Fool's Gold (12 page)

Balur was almost in range. “Now wait—” he started, but then even he could not hear his voice above the cheer that erupted in the heart of the village square. A baying, howling cry of bloodlust finally let free of the leash. Men and women and children threw back their heads and bellowed out Fire Root–induced rage.

“Mattrax's cave!” Firkin howled, his nasal shrill somehow cutting through the sound of the crowd. “He waits for us at the entrance to Mattrax's cave! Waits with our balls!”

For a moment the crowd stood there, silent, eyes wide, mouths hungry. Then the words sank home, hit deep in their drug-addled minds.

As one they surged forward, a barking, roaring mass of unhinged humanity. Heading for the hill, for the cave, for Mattrax. And this, Balur realized, was it. The tipping point had been reached and passed. Though what it was they had tipped into, he was not sure.

Beside him, Firkin reached down and picked up a beetle that had just dragged itself out of a puddle. He dropped it into his mouth, crunched it, and smacked his lips as he watched the retreating crowd.

“Inciting violence,” he said, “always gives me a powerful hunger.” He grinned at Balur, eyes glittering with the flames of an internal fire. “Let's go do it some more.”

Perched high above the floor of the Kondorra valley, encased by the protective walls of his mountain, atop a pile of gold so vast that a thief had actually drowned in it once, the dragon Mattrax was possessed of a powerful urge to shit on all he surveyed.

The arse-end of the Kondorra valley. The field-strewn, forest-clogged, scraggly arse-end of it. That was what they had seen fit to give him. Him. Mattrax. He who had melted the faces of a thousand foes. Who had carved the guts from ten thousand more with his gilded claws. He who sat upon the wealth of ten kings. That was what the Dragon Consortium had given him. The northern tip of the valley. A region so remote, so sparely populated, that the single most important human settlement was known as… The Village.

It wasn't even “The Town.” You couldn't even pretend that it might get round to calling itself The Town sometime soon. To be honest “The Hamlet that Had Rather an Inflated Opinion of Itself” might be a more accurate name. And then there were the farmsteads, scattered like warts on a whore's arse. And populated with human pus. And what was worse, far, far worse…
poor
human pus.

That was what was so galling about it all. If the hills here had been shot through with valuable ore. If gold or diamonds had glittered in deep mines. If perhaps instead of farmsteads there were the mansions of a wealthy elite scattered among the hills, then perhaps that would relieve some of his frustration. But, no. It was peasants, illiterates, and the mentally disturbed. That was who he oversaw. Them and not another soul.

Mattrax shifted on his pile of gold. A crown and several ruby-studded necklaces tumbled down, clattering against silver platters, tiaras, and loose gemstones. The massive coils of his body twisted, leathery wings stretching slightly as he settled into a new position.

His thoughts turned with his body, headed toward darker territory.

Dathrax. The bloated, fat, lazy, son-of-an-iguana Dathrax. Sitting fat and happy one province to the south, lauding his dominion of Athril's Lake. Fishing towns. Not just one town. But towns. A plurality of towns. All the citizens with pockets stuffed fat from the profit of their stinking hauls.

The taxes. Mattrax almost groaned at the thought of them. He stroked his own belly with a single gilded claw, imagining the carts coming in, axles creaking under their loads. Great sagging chests, overstuffed, coins positively bursting out of them, begging to be raked by his talons.

And none of it his. All Dathrax's.

He could take Dathrax, of course.
Would
take Athril's Lake from him in time. But that required an army. And an army required coin. And coin required something fucking more than an arse-load of squelching, stinking peasants to tax.

But that was all he had.

And so all that he could truly do was stretch his wings, take to the air, and shit on it all.

Will clutched the leash that was tied to Ethel's neck in a grip so tight his nails threatened to break the skin of his palm. It was old rope, fraying and rough. He imagined how it felt around her neck. The slow friction of it, working back and forth, the mounting irritation. He thought of the rough pebbles of the road beneath her hooves, so different from the grass meadows she had ambled through all her life.

He thought of the dragon Mattrax's jaws settling about her neck.

“Are you crying?” Quirk, walking beside him, looked as if she was assessing him for some hidden injury.

Will turned away, allowed his purloined helmet to hide his face. It wasn't difficult. The guard whose clothes he had taken had been a fat-headed man and the thing hung loose on him. Everything hung loose. Chain mail clanked around his thighs. The sword belt kept slipping. His britches pooled in his oversize boots. It would have been uncomfortable enough even if it were not soaked through with blood from where Balur had slammed a war hammer into the former owner's chest and punched a large portion of his lungs out between what was left of his ribs.

The same way Mattrax's jaws would crush the life out of Ethel.

“I knew her since she was a calf, is all,” Will said, trying to keep his voice steady. “My pa birthed her, but I raised her for the first years. He used to give me the younger animals to look after. The ones headed for pasture anyway. I mucked her out. Kept her hay clean. Cleaned the burrs off her coat.”

Quirk nodded sympathetically. “That's a hard thing,” she said. “To be there for both the start and the end of a life. I cannot imagine wanting to be there for the whole of that journey.”

Will nodded, permitted himself a sniff.

Quirk rested a hand on his shoulder. “Honestly, it's impressive,” she said. “Your drive to see this through. Passion for revenge conceived in the heat of the moment can be hard to sustain, especially when you are faced with the need to sacrifice things you have loved.” She smiled at him, full of understanding. “Regret is not weakness, Will. It is a demonstration of humanity, of compassion.”

Will nodded again, grateful. He was glad Quirk was with him in this. It would be harder with Balur or Firkin. People who could not understand.

“Now,” Quirk said, “please hold Ethel still. I have at least a gallon of this potion to force into her.”

They spent the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon climbing the great zigzagging road that led up from the valley floor. It slowly switched back and forth as the landscape transformed from fields, to forest, to rock and scree.

Finally, the gate to Mattrax's castle loomed before them—a great monstrosity of oak that couldn't have made Will feel more unwelcome had the iron studs that punctuated its surface been arranged to read “Piss off.” Around it, rock had been piled into a gatehouse built along a similar theme. Beyond it, a jagged crack in the rocky ground pitched down into a dry moat. And beyond that, Mattrax's fortress rose.

If the gatehouse was unwelcoming, the fortress was positively rude about the whole notion of visiting. It was an ugly towering slab of unfriendly rock, spilling shadow and hate onto the valley below. Carved directly into the surface of the mountain, its walls were polished smooth to give attackers no place to gain a foothold. The crenellations jutted forward at a sloping angle to make the use of ladders more difficult and to provide routes for boiling oil to be poured down upon anyone clustered in the moat below. Arrow slits peered down upon the whole affair, and a pair of eyes could be seen behind each one.

Who exactly it was that Mattrax imagined would be attacking the castle was beyond Will. Did he picture some mass suicidal urge gripping the valley below? Everyone marching here en masse to batter their brains out against his castle walls? The only threat Will could possibly imagine was another dragon, and one of those would just fly over any fortifications while arrows bounced off its skin, slowly charbroiling all the archers until Mattrax bothered to come out and have a proper fight. Assuming Mattrax would bother. It would be like the fat, lazy bastard to just sit there and wait until the other dragon got bored and flew off.

Much like the guard sitting atop the gatehouse wall gazing down at Will, Quirk, and Ethel right now.

The guard scratched one of several chins that filled the space between his chain mail and his helmet. “What,” he said, “in the name of Betra's sagging tits is wrong with that cow?”

Ethel, it had to be admitted was acting… strangely.

In order that the Snag Weed not render Ethel immediately unconscious, and so that she could get to Mattrax's fortress under her own steam, Quirk had put the potion in a series of pigskin bladders that she had forced down Ethel's gullet. The idea was that the bladders would dissolve slowly in Ethel's stomach acid, releasing the potion and permeating the meat only after the moment of death. Ethel's stomach however, was a little ahead of schedule, and she was not reacting terribly well.

Her head lolled first to one side then the other and her tongue flopped back and forth from her slack mouth as she did so. Her laconic nature faded as one's eye traveled from head toward rump. Her front feet shifted unsteadily, but her back legs were stamping like those of an enraged bull. She held her tail aloft and was whirling it in circles so rapidly it was practically a blur. Will almost expected her hindquarters to take off the ground.

Will glanced at Ethel and then up at the guard. In his experience, Mattrax's soldiers didn't know much about cattle.

“She's, erm…” He shuffled options in his head. “In heat.”

“She's what?” The guard kept scratching at his chin.

“In heat,” Will repeated. “Like… mating season.”

The guard squinted. Will risked a look at Quirk. She was squinting at him too. Which didn't really feel like the right attitude to Will.

“It's a horny cow?” said the guard eventually.

“Yeah.” Will shrugged again. Then risked an, “Obviously.”

Quirk emitted a sound that distinctly resembled choking.

The gate guard hadn't left himself much leeway for additional squinting, but he gave it a noble effort. His eyes were barely open as he examined Ethel.

“Something funny about that cow,” he said. “I don't trust it.”

“Please,” said Quirk, “it's just a cow. It's for Mattrax. It's his dinner. How much damage could it cause?”

Unfortunately, Will thought, being polite was as likely to mark them as suspicious as being in possession of a cow that was evidently tripping balls.

Having no room to squint further, the gate guard chewed his lip instead.

“Could be a ruse,” he said. “That cow could be full of enemy combatants.”

Both Will and Quirk regarded Ethel.

“Full?” Quirk hazarded. “Of… how many?”

Will supposed that that was as valid a question to pull from the ether as any other.

“Could be dwarves,” said the gate guard, doing an impressive job of seeming to be guileless.

Quirk held her arms out measuring the cow. Which, Will thought, was perhaps humoring the madness a step too far.

“You're worried that this fully alive and healthy cow also contains… perhaps two dwarfs?”

“Could be pixies,” said the guard quickly. “They're bloody small, they are. Could have a hundred pixies in there. That could be a whole fake cow full of pixies.”

Quirk shook her head sadly. “Actually,” she said, “pixies are a highly individualistic society. Gatherings of any more than three or four rapidly devolve into violent confrontation. They tend to use flower blooms as weapons, though, which means their territorial displays are often mistaken for adorable demonstrations of cuteness, but actually they're quite feral in their…”

She finally seemed to notice Will's horrified stare. “Ix-nay on the knowing it-shay,” he whispered. Entry into Mattrax's guard did not require a significant level of education. In fact, the mindless following of orders was far more cherished than independent thought.

The guard spat—a brown gobbet that arced down and splattered next to Will's boot. “Might be some sort of bomb,” he said. “Someone made her eat it and now it's making her funny. Someone bites into her and she goes boom. That's more than my job's worth. I don't want to let in no exploding cow.”

Quirk, Will noticed, seemed to be finally running out of patience. She was repeatedly opening and clenching her fists. Her knuckles were white, but her palms were bright red.

Violence, pain, death, and the impressive meltdown of the plan in its infant stages seemed inevitable, and just as Will was working out if there was time to flee for his life there was a great rumble from the mountainside. His eyes left the guard and flicked left to where, fifty yards or so below them, soldiers were milling about on a broad shelf of rock. Something in the rock itself was moving. Something grating against stone.

The portcullis,
he realized, the entrance to the cave, to the gold, to revenge. It was so tantalizingly close.

And then Mattrax appeared. A vast uncoiling mass of scale and muscle. His head was titanic. As big as an oxcart, small fiery yellow eyes dwarfed by the huge underslung jaw. Teeth jutted up like broken yellow branches from his mouth. A crest of spines crowned it. His scales were a dull red, the color of raw meat left out for a day. His wings were held half-spread, almost impossibly large. The flesh stretched between each elongated, thorny joint was almost translucent, thick with veins.

The dragon yawned lazily, snapped halfheartedly at some guards, and then launched himself into the air, rising rapidly on quick, powerful strokes.

A low moan drew Will's attention to Quirk. She was no longer a quivering arrow of rage. Her hands were not clenched. They were wide open, held almost in supplication. She was staring at the dragon in awe. As the beast disappeared into the low clouds, she flicked her gaze to Will.

“We
have
to get in there,” she breathed.

Will, for his part, was having his own trouble controlling his emotions. But it was rage instead of awe that bubbled inside him.

“Then convince Captain Arsehole to let us in,” he hissed back.

“Look,” said Quirk loudly, turning to the guard above. She had her teeth bared in a rictus smile. “What if we just killed the cow here and now? Then you can see if it explodes or not, or if a hundred imps leap out, or anything. Would that make it easier?”

For a moment, Will's world seemed to stop. A single heartbeat thundered through his chest. He turned to Quirk. She turned back to him. A big soft smile on her face. She turned it back toward the guard but kept her eyes on him.

“You'll have to do it, I'm afraid,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth. “I'm a pacifist.”

“What?” The word squeaked out of him. “I'll have to what?”

He could, he supposed, deal with the death of Ethel in the abstract. Eventually, given time, he could, perhaps in the peace and quiet of his home, imagine handing her over to soldiers who, far out of his sight, would hand her over to a dragon. He might even—with several weeks to think it over, and a number of strong drinks inside him—be able to take her to the cave entrance himself. As long as he were able to shut the door tight before the inevitable slaughter began.

But here? Now?

He stared into Ethel's eyes.

Each one rolled independently in its socket.

“Go on then!” yelled down the guard. “Do it then!”

“To be honest,” Quirk whispered, “I'm surprised she's survived this long given the quantity of Snag Weed we put in her, so if you could kill her first that would be a huge weight off my conscience.”

Will felt his jaw clenching. The red rage brimming up in him. But he took a breath, turned back to Ethel. He put a hand on the side of her head. It lolled away from him and a slurred moo dribbled out from between her lips.

“Look,” said the guard, “I'll help you out. I'll go and get my crossbow, and if it's not dead by the time I get back then I'll kill you and the cow. Sound fair?”

Quirk spread her arms, exasperated. “We're guards the same as you. Look at our uniforms.” She sounded slightly injured that the disguise wasn't proving to be more effective.

“You might just be wearing them,” said the guard, and Will's heart skipped a beat. “Or you could be pixie-stuffed puppets for all I know.”

“I already explained the unfeasibility of—”

But the guard was already gone. Quirk whirled on Will.

“Go on then,” she said. “Do it already.”

Will felt the weight of the purloined sword on his belt. He felt the warmth of Ethel's fur against his palm.

“I can't.” He felt helpless.

“Look.” Quirk leaned in close. “There is no version of this plan—of
your
plan—where Ethel survives. There is only a version where we survive. And I am not dying outside this castle, pincushioned by some mouth-breathing imbecile because you can't bring yourself to kill a dying cow. If I die here, it is going to be at the hands of a brutal monstrosity like a respectable thaumatobiologist. Now pull yourself together and stab that cow.”

Ethel's rolling head slapped into his stomach, her nose smearing snot over the loose-fitting breastplate.

How many days had he drunk Ethel's milk? How many years had her cheese been a constant of his life? Her butter? She was his sustenance.

He held on to her head, cradled it gently in his arms. Her tongue probed sloppily at his elbow.

“Weren't you a farmer?” Quirk said. Much of the sympathy seemed to have boiled off from her voice. “Didn't you slaughter animals all the time?”

“Not the ones I named,” Will said. “Not the ones that were part of my family.”

“Look,” said Quirk, leaning in close. “Who would you rather see killed here? Me or the cow?”