But for all her urgings Savi suddenly stopped amidst that gathering throng, and looked back to the palace, stealing one last glance as Alya thought. He seized her by the shoulders. ‘No time for doubt! You come, or stay now, forever!’
She shook him free, while others streamed around them, buffeting them. ‘Not doubt! I thought I saw—’ There was a cluster of watchers on the palace roof.
Vansha shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you!’ he said caustically. ‘This one’s tall, yes; but her hair’s as black as yours or mine. Blue-robed, pale-skinned, proud in bearing – the one in the dressing room?’
‘That’s the princess! Happy enough where she is, poor goose, and good luck to her. But I thought – no, you’re right, Alya! I’m coming. With you!’
‘With—’ he began, uncertain; but she pulled him into the streaming crowd, and Vansha with him.
Even those few seconds had all but choked the streets, and they found themselves jostled, pushed and finally borne almost unstoppably along by the milling, half-hysterical crowd. Bodies ragged and filthy collided with them, work-worn faces whirled about them like visions in a nightmare, and they clamped hand in hand painfully, in constant fear of being torn apart and lost. Many in the throng, though, recognised Alya and Vansha, by face or repute, and fought through to wring their hands and slap their backs till their shoulders ached. Like leaves in a torrent they were swept along the dismal lanes towards the town’s far side, and the open slopes beyond.
Yet even as it loomed above them at last, they felt the crowd change around them, like a flood abruptly baulked. The flow halted suddenly, and though frantic shouts went up, the press still swelled and deepened under the impact of those behind. The flood became a milling crush, and Alya, alarmed, began forcing a way to one side. Even as he did so, the shouts became screams, gibbering cries of panic, and a thunderous, heart-shaking growl devoured all lesser sounds. The pressure released very suddenly, as the crowd swayed back; but in the same moment the black hillside blossomed suddenly into searing yellow light.
The screams were cut off sharply. Streaks of flame laced across the bare dark slope, and the soil hissed great clouds of steam. Another growl, and spurting fire lanced high overhead and rained down among the crowd in searing droplets that slew with the agonised shock of their touch.
The monster Tugarin still lived, despite his fall; and he was blocking their best line of escape.
CHAPTER 12
The End of Strength
BARELY in time, with ruthless shoving and kicking, dragging the others after him, Alya forced his way over to the edge of the street, and through a shutterless window. They found themselves in some kind of guard-post, half wrecked by an ice-slide.
‘They’ll never get past that monster!’ panted Vansha. ‘Look at them! Like squalling sheep for the slaughter!’
The crowd was a churning well of panic. People were still running up at the rear, unaware of what was happening, blocking any retreat; and even in the thick of the mass some were fighting others who sought to turn them back. Many of the buildings around them were catching fire, panicking them further, and sending clouds of greasy black smoke rolling overhead to blot out the sun.
‘The Morghannen must still be guarding the palace!’ gasped Savi. ‘But when they realise what’s happening—’
‘The what?’ demanded Vansha. ‘Those screaming things?’
‘The Choosers!’ Savi told him coldly. ‘Louhi’s bodyguard – warriors of the Ice. They spur the Ekwesh to frenzy and worse, and they are slayers in themselves. You heard their cries.’
‘She’s right,’ said Alya tersely. ‘I know their minds. We can’t face them.’
Vansha threw up his hands. ‘So we’ve got to get out, somehow! Which we already know!’
Alya cast desperately about. ‘The south road is blocked by fire now, even if we could reach it. And the Dead Stair – even if we could risk the rapids, we would not face what would await us there, not again. The palace guards any northward way. And the far slope’s too steep.’
‘Then this is our one road!’ said Vansha grimly. A rumbling roar shook down stones from the walls, and they all flinched instinctively. ‘This smoke pall – could you not make that bitch’s talisman work beneath it? Would the shadows be strong enough to sneak past that thing?’
Alya stared. ‘I don’t know! The flames give so much light … but we won’t know till we try.’
He led them through the shattered hovel, clambering over scattered weapons and other debris, across rough stone and half-rotten timbers, and the masses of shattered ice. Flame had passed over it, so that the face of the fall was molten and slick, but already freezing again as the beast turned its fires elsewhere. The door was under the rubble, but they could just reach the remains of a narrow window on what had been the second storey. They scrambled up to it; but as Alya looked through, he ducked back in sheer fright.
‘Powers! We’re right on top of it!’
They peered tentatively out.
The old road had wound beneath this window; and whatever had stood on its far side was obliterated now by the icefalls. And by the dragon.
In the open space before them it lay, sprawled half on its side among the ruins of the hillside it had brought down, blocking all the wide ground between hill and town. Even in the tunnel they had not truly realised its vastness, there and gone in that rushing moment.
‘Remember that dragon in Volmur’s procession?’ whispered Vansha; and Alya chuckled mirthlessly. That toy of cloth and paint had twisted the length of a street, borne by twenty or thirty men; but a hundred could not have lifted this vast black-scaled serpent-shape. With its broken wing stuck up like a distorted sail, it looked much as he had imagined the wrecks of great ships, in the old tales. ‘Imagine the real thing unleashed against him! It could have smashed his stockade to flinders and curled up in the remains!’
‘Three heads!’ shivered Savi. ‘How can such a thing be?’
‘There are monsters born,’ muttered Vansha. ‘Creatures with extra limbs, eyes, heads. There was a child born in the Citadel, years past, that was two children; my father would not suffer it to live, lest it be a curse. Maybe the Ice made this thing, somehow. But how could it live thus, fly even? With three minds? Fell and horrible!’
‘I remember my visions!’ whispered Alya in awe. ‘Those cities of old must have been stronger than I dreamed. Look at it! Even that fall didn’t kill it!’
Black blood seeped from the wing, and its back was twisted; and its hind limbs were broken perhaps, for though the ancient beast strove to raise itself and crawl, it could not. The other wing and the long spear-tipped tail thrashed uselessly in its fury, sending more ice and rocks cascading from the slope. But Tugarin lived still, and was strong. At each surge of the frantic crowd the three heads reared up, and sent jets of flame lancing along the ruined side-streets, and upon any who dared to show themselves.
One bold knot of men sought to run out beneath, ducking between the fires; and though most vanished in spurts of flame, yet one or two came below the great body and stabbed at it with spears. But the heads darted back and plucked them away, like lice, and they vanished, screaming, between the jaws.
‘Maybe it doesn’t like to use fire so close,’ muttered Vansha. ‘Doesn’t need it, though. Can the strongest shadow shield us from that?’
‘I don’t understand about this shadow!’ complained Savi. ‘But I saw things that might help!’
She scrambled down the rubble, and back into the guard-house ruin. The others, following, saw her haul a long metal plate from the rubble, an Ekwesh battle-shield, scarred and dented by the fall, but whole enough; and there were others beneath, with swords and spears and other weaponry.
‘Indeed, till it turns red-hot!’ grinned Alya. ‘But it’s a lot better than nothing!’
‘Well, I’ve found something too!’ grinned Vansha, and held up a coarse loaf and a joint of mutton. ‘I don’t think the guards will be needing their day-rat
ions, do you?’
They tore hungrily at a few stringy mouthfuls. ‘Take the rest with us!’ said Alya. ‘We can’t delay any longer! Savi, stay close to us. If the thing sees us, then maybe the two of us can keep it busy enough—’
‘The three of us,’ she said, softly, and hefted a shield. Ignoring Vansha’s explosive gasp, she threw down her short sword, and swung a broad Ekwesh spear. ‘I think I can wield this well enough.’
‘But if you—’
‘I fought the raiders, did I not? When you lay helpless, Alya; and you were beaten back, Vansha. This is my battle, also.’
‘Is it?’ Vansha demanded, wide-eyed with anger. ‘When we found you in her bed? Does the wind swing about again so readily?’
‘I could explain it to you,’ she said wearily. ‘I will, yet, if we’re spared. And if you could ever understand. Or will you tarry till the Choosers come?’
Wordless, they scrambled up the rubble once again. The shields were a burden, but Savi steadied herself with the spear, and leaned on neither of them.
‘Stop at the window!’ hissed Alya; and there, as smoke rolled across the sun, he sought the answering shadow in his mind. It faltered and guttered, for forests are afraid of fire; but the shade wrapped around them nonetheless, providing what shelter it could. Alya saw little more than the glint of Savi’s eyes, as she exclaimed in soft amazement; but as Tugarin spat another streak of yellow flame, he saw that only too clearly.
Silently then, they scrambled through the narrow gap, out on to the mingled mass of rock and ice that had smashed the building, and climbed slowly, painfully down, helping one another with hardly a word.
Savi was watching Tugarin – too closely, for as one great head swung their way an instant, she almost slipped, and dislodged a rock. Alya caught her arm, and the giant eyes, yellow now with the flames they had started, swept across them unseeing. To his horror, still holding his arm, she stooped, snatched up another stone, and flung it hard at the middle head. The nearer one snapped around with a thunderous bellow, and fire splayed over the walls behind them.
‘Madwoman!’ hissed Vansha in wrath, but she tossed her head impatiently.
‘Can’t you see?’ she whispered. ‘You wondered how it lives! I was watching it, and now I’m sure. One will guides that thing, one spirit. A thing of malice and power.’
‘Aye, marvellously,’ protested Alya, ‘but I’m more concerned about the getting past it!’
‘But that’s why!’ she insisted. ‘It’s the middle head we’ve got to watch! The others only serve it, like slaves!’
‘What good’s that supposed to do us?’ sneered Vansha, but Alya broke in.
‘Don’t you see? When it’s looking the other way—’ He gazed at the girl in renewed wonder. ‘Maybe you’ve won us our chance!’ And for all the place and time, for all the doubts he also struggled to repress, Alya drew her to him as of old.
She pushed him away, but gently. ‘Maybe I have. And I will tell you all – all. I promise! But now …’
He nodded, steadying the shield. Together, creeping as slowly as noon shadows, keeping beneath the shifting pall of the smoke, the three scrambled over the last rocks of the fall and out into the open ground, watching the necks lash this way and that, hemming in the fear-maddened crowd. There was something in the touch of free earth beneath their feet, softening now out of its frosty grip; but Alya had no chance to dwell on that. On its far side, yet another bunch of bold or panicking souls broke away, and Tugarin’s heads turned sharply to follow.
‘Now!’
Together, raising their shields, they broke into a run. Not fast, because the ground was still rough, and because they had to keep together. Fire erupted on the far flank, and terrible screams, and Savi would have stumbled if Alya had not caught her up. The bulk of the dragon seemed to fill their sight, and the stench of it made them choke, the sickly odour of the tunnel redoubled.
This close, less than a hundred paces, its flank was a horrible sight both in its ridged and hideous scales, chipped and cracked and filth-encrusted, and still more so in the corruption that ran among them, riddled with oozing sores and old wounds half healed and discoloured, running dribbles of pale humours. Dark blood leaked around its broken hindlimbs, a spreading pool that smoked upon the barren earth; and its tail lashed fitfully as it still struggled to raise itself and fall upon the crush of terrified humanity that confronted it, neither standing nor fleeing, but tormenting it, perhaps, as a wounded man is plagued by a cloud of flies.
One of the doomed men broke and ran screaming, trailing a comet’s tail of liquid flame, not away from the beast but towards it, still brandishing a spear that was itself a living flame. In malice and contempt Tugarin’s many eyes watched him an instant, then with one great effort the brute heaved itself up on its massive forelegs, higher than the rooftops it had shattered. Down the heads darted, serpentlike, terrifyingly fast, and struck. The scream ended; the flame was quenched; the man vanished. And Tugarin, though growling horribly with pain, strove once more to rise in its wrath. Directly before the three escapers the huge surviving wing flailed an instant, then beat down.
The air boomed. Dust swirled and eddied against the foot of the vale wall. The flames bowed before the blast, and the many smokes billowed, danced and boiled upward and away, drawing the shadows with them. There, very suddenly, the forest dimness became dappled and bright as a lime-glade at noon; and the three of them stood exposed and unguarded, close beneath the flank of the wounded dragon.
The three heads flicked towards them as one; and as swiftly, vindictively, the main head struck.
No time for words, no time for anything save to fling up the shield against the onrushing jaws, against the flame that would outrun them. Alya, in horror and defiance, felt it billow around him and melt his flesh; for so it seemed.
But the flame was not yellow, but red as blood, red as iron, red as the rusted earth below which the forge of Ilmarinen blazed; and the force of it greater and more frightening since that first searing touch, consuming, healing. And so was the sense of strength. Like a living flame of his own he felt, his arm as one with the hero’s sword it bore, the fire welding them to a greater whole. As one he raised them, faster than actual thought, and as one they struck.
Not even that, perhaps, would have been enough to turn that onrush. For the serpentine heads were all but fleshless, bone and scales large and small, even bordering the lipless arrays of fangs. But the beast’s own malicious speed was added to his, and the blow caught the side of its greatest jaws.
Alya was flung on his back. The head whipped skyward, away from the agony that had cut deep into those scales. The lesser heads swung in response, as Savi had guessed, momentarily aimless, unwary.
‘Strike! Strike, brother!’ yelled Alya, though it pained his breast; and Vansha, as if jolted from a dream, lashed out in his turn at the lesser neck that swept above him. It was as thick as a man’s armspan; but Vansha struck from below, among the smaller scales of the throat, and goaded by vengeful fury. There was a flash, a spurt of stinking blackness mingled with the dragon’s dark blood. His sword passed through the scales, and cracked in two. The lesser head fell. Its jaws sagging open, its eyes dim and empty, it dangled from a single strand of sinew upon the convulsing neck.
Now Tugarin bucked like a maddened horse, and its remaining jaws howled in agony. So fell was the sound that the crowd was stunned, and cowered down in animal terror. Vansha staggered, dazed, half blinded by the foulness spraying from the severed neck. Again the surviving heads swung back, straight at him this time; but Alya sprang up, and swinging his body with the weight of his shield, he struck at the other neck.
He struck against the massive side scales, but he had aimed his blow well. Through their trailing edges it smashed, with a dull clangour, and into the quick, and across. The neck whipped up, and he fell sprawling, the sword out of his hand. Again the rush of filth and blood, and the head crashed severed to the black earth.
Th
e agony was a goad. Tugarin, still screaming, suddenly twisted upright once more in pain and fury, rising on its forelimbs. Vansha still faltered; Alya had fallen to his knees. Their blades were heavy with smoking filth, and of Vansha’s only half remained. Neither could resist. But Savi flung herself before them; and the movement caught the monster’s maddened eye. It snapped at them, but head-on, no longer exposing its wounded throat; and a shade more slowly, as if to unleash the fire it had hitherto held back. But Savi, less strong than the men, was swifter, and her weapon well suited. She stabbed out her spear, not at the throat, but straight into the jaw that gaped above her.
Straight between its terrible teeth she struck, shattering them; and though the mouth was little softer than the body, her spear bit deep into its roof. The great head threshed back, blinded with pain, knocking her down; and the fire it had readied erupted in an uncontrolled vomit of flame.
A yellow fire-cloud erupted about Tugarin’s head. Droplets rained about the black ichor that still dripped from the wounded necks, in great pools on the ground beneath; and they also caught and billowed like hideous blossoms. Flame raced upward, and suddenly the wounds themselves burst out in fire, a ghastly sight, as if the great beast burned from within with the stuff it secreted.
It rolled back, thrashing horribly. But then, as if conquering agony with the sheer force of its malign will, it reared high over its tiny adversaries and half fell towards them. It could utter flame no longer. Dark blood spewed from its wounded jaws and kindled in a hissing, fiery spray. But it needed none, with such a bulk. Vansha and Savi raised their weapons in desperate defiance.
Alya sprang up. He flung aside his shield and caught the hilt of his great sword in both hands; and, though his limbs were leaden and weary, it seemed to him that the fierce heat flowed up from the thawing earth beneath, and poured its renewed force into his hollow limbs, lent lightness to his legs and to his arms massive, unstoppable force. He sprang, and his leap carried him straight into Tugarin’s path.
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