Listening to those mechanical voices, fading deeper and deeper within the tyrant's corpus, Will had a vision of an interior that never came to an end but was a world in itself, all the night contained within that lightless iron body, expanding inward in an inversion of the natural order, stars twinkling in the vasty reaches of distant condensers and fuel pumps and somewhere a crescent moon, perhaps, caught in the gear train. "I won't argue," Will said. "Nor will I ever tell you the merest word of what you desire to learn." "You will."
"Wait until the Armies of Twilight rise from the sea to overwhelm the land, and still you will be disappointed."
"Think’st so? I tell you, this very hour I will have my will of you." "No!"
The dragon fell silent. The leather of the pilot's couch gleamed weakly in the soft light. Will's wrists ached.
The outcome was never in doubt. Try though he might, Will could not resist the call of the leather couch, of the grips that filled his hand, of the needles that slid into his wrists. The dragon entered him, and had from him all the information he desired, and this time he did not leave.
Will walked barefoot through the village streets, leaving footprints of flame behind him. He was filled with wrath and the dragon. “Come out!” he roared. "Bring out your greenshirties. every one of them, or I shall come after them, street by street, house by house, room by room." He put a hand on the nearest door and wrenched it from its hinges. Broken fragments of boards fell flaming to the ground. Vague shapes fled inward. "Spillikin cowers herewithin. Don't make me come in after him!"
Shadowy hands flung Spillikin face-first into the dirt at Will’s feet.
Spillikin was a harmless albino stick figure of a marsh-walker who screamed when Will closed a cauterizing hand about his arm to haul him to his feet.
"Follow me," Will/the dragon said.
So great was Will’s twin-spirited fury that none could stand up to him. He burned hot as a bronze idol, and the heat went before him in a great wave, withering plants, charring house fronts, and setting hair ablaze when somebody did not rice from him quickly enough. "I am wrath!" he screamed. "I am blood vengeance! I am justice! Feed me or suffer!"
The greenshirties were, of course, brought out.
No-name was, of course, not among their number.
The greenshirties were lined up before the dragon in Tyrant Square. They knelt in the dirt before him, heads down. Only two were so unwary as to be caught in their green shirts. The others were bare-chested or in mufti. All were terrified, and one had pissed himself. Their families and neighbors had followed after them and now filled the square with their wails of lament. Will quelled them with a look.
"Your king knows your true names," he said sternly to the greenshirties. "and can kill you with a word."
"It is true," said Hag Applemere. Her face was stiff and impassive, though one of the greenshirties was her own brother.
"More, he can make you suffer such dementia as would make you believe yourselves in Hell, and suffering its torments forever."
"It is true." the hag said.
"Yet he disdains to bend the full weight of his anger upon you. You are no threat to him. He esteems you as creatures of little or no import."
"It is true."
"One only does he desire vengeance upon. Your leader he who calls himself No-name. This being so, your most merciful lord has made this offer: Stand." They obeyed, and he seized a rake that had been left leaning against one of the houses fronting the square. His grip set the wooden shaft ablaze. He tossed the rake lightly upward and caught it deftly by the tines. "Bring No name to me while this lire yet burns, and you shall all go free." He held the brand high. "Fail, and you will suffer such torments as the ingenuity of a dragon can devise."
"It is true."
Somebody not one of the greenshirties was sobbing softly and steadily. Will ignored it. There was more Dragon within him than Self. It was a strange feeling, not being in control. He liked it. It was like being a small coracle carried helplessly along by a raging current.
The river of emotion had its own logic: it knew where it was going. "Go!" he cried. "Now!"
The greenshirties scattered like pigeons.
Not half an hour later, No-name was brought, bruised and struggling, into the square. His former disciples had tied his hands behind his back and gagged him with a red bandanna. He had been beaten not so badly as Will had been, but well and thoroughly. Blood ran down from his nose.
Will walked up and down before him. Leaf-green eyes glared up out of that silt-black face with a pure and holy hatred. There could be no reasoning with this boy, nor any taming of him. He was a primal force, an anti-Will, the spirit of vengeance made flesh and given a single unswerving purpose.
All the words that the rebel-boy could not speak poured from those amazing eyes. They passed effortlessly into Will's head, and he accepted them for his own.
Behind No-name stood the village elders in a straight, unmoving line. The Sullen Man moved his mouth slowly, like an ancient tortoise having a particularly deep thought. But he did not speak. Nor did Auld Black Agnes, nor the yage-witch whose use-name no living being knew, nor Lady Nightlady, nor Spadefoot, nor Annie Hop-the-Frog, nor Daddy Fingerbones, nor any of the others. There were mutters and whispers among the villagers, assembled into a loose throng behind them, but nothing coherent. Nothing that could be heard or punished. Now and again, the buzzing of wings rose up over the murmurs and died down again like a cicada on a still summer day, but no one lifted up from the ground.
Back and forth Will stalked, restless as a leopard in a cage, while the dragon within him brooded over possible punishments. A whip ping would only strengthen No-name in his hatred and resolve. Amputation was no answer — he had lost one limb already, and was still a dangerous and unswerving enemy. There was no gaol in all the village that could hope to hold him forever, save for the dragon himself, and the dragon did not wish to accept so capricious an imp into his own body.
Death, then. Death was the only answer.
But what sort of death? Strangulation was too quick. Fire was good, but Tyrant Square was surrounded by thatched roofs. A drowning would have to be carried out at the river, out of sight of the dragon himself, who wanted the mana of punishment inextricably linked in his subjects' minds to his own physical self. He could have a hogshead brought in and filled with water or, even better, wine. But then the victim's struggles would have a comic element to them. Also, as a form of strangulation it was still too quick.
Unhurriedly, the dragon considered. Then he brought Will to a stop before the crouching No name. He raised up Will’s head, and let a little of the dragon light shine out through Will's eyes.
"Crucify him."
To Will's horror, the villagers obeyed.
It took hours. But shortly before dawn, the child who had once been Puck Berrysnatcher, who had been Will's best friend and had died and been reborn as his nemesis, and who had then raised up a rebel lion that might well have ended in the dragon's downfall, breathed his last. His body went limp as he surrendered his name to his revered ancestress, Mother Night, and the exhausted villagers could finally turn away and go home and sleep.
Later, after he had departed Will’s body at last, the dragon said. "You have done well."
Will lay motionless on the pilot's couch and said nothing..
"I shall reward you."
"No. lord." Will said "You have done too much already." "Haummgnmn. Do you know the first sign that a toady has come to accept the rightness of his lickspittle station?" "No, sir."