Wrath-Bearing Tree

by James Enge

  “I don’t see that as the best possible option,” she said diplomatically.

  “Name a better,” he said.

  “I could go.”

  “You are the captain of this ship. I’m just a passenger with a red cloak.”

  “I’m a Guardian of the Wardlands and so is every member of this crew. If we need to die, we can die together—at least make the dragon pay for his fun.”

  “No. Aloê. Think.”

  “Think of what? You were eloquent enough in quelling my second-in-command. Say what you damn well mean.”

  “Is it a coincidence we were attacked within a day of leaving the Wards?”

  “You say no.”

  “I say no. Someone was warned we were coming. That, in itself, is news the Graith must know. Even if my fight with the dragon only buys the ship a little time, you must use it to bring the ship nearer home.”

  “God Avenger scorch your stupid guts!” shouted Aloê, because she knew he was right.

  “I’m sorry,” said the man they both knew was going to his death.

  Morlock took the long spear that lay wrapped underneath his hammock and shook it free from its covering. It gleamed silver even in the dull light of the cabin. Also under the hammock was the Banestone, the baleful jewel that had killed Saijok Mahr. He put its chain about his neck and walked out of the cabin. Aloê and Koijal, following him out, watched him step to the edge of the deck nearest the circling dragon and spin the silver spear in his fingers. Even in the dim humid day, the silver spear glittered notably, and the dragon seemed to take note, or perhaps it was the Banestone the dragon noticed. He dropped below the horizon, settling down on the surface of the sea, enfolding his wings about him, until he was like a volcanic isle, sending up a column of smoke and steam as it drifted on the steel-gray waves.

  “How can he do that?” Koijal wondered in a subdued tone. “I held a dragon’s vertebra once—it was heavier than bronze. Do they get heavier after death?”

  Morlock shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d like to know.” (I would have liked to know, Aloê translated.)

  “I’ll need a little boat,” he said to Aloê. “Or do you call it a ship, too?”

  “Boat!” she snapped. “See to it, Koijal.”

  They put the odd pale man in the boat, swung it over the rail and lowered it into the sea. Then, as he unhandily began to row toward the waiting dragon, Aloê stonily gave the orders to bring the ship about and strike for home.

  It was a wretched day to die, and Morlock was in no mood for it. He had to stop rowing twice to vomit on the way to parley with the dragon, and the thin bitter bile (which was all his belly had left to give up) burned in his mouth even after he rinsed it clear with salt water.

  But he was glad to see Flayer running westward with all its oars swinging. Even better, the dragon didn’t seem to be pursuing it. He took no trouble to hurry toward the rendezvous, therefore. The longer this took, the longer she had to get away.

  Morlock wondered if there was some way to row a boat facing forward. He disliked the sensation of approaching a dragon with his back turned. But at least he did not have to meet the dragon’s eye (malefic? amused? something of both?) after retching over the little boat’s side, as he did several times on the short journey across the rough gray water. It was hard for him to gauge his progress in paces or boat lengths. But he could feel the regard of the dragon on his neck. A sensation of heat, like sunlight on this cloudy day, grew on his shoulders. Eventually he could hear the hiss of water becoming steam from contact with the dragon’s fire-hot skin. He smelled the smoke and venom of the dragon’s breath. He had come far enough, he guessed. He pulled the oars inboard and let their handles fall down in the bilge.

  He cleared his throat, spat out some dark mucus. Standing up, he turned to face the dragon.

  The enemy looked on Morlock with a long lupine grin that was not a smile. The dragon’s scales were black and green, like Saijok Mahr’s. He floated on the gray waves, Koijal’s mystery, with his wings folded about him like an island. A volcanic island: the smoke of the dragon’s breath drifted upward in a long column in the stagnant air of the hot cloudy day.

  So you are the sacrifice, the dragon rumbled in Wardic. His red-gold eyes gazed with naked greed at the Banestone hanging from Morlock’s neck. That was one reason Morlock had brought it along: to give the dragon a reason to fight.

  “I am Morlock Ambrosius, also known as syr Theorn,” Morlock replied in Dwarvish. “It was I who slew Saijok Mahr and broke the guile of masters.”

  You are the one I seek, then, rumbled the dragon, still in Wardic. I am Rulgân the Outlier, also known as Rulgân the Kinslayer and Rulgân the Thief.

  “Eh,” said Morlock.

  You are not one of the wordy Ambrosii, I see, the dragon reflected. Nor does my dragonspell seem to be effective on you.

  “Then?”

  Then let us get down to business, Ambrosius. I can earn a great gift of strength and wisdom from the Two Powers. All I need give them is you, or the proof of your death.

  Morlock stooped and lifted up his spear from the bilge of the boat. “You find me ready.”

  Morlock’s defiance was rewarded with a moment or two of silence.

  We can fight, Rulgân at last, and we will if you choose. But it occurs to me that we each have something to buy that the other can sell.

  “I have my life. What is it you have?”

  The life of that ship. You rowed yourself out here in that pitiful fragment of wood so that the trireme might have a chance to get away. If you surrender to me, I will spare it.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I will self-bind myself in oath. Of course, I would expect the same from you.

  Morlock briefly considered it. A self-binding oath, with anchor’s in the swearer’s own tal, was a powerful instrument. Breaching the oath made the swearer susceptible to external control, even death. But there had to be some person free to activate the terms of the oath. If Morlock surrendered his free will to the dragon’s he doubted he could enforce the oath, and no one on Flayer would be party to the terms.

  “No.”

  Rulgân eyed him curiously, as if waiting for more words. When no more were forthcoming he said with slow emphasis, Then we fight.

  “You find me ready,” Morlock repeated.

  Why are you unreasonable? the dragon wondered. I can offer you a clear gain, at very little cost. You cannot withstand my attack, but if you surrender yourself I will spare the ship and its crew. Is that not what you came out here to achieve?

  “I came out here to challenge you to a duel, Rulgân the Outlier. It is long months since I killed a dragon, and I need the practice.”

  The dragon was amused. Why should I engage in anything so formal when I could be tasting your heart’s reddest blood in mere moments?

  “You could swear in a self-binding oath that you slew in single combat the man who killed Saijok Mahr. Even an outlier with no guile to lead must find it useful to boast now and again.”

  The dragon laughed lazily. A guile to lead! What an idea! Every guile master that ever lived was a slave to his servants. To be a master in their eyes, he sold his freedom. That I will never do. No, I follow after my own thinking and my own desires. It so happens that your life, or proof of your death, will buy me what I desire, from those well able to give it.

  “Then,” Morlock said, and tapped the point of his spear on the frame of his boat. The spear was long enough to reach a dragon’s brain through its eye or the roof of its mouth—long enough to pierce a draconic heart within its lizardlike chest. The dragon knew it: Morlock saw that. The red-gold slotted eyes half-closed in contemplation.

  Single combat, Rulgân said lazily. Like a song from the Longest War. Why is it, Ambrosius, that people like you and me, who should be making the future, are forever fighting the battles of the past?

  “I will make the future after I am done killing you.”

  You badly wish to provoke me, I see.
You will not find it easy to do, my two-legged friend with the voice of a Softclaw. If you succeed, you will wish you had not.

  Morlock opened his free hand and turned it face down, an insulting gesture in Dwarvish that he hoped the dragon would understand.

  If Rulgân did, he gave no sign of it. He did not speak for seven long smoky breaths. Then he said, Here is what I propose. You will take your little boat to whatever quarter of the sea, within sight, that you choose. I will take five runs at you. If you are still alive after the fifth, I will self-bind to let you live.

  “I reject your terms. I challenge you to the death.”

  But I live on my terms, not yours, replied the dragon coolly in words licked by flame. He leapt straight up into the air and spun upward in a long lazy spiral.

  Morlock sat down on the bench and tossed his spear back into the bilge. He picked up the oars and slowly began to row the boat away toward the shore.

  It had gone as well as it could have. But it had not gone very well. His enemy was unreachable by shame, or pride, or anger. What other weapons did Morlock have, except a pointed stick and the willingness to risk death?

  As Flayer moved steadily westward through the choppy seas, Aloê glumly watched the dragon leap silent from the surface of the water. She had watched the conversation without hearing any of the words, but its import was fairly clear. The dragon was taking flight in a long spiral, and Morlock began to row toward the shore. Had he specified the place of the duel to give Flayer a better chance of escape? She had no doubt of it. That hateful son of a bitch’s brach.

  Aloê was not used to running away from a danger someone else was facing. She had to admit Morlock’s point that the Graith needed to know what they knew. But she didn’t have to like it . . . and, anyway, who should she tell?

  Then she remembered the message sock Jordel had given her.

  Cursing herself, she ran into the deck cabin. It was in one of the pigeonholes in the table she’d been working at. . . .

  She found it. She also found all her sketches and plans carefully stacked to one side. One lay by itself—the oddest, strangest, most knifelike design. She had loved it, but put it aside as too strange.

  On it lay a note in Morlock’s tall tangled script: Not the others. This.

  He had looked at her designs. He had judged them, the cold-eyed unblinking bastard. And he had approved the one she had loved too much to approve, her secret dream that no one else was meant to see.

  She swore violently and incoherently. She took the pencil and scribbled a quick note to Jordel and Illion on the back of the knifelike design. She stuffed it into the message-sock and twisted the fabric to send the message.

  She ran out onto the deck, and almost knocked down Koijal, who was coming after her, apparently.

  She shouldered off her red cloak. “Koijal,” she said, “I’m leaving you to carry my cloak. If you bring this ship and its crew back to the Wardlands more or less intact, I’ll see that you get a red cloak of your own. If I can. Tell everything you saw and heard to the Vocates Jordel or Illion and no one else.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to stand by Vocate Morlock. Good luck, K. I hope you don’t need it.”

  “But—”

  She kicked off her shoes and dove over the rail, past the long white oars toiling in the sea, into the bitter gray water.

  Morlock rowed as far into the Shallows as he dared. Rulgân was patrolling in the dark skies overhead, occasionally eclipsed by low-lying clouds.

  Morlock decided he had stalled as long as he could. He dragged the oars inboard of the boat and stood, wobbling a little, in the bilge. His hands were actually trembling as he bent down to pick up the spear, twin to the one that had carried death to Saijok Mahr. He wondered dimly if it was fear or sickness making him tremble. The latter, he thought. He should make sure of his aim before he threw away his only weapon. But underneath his trembling, underneath his caution, was the rock-solid certainty of striking his target.

  He waved the spear in the air and stood waiting for the battle to begin.

  Slowly, lazily, the bat-winged form of his enemy turned in the charcoal sky and began a long, twisting attack-run.

  Flayer still labored in the waves in the middle distance. He had bought them some time—probably not enough. But Aloê was on board, a rokhlan in her own right. She would think of something.

  Rulgân flickered in the air as he approached: lifting, falling, swerving left and right, sketching a serpentine twisting route through the hot gray sky. He was luring Morlock to throw his spear. Morlock knew it, knew that his enemy was waiting for the throw, and he watched patiently for the chance to strike at his enemy in truth. Part of the game Rulgân was playing involved giving Morlock a real chance for a killing blow—as long as he saw it in time, as long as he was able to make use of it.

  The dragon was just within the range of a longish spear-cast when he stalled in midair and roared fire down on Morlock and his boat and the surrounding water.

  Morlock’s Ambrosian blood would protect him from the fire, but he clenched his eyes shut against the venom and smoke and kept them shut: they’d be of little use in the fog. But he heard the shriek of the dragon’s wings on the air, and he guessed his enemy’s next move: to swamp the boat. Following the sounds of the dragon in the air, he jumped to one end of the boat and stabbed out wildly with the spear.

  His advantage was that he had spent long years under the earth, often without light: the absence of sight did not frighten him. His disadvantage was that he wasn’t used to his ground sliding away under his feet as he fought.

  His spear blade bit something, and there was a fierce satisfaction in that. But his foot caught on a bench in the boat, and he fell facefirst into the bilge.

  He struggled to his feet, spitting bilgewater, blood, and steam. If the dragon had spun about and struck him it all would have been over. But Rulgân was already more than a spear-cast away to the east. He resumed his leisurely patrol, fire-bright eyes ever peering at Morlock through the heavy murk of cloudy hot day.

  Whatever Morlock had caught with his spear blade, he hadn’t drawn blood. The dragon hadn’t fled. Rulgân wasn’t afraid. He was . . .

  He was the cat and Morlock was the mouse. The cool-headed dragon was amusing himself at Morlock’s expense.

  Morlock tried to remember that this was good. He tried to remember why he was doing this: to give Aloê a chance to get away. He tried to be glad that Rulgân was mocking him, like a cat with its paws on a mouse’s tail, watching with interest as it struggled to get away. . . .

  Morlock clenched his teeth and watched with fury as the dragon idly cruised the sky, turned as if to attack, resumed his patrol.

  When Rulgân dropped into another attack run, Morlock was ready for him. He kept his eyes on the dragon’s wings until he felt their beat like the rhythm of his own heart. He watched the twists and turns that Rulgân took in the air, and he thought he had a sense of how long it took the dragon to turn in the air.

  This time, this time he would draw blood. He knew it. He would show Rulgân the Outlier what it was to mock Morlock Saijok’s-Bane.

  The moment came. The attack was a feint; Morlock knew from the lines he was drawing in the sky, his judgement of the dragon’s speed and momentum and path. But Morlock attacked in earnest, throwing his spear straight through the window of opportunity his eye had sketched in the air.

  The wound might indeed have been fatal if Morlock had thrown the spear at his target. But his hands were still trembling and, in the act of releasing his weapon from his hand he felt, like an iron bell, the unintended tap of his thumb against the shaft of the spear, sending it wildly off course. He watched in mute disbelief as it fell into the rough gray water and disappeared. The dragon passed like a storm, but still he stood staring at the empty air and water to the west.

  He had thrown and missed.

  He still had a long knife in his belt, not nearly long enough for this fight, and the Ban
estone as his focus of power, if he could think of some way to wield the Sight or the Strength as a weapon through it. But he . . .

  He had thrown. And he had missed.

  It was so long since that had happened that Morlock didn’t remember how it felt. Even as a child, tossing pebbles at cups during the games of Cymbalfeast, even then he hit his targets.

  He had told himself that he had come out to face death, and he had known that defeat was the likeliest outcome of his challenge.

  But he hadn’t expected this. This was the true defeat, the true mockery.

  He had thrown and missed.

  Rulgân took a single half-circuit of the sky and dropped down into an attack run again. And this was no twist-filled feint. He was headed straight for Morlock, jaws open, front claws extended. He was coming in for the kill.

  Morlock grimly drew his dagger and thought about his options. There didn’t seem to be any. He hoped he could at least leave a mark on the beast.

  His lost spear rose up in front of him, gleaming from the water.

  “Take it!” Aloê’s voice snarled as he stood there gaping.

  He seized the shaft and brandished the spear.

  Rulgân saw. He spun aside and drove upward. He was well out of throwing range as he passed overhead.

  “Khul, gyrmar!” Morlock shouted in fierce satisfaction to the dragon flying eastward. The veil of mockery was torn open, at last. The dragon feared a spear in Morlock’s hands, as well he might.

  The satisfaction passed almost as quickly as the storm-swift dragon. Morlock turned his head downward to watch bemusedly as Aloê Oaij climbed into the little boat.

  He was racked with shame: she had seen him fail. And fear: God Avenger, hadn’t he done this so that she would have a chance at life? And here she was standing in the path of the dragon.

  Gleaming from the water that was native to her, so alien to him, she was glorious indeed, but he was wounded by something deeper than her beauty. He saw it in her golden eyes, in her defiant stance. She couldn’t stand to see someone in danger and not stand beside him.