by Rick Shelley
Harkane backed away as I caught his opponent from the side. There was no trouble with elegant form this time either. My first swing bit about halfway into my foe's upper arm. He turned toward me but couldn't do much to defend himself. He managed to block my next blow, but not the lunge that caught his throat after that.
I didn't waste time looking south for the other group of riders. I didn't need to look. I could feel the elf warrior and his band getting closer, and, near the end of my second duel, I could feel something more deadly than a host of elf warriors.
Harkane and Lesh combined to dispatch the last member of the small patrol. I looked south and then up finally… and saw death overtaking the elf's band. An immense shadow drew my eyes upward. A dragon was swooping down toward the galloping riders.
"To the swamp!" I shouted at my companions. We raced northeast, but we kept looking back over our shoulders toward the group pursuing us and the dragon pursuing them. The elf drew his six-foot sword, looked back, and kicked at his horse's flanks, looking for more speed from the already-overtaxed steed. The elf's head turned left, then right. Maybe he was shouting at his men. He was still too far away for me to be certain. His men spurred their mounts on, hardly needing encouragement, trying to outrun the flying death behind them.
It was an impossible flight.
"Hold up!" Annick shouted behind me, after we had crossed about half of the beach. "The dragon chases motion."
I reined in quickly. There wasn't time for a round-table discussion on the subject, but it made a certain kind of sense. We dismounted and moved to our horses' heads to hold them as still as possible. The horses weren't happy about sticking around.
I saw a large blob fall from the dragon.
"What's it doing, bombing them?" I asked softly. It wouldn't have surprised me.
"Just lightening up, I expect," Lesh said. "Dropping a load of crap from his last meal." Lesh's snort wasn't quite a laugh. "I've seen dragon droppings. Must drop more'n ton at a time. One of those turds hits you, you've had it." He was serious. That was obvious, but the image he conjured up almost sent me into hysterics. I managed to hold back the laugh that was trying to get past my fear, but it was a struggle. Still, there was nothing at all funny in what was going on.
The dragon struck. There was nothing the four of us could do but watch. At the moment, that dragon was saving our bacon, but I couldn't help but feel for the men-and even the elf-that it was attacking. Each massive front talon grabbed a horse and rider. The dragon's jaws opened and bit off the top half of another rider as it pulled out of its dive. The elf stood in his stirrups and took a full swing at the beast. He connected with the dragon's shoulder, just in front of the left wing, but the blade bounced back and the elf nearly tumbled to the sand. He might as well have tried to slice the wing off a 747 with a Swiss Army knife. The dragon climbed quickly. One of the men in its grasp fell, still on his horse. That was from about two hundred feet up. Then the dragon dropped the rest of his grisly cargo and dove again. And again. Each time, he got one or two riders and horses, until only the elf was left.
The elf jumped off his horse and slapped its rump to run the animal off. I couldn't guess if he hoped that the dragon would chase the animal and leave him alone or if he just wanted to get the horse out of the way. The dragon circled and dove again, not at all distracted by the panicked horse racing north. The elf faced the dragon, his claymore out in both hands, ready for his last stand. It couldn't be anything but a last stand. The dragon came low, then climbed and circled again, surveying the carnage he had already caused. He eyed the elf, then climbed to make another power dive, pulling up just as he reached his target, stalling to a stop.
As they met, the elf sliced at the bottom of the dragon's jaw and black blood spurted down on him. As far off as we were, I heard the thud of the blade biting into the dragon, the rushing sound of blood gushing out-like water from a fire hose. The dragon reached out with a talon that was bigger than the elf… and the elf sliced it off cleanly. More blood spurted. I wondered how sharp that blade was. It seemed incredible.
The dragon folded his wings and dropped on the elf. I figured that that was the end of the affair, since the dragon had to weigh hundreds, maybe thousands, of tons. But after a long moment of the dragon thrashing about, we saw the elf crawl out from under one wing. The wing flailed and knocked the elf face first into the sand-hard. Almost at once, the elf started crawling forward again, dragging himself a few feet farther from the dragon. The reptile was still thrashing, its head weaving like a cobra rising from a snake charmer's basket. Thunderous groans came from its slack jaw. It was hurt, but still very much alive.
Incredibly, the elf was also still alive. Somehow. He got to his knees slowly, in obvious pain. I shook my head, marveling that anyone could take that amount of abuse and not only survive but be able to get to his feet afterward. But the elf couldn't walk. He stumbled and fell back to his knees and crawled toward his sword. He had to inch his way, and he collapsed twice before he reached it. The dragon started waddling after the elf, moving just as slowly. The missing foot was hampering him, I guess, as much as the blood he had lost.
Without warning my companions, I mounted and kneed my horse, aiming him toward the combatants and giving him a slack rein. Annick and the others followed as soon as they saw what I was doing. They were as captivated as I was by the duel. Even our horses had lost some of the fear they had displayed before.
The elf used his sword to help him get to his feet, though it was a clumsy crutch, digging into the sand. When he picked up the sword to hold it out toward the dragon, he swayed, obviously unsteady, but he managed to raise the sword over his head, and he sliced forward, biting into the dragon's snout-but that snout butted the elf and hurled him and his sword away. The blade stuck in the sand, a cross to mark its owner's grave… but not yet. The elf crawled toward the sword again, determined and somehow able to move, however slowly. But this time, he just couldn't make it all the way. He collapsed eight feet short of the mark. His face flopped into the sand. Then he lifted his head a little and looked at the blade, a hopeless distance away.
But the dragon wasn't ready to continue the fight immediately either. Its head was also down in the sand, one open eye watching its quarry while it tried to gather strength to finish the battle.
I reached the elf and dismounted a few feet short of where he lay sprawled. My plan was to carry him away from the dragon, do what I could for him. After the fight he'd put up, I didn't want to leave him to be part of the monster's supper. The elf warrior was fair of face and hair, his skin as pale as Annick's, his eyes the palest blue I had ever seen. Mortally wounded, he still looked like a movie star. I knelt down to him in unconscious homage to his valor. I could feel his magic. He could feel mine.
The elf opened his eyes and looked up at me. "Take my sword, Hero," he said, struggling with the words, "and slay me this dragon that I may die in peace."
I looked from the elf to the sword that was as tall as I am, then on at the dragon that was the size of an airliner. Sure thing, I thought. I recalled hearing someone say that dragons couldn't be killed by a mortal, and Parthet's inability to name one who had. But when I looked at this dragon, I thought that-maybe-most of the work had already been done.
"If I can," I told the elf as my companions arrived.
"Highness…" Lesh started, but I waved him quiet.
I pulled the claymore from the sand. It was the largest sword I had ever held, but it didn't feel nearly as heavy as I'd expected. I had handled a couple of claymores once, but I'd never had the chance to practice with them. I held the blade straight out in front of me and walked back to the elf. If he was concerned that I might use it on him instead of on the dragon, he didn't show it.
"A deep thrust, straight through an eye," he said. The words came out singly, labored. A little blood flowed from the corner of the elf's mouth. "Aim for the middle of the back of its head." I nodded. The elf closed his eyes for a second. As I stalked cl
oser to the dragon, though, the elf lifted his head to watch.
The dragon was also watching me. One amber eye stared, tracking my movements. The head waggled weakly. The dragon couldn't raise its head out of my reach, though it tried. Its wings fluttered weakly. It tried to turn away, tried to interpose a wing between us, but it couldn't move fast enough to avoid me. I hoped it was too weak for one last burst of defiance.
This all seemed to be happening in slow motion. I guess my mind was running a little faster than usual. But stalking from the elf to the dragon, I had more than enough time to consider that the dragon's relationship to the reptiles of the real world had to be pretty ancient, if there was any direct link at all. It had a huge bloated body and a head that looked positively puny in comparison. A pinhead. Still, that head was big enough to cause problems without half trying.
I slashed at the dragon's snout when it opened its yap-a gaping food hole that I could have walked into without bending over. The mouth slammed shut again.
An eye was going to be quite a reach for me. Maybe the dragon had a pinhead in relation to his size, but the head was still bigger than an elephant. I moved around to the side. The eye, about the size of a soccer ball, looked down at me from just above the top of my own head. I took a deep breath and tightened my grip on the elf's sword. Behind the head, the dragon's thin neck curled back to a body that was taller than a two-story building. The head tilted my way, bringing my target a little closer. I stepped forward and thrust the sword into the eye with every bit of my strength (and whatever "strength of Vara" being Hero of Varay was supposed to give me), leaning into the hilt with my shoulder, pushing until the dragon's renewed thrashing around pulled the sword out of my hands-and out of my reach. I backed off fast, almost tripping over my own feet in my hurry to get out of the way. Black blood and purple goo spurted from the eye. The dragon flopped and twisted for minutes before it was finally still. The head lolled over, the wounded eye staring blindly into the sand.
"I think it's dead," I mumbled-too softly for anyone to hear, I think. Then I pulled the sword out of the eye, cleaned the blade in the sand, and carried it back to the elf.
"Well done, Hero," he said. Then his eyes closed for the last time. I knelt and felt for a pulse in his neck. Nothing. It was strange-not that he was dead, but the way I felt. Not long before, I had been ready to fight him, but now I was mourning his death. I looked up at Annick as I stood.
"He wasn't your father by any chance, was he?" I asked.
Annick shook her head firmly. "No, he can't be. I'm sure I would know if we met."
I wasn't about to get into a discussion about that.
"I guess we should bury him," I said instead.
"Even I wouldn't dishonor him so," Annick said. "An elf warrior belongs out in the open air." I wasn't going to argue. I knew zip about elf customs and I wasn't at all sure I wanted to learn.
"Whatever you say." I felt tired suddenly, fatigue just trying to swallow me whole. I stabbed the claymore into the sand at the elf's head. "I wish I knew his name. He was really something fighting that dragon." A true hero, I thought. I looked down. The magic I had felt from him before was gone. A supposed immortal had found that he wasn't, not by a long shot. I shook my head and started to walk toward my horse.
"You're not going to leave his sword, are you?" Harkane asked. His voice actually sounded pained.
"Why not?" I asked.
Annick answered. "To leave an elf warrior's sword would be disaster. It would return to kill you."
"Why? I didn't kill him."
"It will seek you out if you abandon it, though. That is the way of such weapons."
Again, I couldn't argue the point. I didn't know what I was talking about. I pulled the blade from the sand. Harkane pulled loose a heavy sash from the elf's body. The claymore hadn't been in a normal sheath. Two spring-loaded C-clamps closed over blade and guard. I strapped on the rig and tried it. With proper pressure, the clamps freed the blade-very smartly.
There were a bunch of fancy characters etched high on the flat of the blade, above the blood channel, near the guard. Annick looked at them and said, "The runes name this sword Dragon's Death." For one dragon at least, I thought. I looked at the runes, traced them with my finger. I had thought that the translation magic was supposed to handle writing too-I had been able to read that Chapbook once I got to Varay-but I couldn't make out anything at first. But when I looked closer, I could read the inscription. The script was just very convoluted, worse than my mother's handwriting.
With the sword in my hand now, I could feel its magic.
14 – Elflord
We chased our shadows away from the Mist after we washed off the gore of battle. Despite the continuing risk of being discovered along the beach, all four of us went into the sea to get clean. The salt water stung our minor cuts from the fight with the swamp trolls, but I figured that that was all to the good. It might clean them out, lessen the chance of infection. We headed northeast then, deeper into Fairy. At first, I aimed that way just because it seemed to be the fastest route away from the carnage on the beach. Then it seemed right for a couple of better reasons. Most important, any pursuit would look to the south if anyone suspected that we had come up from Varay. And going north might actually give me a chance to sow some of that confusion I had bragged about, my wild idea to make the Elflord of Xayber think that one of his peers was raiding his territory.
Sunset caught us before we had traveled far, but we kept going as long as we had enough light to navigate by in the open. We stayed clear of the swamp and even avoided the gnarled forest as much as possible. After two hours of riding, we found a sheltered area away from the road that looked decent. There was fresh running water for everyone, and plenty of grass for the horses.
I didn't tell the others that I planned to keep going deeper into Fairy until we camped for the night. There were no objections. I hadn't expected any. Lesh and Harkane would obey orders, and Annick was delighted at any chance to hurt the Elflord of Xayber some more. Going farther into Xayber's territory was a gamble-and quite possibly stupid. I had no way to know how powerful the magic of the elflords was. I didn't know a lot about Fairy and the seven kingdoms. But I did know that we were going to have to take some real risks to have any chance to stand off both the elflord and the Etevar.
I took the first watch again and sat with the two-handed elf sword in my lap. Dragon's Death. The blade felt sharp enough to shave metal with but so strong that it couldn't be nicked or damaged in a fight. Even after seeing the blade in action, I thought that it was an impossible combination. The hilt of Dragon's Death was designed for larger hands than mine, but I could hold it. I might even be able to wield it in a fight-but not a marathon. It was a magic blade. I was still new at all this magic hocus-pocus, but I could feel the sword's magic in my mind, and that's something else that is hard to explain. On the simplest level, it was something like the static electricity discharged when two sets of the family rings touched, an aura, or maybe a physical field. I wished that I knew what the sword's magic was, precisely, how it might help or hurt me. Maybe Parthet would be able to puzzle it out when we got back to Varay. Using a magic I didn't fully understand could be dangerous. I had no trouble thinking of magic as a weapon-a weapon with all the potential of a gun or a sword. Of course, I was already using a lot of magic I didn't really comprehend-the magic of the Hero, the magic of the doors, the magic of the land itself.
It all needed a lot of thought, and I was too tired to do it all that night. I hadn't had a full night's sleep since leaving Varay, and our last night in the swamp had been almost sleepless. An exhausting day had followed. Gil Tyner-Dragon Slayer. Another ludicrous title to add to my collection. Fortunately, my danger sense didn't kick up all night. I woke Annick and went to sleep. When Harkane woke me just before dawn, I felt rested enough for another day in the saddle.
We crossed the spine of the isthmus early that morning and turned north between the main ridge and a line o
f lower hills to the east. The paths were narrow, often steep, but at least we didn't have the swamp or low-hanging branches to worry about. After the past couple of days, it was almost a picnic. No one had any idea how far we might have to go to find a village or town to harass. I had a rough idea of racing through some sleepy little burg and setting fire to a few buildings before we turned around and scooted south. I didn't want to skulk around slitting throats in the night. Maybe I would face the warriors of Fairy in battle someday, but I had no taste for the kind of action that Annick seemed to delight in.
Since my danger sense remained quiescent-just barely ticking over-we didn't push our horses while we headed deeper into Fairy. I wanted to save their speed for our escape. Late that afternoon, I used my bow to bring down a miniature mountain goat after Lesh said that they made good eating. There was a sheltered dent in the hillside nearby, and Lesh assured me that he could make a smokeless fire, so we made camp early and got ready for a hot meal. We hadn't seen anyone on the road all day, hadn't even heard any horn calls.
Lesh did the cooking. Harkane tended the horses. I climbed the ridge to get a better view of the countryside. Annick followed me.
"You don't think much of me, do you?" she asked when I stopped just below the crest, maybe 150 feet above our camp.
I peeked out over the top of the ridge, careful not to stick my head up too far. There was nothing special to see, just more country like that we had been riding through. Then I sat on a rock and looked at Annick. I couldn't, wouldn't, come out flat and tell her that I thought she was a bloodthirsty bitch. But I wouldn't lie to her either.
