Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  “I somehow doubt it.”

  “Either way”—she shrugged—“it’s just not right to axe someone while he’s doing his business.”

  Nitz might have suggested that ethics could likely be suspended when battling denizens of hell, if not for the fact that it would undoubtedly lead into a discussion of what fell under the category of “denizen.” That, he knew, would be an argument that would end in his defeat and likely with a boot planted in his groin.

  After all, he thought with a sigh, it was only ten years ago that the northerners had been removed from the list of “denizens” by virtue of the fact that they had all been slaughtered or converted.

  With that in mind, he resigned himself to merely offering an encouraging smile.

  “We’ll keep thinking, then.”

  It was only after he turned back to the cave that he noticed that her gaze was directed somewhere else, far into the underbrush surrounding the tiny clearing.

  “I suppose I’ll think of something, then,” he muttered. “Though, you know, it wouldn’t hurt if you—”

  “Shut up,” she hissed, waving him down. “We’re being watched!”

  “What?” He instinctively, and, with less shame than he suspected he ought to feel, crept behind her sizable frame. “How can you tell?”

  “Something”—her nostrils quivered—“stinks.”

  “Well, they might just be passing through,” he said softly. “Don’t kill them.”

  “Ha. Right.” She paused for a moment, then looked at him with one eye wide. “Oh … you were serious.”

  “I was.”

  “I guess you’re going to be disappointed, then.”

  “DAMN it all,” Armecia whispered. “I think they saw us.”

  The colossal, half-clad woman now had her one black eye focused intently on the brush, narrowed to such a ferocious slit as to bore a deep hole in the tree behind them. A tree, she noted with some frustration, against which Leonard’s dirty gray chain mail shone starkly.

  The large plumes of smoke, of course, were of no great help, either.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked, taking a long drag.

  There was a sudden movement, a bright flash of silver, and the hush of leaves.

  Armecia was deaf to her own scream as the axe came hurtling over her head, cleaving through the branches and impaling itself with a hollow, heavy sound against the tree trunk.

  The scream she emitted when she turned about, decidedly less so.

  The axe neatly separated Leonard’s arm from the rest of his body, marred only by the sinuous string that connected the two at his armpit. He didn’t seem to notice until it finally snapped, the appendage landing softly upon the leaves.

  With a glance that was as blank as hers was horrified, he regarded the stump thoughtfully for a moment, moved it up, then down, then in a brief circle before smacking his lips.

  “… huh.”

  “Oh lord”—she found the words harder to come by as she looked from the man to the arm to the shining, broad-headed axe—“I can’t … I need to think of something. Just … just don’t move, Lenny.”

  “I think I should.”

  “What? Why?”

  Her answer came in the sound of branches cracking against the force of something large barreling through the underbrush.

  Where Leonard’s face had once been, in an instant, there was a heavy leather boot connected to a muscular, barely feminine thigh. Armecia, with no more breath to scream, could only gape in horror at the sound of something cracking, something squishing and something heavy falling to the ground as Leonard slumped over.

  Sparing a moment to sneer at his fallen body, the tremendous woman turned to regard the girl through a single dark eye. Such a gaze was not contemplative, nor scornful, but rather merely acknowledging, as one might acknowledge a squirrel or a bird.

  Armecia would have been content with that, to be a small rodent easily ignored, if not for the woman reaching down to pluck up a large, dead branch from the earth.

  Instinct seized her, all fear forgotten in a moment of pure animal action. She found enough clarity of thought to consider with some pride that no animal had the same defenses she had.

  It was with that clarity that she found wits enough to close her dark eye and level her chilling blue orb upon the woman.

  Gritting her teeth, she felt the power leap from her heart to her head in an instant. Her eye erupted in a cloud of frost, icicles bursting from the iris to surround the thin, azure beam that leapt from her pupil and bit at the woman’s torso.

  With great glee, she noted the staggering step backwards the woman took as frost coated her abdomen in a thin, blue shell, clinging to muscles and gnawing at them with a hunger unseen in any beast. She held the spell within her eye until she could stand it no longer, until it felt as though the sphere would roll out and plop onto the ground.

  She blinked, and when she opened it, it was with less glee that she saw the woman staring at her with a scowl, still standing, if shivering.

  “Sorcery.” The observation was one of amusement, rather than accusation. “Clever trick,” the woman said as she unhurriedly brushed the frost from her belly, revealing blue flesh beneath, “tell me, what do you call that?”

  “Eye …” Armecia swallowed hard in astonishment, “the Eye of Ajeed.”

  “Fancy.” The woman hefted the massive branch, paused but for a moment to grin at her. “I think I’ll call this club ‘Maurice.’”

  And then, it came crashing down.

  WELL, Armecia thought as she surveyed in the infinite blackness stretching out around her, this isn’t so bad.

  Somehow, she had expected death to be something a bit more glamorous, as she had been led to believe all her life.

  Her father had told her that the warriors of God were escorted to the foot of His throne by a line of immaculate Crusaders, welcomed forever into a world that bore no hatred or warfare, as a reward for all their bloodshed in His name.

  Her mother had told her that there was no afterlife to be experienced, only a brief pause between breaths when one fleshy vessel was shattered and the soul slipped into another, destined to commit the same sins and atrocities that it had in its previous thousand lives.

  And the people of the kingdoms had frequently shouted that she was destined for a lake of fire surrounded by walls of red-hot iron, struggling to drag her scorched and savaged body up the slick corners while weight-laden chains sought to pull her back down to the bottom.

  Many of them, torches and rope in hand, had seemed not patient enough to wait for that to occur.

  In comparison, an eternity of blackness was moderately disappointing. Perhaps, she reasoned, this was the fate reserved for people like her: half-breeds who kept their friends as books and inebriated corpses. Sins that were deemed too great to warrant the glory of perpetual bliss, but far too dull to merit the spectacle of a lake of fire.

  “You hit her a little hard, didn’t you?”

  The shrill, grating voice that occasionally echoed through the dark, she supposed was the worst she deserved; an eternity of annoying questions.

  “Threatened you? She’s less beefy than a twig!”

  Annoying, she thought, and senseless.

  And yet, they kept getting louder; perhaps stupid questions were merely the prelude to the lake of fire? The darkness around her seemed to support that idea, as it grew grayer around her, infected by some disease of light.

  “The wounds don’t look too bad, anyway. The pulse is there … just a nasty blow to the head.”

  But there was pain. The blanket of numbness that swaddled her began to come undone, exposing her body to all manner of aches that flowed through her. Her eyelids twitched inside an aching head, longing to open.

  Despite her subconscious warnings, they did anyway, and the darkness, so close to light, twisted to searing red. Her head thundered with a pain she had thought was reserved only for people who ate the flesh of children … or puppi
es … or something equally loathsome.

  Whatever sins she had committed, they were apparently not grave enough to keep the red from dissipating. As she rubbed her eyes, feeling sticky warmth upon her fingers, she glanced up and looked into the face of God …

  … and was decidedly unimpressed.

  In a face resembling an oddly angular knot at the top of a twig, the concern flashing in the young man’s eyes was not quite as benevolent as she had hoped. It wasn’t a concern that a midwife might have for a pregnant woman, but rather that a beast-soother might have as he debated whether or not to put her out of her misery with a well-placed rock.

  She blinked; it hurt to blink. Why does it hurt to blink?

  That was when she looked down at her hands, stained with red. That only caused her to look down at the earth she lay upon, also red. When she spied the red-cloaked kerchief in his hands, she felt the urge to scream.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said, the particular gape of her mouth not lost on him. “You’ve lost enough blood that sending it all rushing to your tongue wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “What … happened?”

  She rose slowly, putting a hand to her brow as if to shove her missing memory back in through the cut that scarred it. It was moist, she noted, and stinging to the touch, but not quite as painful as she imagined having a head split open should be.

  Instinctively, she called to memory a spell as she called to her hands a sort of energy. It was fresh in her mind, having already used it once that day; if it could cure the pox, it could close her head, at least.

  A hand placed itself upon her back and she froze, all memories lost as another one steadied her by the shoulder.

  “Careful,” the young man cautioned. “Moving isn’t very wise, either, I should have mentioned.” His attentions turned from her to the gaping cave mouth nearby. “Not that it’s particularly wise to bash a complete stranger in the head.”

  Armecia followed his gaze to the monolith of flesh and leather standing nearby. Her brow furrowed into a scowl, despite the pain; she remembered the woman.

  The same, apparently, could not be said for the muscular female’s own recollection. She merely rolled her shoulders, the gesture vast enough to be directed at both Armecia and the young man.

  “Better safe than regretful, I always say.”

  “You never say that,” he retorted.

  “Oh,” she hummed thoughtfully, “better to have smashed than never to have smashed at all, then. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before.”

  “You could apologize,” Armecia grumbled, with an intentional lack of conviction.

  “You could be thankful you didn’t end up like him.”

  The woman pointed a finger long enough to be a knife to the earth beside her. Armecia followed it and grimaced.

  The sight of Sir Leonard wounded was something she was far unused to screaming over. Instead of fear, there was only frustration in the sight of the bootprints on his face, the skin hanging from his jaw, and the severed arm clutched to his chest like a dismembered doll.

  That, she knew, will take a lot of healing.

  “What in God’s name did you do to him?” she asked as a blacksmith might ask what happened to a sword he was to repair.

  “It would appear fairly obvious, wouldn’t it?” The young man answered for his taller companion. “Truth be told, I had expected to hear of Sir Leonard slain in combat or torn apart by a Hashuni mob.” He coughed, made a show of waving his hand before his nose. “Dismembered by a savage nun and reeking of weed was not entirely expected.”

  “You know him?” She turned toward the young man, her eyes widening as a second realization dawned on her. “Wait, did you say … Hashuni?”

  “That’s what they’re called, right?” He clapped a hand to his mouth, eyes wide with genuine regret. “I’m sorry. Heathen is the more proper term.” He offered a sheepish smile. “And it’d be more accurate to say that I met him, yes.”

  He rose from beside her and folded his hands behind him as he frowned at the knight’s corpse.

  “Back then, of course, he preferred to be called the Scourge of Savhael. What with the thousands of Hash—Forgive me, heathens he had slain.” He raised a brow at her. “Given that, I must say it’s a bit surprising to find him traveling with one of them … or half of one, at any rate.”

  The calmness in his voice unnerved Armecia. Perhaps she had been used to such recognition of her heritage being accompanied by scorn and torches that a casual observation seemed horrific by virtue of conditioning.

  He might just be open-minded, she thought, but quickly discarded the idea. He was one of them, a Kingdomer, a book-burner. His were a people embroiled in an endless war against the people of her mother, for reasons only their God fathomed and did not care to share. He was her enemy; he would be her death.

  But then … why hasn’t he killed me already?

  “Granted”—he cleared his throat and looked down at Sir Leonard—“the fact that he’s still breathing is far more surprising.”

  Oh, lord …

  Within her chest, she felt her heart grow fleshy arms and crawl up her rib cage to lodge itself firmly in her throat.

  Probably for the best, she figured. There was no way she could explain it, explain Sir Leonard, that anyone, a scholar, a northman, or even a Hashuni, let alone a book-burner, would understand in a beneficial way.

  They already know you’re a sorceress, she told herself, a witch. That’s bad enough without knowing that you brought a man back from the dead! She felt her left eye twitch. Maybe I can zap them, bring them down, and take Lenny out of here … or at least get out myself.

  A quick glance to the tall woman, now standing closer, and she discarded that notion. The flesh of her abdomen, still blue from the spell, was barely enough to warrant an irritated scratch from her. The Eye of Ajeed hadn’t stopped her, had barely slowed her down. Spells, she decided, would not resolve this.

  A sign, she decided, a sign to end this. This is God’s way of telling me there’s no need for it. No need for him.

  Staring at Leonard upon the earth, his body twitching with what might have been breath, she frowned. Amongst the multitudes of anger and scorn she had previously felt for him, the pang of pity was uncomfortable.

  He, too, had been one of them. Not a good man in her eyes, but good enough that other men had called him good. He had participated in the endless war and drunk his fill of blood and been righteously and fairly slain. Better he lie here now and sleep forever, as he had slept when she first found him with a spear through his chest.

  End it with him, she told herself, give up the lies and find another way to settle Father’s debts. A way without sorcery … that makes sense, doesn’t it?

  To someone else, it might have. For Armecia, it only made her leap to her feet.

  “LENNY!” she suddenly screamed, “WAKE UP!”

  The young man recoiled away from the knight, the woman taking a cautious step backwards. Apparently, of all the things they thought he might do, sitting up and scratching his head with his severed arm while he blinked blearily was not at the top of the list.

  “What happened?” he asked, then slowly became aware of the stump where his arm had been. Quietly, he glanced from it, to his arm, to the woman towering over him. “Ah … yeah.”

  With a speed that shocked the woman into inaction, he lunged to his feet, swinging his club of flesh and bone. With a force that surprised everyone, it connected solidly with her jaw, sending her reeling backwards, a spout of blood arcing from her mouth to spatter the ground.

  Whatever revulsion Armecia and the young man might have had for the sight was apparently not shared by the woman. When she recovered, her smile was a jagged red gash in her mouth. She hefted her axe, cracked her neck, and rushed to meet Sir Leonard, Scourge of Savhael, risen.

  “Damn,” Armecia cursed under her breath as she watched them lumber toward each other, two foul abominations of scarred flesh and dirty weapons
. “Damn, damn, damn … what made me think that was a good idea?”

  “A decent enough question,” the young man mused, apparently unconcerned. “Judging by Maddy’s grin, she’s probably intent on not stopping for a bit.” He glanced to Armecia, held out a bag. “Jerky?”

  “What?” she blinked. “I just … sent a man to fight your giant lady friend, and you’re offering me dried meat?”

  “A flavorful assortment of dried meats. But … I guess we could fight, too”—he shrugged—“if you really wanted to. But really, I’m far more interested in why a half-blooded sorceress with a greasy zombie is fighting my giant lady friend in front of a dragon’s lair.” He pulled a piece of meat from the bag. “I’m Nitz, by the way.”

  Armecia blinked, glanced over as Lenny took a knee to the groin and cackled, then reached out and took a piece of the jerky for herself.

  “Armecia.”

  THERE was a crack of thunder heralding the blow, a spray of splinters punctuating it, and when the dust settled, Sir Leonard peered through the other side of a tree trunk, his shoulders and neck firmly lodged in the wood. Maddy’s laughter was soft and gentle, a giggle she reserved only for lovers and shoving men’s heads through trees.

  “That’s it, is it?” She tapped her axe against the ground. “Spent after one dismemberment?”

  “Just give me a moment,” he grunted, trying to squirm his way free. “I’ll be ready to go in just a few breaths.”

  “Don’t they all say that?” Maddy hefted her boot, and, through her one good eye, leveled it squarely at the knight’s rear end. “However, I’m ready now.”

  From across the clearing, Nitz paused in the middle of chewing jerky to wince. In a spray of brown and green, Leonard went tumbling out of the tree trunk and rolling like a limp doll upon the earth, only to rise again, clutching his severed arm like a club as Maddy stalked toward him casually.

  “He’s not bleeding,” the young man noted immediately.

  Punctured, pummeled, and pounded as he might be, there wasn’t a trace of red upon the knight. That wasn’t to say he looked at all good, however; Nitz felt the dried meat rise in his gullet as he spied the large, jagged splinter rolling about in Leonard’s eye socket. The knight didn’t seem to notice, but Nitz felt compelled to speak, regardless.