Dragons!

by Various

"No, that knowledge I know not."

  "Small wonder you would, you being a hero and all. Stand up for yerself, do what you like, go where the fancy takes you. But regular army? We don't dare take a shit without proper orders to wipe off with after. So when there wasn't none coming through, we dug in where we was, up

  by the Wall, took up with the local ladies, bred our boys to the Legion and our girls to bribe any tribes we couldn't beat in a fair fight, and we waited." Caius rested his face on one hand, forgetting it was the one he'd been using to dip into Ursus' helmet. "We're still waiting, man and boy, father to son, can't tell you how bloody long it's been."

  The barbarian tilted his helmet and slurped out the last of the plundered honey. He wiped his gooey whiskers on the back of an equally hairy forearm, then said:

  "Strangely this strikes me as scoop-skulled.

  Why do you wait and wonder?

  Beneath your brows lurk brains or bran?

  Sit you thus centuries? Shitheads."

  Caius made a hand-sign that translated across any number of cultures. "Look, mate, so long as our bleedin' commander, latest in a long line of Imperially appointed shitheads, has got more than three like old Junie there to lick his tail and say please, sir, what's for afters? it's no use running off. There's precious little as is to keep the men occupied. Hunting down a deserter'd be a rare treat for any of 'em. And it's as much as my life's worth to speak up and say let's break camp and head south like sensible folk, try to scare up some news from Rome as isn't staler than week-old pig piss. See, so long as we're up here, our commander's the law. Go south, and he could find out that the only thing he's got a right to control is his own bladder, and not too strict a say over that. So if a man's fool enough to suggest a move off the Wall, `Orders is orders,' he'd say, `and traitors is traitors. And we of the Glorious Ninth know what to do with traitors, don't we, Junie, me proud beauty?' "

  "Crudely crucify the creatures," Ursus supplied.

  "You're not just talking through yer helmet there, mate," Caius agreed. "Speaking of which, it's in a proper mess. Give 'er here to me, and you go fetch that boar-sticker of yours out of the log. We'll have a proper wash-up--me for the helmet, you for the blade, before she rusts silly, doesn't anybody ever teach you barbarians respect for a good bit of steel?—then we'll go back to camp and get some oil for the

  pair of 'em. Supper's ready, and if we let it go to the bad, Junie' 11 be off crucifying us left and right again."

  "Dares he the deed to do,

  Sooner my sword shall steep its steel,

  Blood-drinker, blade and brother,

  Entirely in his entrails."

  Caius took up the helmet, beaming. "You're a decent sort, Bee-wolf, for a bleedin' hero." He toddled down the slope to rinse out the helmet.

  As he squatted to his task in the shallows, a tuneless ditty on his lips, a loud, wet, crunch hard by his right foot made him start and keel over into the murky water. The helmet went flying out over the fenland, landing with an echoing plop in a nearby pool.

  Junius Claudius Maro leaned hard on the eagle standard and observed the helm's trajectory with a critical eye. "Now you shall not escape punishment, Caius Lucius Piso."

  "Punishment?" Caius spluttered, scarcely feeling the cold water that seeped through his clothes. Rage kept him warm. "After you was the one as scared the bracae off me, sneaking up and chunking that whopping great standard into the sod like you was trying to spit me foot with it?" He picked himself up out of the shoreline muck and hailed the hummock. "Oi! Bee-wolf! You saw him do that, didn't you? You saw as it wasn't no fault of mine that your helmet—"

  But Bee-wolf was not paying attention to the angry little Roman. He stood on the high ground, honey still gumming his beard, and stared out across the fen to the spot where his boar-crest helmet had gone down. He made no move to yank his sword free of the fallen log where it still stood wedged in the heart of the ruined beehive. Something in the barbarian's sudden pallor and paralysis stilled Caius' own tongue. From the corner of one eye, he saw that Junie was likewise rapt with terror. He did not want to see what had frightened them so, but, at last, look he did.

  The fen bubbled. The slimy surface heaved. Slowly, seemingly as slender as a maiden's arm, a snakey form broke the face of the stagnant water. On and on it came,

  climbing even higher into the clear air, until Caius thought that there simply could not be any more to come without ripping reality wide open and sending all the world plunging down into the gods' own nightmares. He was only half aware of the eagle standard toppling over into the mud as Junie whirled and fled. This sudden movement galvanized the lazily rising length of serpentine flesh. The spade-shaped head darted within arm's length of Caius, ignoring the petrified little man as if he were part of the scenery. A maw lined with needle-like teeth gaped open, impossibly wide, and sharp jaws clamped shut around Junie, hauberk, shriek, and all.

  "Oh, I say!" Caius exclaimed, as his comrade's scream knocked his own tongue free. Automatically, he stooped to retrieve the fallen standard, then turned to the hummock and bawled, "There's your bloody fen-monster, Bee-wolf, old boy! Do for 'er now while she's busy with poor Junie and you've got surprise on yer . .." His words dribbled away.

  The high ground was bare, the hero nowhere to be seen.

  "Coward!" came Marcus' angry shout from the direction of camp. "You pusillanimous, recreant, craven, dastardly, caitiff—O0000h, you rabbit, come back with Cai's sword!" The commander's secretary came stomping into sight of the fen just as the monster commenced reeling in a struggling Junie.

  Caius heard Marcus's yips of shock blend nicely with Junie's continued screaming and blubbering. The dragon was imperturbable, allowing the bulk of his still-submerged and leisurely sinking body to drag his prize into the fen. Caius watched as span after span of sequentially decreasing neck slipped past him. It would not be long before Junie followed, down into the fen, without so much as a last vale for his old messmate.

  "Bloody foreigners," Caius grumbled, and, raising the eagle standard high, he brought it crunching down as hard as he was able, just at the moment when the monster's head came by.

  BONK.

  The dragon froze, its wicked mouth falling open. Junius

  flopped out. He wasted no time in questioning deliverance, but hauled his body free. He was breathing hoarsely—no doubt he had a rib or two the worse for wear—but he was able to pull himself a little ways up the shore.

  Caius smashed the beast in the head again with the eagle of the Ninth, putting all his weight in it. He and Junie looked at each other. "One bloody word out of you about damaging legion property, Junie," he shouted, "and it's back in the fen I'll toss you myself!"

  "Not a word, not one!" Junie wheezed, pulling himself farther up the bank. Marcus came running down, holding his tunic well out of the mud, and tried to hoist the injured man without soiling himself. It was an impossible endeavor.

  "Cai, leave that horrid creature alone and come here right now and help me with Junius!" he called. "Go on, let it be, it's had enough."

  "Stop yer gob, will you?" Caius was panting with the effort of using the legion standard as a bludgeon, but he lofted it for a third blow anyhow. "If this bugger's just stunned, I'm nearest, and I'll be twigged if I'll be the tasty pud to tempt an invalid monster's palate when it comes to. Not just to keep your tunic clean, Missy Vestal!"

  "Well, who died and made us Jupiter Capitolinus?" With a peeved sniff, Marcus slung Junie's arm around his neck, letting the mud slop where it would. "If you're still speaking to the plebs, Cai, we'll be back in camp." He hustled Junie out of sight without waiting to see the eagle descend for the third time.

  The beast had been hissing weakly, but the final smash put paid to that. There was a sickening crunch that Caius felt all the way up his arms and shoulders, and then it was no longer possible to tell where the monster's skull ended and the bogland began. Caius wiped his sweating brow, getting honey all over his face. "That's done," he said, "and
damned if anyone'll credit it. Goewin won't, for one; not without proof, and that means the head." He felt for his sword, then remembered that not only had he left it in camp, but the barbarian had made off with it.

  "Vesta's smoking hole!" He thrust the standard deep

  into the sodden ground, cradling it in the crook of one arm as he raised cupped hands to lips and bellowed, "Oi! Marcus! Fetch me back Junie's sword when yer at a loose end, there's a dear!" He waited. Not even an echo returned.

  Caius called again, then another time, until he felt a proper fool. He left the standard rooted where it was and trudged back to the camp, only to find that all of it—tent, packs, gear, cookpots and dinner—was gone. In the failing light, he spied two rapidly retreating figures headed in the direction of the Wall.

  "Plague rot 'em, lights and liver," Caius muttered. "Look at the buggers run! I never saw Junie move that fast, even when he wasn't chawed over by a dragon." He patted his legion dagger, still firmly tucked into his belt. "Well, old girl, it'll be a long saw, but you and me, we'll have that bleeder's head off right enough, even does it take us all night. After all, it's my dragon."

  Caius' chest inflated with pride as he realized the full measure of his deed. "Didn't even need a sword to kill 'im," he told the air. "And if there's any man likes to fancy that means I did for the monster barehanded, who's to tell the tale any different?" He was fairly swaggering by the time he returned to the scene of his triumph.

  His mood of self-congratulation quickly soured to outrage when he beheld the tableau awaiting him at the fenside. The eagle had fallen again, knocked down by the hopeless struggle of a raggedy, gray-bearded relic who had the dragon by the narrowest bit of its neck and was obviously trying to yank the whole enormous carcase out of the water, hand over hand. The head, already pulpy, could not long stand such cavalier treatment. It squashed into splinters of bone and globs of unidentifiable tissue in the old man's grasp.

  "Here, now!" Caius barked, rushing forward too late to preserve his trophy. He shouldered the gaffer aside, stared at what once might have been the full price of Goewin's respect—to say nothing of that of the commander and the Ninth—and burst into tears.

  The old man cowered and wrung his hands, squeezing out

  little pips of blood and brain matter from between the palms. "Noble Chieftain, forgive this worthless fool for having dared to presume you had abandoned your lawful kill!" He spoke Gaelic, a dialect slightly different from Goewin's folk.

  "Oh, you pasty old fiend, you've bally ruined everything!" Caius wailed, kicking the goo that had once been the dragon's head. "How am I ever going to prove I slew the beast without the head to show for it? I can't bloody well tow the whole fucking corpse down the Wall, can I now?"

  "You might take a handful of the teeth with you, my lord," the old man suggested timidly, awed by Caius' passion.

  "Oh, yes!" Caius did not bother to trim his sarcasm. "Dragon's teeth'll do, won't they? When every peddler the length and breadth of Britain's got bags full of such trumpery—grind 'em up and slip 'em in yer wine when yer woman wants cheering and you can't afford unicorn's horn or a legionary's pay—each and all culled from the mouths of any great fish luckless enough to wash up dead on the seacoast?" He gulped for breath, then spat, "Think the commander don't know that much? He's one of their biggest customers. You stupid sod!"

  "High Chief, do but calm your wrath against me." The old man pointed a palsied finger at the pool that still concealed the bulk of the beast. "Together we can surely pull the monster's body onto land, and then you have but to cut out its heart and eat it and then—"

  Caius stopped crying and frowned. "You off yer nut entire, or are you just senile? Eat a beastly dragon's heart? Whuffo?"

  "Why, High Chief, then you shall be wiser than any wizard and understand the speech of all the birds of the air!" The old man flung his arms wide. He wore no more than a mantle of red deer hide, with a knot of anonymously colored cloth doing up his loins. His expansive gesture wafted the full power of his personal aroma right into Caius's face.

  The legionary wiped his nose, then pinched it shut. "Is

  thad whad you was doing? Trying to beach this creature so as to ead id's heart and have yerself a chat with the birdies?" The old man nodded. Caius dropped his pinching fingers. "Mithra, what sort of cuckoo hatched you?"

  The oldster hung his head. "My mother was a wise woman, my father I never knew. At my birth, the bards of our tribe tell that two dragons coupled in a field hereabouts and—"

  "Right, right." Caius waved him silent. "Serve me right, asking for the straight story from a Celt," he said to himself. Aloud he added, "You one of them wizard fellers yerself, then? Or can't you afford decent clothes, just?"

  A sly glint came into the old man's eye. When he smiled, Caius beheld a mouthful of the memories of decent teeth. "King and lord, you are as all-seeing as you are all-valiant. I am indeed privy to the occult forces of nature."

  "Well, I knew there was summat of the privy about you," Caius riposted. He chortled over his own sally until he caught the look the old man was giving him. He decided to return to his wrathful pose; folk treated you with more honor if they feared you were going to send their conks down the same route he'd shown the dragon.

  Thoughts of the beast forced him to consider the ruined trophy and his present position. Although he glared doom at the old man, in his heart he knew that he would not be able to afford the luxury of such a killing look when he faced his commander again.

  Junie and Marcus, they'll make camp before I do, what with the time I'm wasting on this geezer and the thought of what I've got to say, he reflected. Even with Junie banged up like he is, they'll stir their stumps to be first in line with the tale of what happened to the dragon. Think for a tick they'll make it truthful? Huh! That'd mean old Junie'd have to admit as he was near ate and saved by me. Me! He'd sooner—Well, he'd sooner crucify hisself, given there was a way to see that stunt through.

  Caius scraped his chin with fingers still sticky from the honey harvest and regarded the self-styled wizard thought-

  fully. "Here," he said. "You called that great wallopin' beast me lawful kill, didn't yer?"

  "Oh, aye, that I did, most awful lord."

  "Saw the whole thing happen, did yer?"

  The old man grinned like a death's head and nearly bobbed the head off his meager neck in agreement as he pointed to the paltry stand of scrub that had been his hiding place throughout the epic conflict.

  "That's all right, then." Caius was better than satisfied. "You'll just nip along back to the legion camp with me and tell anyone as I points you at just exactly what happened here, how I stepped up bold to that 'ere dragon and—"

  The old man's eyes rolled back in his head and he sank cross-legged to the ground. A horrid gurgling welled out of his throat as he tilted his face skywards. "Bold came the high king, master of men, open-handed to the least of his servants, and the golden eagle flew before him, symbol of his might and fame. Fled they all three, the cowards who had served him, leaving him lone to fight the unwholesome beast of the bogland. Terrible was his ire against the fainthearted. Cursing, he killed one man for his shameful act, striking him down like a dog—"

  "Now just a minute, you old rattlebrain, I never killed no one but the dragon!"

  The old man opened his eyes so sharply that Caius thought he heard a whiperack. "Now you've made me lose the sacred thread of creation, O High Chief." He managed to make the highflown title sound like a synonym for numbskull.

  "An, that don't signify. There wasn't half the truth in what you were saying—leave it to you Celts—and if the commander's not drunker than Silenus when he hears you out, he'll rule as all of what you have to say is pure horseshit."

  An uneasy inspiration creased Caius' brow. "Excepting for the part as where you says I killed someone. Bee-wolf, curse him, he's gone. Who's to say what's become of him? That Junie and Marcus, they're clever as a brace of seaport whores, the pair of 'em. Sh
ouldn't take 'em long to club

  together and tell the commander that I murdered the hero while they did for the dragon. Nodens' nuts, Junie's got the battle scars to prove it! And what've I got? What in bloody Hades have 1 got?" The gristle of reality stuck in his throat and he crumpled down beside the old man, sniveling.

  "Does this mean that my noble lord will not help his sworn servant to cut out the dragon's heart?" the graybeard asked by way of comfort.

  "Oh, go help yerself to the soddin' heart, you old fool!" Caius sobbed. "Can't you see I've me own troubles?"

  "The burden of rule falls heavy on the uncounseled," the old man intoned with due solemnity. "Yet, by my head, I swear never to give you ill-considered advice, nor to let aught but wise words pour from my lips into your ears."

  "You try pouring anything into my ears, grizzlepate, and I'll cosh you a good one!" Caius raised his fists to the darkening sky. "Oh gods, not even a place to lay me head tonight, and odds are it won't be many days before the commander sends out a patrol to hunt me down!"

  "Over the dead bodies of your guardsmen, my lord." The old man looked grim but determined.

  "Over—what?" Caius asked.

  Even allowing for oral decoration and a useless genealogical sidebar tracing the ancestry of the dragon's last-butone victim, it did not take the old man too long to inform Caius that the beast had caused the death of his tribe's chieftain, a man of sterling character and many cattle. An upstart stripling named Llassar Llawr of the Lake Country had tried to avenge the chief's consumption, but he too had been dragged into the fen for his troubles.

  "Is that why you were here, skulking about?" the Roman asked. "Waiting to see was anyone else fool enough to have a go at the monster, so's you could leap out and ask for a gob of heart did they succeed?"

  "I was not skulking." The old man puffed up like an infected wound. "Wizards have no need to skulk. I was in trance, communing with the gods, awaiting a sign to foretell the coming of a hero to defeat the dragon and take the right of kingship over our tribe. Since the beast took the life of