Dragonslayer: A Novel (27 page)

In the distance, Galen heard the cries of protest from the throng on the hillside, and shouts of outrage from Horsrick who, having fulfilled all final obligations under the
Codex,
was now on his way out of the Blight.

But Galen did not
see
what was happening amidst the crowd. He did not see that Tyrian had mounted his horse and was coming at the brisk trot of a cavalryman down the road into the Blight. He did not see him push roughly past Horsrick, drawing Tendrun as he did so, and he did not see the horse increase its pace to a gallop over the last half league. In fact, not until Elspeth screamed a warning did he turn and find Tyrian almost upon him, sword raised, teeth bared in his mirthless grin. He ducked, and Tyrian's sword sang half an inch above his head. The stallion wheeled, but its footing on the rocky ground was uncertain and it balked at another charge. Tyrian dismounted. He was five yards away. He seemed enormous, his sword huge, his black clothing terrifying. The dragon emblem on his chest twisted with a life of its own, and Galen felt the lance yearning eerily toward it. The man moved in the coiled crouch of a skilled fighter, both hands gripping his weapon. He came slowly forward.

"Meddler," he said to Galen as he came. "I should have killed you at the start." As if in affirmation the ground quivered; Vermithrax was moving. "We will correct that, now," Tyrian said. "We will begin to make amends." He had come close, and he lunged.

Galen had also been crouching, his stance an imitation of Tyrian's. When the other man struck he raised Sicarius to parry, and felt the sharp shock of steel on steel. The pain of it shot through his wrists and into his shoulders, and the pain ignited him. Despite everything, he had meant no harm to Tyrian; his response to the warrior's charge had been defensive. He had wanted only to meet Vermithrax. But now the sharp pain reminded him that he was face to face with the man who had killed Ulrich, the man who had murdered old Hodge with a war arrow through the back, the man who had humiliated him, slapped him, treated him like a lackey. He was filled suddenly with an emotion he had never known—hatred. It was like a keen, white flame.

Tyrian laughed. His thick laughter echoed in the Blight like invisible boulders bounding on the slopes. It joined with the rumble of Vermithrax's movements, somewhere beneath. "Kill me? Is that what you are thinking? You little fool! Look at you! You can hardly lift that lance." And again, his laughter suddenly cut off, he lunged.

Galen was ready. He had never felt more alert or more intensely alive. He saw vividly, knew exactly what must be done. Again he parried Tyrian's stroke, and while the other man's sword glanced harmlessly away, his own weapon twisted back and down, like a scorpion's sinewed tail, and pierced Tyrian's shoulder just above the biceps. The centurion's thick body arched in pain and the arm flopped uselessly at his side. Blood splashed. He looked from the wound to Galen but there was no change in his expression, no sign of either astonishment or fear. His grin remained implacable. He said nothing. One arm seemed quite enough to wield the sword. Its point turned in tight circles at the level of Galen's eyes. He inched forward.

Galen's attention, meanwhile, had been distracted. In the flurry of Tyrian's onslaught he had forgotten about Elspeth, but now he saw that she was no longer beside the post. She was halfway up the slope, determinedly following the same fatal path that Jacopus had taken only the day before. "Don't!" he shouted. "Stay! You don't have to!" She gave no sign that she had heard.

Tyrian inched forward. There would be no dramatic lunges this time. Every move would count. He feinted, grinned as Galen dodged away, feinted again. Then he struck. The blow was fast as the flicker of a snake's tongue, a thrust to the heart.

Galen did not know how he avoided it. Had he been a hair's breadth slower he would have died pinned and squirming on Tyrian's sword. Instead he was alive, stretched tiptoe, twisting away like some pirouetting court juggler, and the side of Tyrian's neck, carried forward by the thrust, was exposed to him. Later, when he had time to reflect, he would wonder why he did not strike with all his force; why instead he allowed the edge of Sicarius merely to drift along that exposed neck between tunic and helm, and he would never be able to say truthfully whether his motives were kind or vicious. Was this the last of the warning? Or was there something of Tyrian even in him; was he toying with the man?

In any case, the second wound had no more effect on Tyrian than the first. He spun back to face Galen, shaking his head as if to fling away the new blood as a dog flings off water. Then he came forward again. He was breathing heavily.
You will regret that,
his eyes said.
You will regret that very dearly.

Galen knew then with a cold certainty that one of them would die. He glanced up the hill again and caught sight of Elspeth just beginning the last, steep section of her climb to the lair's mouth. If he was to prevent her, there was no time to lose.

He moved to the attack. He felt magnificent. The lance rose singing in his hands and bore him up with it, up, up, until he seemed to be looking down at Tyrian from a great height, and in the instant before he struck, oblivious and impervious to the flailing of Tyrian's blade, he was filled with such mix of emotions— rage and pity and triumph—that he screamed from the brimming force of them, a dreadful warrior's scream that bounced and reverberated and took its mighty place among the echoes of the Blight.

Sicarius descended.

Driven exultantly, it pierced the post behind which Tyrian had taken refuge, the open dragon's mouth on Tyrian's breast, and the thick torso of the man behind it. Then, as swiftly as it had gone in, it was out, and Galen was backing away, holding it, watching Tyrian die. He was suddenly no longer a foe or a threat. He was simply a big man with a hurt arm and a crease of concern between his eyes, as if he had forgotten to keep some small promise, sagging to his knees, folding to conceal his mortal wound, then falling gently on his side.

The ground shook.

There was no other sound.

Galen turned and ran for the mouth of the lair. He did not feel triumphant or heroic. He felt breathless and nauseous. In fact he thought once that he would have to stop and vomit, but he controlled himself, swallowing hard, and in a few minutes had reached the foot of the last incline. He did not look at Jacopus's remains, shrivelled there, nor did he breathe when he passed that place of the pervading dragon-stench and the odor of roasted meat. Rather, he scrambled forward and up.

He saw no sign of Elspeth until he reached the ledge at the cave's mouth; there, amidst the loathsome excreta and detritus of the place where the dragon perched, lay a silken scarf. It was pure and white. It shone. Hers. Elspeth's. But why? Had it been accidentally dropped, or had she left it for some reason as she went forward to that darkness?

He did not pick it up. He might have done so had he not, peering ahead, seen something else white—too large to be another scarf—farther down the tunnel. Filled with a terrible premonition, he went forward, Sicarius held at the ready.

Again the appalling odor struck him. It was indescribably rank and putrid. It was a stench such as he could never have imagined, compounded of feces, decayed meat, abominable breath, and dank mold flourishing in crevasses. It was overwhelming. He gagged but forced himself onward. The formless patch of white shimmered ahead, now visible, now vanishing. He reeled toward it.

He sensed the walls closing behind.

The tunnel was like the gut of a great beast. Lime-laden water shimmered on the walls. Stalactites dropped in thin strands from the ceiling, and underfoot the passage was slippery with stagnant water and dragonslime. It was a maleficent and baleful tube, and it was lit both by strange sources deep within and by daylight angling crookedly through cracks to the surface of the earth. The light changed and shifted constantly, now waning daylight, now flickering, fading fire.

Galen descended. He was sickened to the heart, both by his surroundings and by what he was now sure he would find ahead, for the nearer he drew to the patch of white, the clearer it became that it was something horizontal, and that small dark shapes were moving on it. A few more steps into that stifling atmosphere, and he saw that it was, as he feared, the Princess Elspeth. Rather, it was the remains of the princess. She had never reached Vermithrax, never offered herself to the dragon. What had befallen her was even worse, was absurd and horrible: she was the prey of the little ones.

Dragonets, two of them, moved on her corpse. They clawed, gnawed. Her body was fast losing its shape, her dress had ceased to be white. They were the size of large, quick cats. From the ridge surmounting their eyes no horns had yet sprung, nor did they jet fire at Galen's approach. But in all other respects they were perfect copies of Vermithrax. Their teeth lined a harsh V of exposed gums; their fibrous wings arched out, claws threatening; their tails terminated in the loathsome spade that Galen had felt sliding across his skull.

They watched him with malignant red eyes. They were chewing with lazy relish, but their poised stances suggested that if he were to falter, or stumble, or show any weakness, they would be on him in an instant, teeth driven by muscular necks.

He did not falter. Sicarius drew him forward and determined what must be done. The first dragonet he beheaded before it could either move or cry out. Spurting fluids, its body scrabbled in ever-widening circles like a coiled spring let loose, while the jaws of the disembodied head opened and shut, opened and shut, helplessly yearning for Galen. The second was already airborne, leaping for him, as Sicarius slashed down upon it, missing the neck and catching it just behind the thorax. Abdomen and tail dropped earthward but—horrible!—the forepart of the body sailed on, borne on grim little wings, and actually grazed Galen's shoulder before he managed to twist in the narrow confines of the place and beat it down to the earth. For a moment, beside himself with rage and revulsion, he slashed and slashed until what had been the dragonet was a pulped mass of tissue. And it was only then, when he believed that he had beaten them, and when his relief had welled up in a fit of retching, that the third one sprang on him.

The third one had been late to the feast, had not been part of the killing of Elspeth. It had lurked waiting in the shadows for the others to finish, and now, with a baleful and exultant delight, saw that it would have a feast of its own. Its embryonic wings unfolded and fluttered. It drooled. Its muscular little legs contracted. It leapt, sailed, and fastened itself on Galen's tunic. Its fangs cut. Its breath, though not flame, was still hot enough to sear his neck. With a strangled cry of horror Galen writhed and twisted. He struck the thing with his shield. He tried to scrape it off against the wall of the cavern but he could not. Only by an extraordinary effort was he at last able to work the point of Sicarius under its belly and stab upwards. The lance went through. With a dreadful cry the thing dropped away, its backbone severed. Even then, as it lay thrashing in its death throes, it scrambled to seize its killer's ankle. Galen stepped back and slashed, again, again, again.

For a moment there was silence in the tunnel. Galen reeled back, sickened by the slaughter, twisting lest the shadows be hiding yet another monstrous thing. But there was nothing. He was alone with the corpses.

The earth trembled.

Somewhere below, not far, Vermithrax was moving. Galen took one last look back up the tunnel, back to the twilit sky and the cool world of birds and flowing streams, and to . . . Valerian. Then he hefted Sicarius, swallowed hard, and headed down the tunnel in the direction of the lair.

As he descended, the heat increased, and the oak haft of the lance grew slippery with sweat. Sweat beaded and then streamed on his face and neck. Sweat flattened his hair, soaked his tunic. As if in sympathy, the walls also streamed, acrid and sulphurous, and strange white insects and lizard-shapes raised red eyes to watch him pass. Some hissed sibilant challenges; some scampered back into dingy recesses. The place seethed with reptilian life. And as the heat grew, so did the stench. It was oppressive beyond belief. No matter how he bent or twisted, he could not avoid it. It worked like acid, the odor of death and of inestimable age, into his very skin. He gagged, staggered, reeled onward, his vision bleared by sweat, and by stench, and by profound fatigue.

Soon the corridor began to broaden and the light infusing it grew more ambivalent. To his astonishment, he found that what he had assumed to be the pulsing of nerves in his hand and arm was actually the lance, throbbing with a steady, expectant rhythm, leading him on. The walls and ceiling all flickered now with a rosy sheen, and the passage opened suddenly into a vista of staggering immensity. Ahead lay an underground lake, a lake of fire, its surface covered with sheets and torn by blades of flame. Arching over it were granite vaults, broken at intervals by natural chimneys down which spilled the reflections of distant and fading daylight. No matter how intently he peered into the shifting gloom, he could not tell how large the lake was; it vanished into at least half-a-dozen side chambers, all of which could have been as large as this, could have led into others in an endless, echoing labyrinth. It was a maze of gigantic proportions, and somewhere inside was Vermithrax.

Galen remembered how he had stood at the mouth of the cave-had it been only three months before? It seemed a lifetime—and whispered the dragon's name in a challenge that was never answered. Now, with the throbbing lance telling him that the dragon was very close, although he could see only the flames and reflections of flames, and white, unnatural shapes moving under dark surfaces, he said the name again: "Vermithrax!"
Vermithrax . . . vermi . . . vermi . . . vermithrax . . . ithra . . . ithrax .
.
.
the walls said back, whispering among themselves into the farthest recesses of unknown chambers. He waited for the echoes to die down, and then he spoke the name again, not whispering, but imperiously, a firm challenge.