Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Not that again.” Caius shifted the spears. “I’m fucking sick and tired of Junie and his thrice-damned crucifixions. Mithra, it’s like a bally religion with him. What’s he need to get off, then? A handful of sesterce spikes and a mallet?”

  “He also said that he was going to warn Arctos to keep a weather eye on us so we don’t bolt.”

  Caius flung down his bundle, exasperated. “Now who’s been wished on us for this little deathmarch, eh? Bad enough we’re to split two men’s rations four ways—sod the commander for a stone-arsed miser—but who’s this fifth wheel coming to join us?”

  The clatter of falling spears made the rest of the party draw up short. Marcus was totally bewildered. “What fifth wheel?”

  “This Arctos bastard who’ll be baby-minding us, that’s who!” Caius shouted.

  Junius regarded the angry little man with disdain. “I will thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when speaking of our pro tempore commander, Caius Lucius Piso.” He then turned to the barbarian and added, “Do not kill him yet, 0 august Ursus. We still need him to carry the spears.”

  “Arctos is Ursus, Cai, old boy,” Marcus whispered. “Greek, Latin, same meaning, same name. So sorry if I confused you. The drawbacks of a really good classical education.” He tittered behind his hand.

  “Sod off,” Caius growled, gathering up the armory.

  It was some three days later that the little group finally stepped off on the northern side of the Wall and reached their goal. Gray and brown and thoroughly uninviting, the fen stretched out before them. Mist lay thick upon the quaking earth. A few scraggly bushes, their branches stripped of foliage, clung to the banks of the grim tam like the clutching hands of drowning men going under for the last time.

  “—and the best freshwater fishing for miles about.” Caius sighed as he viewed the haunt of their watery Nemesis. “If the commander wasn’t half such a great glutton, we could leave the fish to the dragon and eat good boiled mutton like honest folk. But no. Off he goes, filling our ears with endless, colicky speeches about the honor of the Ninth and all that Miles Gloriosus codswallop, when the truth is that he just fancies a sliver of stuffed pike now and again. So in he brings this hero fella, and now our lives aren’t worth a tench’s fart.”

  “I heard that!” Junius called. “And when the commander finds out—”

  “Junie, love, why don’t you go nail your balls to a board?” Marcus Septimus remarked over-sweetly.

  Caius patted the former secretary on the back. “You know. Marc, old dear, you’re not a bad sort for a catamite.”

  The barbarian directed his helpers to pitch camp, which they did in swift, efficient, legion fashion. Despite their internal bickerings, proper training made them work well together. Even Marcus did not manage to get too badly underfoot. When the lone tent was pitched and dinner on the boil, Caius flopped down on the damp ground without further ceremony.

  “Oh, me aching back! Mithra knows how many friggin’ milia pasuum we’ve covered, and for what? Just so’s we’d be on time to be ate tomorrow morning!”

  A gaunt shadow fell across his closed eyes. “Get up, Caius Lucius Piso,” Junius said, using the tip of his foot to put some muscle behind the order. “The food is ready and we can’t find Ursus anywhere.”

  “Can’t we now?” Caius did not bother to open his eyes. “Here’s me heart, bleeding like a stuck pig over the news. Run off, has he? Jupiter, I never figured the big ox to have a fraction so much sense as that. Commander shouldn’t’ve paid him in advance.”

  “He was paid nothing.” Junius’ words were as dry as Goewin’s onion tart. “Nor has he run off. Ursus is a hero.”

  “Says who? Himself?”

  Junius tucked his hands tightly into the crooks of his elbows. “Our commander is not without his sources of information, nor would he engage such an important hireling blind. He heard nothing but the most sterling reports of our man’s prowess at disposing of supernumerary monsters. Granted, the fellow’s one of those Ultima Thule types who hails from where they’ve the better part of the year to work on polishing their lies for the spring trade, but even discounting a third of what they say he’s done—”

  Caius made that blatting sound again.

  “In any case, our noble commander is not the sort to make a bad bargain, and were he to hear you so much as implying that he might, he would—”

  “Yes, yes, I know, crucify me.” Caius forced himself to stand. “I’ll go fetch ‘im, then, before you get yer hands all over calluses from nailing me up.”

  Caius didn’t have far to go before he found his temporary leader. The barbarian squatted on a little hummock of high ground overlooking the fen, his sword jammed into a large, moldy-looking log some short distance away. His helmet was off, propped upside-down between his ankles, and his left hand kept dipping into it, then traveling to his mouth. Caius smelled a penetrating sweetness above the fetid reek of the marshland.

  “Hail, heart-strong helper!” Ursus beamed at the little Roman. Viscous golden brown strands dripped from his beard and moustache.

  “Hail yerself,” Caius replied. He sauntered up the hummock and scrooched down beside the barbarian. “Got something good, have we?” He peered into the upended helm.

  Ursus nodded cheerfully, his expression miraculously purged of any bloodlust. He jerked one thumb at the log, while with the other hand he shoved the helmet at Caius.

  “Hollow this harvest’s home,

  Fallen the forest friend

  Ages ago, several seasons spent.

  Rotten and rent, core and root,

  Toppled to turf the tall tree.

  Gilded the gliding gladiators,

  Plying their pleasant pastime,

  Sweetness sun-gold instilling,

  Honey they heap in hives.

  Noisy their nest they name,

  Daring and daunting dastards,

  Stabbing with stings to startle

  Thieves that their treasure try taking.

  Came then the conquering caller,

  Scorning their scabrous squabbles,

  Their dire drones disdaining,

  Helping himself to honey.

  Right were the runes they wrought

  When saw he first the sunlight,

  Bidding the birthed boy Bee-wolf

  Never another name know.”

  “Boy? Who gave birth to what boy hereabouts?” Caius’ eyes darted about suspiciously.

  The barbarian struck his own chest a fearsome thump.

  “Oh.” Caius dipped into the honey. Through gummy lips he added, “Going on about yerself, then, were you?”

  The barbarian bobbed his head eagerly.

  “Nice bit o’ puffery, that. Bee-wolf, eh? That’d be yer common or garden variety bear, ain’t it? So that’s why Junie stuck you with Ursus, leave it to him not to have more imagination than a badger’s bottom. Kind of a circumlocutionariatory way to go about naming a sprat, don’t ask me why you’d want yer kid associated in decent folks’ minds with a horrid great smelly beast what hasn’t the brains of a turnip, though it does make for a tasty stew, especially with a turnip or two, gods know I hope you didn’t smell like one from the minute you were born—a bear, I mean, not a turnip; nor a stew—but you can’t bloody tell about foreigners, now can you? Never one word where twenty’ll do, no offense taken, I hope?”

  Bee-wolf nodded, still grinning. His find of wild honey had sweetened his temper amazingly well.

  ” ‘Course, not that a name like that don’t have its poetry to it, mate. A man needs a bit of poetry in his life now and again.” Caius chewed up a fat hunk of waxy comb and spat dead bees into the fen with casual accuracy. ” ‘Mongst my Goewin’s folk—Goewin’s the jabbery little woman you came near to filleting with yer dagger—they keep a whole stable of bards plumped up just to natter on about how this chief slew that one and made off with his cattle. It’s a wonder to me the poor beasties have a bit o’ flesh left on their bones, the way those ma
d Celts keep peaching ‘em back and forth, forth and back, always on the move. Savagery, I call it; not like us Romans. Compassionate, we are—one of the refinements of civilization. Cruelty to dumb brutes makes me want to spew.”

  Caius leaned forward, encouraged to this intimacy by the barbarian’s continued calm. “Now if it were up to me,” he confided, “I’d leave this poor soddin’ dragon alone, I would. Live and let live, I say—that’s the civilized way to go about it. It’s not as though he’s ate up more’n five of our men, after all, and we’ve just got guesses to go by even for that. Only one witness ever come back to tell us it were the dragon for certain as ate ‘em, or even was they ate, and that man was our signifer Drusus Llyr, what no one knew his parents was first cousins ‘til it was too late, and he died stark bonkers that very night. You want me considered opinion, them fellers went over the Wall, they did, fed up to their gizzards with the commander and the whole glorious Ninth fucking Legion.” He drew a deep sigh. “Can’t say as I blame ‘em. Can’t even rightly say as I wouldn’t do the same.”

  Ursus looked puzzled.

  “Came the commander’s call.

  Summoning my sword to serve him.

  Nobly the Ninth he named,

  Home and haven of heroes.”

  “Arr, that’s just recruitment blabber.” Caius waved it all aside. “Lot of fine talk, all of it slicker than goose shit, just to rope in the young men as are half stupid, half innocent, and t’other half ignorant, no offense meant. Once in a while he manages to gammon a few of the local brats into uniform, but mostly it’s sons of the legion following in their Da’s footsteps because a camp upbringing’s ruined ‘em for honest work stealing cattle. No, the Ninth’s not what she used to be.”

  “When, I do wistful wonder,

  Was this, thy lonesome legion

  More than a muddle of men

  Prowling the piddling plowlands,

  Wandering the Wall’s wide way?”

  “Wozzat? Oh, I get yer. Well, truth to tell—” Caius leaned in even closer and nearly rested his elbow in the honey “—I haven’t the foggiest. See, mate, used to be the Ninth was as fine a lot of pureblood Roman soldiers as ever you’d fancy—and didn’t our commander just! But then, well … you know as how things have this narsty way of just . . . happening, like?”

  “Fate do I fear not.

  Still, circumstances stun stalwarts.

  Here, have more honey.”

  Caius did so. “Like I been saying, what with the wild upcountry folk the Ninth was first sent here to deal with, always on the march, camp here today, there tomorrow, try to keep the Celtic chieftains in line or even leam to tell ‘em apart one from the other, and what with the odd carryings-on back home in dear old Roma Mater, inside the city, out in the provinces, up ‘crost the German frontier with them as must be yer kissin’ cousins, Saxons and Goths and that lot, well, in comes one rosy-fingered dawn and gooses our then-commander with the fact that there ain’t no orders come through from Rome or even Londinium to tell us arse from elbow. No orders, mate! You know what that means to a professional soldier and bureaucrat like our commander?”

  “No, that knowledge I know not.”

  “Small wonder you would, you being a hero and all.

  Stand up for yerself, do what you like, go where the fancy takes you. But regular army? We don’t dare take a shit without proper orders to wipe off with after. So when there wasn’t none coming through, we dug in where we was, up by the Wall, took up with the local ladies, bred our boys to the Legion and our girls to bribe any tribes we couldn’t beat in a fair fight, and we waited.” Caius rested his face on one hand, forgetting it was the one he’d been using to dip into Ursus’ helmet. “We’re still waiting, man and boy, father to son, can’t tell you how bloody long it’s been.”

  The barbarian tilted his helmet and slurped out the last of the plundered honey. He wiped his gooey whiskers on the back of an equally hairy forearm, then said:

  “Strangely this strikes me as scoop-skulled.

  Why do you wait and wonder?

  Beneath your brows lurk brains or bran?

  Sit you thus centuries? Shitheads.”

  Caius made a hand-sign that translated across any number of cultures. “Look, mate, so long as our bleedin’ commander, latest in a long line of Imperially appointed shit-heads, has got more than three like old Junie there to lick his tail and say please, sir, what’s for afters? it’s no use running off. There’s precious little as is to keep the men occupied. Hunting down a deserter’d be a rare treat for any of ‘em. And it’s as much as me life’s worth to speak up and say let’s break camp and head south like sensible folk, try to scare up some news from Rome as isn’t staler than week-old pig piss. See, so long as we’re up here, our commander’s the law. Go south, and he could find out that the only thing he’s got a right to control is his own bladder, and not too strict a say over that. So if a man’s fool enough to suggest a move off the Wall, ‘Orders is orders,’ he’d say, ‘and traitors is traitors. And we of the Glorious Ninth know what to do with traitors, don’t we, Junie, me proud beauty?’”

  “Crudely crucify the creatures,” Ursus supplied.

  “You’re not just talking through yer helmet there, mate,” Caius agreed. “Speaking of which, it’s in a proper mess.

  Give ‘er here to me, and you go fetch that boar-sticker of yours out of the log. We’ll have a proper wash-up—me for the helmet, you for the blade, before she rusts silly, doesn’t anybody ever teach you barbarians respect for a good bit of steel?—then we’ll go back to camp and get some oil for the pair of ‘em. Supper’s ready, and if we let it go to the bad, Junie’ll be off crucifying us left and right again.”

  “Dares he the deed to do,

  Sooner my sword shall steep its steel,

  Blood-drinker, blade and brother,

  Entirely in his entrails.”

  Caius took up the helmet, beaming. “You’re a decent sort. Bee-wolf, for a bleedin’ hero.” He toddled down the slope to rinse out the helmet.

  As he squatted to his task in the shallows, a tuneless ditty on his lips, a loud, wet, crunch hard by his right foot made him start and keel over into the murky water. The helmet went flying out over the fenland, landing with an echoing plop in a nearby pool.

  Junius Claudius Maro leaned hard on the eagle standard and observed the helm’s trajectory with a critical eye. “Now you shall not escape punishment, Caius Lucius Piso.”

  “Punishment?” Caius spluttered, scarcely feeling the cold water that seeped through his clothes. Rage kept him warm. ” After you was the one as scared the bracae off me, sneaking up and chunking that whopping great standard into the sod like you was trying to spit me foot with it?” He picked himself up out of the shoreline muck and hailed the hummock. “Oi! Bee-wolf! You saw him do that, didn’t you? You saw as it wasn’t no fault of mine that your helmet—”

  But Bee-wolf was not paying attention to the angry little Roman. He stood on the high ground, honey still gumming his beard, and stared out across the fen to the spot where his boar-crest helmet had gone down. He made no move to yank his sword free of the fallen log where it still stood wedged in the heart of the ruined beehive. Something in the barbarian’s sudden pallor and paralysis stilled Caius’ own tongue. From the comer of one eye, he saw that Junie was likewise rapt with terror. He did not want to see what had frightened them so, but, at last, look he did.

  The fen bubbled. The slimy surface heaved. Slowly, seemingly as slender as a maiden’s arm, a “snakey form broke the face of the stagnant water. On and on it came, climbing every higher into the clear air, until Caius thought that there simply could not be any more to come without ripping reality wide open and sending all the world plunging down into the gods’ own nightmares. He was only half aware of the eagle standard toppling over into the mud as Junie whirled and fled. This sudden movement galvanized the lazily rising length of serpentine flesh. The spade-shaped [head] darted within arm’s length of Caiu
s, ignoring the petrified little man as if he were part of the scenery. A maw lined with needlelike teeth gaped open, impossibly wide, and sharp jaws clamped shut around Junie, hauberk, shriek, and all.

  “Oh, I say!” Caius exclaimed, as his comrade’s scream knocked his own tongue free. Automatically, he stooped to retrieve the fallen standard, then turned to the hummock and bawled, “There’s your bloody fen-monster. Bee-wolf, old boy! Do for ‘er now while she’s busy with poor Junie and you’ve got surprise on yer …” His words dribbled away.

  The high ground was bare, the hero nowhere to be seen.

  “Coward!” came Marcus’ angry shout from the direction of camp. “You pusilanimous, recreant, craven, dastardly, caitiff—Oooooh, you rabbit, come back with Cai’s sword!” The commander’s secretary came stomping into sight of the fen just as the monster commenced reeling in a struggling Junie.

  Caius heard Marcus’s yips of shock blend nicely with Junie’s continued screaming and blubbering. The dragon was imperturbable, allowing the bulk of his still-submerged and leisurely sinking body to drag his prize into the fen.

  Caius watched as span after span of sequentially decreasing neck slipped past him. It would not be long before Junie followed, down into the fen, without so much as a last vale for his old messmate.

  “Bloody foreigners,” Caius grumbled, and, raising the eagle standard high, he brought it crunching down as hard as he was able, just at the moment when the monster’s head came by.

  BONK.

  The dragon froze, its wicked mouth falling open. Junius flopped out. He wasted no time in questioning deliverance, but hauled his body free. He was breathing hoarsely—no doubt he had a rib or two the worse for wear—but he was able to pull himself a little ways up the shore.