Zach Hughes: Killbird

———, that dirty word of her people. And a companion. Someone with whom to talk. Now, thinking that she was dead, a hurting in my chest, tears on my face, all the pain, told me that she had become more, and I cradled her in my arms and crooned grief and sympathy for her. After a long, long day, she opened her eyes again. «I hurt,» she said. «You will be all right.» «My head.» She put her hand up and winced. «It is not broken.» «I feel…» And she slept. She was dizzy for a few days, during which we made camp by the stream and she constantly wanted me to hold her, which, as she felt better, led to other things, and, finally, laughing, I accused her of pretending to be dizzy so that we would not walk but stay in camp to do the together closeness. She smiled, but then she shuddered. «When I saw the dragon…» «You saw it?» «Then I felt the pain and there was a moment when I was alive before I died and in that moment I knew regret.» «I know,» I said. «I would have felt it, too, for I would have died, my Mar, without telling you that you are my true pairmate.» «Truly?» I had explained to her the ways of our people, that pairs mate for life and two lives are as one. «Truly.» «My regret, too, was that I had not spoken,» she said. «Speak now, then,» I said. «I hesitate.» «We are pairmates. You may speak anything.» «But I may be wrong.» She clung to me. «Oh, I do not want to be wrong.» «Between pairmates, nothing is wrong except the giving of pain,» I said. «It is that I have not blooded for three moons,» she said. I digested this information, nodding. Thinking of all the implications, remembering the deformed baby which an inbreeder had killed by smashing its head against a tree. «Perhaps I am merely old, for in old women the blooding stops,» she said. «At fifteen, no, sixteen summers?» I asked. «I will be happy if I am right,» she said. «Will you, Eban?» She gazed at me from behind long lashes, her face fearful. «It will be a son,» I said. «We will call it after my father.» «And you are happy?» «Yes,» I said. But I could think of nothing except that deformed thing which died even before it lived, of the sickness in Mar's people, of the warning tingle which came, ever so faintly, from her very bones. It is forbidden to mate with the inbreeders of the lower slopes. Another sin for the head of Eban, Killer of His People. Now I was taking the taint, the sickness, into the very home of my kind. We circled the field of the dragon. His path lay through a valley, and he was in the center, commanding a view of the entire valley and the ridges surrounding it, and had I been inclined to kill, I would have been sore tested to approach that one, for he was well placed. Within a moon Mar's belly was swollen, and she was happy. We saw signs of people, but I skirted them. I did not want to be seen by the true men of the hills, without hair, in my present condition, with a hairy inbreeder woman as my companion. But I had forgotten the skills of my people. As we made our way up a valley, leading into the hills, making camps beside a clear and cold stream, living on the plenty of the hills, I walked into an ambush without realizing it. I had become spoiled by the easy life among the lesser men. I saw, suddenly, two men leap into the clearing in front of me. «Ho, hairy one,» one of them said. «I am Eban the Hunter, son of Egan, of the family of Strabo the Strongarm of the northern hills,» I said, bowing in politeness, my hardax dangling in front of me. «He knows the form,» one man said. «Haired,» the other said. «He lies.» «I have hair, but I am a man,» I said. «I have killed dragons, for which I have proof, with your permission.» «Ha,» said a mountain man. I took that for permission. I took the necklace of dragon's guts from my pack. Mar refused to wear it. I tossed it onto the ground at the feet of the mountain men. «Ha,» they said, together. «How can it be true, from a hairy one?» «It is a curse,» I said. «And I have suffered for it. But I have flown, and I have seen the killbird.» «No inbreeder talks so,» said one of them. «I beg only that we be allowed to cross your land,» I said. «We seek nothing, save living room, and we hope to find it in the western hills, where our hair will give no offense.» «That is for the family head to decide,» said one. «Understood. May I beg to speak with him?» «Follow.» «Ho,» said the other. «First I test. Lay down your bow and hardax, hairy one.» I obeyed his orders. He came close, so close that he could have felt the warning had he been so close to Mar, but he did not test Mar, only me. And he said, «It is true. He is not of the inbreeders.» We followed the two mountain men into a clean and tidy village of hidehouses. It was the family of Stoneskull the Leftarm. He reminded me so much of Strabo that I was saddened. We were surrounded by the people, in front of Stoneskull's hidehouse, and given leave to speak. I repeated my desire for safe passage to the west. «There be dragons,» Stoneskull said. «I am Eban, slayer of dragons,» I said, presenting him with one strand of my dragon's-gut necklace. There was an oohing and a moan of approval. «We will hear your story,» Stoneskull said, and with feasting and rhythm from the drum, I told of my slaying of both the lion and the dragon and, for the first time, never even having told it to Mar, the tale of my leading the killbird to slay my family. There was a moan of sympathy. «It is true, God has seen fit to try you,» Stoneskull said. «I think you have suffered enough, and, although you are haired, you may, should you choose, live in our lands.» But not, I noted in their village. «You are generous, honorable father,» I said. «But we seek solitude to live with our curse in peace.» «I grant you permission to traverse our lands, but I warn you that beyond the rocky dome there be dragons so deadly that no man returns.» We spent the night in the village, sleeping in the open, for no one was willing to give hospitality to haired ones, and then set out. The hills seemed to be thickly populated with families. But they were all offshoots of the Stoneskull family, so that word went ahead of us and we were welcomed with food and fireside in camps between a series of ridges which led ever deeper into the mountains. I became Eban the Storyteller, and there were times when I could hear Mar giggle as, to add entertainment value, I embellished our adventures. But at last we were below the rocky dome, and beyond it, as we were constantly warned, were dragons of the fiercest disposition. Mar was big in the belly when we made the last climb. To her everlasting credit, she did not complain, nor did she question my decisions. She, too, felt the shame of being considered a freak and wanted to find a valley of our own, a place where we could have our child and, dream though it was, start our own family, a family of hairy ones in the midst of the people. A mist crept over us as we climbed. The going was easy, for although the dome was the highest in that part of the mountains, the dome from which I flew, that last time, reached to the clouds. The summit was barren, rocky. Huge boulders joined each other in a line along the crest. I approached them cautiously and peered over into the valley beyond, a narrow cleft between two ridged backs. I saw neither dragon nor the white bones of the dead. Nor did I see sign as we went down into the cleft, started the climb of the opposite side, gained the top of the ridge and looked out over ridges descending toward the west. «The dragons of these hills,» I told Mar, «are like the dragons of the east, often told but seldom seen.» «I pray so,» she said. The days were shortening. Soon it would be time to build a hidehouse, to make a clearing, to store provisions for the winter. I felt like a new man, home in my mountains, the air clean, the temperatures cool. I studied the ridges ahead of me and saw, the second ridge over, that there was space for what should be a nice valley. «There,» I said, pointing. We took a leisurely two days to make the journey, I taking note of a dam of the swimmers and promising Mar a winter garment of their warm hides. I saw bear sign. I began to look upon that valley, which now lay just over the next ridge, as my home, and I prayed that the tales of the dragons had kept it free of men. I was to find one obstacle. As we climbed, I came upon a dragon's path of a type not known to me. The dragon had lain down two lines of dragon stuff which lay, bleeding and twisted, atop a little mound which extended alongside the ridge. It was evident that the path was long unused. In places there were slides and the lines of dragon stuff were buried. It made for easy walking, and it seemed to point toward the top of the ridge, so we followed—to see, as we rounded an outcrop of rock with a drop of two arrow flights to the bed of a rocky stream below, the strangest dragon of my experience. I leaped back. Mar was behind me, and dragon's teeth shattered the rock outcrop and hummed off into the air over the long drop. «We must go back,» she said. «We shall see.» I crawled and peered around the outcrop. The dragon lay, half curled, in the curve of ridge, long, bleeding with ancient blood, one large eye on its head looking directly down the path toward me. The dragon was segmented, and I could see that his body was connected by a backbone, low, and at the end of the segments I could see space between them, except where the backbone connected, down low, I considered. The dragon was blocking the way to my unseen valley, but he was stupid, like my first dragon, for he had chosen his lair below a cliff which rose above him. I determined to test him, to find his capabilities. The path in front of us was littered with rock fall and obviously unused. Indeed, the path to his very head was the same, and, as I examined him, I suspected that he was unable, for some reason, to move, for there were no fresh tracks and things grew in the pathway. Was he mortally wounded and lying there to die, taking eternity to do it? I took off my pack, took out my sleepskin, held it on my longbow and suspended it beyond the outcrop and did not manage to jerk it back until, with a blast of sound and buzzing, teeth shredded it. The dragon had no shortage of teeth, despite his obvious age. «Please, let's go back,» Mar begged. «It is only one dragon,» I said, «and it spits teeth only from its middle.» Indeed, I had observed that as the dragon ruined my sleepskin. Three heads on its middle, on one of the separate segments of his body, turned and spat as I tested him once again, watching closely. The other segments had eyes, but they seemed to be of the sort which were on the cave of the giants, eyes without the deadly burning fires. I made a few more tests, just to be sure, and there was no burst of fire, only the teeth which made little popping sounds as they passed close by, outside the protecting outcrop. «We will kill him and rid the mountains of him,» I said. «He will kill us,» Mar said. «No. Now, here is what you must do.» I told her, and I left her there. The year with me had given her courage. I climbed to the top of the ridge and made my way carefully to a point overlooking the dragon's middle. There I positioned myself. Then, for I wanted more information, I shrilled out a signal to Mar. She heard and extended the tattered sleepskin on a stick. I watched. The three heads jerked and spat, and as they spat I stood in the open and yelled at the dragon. Immediately one head started turning, and I dived for cover. Yes, I knew then that the heads could turn individually and that I would have to work carefully. I went for Mar, took her to a safe distance, made our camp. At the sun, she insisting upon going with me, I went to the top of the ridge and studied the situation. This one was an alert dragon, sending his heads searching at the sound of my movements, hailing his spat teeth into the thick trees around us. In any forest there is an ample supply of deadwood, unless fire has passed recently, and this forest, although not overly thick, was littered with deadwood. First I cut green saplings, and, crawling on my belly and using rocks for cover, hearing the song of the spat teeth around and over me, but staying behind the protecting stones, I built a sort of hold, a bed of green saplings braced against rocks and half suspended over the cliff. Then, that part of it finished, the rest was easier. I was able to toss deadwood and debris onto my platform from the safety of the cover of the trees until, by nightfall, I had a huge pile. The weight of it sagged the saplings which held it. Since I wanted to be sure of seeing all of the action, I waited for morning, and then, with the sun, I tossed a burning brand into the huge pile of deadwood. The resulting fire spread quickly until, smoke reaching for the skies, there was a huge blaze which ate through the supporting saplings and sent the entire blazing mass down the cliff. It lodged exactly where I'd planned, against the living portion of the dragon. Now I followed through, sending the largest dead logs I could roll tumbling down the cliff into the blazing fire, until, after a morning's sweaty work, there was a heap of burning logs beside the dragon, which, as I'd suspected, could not move. From a place of safety we watched as the fire burned hotter and hotter, the thick logs blazing, the flames licking high on the dragon's sides. We waited. Once a head turned and sent an aimless spit of teeth into the air, and then all three heads went into motion. As we watched the dragon, which was obviously in pain, there was a flash of light followed by a boom of thunder louder than the summer storms, and the dragon burst as a green nut bursts when thrown into a bed of glowing embers. One by one his segments, the chaos of God following his body in two directions, from middle to front, from middle to back, burst with the thunder, and I knew great fear for both myself and Mar, for dragon flesh began to rain down everywhere. Only the fact that we were in dense tree cover saved us from injury or death as dragonskin fell, some of it sizzling hot, all around us, bouncing down through the branches, knocking away branches and leaves and needles. When all was quiet I ventured a look over the cliff. Only the dragon's head survived, and a segment of his tail. I led Mar down to the scene of his death, and there were bits of skin for the picking, some jagged and excellent for hardaxes. A fire was burning in the dragon's dead head, and as we watched it spread, apparently feeding on stored blood, which leaked and burned and engulfed the head and left, after a day of burning, only blackened shells of the dragon's head. In the shattered tail we found sharp pieces of eye, good for scraping and for decoration, and, most valuable, chair things covered with a sort of hide which was soft and warm. I told Mar we would come back for it to make her pretty skirts. And there was a treasure house of dragonskin all around me. Our new life would be started in ease and richness, and should I desire, I could march back to the people of the Stoneskull families and trade for many buythings with the skin pieces. Now, however, I wanted to see my valley. We walked down the rotted and broken dragon's path and came to a curious place where the path went into the mountain, into a blackness lined with a sort of white stone or bone. Eban the curious looked in and saw light at the far end. It seemed to extend under the ridge and come out the other side. «I will not,» Mar said. «The dragon is dead.» «You go if you must, and leave your child fatherless and your pairmate lonely.» «That would be a sadness,» I said, grinning. «So we go together.» So, unwillingly, she came, clutching my hand tightly. There was nothing. The dragon's hole simply went under the mountain and came out the other side, and we looked down upon the sweetest valley I'd seen since leaving the Valley of Clean Water. Gods of man, it was beautiful. It was a perfect bowl, and all around the hill rose to almost uniform height, with no gap that I could see. The dragon's path went around the inside of the ridge and spiraled downward toward the valley floor, I was too eager to take the long way. I led Mar down the slope. I noted a stream cascading down the side of the slope and knew that somewhere there had to be a way out of the valley, otherwise the entire bowl would be a lake. I would find the outlet for the stream later. I would explore every stone, every tree, for the valley was mine, mine and my pairmate's and our unborn son's. With an eye toward permanence, I found a pleasant knoll near the stream and selected a site high enough to prevent flooding when the snows melted. «Here we will build our house,» I told Mar. I had one fresh deerhide, and there were signs of plenty of game. I left Mar beside a fire at the new homesite and went walking, took a huge stag near the camp, skinned him, and put Mar to work preparing the skin. We had fresh meat roasted over the fire and slept entwined to wake with a feeling of joy and anticipation. My valley was not as small as it first appeared. It took us several days to familiarize ourselves with it. There were wild fruit trees on the southern edge which offered a bounty, since the fruit was at its ripest; and there was an abundance of small game. I had, I discovered, my own farm of swimmers to be harvested as needed for clothing. Now, however, the main object was to finish the hidehouse. To gather the material I hunted alone and found, at the western end of the valley, the outlet of our stream. A natural cleft in the rock wall had been breached, and the stream tumbled through a narrow ravine with towering hills on either side, the depths of the gorge seldom seeing the sun, so narrow was it. I made a tentative probe into the ravine, wading and noting that fat fish lay in shallow pools. I was no more than an arrow's flight into the ravine when I saw the warning gleam of whiteness. From long habit I froze and then sought cover. Dragons in that deep and narrow ravine? Not likely. And yet, as I looked carefully, I saw another and another pile of weathered white bones of death, and I set out to study the situation. I saw nothing. There was no space for a dragon's path, and I began to think that the animal had been a victim of a lion or a bear. However, I knew that rashness is danger, so I did not plunge into the ravine, but, rather, retreated and sought to climb the hill to the north to get an overall view of the ravine. I startled a deer, and, since deerhide was my objective, I loosed an arrow which took the beast in the shoulder in a nonfatal spot. Panicked, in dire pain, no doubt, the poor animal bolted, saw me, and turned to run into the ravine, splashing along the bed of the stream. He had gone only a short distance when, with a chatter of horrible proportions, at least two dragons, one on either side of the ravine and high up on the hills, began to spit teeth in such a hail that the deer was slain in midleap. I saw the flash of an eye, high near the top. I did not like that development. Dragons on the hills. They could, it seemed, have a view of the entire valley. However, both Mar and I had walked near, within range of a dragon's teeth, and had lived. It was a puzzle. I began to climb the slope, finding the going tough as the side of the hill steepened, and kept an eye out for the telltale signs of the bones of death. There were none. I made a slow approach to the spot from which I had seen the gleam of an eye, and, in the dense growth, was closer than I wanted to be when I saw the bloodstained hide of a dragon showing through the trees. I crept close. This was a peculiar dragon, I found, with no feet. His body was half a globe, sitting on the ground, and his head was not eyed all around. There were eyes on the front side, facing the ravine, and holes from which the dragon had spat teeth. I studied how to kill the beast, to rid my valley of him. Since he was on top of the hill, I could not roll rocks down on him, and that left only fire. However, to burn him meant exposing myself, and I had little inclination to do that. But behind the dragon were no bones of death. Looking past him into the ravine I could see several white spots. Could he not, then, turn his head? To test him I exposed myself, ready to leap for cover. There was no action from the dragon. I taunted and jeered and crept ever closer until I was close enough to cast stones which rang off his tough hide. He seemed not to notice. However, when I threw large stones past him his head jerked and followed their roll down the steep side of the ravine. A peculiar dragon, indeed. I crept to his side and put my hand on his cold and bloodstained hide. He did not seem to know I was there. I began to gather dry wood and built a fire at his back, stacked it with logs and went back into the trees to watch. The fire burned for a long time and I kept awaiting the blast of his bursting, but when there were only embers his hide was blackened by smoke but intact. He was a tough one. I knew that he had a mate on the opposite side of the ravine, and keeping behind him, I began to search out the other dragon. At last, hidden in underbrush, I saw the sun reflect off an eye, and then, to my concern, I saw another reflection a bit farther down the ravine, still at the top of the hills, however. I scouted on my side and came upon a second dragon like the first, unable to turn