by Philip Reeve
He nodded.
And then she was hugging him, and all the villagers were around him, demanding to know if the dragon was dead, if the dragon hunter was victorious. All he could do was nod. He knew that if he let on that the beast still lived, they would never come up the mountain and give the help that was needed.
“And Father Flegel?” someone asked.
He shook his head.
He had left Brock and Else resting at the snow line. The dragon lay trussed on the crude pine-branch sledge they had made for it. It had regained its senses sometime in the night, and they had been woken by its struggles and its muffled, threatening roars. But the ropes had held, and now it lay still, seemingly resigned, one evil yellow eye staring at the sky.
The villagers would not go near it at first. They crossed themselves or hid their faces, appalled at the thing Brock had brought back from the mountain with him. Brock had to threaten them before they’d help. “Here is the girl Else,” he said, pointing her out where she stood reunited with her mother, the two of them holding to each other so tight and watching the other villagers as if daring them to try and prize them apart again. Brock said, “Here is the girl you would have given to this monster like a sacrifice upon a heathen altar. Shall I tell your landgrave how you treated her? Shall I tell your bishop how little faith you have in the goodness of God upon this mountain? Or shall you help me carry the beast to town, so that the whole world can see it vanquished?”
The villagers were silent. Brock scared them almost as much as the dragon. He was as ragged as the boy, and there was a look in his eyes that suggested his night on the mountain had made him into a madman or a saint — a man worth humoring, in either case. They still hung back, but when Else sat down on the dragon’s tail and smirked at them, first one and then another of the men edged forward, closer and closer to the monster, flinching backward at every small sound and movement that it made. At last, one drew close enough to jab its flank with the staff he carried. Another, not to be outdone, spat at it. “Why,” said one, “it’s just a big old lizard.”
They brought more ropes and lashed it tighter, just to be sure. They cut fresh runners for the sledge, to replace the two rough logs that Ansel and Brock had used. They dragged it downhill to the track, where they were met by men bringing horses from the village. Behind the horses walked Brezel, clever Brezel, who had passed through that landslide somehow and found his own way back to Knochen. Brezel, who knew better than to go near that dragon again and started snorting and whinnying and trying to turn away as soon as he got within twenty yards of it. Ansel had to run and take his halter to keep him from bolting. He stood stroking the pony’s nose, watching the village men as they coaxed their horses closer to the beast.
It took a long while before they could be calmed enough to be hitched to the sledge traces, but at last they were attached and the strange procession set off toward the town. Ansel scrambled up onto Brezel’s broad back, and Brezel farted like a trumpet. Else cast aside the branch she’d leaned on to limp down the mountain and rode on the sledge, sitting on the dragon. She was scared of it, but she hid her fear, enjoying the knowledge that her neighbors were now afraid of her. She did not even hop down from her perch when they came to fords and broken-down portions of the road, where the horses had to be unhitched and the villagers dragged sledge and dragon on by hand. Let them drag her too. That would show them!
Brock, missing his horse, walked beside the girl’s mother. The woman seemed to have grown younger now that the weight of her grief was lifted from her. She still cried from time to time but they were sweet tears, like April rain. Brock was telling her the story of what had happened to them on the mountain, although it was not quite what had happened to them on the mountain, and the woman looked at him sideways as if she guessed that but didn’t much mind. Now that he knew her daughter, Ansel could see how alike they were: She had the same wide mouth, the same habit of quirking her thick black eyebrows into a frown. She looked like Else grown up.
“What will you and your daughter do when the creature’s killed?” Brock asked her. “You’ll not be safe in Knochen. Once the dragon’s dead and I’m gone away, these brutes will kill you both to keep you silent.”
Else’s mother shrugged, and patted her bodice. “I have a little money, sir. My husband’s savings. I’ll buy a cart in town and travel on. I’ll be a tinker like my mother’s people. Go far away from mountains, that’s for sure.”
And Ansel, hearing her, stroked Brezel’s shaggy neck and thought, Oh, me too! Nevermore any mountains for me!
The procession grew bigger as they neared the town. People came from villages and farmsteads to see the thing on the sledge, and then joined in, children running alongside to pelt the trussed-up dragon with mud and pebbles, their fathers stepping up to help the exhausted burghers of Knochen whenever the sledge had to be coaxed over rough ground, or a gateway needed battering down to let it through. Reckless young men scrambled onto the dragon’s back to show off to their friends and flirt with Else. When a few had ventured up there and come down uneaten the mood grew festive. One man began to play the bagpipes, while another banged a drum. The dragon flinched at the strange new noises. It tried to roar, but it was gagged too tightly to make a sound. Ansel thought he knew how it felt. Watching the flies that clustered thickly about its eyes he felt a sudden, guilty pity for it. But only for a moment. The parade was swelling quickly as the burghers of the town came running out to see what Brock had brought them.
They were silent at first when they realized what it was. Then, slowly, the excitement spread. It sounded like a wind coming, rushing over the treetops in a wood. And Ansel found himself being kissed, patted, lifted off Brezel’s back to ride with Brock upon the shoulders of the crowd, in through the town gates and up the hill to the cathedral square.
THEY BUILT A PEN FOR THE DRAGON THERE. THE CARPENTERS who had been hired to make wooden scaffolding for the masons at work on the cathedral took their tools and stocks of wood and made a cage instead: four barred walls and a barred roof, just large enough to hold the beast, anchored with ropes to heavy stones that they dragged from the building site. It was almost dark by that time. Torches and braziers were set up around the cage, casting crazy shadows across the cobbles.
Brock reached in through the bars and cut the ropes that bound the dragon’s legs and wings. It scrambled upright, claws scraping on the strange-feeling stones beneath it. It looked smaller than it had on the mountain, and it was certainly shabbier, stained with mud and spittle, with patches of bare and bird-pale flesh showing through where the ropes had rubbed its scales off. Its yellow eyes stared around at the crowd. They jeered at it, and laughed when someone threw a rotten cabbage, which hit it between the eyes and made it flinch. Then Brock took a halberd from one of the town’s guards and managed after a long struggle to cut some of the ropes that held its mouth closed. It snapped the rest itself and slammed its wounded muzzle against the bars. Its dreadful roar bellowed across the square, crashing from the walls of the cathedral and the landgrave’s palace. The crowd scurried backward, leaving Brock to stand alone beside the cage. When they saw that the carpenters’ work was sound and the beast could not get free they started to edge in again, but each time it moved or made a sound they fell back, all of them at once, like a ripple in water.
Brock looked around at them, pleased at the impression that his catch had made. He ran his eyes over the ring of watching faces: children and ancients, peasants and paupers, mendicants, merchants, mountebanks, soldiers and priests, plain women and pretty ones. As far as he could tell the whole town had turned out to watch him kill the beast. The landgrave’s secretary was at the front of the crowd making drawings of it, frowning each time they jostled him, with a boy at his side to hold his inkhorn and spare pens.
“So where is His Lordship?” asked Brock, in an actorly voice that he meant the whole square to hear. “The landgrave should be here to see me dispatch the beast.”
The secre
tary looked up from his drawing. He wore spectacles of wood and glass, the first ever seen in that region. There was a smear of ink on the side of his nose. “The landgrave is away at present, sir. The emperor is hunting in the forest, and the landgrave has gone to pay his respects and join the sport.”
“Sport?” Brock did his best to hide his disappointment. “I wonder what sport he will find in the emperor’s woods. Boar? Deer? A badger or two? There was better hunting on his own mountain all along.”
The crowd cheered. Brock looked thoughtful. It seemed a shame that he had dragged the beast all this way if the lord of the place was not present to watch him kill it. “How far to these woods?” he asked.
“A half day’s ride,” the secretary said.
“Then send a messenger to fetch him home. Tell him to bring the emperor if he wishes. Tell him there is sport to be had here in his own town; if he hurries, he can be present when I slay this wild savage heathen monster. But he must hurry, for I do not think we can keep it penned up for long.”
He looked at the wild savage heathen monster, hoping that it would add some drama to his words by roaring, or barging the bars of its cage. But the dragon seemed to have given up; its big head hung down, and apart from a quick trembling in the muscles of its haunches it might as well have been a carven statue.
That night they gave Ansel a bed of his own to sleep in, in a room of his own, next to Brock’s, in the town’s best inn. It felt strange to be lying on a soft straw mattress again after his time on the mountain. He blew out the candle and watched the wavery orange light of the fires in the square ripple around the edges of the shutters. Songs were being sung down there, and dances danced, and beer drunk, while abuse and rubbish were hurled at the captive dragon. They were slinging hunks of old meat into its cage, and saying “Oooh!” and “Aaah!” as it sullenly tore them up and wolfed them down. Ansel wondered if Else and her mother were down there. He had not seen them since the dragon was carried in through the gates, and he could not be sure that they had come into the town at all. It felt strange to think that he might not see Else again, or have his chance to bid her farewell, after the dangers that they’d come through together.
He slept, and dreamed that this was all a dream and that he was still on the mountain. The dragon hunted him, howling.
When he woke it was quiet. No sound from the square, only the soft light of the dying-down fires lapping at the shutters’ rims. Ansel’s stomach ached from all the rich food he had crammed into it the night before.
He knew he could not sleep again, for fear of falling back into the same dream. He rose and went downstairs instead, stepping carefully over the potboys sprawled in the inn’s big lower room, lifting the latch and letting himself out into the chill night. The moon was low, resting on the shoulder of the Drachenberg. The town was quiet. Even the revelers in the square had grown bored of taunting the captive dragon and gone to their beds. Ansel walked past the snoozing guards who huddled around braziers of dull red coals and went up to the dragon’s cage.
It was not asleep. He saw the moon-gleam on its eye as he came close to it. He saw its scars and wounds in the moonlight. Poor dragon, he thought. The last of its kind, maybe. It seemed wrong that it should end up here, penned and mocked. It was not evil that had made it eat men and sheep and horses, any more than evil made a fox kill chickens. It was an animal; that was all.
The dragon snorted, and the hot cloud of its breath drifted past Ansel like stinking smoke. It pushed its head against the cage and there was a creaking sound, a wrenching. He looked down and saw where the ropes that held the cage door shut were fraying. All night long it must have been nudging against the bars with that same patient motion, too gentle to be noticed by the guards or the townspeople who came to gawp at it. And now the ropes were almost worn through. Ansel stood and watched. He knew that he should warn someone, but he didn’t. He just stood there, and strand by strand the rope frayed through.
The dragon, perhaps recognizing his scent out of all the baffling scents of the town, gave a low growl and barged at the bars. The ropes strained. One snapped. The dragon shoved its nose out through the gap between the door and cage, then drew it back and barged again. The remaining ropes gave way and the door swung wide.
Ansel kept walking carefully backward while the dragon eased itself cautiously out into the square. It flexed its long neck and stretched its wings and he felt again the cold terror that he had known on the mountain. He had grown so used to that feeling that he almost welcomed it.
“Hey!” shouted a man’s voice behind him. “Hey! The beast’s free!”
There were cries of alarm, curses, scuffling sounds as the guards snatched up their spears and halberds. Running footsteps, as some men fled. Others came past Ansel toward the dragon, their weapons held out nervously in front of them. One man shook Ansel and shouted angrily in his face, wanting to know why he hadn’t warned them that the monster was loose.
Even if Ansel had had a voice, he would not have been able to answer. How could he explain that he pitied the dragon, and half wanted it to be free again?
Another man said, “Leave him. It’s the dragon hunter’s boy; he’s dumb.”
The dragon roared. The guard sergeant, braver than his men, lurched forward, jabbing his halberd at it. It snatched the weapon in its jaws and bit the shaft in half. The rusty blade rang as it dropped on the cobbles, and like an echo came the clattering of other weapons being thrown down as the men took flight. In one of the houses across the square a woman screamed. The dragon swung its head this way and that, scenting prey everywhere, confused by the sounds of panic, which came from every doorway and street opening in the straggle of buildings that faced the cathedral. Stalking toward the closest house, it shoved its head in through a shuttered window, groping inside in just the same way that it had groped inside the shepherd’s shelter on the mountain on the morning when Ansel first saw it. Shrieks and shouts came from inside the house, and the crying of a scared child.
Ansel found himself moving toward it. He looked down and saw his own feet moving him across the moonlit cobbles without his thinking about it. He knew he had to stop the dragon. Brock was still abed most likely: They’d have trouble waking him after all the wine that Ansel had seen him drink. Anyway, it was not Brock’s fault that the thing was free.
Ansel flapped his hands at the dragon, but it had its tail to him, its head deep in the stricken house, whose walls were beginning to show cracks as the beast forced more and more of itself in through the window. Ansel picked up a cobble that its claws had gouged loose as it crossed the square and threw it as hard as he could, but the dragon only twitched, then ignored him and went on trying to stuff itself into that house.
Helpless, he felt his face crumple up as if he were a little boy again, getting ready to wail in anger or unhappiness. He hated the dragon. He hated the mountain. He hated the town. He hated the life that had led him here, Brock and his father and all of it. He hated being alone. He wanted Else with him again. He wanted his mother. And he felt all that hatred and want starting to gather somewhere behind his breastbone, a knot of pressure that grew and grew until he couldn’t breathe, or swallow, or think, until he was sure he was going to explode.
The house door burst open. A terrified family spilled out into the square in their nightclothes, the older children carrying the younger ones, their mother and father lugging an aged grandfather between them in a high-backed chair.
The dragon, scenting them, tugged its head free of their crumbling house front and wheeled toward them. And Ansel ran toward it with that impossible knot inside him, and let it blare out of his mouth in a shout. He spewed sound. It was as if he had saved up the breath of every word he might have uttered in all his years of speechlessness and let them all out at once. He roared at the dragon, loud enough to make it forget the huddled family in front of it and remember him. Loud enough to make the whole square clang like a swung bell.
“No!”
In
the quiet afterward, as he gasped in a great breath of air, he saw Else and her mother watching him from the end of one of the streets that opened off the square. They looked as astonished as he was by the noise he’d made. Catching his breath, he started to smile at them, and then he heard the dragon’s flinty claws go click, click, click upon the cobbles as it began to run at him.
He turned and took off running himself, heading nowhere, seeing the cathedral loom up in front of him like a cliff. At its foot was a cave, an unfinished doorway screened with sackcloth and tarred canvas. He could hear the dragon’s talons scraping across the cobbles behind him. Then they stopped, and he looked back, half hoping it had given up, but it had simply taken to the air, wings spread, half leaping and half soaring across the empty square in its pursuit of him.
He reached the doorway, crashed against the sackcloth screen, found a gap in it, and shot into the cathedral like a rabbit down its burrow.
For a moment he was alone in the cool and sacred shadows with only the slap of his running feet for company. Then the screens on the doorway behind him ripped and the dragon was inside with him, its snorting breath echoing under the high vaultings of the roof. Light came in with it — a dropped lamp in the house it had been menacing had started a fire — and its ungainly shadow spread across the newly paved floor as it stretched out its neck and its big head swung to and fro, snuffling for Ansel.
He kept running, through ranks of pillars that rose around him like trees in a stone forest. He was looking for another door, but the cathedral seemed to be turning around him in the dark and he could not see one. At the end of the nave a spidery tower of scaffolding rose, marking the place where the masons were at work on the spire. In the midst of it, as if in a tall cage, a ladder stretched upward, like Jacob’s, into Heaven. Ansel flung himself at it and went up, up, feeling the dragon’s jaws close on the lower rungs and yank it furiously aside just as he reached a planked platform at the top. He heard the ladder go crashing down behind him as he crossed the platform and started to climb a second.
