“You said ‘only at the hands of another of our kind’,” Dael reminded her smugly.
She shook her head. “I did. But you are far too simple in your thinking.”
Taking another step forward, she plunged her hand through his armour and into his chest, as if metal and bone and skin were the thinnest of paper. Dael’s eyes went round; then, as she pulled her arm back, he looked down in disbelief at the bloody, pulsing mess of organs trailing from her hands back to his body.
Her hand held his heart, twitching and wobbling. Dael opened his mouth, made a faint, whimpering noise, then crumpled at her feet.
Kala waited until the first sounds escaped the watching soldiers. As the realisation that she had killed their leader sank into the minds of those watching, she raised her eyes and surveyed those standing closest. She gestured with the bloodied heart, beckoning them closer. Instead, all turned and ran, yelling and screaming their terror.
All except Reny. A movement in the air had drawn his eyes. The shimmer between Dael’s body and Kala was so intense it was almost a sound.
Is it only her magic or does it come from all the souls he has taken?
He looked up and met Kala’s eyes. Weariness and resignation had replaced her fierce grin of triumph. She grimaced as she let the heart drop to the ground.
“I can’t stop myself taking it,” she said sadly. “But I can do this…”
Then she turned and strode away, the rippling air stretching and slowly thinning between herself and the dead sorcerer until the effect was no longer visible.
WHEN HE LEFT, Reny took nothing with him but a large pack and his sword. While he would rather have left the weapon behind, he wasn’t stupid. The road home would not be free of trouble. It would be full of ex-soldiers like him, and some would resort to theft and murder to get food, shelter and other essentials. He’d pass through lands that the sorcerer King had conquered, who would not welcome the men who had followed him, bringing so much suffering and loss.
At the end of the long journey was his home—and the ghosts of his family. If he made it, he would live the remaining years left to him there, and concern himself only with the strategies of crops and animal breeding cycles and bartering in the markets. He resolved to forget the war, and let all tales of his part in it fade from the memories of others, even if they would never leave his own.
Every day Kala was in his thoughts, and every night she appeared in his dreams, and he never stopped wondering where she was, and if she still sought her own death.
THE DRAGONSLAYER OF MEREBARTON
K J PARKER
I WAS MENDING my chamber pot when they came to tell me about the dragon.
Mending a pot is one of those jobs you think is easy, because tinkers do it, and tinkers are no good or they’d be doing something else. Actually, it’s not easy at all. You have to drill a series of very small holes in the broken pieces, then thread short lengths of wire through the holes, then twist the ends of the wires together really tight, so as to draw the bits together firmly enough to make the pot watertight. In order to do the job you need a very hard, sharp, thin drill bit, a good eye, loads of patience and at least three pairs of rock-steady hands. The tinker had quoted me a turner and a quarter; get lost, I told him, I’ll do it myself. It was beginning to dawn on me that some sorts of work are properly reserved for specialists.
Ah, the irony.
Stupid of me to break it in the first place. I’m not usually that clumsy. Stumbling about in the dark, was how I explained it. You should’ve lit a lamp, then, shouldn’t you, she said. I pointed out that you don’t need a lamp in the long summer evenings. She smirked at me. I don’t think she quite understands how finely balanced our financial position is. We’re not hard up, nothing like that. There’s absolutely no question of having to sell off any of the land, or take out mortgages. It’s just that, if we carry on wasting money unnecessarily on lamp-oil and tinkers and like frivolities, there’ll come a time when the current slight reduction in our income will start to be a mild nuisance. Only temporary, of course. The hard times will pass, and soon we’ll all be just fine.
Like I said, the irony.
“Ebba’s here to see you,” she said.
She could see I was busy. “He’ll have to come back,” I snapped. I had three little bits of wire gripped between my lips, which considerably reduced my snapping power.
“He said it’s urgent.”
“Fine.” I put down the pot—call it that, no way it was a pot any more. It was disjointed memories of the shape of a pot, loosely tied together with metal string, like the scale armour the other side wore in Outremer. “Send him up.”
“He’s not coming up here in those boots,” she said, and at once I realised that no, he wasn’t, not when she was using that tone of voice. “And why don’t you just give up on that? You’re wasting your time.”
Women have no patience. “The tinker—”
“That bit doesn’t go there.”
I dropped the articulated mess on the floor and walked past her, down the stairs, into the great hall. Great, in this context, is strictly a comparative term.
Ebba and I understand each other. For a start, he’s practically the same age as me—I’m a week younger; so what? We both grew up silently ashamed of our fathers (his father Ossun was the laziest man on the estate; mine—well) and we’re both quietly disappointed with our children. He took over his farm shortly before I came home from Outremer, so we both sort of started off being responsible for our own destinies around the same time. I have no illusions about him, and I can’t begin to imagine he has any about me. He’s medium height, bald and thin, stronger than he looks and smarter than he sounds. He used to set up the targets and pick up the arrows for me when I was a boy; never used to say anything, just stood there looking bored.
He had that look on his face. He told me I wasn’t going to believe what he was about to tell me.
The thing about Ebba is, he has absolutely no imagination. Not even when roaring drunk—whimpering drunk in his case; very rare occurrence, in case you’ve got the impression he’s what she calls basically-no-good. About twice a year, specific anniversaries. I have no idea what they’re the anniversaries of, and of course I don’t ask. Twice a year, then, he sits in the hayloft with a big stone jar and only comes out when it’s empty. Not, is the point I’m trying to make, prone to seeing things not strictly speaking there.
“There’s a dragon,” he said.
Now Ossun, his father, saw all manner of weird and wonderful things. “Don’t be bloody stupid,” I said. He just looked at me. Ebba never argues or contradicts; doesn’t need to.
“All right,” I said, and the words just sort of squeezed out, like a fat man in a narrow doorway. “Where?”
“Down Merebarton.”
A BRIEF DIGRESSION concerning dragons.
There’s no such thing. However, there’s the White Drake (its larger cousin, the Blue Drake, is now almost certainly extinct). According to Hrabanus’ Imperfect Bestiary, the White Drake is a native of the large and entirely unexpected belt of marshes you stumble into after you’ve crossed the desert, going from Crac Boamond to the sea. Hrabanus thinks it’s a very large bat, but conscientiously cites Priscian, who holds that it’s a featherless bird, and Saloninus, who maintains that it’s a winged lizard. The White Drake can get to be five feet long—that’s nose to tip-of-tail; three feet of that is tail, but it can still give you a nasty nip. They launch themselves out of trees, which can be horribly alarming (I speak from personal experience). White Drakes live almost exclusively on carrion and rotting fruit, rarely attack unless provoked and absolutely definitely don’t breathe fire.