The Dragon Lord

by David Drake

  The guards glanced quickly and oddly at one another.

  "With the monster he raised," said Veleda from behind Mael. "With his dragon. Welcome back, my love."

  Mael turned. Veleda was on horseback, as beautiful and free as the wash of her hair. The Irishman nudged his horse toward her. The press of clamoring women still separated them. Mael leaned sideways and Veleda caught his hands, bridging above the crowd for a moment. Starkad watched with an indecipherable expression.

  Mael released Veleda. "Arthur sent us to tell Merlin to loose his beast," he said.

  Veleda's laugh was real but harsh. "No," she said, "god sent you to destroy that dragon before it destroys the world and more. There is no limit to the number of universes, and there will be no limit to the size of the beast with all infinity to draw on . . . unless it can be killed while it is still able to die. If it is still able to die." Veleda stretched out her hands to touch Mael's, but she leaned away as he tried to gather her into his arms again. "Not now," she said. "It—it's at best very close to being too late. Did you bring the lance?"

  Mael straightened and cursed sickly. "I could have," he said, remembering Arthur's dying horse and the spear still in its saddle scabbard. "I don't think."

  Veleda smiled unexpectedly and kissed the Irishman's fingertips. "The time's here, and we're here, the three of us—and I brought the shield." She rang her knuckles on the cloaked circlet lashed again to her saddle. "Everything is the way god willed it to be. Let's see if he wills us to kill a dragon." Veleda clucked to her horse. It wheeled, picking its way through the clots of women still nearby. At the fringe of the crowd she turned north toward the cave.

  Mael spurred after her. Starkad followed them with a wry grin and a curse as his mount jolted his bruises anew. "Well," Mael called to the witch-woman, "I'll learn never to take you for granted."

  Veleda looked back at him. Her face was dim in the faded sunset. "I wouldn't ask you to do this if it weren't necessary," she said quietly. "If there were anyone else but you, you two . . . but there isn't, and things are as they are. If you're killed—and you may well be killed—I won't long survive you. And if you fail, the world itself won't long survive."

  "Be the first wyvern we chopped, won't it, brother?" Starkad noted placidly. The Dane was polishing his axehead on his thigh as he rode. "Don't worry about us, Lady. This sort of thing may be all we're good for—this and women. But we're very good at this."

  "And you'll not do anything stupid if something goes wrong," Mael added in real irritation. "I've enough on my conscience without adding your blood to it." After a moment, he frowned and added, "I thought that sound I was hearing was thunder. It isn't."

  "No, that's the wyvern," Veleda agreed. "It roars as though the sound alone could bring down the walls that hold it. But the sound won't have to."

  Blue-white fire stabbed suddenly from ahead of them. The hillside framing the jet was a dark blot against a sky which the thin moon lighted. The bellowing that followed the flame reminded Mael of the squeals of the tiny creature which he had slapped across the cave so recently—reminded him as the sun reminds a man of the stars its glare extinguishes. The vivid fire silhouetted the crabbed figure of Merlin near the clump of poplars. He was bent over a brazier like the one on which he had raised the creature. The jet of fire had come from the throat of the cave. The iron gate-posts still stood but they were red-hot. Only scraps remained of the panels themselves. Previous gouts of fire had burned away the oaken leaves entirely and had left only the hinges and reinforcing straps.

  "The spell keeps it from crossing the doorway," Veleda explained. "It doesn't stop the flames, though. And it's only the cave mouth which the spell can block. No one, not even I, has the power to bind the whole hillside. Perhaps if I'd realized sooner what was happening . . . but . . ."

  As Veleda's voice trailed off, flame exploded suddenly from the rock far above the doorway. That azure flare limned a narrow opening. It widened perceptibly as the limestone burned away. Mael frowned, trying to superimpose his memory of the cavern's interior against what he now saw of the cliff face. The stone at the top front of the cave must have been very thin, separating the hollow from the outside air by only a few inches. It was through that weakness that the fire had burst.

  Briefly silent, the three newcomers dismounted beside Merlin. They lashed their horses to the poplars. Wheezing and the sound of crumbling stone were loud within the cave. Even through his thick sandals, Mael could feel the ground shaking.

  "What in god's name have you done?" Veleda whispered to the wizard.

  Merlin's face was as pale as the waning moon. "I don't know," he said simply. He still carried a willow wand, but his fingers had shredded it into little more than a belt of fabric. When Mael had last seen Merlin, the wizard had been as awesome to look upon as a Roman aqueduct: ancient and mighty and seemingly beyond human change. All that strength had wasted out of the man in a matter of weeks, leaving something pitiable in its disintegration. "Did Arthur learn?" the magician asked. "Did he send you to kill me?"

  "What?" Mael said in surprise. "Kill you? He sent us to tell you to let the dragon loose against the Saxons."

  Merlin burst into cackling laughter. "Let it loose? It's about to let itself loose, don't you see?"

  Another jet of flame slashed through the hillside. A slab of rock collapsed with a roar which merged with that of the imprisoned beast. For an instant, the wyvern's head thrust through the opening high in the cliff. The shape of the head was the same as it had been when Mael first saw it. In size, however, it was now almost a yard from crest to muzzle. When the creature slipped back, its scales rasped more stone down into the cave with it. "It's grown large enough to tear its own exit," Veleda observed. "This one, this magician, depended on the rock to hold it forever if he couldn't control it himself. And it's grown too large already for anyone to control it through spells. Just as you told the fool it would."

  Merlin shriveled away from the witch's scorn. He made no attempt to deny the statement.

  Starkad shrugged. "We'll control it," he said. He loosed the strap of his buckler and gripped its double central handles with his left hand.

  Veleda handed Mael the ancient target from Biargram's tomb. The Irishman took it by the rim. Its weight was a subconscious surprise. "Starkad—" he began uncertainly.

  "Don't try to give me that thing," the Dane said. "You want to load yourself down like a mule, that's your business. This—" he gestured with his own buckler. It was also round, but it was less than a foot and a half in diameter—"is as much as I'm going to lug, dragon or no."

  "Yeah, well . . ." Mael said. He turned away from Starkad as he slipped his arm through the loops of the target. He did not see Veleda's hand touch the Dane's and squeeze it briefly.

  Veleda thrust a stick of brushwood into the brazier. After a moment, the end smouldered. It flared as she whipped it over her head. Answering flame cut deeper into the stone of the cliff thirty feet above the ground. The roar of the wyvern echoed again across the otherwise silent countryside.

  Raising the torch so that it would not blaze in the eyes of the men following her, Veleda began to walk toward the bluff. Starkad and Mael were side by side. The Dane carried his axe at high port across his shield face. The Irishman rested his lance on his right shoulder. None of the three bothered to look back at the huddled wizard.

  Veleda skirted the original doorway at a safe distance. Though the wyvern was now concentrating on the vent in the roof of its cavern, it would have incinerated anyone passing the doorway within reach of its flame.

  Mael used the butt of his lance to brace him as he began to climb the bluff which had been lifted out of the surrounding soil a million years before. Beside him, he heard Starkad twice slip clangingly onto his shield. The hole which the dragon had ripped stared darkly at the men as they approached it. It was an irregular oval, big enough now to drive an ox through. Its edges were thin where ground water had hollowed out the limestone to within inch
es of the outer surface of the hill. Mael edged forward the last sword's-length on his belly. The inner face of the cave showed deep gouges from the monster's claws. Rock near the opening had been burned to quicklime by the flame. The white caustic crumbled as Mael's shield brushed it.

  Within the cave, the waiting dragon cocked an eye which reflected enough moonlight to glitter. Veleda cried a warning, but Mael was already twisting his head back. A gout of fire leaped thirty feet and tore the rock like a saw. A spatter of the flame heated Mael's whole shield by touching the rim.

  The dragon's wings boomed as they flapped in the confined space. The beast heaved itself up on its left leg. Its right foot, triple claws extended, scrabbled a purchase on the lip of the opening. Its snout was braced against the upper edge of the hole. The dragon strained. The rock began to crack away. Mael had risen to his knees. The shifting surface flung him prone again. The wyvern flapped its wings and lunged upward, getting its head and neck completely through the opening. The tips of its left claws and the thunderous clapping of its vanes held the monster poised there although even its right leg must have been above the cave floor.

  Starkad rose on the high side of the hill and chopped at the wyvern's neck. His axe glanced away from the dense, black scales in a shower of sparks. Mael shouted. The creature twisted more quickly than Starkad could recover. The jaws slammed. The Dane thrust out his shield more by reflex than by plan. It wedged at the hinge of the monster's jaw. The sturdy buckler was gripped top and bottom by the dragon's teeth, but it prevented them from closing on the man. Mael raised his lance as a furious snap of the beast's neck flung Starkad high in the air. When the Dane loosed the handles, he cartwheeled against the night sky. The buckler disintegrated in blue-white flame. The linden was blasted like thistle-down in the jet from the monster's throat while the iron boss scattered in a shower of burning gobbets.

  Mael stabbed at the back of the wyvern's skull. His lance refused to bite. Sweat was washing the Irishman's body. His target glowed like the crown sheet of a boiler from its brush with the dragon's flame. The thicknesses of ox-hide backing the metal were barely enough insulation to permit him to carry the shield.

  The wyvern strained upward again. The whole weakened cliff-face began to crumble down into the cavity. The ground dropped out from under Mael. He tried to stay upright, but the stone beneath him twisted and threw him on his back. Rocks as large as the Irishman's torso fell with him. Only his armor kept them from pounding him to death. Dust rose in a gray pall. It hid the walls of the trench which had been formed when the front of the cave collapsed. The dust hid also the jumble of rock that blurred and buried Merlin's blocking spell. The symbols were useless anyway, now that the cave gaped fully open to the sky.

  Above everything, the dragon raised its mighty head and bellowed its victory to the moon.

  The beast slammed the air with gem-scaled pinions which roiled the dust into ghost shapes.

  Falling limestone had briefly bound the wyvern's left foot. The wingbeats now tore the claws free. Mael, stunned by the fall, lay on the rubble which covered what had been the cave entrance. Momentarily, the creature roaring above him was only a nightmare. Then the Irishman was alert once more, realizing that the dragon was growing as he watched it. In his mind echoed Veleda's voice saying, "There is no limit. . . ."

  Mael fought upright, coughing from the dust. Splinters had cut his cheek and right thigh. His torn ear was draining down the side of his jaw again. The Irishman had not let go of his lance, and his shield was strapped firmly to his left arm. He gauged the wyvern's distance. With all his strength, and with both hands guiding the shaft, Mael drove the lance up against the creature's outthrust keel bone.

  Sparks danced like fairy lights as the flint-hard scales shaved curls from the steel. The beast bent toward Mael and opened its jaws. Fire spurted. The air itself grunted as it flash-heated, making the powdered stone whiff away from the arm-thick jet of flame. The fire struck the center of the ancient shield, the silver-gleaming boss that was the world in every detail. The impact of the flame was like that of a battering ram. The metal glowed white and the hide backing stank like a slaughter-house as it charred. The facing did not melt. Though the iron core of the shield soaked up much of the blast, Mael burned as though he had strapped a lighted stove onto his arm.

  Screaming with pain, the Irishman hurled his lance at the wyvern's sparkling eye. The weapon's point glanced off a bony scute and flickered into the night. Perhaps the silvered blade of Achil would have bitten, have penetrated, but honest steel was useless. The beast roared and rocked forward, reaching out with its right leg. The three toes were folded under for walking. As the foot glided toward Mael through the dust, its claws flared out like black horn scythes. Their thrust drove Mael backward. He fell into the crevice between two slabs of rock. The claws curled over the rim of his shield. Their needle points pricked the Irishman through his mail. The wyvern rolled its weight forward, crushing the unyielding circuit of the shield down on Mael and the tumbled stone beneath him. The metal sizzled where it touched the bare flesh of his thighs and the base of his throat. Mael could not fill his lungs to scream. Rocks were being driven through his back.

  The wyvern cocked one eye down at the Irishman like a grackle studying a worm. The beast leaned forward, bending from the hip joint, and its jaws began to gape. One of its eyeteeth had cracked jaggedly; the other was a gleaming spearhead touched by the moon's cool light. Mael's right arm was caught under his shield. He had half-drawn the Spanish sword when the beast's weight crushed him against the rocks. Now he dragged the weapon an inch further from its sheath, feeling his skin tear and slip in his blood. The dragon's mouth stank like a furnace stoked with old bones. Mael whined curses into it. The blast of fire from the jaws would leave his helmet a pool of incandescent slag amid the ash of his head and shoulders.

  Starkad leaped down from the hillside onto the dragon's withers. His beard and hair were tangled like a gorgon's locks. The shock of the Dane's mass was staggering, even to a monster fifteen yards long. The wyvern took three steps forward, all the weight of its first stride bearing on Mael's shield. The beast passed over the Irishman like the shadow of death. It was trying to twist its serpentine neck to the left to tear at the man on its back.

  Starkad had locked his heels around the wyvern's throat, just ahead of the wings. The vanes crashed against the Dane, hiding him momentarily. When they lowered, Mael saw his friend still astride the monster.

  Mael rolled to all fours "I'm coming, " he wheezed. His flesh had swollen cuttingly to the straps of the target. The circuit of burning metal tried to anchor him to the rubble, but he lurched upward and the shield came with him. Before him, earth spewed high as the wyvern pivoted. It was trying to turn more sharply than its bones allowed.

  Starkad lifted his axe high over his head, peen forward. For a moment he was a bellowing statue against the night sky. Mael, staggering forward with his spatha out, raised his own banshee war cry, but the darkness drowned in the dragon's roars.

  There was no sound and no movement. Starkad poised and Mael hung in the midst of his own attack. The Irishman could see Veleda in the corner of his eye. Her arms were outstretched and her lips pursed in the middle of a chant. The woman's slim body was glowing violet. The cliff face brightened with the reflection.

  Mael was cold. The ghastly color enveloped him and became a force created deep within his being. It was an amalgam of motion and fury and soul, all focused on Starkad's axe. Mael knew for an instant that there was something more dehumanizing than merely being the object of inhuman forces. Motionless himself, the Irishman strained toward the motionless tableau of dragon and axeman. The great axe began to shimmer violet.

  The Dane brought his weapon down in an arc so perfect that it seemed the dragon was raising its skull to meet the blow. The stroke was swift enough that a line of steel hung in the air. Iron struck bone and rang and rebounded as it had when the axe head smashed the stone in Lancelot's hands. The drago
n missed a half step, shaking its head. The eerie light had vanished. Starkad raised his humming weapon again, but the first blow had numbed his whole side. The creature's wings batted the Dane. His feet were no longer locked beneath its throat. Mael saw Starkad flung away, losing even his grip on his axe. Man and weapon struck the ground twenty feet apart.

  The Irishman's legs drove him forward. The wyvern pivoted. Its head was twisting toward Starkad. The jaws were open. Mael howled and cut with his spatha at the beast's tail, the only portion of the dragon he could reach. The blade clanged and skittered away harmlessly. Mael raised his sword again, gripping the hilt with both hands. Through the rising arc of the blade, he saw the wyvern's head. The axe blow had caved it in. As the creature swung, its brains dripped from the open wound.

  The beast turned further. Its jaws slammed shut and tore a huge gobbet out of its own left flank. The dragon screamed. It threw its head back, then forward and down with a gout of fire. The soil blew apart as moisture exploded into steam. Then the monster found its own right foot with the flame and sent itself sprawling like a broken-backed snake.

  Starkad was crawling. Mael shouted to him. The Dane was not attempting to escape but rather to reach his axe. Beside Mael the wyvern began hammering the ground with its head and tail. The rocky soil shook in syncopated thunder. The dragon licked its side with another tongue of flame. One wing fell away. Scales, thrown high by the gases of their own destruction, spun back to the ground like dead leaves.

  Mael shambled toward the Dane, letting his sword fall on the ground unnoticed. The shield was a fiery deformity which warped his body with its weight. He was past noticing even that. When it suddenly slipped off, the Irishman's back still bent to its imaginary burden.

  Starkad looked up. With an effort that made his jaw sag open, the Dane rose to his feet. Some time during the night the left side of his beard had been scorched away. Blisters pocked his skin. He embraced Mael, each man cursing and praying in his own language.