

  “That’s…” Jolan whispered. “Not possible.”

  “Lots of things seem impossible until someone does it in front of you,” Morgan said.

  Thick orange liquid poured down the side of the dragon’s face and neck. The beast took a few steps back toward his lair, looking feeble, almost pathetic. He slipped a few times and then crashed to the ground. Didn’t move. For a few eerie seconds, the field was quiet and still. Then birds began chirping their merry songs from the dense trees to the north.

  “Jolan!” Morgan barked. “With me.”

  Jolan awoke from his daze and followed his master across the field. Morgan wasn’t running—he’d want to keep his pulse steady for any surgery—but Jolan sprinted the last stretch and spread out the knives over a clear spot of grass so they’d be ready. Bershad was unconscious, but Jolan could see his chest rising and falling beneath his breastplate.

  Still alive.

  “It’s his upper left leg and ribs,” Jolan said as Morgan crouched beside him. Morgan snatched up a scalpel and made four fast cuts across the straps of Bershad’s armor. He pulled the lamellar rib-guard away, then rolled up the chain mail that was underneath.

  “What do you see?” he asked Jolan.

  Jolan examined the wound—his leg and ribs were swelling, and there were a few cuts along his stomach where the lamellar had pushed the chain mail into his skin, but they weren’t very deep. There was a circular wound on his thigh where a barb from the dragon’s tail had punched through the hauberk, but the barb was thin and it had missed the arteries and the bone.

  “He’ll live. A few cracked ribs maybe, but otherwise his chest is fine. That cut on his leg is deep, but he should make out with nothing except a bad limp.”

  Morgan nodded once. “Disinfection, stitches, bandages. I’m going to have a look at this dragon before the peasants destroy it.”

  Jolan prepared a poultice for the wound on Bershad’s leg. He mixed several different herbs into the bottom of a glass flask, including one pinch of Gods Moss, which Morgan had personally harvested from an old dragon warren in the Daintree jungle. It was extremely valuable because of its healing properties and Morgan would have whipped Jolan bloody if he saw him use it, since there were three cheaper disinfectants in the pack that would do the same job. But Jolan figured the most famous dragonslayer in the world deserved the best ingredients. He added a bit of distilled water to the flask and stirred until the mixture turned into a paste. Then he picked up a skin of potato liquor and poured it into Bershad’s wound.

  The dragonslayer winced, but didn’t wake up.

  Jolan set the skin aside and dabbed the paste into the wound. He turned away to prepare a catgut stitch but his needle froze when he returned to the wound. It was already knitting itself back together, as if there was a second, invisible apprentice sitting across from Jolan and binding the flesh.

  “Not possible,” he muttered for the second time in ten minutes.

  He’d seen Morgan use Gods Moss seven times before, but it had never done that.

  “Careful, boy,” Bershad said. He’d woken up. His eyes seemed more alive. Burning, almost. “Witnessing some things can be bad for your health.” Bershad scooped the paste out of his open wound and flicked it away. Then he reached past Jolan, grabbed a bark-skin bandage, and wrapped it over his thigh.

  Jolan was about to ask Bershad for an explanation, but a jerk of movement caught his attention. It was the dragon’s left claw twitching. Morgan had been examining the folded flaps of skin that formed the Needle-Throated Verdun’s wings when it happened. He cursed when the dragon started moving, then stumbled backward a few steps, looking surprised and furious at the same time, as if his favorite horse had bucked for no good reason.

  The
dragon decapitated Morgan with a single swipe of his claw.

  There was a jet of blood and then just a twitching body. No head. The dragon lifted himself onto his back legs and released a terrible cry. Jolan heard much smaller, softer screams behind him. The last and bravest villagers were fleeing from the field. Frozen, Jolan couldn’t think of anything to do besides move himself between Bershad and the dragon.

  He fumbled around in his pockets for a seashell to put in his own mouth, but couldn’t find the one he’d set aside that morning.

  The dragon dropped its front claws back to the ground with a thundering pound. It took a few slow, unsure steps toward Jolan. Orange blood was still flowing out around the spear jammed in its ruined eye. The dragon sniffed the air once. Twice. Nostrils wet and dilated.

  Jolan was an educated person. He did not believe in gods or demons, nor did he believe there was anything special about the enormous lizards that plagued the realm of Terra. They were just beasts. Wild and dangerous and more powerful than other creatures, but beasts all the same. Still, it seemed to him that in that strange moment, the dragon was trying to say something—to share some secret.

  A spear hissed past Jolan’s left ear and hit the dragon with so much speed that a jet of blood and bone spewed out the back side of its head. The dragon’s neck kicked up from the strength of the impact, then the beast crumpled and died at Jolan’s feet. He turned around to see Bershad was standing, but swaying a little.

  “Not possible,” Jolan muttered. No man should have the strength to pierce a dragon’s skull like that.

  “Remember what I said about witnessing shit, boy,” Bershad growled. Then he vomited and collapsed.

  * * *

  Jolan spent a long time looking for Morgan’s head. He wandered along the ruts of the wheat field and checked the copses of trees. Mostly he just tried not to cry in front of Rowan and the Flawless Bershad. Even if the dragonslayer was unconscious, sobbing in front of a living legend seemed wrong.

  The villagers returned from their hiding places in small groups, too. Nobody had seen the way Bershad had killed the Needle-Throated Verdun, so instead of gossiping about his inhuman strength, they just squabbled over who got what.