Section links

A crop-haired woman and a youing boy. Behind them is a huge reptilian eye.

The Death of the Dragon

- a summer tale

The Death of the Dragon is the summer story in the Symeyric Tales. Set in the desert lands of Sagathia, it is about coming to terms with the fact that not all your dreams can - or perhaps should - come true. Some people who have read this 'work in progress' have seen it as saying that we should all accept our 'station' in life and never strive to better ourselves. It obviously still need work in that case because I don't want to say that at all. I suppose the real 'message' in the story is simply that 'the grass is always greener on the other side', and that what is mundane and commonplace to us may be the embodiment of somone else's dreams... The story in still unfinished but I hope the reader will enjoy what's here.

There is a printer-friendly version of this story.

Summer's first hot winds were scouring the rolling hills and fertile plains of Sagathia, barely cooled by their passage over the huge inland Sapphire Sea, dry as dust and spiced with the exotic breath of the desert lands to the south. The torrential spring rains had come and gone, turning the land to clinging mud which glued itself to feet and the axles of carts, mud that made a backbreaking labour of every effort, so that people working in the fields came home exhausted and slept like the dead through the long nights, sticky with sweat and restless with half-formed dreams. Now, the rains over for another year, the mud had dried to a fine red dust that blew in choking clouds at the slightest breeze and clung in a gritty coating to clothes and skin, clogging mouths and noses like an insubstantial, suffocating hand.

The winds promised hotter days to come, and with them from the south came the merchant caravans bound for the rich cities of the north. The great, six-wheeled carts, pulled by teams of wide-horned oxen or fierce flightless birds with beaks like axes, rumbled and creaked their slow way along the Southern Trade Road from the mysterious lands of Mhersia and Tang Sen, laden with rugs and spices, teas and strange fruits, brass bells jingling beneath their canopies of silk and lizard-hide.

The merchants themselves, dark men in turbans and robes of wild, bright colours - deep violets, greens, turquoises, pinks and scarlets - rode the carts that were their homes and shops combined. They called to each other in an odd language full of gutterals, laughing uproariously or shouting at the long, lean dogs that ran beneath the carts.Their veiled wives, eyes twinkling like onyx above layers of rainbow silks and gauze, bobbed and waved from the passenger platforms at the workers toiling in the fields that straddled the Road. The workers in turn brought crusty bread to the caravans, spiced milk and cheeses pungent with herbs, wood-carvings and tanned leather, swapping them for scented wines and peacock feathers and small figurines of blown glass that caught the light and flashed and sparked like coloured ice.

These were treasured, not so much for their intrinsic worth but just to have something to put above the hearth and look at through the winter months when the carts had rolled away leaving behind the smell of sand and dates and incense, a keepsake of this brief intrusion of romance into their humdrum lives. The carts would return in half a year, laden with bright steel and white furs from the Icefields far the north; until then the workers returned to their labours, sighing yet content. For wandering was not for them; the greater, wider world at the ends of the Trade Road was there to talk of and to wonder at, but for others to inhabit - strange, romantic folk with other ways and other tongues, as alien as if they came from another world entirely.

As Dern drove the humpbacked cows homewards towards the village the land burned under a sky the colour of pewter, the hills shimmering like mirages through the heat, and on their slopes loosestrifes glowed like fire, their petals illuminated by the sun's last rays. Dern wiped sweat from his eyes with a dusty forearm and sighed deeply as one of the cows, irritaed by heat and flies, kicked up her heels and galloped off the path before he could prevent her. Swearing, he chased the errant cow, driving her back into the herd with flicks from the thorn-branch he carried.

As the small herd crossed the line of wooden palisades that marked the outskirts of the village, elder Tarn limped by and greeted Dern:

"Even' to you, herd-boy."

Dern bit back a curse and forced a civil reply, his foul mood suddenly even fouler. Herd-boy! Might as well say 'Dolt' or 'Imbecile'! Herd-boy! Was this all that he was to be, a 'Herd-boy'? The mournful cry of a curlew drifted from the direction of the setting sun as if in counterpoint to his melancholy mood.

[Here there will be a section where Dern's dreams of romance and adventure are hinted at, and his resentment and claustrophobia at being 'trapped' in his small village]

Dern's romantic imaginings were not appreciated by the adults of the village. "Your dreams are like a dragon," said his grandmother, cleaning out a rabbit for the pot. "They're beautiful, but dangerous too. They'll turn on you, boy, turn on you and eat you, spit you out as bare dry bones. Forget them."

[There is a family argument, not for the first time, with his family trying to bring him back down to earth and accept his life as it is, and Dern angrily rejecting their advice and bitterly pouring scorn on their acceptance of 'the way things are'.]

Dern could stand no more. He shouldered his way out of the door and slammed it shut behind him, hearing as he went his father's hurt and angry shouts.

[He escapes to his own 'secret place']

He entered the musty darkness of the stable with an almost-audible sigh of relief. No-one would follow him here, he knew. He murmured a greeting to the old horse in the far stall, who snuffled in reply, his eyes shining in the gloom. Dern climbed the rickety stairs to the loft and taking the small lamp that hung on a hook at the top of the stairs, lit it from the firepot he carried. The floor of the loft was bare - at this time of year, with the animals out to pasture, what little stored fodder remained was kept in the stable itself; only in winter did the loft become full. A rat scuffled somewhere in the shadows. Dern crossed the room, the floor creaking beneath his feet, and prised up a loose board, taking from the revealed cavity a small bundle wrapped in sacking and oilcloth. He laid it down and carefully unwrapped it.

His eyes shining, he held up each of the objects contained within it, one by one. They were carved wooden figures, each some nine or ten inches high. Dern's father had spent hours through the long winter evenings carving them, special figures to be gifted to Dern once a year on his birthday. Beren was an artist. The figures were his best work, and the merchants would have bought them - for a good price too - but Dern cared nothing for their value; he cared only for what they were. The first figure was a mercenary sell-sword, crouched and half-turning as if to meet an onrushing attacker. Each tiny link in his chainmail byrnie was carefully picked out, and his shield was decorated with three cartwheels, showing him to be coin-vassal to the local Syndic. He carried a great, basket hilted longsword and had a crossbow slung across his back. Dern stood him upright on his base and held up the second figure.

This was a seafarer, perhaps one of the pirates that plundered the Reavers' Sea to the north of Sagathia, her loose trousers and tunic blown in the wind and her legs braced as she gripped the ship's wheel in front of her. Her pigtails seemed to flutter in the breeze, so skilfully were they carved, so that Dern could almost feel the speed of the ship's passage and taste the salt air. Dern had never seen the sea, although Sagathian traders ranged the world from the seaports in the far north of the country. But once a sailor had stopped at their small farm on his way south to the Sapphire sea, and he had kept Dern entranced with stories of storms and whales and great sea-serpents, scaled mer-people, strange islands full of magic, and waters fathoms-deep and clear as glass so that you could see the wrecks and dead men lying on the ocean floor. Dern's father had smiled and shaken his head at the tales, but Dern had seen that he was just as enthralled as the rest of the family - and, sure enough, next birthday the figure had been this one.

The third figure was a merchant, such as rode the carts. One eyebrow was cocked cunningly as he held his pack open, exhibiting its wares. And the pack was the finest thing yet, for if the flap was carefully prised up on its tiny hinge the contents were revealed and could be taken out, each minute object made separately; a rolled mat of scented grass, its edges fringed with bright feathers, small amphorae, their stoppers sealed with wax, curved knives with hilts fashioned in the shape of strange animals. Dern placed the merchant next to the others where the flickering light made it look as if he were winking.

A strange, fierce creature came out of the wrappings next, described to Dern's father by a traveller from the south some years ago. It was a terrifying beast like a horse, but with a ruff of hair around its face, an eagle's claws and teeth like knives. The traveller had said the lion, as he called it, had eyes of flame, so Beren had carved them, tiny stabbing darts from either eye. Dern wondered if he'd ever see a lion, flames and all, and sighed.

He paused for a moment, anticipating, then pulled out the next figure. This was the best of all, bar one. It was a dragon. Beren had carved it not from life, but from memory - which to Dern was the next best thing. Once, when Dern's father himself had been a boy, a dragon had come to the village. They were rare, thankfully, so rare that many never saw one even once in a whole lifetime, and for that they were grateful. A single dragon could destroy a province, given time and freedom to do so, burning crops and poisoning trees and lakes, devouring people and animals alike before returning to its lair in some dank cave deep in the hills. The model caught the dragon in mid-flight, poised on its snaky tail. Its body twisted in a sinuous ripple of muscular power and its wings were outstretched, the spines that tipped each joint like poisonous thorns. The mouth gaped, and through the forest of its teeth came flames, carved in a different reddish wood - red cedar perhaps, traded from the merchant carts - so that it looked if they were truly burning. The wings and mouth were hinged and connected by fine thread so that when the wings were manipulated as if the dragon flew its mouth moved too and made it gnash its teeth in fury. It was very fine. Dern placed it reverently on the wooden boards and took the last - and best - figure from the wrappings.

The Dragonslayer. For if there were dragons there must be those who rid the country of them. He sat on a great horse which was rearing upwards and pawing the air, showing its teeth in what looked like a savage grin. The horse's mane and tail flew out like flags as it arched its neck in furious power. Every detail of its bridle and trappings was shown, even the stirrups and the knots in the traces. Its rider, braced in the saddle, brandished a great spear in both hands. His face was nobly-drawn and fierce with exhilaration, and his mouth was stretched wide in a great shout of triumph. He wore a breastplate, greaves and gauntlets and his face was shadowed by a visored helmet. The armour gleamed in the light of the lamp. A peddler had come to the village the year this figure had been carved, and in his pack, buried beneath the ribbons and the silks, had been a tiny bottle of gold paint - very rare, very expensive. Dern's father had seen it. Sighing, he put off for another year the new shoes that he needed and the pipe and pouch of heavenweed nestling in the pack. He bought the paint so that Dern's Dragonslayer should have his golden armour. The look on Dern's face when he had seen the figure had made the sacrifice worthwhile.

Dern turned the figure in his hands and stared at it as if he could breathe life into it by the sheer intensity of his gaze. This was a dragonslayer such as the ballads told of - the flower of nobility (Dern had heard that phrase in a song and remembered it), brave, strong, perfect, matching his awesome foe on equal terms, strength against strength, intelligence against intelligence, mighty soul against mighty soul. Dern thought that the battle between these two great combatants was the height of what life could offer, the brightest flowering of heroism and courage.

When he had attempted to articulate these thoughts to his family, his father had shaken his head, smiling, and had even laughed a little. His mother had tightened her mouth and turned away, banging the pots and pans around unnecessarily. Dern had been angry at their reaction. Now, he only played with the figures here, in his own world, where there was nobody to gainsay their bright reality. If his dreams were indeed like a dragon, as his grandmother had said, then they were none the worse for that. Still lost in the romantic world of his imaginings, Dern fell asleep.

[Possibly a short 'dream' here, contrasting his imaginary world with the reality that is about to follow]

He wake with a shock to a biting, acrid smell and crimson light flickering through the gaps between the boards of the stable wall. Fire! He stuffed the figures into his shirt and ran out of the stable. The village was ablaze. Above his head black smoke obscured the sky, the roiling mass of its underside illuminated by reflected bloody light from burning thatch. Sparks danced in the air like glowing, malevolent seeds, and everywhere they rooted scarlet and orange flame blossomed. The village was painted in the chiaroscuro of the burning and the darting figures emerging and disappearing in the smoke looked like demons. But demons did not, as far as Dern knew, carry buckets of water, nor did they call to each other in terrified high-pitched voices.

From far above, behind the blanket of smoke, Dern heard a cry that chilled his blood. He had never heard anything like it before, but some deep atavistic part of his brain recognised the tearing screech like shearing metal.

The smoke billowed and churned like a curtain with the wind behind it, something burst through it in coils of wreathing vapour, and suddenly there was a great shape hanging there, far above the village, dimly lit in bloody flame-light. Bat-like, it hung between vast, ragged pinions, shifting and tipping in the hot updrafts from the burning village. The terrible screeching cry came once again... And then the shape tilted and swung away and was gone in two sweeps of its wings.

All through the long and frightened days that followed, Dern concealed a secret glee, a pleasure that the other villagers would not have understood if they had known of it. He blessed the day the dragon came, and clutched the deaths and the destruction to himself in guilty delight. For now the dragon had come, so would the Dragonslayer! A deputation had been sent to Ravenspeak and the Syndic himself had replied by messenger. A Dragonslayer would be sent. The message said no more than that, but to Dern it was a personal vindication of all his dreams and longings. He had seen a dragon. Now he would see a Dragonslayer...

The horse and its rider materialised out of the dust-clouds and the haze like a dreaming of the desert, spectral, mirage-like. The first to see them shouted and ran through the village calling out his news. From every house people came, wondering. Travellers were rare enough, and this one was a sword-hire; the gleam of steel showed at the rider's waist, and a great broadsword hung from the saddlebow of the tall, lean gelding. No ordinary traveller this - a warrior. Whispers ran through the gathered crowd. 'The Dragonslayer comes!' 'The Dragonslayer!'

The rider's face and head were muffled in the folds of a light scarf against the choking dust. Both horse and rider stank of sweat and travel.

The horse drew to a halt and tossed its head. The rider stretched and slid out of the saddle, raised a hand and drew the scarf away. There was a rustle of amazement and concern, mixed with not a little disappointment, as the crowd got its first look at the Dragonslayer.

She was a tall, raw-boned woman with cropped fine hair the colour of the road-dust that covered her from head to foot, and eyes of the same shade, faded with staring into the sun and webbed around with deep-cut crowsfeet. Old, faint scarring, from burns perhaps, or acid splashes, patterned the right side of her face beneath the tan like the mottlings on a wall-lizard's back. More of the same covered the back of her strong, long-fingered right hand beneath the cascade of frayed lace at her cuff. Beneath a sleeveless hauberk - somewhat rusted - her tunic and trousers were quilted leather, patched and mended many times, and the paired shortsword and dagger were slung at her right hip for left-handed use. Both were plain and functional, the hilts worn smooth and dark with sweat-stains - a soldier's weapons. Dern stared at them, wondering; the hilts were bound in some scaled, reptilian hide - dragon-skin? His heart thumped at the thought.

The woman scanned the crowd. "Give you good day," she said, her accent barbarous. "You are much troubled by a worm, I understand."

Dern stared at her, trying to reconcile this woman, with her air of shabby raffishness, with the mental image he still attached to the word 'Dragonslayer'. He was not sure what he had expected. Something more like his carved figure, certainly, a great tall hero in shining brass armour, astride a white charger with eyes of flame. After all, that was how it was described in all the ballads. This ragged woman on her scarred and worn-out horse was not at all what the reality of the legend should be.

[A short time elapses, as the dragonslayer settles into the village and begins to plan her campaign against the dragon.]

Dern sat for hours, hidden in the cool darkness beneath the boards, and watched her as she sat in the shade of a hawthorn tree at the edge of the village and stared at the sky with her pale eyes; eyes that were no colour at all but contained within their shifting depths hints of every colour; eyes that were often unfocussed, distant, that did not see exactly what others saw; eyes that saw between the lines and round the corners of the world. People in the village did not like to look too deeply into the Dragonslayer's eyes. The reflections that they saw there, especially of themselves, were too inexplicable, too enigmatic...and perhaps too dangerous.

[Again, some days later, after Dern has aproached the dragonslayer. They talk about her past experiences. Dern is fascinated to discover that she has been a soldier at one time, and fought in one of the most famous battles of recent history, a battle that, although far away, had been talked of even here in Dern's part of the world. Balledeers had sung of the fight. Their perceptions of the battle are very different, though. Jenel describes it in brutal and cynical terms, much to Dern's dismay and anger...]

"But that's not the way it was! It was glorious! Landor's banners billowed gold and crimson... 'Crimson the battle banners, staining the morning, Golden the dragon-coils, billowing in sunlight; Bright was the shining of ringmail and byrnies, Joyful the shouts of the troops in their war-gear. Brave were the deeds and golden the memories When Landor met Grimlock on the plains of the west...'"

"You speak that well." Jenel said. She paused, staring into the distance. Then she gave a sort of muffled grunt that might have been laughter or a half-choked sob. She turned away from the boy and her shoulders shook. When at last she turned back her face was composed but there was moistness at the corners of her eyes. She stared at Dern, intense.

"It's a story, boy. It wasn't like that. It never is."

Dern's face set into an expression of fixed stubbornness. "Then why...?"

"Because people don't like to remember how things really are!" Jenel seized his shoulder and almost shouted into his face. "Humans can't stand that much reality. I think that most of the glory and the heroism that attaches to the so-called great deeds of the past comes in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight, usually by people who weren't even there. Simple butchery becomes noble chivalry, killers magically transmute into heroes, a panic-stricken fight for life - at any price - becomes glorious combat. Have you ever seen a battlefield in the aftermath of war, boy? No. I hope you never do, not as I did, time after time. It's not a spotless field of honour; it's churned mud and blood, sown with jagged iron and chopped red things that once lived and breathed and shared a joke with you before the fight to stop the shaking and the fear, and wanted only, desperately, to go on living and breathing... Death is a terrible thing, boy. And do you know the most terrible thing about it? The fact the life goes on regardless, the seasons change, the years roll by, without even noticing that you've gone. And you're so easily forgotten. That's the one thing the stories can't change, only ignore. Death. Victims are always victims, whichever way it's told. And the dead always..."

"Always stay dead?" Dern said quietly.

There was a very long pause before Jenel whispered:

"Yes."

[The argument continues. Jenel is obviously remembering terrible things, and is suffering a personal hurt (she has run away and hidden at the height of the battle, and is still, years later, racked by guilt at the deaths of friends and comrades and her survival through, as she still sees it, her own cowardice).]

She threw back her head and laughed bitterly. "And do you know the best joke of all? I ran away."

[She expands on this, finally and painfully telling her story to this small and unimportant boy in this small and unimportant place...]

"I wouldn't have run away," Dern said.

"Wouldn't you? Well, perhaps you wouldn't at that. We none of us know what we'll do until the event."

"Why did you run away?"

Jenel sighed. "Because I was cold and tired and frightened, and very far away from home. It's very hard to be a hero when you're far away from home and everything you love. More hard than you can know."

Dern dropped his head and drew pictures in the dust at his feet, scowling. After a while he glanced up at Jenel, who was staring out over the village, not really seeing it.

[After Jenel's admission, Dern is estranged from her, ostensibly because of her admitted 'cowardice', truthfully because she is guilty in his eyes of not being the thing he wants her to be. Meanwhile, Jenel finalises her plan to kill the dragon and begins to make preparations, while Dern's excitement grows at the imminence of what he sees as a noble conflict.]

Havek, the new headman now that Frann had gone, was walking towards them. He nodded a greeting, cursory to Dern, respectful to Jenel - although, Dern noticed, he could not prevent his eyes from roving over Jenel's barely covered body. If Jenel noticed she chose to make nothing of it, slipping her shirt over her head and lacing it while they walked back to the shade of the well-house porch. Dern hung back, conscious of an urgency of purpose that excluded him. He ducked away and squirmed into the thicket of a japonica bush that grew close to the well-house wall. Peering out of his concealment he saw Havek place a lambskin map between them on the ground, weighting the corners with small stones against the evening wind. They squatted to peruse it.

Havek pointed to some feature on the map and spoke.

The dragonslayer shook her head, the gold rings in her ears jingling slightly. She replied, her voice as low as his. Dern burrowed closer until he could make out the words.

"Where will you take it, then?" Havek asked.

"The quarry. There's good cover there and once it's landed little space for it to maneouver. I can lure it to the far end, up against the hill. It narrows there and gives me the best chance at its belly." She shook her head again as if in disbelief and swore, then barked a brief laugh but with little humour. "Wish me luck," she said. "This one's clever, and the biggest that I've ever seen."

Havek reached out and grasped her upper arm, not as a man will touch a woman usually, but in way that made it look as if he both honouring and reassuring her. She nodded thanks, and then they ducked their heads and scrutinised the map again, their voices dropping so that Dern could not hear more without leaving his hiding place.

[More planning takes place...]

She took the large pack from her horse and unwrapped it...

Dern helped her buckle the armour on. The cured leather breast and back-pieces were reinforced with metal plates. The browned-iron was bent, scored and stained. Three wicked foor-long spikes grew from the plate that covvered the upper back and shoulders...

"On horseback?" Jenel barked a disbelieving laugh. "You'd never get a horse within a half-mile of a dragon..."

[Eventually, the dragon is sighted. Jenel goes to kill it. Dern, unseen, follows her. He hides, in preparation for the conflict...]

All the time Jenel looked up to the sky, her body tense with anticipation. Once, she shuddered violently as if she were cold, though the day was sweating-hot. She was muttering to herself in a low monotone. Dern thought she might be praying but when she circled close to him he heard the words and realised that she was cursing, low and deadly but without intent as if she was not fully aware of what she was saying. Suddenly, on one of her periodic glances up into the sky she froze and squinted hard against the sun. She swore aloud, a filthy gutter word, and ran for the cairn of rocks that she had marked out earlier. Dern's heartbeat quickened in anticipation and his palms went clammy. Now, it was coming, now...

From above there came a brazen clangour of sound, like a harsh blare of trumpets. A covey of partridge shot up from the scrub in a great clatter and whirr of wings, making Dern's heart thump. A thrill of fear cut through his expectation. For the first time he began to feel that this was not a storybook, but real; that up there, still unseen, was the thing that had made ruin of the village. He felt exposed and vulnerable, a tiny speck upon the wide and wheeling, empty face of the earth, which seemed to stretch and open itself to what was coming. He started to shake, knowing suddenly how a mouse must feel as it senses the kite's shadow chill on its back and tenses against the slashing claws.

From out of the sun there fell, like part of the sun itself, a golden shape, splitting the sky like lightning as it arrowed down. It soared above the hill, its shadow racing over the ground. Then it wheeled and come to a dead stop in a thunderclap of back-beating wings, hovering like some great, impossible insect, a twenty-foot spread of membranous wings beating slowly. Its forelimbs extentended, gun-metal claws slipping in and out of armoured sheaths. The serpentine body was fifteen feet long, burnished scaled gleaming with oil and venom and sizzling as its secretions vapourised into poisonous steam. Heat radiated from it like fever and the sun sparked coruscations of light from the serrations of its scales. Along its sides spines shifted with an oiled rustle, each needle point bearing a single drop of viscous liquid at its tip like a jewel. Rainbows flickered along its flanks. Light spilled from its eyes like madness. Poison pooled beneath it and the grass blackened and died. It was the most beautiful thing Dern had ever seen.

The oxen bellowed and reared, pulling against their tethers. The dragon's baroque, crested head coiled downwards, scarlet eyes whirling and twin spirals of smoke curling from its nostrils. It smelled of bonfires and old burning, scorched flesh and hot metal. A long forked tongue flicked out and darted at the oxen like a whip, testing. Satisfied, the dragon landed. Only then did the full bulk of it become apparent. Airborne, it had seemed weightless; now its landing shook the ground, and when it moved its claws gouged deep into the hard-baked earth. Like a bat, its wings were also its front limbs and it hunched itself along in a sinuous wave of power, its head whipping from side to side. The sun glanced off its armoured sides in daggers of light. The great head lashed forward and struck at the tethered oxen. There was a terrible wet crunch and tearing as it bit an ox in half. The dragon threw its head back to swallow, gulping. Dern's eyes widened as the remains of the bisected ox toppled sideways, steaming entrails spilling from the body cavity. Again the dragon struck, settling down for a protracted feed.

From the corner of his eye, Dern saw a movement by the cairn of rocks. Jenel was creeping out, downwind of the feeding monster, the dragon-spear held braced and rigid in her hand. She paused, her eyes fixed on the dragon. Dern realised suddenly what she was going to do. She had the dragon trapped against the quarry wall, distracted, feeding... And she was sneaking up behind it, about to kill it, before it even knew that she was there. Dern was horrified. Where was the honour in a cowardly attack from behind...

[Dern makes his presence known, warning the dragon. Jenel is horrified, furious. The dragon goes for Dern. Jenel draws it away. He can see that she is terrified...]

The dragon scuttled blindly after her, bat-like, its head whipping to one side like a snake's.It hissed again and acrid smoke began to curl up from its hide. The smell of burning filled the air. Jenel rolled and dived aside as its claw slammed down where she had been, shattering the stones. It bellowed in frustration, spun and struck at her again, but she was up and running, staggering for the cover of the rocks. The dragon leaped for her, great muscles tensing in the long hind legs. Its skin was glowing now, heat rippling in the air above it. As Jenel reached the rocks she turned, and at the same time the dragon immolated in a burst of flame. A wave of fire rolled over the rocks and flames licked around the hill-side. Dern bit back a scream. Where Jenel had been standing there was nothing more than blackened stone.

The dragon paused, its head raised, listened. It sniffed the air, padded forward and sniffed the rocks too. Nothing moved. There was no sound. It hissed in sleepy satisfaction, turned and started down the hill towards Dern's hiding place.

Crouched in his useless cover, Dern watched in frozen terror as the dragon came towards him. Dust and gravel sifted down from the rocky bank with every thundering footfall of the creature. Suddenly, as if a veil had lifted from his eyes, Dern saw the dragon as it really was. Its beauty was superficial only, a pretence of gilded scales and rainbow refractions. Close up, Dern could see the reality beneath. Parasites clustered and scuttled in the filthy crevices of its skin, great sores and lesions marred the golden hide, and beneath the constant smell of burning that clung to the dragon its body exuded the stench of decay. But worst of all were the dragon's eyes. Their light was purely chemical in origin, a product of the dragon's alien metabolism, not of intelligence. There was nothing beautiful or noble about them up close. They were a flaring muddy crimson, unblinking, mindless, the eyes of a brute beast.

It opened its mouth and hissed at him, revealing the great fangs, brown with dried blood and decay, and behind the forked tongue the red, smouldering glow of the banked fires within its gullet. Its breath was wet and hot and stank. Once, some years before, Dern had been fishing in the river. He had seen a bundle of what he thought were old clothes washed up against one bank. But when he had approached, a buzzing cloud of flies had risen from the 'clothes' and the smell had brought him to his knees, vomiting. The body must have been in the river for days before coming ashore and then lain in the hot sun for days more. The dragon's breath smelled like that corpse, green and sweet and heavy with rot.

Dern closed his eyes and waited for its coming as the earth shook under him and the stench of death and burning filled the air.

He opened them again, disbelieving, as a hoarse shout echoed around the rocks. The dragon stopped and flung its head around. Behind it, a long lean arm appeared over the top of the piled rocks, fingers searching for a hold. It was followed by a head, cropped hair singed and matted with blood. Jenel dragged herself over the crest of the rocks and lay panting on the ground, still cradling the dragon-spear. She forced herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the spear for balance. Her face was bruised and burned, one eye was closed and swollen and there was blood at her nose. Her armour hung from her, the straps broken. She stripped her useless armour off and hurled it at the dragon.

"Come on, you bastard!" Jenel cried. "Leave him! You haven't dealt with me! Come on!"

The dragon growled deep in its throat. It swung its head, confused, undecided between Dern and this woman.

[The aftermath of the death of the dragon. Dern must cope with the shattering of his childish fancies and his idealisation of both the dragon and Jenel, the dragonslayer. He also feels guilt at his responsibility for her nearly being killed. Eventually, through talking to Jenel and her understanding, he comes to terms with the events of the past few days and starts the long process of 'growing up'. Eventually, it is time for the dragonslayer to leave, her work done. Dern accompanies her to the edge of the village, wanting to share a last few moments with her before she goes.]

Jenel looked around. The land shone under the morning sun, loosestrifes glowing purple on the rolling hills.

"This is a beautiful place," she said.

Dern stared around as if seeing his home for the first time. It had never occurred to him that someone might find this place beautiful.

[They have a final conversation, making peace with each other and both coming to terms with the events that have taken place. Dern wonders if they could perhaps swap places one day?]

"No, Dern. We couldn't." She laid a calloused palm along his cheek and smiled at him. "We are what we are. You could never be a dragonslayer, nor should you be. And goddess knows I could never be a farmer, that I'm sure of. We each of us must find a peace in what we are. In dreams... That's different. But... I'm a ratcatcher, Dern. Nothing more than that. Nothing heroic, nothing fine. Just a ridder of the world from vermin."

[Dern is quiet for a moment. He reaches into his tunic and produces a small package, which he offers to her.]

"I want you to have this."

Jenel reached down and took the packet from him, unwrapped it. The Dragonslayer's golden armour gleamed in the sun. She turned the figure in her hand, her face unreadable.

"I don't need it any more," Dern said, as if forestalling her protest. "It's just a toy... not real. Silly. For all my life he was the Dragonslayer. Then you came, and now...in here..."

He touched his chest, his face working with the effort of trying to find the words.

"In here, you're the Dragonslayer. The real one, not pretend. That's why I want you to have the toy. It's you. I know it doesn't look anything like you on the outside..." He stopped, bit back what he was going to say, then scowled and said it anyway. "But I think it's what you look like on the inside."

He shuffled his feet, horribly embarrassed, feeling as young and as stupid as he'd ever felt. He wished to be anywhere but here. He waited for the Dragonslayer's reaction, her scornful laugh, her dismissal of his ridiculous gift. There was a long silence. "I understand," said Jenel quietly, finally. "Thank you, Dern. For the gift. And for reminding me that what I am to my own self is sometimes less important than what I represent to others." She paused, frowned slightly, curbed the gelding as it shifted restlessly, eager to be moving. Her pale eyes softened slightly as she looked down at Dern.

"Don't entirely lose your dreams," she said.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Jenel carefully wrapped the figure and placed it in her saddlebag. She turned the horse away.

"Will I see you again?" Dern said suddenly.

Jenel shook her head, not turning. "No," she said, and drew her scarf across her mouth and nose.

She rode away along the Trade Road, heading for some far-off place that Dern would never hear of. He watched until her silhouette was lost in blowing dust and heat-haze shimmering. Then he turned back to the village and went to fetch the cows out to their grazing.

Printer-friendly version