Two days before the fight, the dragon left the shade of the trees and waddled down to the brook for a drink. Just as he was about to take a long, cool suck, he noticed a funny, familiar smell. He hesitated. He looked about.
The surface of the brook, he noticed, was covered in dead fish.
Half an hour of nosing about revealed a pile of empty WormexTM cans, concealed under a thick mass of brambles half a mile downstream. For a long time the dragon lay beside the water, his brows furrowed in perplexed thought. Surely not, he kept saying to himself. Impossible. Out of the question. Absolutely no way. For pity’s sake, what was the point of arranging a contest between Good and Evil and then trying to cheat?
Twenty-one empty cans and a streamful of dead trout.
The dragon had stopped speaking and was looking at her, one eyebrow raised. Bianca shook her head again.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But the survival of the human race was at stake. You said yourself—’
‘No.’ The dragon’s voice was soft and reasonable, with
just a dash of perplexity. ‘No, it wasn’t, that’s the whole point. What was at stake — as set out in black and white in the super limited edition official pre-fight souvenir brochure — was the contrasting merits of Good and Evil. And that’s what I simply couldn’t get my head around, try as I might. Of course,’ he went on, waving to the barman for another bottle, ‘if I’d been a cynic I’d have had no trouble explaining it away. You see, as a baffle between species, survival of the fittest and all, it was a foregone conclusion. In the red corner, a huge, fire-breathing, flying, invulnerable dragon. In the blue corner, lots of little squishy things who fry if you sneeze on them and starve if you burn their crops. But as a contest between moral forces, it’d be a foregone conclusion the other way. Particularly if the bad guy forfeited the match by not showing up, on account of being home dead with severe gastritis. But that wasn’t the way I saw it.’
‘No?’
The dragon shook his head. ‘Still wouldn’t have made any sense,’ he said. ‘Think about it. Your entire species is wiped out, except for you. There’s got to be a reason, surely. If there wasn’t a reason, you’d go stark staring mad just thinking about it.’
Bianca intercepted the fresh bottle and took a long, serious pull at it. ‘All right,’ she said, wiping off the neck and passing it over. ‘So then what happened?’
Well (said the dragon), I found another stream that didn’t smell of roast almonds, had a good long slurp and went to sleep.
When I woke up, there were five humans standing over me. I took a deep breath, but they waved a bit of white rag on a stick at me. I believe that’s supposed to make you fireproof.
They explained that they represented a syndicate of humans who earned their living by making bets on things —horse-races, chess matches, witch duckings and, apparently, confrontations between Good and Evil. They had a proposition to put to me, they said. Something, they said, to our mutual advantage.
It was just as well they said the last bit, because if they hadn’t they’d have found themselves floating on the breeze like wee grey snowflakes two seconds later. As it was, for a moment I reckoned that at last the humans had finally got their act together and worked out some way dragons and people could share the same ball of wet rock without having to snuff each other out. Actually, I was wrong. But the proposition was interesting.
They told me that the big fight had attracted a lot of interest in gambling circles. The trouble was, once the news broke that I hadn’t drunk the WormexTM cocktail and was accordingly still somewhat alive, the odds had been redrawn on the basis that Saint George was going to be fondued and I would inevitably win. You could get two thousand to one on Cody, no trouble at all, but if you wanted to bet on me nobody was prepared to take your money. This, the betting men said, struck them as a wonderful opportunity cunningly disguised as a fuck-up.
Explain, I said.
They explained. If they put their shirts on George to win and then I lost the fight...'
Come, come, I said. All false modesty aside, do you really think there’s a lawyer’s chance in Heaven of that happening?
They shuffled their feet. They cleared their throats. They fiddled with their hats. Was I familiar, they asked, with the concept of taking a dive?
George, they went on, was already in on the deal and
would do his bit to the letter. All I had to do was wait until he tried to prod me with his lance — he’d miss, naturally —and then roll over on the ground, make funny noises and pretend to die. Once everybody had gone home, I’d make myself scarce and never come back. They’d just acquired some vacant real estate, they said, a big island called Antarctica, completely empty, not a human being anywhere. I was welcome to it. Chance to make a fresh start, live my life without any further aggravation from homo sapiens. Plus, they added, once again saving themselves in the very nick of time from being oxidised, it was the only possible way to resolve the Good-versus-Evil showdown with the one result that actually made any sense, which was, of course, a draw.
Bianca realised that she’d lost all feeling in her hands. She looked down and saw that her hands were clamped solid on the arms of her chair.
‘And?’ she demanded.
The next bit (continued the dragon) makes me feel a bit upset when I think about it. As a rule I’m not one to carry a grudge, but I reckon it was a pretty poor show.
I did my bit. George didn’t do his. Maybe, just conceivably, there was some sort of communications breakdown, I don’t know. Perhaps the gamblers were lying when they said George had agreed to co-operate. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Like I said, I’d known Cody a fair while, and not only would he sell his own grandmother, he’d throw in forged Green Shield stamps.
So there I was, or rather wasn’t. A right idiot I felt, with my body stuck with George’s lance like an enormous green cocktail sausage, and my head on a pole being pelted with distinctly second-hand groceries. By that point, however, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.
Maybe it served me right; after all, I’d agreed to cheat too, and Cheating is Wrong. And you could say George didn’t cheat, because his job in the grand scheme of things was to kill the evil dragon, and that’s precisely what he did do. I really don’t know, and what’s more I don’t really care any more. I’ve had enough of Good and Evil to last me, and as far as I’m concerned it sucks.
Any old how. There’s me, dead. Which is presumably where the story’s meant to have ended.
Only it didn’t.
‘You’ve gone ever such a funny colour,’ said the dragon.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have drunk all that apple juice.’
‘Calvados. And no, I don’t think it’s that.’ Bianca swallowed a couple of times, as if she’d got the Arc de Triomphe stuck in her throat. ‘Excuse me asking this, but are you dead?’
‘I was,’ replied the dragon, scratching his ear. ‘Very much so. If there was an award for Stiffo of the Millenium, I’d have been a contender, no question about that, right up until a few weeks ago. Round about the time you started—’
‘Don’t.’ Bianca swallowed again. ‘Would you excuse me?’ she said. ‘I feel a bit unwell.’
‘Over there by the fruit machine and turn right,’ said the dragon. ‘That’s assuming I’ve interpreted the little drawings on the doors correctly.’
‘Thank you.'
While Bianca was in the ladies’, the dragon passed the time by drinking off another three bottles of calvados and, having exhausted the wine bar’s supply, a bottle and a half of Bacardi. Not a patch on Diesel, but in time you could probably acquire the taste.
‘As I was saying,’ he went on, ‘it was your statue that did it. Why, I have no idea. You got any theories?’
Bianca shook her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘And anyway, I’ve clearly gone barking mad, so anything I say isn’t likely to be much help to anybody.’
The dragon frowned a little, pulled open a pac
ket of peanuts and offered her a handful, which she hastily refused. ‘My theory — and it’s just that, a theory — is that somehow, somewhere along the line, something has cocked up quite spectacularly. The whole Good-and-Evil business is up the pictures and it needs setting right. And,’ he went on, more to himself than to Bianca, who in any event was staring at the toes of her shoes and making puppy-dog noises, ‘for some reason that beats me completely, it needs setting right now.’ He sat very still for maybe nine or ten seconds; then he finished off the last of the rum, slapped his knees jovially and stood up. ‘Ready?’ he demanded.
‘Woof,’ Bianca replied.
‘I think I’ve decided what I’m going to do next.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes.’ The dragon looked out through the window, smiled a little and ate the last peanut. ‘I think I’d like to find George,’ he said.
Chapter 6
Prodsnap’s idea was very simple. All they had to do was find a phone box and call a cab. Eventually they found a phone box... (‘But don’t we have to put money in it?’ ‘Or a phonecard.’
‘You’ve got a phonecard?’
‘Got one? Man, I invented them.’
... and eventually the taxi came. Moving with extreme speed, Prodsnap was able to get his claws round the passenger door handle before the driver was able to throw the car into reverse and get away.
‘Hi,’ he said brightly. ‘Birmingham, please.’
The cab driver’s eyes were as round as soup-plates, and he made a sort of snurgling noise. Prodsnap occupied the front seat, beckoned towards the bushes and grinned.
‘On our way to a fancy dress party and the blasted car died on us,’ he said. ‘Don’t you just hate it when that happens?’
The driver’s eyes were riveted to the six-fingered, claw-
fringed talon resting lightly on his dashboard. ‘Fancy dress?’ he guttered.
‘Neat costumes, yes? There’s five of us, but don’t worry.’ He turned to his colleagues, who had appeared out of the shrubbery like bad-cheese dreams in the early hours of the morning. ‘Chardonay,’ he went on, ‘your turn to go in the boot. Come on, let’s be having you.’
There was a hiss, like a rattlesnake being ironed, from Snorkfrod, but Chardonay went round the back of the car without a word, opened the boot and hopped in.
‘Off we go,’ Prodsnap said cheerfully.
‘Good morning, your Grace,’ murmured Father Kelly. ‘I’ve brought you a nice cup of tea and a boiled—’
‘Fuck tea,’ George growled without moving. ‘I want whisky, about half a pint, nine rashers of bacon and a big greasy slab of fried bread. Jump to it.’
When Father Kelly returned, George was sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling with his toes for the slippers. Since his feet were about fives sizes bigger than his host’s, he’d slit the slippers up the side with a pair of nail scissors he’d found in the bathroom. Then he used the scissors to pick his teeth.
‘Breakfast,’ Father Kelly announced, carefully setting down the tray. ‘It’s a beautiful morning, the suns s—’
‘Shut up,’ George replied. ‘Now, you got that stuff I told you about?’
Father Kelly nodded. He’d been busy since before first light, routing parishioners out of bed, scrounging and borrowing. ‘Most of it,’ he replied. ‘Nearly all—’
‘What d’you mean, nearly all?’ George scowled at him and stuffed another handful of bacon into his mouth. ‘Nearly isn’t good enough, you idle sod. What haven’t you got? The Semtex?’
‘Actually,’ replied Father Kelly, with a tiny trace of smugness, ‘I’ve got that. You see, Seamus Donoghoe who works in the quarry—’
‘The detonators?’
‘All present and correct, your Grace.’
‘The cyanide?’
‘Ah.’ Father Kelly bit his lip. ‘Ever such a slight difficulty there, but I hope I’ve located a likely source. Dennis O’Rourke’s mother, who works down at the plastics factory—’
‘Then don’t stand there rabbiting like a pillock,’ George snapped. ‘Go and suss it out. You’ve got till I finish my breakfast, so you’d better get moving.’
‘Yes, your Grace.’
‘And get some decent whisky, for fuck’s sake. This stuff tastes like anti-freeze.’
‘Of course, your Grace.’
‘And more bacon.’
‘At once, your Gra—’
‘Move it!’
Having got rid of the priest — what, George demanded of the empty air, has happened to the clergy in this piss-awful century? In his day, a priest was a big, silent bloke in chain-mail who stood by with the spare arrows and held the funnel when you poured the poison in a river — he knocked off the rest of the whisky, wiped his greasy hands on the curtain, and ran over the plan in his mind one more time.
It all depended on the statue still being there. If it was, all he needed to do was pack the Semtex all round it, retire to a safe distance and push the handle. End of statue; end of dragon. That was Plan A. Plan B involved the cyanide, the West Midlands water supply and a very flexible interpretation of the old maxim about omelettes and eggs.
Good century, this. Progress. Take explosives, for
instance. Before calling on Father Kelly he’d stopped off at the library and read an encyclopaedia — saints are fast readers and have near-photographic memories — and some of the stuff you could do with explosives had made him feel green with envy. What he couldn’t have achieved, back in the old days, with a couple of cartloads of gelignite, or TNT. Of course, he’d been experimenting off his own bat back in the dawn of prehistory with basic sulphur and charcoal mixes, but it had been disappointing stuff; a fizz, a few pretty sparks and a nasty smell. That was the way the world began, not with a bang but a simper.
He looked up. Someone was tapping nervously at the door. He sighed.
‘Stop pratting about and come in, you ponce,’ he shouted, and Father Kelly duly appeared. He was deathly pale and trembling like a second-hand suspension bridge.
‘Your Grace,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, your Grace, you’ve got to come quick. Out in the street. There’s...’ He broke off and started crossing himself, until a sharp blow from George’s foot got him back up off his knees.
‘Don’t stand there drivelling, you big girl. What’s up with you? Mice? Spider in the bath?’
‘Devils!’
‘You what?’
‘Devils,’ Father Kelly repeated. ‘Five of them, wandering up and down in the street, bold as brass. Oh, your Grace—’
‘You sure they’re devils?’
Father Kelly described them in a horrified whisper. George nodded.
‘Yup,’ he said, ‘sounds like devils to me. That’s handy.’
The priest’s mouth fell open. ‘Handy? Oh, saints preserve us. I mean ...
George stood up, took the priest by the ear and threw him out. Then he crossed to the window and edged back the corner of the curtain. Sure enough; five demons, standing in the road arguing with a taxi driver.
George smiled. ‘Perfect,’ he said.
‘Of course it’s a valid credit card,’ replied Prodsnap angrily. ‘Look, you stupid ponce, can’t you read? Bank of Hell, it says, expiry date — well, you don’t need to know that,’ he added, putting his thumb over the embossed numbers. ‘What you might call, um, sensitive information.’
The driver took the card and peered at it. ‘What’s them funny squiggles?’ he said. ‘They don’t look like writing to me.’
Prodsnap swore. Hell’s own internal language was a relatively recent innovation, an artificial tongue introduced so that all the myriad races who crowded the Nine Rings would be able to understand each other. It had been loosely modelled on Esperanto, but for obvious reasons they’d changed the name. They called it Desperado.
‘Chardonay,’ he said. ‘You’re a bloody intellectual. Come and explain to this cretin here—’
Mistake, Prodsnap realised. The Demon Chardonay still
believed that difficult situations could be defused by explanation and negotiation. Once you’d been around the Shopfloor as long as Prodsnap had (roughly the same length of time the sun had been alight) you knew for certain that without explanation and negotiation there probably wouldn’t have been a difficult situation in the first place.
At his side, Slitgrind scowled. ‘Why don’t we just eat the sucker?’ he whispered loudly. ‘No worries. You hold his arms, and I’ll bite out his—’
Prodsnap shook his head. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to create an incident, do we? Hence the low profile.’
Bad choice of words; Slitgrind always had a low profile, something to do with the fact that his eyebrows and simian
hairline shared a very narrow common frontier.
‘There’s nobody watching, is there?’ Slitgrind replied. ‘I mean, nobody’s going to miss him, are they? Pity we haven’t got any mustard, but still.’
‘For the last time,’ Prodsnap growled. ‘Don’t eat the livestock. Got that?’
‘Bloody spoilsport. Bad as the frigging Management, you are.’
Chardonay’s negotiations were just on the point of collapse — one positive thing; further acquaintance had dissolved the cab driver’s fear of demons to the extent that he was just bracing himself to give Chardonay a very hard punch on the nose — when the door of a house on the other side of the street opened and a human figure walked out into the middle of the road.
‘Need any help?’ he said.
Prodsnap stood in his way and put on his nastiest expression. Absolutely no effect. ‘Here,’ he grunted. ‘Who are you, then?’
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