by Hugh Cook
At the camp they made that evening, the right opportunity arose, for Elkor Alish unbuckled his sword to give him complete freedom of movement for a difficult climb up a cliff face to raid a bird's nest. Andranovory let him make the climb – he fancied an egg as much as anyone – but moved his men into position with a nod or a wink.
When Alish descended, he noticed nothing odd, for his concentration was devoted to treasuring down the half-dozen bird's eggs he was carrying in a string bag, gripping the draw-strings in his teeth.
When Alish jumped the last little bit to the ground, he found a half-circle of men confronting him, and Andranovory holding his sword-belt.
'Good evening,' said Andranovory.
And smiled.
As adrenalin armed him for action, Alish glanced around, noting men standing guard over Garash, Gorn and Hearst. How easily they had been taken! They must have been half-asleep. The wizard Garash, despite his power, was helpless when someone was holding a knife at his back – as Alish had proved during their first confrontation at Castle Vaunting.
Beside Hearst stood a man who held the battle-sword Hast, and was gloating over the firelight steel. Hearst gave Alish a little nod, and Alish, giving no answering signal, waited just long enough for Andranovory to begin to speak.
'The boys and me,' said Andranovory, drawing the Melski blade, 'Have been thinking, and – '
Alish smashed the eggs into his face and butted him in the stomach. Then pushed him, sending him reeling back into the crowd. And Gorn and Hearst were moving, smashing fists and elbows into the nearest faces. Hearst tossed a weapon through the air. Alish grabbed for the hilt, snatched the sword from the air, and screamed: 'Ahyak Rovac!'
Gorn and Hearst, both now armed with weapons not their own, broke free from the mutineers and danced into position, moving with an effortless grace in which there was not the slightest hint of a swaggering boast or bluster – only the perfect economy of absolute professionalism.
'Three against forty,' said Alish. 'The odds are even!'
And some of the mutineers fell back, as if believing him. The more clear-sighted saw that Alish was simply making war on them with words, but, all the same, none wanted to be the first to die. And nobody, watching Our Lord Despair flanked by Gorn and Hearst, could for a moment have believed that those three warriors would surrender, whatever happened from now on.
Andranovory, pushed forward by the others, hesitated, then picked up the Melski blade which he had dropped when Alish had butted him.
Alish moved.
Light blurred through the air. Steel halted a fraction from Andranovory's throat. Then Alish withdrew the blade.
'What have you got to say to me now?' said Alish. Andranovory looked around. 'Come on, boys,' he said. Nobody moved.
'I think you'll find they're suddenly hard of hearing,' said Alish.
'Then it seems I must surrender to your… justice!'
And with the last word, Andranovory swung at Alish, putting all his strength into the blow. The Melski sword slashed through the air.
Elkor Alish moved like a dancer. One hand gripped the hilt of Hast. The other slid along the flat of the blade so that his arms were widespread, bracing the sword. Andranovory's full-strength swing sent the Melski blade slamming into this barrier, cutting edge impacting with flat steel.
The Melski blade shattered.
And Elkor Alish was moving again, sidestepping, pirouetting, outflanking Andranovory with nimble steps which suggested that he could have made a spectacular career for himself as a dancing master in one of the courtly cities of the Cold West.
The mutineer, still holding the Melski sword with its jagged stiimp of blade, tried to turn to meet him. Alish tripped him expertly. Andranovory went sprawling. The battle-sword Hast sliced down – and sheared away part of his scalp.
Alish dug the point of the sword into the bloody piece of skin and hair, flicked it into the air and fielded it. The piece he had cut away was half the size of the palm of his hand. Andranovory lay on the ground, dazed, half-persuaded he was dead. Alish gave a small bow, and offered him the trophy, saying: 'Madam, you seem to have mislaid your wig.'
The joke allowed the tension in the air to dissipate with a roar of raucous laughter, leaving the chief mutineer hurt, bloody, humiliated, discredited – but alive.
After a certain amount of swearing and threatening, meant mostly to flatter the rebellious fighting men by making them think he took them seriously, Alish had the camp settle down for the night, and returned the battle-sword Hast to its rightful owner. To replace the broken Melski sword, he claimed Andranovory's blade: a cutlass, the kind of weapon favoured by the Orfus pirates.
Alish went to sleep that night on a piece of high ground at the most northerly point of the campsite, so that anyone who chose to walk south during the night would not have to step over him. Gathered together on that high ground were, apart from himself, Gorn, Hearst, Garash and Blackwood.
Those last two did not suspect what was going to happen, but both Gorn and Hearst knew, though Alish had not said so much as a word to them. The Rovac warriors knew that, if Alish had seriously meant to quell the mutiny, he would have killed Andranovory, roasted the corpse, extracted oaths of loyalty from all present, then made them eat dead flesh in a ceremony that would have marked their minds with unforgettable horror.
As it was, Alish had clearly decided that, on this trek north, the fighting men, in their present mood, would be more trouble than they were worth.
When they had left the High Castle, the presence of a Collosnon army in Trest had made it wise to take as many armed men with them as possible. And when they had encountered the Melski on the Fleuve River, armed force had allowed them to speed their journey by seizing rafts to use the waterway which would otherwise have been barred to them.
But now, their main challenge was distance. Numbers would not make their journey any faster -and the foraging would be better for a small party. And Comedo's men, easy enough to intimidate and bring to heel on the early stages of the journey, were a different proposition now that they had been hardened by the nightmare underground river journey.
Hearst woke in the night, and heard small mutter-ings, a faint clinking of steel against rock, sounds of searching and finding, a grunt, a hiss… Blackwood coughed heavily in his sleep. Silence. And then again the noise started, the muttering, the scrape of boots on stone, the sound of steel.
In the night, men were gathering up their possessions and slipping away. Now, if ever, was the time for Hearst to challenge Alish's judgment. But he did not. For, quite apart from anything else, with so few travelling companions left, Hearst would have a better chance to renew that friendship which had once flourished so: and which had then failed, suddenly, after the siege of Larbreth.
***
Come morning, Garash was dismayed to find that the soldiers had deserted: he went so far as to order Alish to bring them back, only to find his orders were dismissed with scornful laughter.
Gorn and Blackwood did not care one way or the other; Alish declared that a small group could travel more safely than a large one, at least in this dragon country, and they trusted his judgment.
Their march north took them past the heights of the volcano known as Barg, and from then on the volcanic nature of the terrain grew more pronounced.
They passed hot springs, with water which was still drinkable, although heavily contaminated with chemicals from the bowels of the earth. They encountered more of the smoking fumaroles which they had seen at the Araconch Waters, and also things which were new to them: pools of boiling mud, land where the ground shook and rumbled incessantly, places where smoke and sulphur made the air almost too foul to breathe, and huge pits plunging down to depths where the earth seethed and muttered.
Alish estimated their progress north at roughly five leagues a day; if they had tried to make better time, they would have risked losing someone. In places, ground which looked solid proved to be just a thin crust roofing
a pool of gently-boiling liquid death; they had to advance carefully, scouting out the way and probing dubious spots to see if they were solid.
On the morning of the second day after they passed Barg, they found a scratching rock. A heap of scales lay beneath it, some dull and cracked, others new and shiny. The scales crunched underfoot; one or two of the older ones cracked, but none shattered into fragments.
'Can these scales be worked?' said Hearst.
'No,' said Garash. 'Cut them or drill them, and they fall apart.'
'It might be possible to glue them onto a foundation of leather,' said Hearst.
And he began to talk of craftsmen he had seen in Chi'ash-lan, in the Cold West, and mentioned the various glues they had used.
Later in the day, they found dragon dung. It was hard – almost like rock – and there was not much of it. Why hard? Water conservation, explained Garash. No liquid wasted. i didn't see any in the dragon's lair at Maf,' said Hearst.
'Dragons don't foul their own lairs,' said Garash.
T roamed all over Estar in the years the dragon Zenphos lived there,' said Blackwood, 'and I've never seen anything like this.' it's water-soluble,' said Garash. 'The droppings would always dissolve in the first rain.'
And that prompted Hearst to make a joke about the impressive size and smell of mammoth droppings he had seen in the Cold West.
It seemed to Alish that Hearst was taking every opportunity to launch into reminiscences about the Cold West; worst still, he tried to encourage Alish to tell his own stories about campaigning in that land of ice and snow. That evening, Hearst actually talked about Larbreth itself, and the treasure gained in the sack of that city; he went so far as to sing a lewd song the Rovac had made about the siege of that seaport stronghold, a song which began:
Their legs were closed as tight as their gates But we broke the both of them open.
For Alish, the very mention of Larbreth again awakened appalling memories: Hearst striding down a hallway, smiling, fingers knotted in the hair of a woman's head, which he had held casually, as if it had been a hunting trophy.
Furthermore, Alish was angered at how lighthearted Hearst had become, full of levity and enthusiasm. For Alish, the quest for the death-stone was assuming the nature of a sacred pilgrimage, undertaken as a rite of atonement to make amends for his thoughtless indulgence in battle-lust and war-glory in the Cold West; he welcomed this barren land of shattered rock, foul air and poisoned water, for it allowed him to perfect his mood of suffering and repentance; Hearst's high spirits, at moments infecting the others with an access of positively rollicking good humour, seemed a gross affront to the spiritual aspirations which Alish had made the centre of his being.
Alish did not know how much more of Hearst's joking and boasting he could take.
***
The next day they passed right beside a dragon's lair. They could not avoid it: in this land of cliffs, pits and quaking earth, they were lucky to find a way forward at all. They crossed the danger zone one by one, ducking from rock to rock, quick as rabbits. Even a man laden with a pack could move fast when fear inspired him. They were all hot, flushed and panting by the time they reached the comparative shelter of a clutch of tall rocks out of sight of the dragon's lair. They shrugged off their packs and sat on them to rest.
'By the tit that mothered me,' said Gorn, 'I've never moved so fast before. Not in all my days.'
'Me neither,' said Hearst.
'Yes,' said Garash. 'It's one thing to enter the lair of a dead dragon, quite another to walk past the lair of a live one, isn't it?'
'Watch your tongue, pox doctor,' said Hearst.
'But he has a point, doesn't he?' said Alish.
Hearst turned to Alish.
'What do you mean by that?' it's true, isn't it?' said Alish.
'What do you mean?'
'The dragon on Maf was dead, wasn't it? When you entered its lair, it was dead, isn't that so?'
And Alish was on his feet, his eyes alive and blazing.
'Do you think it's a secret, Morgan? How many people do you think you've fooled? Who could listen to your drunken boasting and think you told the truth? We've shared the same shadow down many roads: do you think I didn't know you for a liar the first time I heard your story from your lips? Do you think I don't remember the night before you made the climb? You stank of fear.
'Why so silent, dragon-killer? I know what you are. A coward and a liar. A coward not once – but twice. Remember Ep Pass? Heenmor set the trees alight. Did I run? No: I stepped forward to meet him. Where were you, Morgan? Where was your sword? What happened to our plan: one to manage the snake, the other to kill the wizard? You were off and running, Morgan. You cost us the death-stone. We could have had it, then and there. We could have had Heenmor's head. You cost us the death-stone, and you know what happened afterwards.
'Speak up, Morgan. Come on. What's the matter? It's true, isn't it? Do you care to dispute it? You've got a sword at your side. You know how to use it.'
Hearst stood there, shaking, speechless in the face of this tirade.
'Come on, Morgan. Where's your blade? Will you match me, steel for steel?'
Morgan Hearst abruptly turned on his heel and walked back the way they had come.
'Hearst!' cried Blackwood. 'Hearst, come back!'
'Let him go,' said Gorn, not caring whether Alish or Hearst was in the right, but knowing that their dispute had to be settled now.
'If he wakes the dragon, it's death for all of us,' said Garash. 'Hearst, stop!'
Hearst did not look back. Garash raised his right hand.
'Watch yourself, or my knife will taste your kidneys,' said Gorn, standing behind Garash. The wizard stood quite still. He knew Gorn would have no hesitation in killing him if he harmed Hearst.
'Blackwood!' said Garash. 'Blackwood! Alish! Get him back! Bring him back!'
'No,' said Alish. iil get him,' said Blackwood.
'Don't move, as you value your life,' said Alish.
And so they stood there and watched Hearst retreat out of sight. Then they waited.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Rock was underfoot; overhead, the sky.
Morgan Hearst stood at the bottom of the steep slope leading to the dragon's lair. Now was the moment of decision. Hearst knew he could not simply creep back to the others and confess that his fears had defeated him, for Alish had clearly given him a choice between facing the dragon or his sword.
Shadows crowded the mouth off the dragon's lair. Death waited inside. If life was the most important thing for him, then his choice was simple: if he wanted above all else to live, then he should turn and sneak away, slipping away to the south and abandoning this quest.
But from his earliest days, Hearst had learnt that life is worth living only for the things that give it significance: the honour and the glory that a warrior wins by resolute action matched to high resolve.
Life is a mere matter of calories, hydration and defecation; if that was all Hearst valued, then on many occasions in the past he would have turned and run from overwhelming danger. And now, above all else, he wanted to redeem himself in Alish's eyes. They had been battle-comrades before, close as blood-brothers; if it was a lie that had poisoned the words that passed between them, then there must be a truth to redeem the lie.
Carefully, he studied the slope and the entrance to the dragon's lair; his studies told him nothing. He could not pretend that further hesitation would add to his knowledge. He drew his sword Hast, though he knew that, face to face with a dragon, it would be about as much use as a toothpick.
He began to climb.
His shadow flickered over the broken ground, dodging from rock to rock. Stones shifted underfoot, slipped, and clattered down the slope. At Hearst's feet there was a flash of movement as a snake struck at one of his boots. He kicked it away. Its fangs had left marks deep in the leather.
Hearst paused, watching the entrance to the dragon's lair. His shadow crouched against a rock,
silent, waiting. There were many talon marks on the rocks outside the entrance; stray scales were scattered in the cave mouth, where the rock had been rubbed smooth by the dragon forcing its body in and out. Half a dozen men could have walked arm in arm through the mouth of that cave.
Inside, it was gloomy. The air stank, but the cave was empty. Empty: but it opened onto another chamber, from which came a dull ochre glow.
– Strength, man of Rovac, strength.
Step by step, balance by strength, Hearst dared his way toward that glow. His breathing was the breathing of a ghost, a ghost with no shadows: dead men have no shadows. But balance is balance and poise is poise, and:
– We have a chance.
He found himself looking into a vast chamber lit by firestones which had been stolen from some place of wizard-work. By that light, he saw loose scales, heaps of treasure – and the dragon.
The dragon!
It was alive, it could not be doubted that it was alive: the fires that showed between its parted jaws hissed and pulsed with its breathing, and in sleep its entire body moved with a slow, regular rhythm, as if it was forever stretching and relaxing.
– Strength now, strength!
The ground was slippery. Hearst glanced down, and by the combined light of firestones and dragon-fire he saw he was walking on glass, in which were embedded rings, swords, crowns, goblets, sceptres. Generations of treasure were buried in this cave, but more still lay about in loose heaps.
– Forward, warrior, battle-song hero!
And one pace, then one pace more. And in the heat his body was greased with sweat, his thighs trembling, hot sweat, eyes red, legs wet, forward, one step, a spear – He sheathed Hast, and chose a pair of spears from the heap of treasure. They were ornamental weapons, chased with silver and gold, but the killing blades were steel, and the balance was right. No hesitation now, but:
– Aim and throw!
The first spear struck home. And Hearst, snatching up the remaining spear, was running even as the steel lanced home. He slipped on the glass, went down, scrabbled for balance and was off again. As the dragon roared. The walls of the cave flushed red with reflected fire as the dragon blasted flame at random.
