Fool's Gold (43 page)

Balur tumbled, arse over elbow, through the night.
So this is being it,
he thought, and he had no regrets. This was a good way to die. Soaked to the bone in his enemy's blood. The taste of his enemy upon his tongue. There was glory in this. He would be in the Hallows with Lette soon, and together they would kick the arses of all the dead for all eternity.

Then a roar swallowed him, and jaws filled his vision.

The red dragon had looped back through the air, was coming up below him, jaws wide, to snatch its prize from the air.

Balur's resignation fled him. This fight was still his to be won.

He pulled his knees to his chest, folded his head down, made a cannonball of his massive body. Then as the jaws were about to embrace him, he flung himself wide, pistoning out arms and legs into a violently spread eagle.

His fist slammed into the dragon's nose, his foot into its lower lips. Jaws snapped shut beneath his stomach. Its snout punched him in the balls. He folded over the dragon's muzzle in a howl of agony. The dragon snorted in surprise and anger, a blast of hot air, that sent him flipping upward. Desperately, Balur clung to the upper lip of the dragon with his spare hand, feeling saliva working at his grip.

He dangled from the dragon's nose as it lanced straight up into the sky. It snapped its jaws beneath him, but he was out of reach. He felt the bellows of its lungs fill with air. Fire shot up into the night sky. Liquid flame streamed past his fingertips. He could feel the skin blistering. He screamed, fighting to keep his grip. But it was too much. The dragon bucked and again he was sent flying into free fall.

This time there was no chance to recover as the jaws closed around him.

Incisors clashed shut, the enameled bars of a hot black jail. Somehow Balur was still whole inside the dragon's mouth. It did not care for chewing. It would swallow him in his entirety, feel him flail in the bath of its stomach acid.

Desperately Balur fought for purchase. His claws scrabbled against slick teeth. The tongue pulsed beneath him, pushing him toward the gaping gullet, just visible in the gloom of the mouth.

With his free hand, Balur snagged a chunk of gum, hung by a single aching arm while the tongue lashed and curled about him. The sharpened clock hand was a deadweight pulling him down.
Gods why did he still have…

Gods!
He was still having his clock hand!

The dragon's tongue curled around him. A great muscular wave sent him flying toward the back of the dragon's throat.

Balur slashed wildly. Hacked at the tongue, at the roof of the mouth.

The dragon screamed in pain, the whole mouth convulsing around Balur. In its confines the sheer volume of the howl almost scrambled his brains, sent him reeling toward the dragon's throat. The teeth parted. Light flooded in. He could see the battlefield below, the massive bulk of the Hallows' Mouth volcano rising before them, a fist of rock smashing up, heavy and black in the midnight blue of the sky. Blood rained down upon him.

Fighting against the rising slickness of the mouth, Balur braced himself on the dragon's tonsils. He thrust down, speared the creature's tongue. It roared once more. The dangling uvula thrashed back and forth like a mace, crashing into his ankles. The convulsions of the tongue finally tore the clock hand free from Balur's hands, and suddenly he was in as much peril as the dragon's orthodontics. The tongue flailed about, slamming the heavy spear of iron back and forth scoring deep trenches in the fleshy walls.

Balur held on for his life. The pulsing throat of the beast beckoned him to his doom. The dragon roared again. They were feet away from the volcano now, rushing straight up its vertical slides. He heard a clatter as its wing smashed into rock, and the jolt made him lose his footing.

One of his whirling fists struck the thrashing clock hand, still buried deep in the dragon's tongue. The blade bit deeply into his palm, but still he held on, fighting through the pain. The throat closed around on of his feet, pulled violently at him. Bellowing, Balur reached up with his other hand, seized the hilt of his clock-hand blade. Bracing his feet against a blood-slick something, he wrenched the makeshift sword sideways and felt muscle tear as he sliced the creature's tongue almost in half.

“Balur!” he screamed into the mad chamber of the dragon's mouth. “My name is being, Balur! Are you knowing me now?”

Another howl, of rage, and pain and hate. The world whirled in the glimpses he caught between its teeth. Blue night, black rock, and red magma. They were above the crater of the volcano now, gazing down into its maw.

Heat built beneath Balur. Too much to just be the volcano's presence. And Balur realize that the dragon had finally landed upon a way to remove this thorn from its mouth. When the flame roared up, out of its throat, there would be nowhere for him to hide. He would be cooked, and finally ready to eat.

The throat below Balur opened, released his foot. Yellow light filled the dragon's maw, racing up. For a moment Balur teetered on the brink of the abyss, poised to tumble down into that liquid brightness.

He denied it. Instead, bunching muscles, screaming his hatred, his fear, his grief, he smashed the clock arm straight up. Hard iron met the soft fleshy palate of the dragon, tore through.

Blood fell like a waterfall upon Balur. It clogged the throat of the dragon. Below him the spark of fire, flickered, was drowned. Balur spat and thrashed, tried to breathe beneath the deluge. Blood made his hands slick and slippery. Yet still he maintained his grip upon his clock arm. Still he thrust up, higher, deeper, feeling bone. He planted his feet on the convulsing throat of the beast, pushed upward, roaring, extending to his full height in a single burst of energy.

The sword smashed through bone, tore into brain.

The dragon stopped moving. Went utterly still.

Balur ripped the blade left, tore it right.

Then gravity abandoned Balur. A sense of weightlessness embraced him. The sword, lodged in the dragon's brain, was his only anchor point. His feet drifted, clattered against the dragon's teeth, just as the slack jaw opened.

The dragon was falling, tumbling lifeless through the air.

He had killed it. He had killed it!
He had fucking killed it!
Euphoria clutched Balur. A weightlessness of spirit as well as body.

He watched the world whirl around them through the frame of the dragon's slack jaw. The black rock of the volcano reached up hungrily for them. From one maw, Balur stared into another. Like a strand of cotton threading a needle, the dragon smashed down through the volcano's crater, body somersaulting off the lip.

Gravity returned to Balur, smashing into him like a spurned lover, savaging every vital organ he had. The clock hand jerked free from the roof of the dragon's mouth. He was slammed one way, another. He crashed into its teeth, shattered them, was scoured by enamel shrapnel.

Then the dragon's body smashed cataclysmically into the magma. Molten spray rose in a vast corona, a celebration of his titanic death. Its head half-rebounded from the viscous muck. Inside, Balur was flung upward by the impact.

For a moment, he half-emerged from the dragon's slack lips. He saw gold everywhere. The walls of the entire crater were lined with vast ledges, and each ledge heaved with gold.

This is being the Hallows,
he thought.
Lawl is rewarding me.
And then he was descending, slipping back down into the mouth, and he scrabbled desperately, trying to hold himself up in that glimmering, golden light. But even as he fought he could see the dragon's body rupturing, blood and guts spilling free. And fire. Fire leaking out of the dragon, running down its flanks, landing in the magma. And where it landed, the magma frothed and spat. And just before Balur slipped back fully into the dragon's roasting skull, he saw the whole dragon split open, a great gout of fire rushing up, up, up, up through its body.

The world flared red, then yellow, then white. And then the dragon's jaws fell shut, and Balur was caught in total darkness as all around him the world exploded.

Quirk looked in amazement at Hallows' Mouth, once the Consortium's lair, now its final resting place.

She had stared as Balur had mounted the red dragon. She had stared as he had been borne aloft. She, along with the whole army, had gasped as he had been shaken loose, and swallowed whole.

It had been over in that moment. All the hopes. All the dreams. All the plans. It had all come to naught. The prophet, whoever he was today, was dead.

And then, as if reality had had second thoughts, as if maybe the gods did give a shit about Kondorra after all, the dragon had started to convulse in the sky, and then fallen down, straight into the volcano's mouth.

The whole army stared, unsure what to do. Was this victory? Had they won? Quirk had nothing to tell them. For all her learning, she was no wiser than they were.

Then the volcano erupted. A massive geologic orgasm, thrusting fire up into the night. The shock wave slammed into her, sent her sprawling back, falling into the tumbling mass of humanity.

Blackness shuddered at the corners of her vision. She fought her way back. Screaming and panic were rising all around her, buoying her on her journey back to consciousness.

Boulders and fire were arcing through the sky. They crashed down around her. Lives were swallowed by flame.

Quirk tried to scramble free, to get mobile, to get out of the way. Her ears were ringing. Her limbs felt distant and shaky. All around her, people wrestled and thrashed, an unstable bed of limbs that gave her no chance to gain purchase.

She could see a massive jagged shape—black against the dark blue of the night sky—plummeting toward her, implacable, unavoidable. A great black slab of death aimed from the heavens straight down to her.

But I was the one who told them not to raid the hexed temples,
she thought desperately. It all seemed terribly unfair.

The object smashed to the ground twenty feet shy of her, skidded across the ground. She was showered with mud and gravel. A smell like bacon filled her nose.

Finally she wrestled herself free from the collapsed crowd, clambered to her feet. To her right another volcanic missile smashed to the earth. She skittered away, cowering. But the screams were short-lived.

The heavens were silent. Just the slow, steady rumble of molten rock spilling forth, ash rising into the sky. But for a moment the terror was suspended.

Quirk stared at the boulder that had almost ended her life. No… not a boulder. Not some chunk of cooling magma. And she should run. There could be another blast. This place was not safe. But she could not suppress the scientist inside. So she sniffed the air again… She could smell… meat? She moved closer, trying to make out details in the flickering light of the flaming battlefield.

And then she realized what she was looking at.

A dragon's massive, roasted head. It must have been blown clear off the dragon's neck, sent spinning up out of the mountain, cooked in an instant by the heat of the explosion.

Gods. A head. She had her own dragon's head. It was hers alone to explore. And cooked! She could taste it. Gods. Her belly was full of fluttering. She stepped out, hand outstretched.

The head convulsed. The jaw twitched.

Quirk reeled away. The horror of it all was suddenly apparent to her. The head was severed, but the brain had not finished firing. Somehow, impossibly, the dragon was still alive, trapped in the confines of its own roasted skull.

Gods. The agony must be almost overwhelming…

The head convulsed again. Quirk fought against the urge to vomit.

And then the jaws cracked open, tongue lolling wide. And stepping out, upon that tongue, as if it were a carpet rolled out for a conquering emperor, soaked in blood from head to foot, clutching a gore-slick clock hand in one fist, strode Balur.

Victorious.

The sun rose on a slaughterhouse scene. Broken bodies lay everywhere. The smell of charred meat filled the air. A volcano rumbled and boomed.

Balur flinched awake. He had been dreaming. A vision of gold. A mountain lined with gold and full of fire. Everything reaching up to encase him. Being swallowed by gold…

Blearily he scraped dried gore from his left eye. Staring down at himself he realized he was crusted in blood from head to foot. And from the noises slowly puncturing his consciousness it sounded like there was a party going on somewhere nearby.

Then it came back to him. The dragon. Clinging to its flank. Fighting to stay alive in its mouth. Stabbing its brains. Plunging into the volcano. A glimpse of impossible wealth. Then the explosion. Flying through the air, feeling the meat of the heat cooking around him. Smashing to the ground, cushioned by what was left of the thing's tongue. Forcing his way out of those locked jaws. The screaming, the cheering, the roars of joy. Raising his weapon high.

And then on the heels of those pieces of the night that he had managed to stitch together, meaning followed.

He had been killing a dragon. Him.
Alone
. They had taken to the skies. Tooth and claw. Two beasts desperately tearing the life from each other. Him, and the dragon. And who had emerged? Who had strode away?

He was vaguely aware that the gold was lost. That the volcano had erupted and turned a world's worth of wealth to nothing but slag, but it seemed an insignificant detail now. He was covered in the blood of his foe. He was coated in the proof of his victory.

They would sing songs of this. And they would be glorious.

He could see the head of his vanquished foe nearby. Black, crisp, and smelling faintly of pork. He would eat it later, feel the strength of his enemy enter him and be turned to nothing.

Beyond that, he could see the corpse of the yellow dragon, its throat torn out, lying in a lake of congealing blood. A black body lay nearby, guts splayed open, organs pulled free of the corpse. Its pale white ribs pointed to the heavens. And there were the green and brown bodies, sloping hills of death. There was someone still standing on the corpse of the green, still hacking away with some improvised club, working out the last of his rage on the slain beast.

They weren't the only corpses, of course. Thousands of human bodies lay scattered about the field. Some were barely recognizable. Some were just charred ash. Others were lying in pieces where talons had torn them apart. Some were in even smaller chunks, spilling out of the torn open stomachs of the dragons who had eaten them.

And there were two other corpses. Two dead bodies lying at the heart of the rough circle described by the battle.

Slowly the thought that he had killed a dragon soured in Balur's gut. Victory tasted like ashes in his mouth.

Then he spat. It turned out there actually were ashes in his mouth.

He tried to ground himself in the world. To get out of his own head. The noise that sounded like a celebration turned out to be exactly that. A hundred yards back from the scene of the fight, in every direction, were the survivors. There were more than he would have expected. Fifty thousand perhaps. At least forty-five. And truly, only ten or fifteen thousand dead was staggeringly good considering the beasts they had been up against. The sudden outburst of pent-up rage, it seemed, had all been too much for the dragons. They had been engines of destruction, no doubt, but they had not had the chance to warm up.

So he could understand the survivors' desire to celebrate. He could understand the ale being poured, the minstrels playing, the rowdy chanting of choruses, the cheering, the laughing, the sudden camaraderie between forces that had hours ago been ready to tear each other limb from limb. He could understand it all.

He just could not join it.

No one approached the dragons' bodies. Only that lone, raging figure hacking away. Everyone else stayed back, so he was alone as he approached the center of the field. The place where two wagons had burned. Where lead had—inexplicably—caused the Consortium army to switch sides.

He was alone as he approached the spot where Lette had died.

It was difficult to find the exact place, but he found a place churned up with mud and splattered with blood and gore. It was black with ash, and the lead lay nearby.
It would be doing for now,
he thought.

He stood, ignoring the celebrations, and for once in his life embraced silence and thought. Thoughts of Lette, of his tribe, of his being alone in the world.

“I was killing a dragon, Lette,” he said to the ashes. “Just like I was saying I would. Dragonslayer. That was a job you were never suggesting for me.”

He could almost hear what she would tell him.
Because I'm not a suicidal fuckwit, arsehole
. He smiled at the thought.

“They're talking about you, you know,” said a slurred voice from behind him.

Balur wheeled round, instinctively grabbing for his hammer. But it was lost, lying at the bottom of a lake. And his clock hand was still buried in the brains of the red dragon.

But it was only Firkin. Thin, and dirty, and drunk.

“Flap, flap, flap go their little jawbones,” he went on. “So much flapping you'd think they might fly away, you would.” He cocked his head to one side. “Probably be calling that a miracle if it happened. Be saying you caused it. Miracle of the flap-flappy jaws.”

He shook his head irritably. As if trying to dislodge a fly from his nose. Or, this being Firkin, possibly a whole colony of flies from the tangle of his beard.

“They would be saying it was me?” Balur half-repeated.

“Well,” Firkin hawked and spat. “You're their prophet now, aren't you? Great big fucking thing. They like that. On and on about size, like it is of great import. Physical stature isn't everything, I tell them. Got to go around a few blocks, know what to do with it. But, oh no, eight feet tall has them all hot and sweaty and flapping away. Oh prophet this. Oh prophet that.”

The prophet. They are still thinking I'm the prophet.
Balur had to give it to the natives of Kondorra. They were stubborn when it came to hanging on to their delusions. You almost had to admire that sort of blind tenacity.

“Will was being the prophet,” he said. “And Will is being dead.”

Firkin looked at him oddly. “Will?”

Balur rolled his eyes. “Tall for one of you pink fleshy things. Blessed with an ability to be coming up with godawful plans. The one who was stealing my kill of Mattrax. The one who was going and prophesizing this whole mess.”

“Mess?” Firkin's frown deepened.

“Yes,” Balur growled. He was losing patience with being questioned. “Dead bodies. Dead friends. Blood being everywhere. That is being a classic definition, I am thinking.”

“I know Will. I know messes,” Firkin snapped with surprising anger. “I know fuck me, I'm a poor sad lizard stuck with a valley that worships me like a god. Oh boo-hoo all the way home.” He hawked and spat. “I've been sad. I've lost whiskey bottles, you whipper of snappers. I know pain, like you cannot believe. But I still have my balls in my britches. Didn't know you gave yours to the lady friend. Did she lend them to Will so he could plow her?”

Balur was in what he might have described, if he had been inebriated enough, as a fragile mood. Firkin's shit was not something he had patience for at the best of times. And fragile moods were far from the best of times.

He crossed to Firkin in two paces, had him by the neck, then had him off the ground. “Be listening, you little turd,” he hissed. “I have been losing my tribe today. And I am mourning my tribe. And I am not being above snapping your neck.”

“Alone,” cackled Firkin. “A lonely lonesome. I was alone once. Happened to me too. Few hundred years is what it feels like. My memory is a little hazy. I was drunk for most of it. Most of before it too, truth be told. It's brilliant being drunk, did I tell you that?” Feet dangling from the floor, Firkin seemed almost oblivious to Balur's hand at his throat.

“Don't think I was killing any dragons when I was drunk,” he said. “Don't remember the adoration of thousands. Don't remember any worship at all. Might have paid for it once or twice. Hard to be sure. Might explain where all the money went. Might not. It's brilliant money. Little bits of copper and you give them to someone and he gives you booze. And you pour it into yourself and you just don't give so much of a shit anymore. Have you tried booze?”

“I have been trying booze,” Balur growled at Firkin.

“Wasn't sure,” Firkin said, attempting to nod, and doing a pretty poor job of it. “What with you being such a limp-dicked little crybaby and all.”

Balur was actually shocked at that. He dropped Firkin and stared at him as if he was something rabid.

Who said that? Who, with a hand around their neck?

He reached for his hammer again, found it absent again, cursed again. Still, he could kill Firkin with his bare hands. It might even be more satisfying that way.

“Tribe!” Firkin yelled. “You are having no tribe?” He was scrambling back as Balur advanced. Even he could recognize this level of danger. “You are crying over losing a tribe of one? What did they do in the Analesian desert? Teach you to count up to the number of dicks you have?”

There was an audacity to that that even Balur could admire. He would maybe take some pride in tearing Firkin's spine from his body and flaying the man with it.

“You have a tribe of fifty thousand souls, you dolt!” Firkin screamed as Balur finally stood over the man. “You lost one and gained every other stupid fuck in this valley. You are number-one tribe man now, dumbarse! You say tribe, they say fuck yes, oh prophet of the tribe! You say go do tribe-y things, they find out what they are being, and then they do them. It's all tribe, all the time now, baby. Tribe of the prophet. You prophet. Prophet is dumbarse, but nobody is giving a shit because of all the prophety shit.” Firkin appeared to notice that Balur was no longer attempting to kill him, dusted himself off a little bit, and said in a more reasonable tone, “And the dead dragons.”

Balur was hesitating. He looked up at the inhabitants of the Kondorra valley. Drunk on victory and dragons' blood. Just like any good tribe should be.

“Why are they thinking that I am their prophet?” he asked.

Firkin had the audacity to look outraged.

“When five big, old, flappy fuckers land down from the sky and go about torching everything, and everybody stands around clutching at their drawers trying to keep the poop from sliding out, and then one giant bastard is letting out a roar like he just got a hard-on he can use to beat a dragon to death—people go and notice that sort of shit.” He nodded sagely. “For I am wise in the ways of the gods and I know such things.”

Balur found his rage rekindling. “You are being about as much a priest as I am being a prophet. If there ever was being a prophet, he is being very burnt and toasty right now.”

Despite being around three feet shorter than Balur, Firkin did his best to look down his nose at him. “People,” he said, “say you are a prophet. You say you are not. You have one vote. They have fifty thousand. You are a prophet. That's democracy.”

Balur's patience was done. “That is being horseshit, and the last shit of yours I shall be listening to, unless you are shitting yourself in terror as I am murdering you, or in an involuntary reflex when you are dying. Because that is happening sometimes.”

Balur sort of wished he didn't know that.

“Do you want a fucking tribe or not?” Firkin spat.

Which brought Balur up again.

Fifty thousand… Humans, yes. But fifty thousand. Perhaps forty-five. But all his tribe.
His.
An Analesian could do a lot with forty-five thousand soldiers. A lot of…

What? Good? Bad?

He wasn't sure, but he did have a sneaking suspicion it could be fun.

But Lette…

Lette was dead. His tribe was dead. And an Analesian without his tribe was dead.

He had been without a tribe before, though. He had been dying before in the desert. And he had found a new tribe then.

Firkin rolled his eyes. “Walk with me,” he said in magnanimous tones. “Meet your people. Tribe. Whatever.”

So Balur walked. Against his better judgment perhaps, but what other choice did he truly have? To die? To mourn, and weep, and drown his sorrows. Until… when? What then? A time when nobody cared?

People cared now. They cheered as he approached. They roared. They hooted, and hollered, and screamed his name.

“Prophet! Prophet! Prophet!” The world shook with their cries. And then, as he drew closer still, they fell silent. They drew back. They bent their knees. They bowed their heads.

Balur came to a stop in the middle of the crowd. And as he looked out, all he could see were women, men, and children, down on one knee with their heads bent. Before him, Firkin was the only man standing. He spread his arms, spun around. A broad smile was smeared across his face. The message was clear.

See what I give you.

Balur looked back at the corpses of the dragons, and where Will and Lette lay dead, nothing more than piles of ash.

What would Lette have really wanted for him?

A whore, an ale, and a good fight, you big dumb lizard,
he heard her voice inside his head.

How about an army?
he asked that echo from the Hallows.

Close enough.

Quirk found him a few hours later. He was in Will's old tent, which a few enthusiastic worshippers had found and erected over him. They had made him a throne, and brought him a dragon's horn full of ale, and someone was working on the whore, and he was pretty confident it wouldn't be hard to find a fight.

She pushed her way through the tent flap flanked by the guards he had posted—large men previously of the Consortium army. They were armed with halberds, and he liked the way it looked when they dropped the weapons to form an X blocking people's path. Above the tent he had posted one of the remaining griffin riders, just because it looked awesome.