“Who was the last knight to kill a dragon?” I ask Tristan.
He chops at a bramble with his sword and shrugs. “Saint Gilbert, I think.”
“He was a Scotsman, wasn’t he?”
“Aye, Sirrr,” Tristan says in a brogue. “Kilt the dragon Dubh Giuthais, he did. Said the words, ‘Pity of you, dragon,’ and fired an arrow into its heart.”
“But Gilbert killed his beast a hundred years ago at least, didn’t he?”
Tristan nods. “We could be the only dragon slayers of our time.”
“We have to kill the dragon to become dragon slayers, Tristan.”
We push through ever-thickening brush. Water trickles into my helmet through the eye slits and air holes, spatters my face. I stumble over fallen, half-buried branches and push through thick patches of bur reed and saxifrage. I worry that we will not find the creature. What happens then? Will we waste days searching for the simpleton? What if he is not in the village? How long will it take to find him? I wonder how Elizabeth is doing and pray her body is holding up better than Morgan’s.
“Edward,” Tristan says. “Did you see the dragon’s eyes when we fought it in the river?”
“No, Tristan,” I say. “I was distracted by the massive teeth that nearly took my arm off.”
“I saw them,” he says. “They were yellow.”
“Very good,” I say. “Maybe you can paint a picture when we get home.”
“Edward,” he says. “They were yellow.”
“I heard you, Tris…” I stop walking and look back at him.
He nods. “Yellow.”
“The priest said the dragon eats plaguers.”
“And yet its eyes are yellow.”
“Maybe the priest lied,” I say. “Maybe it doesn’t eat plaguers.”
Tristan shrugs. “Then where are the afflicted? We haven’t seen any in the village. Not one.”
I stare back toward Bure and wonder. “That’s quite a mystery, Tristan.”
“It quite is, isn’t it?”
We continue walking. I am tired already. The festering wound still drains me of strength. When we are about fifty paces into the forest, something moves in the mist. I crouch and hear Tristan doing the same behind me. My helm makes it difficult to see, but I do not want to remove it. If the dragon breathes fire, it is the only thing that might save me. I look into the mist. It is no snake this time.
I put a finger to my helm at the place where my lips would be and turn toward Tristan, point to the dark shape. Tristan’s helmet bobs up and down. He sees it. I tap him with my hand, then motion with my finger that he should loop around in front of it. Then I tap my chest and motion that I will circle behind it. His helmet shakes side to side. He taps me and motions that I should go in front of it and he behind. I sigh.
The shape moves closer. Slowly, so slowly. I do not think it has spotted us. Despite the danger, I allow myself a smile.
We found the dragon before it found us.
I stay crouched and creep toward the front of the monster. I wish I had a shield. I do not know how many times I have wished that on this quest. Knights do not use shields anymore. They are unwieldy on horseback and our armor is so strong these days that we do not need the extra protection. Not using shields also allows us the use of two-handed weapons. Tristan would laugh if he saw me with a shield, but if dragons are returning to the world, then I think shields should, too.
Tristan creeps forward and loops toward the dragon’s flank. We are only a few paces from the Stour, which worries me. It would not be wise to pin ourselves between a dragon and the deep river if things go badly. But if things go badly, then Elizabeth will die. I shake my head. There will be no retreat.
The shape makes a sharp movement, then freezes. Has it heard us? I sit unmoving, breath held. We need to take the beast by surprise. It does not move. I think it knows we are near. We should strike before it finds us. I take a long breath, count to three, and charge.
My war cry is “Elizabeth.” I shout it with all my strength and storm toward the dark shape, knowing, as I approach, that it is far too tall to be the dragon. Far too lanky and frail. My war cry echoes flatly in the forest.
The deer plants on its front legs, then leaps to one side and bounds away from me. But Tristan charges from its flank, his war cry of “Hallelujah!” echoing as well. The doe shifts to one side, crouches, then leaps effortlessly over Tristan’s hunched form. She lands behind him and vanishes into the mist.
Tristan laughs and turns to me. “Did you see that? Did you see it Edward? She jumped right over me!”
More deer silhouettes appear behind Tristan. I open my mouth to tell him that more deer may jump over him, but they are not deer.
“Tristan!” I slog through lady fern and old leaves, raising my sword high. “Tristan!”
He turns and nearly falls backward from the surprise. Plaguers. At least a dozen of them. And the mist gives birth to more and more of them as I watch.
“To me!” I shout. “To me!”
But Tristan is already backing toward the river. Fool. He will be pinned between river and plague. I run to his side.
“The other way! Back toward the village!”
But I realize why he backed toward the river. There are plaguers behind me too. The afflicted approach in a half circle of snarling death. The mist leeches them of details. They are rotting silhouettes that claw at us, their footsteps like an exhausted army on the march.
Tristan and I stand shoulder to shoulder. One of the plaguers trips in the brush and falls at our feet. I drive Saint Giles’s blade through his back, pinning him to the earth. Tristan thrusts over and over again into the back of the man’s neck until the head is severed.
Two more approach. I hack through the leg of another man, nearly severing the limb. He topples to the ground. Tristan frees a woman’s entrails. When she doubles over in pain, he shatters her skull with a two-handed rising cut. My plaguer crawls toward me and I smash his skull with my boot, knowing I will remember the slow crackling sound for the rest of my days.
Three bodies. A good start.
But many more approach. I think back to a night on the banks of the Thames. Sir Morgan and I shoulder to shoulder, rotting, clawing death closing in on us from all sides. But this is different. There aren’t so many against us today. And, unlike the Thames, the Stour does not appear to be tidal. The river is deep, so the dead cannot flank us.
I would be more confident if I did not feel so tired already. My breaths echo in the great helm at the same speed as my thundering heartbeat.
Tristan savages the throat of a thickset man. Three more of the afflicted approach. Then a fourth and fifth. There are too many to count. We give as much ground as we can. Until the river strokes our heels. Our swords carve room for us, but the space we make is taken back instantly as more of the afflicted crowd forward. Some of the plaguers we cut down continue to attack. I feel their hands clutching at my legs, their teeth searching for weakness in my mailed boots. There are too many. Too close. They are inside my fighting distance and I cannot retreat. My sword is now a liability.
I drive the blade down through the back of a crawling man, plunge it deep as I can, hearing the man’s high-pitched shrieks as I pin him to the earth. I draw my dagger. And I begin a more personal fight.
My head hurts. There is a whine in my ears, a high-pitched tone that grows louder. I slash the dagger two-handed at a young woman’s face and almost lose my balance with the follow-through. I stagger backward and one of my boots slips into the river. I fall to my knees and feel hands grasping at me. Bodies overwhelm me.
I stab and stab at the bodies that hang from me. I do not know where I am striking, only that I am rending flesh, releasing blood, tearing screams of agony from the plaguers. I grab hair, gouge eyes, use my helmet to break skulls, and slash, always I slash. Still on my knees. I must stand or they will smother me.
Tristan holds one gauntleted hand at the center of his sword and swings the we
apon like a staff, hacking with the blade and piercing with the tip. He rips open the face of a man who wears a blue silk shirt. The flesh splits like a sliced gourd, revealing the bright red pulp inside.
He turns to me and extends a hand. I take it and he pulls.
For if one falls, the other will lift up his fellow…
I thank God, Mary, and Saint Giles that Tristan is beside me.
The world spins as I stand. Exhaustion. I have reached the point of exhaustion. My limbs feel like limestone blocks. I am still not well. But the dead do not stop. They smother me with their heavy flesh. Get between me and Tristan. I lose sight of him among their bodies. More and more plaguers press against me. I have to push back to keep them from driving me into the river. I plunge my dagger blade into the eye socket of a fat man who has boils over his entire face.
I must find the simpleton.
They hurl themselves onto me, one after another, dangling from my arms and shoulders, holding my waist and legs. Their teeth scrape loudly against my armor, like tiny saws working at tree trunks. They push at me from three sides. We sway dangerously, back and forth. I pry my arm free and raise the dagger over my head. Aim at the nape of a woman wearing a wimple. I have no strength to put behind the blow; I simply let my hand fall. The blade sinks two inches into her neck. She shrieks and throws her head back, which yanks the dagger out of my hand and sends it into the darkness.
I must find the cure.
I raise my gauntlet and drop it on her face. The lobstered plates rattle against her forehead. A man lunges at my neck, his teeth scraping at my bevor. I gather all my strength and strike the woman’s face again. Her bones crunch and grind beneath the metal plates of my gauntlet. She screams, her voice nasal behind a shattered nose and cheek.
I must cure Elizabeth.
I put one hand behind her neck. The man pushes at my helmet. I can feel the strap straining against my chin. I draw back once more and use the strength of blooming hysteria to drive my gauntlet through the woman’s head. Her face becomes soft and curved. I smell something briny and rich, feel the back of her skull against my fingers.
I will never leave her side again.
Tears come to my eyes as I let the woman drop and turn to the man pulling at my helmet. I grab his face in my hands, feeling a dozen other hands pulling at my armor. Plates rise, straps strain. The man opens his mouth and I slam my great helm into him, shattering his teeth.
Je suis apprivoisé. I am tame.
The tears flow freely, my screams of rage muffled and echoing in the helmet. I cannot stop screaming. I draw back my head and deliver another blow, then another and another. My throat hurts. I slam my helmet into the man’s forehead again and again. I do not stop even when the man’s hands fall limply to his sides. My helm slips against the wet mess of his skull but I do not stop.
I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Mea maxima culpa.
There is not enough of the man’s head left to strike, so I look for the next plaguer. I spin in a half circle and see one wearing armor. I grab his shoulders and realize that it is Tristan and that he has been shouting at me. I do not know for how long. He places both hands on my helm and looks into my eyes. His mouth moves; he is saying something, but I cannot hear it. All I hear is my breathing and the echoes of my gauntlets striking the woman’s face. Caving in her skull. The Stour is like a thunderous waterfall in my great helm. Each breath I take is like the roar of a bear. I cannot focus. My knees tremble.
“Gone!” Tristan shouts. “All of them! They are gone! Speak to me, Ed! Speak to me!”
I blink my eyes and stoop, then collapse to the ground. My wrist hurts. Why does my wrist hurt? I hurt it. The doctor…the nun…
I claw at my helmet. I cannot breathe.
Tristan kneels beside me and helps me with the straps. I throw the great helm off and take deep gasps of air. Steam rises from beneath my bevor. I pull off my gauntlets and look at my wrist. It is red and swollen and I feel the familiar fire in my arm.
Plaguer bodies form two half-moon ramparts around us. They lie in twisted, bloody, mangled stacks. Some of them writhe. I estimate fifteen or twenty bodies. Not enough.
“What…what happened to the rest?” I say.
Tristan takes his gauntlets off and scoops water from the Stour in his cupped hands. He pours it over my head. “I don’t know. They just left.”
“What do you mean they left?” It is lighter by the river. The setting sun is burning its way through the clouds, turning the skies into a blazing forge. “Plaguers…don’t just leave.”
Tristan looks up the Stour, then down it, then collapses to his knees by the river, his breathing labored. “I’m…very wary of it. I felt a chill when they left, but I’m glad they did.” He scoops more water from the river. “I don’t think we would have made it. Maybe the—”
The Stour explodes in a roaring eruption of white water, foam, and the most terrifying jaws I have ever seen. Craggy, sculpted jaws lined with jagged white teeth the shape of thorns and as long as my forefinger. The creature’s head is nothing but mouth, and it is a mouth like nothing on earth. It is Lucifer’s man-trap. A cave with knife-blade teeth. Plateaus of gnarled rock splitting and swallowing the world. It is the very gateway to hell.
And it shuts on Tristan with the sound of a cell door slamming forever closed.
Chapter 29
The dragon’s jaws clamp shut around Tristan’s waist and the beast tosses its head to one side, scaled muscles rippling, whipping him effortlessly off the riverbank and into the Stour. Knight and beast vanish underwater. It happens so quickly that a moment after the attack it seems like Tristan was never there.
“Tristan!” The mist roils and water churns but I cannot see them. There is nothingness again, an oblivion that has swallowed them both. “Tristan!”
I scramble to my feet and crouch, ready to leap into the river after him, but I hesitate. I cannot help Tristan if I am trapped at the river bottom. The weight of my armor will sink me, and we will both drown. If we are not eaten first. But what choice do I have? Tristan dies while I debate. I lean toward the river, bend my knees and—
A gauntleted hand rises among the mist. It waves violently, slaps the surface. I reach toward it. “Tristan! Tristan!” My fingers brush against his fingers. I grab the thin tendril of an oak branch and lean forward, my entire torso now over the water. My fingertip touches his gauntlet. My fingers close on his fingers. And then he is torn from me.
The hand travels upstream swiftly, appearing and disappearing in the mist for ten or fifteen feet. It becomes an arm, then shoulders and a great helm. Tristan sucks in a deep, wheezing breath. He screams my name, his voice cracking and high pitched. The mist parts and closes behind him as the dragon propels him through the water. He strikes at the dragon with his fist. The monster rolls. Tristan flips sideways and vanishes into the Stour once more.
I run along the bank, pushing through branches and shrubs and unbuckling my sword belt. I glimpse the white belly of the dragon as it rolls and then the mist hides even that from view. But they are less than ten feet from the bank.
I wrap the leather belt tightly in both hands, feel the bite of the cold metal buckle. Then I leap into the Stour.
In these times of madness, only madness will save us.
I spread my body to its full length as I leap. I stretch my arms out forward, the belt forming a two-foot link between my hands. It seems like I hang in the air forever, suspended over coiling white clouds. The water will never come. I am in purgatory again. I am a hairy tick and I dangle over the hairy sea.
When I finally hit the water, I find it surprisingly warm. It surges over me. Floods in through every crevice of my armor. I can see nothing but frothing river. My arms hook around an object that I pray is Tristan. One of my hands touches rough warts and scales. My chest falls on something that does not like being fallen upon. It thrashes and whips its body. Tosses me like a hound’s toy. But I am hooked to Tristan.
The water froths. I thin
k it has released Tristan, because he and I drift downward. The monstrously spiked tail sweeps past my eyes. Dirt and debris cloud the water. And then I see something gleaming and white. The jaws of the beast. Breath leaves me in a thousand bubbles. The dragon flashes past and I get a closer look at its lunatic grin. Meet the gaze of one jutting, serpent-slit eye. The tail thumps me and sends me reeling in the water as the wyrm sweeps past.
Tristan and I sink. My lungs feel like lead. My head throbs. My boot touches soft mud and sinks to my shin. I shove toward the shore, drag Tristan with me. My other boot sinks into the mud a few feet closer to the riverbank. I feel like sleeping. The lap of the river is soothing. The milfoil caresses my cheek. Sleep. My arms relax. Darkness eats at the edges of my vision. I struggle against it, bubbles rising from my lips. But the last breath escapes my mouth and I ascend to heaven.
I open my eyes and cough. If I am in heaven, then I am terribly disappointed. I cough again, on my hands and knees, water leaving my mouth like vomit. Heaven is a leafy riverbank in a dark forest and apparently it is full of coughing men. I cough and look sideways. Tristan is on his hands and knees, and he too coughs water. It trickles from the breathing holes of his helm. I recall, somewhere in the shadowy depths of my mind, him pulling me from the river. He throws off his helmet, vomits more water, then sits up on his knees, and tosses me my sword belt. His eyes scan the river carefully.
“I propose a new rule,” he says. “If plaguers run away, then we should too.”
I cough. Did the plaguers really run from the dragon? I have never seen plaguers run from anything. “Are you injured?”
Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) Page 16
