by Tom Holt
Deserts are, by definition, big; and this is a big desert.
The dragon, waiting in the shade of the huge stack of cardboard boxes that contains the Great Wall of China for his scheduled rendezvous with Chubby and the boys, looks tiny; from a distance you’d think he was a wee lizard, the sort of thing desert travellers evict from their boots every morning before setting out.
But that’s perspective playing tricks on you, because the dragon is, of course, huge. And, more to the point, quite incredibly strong. Maybe you haven’t yet realised how strong the dragon is; well, consider this. Between one and five am last night, this dragon single-handedly dismantled the Great Wall and lugged it here, boxful by boxful across the Gobi Desert, without making a sound or disturbing anybody. No real trouble; to the dragon, it was just like picking up so much Lego off the living-room carpet.
It was still, nevertheless, one hell of a lot of Lego, and the effort, combined with the heat, is making him sleepy. His soul (for want of a better word) is hovering in the middle air, looking down at the stack of boxes and thinking, Pretty neat, huh?
Then, suddenly, it starts to panic. Instinctively it makes to dart back into its body, but it can’t. Imagine that nauseating feeling when you’ve just stepped outside to get the milk in and the front door slams shut behind you, locking you out. Normally, the dragon’s soul would have the door kicked in and be back inside in twenty seconds flat. But this time, what with purloining walls all night and not getting much sleep while it was at it, it simply hasn’t got the strength. Which is unfortunate, because ...
Cut to -
Saint George, toiling wearily up a vast sand escarpment, on his way to the scheduled rendezvous with Chubby, the boys and a billion tons of hooky masonry.
He feels - strange ...
Oh look, he mutters to himself, I’m flying.
Or at least part of me is. The rest of me - head, arms, torso, legs - is down there on the deck, flat on my face ...
(Cue rushing wind, shimmering tinkly sound, shorthand for magic, deep and rumbling unworldly laughter . . .)
Nkunzana, moving with remarkable agility for a man of his advanced years, shinned out of the bathroom window, dropped five feet onto the fire escape, clattered down the steps like a ten-year-old and sprinted across the alleyway to where Kurt had the van parked, engine running.
‘Quick!’ he panted. No need to explain further. There was a squeal and a smell of burning rubber.
‘Okay?’ Kurt asked, glancing down at the road map open on his knee.
‘No,’ snapped the witch-doctor, ‘it isn’t. You might have warned me.’
‘Warned you?’ Kurt grinned. ‘Hey, man, I wouldn’t insult you. I mean, you being a witch-doctor and all, I’d have thought you’d have known...’
‘The hell with you, white boy. Let’s see if it’s so funny when I’ve turned you into a beetle.’
Feeling that the conversation was becoming a little unfocused, Bianca interrupted. ‘What Kurt meant to say was,’ she said, ‘is everything going to plan? With the, um, spirits, I mean?’
‘Huh?’ Nkunzana frowned, then nodded. ‘Sure, no problem. The fifteen dead people are out of the stolen statues and into the statues you made for them. The same with the souls of the dragon and Saint George; I’ve conjured them out of their bodies, and the dragon’ll be too knackered after all that heavy lifting he’s been doing...’
The old man paused, his eyes tight shut, and chuckled. ‘Hey, man,’ he muttered, ‘this is fun. I really wish you could see this.’
Cut to—
Three disembodied spirits, hovering in the upper air.
The first is the dragon, scrabbling frantically at the door of his magnificent, wonderful, all-powerful body. But he’s too weak. He can’t open the damn thing.
The second is Saint George, also unexpectedly evicted from his body by the Zulu doctor’s magic. Not his body, strictly speaking; remember, he’s been dossing down in the statue Bianca made for Mike to live in, which he stole when the dragon carbonised him on his return from the future.
George is just about to nip back in when he realises he’s not the only disembodied spook out and about this fine Mongolian summer morning. A mere hundred miles or so to his west, he becomes aware of the soul of his oldest, greatest enemy, and, more to the point, the empty dragon body.
He hesitates. He thinks.
YES!
Well, wouldn’t you? Think it over. Yours for the hijacking, the most powerful, the strongest, the most stylish, the fastest, the most heavily armed and armoured, the slinkiest piece of flesh ever in the history of the Universe, with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. One swift, slick job of taking and driving away, and then we’ll see exactly who’s vapourising whom ...
With a none too gentle shove and a merry shout of, ‘Move over, asshole!’, George heaved the dragon’s enervated soul out of the way, scrambled into the dragon body and hit the gas. There was a roar and a stunning thump, as the beast’s enormous wings scooped up air like ice-cream from the tub. Wild with fury and terror, the dragon’s soul scrabbled desperately at its own body, but there was no way in. A fraction of a second later, the body had gone.
‘Shit,’ whimpered the dragon. He collapsed onto the sand and started to quiver.
The third spirit in waiting is Bianca’s friend Mike. He has the advantage over the other two of knowing what’s going on, and the moment George abandons his earthly overcoat and makes his dash for the dragon costume, Mike lets himself quietly out of Saint George, marble statue by Bianca Wilson, and tiptoes across the middle air to where his own familiar shape is standing, vacant and unlocked, among the dunes. He drops in. He rams the legs into first gear. He scrams.
And now the dragon’s soul is alone. Ebbing fast, still weak from his exertions and the devastating trauma of watching his own body zooming off over the horizon with his mortal enemy at the controls, he flickers on the edge of dissolution. Why bother? he asks himself. Bugger this for the proverbial duffing up to nothing.
But not for long. Because dragons don’t quit. And, as the saying goes, a third-class ride beats the shit out of a first-class walk. There, abandoned on the escarpment of a dune, stands Bianca Wilson’s statue of Saint George, empty. Disgusted but grimly determined, the soul of the last of the great serpents of the dawn of the world drags itself through the dry, gritty air and flops wretchedly into George.
And notices something. And suddenly feels a tiny bit better, because it suggests, somehow, that more than meets the eye is going on.
Because, in the back window of Saint George, somebody has stuck a little bit of shiny white cardboard, with five words written on it in red lipstick. They were: MY OTHER CAR’S A PORSCHE
Yes, mutters the dragon, suddenly and savagely cheerful. Isn’t it ever.
Like a salmon leaping the waterfall of the sun, the great dragon soared; wings incandescent, fire streaming off his flawlessly armoured flanks, the scream of the slipstream drowning out all sounds except the exultant crowing of his own triumphant soul, which sang:
Sheeeeit! Wow! Fuck me! Is this a bit of all right, then, or what?
Now bursting up through the clouds like a leaping dolphin, now swooping like a hunting eagle; now high, now low, as the intoxication of flight and power made his brain swim, his blood surge. Mine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
And then a light flashed soberingly bright in his eyes and he glanced down. There, on the desert floor below him, two men stood beside a Land Rover, on which was mounted a huge mirror.
Dragons have eyes like hawks - that’s a very silly thing to say, because hawks are just birds, whereas dragons’ eyes are the finest optical instruments in the cosmos; the point being, although the two men were a long way away, George recognised them easily. Chubby Stevenson and the man Kortright; he’d seen him about the place, though he didn’t know who he was. Intrigued, he swooped.
‘Hey,’ Kortright yelled through a bullhorn. ‘Where the fuck
you been? Get down here like now.’
It then occurred to George that they didn’t know it was him. They thought it was the dragon - his, George’s, enemy. Yet these people were supposed to be his friends, good guys. The hell with that! He filled his lungs and took aim—
No, they’ll keep. Let’s find out what’s going on before we fry anybody we might be able to use later.
‘Hey,’ George drawled. ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘It’s where it isn’t that’s pissed me off, man,’ Kortright replied. ‘C’mon, get your tail in gear, we got people waiting.’
‘People?’ George hovered, his front claws folded, a what-time-of-night-do-you-call-this expression on his face. ‘What people?’
Stevenson, he noticed, was looking a little sheepish as he leaned over and whispered something in Kortright’s ear. The agent stepped back and stared at him.
‘You arrange the biggest fight of all time,’ he said, ‘and you never get around to telling the contestants?’
George quivered; the word fight had hijacked his imagination and was demanding to be flown to Kingdom Come. ‘What fight?’ he asked.
‘You and Saint George,’ Chubby replied. ‘The rematch. I was, um, planning it as a surprise.’
‘You succeeded.’
Chubby scowled. ‘Dunno why you’re sounding all snotty about it,’ he replied self-righteously. ‘That is what you want, isn’t it? A chance to sort that little shit out once and for all? I mean, that is why you came back in the first place, right?’
‘Sure thing.’ George nodded vigorously. ‘Teach the little toe-rag a lesson he won’t live long enough to forget.’
‘Well, then.’
A smile swept across the dragon’s face, in the same way that barbarian hordes once swept across Europe. ‘I call that very thoughtful of you,’ he said, ‘going to all that trouble just to please me. But what makes you think the little chickenshit’ll have the balls to show up? If I was him, the moment I heard about the fight I’d be off.’
‘He doesn’t know about the fight, stupid.’
‘You mean,’ said George, grinning cheerfully, ‘you set him up?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Look—’
‘From the outset?’
‘Sure.’ Chubby looked at him strangely. ‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ he demanded.
‘Not what. Who. But that’s beside the point, we’ll sort it out later. So, where should I go?’
Kortright pointed due north. ‘You’ll know what it is as soon as you see it,’ he said. ‘Hang round just out of sight till we show up with George. Then it’ll be over to you, okay? And don’t say I don’t find you quality gigs, you ungrateful asshole.’
George nodded gravely. ‘I think I’ll be able to handle it from then on,’ he said. ‘Be seeing you.’
Not long afterwards, Chubby’s helicopter landed beside the huge artificial mountain of packing cases that had appeared overnight in the middle of the desert, and two men climbed out, crouching to avoid the spinning rotor blades.
‘George,’ they were yelling. ‘George! Where is the goddamn ...?’
They found him fast asleep in a sort of masonry igloo he’d made for himself at the foot of the mountain. This made their job much easier. Chubby slipped the handcuffs into place while Kortright woke him up.
‘Hi, George,’ Chubby said. ‘Look, no need for alarm, but we need you to do something for us and we really haven’t got time to convince you it’s a good idea before we set off for the venue. This way, we can convince you as we go, and you won’t waste time by running away and hiding.’
‘Suits me.’
The two men looked at each other. ‘Good of you to be so reasonable,’ Chubby said. ‘This way, then.’
In the chopper, Chubby explained that when he’d rescued George from the police in Birmingham, he’d had an ulterior motive.
‘You rescued ... Yes, sorry, me and my tea-bag memory. Do forgive me, carry on.’
‘Yup.’ Chubby had a vague feeling that something was going wrong, but that was so close to his normal mental state that he ignored it. ‘You see, it’s this damn dragon.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Sure.’ Chubby sighed, his face a picture of frustration and annoyance. ‘The bloody thing is starting to be a real pest, you know? Something’s got to be done about it, before it ruins my business and destroys a major city or something.’
‘I quite understand,’ said the dragon, nodding. ‘This planet ain’t big enough for the three of us, that sort of thing.’
‘Three? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, of course, I don’t have to tell you, you want to see the fucker gets what’s coming to him as badly as I do. Well, now’s your chance.’
‘Really and truly?’
‘Really,’ said Chubby, smiling, ‘and truly. That’s why Mr Kortright here -’
Kortright smiled. ‘Hi, George.’
‘Hi, Mr Kortright. Haven’t we met somewhere?’
‘Quite possibly, George, quite possibly.’
‘Mr Kortright,’ Chubby went on, ‘and I have arranged this, um, fight to the death. You and Mr Bad Guy. We built you an arena and everything. You’re gonna love it.’
‘Quite,’ said the dragon. ‘Only, and I hate to seem downbeat here, don’t you think the fight’s going to be ever so slightly one-sided? I mean, him with the wings and the tail and the fiery breath, me with a sword? Not that I’m chicken or anything, but...’
Kortright chuckled. ‘Tell him, Chubby.’
‘We’ve sorted all that,’ Chubby said. ‘We’ve got you some back-up. The best, in fact. The name Kurt Lundqvist mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
Chubby shrugged. ‘After your time, I guess. Well, just as the dragon comes hell-for-leather at you out of, so to speak, a cloudless sky, Kurt “Mad Dog” Lundqvist’ll be poised and ready in a concealed bunker under the press box with a very nasty surprise for Mr Dragon. He won’t know what hit him. And neither, more to the point, will the punters. They’ll think it was you. Neat trick, huh?’
‘Chubby.’ The dragon looked shocked. ‘Surely that’s cheating.’
‘Yes. You got a problem about that?’
The dragon’s eyes gleamed, and if Chubby failed to notice, consciously at least, that they were yellow with a black slit for a pupil, that was his fault. ‘Ignore me,’ the dragon said. ‘I think it’s a wonderful plan. Thank you ever so much for arranging it all. You must let me find some way to pay you back.’
‘George,’ Chubby said, ‘my old pal, forget it. I mean, what are friends for?’
The dragon shook his head. ‘Chubby,’ he said, ‘and Lin. This is one favour I won’t be forgetting in a hurry, believe me. Okay, let’s go. I can hardly wait.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kurt had allowed himself twenty minutes to get from Birmingham to the heart of the Gobi Desert. Thanks to the small flask of concentrated Time which Chubby had issued him with, it proved to be ample.
An imposing figure was waiting for him round the back of the gents’ lavatory. It was wearing a Brooks Brothers suit over its lurid, misshapen body, and a pair of dark glasses perched on the bridge of its beak.
‘Hi,’ Kurt said. ‘Sorry if I kept you waiting.’
‘Bang on time, Mr Lundqvist,’ replied the Captain of Spectral Warriors, handing over a suitcase. ‘Here’s the doings. Best of luck.’
Kurt grinned. ‘Luck,’ he said, ‘is for losers. You got your boys standing by?’
‘In position. You can rely on them to do a good job.’
Kurt picked up the suitcase. ‘Be seeing you, then.’ He started to walk away, but the Captain stopped him.
‘Mr Lundqvist,’ he said. ‘I’m curious.’
‘Yeah, but don’t let it get to you. The shades help. A bit.’
‘I’m curious,’ the Captain went on, ‘about which of them you’re gonna take out. Yeah, sure I got my orders, I don’t actually need to know at this stage. I was just wondering...’
/> Kurt grinned, a big, wide grin that’d make a wolf climb a tree. ‘Watch this space,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll know for sure.’
George circled, keeping high’.
Born yesterday? Not him. Came down in the last shower? You must be thinking of somebody else. He hadn’t slashed a path through the red-clawed jungle of combat theology to a Saintship without knowing when a situation was well and truly hooky; and if ever a set-up stank, it was this one. Souls don’t just float up out of bodies for no reason; it takes big medicine to work a trick like that. And for it to happen just before a major set-piece battle between Good and Evil? Some of George’s best friends were coincidences, but that didn’t mean he trusted them as far as he could spit.
Well, he said to himself. And what would I do if I were fixing this fight?
Easy, I’d position a sniper somewhere in the arena. That way, when I come rushing in to scrag my enemy, the sniper blams me just as I’m about to put my wings back and dive. It looks like Saint George has killed me. Good triumphs over Evil for the second time running. Yeah. Well, we’ll see about that.
He gained a few thousand feet and looked down. Below him, the huge arena looked like a tiny scab on the knee of the desert. It was packed with people; high rollers and fight aficionados from the length and breadth of Time. George chuckled. The way he saw it, spectator sports are at best a rather morbid form of voyeurism. So much better if you can participate directly in the action.
He started to dive.
The joy of it was that the deaths of all the people he was going to incinerate, by way of a diversion, would be blamed on the dragon (representing Evil, and doing a pretty spectacular job) rather than noble, virtuous Saint George (representing po-faced, one-hand-tied-behind-its-back Good). Given the dragon’s track record, nobody would have the slightest problem in believing that he’d decided to zap a whole stadium full of humans for the sheer hell of it.
