The Dragon and the George (29 page)

"Harpy!" said Brian beside him, on a slow intake of breath.

It came on.

Surely, thought Jim, it would veer aside at the last moment; but it continued to swoop directly toward the two. Now he saw why his eyes had refused to focus on that white face. It was not merely that it was human and female. More terrible than that, it was completely mad. The frozen features of insanity rode above the pinions of the huge, winged creature swooping toward them—

Abruptly it was on them, driving at Jim's throat; and everything seemed to happen in a single moment.

A dark shape shot into the air toward the harpy just before it reached him. Long jaws clicked on emptiness where a fraction of a second before the white face had been, and the harpy screamed hideously, jerking aside into Brian, half tumbling the knight from Blanchard's back before it's long wings caught on the air and beat upward once more to safety.

On the ground, Aragh was snarling softly to himself. Brian pulled his body upright again in the saddle. The harpy, its strike missed, was now winging away from them through the air, back toward the tower.

"It's well for you the wolf turned it away," said Brian, somberly. "Its bite is poison. I own that hell-face had me spellbound and frozen."

"Let it try again," said Aragh, viciously. "I don't miss twice."

A voice broke in on them, wailing from out over the still fenwater to their left.

"No! No! Turn back, your worships! Turn back! It's no use. It's death for you all, up there!"

They turned their heads.

"Why, dammit!" Brian exclaimed. "Its' that mere-dragon of yours."

"No," said Aragh, testing the air with his nose. "Another. Different scent."

A mere-dragon, looking enough like Secoh to be a twin, was perched precariously on a small tussock of half-drowned soil and marsh grass about forty feet out from the causeway.

"Oh, please!" it cried, stretching out its wings and fanning them to maintain its balance on the tussock. "You won't be able to do any good; and we'll all suffer for it. They're woken up now in the tower, and you'll just make Them angry if you go there!"

"Them?" called Jim. "You mean the Dark Powers?"

"Them—Them!" wailed the mere-dragon, despairingly. "Them that built and live in the Loathly Tower, that sent the blight on us five hundred years ago. Can't you feel Them, waiting for you there? Can't you smell Them? They that never die, they who hate us all. They who draw to Them all terrible, evil things…"

"Come here," said Jim. "Come onto the causeway here. I want to talk to you."

"No… no!" whined the mere-dragon. He threw a terrified glance at the line approaching over the grass and water. "I have to fly—get away!" He flapped his wings, rising slowly into the air. "They've broken loose again and now we're all lost—lost—!"

A breeze out of the chill wintriness beyond the moving line seemed to, catch the mere-dragon and whirl him away into the sky. He went, flying heavily, back toward the mainland, crying in a thin, despairing voice.

"Lost…lost… lost…!"

"There, now," said Brian. "What was I telling you about mere-dragons? How can a gentleman gain honor or worship by slaying a beast like that—"

In midsentence, the words died on his tongue. While they had been talking to the mere-dragon, the line had come upon them; and as Brian spoke, it passed beneath them. The cold winter colors beyond it enclosed them, and the knight and Jim looked at each other with faces gone ash-colored and pinched.

"In manus tuas, Domine,"
said the knight, softly, and crossed himself.

All about and around them, the serest gray of winter light lay on all things. The waters of the fens stretched thick, oily and still between the patches of dull-green grass. A small, cold breeze wandered through the tops of the bullrushes, making them rattle together with dry and distant sounds, like old bones cast out into some forgotten churchyard. The trees stood helpless and quiet, their leaves now dried and faded like people aged before their time; while all about, a heaviness—as of hope gone dead—pressed down on all living things.

"Sir James," said the knight in an odd, formal tone and with words Jim had never before heard him use, "wit thee well that we have in this hour set our hands to no small task. Wherefore, I pray thee that, should it be thou alone who return and I am slain, thou shalt not leave my lady nor those who are of my kindred live on in ignorance of mine end."

"I—I'll be most honored to inform them—" Jim answered, awkwardly, from a dry throat.

"I thank thee for thy most gentle courtesy," said Brian, "and will do in like event for thee, so soon as I may find ship to take me beyond the western seas."

"Just—tell Angie. My lady, Angela, I mean," said Jim. "You needn't worry about anybody else."

He had a sudden mental picture of the strange, brave, honest character beside him actually leaving home and family to head out over nearly three thousand miles of unknown ocean in obedience to a promise given a near-stranger. The image made him wince inside, in its comparison to the picture he had of himself.

"I shall do so," said Brian—and at once reverted to his ordinary self, swinging down out of his saddle onto the ground. "Blanchard won't go another inch, damn him! I'll have to lead him—"

He broke off, looking back past Jim.

"Where'd the bowman and Mistress Danielle go?" he asked.

Jim turned. Brian was correct. As far as the eye could see, there was no sign of the two who, they had assumed, were following them.

"Aragh?" Jim asked. "Where did they go?"

"They fell behind, sometime since," said the wolf. "Perhaps they changed their minds about coming with us. They're back there somewhere. If it weren't for the trees and bushes, you might still see them."

A moment's silence followed.

"Then, let's on without them," said Brian.

He tugged at the bridle of Blanchard. The white horse reluctantly took one step, then another. They moved off. Jim and Aragh fell into step alongside.

As they traveled onward, the dreariness all around and pressing down upon them had the effect of stifling conversation. Even existing seemed to be an effort under its influence, and each movement of their bodies required a conscious exertion of will; their arms and legs were like lead weights swung heavily and reluctantly into each slow, necessary step. But the effect of their silence was worse, for it left them isolated, each set off alone in the dark pool of his own thoughts. They moved as if in some pale dream, speaking now and then for a moment, then falling silent.

As they progressed, the causeway narrowed. From forty yards across, it dwindled until it became as many feet. The trees, too, shortened and became more stunted—more twisted and gnarled—and under their feet the thinning grass revealed a different soil, an earth lacking in the rich blackness of the fenland toward the main shore. Here it was sandy, with a sterile, flinty hardness. It crunched under their weight and under the hooves of Blanchard, and was at once unyielding and treacherous.

The white warhorse checked himself suddenly. He tossed his head and tried to back up instead of going forward.

"What the hell!" exploded Brian, tugging on the reins. "What devil's into him now—"

"Listen," said Jim, who had also stopped.

For a moment, Jim could almost make himself believe he had imagined what he had just heard. But then it sounded again and began to grow in volume. It was just ahead of them and getting closer. It was the chittering of sandmirks.

The volume soared upward. Clearly, the sandmirks were not just in front of them, but all around. The dark predators had simply not all given voice, to start with; but now they were in full chorus. Jim felt the sound they made reaching through, once more, to the old primitive areas of his midbrain. He looked at Brian and saw the knight's face beneath the open visor of his helmet; it looked drained of blood, its skin fallen in to the bones like the face of a man ten days dead. The chittering was rising to a crescendo and Jim felt the ability to think slipping from him.

Beside him, Aragh laughed his silent laugh.

The wolf threw back his head, opened his long jaws, and howled—a long howl that cut like a razor slash across the sound of the sandmirks. It was not merely lupine night music from some moonlit hilltop that Aragh uttered, but a call that began on a low note and climbed in tone and volume to a pitch greater than all the chittering; then it fell again, dropping… dropping into nothingness. It was a hunting howl.

When it ceased, there was silence. Only silence. Aragh laughed again.

"Shall we go on?" he said.

Brian stirred like someone coming out of a dream, and tugged on the reins. Blanchard stepped forward. Jim, too, moved; and they once more took up their journey.

The sandmirks did not begin their cluttering again. But as the knight, the dragon and the wolf moved on, Jim could hear innumerable small ripplings in the water and rustlings behind the trees, bushes and bullrushes that surrounded them—a noise that paralleled their path and kept up with them, as if a small army of heavy-bodied rats was providing them with escort. He did his best to put that sound from his mind. An instinctive terror was inspired by the noise of those feet and bodies alone; and he had other terrors to watch for.

But the watching was becoming more difficult.

"Getting darker, isn't it?" Jim said, finally. "And misty."

They had gone perhaps a mile and a half since they had crossed the line. And the sky had, indeed, been blackening. It was not a natural darkness, but a sort of thickening of the air, a premature night that seemed to be coming over them. With it came low clouds above their heads, and banks of mist, moving at water level off to either side of the causeway.

Abruptly, Blanchard balked again. They stopped. But around them the noise of the sandmirks began to mount toward a frenzy of invisible movement. There was something triumphant about their mad activity. Unexpectedly, ahead and off the causeway to the right, rang out a single, heavy splash, like the sound of something large heaving itself out of water onto land. Aragh's nose lifted abruptly, and he growled, deep in his throat.

"Now," he said.

"Now what? What comes?" Brian demanded.

"My meat," snarled Aragh. "Stand clear!"

Stiff-legged, he walked a few paces forward from them and stood, tail hanging in a low arc, head a little down, jaws slightly open, waiting. His eyes burned red in the dimness.

Now Jim's nose caught the scent of whatever it was Aragh had smelled. The odor was oddly familiar—and then he realized it was the same scent he had been picking up from the sandmirks, who had kept company with them. Only, this was stronger and far more rank. Now, too, his ears picked up the sound of something heavy-bodied approaching them from down the causeway—the sort of creature that would go through bushes rather than around them.

Brian drew his sword. Aragh did not turn his head, but his ears flicked at the sound of metal sliding against metal.

"
My
meat, I said," he repeated. "Stand back! Go when I say."

Jim found his every muscle tensed, his eyes almost aching with the effort to see through the gloom to what was coming. Then, all at once it was visible, moving toward them: a great, black, four-legged shape, its close body hair still gleaming slickly from the waters it had just left. It made no effort to hide, but came on until it was less than three times its own body length from Aragh. Then it reared up and from its throat came a sick-sounding chuckle that was a deep-toned version of the same cluttering the three intruders here had heard earlier.

"Apostles guard us!" Brian muttered. "Is
that
a sandmirk… ?"

A sandmirk it was, but many times the size of the smaller creatures that had now three times awakened an ancient fear in Jim. This individual was at least as large as an adult grizzly bear; in fact, very nearly the size of one of the great Kodiak Island brown bears. Aragh, standing forward to challenge it, seemed in comparison to have shrunken from pony-size to the dimensions of a small dog.

But the wolf showed no signs of backing off. From his throat came the steady, slow rumble of a growl, unvarying and continuing. For a long moment the monster sandmirk stood swaying a little on its hind legs, chuckling its bass chitter. Then it moved forward, yet upright—and suddenly the fight had begun.

It was a flurry of action, too fast for human or dragon eye to follow in detail. For all its size, the great sandmirk could move its body and legs with vision-blurring speed. Only, Aragh was faster. He was in, out, around, up and down on the towering black figure, so swiftly and continuously that Jim's eyes gave up trying to follow his actions.

As suddenly as they had come together, the two parted. Aragh stood back, head low, sounding his steady growl while the huge sandmirk panted, swaying on its heavy hind legs, its black coat marked here and there with lines of red.

Aragh's growling now broke off, though his tense watching of his opponent did not relax an inch.

"Go!" he said, without turning his head. "The others won't follow you as long as I hold their mother in play. And they won't mob me to help her, because they know that the first five to reach me will die; and none of them want to be among those."

Jim hesitated. Brian spoke for both of them.

"Sir wolf," he said, "we can't leave you to face these odds alone—"

But before the last words were out of his mouth, battle had been joined again. Once more, the movement was too fast to follow; but this time it lasted longer—until a sudden, ugly, breaking sound rang out and Aragh leaped back to stand on three legs, his left foreleg dangling.

"Go!" he snarled, furiously. "I told you—go!"

"But your leg—" Jim began.

"Did I ask your help?" Aragh's voice was thick with rage. "Did I ever ask help? When the she-bear caught me when I was a cub, alone and with three legs I killed her. I'll kill this Mother of sandmirks, again with three legs and alone!
Go!"

The monster now wore a bright pattern of red, bleeding slashes all over her body. But though she panted hoarsely, she did not seem weakened, or slowed. Nevertheless, Aragh's decision to fight alone was plainly not to be altered; and to throw away the wolf's deliberate sacrifice of himself was unthinkable. Certainly, if he was killed, it would only be a matter of time before the sandmirks would finish the other two.