by Philip Reeve
When they reached the valley floor, Brock flung himself full-length on a patch of grass. “Dear Christ, I’m weary of this traveling! Ansel, bring the wine and the bread. We’ll rest here a while.”
He rested, gnawing on one of the small loaves that the affectionate widow lady at the inn had given them. Meanwhile, Ansel went down toward the river. He was looking for a place where Brezel and Snow could drink. The floor of the woods was all boulders, with pools of clear water between them. The river was the color of metal, swirling between bare trees. Beyond those trees there was no sky, just the steep flank of a hill rising almost sheer, reminding him of the bleak heights that he was headed for. Not wanting to look at it, Ansel looked down instead.
That was when he saw it. A shape flashed across the pool at his feet: the reflection of something with big, spread wings swooping low over the trees above his head.
He pelted back to where he’d left Brock and the horses, trying clumsily to cross himself as he ran, plunging into the pools, scraping himself on low branches. He burst out into the thin sunlight pointing upward, desperate to warn his master that the dragon was upon them. It must have sensed by some magic that the hunter was on his way, and flown down from its lonely mountain to meet him on the road.
“What is it, boy? What —?” Brock was scrambling up, looking alarmed. The horses, untroubled, cropped the grass a little way off. Brock shielded his eyes, scanning the sky. Ansel wondered why he didn’t run to fetch his sword. Instead, he started to laugh.
“You thought it was the worm!” He threw back his head. “Christ, you believed it!”
Confused, Ansel looked up at the sky. Far up the valley the big gray wings flapped steadily in sunlight, carrying the heron away toward quieter fishing grounds.
Only a heron … Ansel tried to laugh at himself, but the fear was still in him and the best he could manage was a crooked smile.
Brock looked at him, and stopped laughing, seeing the real fear in the boy’s face. He came closer and patted Ansel’s shoulder. “Ansel,” he said, “I’ll tell you my secret. My secret’s safe with you, isn’t it?”
Ansel nodded. Brock stooped down so that his face was on a level with the boy’s. He said slowly and clearly, “There are no such things as dragons.”
Ansel watched him, puzzled. Was this a joke? A test? What?
“I’ve been halfway across the world,” said Brock. “I went a-soldiering when I was young, and I saw eagles and tigers and whale-fish and Saracens, but I’ve never seen a dragon yet, nor heard of one that was anything more than a story. They don’t exist, Ansel. If they did, we’d all have seen them. Kings and dukes would keep them in their menageries. Rich men would wear dragon-skin hats and dragon-scale shoes, and serve roast dragon at their banquets. But they don’t. And why? Because there’s no such animal, that’s why. Maybe there was once, but Noah never found room for them on his ark — it would be a hazard on a boat, I’d reckon, a beast that belches fire. And even if they had survived, you don’t really think we’d find one up here in all this snow and wind, do you? A dragon’s supposed to be a huge lizard, isn’t it? Lizards bake themselves on summer rocks, hide up and sleep when the weather turns chill. How would one keep itself warm up on those white heights? With its own fiery breath?”
Ansel opened his mouth to protest, so surprised that he had forgotten he was dumb. He pointed questioningly at the dragon’s tooth that dangled on its thong around Brock’s neck. Brock looked down, touched it. “This?”
Ansel nodded. Wasn’t that proof of dragons?
“I bought this in Aleppo. A tiger’s tooth, the man who sold it told me. As for this scar, I got it when I was young; I pulled my little sister’s pigtails and she pushed me down the stairs. I cut my face open on a doornail.”
Ansel didn’t want to believe him. Surely not all of Brock’s bravery could be lies. What about the skull? He forgot that he was not meant to have seen it and pointed questioningly to the bag on Snow’s saddle.
Brock laughed again. “So you’ve been prying, have you? I might have known that telling a boy not to look in a bag is the surest way to make him do so….” He strode to where the mare was grazing and opened the bag, tugging the thing out carelessly, uncovering its huge and hungry grin. Ansel did his best to look brave, but he could not help flinching. The thing looked so evil, and so pleased with itself.
“I picked this up from a trader in Venice,” said Brock. “It comes from Africa. It’s the head bone of a monster called a corkindrille, which is a big breed of newt that swims in the waters of the river Nile and eats up little boys for breakfast. It’s the nearest thing to a living, breathing dragon that I ever heard tell of. But it isn’t a dragon. It’s got no wings, no fiery breath, no voice, no magic stone in its head. It’s just a big animal. Isn’t that right?” he asked the skull, and worked its jaws so that it seemed to answer him, “That’s right, Brock!”
He wrapped the skull again and stuffed it in his bag. When he came back to where Ansel waited he was still chuckling. “You look as shocked as a wrung-necked goose,” he said. “You’re probably wondering what we’re making this hard journey for, then, if there’s no worm to slaughter at the end of it.”
Ansel nodded.
“Well, that’s the real secret. You see, just because worms are only stories doesn’t mean that half of mankind aren’t fool enough to believe in them.”
He took Ansel by the shoulders and turned him bodily to face the looming cliffs and buttresses of the mountains ahead. He said, “In places like this, where the winters are hard and the peasants are stupid, no one doubts but there are dragons on the heights. Every time a sheep is killed or a goatherd goes missing, the old stories that their grandmothers scared them with bubble up anew in their heads, till they can think of nothing but the worm. When we ride in, promising to deliver them from the terror, they’ll welcome us as heroes.
“So we’ll go up into their high pastures, you and I. There’ll be no one up there this early in the year, and there’s bound to be a shepherd’s hut or a handy cave where we can shelter for a night or two. Just long enough for word to get around, and folk to start wondering whether we’ll ever come back. And then, like Our Lord, we’ll rise on the third day. We’ll come back down carrying friend corkindrille’s skull bone on a stick, and telling the people what a hard fight we had before their worm was slain. Of course I’ll have to dress the old skull up a bit, some meat and brains from a dead sheep to make it look fresher than it is. No one will know it’s not the head of a dragon. Then there’ll be feasting, grateful women, maybe a few small gifts, all graciously accepted. And all I need do to get it is lie up a while in a shepherd’s hut. Better than hunting dragons, isn’t it?”
Ansel nodded. In truth, he wasn’t sure how he felt. He knew he should be glad that he needn’t fear the dragon anymore, but somehow he felt that Brock had taken something from him. It had all been lies.
They rode on and quickly came in sight of that great grim mountain again. Cloud shadows swooped over the crinkled lower slopes; the heights were chained with glaciers and tangled in ropes of mist. Ansel was still afraid of it, but now what scared him was mostly the thought of so much height, such cold. Its terrors had become everyday terrors. It no longer held anything as marvelous or horrifying as a dragon.
THEY CAME NEAR THAT DAY’S END TO A TOWN THAT WAS trying to be a city. There had been thin, wintry rain all afternoon, but by that hour the evening breeze was herding the clouds away and the westering sun showed through, lighting the town’s tall walls so that the stones shone like scales. The town lay in a hollow of the mountains with a long lake below it and a white road winding up to its gates and the hard sheer shoulders of the mountains going up steep and sudden behind it, rising toward that one cloud-capped peak that overtopped all the rest. Afterward, Ansel would never be able to remember what the town’s name was, but he would remember for the rest of his life the name of the mountain. It was called the Drachenberg.
“That’s where we�
�re bound, boy,” said Brock, with his narrowed eyes on the mountain. “But we’ll stop here for the night. One last night in a comfortable bed, before our climb begins.”
At the town gate a fire burned smokily in a metal basket and guards with halberds stepped forward to bar the travelers’ way. “You’re Johannes Von Brock, the dragon hunter?” asked their leader.
Brock swept his cap off. “You have heard of me, it seems.”
“The whole country’s heard of your coming,” said the guard, his eyes going up and down Brock, peering at every detail. “The landgrave wants to see you. Told us to bring you to his palace.”
Brock sat straighter in his saddle. “Lead on,” he said.
The guard captain and two of his men shouldered their halberds and led the way, through the gate and up deep, narrow, cobbled streets. In the heart of the town, towering high over the thatch of houses and the long, planked lofts of the wool mills, a big new church was rising. The fresh stone of the half-finished spire was bone-colored, pale against the darkness of the mountain. Masons were still at work up there when Brock and Ansel rode by. Their giddy gantries swayed in the wind, and the pecking sounds of their hammers and chisels fell thinly like the calls of stonechats into the open space between the church and the houses that hemmed it around. Fresh stores of stone lay heaped under flapping canvas, waiting their turn to be hoisted aloft and carved into stone prayers.
Behind the church was a low gray house they called the Palace. It was shut tight, unwelcoming. A carved stone shield above the doors bore the arms of the family who ruled the place: a winged dragon with a pointed tongue. Snow lay in heaps against the walls. It took a lot of knocking with the butt of the guard captain’s halberd before the huge doors grumbled open. Servants peered at Brock. Inside, the sounds of the town were so muffled by the thick walls that Ansel felt as if someone had stuffed lint into his ears. A priest’s bare shanks flashed under the hem of his habit as he came running to lead the travelers to his master.
The landgrave awaited them in a paneled room, in front of a deep fireplace where a peat fire burned, not giving out much heat. On the cowl of the fireplace the dragon emblem of his family spread its wings again. He turned as the visitors entered. He was not an old man, but he had the wary, careworn face of a shaved sheep. It must have been a tiring business being lord of such a cold and backward place. He looked exhausted. His eyes were the color of mussel shells. He had gnawed the sides of his thumbs ragged, and his long fingers never stopped moving, telling over the beads of the rosary that hung from his belt. On a table beside him his servants were laying out bread and cheeses and cold meat and wine. Ansel ate hungrily while his master and the landgrave talked.
“What brings you to our town, stranger?” asked the landgrave in a tired-out voice. “There are rumors about you among the common people. They say that you kill dragons.”
Brock nodded graciously. “I am Johannes Von Brock, landgrave. This boy is my squire. It was good of you to meet me; I should have asked to see you in any case, for I’m told you have need of my skills. Your people are right. I am a hunter of dragons.”
For the first time, the landgrave stopped looking weary and grew interested.
“I have heard that this region is ravaged by a most troublesome worm, and I have come to rid you of it,” said Brock. “This is the best season for worm-hunting. There is still snow and ice on the heights, and it drives the creatures down onto the lower slopes for food. That means I have a chance of meeting them without making the impossible climb to their eyries.”
The landgrave nibbled the corners of his thumbs. “This district has always been dragon-haunted,” he said, and he shivered a little inside his expensive robes. “There have long been stories told of a beast upon the mountain. The Dragon’s Hill, it’s called. The peasants up there are weak and superstitious. The pass through the mountains was closed by a rockfall many years ago and they will not clear it because they are afraid of the dragon. There is said to be copper and even silver in the mountain, but my miners will not go up there to mine it; they hear the peasants talking of their dragon, and they too grow fearful. This could be a rich town, if it were not for that dragon. But you and I are educated men, Brock. We know that there are no such things as dragons, don’t we?”
Ansel stopped eating and looked at the landgrave. He wondered if the man had seen through Brock’s ruse and was about to expose him as a charlatan. What would happen to Brock then? And what would happen to his boy?
Brock looked watchful for a moment too. Then he recovered himself and nodded, as if he had often heard the same complaint from other educated men in other places. He said, “There is the dragon, my lord, and then there is the fear of the dragon. It is hard to say which is worse. And even if you doubt the dragon, you must admit the fear is real.”
The landgrave smiled distantly and turned to the window, which stood open to let out the thick smoke from the fire. A rusty-colored sunset was staining the sky behind the half-finished spire of the new church. He said, “I told them that once we had our cathedral then the creature would be driven away. But they only grow more credulous and more afraid. They swear that they have heard the dragon shrieking on the heights. Even here in the town its voice has been heard. They say that it devoured a shepherd last year, up on the summer pastures.
“In the old times, before they heard the word of Christ, the people used to tether a girl on the mountain each springtime as an offering to the serpent. That’s been stopped now. But who knows? Most of the villages up there are too small to have their own church, their own priest to guide them. Who knows what sins their fear might drive them to?”
“Then let me kill it,” said Brock, pouring more wine for himself.
“Kill what? The dragon, or the fear of the dragon?”
“Both,” replied Brock. He had opened the top of his tunic and the ivory fang shone wickedly in the hollow of his throat. The firelight silvered the old scar on his cheek. He had the look of a man who killed dragons.
The landgrave studied him. Did he believe the dragon was real? Or did he not? Ansel could not tell. But either way, he seemed to think that there would be something to be gained by sending Brock up the mountain. He said, “The peasants tell us that the creature makes its lair high on the Drachenberg, in a cave beside a river of ice, above the village called Knochen. You may stay here tonight, set off in the morning. My secretary will draw a map to show you the way. I fear it will be a hard journey for you.”
Brock stretched like a cat. “I’m used to hard journeys,” he said. “I’ve climbed higher mountains. All I ask is your priests’ blessing on me and the boy before we set out. Oh, and gold, of course.”
“So you must be paid for fighting this evil?” asked the landgrave slyly.
Brock spread his hands. His grin said everything. “How I wish I could do it for nothing but the love of God and the grateful thanks of your peasants, my lord! But this is a sinful world we live in, and a man needs money if he’s to make his way in it. Money for horses, fodder, food. Clothes for myself and the boy. Money for harness and weapons. That sword of mine’s no kitchen knife. It’s Spanish steel, the only kind that will bite through dragon hide. It costs money, a blade like that. It will cost me money to have a good smith repair it when I’ve scuffed and blunted it on your dragon’s scales.”
The landgrave let out a wan laugh. “But dragons keep hoards, don’t they? Greedy creatures, so the stories say. Don’t they sleep in caves filled with gold and diamonds and rubies? Can’t you simply help yourself to a share of our dragon’s treasure when you’ve slain him, master Brock?”
Brock did not laugh. “You don’t know these worms like I do, my lord. You only know old stories of them. I’ve hunted the fell creatures in half the hills of Christendom, and I’ve never yet seen more in their lairs than heaps of dead men’s bones. If you want me to kill your dragon, you’ll have to pay me.”
The landgrave nodded to one of his waiting servants, and the man took someth
ing from a wooden casket and brought it to Brock. It was an ornate crucifix made from white gold, buttery-colored in the firelight, not big, but heavy. Brock took it, weighing it in the palm of his hand.
“It is one of the treasures of my family,” said the landgrave. “I would not part with it unless the need was very great. But it will be yours if you can rid us of the dragon — and the fear of the dragon.”
The meeting left Brock in a bad mood. Ansel had never seen him angry before. He turned pale, and two spots of color burned high on his cheeks. “That upstart!” he muttered. “Landgrave of nothing, yet he treats me like a mountebank. You heard the way he spoke, Ansel? As good as called me a liar.”
But you are a liar, Ansel thought, and though he couldn’t say it, Brock seemed to hear. He looked at Ansel and his temper passed. He laughed.
“Well, you’re right. But I have my pride, you know. It’s one thing to live by playing on the fears of fools, and another to have someone remind you of it. A little respect, that’s all I ask. But the world’s changing, Ansel. Even in outlandish places like this, we meet with educated men. Soon there will be so many of them that no one will take seriously talk of dragons anymore. And what will I do for a profession then?”
Ansel would have liked to stay in the warm, but he had the horses to tend to before the light died. “You can’t trust His Reverence’s servants to care for them,” said Brock, sending him back out into the frosty dusk. “Townsmen. What do they know of horses? Go and see they’re properly stabled while there’s still light.”
Brock was right, just as he always was. The landgrave’s servants had tethered the horses in an old shippen, and filled a manger with hay, but the sweat of the journey still lay on the animals’ flanks, and they were ragged and muddy from their day on the wet roads. Ansel crooned soft noises to them while he rubbed them down with a knot of frayed rope. He picked stubborn clags of mud from their bellies. Carefully he combed them, undoing the elf-knots in their tails and forelocks. They stood calmly, breath a-smolder in the cold air, leaning some of their weight against him while he knelt down to tug off the burrs that had snagged on their fetlocks like spiny, biscuit-colored stars. He gripped their knobbly ankles and they patiently lifted up their feet for him so that he could scrape the packed rinds of mud and road stones from the hollows of their hoofs.
