Stephen Deas - The Black Mausoleum

We kill dragons!

The earth shook. He felt the stone beneath his feet shift again, slipping ever so slightly. The claw didn’t come. When he opened his eyes, the dragon had landed. It was at the bottom, close to the mouth of the cave where he and Jasaan had hidden. It walked slowly to the base of the scree, eyeing him all the way, and then rose on its hind legs, balancing itself, stretching out its wings and its tail as far as they would go, blotting out the field and the river and the forest beyond so there was almost nothing else for Skjorl to see but dragon. It was immense. Magnificent. Its head reached as high as Skjorl on his rock, fifty, sixty feet above the ground where it stood. It stared at him.

You. Kill. Dragons.

Talking in his head. Thoughts all muffled and hard to hear, forced so hard through the remains of the potion Kataros had made that they came out mangled. But forced them through it had. If it could do that, it could hear what he was thinking. And he’d been thinking about the poison.

He’d given himself away.

Yes. The dragon cocked his head. They always looked the same to Skjorl. Hungry and angry. If they had any other expression, he’d never learned to read it. What was the point?

Nowhere. To. Go.

He knew what it wanted. It wanted him to be afraid. That was what they craved, more than anything. The chase, the bursts of fear, of terror, of despair. He’d seen them enough to know what gave them pleasure. And so he laughed, because there’d be none of that here. He was going to die the way he was supposed to. In battle with a dragon. He couldn’t have been happier; if only it didn’t hurt so much. Had to fight the pain back. Almost unbearable. Getting worse. Only way to fight that was with rage and glory and lust for the fight. He clenched his axe, the mistress who’d stood at his side since Outwatch and before, and roared, ‘I’m here, dragon! Eat me! Come on, eat me if you can! I’ll break your teeth and burn your guts. You’ll be so sick you’ll never forget.’

The dragon’s face didn’t change.

No.

It couldn’t reach him. He hadn’t seen that at first, but he saw it now. He was too high up the slope for it to grasp with its fore-claws. The slope was too shallow for it to lean forward and snatch him with its teeth without losing its balance, too steep for it to climb without bringing the whole hillside down.

He took off his helm and threw it away. ‘Burn me then!’

The dragon shifted and flapped its wings hard. Wind blasted up the slope, would have torn at Skjorl’s hair if he’d had any left.

I. Will. Crush. You.

Because fire was too easy. Fire was quick and gave little to savour. Fire took a living man and turned him to ash if he had no dragon-scale to shield himself. Fire took something and made it nothing, just like that. In a flash. No lingering, nothing to relish. Taking a man between your claws, though, holding him high up in the air, letting him feel the strength that could snap him at any moment, letting him truly know how puny, how helpless, how insignificant he was, letting that sink right down into his bones, that was the way. No will could survive that. You snapped his spirit and then you snapped his spine.

Skjorl didn’t move. He understood. They were the same, the two of them. He laughed again. ‘You can try, dragon. You can try.’

Anger pulsed from the monster, overwhelming anger. It bared its teeth at him. As if that was going to make any difference now. Skjorl bared his own back.

‘Better be quick. Before I die of laughing at you.’

It shuddered. Reached forward with its head but then withdrew, flapping its wings. Skjorl took a few steps back. The dragon could burn him any time it wanted, but that would be a defeat now. Throwing his helm away had done that. It had to hold him in its claws.

It took a tentative step onto the slope. Skjorl couldn’t see, but he heard the stone move below, felt his own boulder tremble. The dragon lurched and stepped back again.

He was laughing. Laughter and pain, the drowning pain that had tears streaming down his cheeks, what was left of them, and each tear stung like a hot knife drawn down his face. ‘You can’t,’ he screamed. ‘You can’t win! You can’t possibly win!’ He wasn’t even goading it any more.

The dragon tried the slope a second time and again the boulder trembled. It let out a shriek of fury and frustration, quivered, threw back its head, hurled a torrent of fire into the sky and then stared at Skjorl once more.

Crush! You!

It was up on tiptoe, wings stretched out wide again for balance. Teetering towards him, lost to the need to smash him. It withdrew a fraction and then it lunged.

Skjorl jumped away. Its head hit the boulder where he’d been standing, a yard short. He gave it a long cold stare. It looked… It looked almost comical.

‘The trouble with your kind,’ he said, as he lifted his axe high over his head, ‘is that you are so stupid.’

It flapped its wings furiously, trying to draw away from the slope. It pushed its head against the boulder to lever itself off. Dragons had good necks. Strong. Full of muscle. It drove itself away from Skjorl’s axe.

But Skjorl wasn’t bringing the axe down, had never planned to. He jumped away. Sideways. Off the boulder.

The dragon finished heaving itself back, pushing its weight into the slope as it wrenched itself away. Into the boulder Skjorl had been standing on. And as it did, the boulder tipped and began to slide, and with it came half the hillside, backed up behind it, enough loose rock and stone to build a castle. Skjorl ran, but the tumbling stones swept his feet away as easily as a child plucking a blade of grass. At the last he jumped, as high in the air as he could, trying to get away from the worst. No use. The stones under his feet were rolling over each other and he might as well have tried to walk on water. A rock flew at him, pitched from higher up, as big as he was. It caught him a glancing blow, spun him around and knocked him down. No chance to get up again. All he could do was curl up, wrap his arms around his ruined face and trust to his armour and his ancestors to protect him as stones rained over him.

Something hit him in the hip, hard. Another blow to the head. The next was on his ankle, smashed. Then another round the head, and then, for a time, merciful darkness.

Light. That was all he could see when he opened the one eye that still worked. Light. There wasn’t any pain any more. Numb. Everything. Couldn’t feel his hands, couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t feel anything.

Couldn’t move.

He blinked. He could still do that.

The light slowly separated into shades. Bright sky. Dark earth. Stones everywhere. Littered across the end of the field. And a dragon, darker still.

Lying on the ground ahead of him. Head turned. Looking at him.

Pain. He felt it now, but not his. Pain and a fading futile fury.

One broken wing. One broken leg. Half buried in the fallen rubble, neck crushed by the stone that had been holding up the mountain.

The dragon. Lying beside him, a little way away.

It stared at him.

I will come back. You will not. And then the light slowly went out of its eyes. Skjorl tried to laugh. His lungs shook. Not much else.

He stopped breathing. Took a moment to notice. It was as though he’d simply forgotten how.

Vish, you better have kept a woman and good bottle of something strong ready and waiting for me.

He winked at the dead dragon. ‘Got you both.’

I’m coming, Vish.

The shades merged together again. The light faded.

Was gone.

As soon as the dragon took to the air, Jasaan ran. Head-down sprint, straight across the open towards the place he’d seen the alchemist. The outsider had been dragging her somewhere and he’d had a purpose about him. Neither of the Adamantine Men had seen where he was taking her but it had to be more than just the nearest piece of cover.