"Not even you?"
"Oh, well." Bessie blushed. "I'd follow you, yes. For what little that's worth. But I'm only me — what could I do?"
"You could lie." Will looked the truth teller straight in the eye "You can lie." he said, "can't you?"
Bessie turned pale. "Once," she said in a tiny voice, and reflexively covered her womb with both hands. She looked downward, avoiding his glance. "And the price is high, terribly high."
He stood. "Then it must be paid. Let us find a shovel now. It is time for a bit of grave robbery."
It was evening when Will returned at last to the dragon. Tyrant Square had been ringed about with barbed wire and harsh, jury-rigged lights that cast everything in shades of white and gray. A loudspeaker had been set upon a pole with wires leading back into his iron hulk, so that he could speak and be heard in the absence of his lieutenant. Taken together, these improvements made the square look like a concentration camp writ small.
"Go first," Will said to Hag Applemere. "that he may be reassured I mean him no harm."
Breasts bare, clad in the robes and wide hat of her profession, Bessie Applemere passed through a barbed-wire gate (a grimpkin guard opened it before her and closed it after her) and entered the black-and-white arena of the square. "Son of Cruelty." She bowed deeply before the dragon. "Your lieutenant has returned to you."
Will stood hunched in the shadows, head down, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Tonelessly, he said. "I have been broken to your will, great one. I will be your stump-cow, if that is what you want. I beg you. Make me grovel. Make me crawl. Only let me back in."
Hag Applemere spread her arms and bowed again. "It is true."
"You may approach." The dragons voice sounded staticky and yet triumphant over the loudspeaker.
The sour-faced old grimpkin opened the gate for him, as it had earlier been opened for the hag. Slowly, like a maltreated dog returning to the only hand that had ever fed him, Will crossed the cobbled square. He paused before the loudspeaker, briefly touched its pole with one trembling hand, and then shoved that hand back into his pocket. "You have won. Well and truly have you won. Thou art victorious over all my desire." It appalled Will how easily the words came, and how natural they sounded coming from his mouth. He could feel the desire to surrender to the tyrant, accept what punishments he would impose, and sink gratefully back into bondage. A little voice within cried: So easy! So easy! And so it would be, perilously easy indeed. The realization that a part of him devoutly wished for it made Will burn with humiliation.
The dragon slowly forced one eye half open. "So, boy..." Was it his imagination, or was the dragon's voice less forceful than it had been fourteen days ago? "You have learned what need feels like. You suffer from your desires, even as I do. I... I... am weakened, admittedly, but I am not all so weak as that! You thought to prove that I needed you — you have proven the reverse. Though I have neither wings nor missiles and my electrical reserves are low, though I cannot fire my jets without destroying the village and myself as well, yet am I of the mighty, for I have neither pity nor remorse. Thought you I craved a mere boy? Thought you to make me dance attendance on a soft, unmuscled half-mortal mongrel fey? Pfaugh! I do not need you. Never think that I... that I need you!"
"Let me in," Will whimpered. "I will do whatever you say."
"You... you understand that you must be punished for your disobedience?"
"Yes," Will said. "Punish me, please. Abase and degrade me, I beg you."
"As you wish" — the dragon's cockpit door hissed open "so it shall be."
Will took one halting step forward, and then two. Stumblingly, he ran for the open hatchway. One hand closed on the short ladder up the dragon's side. Such an overwhelming sense of relief flooded through his body then that he was sure for an instant that he had returned too soon.
But then he let go of the ladder and stepped to the side, so that he was faced with the featureless black iron of the dragon's plating. From one pocket he withdrew Sergeant Bombast's name stone. Its small blood-red mate was already in his mouth. There was still grave dirt on the one, and a strange taste to the other, but he did not care. He touched the name-stone to the iron plate, and the dragon's true name flowed effortlessly into his mind.
Simultaneously, he took the elf shot from his other pocket. Then, with all his strength, he drew the elf-shot down the dragon's iron flank, making a long, bright scratch in the rust.
"What are you doing?" the dragon cried in alarm. "Stop that! The hatch is open, the couch awaits!" The words bounced from the shuttered buildings on every side, where villagers surely listened, though they dared not speak. Then his voice lowered, tinny and harsh from the loudspeaker, but still seductive. "The needles yearn for your wrists, oh best beloved. Even as I yearn for —"
"Baalthazar, of the line of Baalmoloch, of the line of Baalshabat," Will shouted, "I command thee to die!"
And that was that.
All in an instant and with no fuss whatever, the dragon king was dead. All his might and malice was become nothing more than inert metal, that might be cut up and carted away to be sold to the scrap foundries that served their larger brothers with ingots to be reforged for the War.
Will hit the side of the dragon with all the might of his fist, to show his disdain. Then he spat as hard and fierce as ever he could, and watched the saliva slide slowly down the black metal. Finally, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed upon his erstwhile oppressor.
So it was that he finally accepted that the tyrant was well and truly dead.
Bessie Applemere hag no more stood silent and bereft on the square behind him. Wordlessly, she mourned her sterile womb and sightless eyes. To her, Will went. He took her hand and led her back to her hut. He opened the door for her. He sat her down upon her bed. "Do you need anything?" he asked. "Water? Some food?"
She shook her head. "Just go. Leave me to lament our victory in solitude."
He left, quietly closing the door behind him. There was no place to go now but home. It took him a moment to remember where that was.
Blind Enna's cottage was at the end of a short lane half overgrown with wild honeysuckle, its scent heavy and sweet on the night air. Enna herself was down on all fours, scrubbing her stoop, when Will came walking up. "Auntie!" he cried. "I've come back!"
The old lady sprang to her feet, bucket in hand. Stricken, she moved her head slowly from side to side, as if attempting to locate him by smell alone. Those vacant eyes were black smudges in the moonlight, that ancient mouth an open and despairing pit. For an instant she stood thus. Then she dashed the water in her bucket onto the ground at his feet, as she might to drive off a carrion dog.
Will could have been no more astonished had she sprouted wings and flown away "Why, Auntie!" he said. "Don't you remember me? I'm your nephew Will."
"Oh. I remember you!" the old hag said. "And what you've done, and the disgrace you've brought on your family. Consorting with dragons! Crucifying your friends! Oh, you wretched, disobedient child! You horrid little shit! You unholy imp! Were you chained at the mouth of Hell, to serve forever as Ereshkigal's mastiff, your sufferings could not suffice to unwrite your guilt!"
Will stumbled forward, arms outstretched. But, hearing the scuffle of his feet, Blind Enna flung down her bucket and darted inside the house. She was, he realized with a shock, actually afraid of him. "Go away!" she shouted, and made to slam the door.
Will was there in a stride, however, before she could close it, and his strength was greater than hers. He forced his way inside.