A Dragon at Worlds' End (4 page)

Then the firs ended and he burst out into a wide clearing. Tall trees lined the eastern side; the scarp cliff was visible on the other. He doubled for the cliff, his legs extending strongly before and behind him. There were scattered palms and a few pine trees as he approached the farther side. Behind him he heard the first shrieks as the pursuit emerged from the fir tree forest. They had him in their sights. Now it was simply a footrace and Relkin was sure he would soon lose that—he'd seen these creatures run and they were better than any human athlete in the world.

He burst through a patch of ferns and caught sight of the spring's wide pool and the dark cave mouth beyond it. Shouting for Baz, he sprang toward it. Behind him came a dozen nightmares, their long arms held out for him, their jaws eager to rend him to pieces.

He was still ahead by the time he reached the pool, but he knew he couldn't get all the way to the cave. In desperation he dove into the water and swam out to the center. It was deep there, well over his head.

The yellow-skinned killers ran up and waded out into the water, and Relkin's heart sank. Then, when the water was up to their bellies, they stopped. They did not swim well and would not venture into water too deep for wading. Instead they stood there in a pack and ululated in frustration as he trod water in the center of the pool and tried to think of a way out of this fix. Their eyes had an implacable gleam. They would wait for him. He could not stay out of reach forever. Even if he drowned, eventually he'd float close enough for them to eat him.

Relkin was beginning to think that this really was going to be the end. Keeping afloat wasn't a problem yet, but eventually he would tire and either drop his weapons or drown. It was a miracle that these killers didn't swim, and that alone had saved him.

How long could he float? Despair was solidifying when a sudden gleam of metal caught his eye. He focused and glimpsed a movement in the palm trees. A moment later Bazil slid forth from the trees with Ecator in his hands.

Relkin roused himself to splash and splutter and moved a little closer to the edge of the pond. The predators crowded to that side, their eyes intent on the prey.

Relkin moved closer yet. They made grasping motions, and even stepped farther into the water so that it rose to their shoulders. They could virtually taste him, he was sure.

And then the Broketail dragon was upon them from the rear. Ecator came around in beautiful flashing cut and two of the beasts expired in an instant as their heads were severed from their shoulders. Their bodies fell in the water in a red froth as the rest whipped around with a weird, collective wail. Bazil swung the other way, just above the waterline, and took his third in the legs, bringing it down among the others.

The rest sprang at him.

Relkin had been paddling closer. Now his feet were on the bottom and he pushed to the shore and launched himself onto the back of the hindmost, landed on the hard backbone, reached around the next moment, and sawed its throat apart with his sword. It bucked, tried to claw him off with its foot, and would have but for the intervention of sudden death. Relkin rose from the wreck in a crouch, ready to throw himself back into the water if several of them came for him. None did.

Bazil, meanwhile, had slain his fourth beast with a backhand slice, cleaving it through the neck and shoulder. The jaws in the severed head kept snapping in rictus spasm even as it hit the ground and rolled into the margin of the pond.

The rest stood their ground, growling and shrieking, but not venturing within range of Ecator. The things had finally grown wary. They drew off out of range of that gleaming arc of terrible steel and started circling. Relkin splashed all the way out of the water and lurched up to join Baz. Together they backed toward the cave.

"Real glad to see you," he muttered to the big dragon back.

"Fool boy almost make lunch for these things."

The creatures had noticed now that their numbers had been reduced almost by half. Their pack had suffered terrible damage. They grew more cautious, but there was no sign of any slackening of interest. They continued to stalk their prey, step by step, as they went back over the rock and gravel into the cave mouth behind the spring.

Still the yellow-skinned killers hesitated, holding off for fear of the sword, until Bazil and Relkin had actually reached the cave mouth. The realization that the prey was going to escape into a cave finally overcame their caution and they thrust forward suddenly.

"Back," hissed the dragon as he swung the sword. The things had learned their lesson; they dodged and ducked back. Bazil struck a rock with the heel of his foot and he almost wobbled off balance, presenting his belly to those deadly sickle claws, but at the last moment he managed to steady himself with a hand to the rock wall. He kept his sword point between himself and the killers. They drew back again.

He edged backward into the darkness of the cave.

It was cool in there, and moist and very quiet.

The yellow and scarlet demons outside let loose with a volley of mournful ululations.

"Wish they'd give it up," grumbled the dragon.

"They're shockingly persistent."

Suddenly the leader of the pack thrust its head in and Relkin cut down and his sword sank into its neck. It jerked its head back violently and tore the sword out of Relkin's hands. The sickle claw lashed forward and Relkin felt it part the skin over his left ribs as he darted to the right. When he put a hand to the cut he found he was bleeding slightly from a gash over four ribs. But he'd been lucky—another inch the wrong way and his guts would have been around his ankles.

The pack leader was still struggling with Relkin's embedded sword when Bazil thrust with Ecator and ended it. The great sword spitted the beast clean through and it died virtually instantly. Bazil put a foot on its fanged snout and heaved Ecator free. The blade was home to a fell spirit, long ago tamed by the witches, but still implacably fierce. It seemed to glow for a moment, saturated with the equally fierce life force of the dead predator. Relkin recovered his own sword with shaking hands.

The others were reluctant to follow their leader. They remained outside, mourning the destruction of their terrifying pack.

Relkin groped his way back into the cave a short ways. The cold mustiness spoke of water in that darkness somewhere.

"Let's try the cave," he said.

Bazil agreed readily enough. There were still enough of the killers back there to be dangerous in the extreme. "Run to ground, as they say."

"I think you're right, Baz. They don't want to come in, so they're hoping we'll eventually have to come out."

Relkin led the way, feeling with feet and hands and describing the ground to the dragon as they entered it. It was smooth and moist, and there were occasional blocks of stone fallen from the ceiling that made it essential to feel one's way carefully.

"Wait a minute," said Baz.

"Why?"

"Food."

Bazil stepped back to the mouth of the cave and hauled in the body of the pack leader. He took it by the head and pulled it along behind them. It weighed perhaps two hundred pounds and would feed both of them pretty well for a couple of days.

Still dragging the carcass, they moved on through a series of limestone rooms not quite large enough to be called caverns, until Relkin spied a light coming from above. Soon they were under it, light trickling, gleaming down from somewhere up on the scarp slope. To reach it they would have to climb.

Fortunately there was a tumbled mass of limestone blocks fallen in from the ceiling of the chamber. They clambered up these and eventually emerged from a sinkhole in a gully that had cut into the steep face of the scarp. Cautiously Relkin stepped forward and peered out of the gully. They were about sixty feet above their former position. The pool was visible in the palm trees and so were a couple of the sickle-claw killers. The predators stood stock-still facing toward the cave. Relkin knew the rest of them would be there, too, hidden among the palms, all watching for their reappearance.

With as much stealth as they could manage, Relkin and Bazil slipped away up the gully for another hundred feet. Then they slid into the short-tree forest and worked their way along the face of the scarp about half a mile before cautiously descending again. There was no sign of pursuit. Once on level ground, they paused to butcher the sickle-claw carcass. The meat was very tough, as Bazil discovered when he bit into a thigh after cutting it free.

"It's going to need long, slow cooking to ever be edible," said Relkin.

"Bake in hot rock oven, then. Like troll, it tough, but it soften with long slow heat."

"Good idea, Baz."

There was still some time before nightfall. They hurried away as fast as they could, now carrying the burden of legs and chops and other prime pieces.

When they'd put a few miles between themselves and the remains of the pack, Relkin started collecting all the dead wood he could find. Since there was quite a lot of well-cured litter on the forest floor, he soon had enough for a good blaze. They came out upon a small clearing and there Relkin built a fire. Bazil pulled in some larger pieces, they were virtually tree trunks, and the two broke them up with their swords as best they might.

Relkin still had his pouch and a few necessities, including flint and steel for making sparks, and a small bottle of Old Sugustus disinfectant. Now he got the fire going quickly and used dried grasses as tinder to get wood chips and twigs alight. The stuff was nicely dry. Soon he had a blaze that roared on through a great pile of branches and brush. While the fire burned, they dug up dozens of large stones which they placed in the fire to get red hot.

Then they waited, virtually slavering with anticipation. Relkin took care of his wound, a slice that just broke the skin about four inches long straight down his rib cage on the left side. The sun went down in the swift tropical manner and left them in possession of the only firelight in hundreds of miles.

Later, the fire burned down to a huge mass of embers, with the rocks glowing in their midst. Relkin had wrapped the joints, ribs, and chops in palm leaves wetted in a nearby stream. These he laid out to sizzle and sputter on the mound of hot coals. Then they put more wet palm fronds over them and piled on some dirt until it was completely covered.

Separately Relkin had roasted a few slices from one thigh and a section from the shoulder. They chewed on these while they waited for the rest to bake through completely. The meat was very tough and took a lot of chewing. Bazil hardly bothered, tossing back a few fragments with a grunt. It stimulated an appetite that needed no reminding of its fierceness.

They went to slake their thirst at the stream and disturbed a small group of two-legged herbivorous beasts, each twice Bazil's size. With nervous hoots, the huge beasts looked up and then withdrew quietly into the trees on the other side of the stream. In a few moments they were gone. Relkin watched them go, awestruck by the silence in which they moved.

When they returned to the fire they found a small predator beast in possession of the site, prowling around the warm place from which the delicious smells arose. It was not a sickle-claw, but an immature member of another type which they called the "red-browns," for the earthy color of their hides. They'd grown far too familiar with these huge two-legged horrors during the Legion march across the ancient Lands of Terror. The biggest red-browns were used to attacking anything and everything. When confronted by the Legions, with their oxen and horses, the big red-browns had always attacked and had always to be slain before they would stop.

This one was smaller than Bazil, however, and at the sight of them it withdrew, snarling in frustration and some degree of mystification. Bazil considered killing it, but Relkin recalled to him the way it had been at the Legion camp in the jungle. The smell of dead meat always brought more predators, and you had to keep on killing them until they were stacked around you ten feet deep. It was better to let this one depart, since it wanted to anyway.

Stomachs rumbling, they waited until the ground had begun to cool before digging into the mound of earth and leaves and pulling out the steaming parcels of meat. They were still too hot to handle, but dragon and boy were too hungry to wait any longer and with a lot of blowing to cool pieces down, they tucked in.

The meat was stringy, but it was food. Relkin found that with his shrunken belly he was sated very quickly. As his stomach went to work for the first time in days, he grew drowsy and fell asleep for a few minutes. While he slept, Bazil continued to eat, working his way through a baked thigh, holding it up and chewing it down to the femur. When Relkin awoke from his nap, his appetite was restored and he tucked into the rest of the smaller chops. It reminded him of mutton, braised mutton.

Before they had finished, however, they were interrupted by the arrival of a much larger member of the red-brown fraternity of carnivorous beast. This one was close to full grown and since as a tribe they tended to be enormous, it was easily twice Bazil's weight. The monster refused to go away even after Bazil heaved hot rocks at it by grasping them with a wad of palm leaves. It stalked around their fire, eying them and sniffing the remains of their feast hungrily. Finally hunger overruled caution and it lunged forward with a mighty scream.

Bazil arose with a grunt of annoyance. He felt wonderfully full, but just a little torpid as a result of the effort to digest a hundred pounds of meat. The red-brown beast came lunging at him, snapping its huge jaws and trying to frighten him. Perhaps it was the torpor of so much meat, perhaps it was the knowledge of the power of dragon-sword, but Bazil felt no fear. Bazil had dedicated his life to skill with the great sword. The red-brown tyrant beast knew nothing of such matters. It simply wanted to eat him. Bazil steadied himself, raised Ecator, and waited until the beast finally drew close enough. Bazil had observed that these brutes usually tried the same maneuver: They would charge and try to panic you. If you turned and ran, they would seize you by the back of the neck and you were done for. If you stood your ground, they would swing the huge head in from one side or the other in an effort to get in a killing bite. One bite from those heavy jaws would be enough in most cases. It came on; he refused to run, so it ducked low and tried to sink its teeth into his left side. He swung Ecator with full force and took its head off with a single, clean blow.