Caius smashed the beast in the head again with the eagle of the Ninth, putting all his weight in it. He and Junie looked at each other. “One bloody word out of you about damaging legion property, Junie,” he shouted, “and it’s back in the fen I’ll toss you myself!”
“Not a word, not one!” Junie wheezed, pulling himself farther up the bank. Marcus came running down, holding his tunic well out of the mud, and tried to hoist the injured man without soiling himself. It was an impossible endeavor.
“Cai, leave that horrid creature alone and come here right now and help me with Junius!” he called. “Go on, let it be, it’s had enough.”
“Stop yer gob, will you?” Caius was panting with the effort of using the legion standard as a bludgeon, but he lofted it for a third blow anyhow. “If this bugger’s just stunned, I’m nearest, and I’ll be twigged if I’ll be the tasty pud to tempt an invalid monster’s palate when it comes to. Not just to keep your tunic clean. Missy Vestal!”
“Well, who died and made us Jupiter Capitolinus?” With a peeved sniff, Marcus slung Junie’s arm around his neck, letting the mud slop where it would. “If you’re still speaking to the plebs, Cai, we’ll be back in camp.” He hustled Junie out of sight without waiting to see the eagle descend for the third time.
The beast had been hissing weakly, but the final smash put paid to that. There was a sickening crunch that Caius felt all the way up his arms to his shoulders, and then it was no longer possible to tell where the monster’s skull ended and the bogland began. Caius wiped his sweating brow, getting honey all over his face. “That’s done,” he said, “and damned if anyone’ll credit it. Goewin won’t, for one; not without proof, and that means the head.” He felt for his sword, then remembered that not only had he left it in camp, but the barbarian had made off with it.
“Vesta’s smoking hole!” He thrust the standard deep into the sodden ground, cradling it in the crook of one arm as he raised cupped hands to lips and bellowed, “Oi! Marcus! Fetch me back Junie’s sword when yer at a loose end, there’s a dear!” He waited. Not even an echo returned.
Caius called again, then another time, until he felt a proper fool. He left the standard rooted where it was and trudged back to the camp, only to find that all of it—tent, packs, gear, cookpots and dinner—was gone. In the failing light, he spied two rapidly retreating figures headed in the direction of the Wall.
“Plague rot ‘em, lights and liver,” Caius muttered. “Look at the buggers run! I never saw Junie move that fast, even when he wasn’t chawed over by a dragon.” He patted his legion dagger, still firmly tucked into his belt. “Well, old girl, it’ll be a long saw, but you and me, we’ll have that bleeder’s head off right enough, even does it take us all night. After all, it’s my dragon.”
Caius’ chest inflated with pride as he realized the full measure of his deed. “Didn’t even need a sword to kill ‘im,” he told the air. “And if there’s any man likes to fancy that means I did for the monster barehanded, who’s to tell the tale any different?” He was fairly swaggering by the time he returned to the scene of his triumph.
His mood of self-congratulation quickly soured to outrage when he beheld the tableau awaiting him at the fenside. The eagle had fallen again, knocked down by the hopeless struggle of a raggedy, graybearded relic who had the dragon by the narrowest bit of its neck and was obviously trying to yank the whole enormous carcass out of the water. hand over hand. The head, already pulpy, could not long stand such cavalier treatment. It squashed into splinters of bone and globs of unidentifiable tissue in the old man’s grasp.
“Here, now!” Caius barked, rushing forward too late to preserve his trophy. He shouldered the gaffer aside, stared at what once might have been the full price of Goewin’s respect—to say nothing of that of the commander and the Ninth—and burst into tears.
The old man cowered and wrung his hands, squeezing out little pips of blood and brain matter from between the palms. “Noble Chieftain, forgive this worthless fool for having dared to presume you had abandoned your lawful kill!” He spoke Gaelic, a dialect slightly different from Goewin’s folk.
“Oh, you pasty old fiend, you’ve bally ruined everything!” Caius wailed, kicking the goo that had once been the dragon’s head. “How am I ever going to prove I slew the beast without the head to show for it? I can’t bloody well tow the whole fucking corpse down the Wall, can I now?”
“You might take a handful of the teeth with you, m) lord,” the old man suggested timidly, awed by Cams’ passion.
“Oh, yes!” Caius did not bother to trim his sarcasm. “Dragon’s teeth’ll do, won’t they? When every peddler the length and breadth of Britain’s got bags full of such trumpery—grind ‘em up and slip ‘em in yer wine when yer woman wants cheering and you can’t afford unicorn’s horn on a legionary’s pay—each and all culled from the mouths of any great fish luckless enough to wash up dead on the seacoast?” He gulped for breath, then spat, “Think the commander don’t know that much? He’s one of their biggest customers. You stupid sod!”
“High Chief, do but calm your wrath against me.” The old man pointed a palsied finger at the pool that still concealed the bulk of the beast. “Together we can surely pull the monster’s body onto land, and then you have but to cut out its heart and eat it and then—”
Caius stopped crying and frowned. “You off yer nut entire, or are you just senile? Eat a beastly dragon’s heart, Whuffo?”
“Why, High Chief, then you shall be wiser than any wizard and understand the speech of all the birds of the air!” The old man flung his arms wide. He wore no more than a mantle of red deer hide, with a knot of anonymously colored cloth doing up his loins. His expansive gesture wafted the full power of his personal aroma right into Caius’s face.
The legionary wiped his nose, then pinched it shut. “Is thad whad you was doing? Trying to beach this creature so as to ead id’s heart and have yerself a chat with the birdies?” The old man nodded. Caius dropped his pinching fingers. “Mithra, what sort of cuckoo hatched you?”
The oldster hung his head. “My mother was a wise woman, my father I never knew. At my birth, the bards of our tribe tell that two dragons coupled in a field hereabouts and—”
“Right, right.” Caius waved him silent. “Serve me right, asking for the straight story from a Celt,” he said to himself. Aloud he added, “You one of them wizard fellers yerself, then? Or can’t you afford decent clothes, just?”
A sly glint came into the old man’s eye. When he smiled, Caius beheld a mouthful of the memories of decent teeth. “King and lord, you are as all-seeing as you are all-valiant. I am indeed privy to the occult forces of nature.”
“Well, I knew there was summat of the privy about you,” Caius riposted. He chortled over his own sally until he caught the look the old man was giving him. He decided to return to his wrathful pose; folk treated you with more honor if they feared you were going to send their conks down the same route he’d shown the dragon.
Thoughts of the beast forced him to consider the ruined trophy and his present position. Although he glared doom at the old man, in his heart he knew that he would not be able to afford the luxury of such a killing look when he faced his commander again.
Junie and Marcus, they’ll make camp before I do, what with the time I’m wasting on this geezer and the thought of what I’ve got to say, he reflected. Even with Junie banged up like he is, they’ll stir their stumps to be first inline with the tale of what happened to the dragon. Think for a tick they’ll make it truthful? Huh! That’d mean old Junie’d have to admit as he was near ate and saved by me. Me! He’d sooner—Well, he’d sooner crucify hisself, given there was a way to see that stunt through.
Caius scraped his chin with fingers still sticky from the honey harvest and regarded the self-styled wizard thoughtfully. “Here,” he said. “You called that great wallopin’ beast me lawful kill, didn’t yer?”
“Oh, aye, that I did, most awful lord.”
“Saw the whole thing happen, did yer?”
The old man grinned like a death’s head and nearly bobbed the head off his meager neck in agreement as he pointed to the paltry stand of scrub that had been his hiding place throughout the epic conflict.
“That’s all right, then.” Caius was better than satisfied. “You’ll just nip along back to the legion camp with me and tell anyone as I points you at just exactly what happened here, how I stepped up bold to that ‘ere dragon and—”
The old man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he sank cross-legged to the ground. A horrid gurgling welled out of his throat as he tilted his face skywards. “Bold came the high king, master of men, open-handed to the least of his servants, and the golden eagle flew before him, symbol of his might and fame. Fled they all three, the cowards who had served him, leaving him lone to fight the unwholesome beast of the bogland. Terrible was his ire against the fainthearted. Cursing, he killed one man for his shameful act, striking him down like a dog—”
“Now just a minute, you old rattlebrain, I never killed no one but the dragon!”
The old man opened his eyes so sharply that Caius thought he heard a whipcrack. “Now you’ve made me lose the sacred thread of creation, 0 High Chief.” He managed to make the highflown title sound like a synonym for numbskull.
“Arr, that don’t signify. There wasn’t half the truth in what you were saying—leave it to you Celts—and if the commander’s not drunker than Silenus when he hears you out, he’ll rule as all of what you have to say is pure horseshit.”
An uneasy inspiration creased Caius’ brow. “Excepting for the part as where you says I killed someone. Bee-wolf, curse him, he’s gone. Who’s to say what’s become of him? That Junie and Marcus, they’re clever as a brace of seaport whores, the pair of ‘em. Shouldn’t take ‘em long to club together and tell the commander that I murdered the hero while they did for the dragon. Nodens’ nuts, Junie’s got the battle scars to prove it! And what’ve I got? What in bloody Hades have I got?” The gristle of reality stuck in his throat and he crumpled down beside the old man, sniveling.
“Does this mean that my noble lord will not help his sworn servant to cut out the dragon’s heart?” the graybeard asked by way of comfort.
“Oh, go help yerself to the soddin’ heart, you old fool!” Caius sobbed. “Can’t you see I’ve me own troubles?”
“The burden of rule falls heavy on the uncounseled,” the old man intoned with due solemnity. “Yet, by my head, I swear never to give you ill-considered advice, nor to let aught but wise words pour from my lips into your ears.”
“You try pouring anything into my ears, grizzlepate, and I’ll cosh you a good one!” Caius raised his fists to the darkening sky. “Oh gods, not even a place to lay me head tonight, and odds are it won’t be many days before the commander sends out a patrol to hunt me down!”
“Over the dead bodies of your guardsmen, my lord.” The old man looked grim but determined.
“Over—what?” Caius asked. ’
Even allowing for oral decoration and a useless genealogical sidebar tracing the ancestry of the dragon’s last-but-one-victim, it did not take the old man too long to inform Caius that the beast had caused the death of his tribe’s chieftain, a man of sterling character and many cattle. An upstart stripling named Llassar Llawr of the Lake Country had tried to avenge the chief’s consumption, but he too had been dragged into the fen for his troubles.
“Is that why you were here, skulking about?” the Roman asked. “Waiting to see was anyone else fool enough to have a go at the monster, so’s you could leap out and ask for a gob of heart did they succeed?”
“I was not skulking.” The old man puffed up like an infected wound. “Wizards have no need to skulk. I was in trance, communing with the gods, awaiting a sign to foretell the coming of a hero to defeat the dragon and take the right of kingship over our tribe. Since the beast took the life of our lawful lord, it was only right that its death provide us with a replacement.”
“So you were waiting for a hero?” Caius snorted. “Been there meself. Had one on me, I did, in fact, but he bolted.” To himself he thought. Wonder what did become of old Bee-wolf? Nothing too bad, I hope. Can’t judge him too harsh, getting the monster sprung on him like that. How was he to know the beast wouldn’t bide quiet ‘til morning, then come be slaughtered all polite and planned? Luck to you, mate, wherever you are! Could be as you’ll still make a hero, some day. Mithra knows there’s fens aplenty in this wicked world, and maybe a dragon or two to be getting on with.
To the old man he said, “I guess you’ll have to make do with me, then. Kingship, eh? Well … it’s bound to bring me no worse than the Glorious Ninth ever did, they can kiss me glorious bum goodbye, see if I care.” He paused in his diatribe. “‘Course, there’s Goewin …”
“This Goewin, is she your woman?” the old man asked.
Caius suddenly recalled Goewin’s voice, alternately throwing him to the figurative lions during his trial and slyly encouraging Maxentius’ advances. His mouth set hard. “Not any more she’s not; not after all the slap-and-tickle she’s no doubt been up to soon’s as I got fairly out of sight. Just you tell me one thing: If I’m yer new chieftain, like you say, this don’t mean I’ve got to be forever riding about, stealing other folks’ cows, now does it? I’m strictly infantry, you know.”
“You need lead no cattle-raids, my lord.” The old man smiled beneficently, if a trifle smugly. “Not if you tell the tribesmen that your faithful servant and all-wise wizard has counseled you that the gods are against it.” Softly he added, “I could be even more all-wise if you’d give me a hand with the dragon’s heart. Noble Chief. Unless you’d like to eat it yourself … ?”
Caius gagged.
By the light of a hastily kindled fire, the two men managed to haul a length of the dragon’s dead body onto the shore a little after nightfall. Caius made some exploratory excavations with his dagger in the region of the beast’s chest, but quickly saw that this was a futile game as well as a messy one.
“Like a field mouse trying to rape a lion,” he complained. “This job wants a man-sized blade. Bugger all, if only that Bee-wolf bastard hadn’t run off with—”
Caius remembered something. He glanced up at the hummock, where the departed barbarian’s sword still stood at attention in the rotten log. “Hang on a mo’, Grandda,” he told the wizard. “Won’t be gone but a shake.”
The old man watched him ascend the high ground. The years, and the diet that had cost him most of his teeth, had been even less charitable to his eyes. The night, the wizard’s nearsightedness, and the uncertain firelight all conspired to obscure just what happened next. The wizard wiped a small bit of rheum from his eyes, blinked, and looked again just in time to see Caius’ hands close around one end of a long, thickish object-standing upright in a second, far more massive, object. Just as the old man had mentally discounted a number of things those distant articles might be, Caius gave a heave and brandished something long and gleaming overhead with both hands.
There was only one possible object for a sane man to brandish in this fashion: a sword. As for what it had been sheathed in …
“A stone!” the wizard shouted. “He pulled the sword from a stone!”
By the time Caius came back down to the fire, the awe-smitten old man was groveling in the mud and gibbering about magical strength and miraculous proof of kingship.
“Say, 0 Highest of the High Chiefs,” the wizard babbled, “Say what this, your humblest servant and counselor, shall name you before the tribe! Speak, and I shall fly swifter than the hunting merlin-hawk to spread your name among your waiting people!”
Caius rubbed his chin again. He was not sure what he had done to merit this, but he was not fool enough to question Fortuna’s little pranks. “I am called Cai—” he began, then stopped. It would not take much for word to reach the Commander of someone with a Roman name jumped up to chieftancy of a native tribe—not the way these Cel
ts talked. It would take less time for the bastard to then dispatch the whole legion after him. The Glorious Ninth had gone to pot, true, but the strength of their old training still made them a bad enemy. Until Caius could give his new subjects the once-over and gauge their mettle as soldiers, he would do well to lay low.
“I mean, Cai, that’s just me milk-name, as I was raised with,” he said hastily. “What I’m really called is—” he cudgeled his brains for a moment, desperately trying to come up with a name that was not Roman and would not ring familiar in the Commander’s ears.
He found one.
“—Arctos.”
He settled down to clean his sword, completely forgetting his promise to cut out the dragon’s heart.
“Lord,” the old man prompted. “Lord, if you do not remove the beast’s heart soon, it will lose all virtue.”
“Sod off,” said Arctos.
The old man scowled. “Bloody foreigners,” he grumbled.
Still, it would make a good story.
Where do you get your ideas? That’s what they always ask writers. If you’re a writer, you already know the answer, and if you’re not, you’ll never have a clue. Sorry, but that’s the way the galaxy spins.
Writers, and in particular writers of fantasy, should be able to make a good story out of anything. Out of the ordinary, the commonplace, the unspectacular. Any fool can build a story around dragons and elves and vampires. It takes a truly good writer to make one out of white bread, or a paperclip, or an ant or a rose.
Or something as plain, ordinary, and everyday as water.
Trouble With Water
HORACE L. GOLD
Greenberg did not deserve his surroundings. He was the first fisherman of the season, which guaranteed him a fine catch; he sat in a dry boat—one without a single leak—far out on a lake that was ruffled only enough to agitate his artificial fly. The sun was warm, the air was cool; he sat comfortably on a cushion; he had brought a hearty lunch; and two bottles of beer hung over the stem in the cold water.
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 27
