by Jon Hollins
“I knew her since she was a calf, is all,” Will said, trying to keep his voice steady. “My pa birthed her, but I raised her for the first years. He used to give me the younger animals to look after. The ones headed for pasture anyway. I mucked her out. Kept her hay clean. Cleaned the burrs off her coat.”
Quirk nodded sympathetically. “That’s a hard thing,” she said. “To be there for both the start and the end of a life. I cannot imagine wanting to be there for the whole of that journey.”
Will nodded, permitted himself a sniff.
Quirk rested a hand on his shoulder. “Honestly, it’s impressive,” she said. “Your drive to see this through. Passion for revenge conceived in the heat of the moment can be hard to sustain, especially when you are faced with the need to sacrifice things you have loved.” She smiled at him, full of understanding. “Regret is not weakness, Will. It is a demonstration of humanity, of compassion.”
Will nodded again, grateful. He was glad Quirk was with him in this. It would be harder with Balur or Firkin. People who could not understand.
“Now,” Quirk said, “please hold Ethel still. I have at least a gallon of this potion to force into her.”
They spent the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon climbing the great zigzagging road that led up from the valley floor. It slowly switched back and forth as the landscape transformed from fields, to forest, to rock and scree.
Finally, the gate to Mattrax’s castle loomed before them—a great monstrosity of oak that couldn’t have made Will feel more unwelcome had the iron studs that punctuated its surface been arranged to read “Piss off.” Around it, rock had been piled into a gatehouse built along a similar theme. Beyond it, a jagged crack in the rocky ground pitched down into a dry moat. And beyond that, Mattrax’s fortress rose.
If the gatehouse was unwelcoming, the fortress was positively rude about the whole notion of visiting. It was an ugly towering slab of unfriendly rock, spilling shadow and hate onto the valley below. Carved directly into the surface of the mountain, its walls were polished smooth to give attackers no place to gain a foothold. The crenellations jutted forward at a sloping angle to make the use of ladders more difficult and to provide routes for boiling oil to be poured down upon anyone clustered in the moat below. Arrow slits peered down upon the whole affair, and a pair of eyes could be seen behind each one.
Who exactly it was that Mattrax imagined would be attacking the castle was beyond Will. Did he picture some mass suicidal urge gripping the valley below? Everyone marching here en masse to batter their brains out against his castle walls? The only threat Will could possibly imagine was another dragon, and one of those would just fly over any fortifications while arrows bounced off its skin, slowly charbroiling all the archers until Mattrax bothered to come out and have a proper fight. Assuming Mattrax would bother. It would be like the fat, lazy bastard to just sit there and wait until the other dragon got bored and flew off.
Much like the guard sitting atop the gatehouse wall gazing down at Will, Quirk, and Ethel right now.
The guard scratched one of several chins that filled the space between his chain mail and his helmet. “What,” he said, “in the name of Betra’s sagging tits is wrong with that cow?”
Ethel, it had to be admitted was acting… strangely.
In order that the Snag Weed not render Ethel immediately unconscious, and so that she could get to Mattrax’s fortress under her own steam, Quirk had put the potion in a series of pigskin bladders that she had forced down Ethel’s gullet. The idea was that the bladders would dissolve slowly in Ethel’s stomach acid, releasing the potion and permeating the meat only after the moment of death. Ethel’s stomach however, was a little ahead of schedule, and she was not reacting terribly well.
Her head lolled first to one side then the other and her tongue flopped back and forth from her slack mouth as she did so. Her laconic nature faded as one’s eye traveled from head toward rump. Her front feet shifted unsteadily, but her back legs were stamping like those of an enraged bull. She held her tail aloft and was whirling it in circles so rapidly it was practically a blur. Will almost expected her hindquarters to take off the ground.
Will glanced at Ethel and then up at the guard. In his experience, Mattrax’s soldiers didn’t know much about cattle.
“She’s, erm…” He shuffled options in his head. “In heat.”
“She’s what?” The guard kept scratching at his chin.
“In heat,” Will repeated. “Like… mating season.”
The guard squinted. Will risked a look at Quirk. She was squinting at him too. Which didn’t really feel like the right attitude to Will.
“It’s a horny cow?” said the guard eventually.
“Yeah.” Will shrugged again. Then risked an, “Obviously.”
Quirk emitted a sound that distinctly resembled choking.
The gate guard hadn’t left himself much leeway for additional squinting, but he gave it a noble effort. His eyes were barely open as he examined Ethel.
“Something funny about that cow,” he said. “I don’t trust it.”
“Please,” said Quirk, “it’s just a cow. It’s for Mattrax. It’s his dinner. How much damage could it cause?”
Unfortunately, Will thought, being polite was as likely to mark them as suspicious as being in possession of a cow that was evidently tripping balls.
Having no room to squint further, the gate guard chewed his lip instead.
“Could be a ruse,” he said. “That cow could be full of enemy combatants.”
Both Will and Quirk regarded Ethel.
“Full?” Quirk hazarded. “Of… how many?”
Will supposed that that was as valid a question to pull from the ether as any other.
“Could be dwarves,” said the gate guard, doing an impressive job of seeming to be guileless.
Quirk held her arms out measuring the cow. Which, Will thought, was perhaps humoring the madness a step too far.
“You’re worried that this fully alive and healthy cow also contains… perhaps two dwarfs?”
“Could be pixies,” said the guard quickly. “They’re bloody small, they are. Could have a hundred pixies in there. That could be a whole fake cow full of pixies.”
Quirk shook her head sadly. “Actually,” she said, “pixies are a highly individualistic society. Gatherings of any more than three or four rapidly devolve into violent confrontation. They tend to use flower blooms as weapons, though, which means their territorial displays are often mistaken for adorable demonstrations of cuteness, but actually they’re quite feral in their…”
She finally seemed to notice Will’s horrified stare. “Ix-nay on the knowing it-shay,” he whispered. Entry into Mattrax’s guard did not require a significant level of education. In fact, the mindless following of orders was far more cherished than independent thought.
The guard spat—a brown gobbet that arced down and splattered next to Will’s boot. “Might be some sort of bomb,” he said. “Someone made her eat it and now it’s making her funny. Someone bites into her and she goes boom. That’s more than my job’s worth. I don’t want to let in no exploding cow.”
Quirk, Will noticed, seemed to be finally running out of patience. She was repeatedly opening and clenching her fists. Her knuckles were white, but her palms were bright red.
Violence, pain, death, and the impressive meltdown of the plan in its infant stages seemed inevitable, and just as Will was working out if there was time to flee for his life there was a great rumble from the mountainside. His eyes left the guard and flicked left to where, fifty yards or so below them, soldiers were milling about on a broad shelf of rock. Something in the rock itself was moving. Something grating against stone.
The portcullis, he realized, the entrance to the cave, to the gold, to revenge. It was so tantalizingly close.
And then Mattrax appeared. A vast uncoiling mass of scale and muscle. His head was titanic. As big as an oxcart, small fiery yellow eyes
dwarfed by the huge underslung jaw. Teeth jutted up like broken yellow branches from his mouth. A crest of spines crowned it. His scales were a dull red, the color of raw meat left out for a day. His wings were held half-spread, almost impossibly large. The flesh stretched between each elongated, thorny joint was almost translucent, thick with veins.
The dragon yawned lazily, snapped halfheartedly at some guards, and then launched himself into the air, rising rapidly on quick, powerful strokes.
A low moan drew Will’s attention to Quirk. She was no longer a quivering arrow of rage. Her hands were not clenched. They were wide open, held almost in supplication. She was staring at the dragon in awe. As the beast disappeared into the low clouds, she flicked her gaze to Will.
“We have to get in there,” she breathed.
Will, for his part, was having his own trouble controlling his emotions. But it was rage instead of awe that bubbled inside him.
“Then convince Captain Arsehole to let us in,” he hissed back.
“Look,” said Quirk loudly, turning to the guard above. She had her teeth bared in a rictus smile. “What if we just killed the cow here and now? Then you can see if it explodes or not, or if a hundred imps leap out, or anything. Would that make it easier?”
For a moment, Will’s world seemed to stop. A single heartbeat thundered through his chest. He turned to Quirk. She turned back to him. A big soft smile on her face. She turned it back toward the guard but kept her eyes on him.
“You’ll have to do it, I’m afraid,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth. “I’m a pacifist.”
“What?” The word squeaked out of him. “I’ll have to what?”
He could, he supposed, deal with the death of Ethel in the abstract. Eventually, given time, he could, perhaps in the peace and quiet of his home, imagine handing her over to soldiers who, far out of his sight, would hand her over to a dragon. He might even—with several weeks to think it over, and a number of strong drinks inside him—be able to take her to the cave entrance himself. As long as he were able to shut the door tight before the inevitable slaughter began.
But here? Now?
He stared into Ethel’s eyes.
Each one rolled independently in its socket.
“Go on then!” yelled down the guard. “Do it then!”
“To be honest,” Quirk whispered, “I’m surprised she’s survived this long given the quantity of Snag Weed we put in her, so if you could kill her first that would be a huge weight off my conscience.”
Will felt his jaw clenching. The red rage brimming up in him. But he took a breath, turned back to Ethel. He put a hand on the side of her head. It lolled away from him and a slurred moo dribbled out from between her lips.
“Look,” said the guard, “I’ll help you out. I’ll go and get my crossbow, and if it’s not dead by the time I get back then I’ll kill you and the cow. Sound fair?”
Quirk spread her arms, exasperated. “We’re guards the same as you. Look at our uniforms.” She sounded slightly injured that the disguise wasn’t proving to be more effective.
“You might just be wearing them,” said the guard, and Will’s heart skipped a beat. “Or you could be pixie-stuffed puppets for all I know.”
“I already explained the unfeasibility of—”
But the guard was already gone. Quirk whirled on Will.
“Go on then,” she said. “Do it already.”
Will felt the weight of the purloined sword on his belt. He felt the warmth of Ethel’s fur against his palm.
“I can’t.” He felt helpless.
“Look.” Quirk leaned in close. “There is no version of this plan—of your plan—where Ethel survives. There is only a version where we survive. And I am not dying outside this castle, pincushioned by some mouth-breathing imbecile because you can’t bring yourself to kill a dying cow. If I die here, it is going to be at the hands of a brutal monstrosity like a respectable thaumatobiologist. Now pull yourself together and stab that cow.”
Ethel’s rolling head slapped into his stomach, her nose smearing snot over the loose-fitting breastplate.
How many days had he drunk Ethel’s milk? How many years had her cheese been a constant of his life? Her butter? She was his sustenance.
He held on to her head, cradled it gently in his arms. Her tongue probed sloppily at his elbow.
“Weren’t you a farmer?” Quirk said. Much of the sympathy seemed to have boiled off from her voice. “Didn’t you slaughter animals all the time?”
“Not the ones I named,” Will said. “Not the ones that were part of my family.”
“Look,” said Quirk, leaning in close. “Who would you rather see killed here? Me or the cow?”
“I know the cow better.” It was out of his mouth before he’d really thought about it.
Quirk struggled to respond to that for long enough to allow the guard to return above. “Oh good,” he said. “I was hoping you would have waited. Now let me see how I aim this thing again.”
“Will!” Quirk wasn’t whispering anymore.
Will held Ethel’s head. He thought about how she had supported his life for so many years. How she had helped bear the farm on her back.
But the farm was gone. And now there was only one way left she could serve him.
He pulled the sword free from its scabbard in a single fluid movement, and slashed at Ethel’s throat.
The blade wedged into the flesh after about half an inch. He heaved. It jerked another quarter inch.
Ethel brayed, kicked.
Will jerked on the sword, horror mounting behind his eyes. If its previous owner had not been lying dead on a road, Will would have hunted him down and beaten the basics of blade maintenance into him. He’d owned sharper butter knives.
Ethel’s wavering legs went out from under and she crashed to the ground. The weight of her slammed into Quirk, slapped the woman to the ground.
“Oh gods.” Will tugged the blade free. More blood sprayed up, coating his face. Ethel screamed, kicked. Quirk screamed along with her.
“Oh Lawl’s black eye on all this shit.” Will brought the blade down with a dull thwack.
It took another minute of hacking and sawing before Ethel finally lay still, in a spreading pool of her own blood. Quirk had managed to extract herself from beneath the dying cow and was trying to wipe the worst of the gore off herself. Will just stood there dripping, trying to keep his gorge from rising. He failed.
Above them, the gate guard looked vaguely disappointed. “Fine then,” he said. “Come on in then. Welcome back to Castle Mattrax.”
14
Gaffes and Gatekeepers
Lette had lain hidden among the trees as Mattrax emerged from the mountainside. She was around two hundred yards shy of the portcullis, where the tree line ended and loose rock and shale began.
She had a rough idea of what to expect from a dragon, of course. Her childhood had allowed for some schooling. She had read some histories. She knew it would be large and powerful. And she had killed some large, powerful creatures herself. A wendigo in the mountains east of Saleria, tall enough that it made Balur look like a toddler. A wyvern in northern Vinter, although that was so drunk from eating fermented grapes that it was literally pissing itself in the battle. And there had even been the demigod in Batarra—some spawn of Toil’s that had somehow made it to its early twenties, and blessed with the gift of compelling people to work themselves to death on a regular basis. Fortunately, when it turned its glowing eyes on Lette, her work had been to kill demigod arseholes.
Still, even when compared to the semidivine walking upon the earth, this was different.
Mattrax was not just large. A horse could be large. A tree. A house perhaps. These were simple things of a size the mind could grasp in a single glance. Mattrax was large in a far more complex and profound way. He was large in the abstract way that major pieces of a landscape were large. In the way countries were large, or rivers that took months to travel from their source to
the ocean. He was so large that it was difficult for Lette to think of him as something truly alive. He had seemed more like some part of the mountain that happened to be able to leave and fly around for a bit.
And she was going to steal from him.
He would be right there next to her, and she would steal from him.
He would be drugged, of course. But could you really drug something that large? Could they really have assembled that much Snag Weed?
And more to the point, how in the name of each and every god of the Pantheon was she going to stop Balur from trying to kill it? The bigger the beast the more he seemed to want to test himself against it. He suffered from an almost suicidal form of machismo.
This, she thought, was going to be a very long and harrowing day.
But first Balur had to get up there, the villagers in tow. First they had to herd the drugged idiots onto the platform, to the pressure plate hidden there. First they had to open the way.
She heard them before she saw them. Her first impression of them was one of baying, braying, belligerent sound. It crashed and careened up through the forest toward her hiding spot, whooping and hollering as it came. She clambered a few branches higher into the pine tree she was using as a lookout, just in case.
Despite their vocal enthusiasm, though, when the Kondorran villagers came into sight, yelling and gnashing their teeth, they were also panting a bit. It was a good six or seven miles from the village on the valley floor to here, and the last two miles were nothing if not steep. It was difficult, Lette supposed, to keep up your deranged enthusiasm for murder when you had a forty-five-degree angle to conquer. When you stabbed a mountainside it would always resolutely refuse to bleed.
As the villagers hit the end of the forest, she could see they were definitely running out of steam. They stumbled out into daylight, started grinding to a halt.
Where the hell were Balur and Firkin? They should be here, driving this rabble on. She scanned the trees below. If Balur was late because he was busy digging a shallow grave for Will’s drunkard friend, he was going to have to dig a second one for himself…
