Killbird

by Zach Hughes

  all in all it was a grating noise, and we soon tired of it to find, at the end of a long cave, the most wondrous cave of all, a cave of multiple plates which opened at a touch, revealing incredible things. There were frail cups, not nearly as sturdy as the cups which my family made of fire-hardened clay, and huge plates, and other things, some of dragonskin, and the most amazing thing, a whole collection of skinning knives so wonderfully wrought that there was no blood and so sharp that I could have scraped away my hair. I chose several, thrusting them into my loincloth, and gave Mar two to carry for me. I could, with those knives, skin the largest bear with no effort at all. We climbed a cave with steps and found couches and things we knew not, huge bowls on the floor of some small caves, for example. We liked the lower caves better, and satisfied that we were alone, decided to spend the night. It was not cold inside the caves, as it was growing with the lateness of the evening outside, but a hunter has his fire. I cast around for a place and decided that the best place, with the clearest field of vision, was the room with the stone floor, if only I could stop the dreadful sounds which sprang out of the walls when we entered. I solved the problem by following my ears to find the places where the sounds originated and stopped them with several blows of the hardax. Then it was quiet. I used the ax to break up some chair things—having to take time out to kill at least half a dozen small dragons who seemed to be intent on stealing my firewood—and started my fire on the stone floor in the center of the room. It was a cheerful sight, even though the magic sunlight lit the room well. The smoke rose and began to collect, and I decided that we needed a vent, so I knocked out a couple of eyes with my stone ax, and soon there was a dragon outside putting the eyes back into place, and no sooner did I knock one out than he was there putting it back. By then the cave was filling with smoke. Mar was coughing. And then she screamed, as it began to rain, and the rain was not mere water, but a smelly, sticky whiteness which cascaded down from the roof of the cave. Our fire was quickly out and we were covered by the stuff, and there were dragons everywhere cleaning up the remains of our fire and the white stuff. «Enough,» I said, smashing dragon's eyes right and left. «We leave this place and seek sensible shelter in the woods.» «Yes, yes,» Mar said. Just to give the dragons something to do, I smashed a few eyes from the outside and threw a burning brand into two or three of them to watch the white rain fall. Then it was night. We went into the woodlands and built a small lean-to and a roaring fire, and Mar was, happily, my———I had come to accept the word. Chapter Five Now winter found us. Ice froze in still waters in the swamps. The small animals hid in their burrows, the climbers in their nests, and I was thankful for the sun-dried meat which I carried in my pack, fashioned of part of a deerskin. There were nuts to eat and a small black berry which I observed to be clean, since the birds liked it and it gave, unlike most of the vegetation, no warning of spirits. We ate climbers until I longed for a huge and juicy deer haunch roasted on a spit over a fire of cinders from our long-burning hardwoods of the mountains. We moved eastward from the grove wherein sat the cave of the giants with its toothless small dragons. Mar begged to be allowed to stop, to build a mud-and-grass hut where we could warm ourselves with a fire vented by a hole in the center of the roof and by lying together in our couch. However, the cold was minor compared to the deadly and snow-deep winters of the mountains, so I pushed on, finding shelter as we might; for example, in the lee of a huge fallen tree with a makeshift lean-to of branches over us. I had it in my mind to find the legendary field of endless waters, and I felt that it must be near, for there was a smell to the air. I was frustrated in my desire to continue eastward by increasing spirit warning, and we spent long and aimless days wandering to the south, trying to find a gap in the solid wall of warning which lay to the east. The reptiles and frogs were sleeping, hidden from the cold. I found that fat birds of the water were clean and, although tasting somewhat fishy, were nourishing and quite easily taken by arrow, since they had no fear of man. Most of the woodlands were of an evergreen tree, tall and straight, with needles similar to the evergreens of our mountains. The climbers ate of the burred seeds, as did we, but found them to be rather tasteless. The warning tingle in my belly was, at times, very strong and caused retreat, so that for the early winter months our course angled east and back and ever southward. The days began to vary, some of them pleasantly warm, some chill as the wind shifted into the north, but gradually it warmed and then there were new green shoots growing and the animals were partaking in the new-year ritual of mating and food was more plentiful. The new year was well established when I decided that it was not my lot to see the field of endless waters. Everywhere to the east was a solid wall of warning. The spirits, it seemed, had reason to guard the endless waters from the eyes of man, or at least of man with the sense to heed the warnings. I make mention of one incident, which decided me to alter my plans. Finding a gap in the wall of warning spirits, we ventured eastward into woodlands and found climbers plentiful and, testing with a stunted deer, the same warning in the very bones of the beast. It was when we were camped for the night beside a pleasant lake. The fire had been allowed to burn down, and I heard, as I fell into sleep, the stealthy movements of an animal. I alerted myself and reached for my longbow and saw, reflecting the dying gleam of the fire, a pair of eyes at a height from the ground which caused me concern. Quickly I replenished the fire, and the eyes disappeared, but I had little sleep that night. In the morning I saw tracks, much like the tracks of a lion, only different. There were claw marks on each pad, whereas a lion walks with his claws withdrawn. I continued eastward with some caution. I saw hints of movement in the trees around us. There was more than one animal there, and I knew the feeling of being stalked, as I'd known it when the lion of the mountains sought me for his meal. As usual, the warnings came and we had to retreat, through the same stretch of woodlands, and that night there were two, three, four sets of eyes around our campfire. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I picked my chance, aimed a hand below the gleaming set of eyes with my straightest arrow and heard an eerie yowl as the arrow went home. There was a threshing sound and then silence, and then a series of mournful hoots, sounding almost human. It was too much for me. I built the fire to its greatest with armloads of dry branches gathered before darkness, and the light showed a heap on the ground and eyes in the darkness behind it. I set a branch blazing and walked nervously to take a look at my kill. I cried out in fear when I saw it. The thing lay on its back. Its pink eyes were open, and blood ran down my arrow shaft where it had lodged in the throat below a face out of a nightmare, a face which was near human but distorted into wide-eyed horror, with fangs which extended over huge, thick lips and a mouth large enough to cover the lower face. The body was all haired and the arms were long and there were three fingers on each hand and the feet were huge and haired and vaguely human but clubbed into a shortness which made them look like lion's paws. The thing was almost as tall as I. Its vaguely human features and shape told me that it might walk upright, and the height of the glowing eyes, when they had first caught the firelight, confirmed it. Shaken, I went to my fire and tended it all night, and in the early hours of the morning there was a scuffling and hooting moans which caused the hair of my neck to rise. At the sound of growling, I threw a brand to see, in the brief flare of light, a sight which chilled my blood. A half dozen of the things were tearing and ripping at the body of their dead fellow, fangs chewing, with blood dripping down their hair-covered faces. Sickened, I yelled and charged them with a burning brand, and one of them stood his ground, indeed, made threatening moves toward me, his huge mouth open to show the fearsome teeth, his growl low and feral. I sent an arrow into his midsection and he fell, but crawled away to moan and scream until I heard a flurry of movement and knew that he, too, was furnishing a meal for his kind. The eating sounds, accompanied by sounds of struggle and occasional hoots, as if of pain, continued until light, and I decided that it was wise for us to leave those woods. We seemed to be in the
clear when, without warning, one of the manlike beasts leaped a tree to send Mar sprawling to the ground, and four others charged us from the undergrowth. I used one of the dragonskin skinning knives to kill the beast which was trying to reach Mar's jugular with his fanged teeth and rose quickly to swing my hardax at the first of the oncoming attackers. He fell, his head almost severed, and I struck the arm of a second such a blow that he was no longer interested in combat. But I went down under the remaining two, using my knife to disembowel one, feeling the sharp teeth of the other on my shoulder, buried under the weight of the dying one and the other, who was fighting to bite my neck. I was in a bad way for a moment, and then the attacker was jerked, went limp and began, still atop me, to kick out his life. I scrambled out from under the reeking mass of horror and saw Mar, breathing hard, crouched over us, one of her knives bloody. «Well done,» I said. «Are you hurt?» «Only a scratch,» I said, squeezing the wounds on my shoulder to force them to purify themselves with free bleeding. Later I would cover them with a leaf poultice. I took time to examine the fallen ones and was struck by the nearness to human form. It was as if some cruel god had taken a man and done his best to deform him, make him a horrible imitation of man. But there were hoots from the forest, and I led Mar away as quickly as I could until, gaining fairly open ground, we left the dark and terrible things behind us. I was left without a purpose. What little purpose I had had was involved with seeing the fabled field of endless water, and, prevented from seeking that goal by the continuous belt of warning which cut me off from traveling east, I made a semipermanent camp and watched the days grow longer. This pleased Mar. She blossomed. She found clay and formed cups, plates, bowls, fired them in the campfire. She became very domestic. But as the weather warmed and it was impossible to move without breaking out in sweat, and, worse, the flying biters came in clouds, I tired of those hot, humid lowlands and, to Mar's sadness, made movement to the west. I longed for the coolness of my native mountains. However, it was impossible for me to return to my own home. I had been the bringer of death to half of my family. And to come, bringing with me one of the sick women of the low ridges, would be the ultimate insult and would, most probably, invite trial before the elders of the family, with the ultimate punishment being what I was already suffering, banishment. However, the mountains were long and large and there was the talk I had listened to in my youth, of the hills extending far to the southward to diminish into pleasant rolling lands. We followed the sun westward, through a broiling summer which left us weak and exhausted at the end of the day. But the farther we went westward the more plentiful became the game, the clearer became the streams. Since our march eastward had been less purposeful, we made better time on the westward march, for I did not deviate, except to avoid the areas of God's chaos. One moon after the longest days of summer we saw on a clear day a band of blue to the west which looked like low storm clouds, but as the days passed, it grew, until, my heart leaping with joy, I knew that there were the mountains. Now we encountered men, the same sick, weak, starving men of Mar's country, not to be trusted. My wanderings and the passing time had added weight to my body, and, with my face hair full, my skull hair hanging to my shoulders, I was, no doubt, a fearsome sight, and my efforts to avoid the inbreeders of the low slopes were not contested by them. Nevertheless, I kept one eye open as I slept and two or three times had to growl warning, once to fire an arrow, to drive off prowlers. At last we reached the low hills leading upward to the mountains, which, as I had expected, did not look as high as the mountains of my home. On a night of nights, I came to our camp with a huge and healthy deer and we spent three days in that camp feasting and preparing meat to dry in the sun. I taught Mar how to chew the hide to make it soft and pliant. Now she would be properly dressed for winter in our own—in my own—type of country, for I had had enough of wandering and would, I had decided, make my home in some secluded place in the mountains. Laden with drying meat, my stock of dragon's veins, the beautiful and deadly skinning knives from the cave of the giants, my hardax, our sleepskins and the new deerskin, we climbed the low hills, and in my eagerness to find the coolness of the heights we walked into the range of an old dragon, a dragon of the hills. It came without warning. I topped a ridge, Mar at my side, her legs strong, long, keeping pace with me, and I saw the bloodstained, ancient body of the dragon even as his head jerked and there came the creaking, warning scream of his anger and then a burst of sound and things like bees buzzing as his teeth flew around us. I yelled and fell back, dragging Mar with me behind the dome of the ridge. She lay limply. I pulled her farther down the slope, thinking she was merely frightened and tired. She was unmoving, and there was a great flow of blood into her black hair, and I felt my heart hurt. The dragon had spat teeth into her head. Oh, gods of man, I prayed. I rolled her onto her back. Her eyes were closed. She was, I felt, dead. The lion had been spat in the head by my dragon, and he was ever so much stronger than my poor Mar. So I mourned for a moment and then, in my agony, saw her chest moving. She was breathing. I parted her hair and saw that the tooth had not broken her skull, but merely chewed along it, taking a small groove of flesh and hair. I carried her to water, a stream which we had passed not long before, and bathed her head in the coolness, finally stopping the flow of blood. But still she slept. «Mar, Mar, without you I am again alone,» I told her. She heard not. Through a long and sad afternoon and through the night I sat beside her. She opened her eyes with the morning sun and looked at me as if she did not see me and went back to sleep, but I now had hope. It is said that out of chaos comes good, but it is not always true. What good comes from God's chaos of the eastern flats? Sickness and death. But, true, in the mountains the chaos of the fires from God's anger from the skies clears the underbrush and leaves growing room for new and tender things. Out of God's blow to Mar came good in the long run, I suppose, for it taught me that I needed her. To that point I had considered her merely a

  ———, that dirty word of her people. And a companion. Someone with whom to talk. Now, thinking that she was dead, a hurting in my chest, tears on my face, all the pain, told me that she had become more, and I cradled her in my arms and crooned grief and sympathy for her. After a long, long day, she opened her eyes again. «I hurt,» she said. «You will be all right.» «My head.» She put her hand up and winced. «It is not broken.» «I feel…» And she slept. She was dizzy for a few days, during which we made camp by the stream and she constantly wanted me to hold her, which, as she felt better, led to other things, and, finally, laughing, I accused her of pretending to be dizzy so that we would not walk but stay in camp to do the together closeness. She smiled, but then she shuddered. «When I saw the dragon…» «You saw it?» «Then I felt the pain and there was a moment when I was alive before I died and in that moment I knew regret.» «I know,» I said. «I would have felt it, too, for I would have died, my Mar, without telling you that you are my true pairmate.» «Truly?» I had explained to her the ways of our people, that pairs mate for life and two lives are as one. «Truly.» «My regret, too, was that I had not spoken,» she said. «Speak now, then,» I said. «I hesitate.» «We are pairmates. You may speak anything.» «But I may be wrong.» She clung to me. «Oh, I do not want to be wrong.» «Between pairmates, nothing is wrong except the giving of pain,» I said. «It is that I have not blooded for three moons,» she said. I digested this information, nodding. Thinking of all the implications, remembering the deformed baby which an inbreeder had killed by smashing its head against a tree. «Perhaps I am merely old, for in old women the blooding stops,» she said. «At fifteen, no, sixteen summers?» I asked. «I will be happy if I am right,» she said. «Will you, Eban?» She gazed at me from behind long lashes, her face fearful. «It will be a son,» I said. «We will call it after my father.» «And you are happy?» «Yes,» I said. But I could think of nothing except that deformed thing which died even before it lived, of the sickness in Mar's people, of the warning tingle which came, ever so faintly, from her very bones. It is forbidden to ma
te with the inbreeders of the lower slopes. Another sin for the head of Eban, Killer of His People. Now I was taking the taint, the sickness, into the very home of my kind. We circled the field of the dragon. His path lay through a valley, and he was in the center, commanding a view of the entire valley and the ridges surrounding it, and had I been inclined to kill, I would have been sore tested to approach that one, for he was well placed. Within a moon Mar's belly was swollen, and she was happy. We saw signs of people, but I skirted them. I did not want to be seen by the true men of the hills, without hair, in my present condition, with a hairy inbreeder woman as my companion. But I had forgotten the skills of my people. As we made our way up a valley, leading into the hills, making camps beside a clear and cold stream, living on the plenty of the hills, I walked into an ambush without realizing it. I had become spoiled by the easy life among the lesser men. I saw, suddenly, two men leap into the clearing in front of me. «Ho, hairy one,» one of them said. «I am Eban the Hunter, son of Egan, of the family of Strabo the Strongarm of the northern hills,» I said, bowing in politeness, my hardax dangling in front of me. «He knows the form,» one man said. «Haired,» the other said. «He lies.» «I have hair, but I am a man,» I said. «I have killed dragons, for which I have proof, with your permission.» «Ha,» said a mountain man. I took that for permission. I took the necklace of dragon's guts from my pack. Mar refused to wear it. I tossed it onto the ground at the feet of the mountain men. «Ha,» they said, together. «How can it be true, from a hairy one?» «It is a curse,» I said. «And I have suffered for it. But I have flown, and I have seen the killbird.» «No inbreeder talks so,» said one of them. «I beg only that we be allowed to cross your land,» I said. «We seek nothing, save living room, and we hope to find it in the western hills, where our hair will give no offense.» «That is for the family head to decide,» said one. «Understood. May I beg to speak with him?» «Follow.» «Ho,» said the other. «First I test. Lay down your bow and hardax, hairy one.» I obeyed his orders. He came close, so close that he could have felt the warning had he been so close to Mar, but he did not test Mar, only me. And he said, «It is true. He is not of the inbreeders.» We followed the two mountain men into a clean and tidy village of hidehouses. It was the family of Stoneskull the Leftarm. He reminded me so much of Strabo that I was saddened. We were surrounded by the people, in front of Stoneskull's hidehouse, and given leave to speak. I repeated my desire for safe passage to the west. «There be dragons,» Stoneskull said. «I am Eban, slayer of dragons,» I said, presenting him with one strand of my dragon's-gut necklace. There was an oohing and a moan of approval. «We will hear your story,» Stoneskull said, and with feasting and rhythm from the drum, I told of my slaying of both the lion and the dragon and, for the first time, never even having told it to Mar, the tale of my leading the killbird to slay my family. There was a moan of sympathy. «It is true, God has seen fit to try you,» Stoneskull said. «I think you have suffered enough, and, although you are haired, you may, should you choose, live in our lands.» But not, I noted in their village. «You are generous, honorable father,» I said. «But we seek solitude to live with our curse in peace.» «I grant you permission to traverse our lands, but I warn you that beyond the rocky dome there be dragons so deadly that no man returns.» We spent the night in the village, sleeping in the open, for no one was willing to give hospitality to haired ones, and then set out. The hills seemed to be thickly populated with families. But they were all offshoots of the Stoneskull family, so that word went ahead of us and we were welcomed with food and fireside in camps between a series of ridges which led ever deeper into the mountains. I became Eban the Storyteller, and there were times when I could hear Mar giggle as, to add entertainment value, I embellished our adventures. But at last we were below the rocky dome, and beyond it, as we were constantly warned, were dragons of the fiercest disposition. Mar was big in the belly when we made the last climb. To her everlasting credit, she did not complain, nor did she question my decisions. She, too, felt the shame of being considered a freak and wanted to find a valley of our own, a place where we could have our child and, dream though it was, start our own family, a family of hairy ones in the midst of the people. A mist crept over us as we climbed. The going was easy, for although the dome was the highest in that part of the mountains, the dome from which I flew, that last time, reached to the clouds. The summit was barren, rocky. Huge boulders joined each other in a line along the crest. I approached them cautiously and peered over into the valley beyond, a narrow cleft between two ridged backs. I saw neither dragon nor the white bones of the dead. Nor did I see sign as we went down into the cleft, started the climb of the opposite side, gained the top of the ridge and looked out over ridges descending toward the west. «The dragons of these hills,» I told Mar, «are like the dragons of the east, often told but seldom seen.» «I pray so,» she said. The days were shortening. Soon it would be time to build a hidehouse, to make a clearing, to store provisions for the winter. I felt like a new man, home in my mountains, the air clean, the temperatures cool. I studied the ridges ahead of me and saw, the second ridge over, that there was space for what should be a nice valley. «There,» I said, pointing. We took a leisurely two days to make the journey, I taking note of a dam of the swimmers and promising Mar a winter garment of their warm hides. I saw bear sign. I began to look upon that valley, which now lay just over the next ridge, as my home, and I prayed that the tales of the dragons had kept it free of men. I was to find one obstacle. As we climbed, I came upon a dragon's path of a type not known to me. The dragon had lain down two lines of dragon stuff which lay, bleeding and twisted, atop a little mound which extended alongside the ridge. It was evident that the path was long unused. In places there were slides and the lines of dragon stuff were buried. It made for easy walking, and it seemed to point toward the top of the ridge, so we followed—to see, as we rounded an outcrop of rock with a drop of two arrow flights to the bed of a rocky stream below, the strangest dragon of my experience. I leaped back. Mar was behind me, and dragon's teeth shattered the rock outcrop and hummed off into the air over the long drop. «We must go back,» she said. «We shall see.» I crawled and peered around the outcrop. The dragon lay, half curled, in the curve of ridge, long, bleeding with ancient blood, one large eye on its head looking directly down the path toward me. The dragon was segmented, and I could see that his body was connected by a backbone, low, and at the end of the segments I could see space between them, except where the backbone connected, down low, I considered. The dragon was blocking the way to my unseen valley, but he was stupid, like my first dragon, for he had chosen his lair below a cliff which rose above him. I determined to test him, to find his capabilities. The path in front of us was littered with rock fall and obviously unused. Indeed, the path to his very head was the same, and, as I examined him, I suspected that he was unable, for some reason, to move, for there were no fresh tracks and things grew in the pathway. Was he mortally wounded and lying there to die, taking eternity to do it? I took off my pack, took out my sleepskin, held it on my longbow and suspended it beyond the outcrop and did not manage to jerk it back until, with a blast of sound and buzzing, teeth shredded it. The dragon had no shortage of teeth, despite his obvious age. «Please, let's go back,» Mar begged. «It is only one dragon,» I said, «and it spits teeth only from its middle.» Indeed, I had observed that as the dragon ruined my sleepskin. Three heads on its middle, on one of the separate segments of his body, turned and spat as I tested him once again, watching closely. The other segments had eyes, but they seemed to be of the sort which were on the cave of the giants, eyes without the deadly burning fires. I made a few more tests, just to be sure, and there was no burst of fire, only the teeth which made little popping sounds as they passed close by, outside the protecting outcrop. «We will kill him and rid the mountains of him,» I said. «He will kill us,» Mar said. «No. Now, here is what you must do.» I told her, and I left her there. The year with me had given her courage. I climbed to the top o
f the ridge and made my way carefully to a point overlooking the dragon's middle. There I positioned myself. Then, for I wanted more information, I shrilled out a signal to Mar. She heard and extended the tattered sleepskin on a stick. I watched. The three heads jerked and spat, and as they spat I stood in the open and yelled at the dragon. Immediately one head started turning, and I dived for cover. Yes, I knew then that the heads could turn individually and that I would have to work carefully. I went for Mar, took her to a safe distance, made our camp. At the sun, she insisting upon going with me, I went to the top of the ridge and studied the situation. This one was an alert dragon, sending his heads searching at the sound of my movements, hailing his spat teeth into the thick trees around us. In any forest there is an ample supply of deadwood, unless fire has passed recently, and this forest, although not overly thick, was littered with deadwood. First I cut green saplings, and, crawling on my belly and using rocks for cover, hearing the song of the spat teeth around and over me, but staying behind the protecting stones, I built a sort of hold, a bed of green saplings braced against rocks and half suspended over the cliff. Then, that part of it finished, the rest was easier. I was able to toss deadwood and debris onto my platform from the safety of the cover of the trees until, by nightfall, I had a huge pile. The weight of it sagged the saplings which held it. Since I wanted to be sure of seeing all of the action, I waited for morning, and then, with the sun, I tossed a burning brand into the huge pile of deadwood. The resulting fire spread quickly until, smoke reaching for the skies, there was a huge blaze which ate through the supporting saplings and sent the entire blazing mass down the cliff. It lodged exactly where I'd planned, against the living portion of the dragon. Now I followed through, sending the largest dead logs I could roll tumbling down the cliff into the blazing fire, until, after a morning's sweaty work, there was a heap of burning logs beside the dragon, which, as I'd suspected, could not move. From a place of safety we watched as the fire burned hotter and hotter, the thick logs blazing, the flames licking high on the dragon's sides. We waited. Once a head turned and sent an aimless spit of teeth into the air, and then all three heads went into motion. As we watched the dragon, which was obviously in pain, there was a flash of light followed by a boom of thunder louder than the summer storms, and the dragon burst as a green nut bursts when thrown into a bed of glowing embers. One by one his segments, the chaos of God following his body in two directions, from middle to front, from middle to back, burst with the thunder, and I knew great fear for both myself and Mar, for dragon flesh began to rain down everywhere. Only the fact that we were in dense tree cover saved us from injury or death as dragonskin fell, some of it sizzling hot, all around us, bouncing down through the branches, knocking away branches and leaves and needles. When all was quiet I ventured a look over the cliff. Only the dragon's head survived, and a segment of his tail. I led Mar down to the scene of his death, and there were bits of skin for the picking, some jagged and excellent for hardaxes. A fire was burning in the dragon's dead head, and as we watched it spread, apparently feeding on stored blood, which leaked and burned and engulfed the head and left, after a day of burning, only blackened shells of the dragon's head. In the shattered tail we found sharp pieces of eye, good for scraping and for decoration, and, most valuable, chair things covered with a sort of hide which was soft and warm. I told Mar we would come back for it to make her pretty skirts. And there was a treasure house of dragonskin all around me. Our new life would be started in ease and richness, and should I desire, I could march back to the people of the Stoneskull families and trade for many buythings with the skin pieces. Now, however, I wanted to see my valley. We walked down the rotted and broken dragon's path and came to a curious place where the path went into the mountain, into a blackness lined with a sort of white stone or bone. Eban the curious looked in and saw light at the far end. It seemed to extend under the ridge and come out the other side. «I will not,» Mar said. «The dragon is dead.» «You go if you must, and leave your child fatherless and your pairmate lonely.» «That would be a sadness,» I said, grinning. «So we go together.» So, unwillingly, she came, clutching my hand tightly. There was nothing. The dragon's hole simply went under the mountain and came out the other side, and we looked down upon the sweetest valley I'd seen since leaving the Valley of Clean Water. Gods of man, it was beautiful. It was a perfect bowl, and all around the hill rose to almost uniform height, with no gap that I could see. The dragon's path went around the inside of the ridge and spiraled downward toward the valley floor, I was too eager to take the long way. I led Mar down the slope. I noted a stream cascading down the side of the slope and knew that somewhere there had to be a way out of the valley, otherwise the entire bowl would be a lake. I would find the outlet for the stream later. I would explore every stone, every tree, for the valley was mine, mine and my pairmate's and our unborn son's. With an eye toward permanence, I found a pleasant knoll near the stream and selected a site high enough to prevent flooding when the snows melted. «Here we will build our house,» I told Mar. I had one fresh deerhide, and there were signs of plenty of game. I left Mar beside a fire at the new homesite and went walking, took a huge stag near the camp, skinned him, and put Mar to work preparing the skin. We had fresh meat roasted over the fire and slept entwined to wake with a feeling of joy and anticipation. My valley was not as small as it first appeared. It took us several days to familiarize ourselves with it. There were wild fruit trees on the southern edge which offered a bounty, since the fruit was at its ripest; and there was an abundance of small game. I had, I discovered, my own farm of swimmers to be harvested as needed for clothing. Now, however, the main object was to finish the hidehouse. To gather the material I hunted alone and found, at the western end of the valley, the outlet of our stream. A natural cleft in the rock wall had been breached, and the stream tumbled through a narrow ravine with towering hills on either side, the depths of the gorge seldom seeing the sun, so narrow was it. I made a tentative probe into the ravine, wading and noting that fat fish lay in shallow pools. I was no more than an arrow's flight into the ravine when I saw the warning gleam of whiteness. From long habit I froze and then sought cover. Dragons in that deep and narrow ravine? Not likely. And yet, as I looked carefully, I saw another and another pile of weathered white bones of death, and I set out to study the situation. I saw nothing. There was no space for a dragon's path, and I began to think that the animal had been a victim of a lion or a bear. However, I knew that rashness is danger, so I did not plunge into the ravine, but, rather, retreated and sought to climb the hill to the north to get an overall view of the ravine. I startled a deer, and, since deerhide was my objective, I loosed an arrow which took the beast in the shoulder in a nonfatal spot. Panicked, in dire pain, no doubt, the poor animal bolted, saw me, and turned to run into the ravine, splashing along the bed of the stream. He had gone only a short distance when, with a chatter of horrible proportions, at least two dragons, one on either side of the ravine and high up on the hills, began to spit teeth in such a hail that the deer was slain in midleap. I saw the flash of an eye, high near the top. I did not like that development. Dragons on the hills. They could, it seemed, have a view of the entire valley. However, both Mar and I had walked near, within range of a dragon's teeth, and had lived. It was a puzzle. I began to climb the slope, finding the going tough as the side of the hill steepened, and kept an eye out for the telltale signs of the bones of death. There were none. I made a slow approach to the spot from which I had seen the gleam of an eye, and, in the dense growth, was closer than I wanted to be when I saw the bloodstained hide of a dragon showing through the trees. I crept close. This was a peculiar dragon, I found, with no feet. His body was half a globe, sitting on the ground, and his head was not eyed all around. There were eyes on the front side, facing the ravine, and holes from which the dragon had spat teeth. I studied how to kill the beast, to rid my valley of him. Since he was on top of the hill, I could not roll rocks down on him, and that left only fire. How
ever, to burn him meant exposing myself, and I had little inclination to do that. But behind the dragon were no bones of death. Looking past him into the ravine I could see several white spots. Could he not, then, turn his head? To test him I exposed myself, ready to leap for cover. There was no action from the dragon. I taunted and jeered and crept ever closer until I was close enough to cast stones which rang off his tough hide. He seemed not to notice. However, when I threw large stones past him his head jerked and followed their roll down the steep side of the ravine. A peculiar dragon, indeed. I crept to his side and put my hand on his cold and bloodstained hide. He did not seem to know I was there. I began to gather dry wood and built a fire at his back, stacked it with logs and went back into the trees to watch. The fire burned for a long time and I kept awaiting the blast of his bursting, but when there were only embers his hide was blackened by smoke but intact. He was a tough one. I knew that he had a mate on the opposite side of the ravine, and keeping behind him, I began to search out the other dragon. At last, hidden in underbrush, I saw the sun reflect off an eye, and then, to my concern, I saw another reflection a bit farther down the ravine, still at the top of the hills, however. I scouted on my side and came upon a second dragon like the first, unable to turn