The Ringed City Chronicles: The Dragon Hunt Page 6

  Chapter Six

  I

  He brought the horse to a halt on the edge of the plain and stood looking out at it. All about a ring of dark stones rising. This ancient caldera. On the far side and to the north that stone ridge falling lower, perhaps twice his height, but rising to three times that on his left, the crags and outcroppings free of snow as the wind tore it from those surfaces and sent it swirling away down the side of the sloping mountains, running toward the true mountains where they towered like behemoths on the horizon. There the land too wild and untamed for a man to live and all raw as if in the world's forming.

  The field itself perhaps four hundred yards in each direction, a rough circle with the stones jutting in at points and retreating at others. Flat as the calm sea of a dead morning. Drifted in heavy snow. The horse breaking through it, but hard enough that he could stand on it were he to dismount. It looked like the mouth of a volcano where the molten heart was frozen solid and the burning rivers plunging away were made of ice. He looked back along the ridge to the lower plain and the forest that stood between him and the town.

  A good place to kill a dragon, here in this frozen world.

  He got off the horse and tested his weight on the snow and nodded and held up a hand for the wind, though he knew where it came from. Turned slowly in that spot to look all about and determine his hunt. For a hunter must know his place better than the game for that one slim moment in which the game's life is in his hands and he can make no mistake or that life will slip swiftly off and be lost to him.

  And when seeking the game that he sought, the roles of hunter and prey would quickly be reversed and the kill would be made.

  It would have to be an open place along the cragged ridge. There in those heavy stones he could wait for as long as he needed without getting soaked to the bone and he could hide himself in his dark plate armor. The dragon wouldn't smell him over the bait. He could take the shot and then come down the side as the beast reeled in its blindness and finish it with the sword.

  And for that, he knew, he would have to take the lower ridge. Some place where he could come down the slope swiftly and without fear of falling. No more than six feet high. The taller cliffs would be better for the shot, but he would lose too much time advancing. You did not kill a beast like this slowly, but swiftly and all at once.

  When the bards sang of dragon slayers, they sang long about the fight, allowing it to ebb and flow like the tide. First the knight with the advantage, then the dragon pushing back. They sang as normal men who had seen a normal battle and knew how it went on the field, drenched in blood. The way a siege could last for hours or days or weeks. The shifts in strength.

  But they did not sing as those who had fought dragons. For if you fought a dragon for long, it would always win. Without fail. It was a beast more powerful than any man and the songs lied. If the battles were fought that way, dragons would rule the earth and men would be no more.

  He went to the cliff and found a thin path where he could climb and pulled himself up. The horse still in the field watching him. Its eyes like dark pools of oil. He topped the cliff and stood there in thin snow and the wind howling about him and bent and checked that wind again to be sure it was at his face and not his back and then knelt and looked out. Here with stones before him upon which he could rest the crossbow and which would break up his shape, but the path close and easy.

  If he ran hard, he could be down and across the field in less than half a minute. Still longer than he wanted, but it was what he had and it was good enough. He'd have to note the eye the arrow struck and stay to that side of the beast and buy himself what time he could.

  The horse was bending and licking the snow and he went down to it again and led it to the center of the field. Eyed the cliff to be sure he'd have a clear shot and moved the horse slightly north and nodded and then went to the saddlebag and took out the gold. A small pouch with the string drawn in the top and the coins heavy and rattling within.

  He bent and emptied the bag in a meager pile. The gold glittering in the sun. He pushed it with his foot, spreading it out, knowing it didn't matter if it went below the snow crust or not. The dragon would smell it either way. There were two dozen coins and he spread them until they were a rough circle a meter across and then he reached to his shoulder and drew his sword and brought it back and drove it through the horse's neck.

  The animal screamed and reared and the sword tore free in a great gout of blood. The horse tripping back and falling and regaining first its knees and then standing and falling again. He stood watching it and could tell from the blood that he had taken it through the vein and it would not be long. This the fastest and most painless way it could die, but still those shrieks to draw the dragon.

  When the horse at last lay still on the frozen snow with the blood pooling and spreading around it, he went to it and cut off the head and dragged it back over to the gold. Setting it at the center of the coins. He took up some of the blood in his hands and spread it on the coins themselves to mingle the scent and then he went back to the horse and took off the saddle and quartered it. Bringing each piece and laying it about the outside circumference of that circle of coins. Like four winds on a compass rose. At last he pulled the body over and put it on the far side of the circle with the mountains behind it and he again spread the blood over the coins and then bent and washed his hands in the snow and stood back to look at it.

  He hadn't needed this for the red dragon. That city had been full of gold and blood and it was coming down on them regardless. But here in the wild he needed to bait it precisely and this would do. He nodded once and went to pick up the saddle and the bags and the reins where he'd left them and went back to the short cliff and climbed it.

  From the top, the spreading blood looked dark and ugly, the coins glimmering within it like eyes.

  II

  He waited a time and the dragon did not come and the sun moved slowly above him until it hung directly aloft and not a cloud to break that merciless glare. When he could crouch no more he stood and set the crossbow aside and stretched his legs. The pop of tendons, the fire of feeling spreading back to feet too long motionless in the snow. His eyes the whole time on the sky and wheeling far off two carrion crows and he closed his eyes when he saw them and then looked away.

  Never had he been one for patience. For waiting. Even in this occupation in which those were the most important qualities a man could have.

  When he'd ridden with the Chainmail King along the banks of a river with a forgotten name, he'd found in him a kinship in their desire to push forward when others would wait. Falling into battle and letting everything sort itself out at the edge of a sword. They came down many times on towns that way and fought through and reveled in their triumphs and in the last town a company of archers not well hidden in the forest. But still unseen.

  They'd ridden down into an empty town and a maelstrom of arrows and while the king lay gasping with a splintered bolt through his throat Brack had learned something of the value of patience. For the rebellion had died there and the world had continued to turn and he'd put those days behind him. But he had never forgotten the feeling of reining up the horse on the empty street and looking back and forth in confusion and then dawning realization and the sound of strings from the forest giving them the smallest warning of the death coming so quickly.

  The way she'd looked at him when he'd returned and told her of it and all in his voice and her eyes the knowledge of what he'd done. His hands and face still coated in the king's blood. The real worth there of a king who yearned to reign and did not, the world now about them twisting in violence and in her face also the knowledge of what was to come—the endless nights on the run and in caves and forests and the pounding of hooves on a night's road as they held their breath.

  And so he settled himself back and he waited, his eyes on the sky. Knowing it would come and not knowing when.

  He saw it the first time far off and circling. Below it a wi
de field of ice and the path up to the keep. So small at that distance that this beast which had dwarfed the castle tower upon which it landed now was little more than a spinning fleck on the horizon, but he knew already it was scenting the air, and he knew also the ground it could cover. He sat forward and watched it circle and then a cloud came and when the cloud was gone, so was the dragon.

  The second time it looked as large as the crows—those long departed, knowing the terror that approached—with its wings beating just once every few minutes. Gliding there in the still air, dropping from the east to the west on the current, then rising again. He felt he could hear the drumming of the wings, that heavy beating, but he did not know if he actually heard it or only remembered.

  He watched it as the sun fell into evening, the crossbow in his hands. He knew his body was cold but he could not feel it, could not feel anything. There was nothing but the drifting creature, so unnatural on that wind, as it moved slowly before his vision. Ever closer. The size of a hawk, then an eagle, then surpassing them all. The great serpentine tail snapping in the air.

  He did not realize that it meant to pass him by until he could make out the legs and the row of spikes along its back. It had been swinging closer and then farther, a child perhaps of indifference or a slothful arrogance, and he kept waiting for it to drop down for the gold and blood as he knew it would. The drumming of its wings now unmistakable.

  But it did not. It flew on in that pendulous motion and swung past his field of stone and ice. He thought he saw the head turn in his direction and gaze at him for a moment, and then the wings beat twice, three times as it pushed for more speed and he stood and felt in his gut something like the twisting of a screw and an immense falling and he brought up the bow but it was much too far.

  The tail flicking through the air as it turned. The shoulders and the long neck twisting. Lungs like a bellows forcing air into the furnace of the ancient world.

  He wanted to run and did not, for there was nowhere to run.

  At long last it rose slightly in the air, the talons coming up under it, the neck arching. Preparing to dive. He could not hear the voices on the ground but he had been there when the red dragon emerged from the shadows and when this one fell upon the keep, and he knew the screams and terror that must live there.

  The dragon seemed to hover in the air for a moment, suspended and unmoving, and then it called out once in a horrid and primordial shriek and it fell like a stone. Wings furled as it dropped, then snapping out as it neared the ground. In Brack's vision, the ridges and hills rising to block what he could see. Just before it fell out of sight, the jaws flared and a wall of flame poured out, a torrent of living fire, the sun itself being birthed suddenly on the ground.

  The fire struck the unseen earth and raged and the beast's black body was for a moment washed in the curling orange light of flame. And then it was gone, falling too low to see, descending on that town with its small ring of homes and the bar where once a blind man had played for the ears of drunks and miners.

  III

  He watched for a long time as he walked. All of him yearning to run but it was miles and he'd killed the horse and there was nothing to be done. So he ran at first and now walked in fevered exhaustion and felt the distance with every step. Throwing the plate aside in the snow. The crossbow on his back and the sword uselessly in his hand. Watching as the dragon rose and wheeled like some black soul cast from another world and into this one with a ferocious anger and the tail snapping behind it and the beast diving again with the lance of billowing flame before it.

  Rising and falling, this bringer of fire and light and death. Dealing in that which it had dealt since the world was raw and empty and it crawled from the cracks below to test those infantile wings on this new air. Claws clicking on hardened stone, a heart of magma.

  So the legends told. He had never believed that and did not now, but it was easy to understand how the stories had been crafted as that fallen archangel rose in the sky to hang floating on black wings and then dipped one and dove with a screech to kill again. For what else could a man surviving that destruction think than that he'd seen the very evil all men knew was in the world, this manifestation in scale and bone?

  At long last it was done. The dragon circling twice and looking down on its killing field. Beating its wings intermittently to stay aloft, the sharp eyes always on the ground. Looking for anything alive in that fiery carnage into which it could lay its claws, its teeth. Then, satisfied that even the bones had burned, it came about a final time and hung in the air.

  And looked at him.

  Too far away to be sure, but Brack knew dragons and he knew it turned toward him where he stumbled both hunched and beaten. The wings drumming softly to hold it there, the smoke rising all around and behind in a backdrop of the dead. That smoke still mixed with orange flame and sparks flying aloft, but already the fires burning out.

  When cabins burned down to the snow, there was nothing else for the flames to devour.

  He did not feel time pass and he did not turn away. The bow and sword very heavy. Then the dragon turned, the head and neck going first and pulling the body around and the wings increasing their beat and he watched as it grew smaller, soaring over those snowswept mountains like an arrow itself, and once it called out long and high and full of rage and then it was gone.

  Only then did Brack stop and stand still, lingering now at the top of an embankment. He tried a step and stumbled and dropped to one knee and stood again. A feeling inside him deep and wrenching. Falling again and again rising.

  Then he turned at the top of the bank and he walked in his own washed out bootprints back the way he'd come. Traversing it all a third time to the field in the ring of stone. Walking forward to that caldera's heart and beginning to pick the gold out of the blood and meat and putting it back in the bag. His fingers were numb and he kept dropping the gold and then finally he had it all and he stood and began walking back toward the town, the towering pillar of smoke to guide him, fading slowly into black as night claimed the land.

  In that darkness drawn on by the distant glow of the burning world.

  IV

  He went through a tall and thin walkway between two immense stones, the walls rising and so close his shoulders touched each side as he walked and on the walls of those stones some robust lichen growing thick in this hidden place where the wind could not touch and when he came out the far side Juoth was there and sitting his horse in the middle of the path.

  Brack stopped and looked at him. His clothing was blackened on one side and his hair burned. The flesh along the edge boiled and smeared with blood, but only just below the hairline. His eyes still alert. He wore one glove and kept the other hand in his coat and he was wearing both sword and bow.

  “Is he dead?” Brack said.

  “You saw.”

  In that the world entire.

  Juoth folded and unfolded his hand. Looking up at the sky and something in his face like a deep pain and he did not touch his head at all and closed his eyes. “It's all gone. Down to the foundations by now. The fire eats everything.”

  “Is he dead.” It was no longer a question.

  “Ironhelm.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Yes.”

  Brack was silent. He had known but it was different to know than to be told and now he had both. He bowed his head and put a hand back on the rock behind him and then he could stand on his own again. But he felt deep in his gut something breaking off and moving through his body, something with a life of its own and the same darkness as the dragon's form wheeling in the sky and he knew that if it worked its way through his veins and heart and to his mouth he would scream until there was nothing left of his voice and it was ragged and tattered and broken. And so he closed his mouth and he guided it and he did not let it escape and after a time he did not feel it anymore and he could look up again.

  “How'd you get out?”

  “Ran during the first dive. Everyone ru
ns at first and if you run later there's no reason. So I ran and it couldn't chase us all and I got to the horses and I got out.” He paused. “He told me to run.”

  “I know he did.”

  “Brack.”

  He waved a hand. “Don't. I don't blame you.”

  “Do you want to go back?”

  “To the town?”

  “Yes.”

  Brack nodded. For just a moment that thing was loose in his blood again and he had to force it back down and then he thought he might be sick but he wasn't. He nodded again. “I have to.”

  “It didn't come for you at all?”

  “No.” Brack looked up and his eyes were flint and steel and he walked toward the horse. “But he saw me.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because that's what he is.” He grabbed the saddle and Juoth reached down and clasped his forearm and pulled him up onto the horse. They were heavy but the horse did not flinch. “He's just playing with me. He's toying. He wanted me to see it.”

  They rode then in a long silence over the snow and ice. The way back infinitely longer than the way there and riding under stars like chips and shards of broken glass strewn about the sky. Clear and brittle and endless. The sound only of the horse's hooves crunching in the snow and their own breathing, their breath and the horse's rising in clouds in that stark air. He touched his beard and it was full of snow and each hair turned white with frost as if he were carved whole from this landscape and would melt with the coming sun.

  Once they stopped and he went to the side of the trail and he was sick and then he got back on the horse and they rode on.

  When they at last came to the town it was not a town anymore but just blackened beams and stones on dirt dry and crumbling. The snow and ice here burned away in a terrible patch around the town. Not a building standing and all of the rubble reduced to near nothing and a little smoke still rising faintly.