Fire and ash. Hot metal. Fear. Joy. Pain. There are dragons in the desert, said the old maps of old empire, and they had laughed and said no, no, not that close to great cities, if there ever were dragons there they are gone like the memory of a dream. Its teeth closed ripping on Gulius’s arm, huge, jagged; its eyes were like knives as it twisted away with the arm hanging bloody in its mouth. It spat blood and slime and roared out flame again, reared up beating its wings. Men fell back screaming, armour scorched and molten, melted into burnt melted flesh. The smell of roasting meat surrounded them. Better than steak.
Gulius was lying somehow still alive, staring at the hole where his right arm had been. The dragon’s front legs came down smash onto his body. Plume of blood. Gulius disappeared. Little smudge of red on the green. A grating shriek as its claws scrabbled over hot stones. Screaming. Screaming. Beating wings. The stream rose up boiling. Two men were in the stream trying to douse burning flesh and the boiling water was in their faces and they were screaming too. Everything hot and boiling and burning, dry wind and dry earth and dry fire and dry hot scales, the whole great lizard body scorching like a furnace, roaring hot burning killing demon death thing.
We’re going to die, thought Tobias. We’re all going to fucking die.
Found himself next to pretty new boy Marith, who was staring at it mesmerized with a face as white as pus. Yeah, well, okay, I’ll give it to you, bit of a thing to come back to when you’ve been off digging a hole for your superiors to shit in. Looked pretty startled even for him. Though wouldn’t look either pretty or startled in about ten heartbeats, after the dragon flame grilled and decapitated him.
If he’d at least try to raise his sword a bit.
Or even just duck.
‘Oh gods and demons and piss.’ Tobias, veteran of ten years’ standing with very little left that could unsettle him, pulled up his sword and plunged it two-handed into the dragon’s right eye.
The dragon roared like a city dying. Threw itself sideways. The sword still wedged in its eye. Tobias half fell, half leapt away from it, dragging Marith with him.
‘Sword!’ he screamed. ‘Draw your bloody sword!’
The dragon’s front claws were bucking and rearing inches from his face. It turned in a circle, clawing at itself, tail and wings lashing out. Spouted flame madly, shrieking, arching its back. Almost burned its own body, stupid fucking thing. Two men went up like candles, bodies alight; a third was struck by the tail and went down with a crack of bone. Tobias rolled and pulled himself upright, dancing back away. His helmet was askew, he could see little except directly in front of him. Big writhing mass of green dragon legs. He went into a crouch again, trying to brace himself against the impact of green scales. Not really much point trying to brace himself against the flames.
A man came in low, driving his sword into the dragon’s side, ripping down, glancing off the scales but then meeting the softer underbelly as the thing twisted up. Drove it in and along, tearing flesh. Black blood spurted out, followed by shimmering white and red unravelling entrails. Pretty as a fountain. Men howled, clawed at their own faces as the blood hit. And now it had two swords sticking out of it, as well as its own intestines, and it was redoubling its shrieking, twisting, bucking in circles, bleeding, while men leapt and fell out of its way.
‘Pull back!’ Tobias screamed at them. ‘Get back, give it space. Get back!’ His voice was lost in the maelstrom of noise. It must be dying, he thought desperately. It might be a bloody dragon, but half its guts are hanging out and it’s got a sword sunk a foot into its head. A burst of flame exploded in his direction. He dived back onto his face. Found himself next to new boy Marith again.
‘Distract it!’ Marith shouted in his ear.
Um …?
Marith scrambled to his feet and leapt.
Suddenly, absurdly, the boy was balanced on the thing’s back. Clung on frantically. Almost falling. Looked so bloody stupidly bloody small. Then pulled out his sword and stabbed downwards. Blood bursting up. Marith shouted. Twisted backwards. Fell off. The dragon screamed louder than ever. Loud as the end of the world. Its body arched, a gout of flame spouted. Collapsed with a shriek. Its tail twitched and coiled for a few long moments. Last rattling tremors, almost kind of pitiful and obscene. Groaning sighing weeping noise. Finally it lay dead.
A dead dragon is a very large thing. Tobias stared at it for a long time. Felt regret, almost. It was beautiful in its way. Wild. Utterly bloody wild. No wisdom in those eyes. Wild freedom and the delight in killing. An immovable force, like a mountain or a storm cloud. A death thing. A beautiful death, though. Imagine saying that to Gulius’s family: he was killed fighting a dragon. He was killed fighting a dragon. A dragon killed him. A dragon. Like saying he died fighting a god. They were gods, in some places. Or kin to gods, anyway. He reached out to touch the dark green scales. Soft. Still warm. His hand jerked back as if burnt. What did you expect? he thought. It was alive. A living creature. Course it’s bloody soft and warm. It’s bloody flesh and blood.
Should be stone. Or fire. Or shadow. It wasn’t right, somehow, that it was alive and now it was dead. That it felt no different now to dead cattle, or dead men, or dead dogs. It should feel … different. Like the pain of it should be different. He ached the same way he did after a battle with men. The same way he did the last time he’d got in a fight in an inn. Not right. He touched it again, to be sure. Crumble to dust, it should, maybe. Burn up in a blaze of scented flame.
If it’s flesh and blood, he thought then, it’s going to fucking stink as it starts to rot.
There was a noise behind him. Tobias spun round in a panic. Another dragon. A demon. Eltheia the beautiful, naked on a white horse.
New boy Marith. Staring at the dragon like a man stares at his own death. A chill of cold went through Tobias for a moment. A scream and a shriek in his ears or his mind. The boy’s beautiful eyes gazed unblinking. A shadow there, like it was darker suddenly. Like the sun flickered in the sky. Like the dragon might twitch and move and live. Then the boy sighed wearily, sat down in the dust rubbing at his face. Tobias saw that the back of his left hand was horribly burnt.
‘Pretty good, that,’ Tobias said at length.
‘You told me to draw my sword.’
‘I did.’
There was a long pause.
‘You killed it,’ said Tobias.
‘It was dying anyway.’
‘You killed a bloody dragon, lad.’
A bitter laugh. ‘It wasn’t a very large dragon.’
‘And you’d know, would you?’
No answer.
‘You killed it, boy. You bloody well killed a bloody dragon. Notoriously invulnerable beast nobody really believed still existed right up until it ate their tent-mate. You should be pleased, at least. Instead, you’re sitting here looking like death while Rate and the other lads try to get things sorted out around here.’ Wanted to shake the boy. Moping misery. ‘At least let me have a look at your hand.’
This finally seemed to get Marith’s attention. He stared down at his burns. ‘This? It doesn’t really hurt.’
‘Doesn’t hurt? Half your hand’s been burnt off. How can it not hurt? It’s the blood, I think. Burns things. It’s completely destroyed my sword. Damn good sword it was, too. Had a real ruby in the hilt and all. Bloke I got it off must have thought it was good too, seeing as I had to kill him for it.’ Rambled on, trying to relieve his racing mind. At the back of his racing mind this little voice basically just shouting ‘fuck fuck fuck fuck’.
‘The blood is acid,’ Marith said absently. ‘And boiling hot. Once it’s dead it cools, becomes less corrosive.’ He turned suddenly to Tobias, as if just realizing something. ‘You stabbed it first. To rescue me. I did nothing, I just stood there.’
Absurd how young the boy seemed. Fragile. Weak. Hair like red-black velvet. Eyes like pale grey