The long snout sniffed at the air again and found my scent. Hobbling, the dragon continued in pursuit of me, while behind it Philander Groot and Grigory Petrovitch Sedenko yelled and struck, to no effect. My strength was fast going. Shards of crystal began to fall all around me, one of them almost impaling me.
Again the teeth found me and I felt my left arm raked. It was as if the dragon had shredded the whole limb in a single movement. I became faint, but continued to flee.
Philander Groot was calling to me, but I could not distinguish the words. I struck again at the dragon's mouth, driving my sword up into its palate. It grunted and lifted its head, taking my sword with it, then spitting it out. I was totally without defence now.
I fell. I began to drag myself along the ground, hoping to find some temporary sanctuary. A claw found my right leg and pain sang up to my spine and suffused my whole body. Yet I continued to move, grasping low branches to pull myself along.
Then my hand fell upon something smooth and cool. Through fading eyes I looked and saw that it was one of the shards from the broken roof. It was like a long icicle. I saw that it tapered to a sharp point. With one hand I attempted to lift it, using my good leg as a lever, until it was braced on the ground between two roots, the thin, jagged edge jutting towards the dragon.
The beast reared again and tottered forward on its hind legs. Saliva ran from the jaws. The silver teeth snapped. I rolled behind the huge shard of crystal even as the dragon dropped down upon me.
The point caught it in the chest, just below the throat, and went straight through. The dragon roared and bellowed, glaring down at me as if it recognised me as the source of its pain.
Black blood burst from the body as the dragon struck with its good leg at the shard, and every blow had the effect of forcing the wound wider so that more blood came. I was covered from head to foot with the horrible liquid, but I fancy I was grinning, too.
Philander Groot and Sedenko had dismounted. They came running towards me, ducking under the branches. Groot had another spear of crystal in his arms. He drove this with all the strength of his tiny body into the side of the dragon.
The beast groaned and turned towards this new source of pain. A terrible coughing began to sound in its throat.
Then it had heeled over against one of the walls, already cracked, and smashed through. For a moment it seemed that it would try to rise as it lay amongst leaves, bits of broken tree, the fallen fragments of glass and crystal. It snorted and blew blood through its nostrils for several feet. The birds were rising from the body of my horse. They had picked its bones completely clean. Again the awful, almost pathetic coughing began to sound from the dying dragon.
One last, long sigh and it had expired.
The bright birds began to settle on the scales until the dragon was completely buried under a wave of bustling feathers and bloody beaks.
Philander Groot and Grigory Sedenko came to my aid. Their faces were full of concern. I turned my head and looked at my arm. It was torn to the bone. My leg had fared scarcely any better.
I gestured towards the skeleton of my horse. My saddlebags were untouched. "The little bottle." I gasped as the pain began to manifest itself.
Sedenko knew the bottle I meant. He ran to the saddlebags and found it. It was dented and buckled, but still in one piece. It took him some while to tear the cork free and put it to my lips. I drank sparingly. The pain gave way to something akin to a kind of cold ecstasy and then there was oblivion. I dreamt that I was a youth again in Bek and that this adventure had, itself, been nothing more than a nightmare.
When I awoke, my friends had cleaned my body and changed my clothes. I wondered, for a moment, if, like Siegfried, I would be made immune by dragon's blood. My left arm was a mass of scars, but I could move it and there was only a soreness and a stiffness to it. Similarly, my leg had healed.
Philander Groot was smiling at me, tugging at his little beard. He appeared as composed as ever. His dress was perfect, as was his poise. "Now you are a true Knight of Chivalry, Captain von Bek," he said. "You have slain a dragon in pursuit of the Holy Grail!"
From his sash he withdrew his scabbarded sword. He offered the beautifully wrought hilt to me. "Here," he said, "you cannot be a knight without a blade."
I did not hesitate in accepting his gift. I am still unsure why he made the gesture or why I so readily responded to it.
"I am grateful to you," I said.
I was sitting upright in a corner of the great aviary. Through the foliage I could see the shattered wall and the bones of the dragon beyond it. There was no longer any sign of those birds. It was as if they awoke only when they smelled death.
I climbed to my feet.
"You have been insensible for a full day," Philander Groot told me as I strapped his sword to my belt.
"Precious hours," said I, "lost to Klosterheim."
"Perhaps," said the magus.
Sedenko came forward, leading the two remaining horses. "I have ridden ahead," he said. "There is a great plain beyond us. And beyond that is a blue-green forest which reaches to the sky. I think that we have found the edge of the world, captain."
Chapter XV
"!T is JUST like my homeland," said Grigory Petrovitch Sedenko with considerable joy, "just like the steppes of Ukrainia."
Beyond this rolling grassland the world seemed to curve upwards so that it was possible to see the hazy blue-green of a great, tranquil forest.
We were crossing a small stone bridge which appeared to have been built for a town no longer in existence. "Count Otto loved to live here, by all accounts," said Philander Groot. "It is said that he built his castle within sight of Heaven and that when he died not only did he rise up to Heaven, but that the castle was taken with him. Certainly there is no sign of it in these parts."
"Well," I said, "it should be only a little while now before I am at the end of my Quest."
"The Grail really lies yonder?" said Sedenko.
"I shall know soon." I hesitated. "I shall know if all these adventurings, all these ordeals, have been meaningless or not. Man struggles in the belief that he can, by dint of perseverance, affect his own destiny. And all those efforts, I think, lead to nothing but ruin."
"You remain a fatalist, then," said Philander Groot quietly.
"I know that Man is mortal," I said. "That famine and disease are not his to control. I sought to become a man of action in response to what I experienced. And all I brought to the world was further Pain."
"But now you could be in reach of its Cure." Philander Groot's tones were kindly. "It might be possible to free Man from his captivity, his dependency on either God or Lucifer. We could see the dawning of a New Age. An Age of Reason."
"But what if Man's Reason is as imperfect as the rest of him?" I said. "Why should we praise his poor logic, his penchant for creating laws which only further complicate his lot?"
"Ah, well," said Philander Groot. "It is all we have, perhaps. And we must learn, must we not, through trial and error."
"At the expense of our natural humanity?"
"Sometimes, perhaps." Philander Groot shrugged. "You must take my horse now, Sir Knight. I shall follow on foot as best I can."
"You have no further magic to aid you in your journey?" I asked.
"It is all used up, as I said. The Dukes of Hell are recalling every scrap of power they have leased to the likes of me. Let them have the fantastic and the sensational. I had rejected it once and now reject it again. Though I do not believe I have the choice, as I once had. However, since when I had the choice I made the same decision, I have no great sense of loss. And my need for it disappeared many years ago."