"Border's near!" yelled Nestor to his crew. "Hang on!"
We know it's near, thought Mark, but which direction is it? Maybe now Nestor really did know. Mark loosed another arrow, and again he could not see where it went. But a moment later one of the pursuing riders pulled up, as if his animal had gone lame.
Another bounce, another tilt of the wagon, bigger than any bounce and tilt before. This one was too big. Mark felt the tipping and the spinning, the wagon hitting the earth broadside, with one crash upon another. He thought he saw the dragon's cage, still intact, fly past above his spinning head, all jumbled' with a stream of bedding, and a frog-crock streaming frogs. He hit the ground, expecting to be killed or stunned, but soft earth eased the impact.
Aware of no serious injury, he rolled over in grass and sand, the ground beneath him squelching wetly. Nearby, the wagon was on one side now, with one set of wheels spinning in the air, and the team still struggling hopelessly to pull it. Meanwhile what was left of the cavalry thundered past, rounding the wagon on both sides, charging on into thickets along the roadside just ahead. Mark could catch just a glimpse of people there, who looked like Ben and Barbara, fleeing on foot.
The dragon was still keening, inside its upended but unbroken crate beside the wagon.
On all fours, Mark scrambled back into the thick of the spilled contents at the wagon's rear. He went groping, fumbling, looking for the sword. He let out a small cry of triumph when he recognized Townsaver's blade, and thrust a hand beneath a pile of spilled potatoes for the hilt. He had just started to lift the weapon when he heard a multitude of feet come pounding closer just behind him. Mark turned his head to see men in half-armor, wearing the Duke's colors, leaping from their mounts to surround him. A spearman held his weapon at Mark's throat. Mark's hand was still on the sword, but he could feel no power in it.
"Drop it, varlet!" a soldier ordered.
And overhead, out of the mist, great wings were sighing down. And the caged dragon's continuous keening was answered from up there by a creak that might have issued from a breaking windmill blade.
Another inhuman voice interrupted. This one was a basso roar, projecting itself at ground level through the mists. Mark's knees were still on the ground, and through them he could feel the stamp of giant feet, pounding closer. A shape moving on two treetrunk legs, tall as an elder's house, swayed out of the fog, two forelimbs raised like pitchforks. Striding forward faster than a riding-beast could run, the dragon closed in on a mounted man. Flame jetted from a beautiful red cavern of a mouth, the glow of fire reflecting, resonating, through cubic meters of the surrounding fog. The man atop his steed, five meters from the dragon, exploded like a firework, lance flying from his hand, his armor curling like paper in the blast. Mark felt the heat at thirty meters' distance.
Without pausing, the dragon altered the direction of its charge. It snorted, making an odd sound, almost musical, like metal bells. Once more it projected fire from nose and upper mouth. This time the target, another man on beastback, somehow dodged the full effect. The riding-beast screamed at the light brush of fire, and veered the wrong way. One pitchfork forelimb caught it by one leg, and sent it and its rider twirling through the air to break their bodies against a tree.
All around Mark, men were screaming. He saw the Duke's men and their riding-beasts in desperate retreat.
The dragon changed the direction of its charge again. Now it was coming straight at Mark.
Nestor, at the moment when the wagon tipped, had tried to save himself by leaping as far as he could out from the seat, to one side and forward. He did get clear of the crash, landed on one leg and one arm, and managed to turn the flying fall into an acrobat's tumbling roll, thanking all the gods even as he struck that here the earth was soft.
Soft or not, something struck him on the side of the head, hard enough to daze him for a moment. He fought grimly to stay free of the descending curtain of internal darkness, and collapsed no farther than his hands and knees. He was dimly aware of someone, Ben, he thought it was — bounding past him, into nearby thickets promising concealment. And there went a pair of lighter, swifter feet, Barbara's perhaps.
In the thick fog, cavalry came pounding near. Beside Nestor in the muck, partially buried in it even as he was, there was a log. He let himself sink closer to it, trying to blend shapes.
The cavalry swept past with a lot of noise, then was, for the moment, gone. Nestor scrambled his way back toward the tipped wagon. He had to have the sword. Whatever else happened, he wasn't going to leave that for the Duke.
When he reached the spill, he found the sword at once, as if, even half-dazed, he had known where Dragonslicer must be. With the familiar shape of the hilt tightly in his grip, and the sound of the returning cavalry in his ears, Nestor moved in a crouching run back toward the thickets. He hoped the others were getting away somehow.
Once among the bushes, Nestor crouched down motionless. Once more, in the fog, cavalry went pounding blindly past him, towards the wagon. He jumped up and ran on again. A moment later, a hideous, monstrous bellowing filled the air behind him. It sounded like the grandfather of all dragons, and the noise it made was followed by human screams.
Nestor ran on. He had his dragon-killing sword in hand, but he wasn't about to turn back and risk his neck to use it to save his enemies. Now, with the dragon providing such great distraction, he could calculate that his chances of getting away were quite good. Behind him the sounds of panic and fighting persisted. Possibly the Duke's patrol could be strong and determined enough to fight a dragon off. Nestor kept going, angling away from the direction he thought he'd seen Ben and Barbara take — time enough, later, to get his crew back together if they'd all survived.
In the fog, the bank of the creek appeared so suddenly in front of Nestor that he almost plunged into the water before he saw it. He hadn't been expecting to encounter the stream right here, but here it was, across his path, and maybe he was getting turned around again — small wonder, in this pea soup.
Now Nestor deliberately stepped into the thigh-deep water and started wading. He wanted to put some more distance between himself and the fighting. If the soldiers drove the dragon off or killed it, they might still come this way looking. The uproar slowly faded with distance. It was peculiar, because this wasn't the country where you'd normally expect to find big dragons… any more than you'd expect a fog like this…
…wings translucently thin, but broad as a boat's sails, were coming down at him from above, breaking through puffs of low pearly mist — what in the name of all the gods?
For a moment Nestor, still knee-deep in water and gazing upward, literally could not move. He thought that no one had ever seen the like of the thing descending on him now. Those impossible wings had to be reptilian, which meant to Nestor that the creature they supported had to be some subspecies of dragon. The reptilian head was small, and obviously small of brain, grotesquely tiny for such large wings. The mouth and teeth were outsized for the head, and looked large enough to do fatal damage to a human with one bite. The body between the wings was wizened, covered with tough-looking scales, the two dangling legs all scales and sinew, with taloned feet unfolding from them now.
It was coming at Nestor in a direct attack. He stood his ground — stood his muck and water rather — and thrust up at the lowering shape. With any other weapon in hand he would have thought his chances doubtful at best, but with Dragonslicer he could hardly lose.
Only at the last moment, when it was too late to try to do anything else, did he realize that the sound he always heard when he used this sword was not sounding now, that this time the sensation of power with which it always stung his arm was absent.
Even shorn of magic, the blade was very sharp, and Nestor's arm was strong and steady. The thrust slid off one scale, but then sank in between two others, right at the joint of leg and body. Only in that moment did Nestor grasp how big the flying creature really was. In the next instant one of the dragon's feet, its leathery digits sprouting talons, as flexible as human fingers, stronger than rope, came to scoop Nestor up by the left arm and shoulder. The embrace of its other leg caught his right arm and pinned it to his body, forcing the sword-hilt out of his grasp, leaving the sword still embedded in the creatures flesh between its armored scales. The violence with which it grabbed and lifted him banged his head against its scaly breast, a blow hard enough to daze him again.
He knew, before he slid into unconsciousness, that his feet had been pulled out of the water, that nothing was in contact with his body now but air and dragon scales. He felt the rhythm of the great wings working, and then he knew no more.
Even as the enormous landwalker charged at Mark, a shrill sound burst from the sword in his right hand. The sound from the sword was almost lost in the roar that erupted from the dragon's fiery throat, and the pulsed thunder of its feet. But the sword's power could be felt as well as heard. Mark was holding the hilt in both hands now, and energy rushed from it up into his hands and arms, energy that aligned the blade to meet the dragon's rush.
The sword held up Mark's arms, and it would not let him fall, or cower down, or even try to step aside. He thought, fleetingly: This is the same terror that Kenn felt. And helplessly he watched the great head bending near. From those lips, that looked as hard and rough as chainmail, and from those flaring nostrils specks of fire drooled. The glowing poison spurted feebly, from a reservoir that must have been exhausted on the cavalry. Mark could feel the bounce and quiver of the soft earth with each approaching thud of the huge dragon's feet. And he saw the pitchfork forelimbs once more raised, to swipe and rend.
The head came lowering at Mark. It was almost as if those forge-fire eyes were compelled to challenge the light-sparks that now flecked the sword, springing as if struck from the metal by invisible flint. The sword jerked in a sideways stroke, driven by some awesome power that Mark's arms could only follow, as if they were bound to the blade by puppet-strings.
The one stroke took off the front quarter of the dragon's lower jaw. The dragon lurched backward one heavy step, even as a splash of iridescent blood shot from its wound. Mark felt small droplet, strike, an agony of pinhead burning, on his left arm below his sleeve, and one on his left cheek. And the noise that burst from the dragon's throat behind its blood was like no other noise that Mark had ever heard, in waking life or nightmare.
In the next instant, the dragon lurched forward again to the attack. Even as Mark willed to twist his body out of the way of the crushing mass the sword in his hands maintained a level thrust, holding his hands clamped upon its hilt, preventing an escape.
Mark went down backward before that falling charge. He fell embedded in cushioning mud, beneath the scaly mass. In mud, he slid from under the worst of the weight; he could still breathe, at least. Finally the sword released his hands, and he felt a monstrous shudder go through the whole mass of the dragon's body, which then fell motionless.
The pain had faded from the pinprick burns along his arm, but in his left cheek a point of agony still glowed. He tried to quench it in mud as he writhed his way toward freedom. Only gradually did he realize that he had not been totally mangled, indeed that he was scarcely injured at all. The falling torso had almost missed him. One of the dragon's upper limbs made a still arch above his body, like the twisted trunk of an old tree.
He was still alive, and still marveled at the fact. Some deep part of his mind had been convinced that a magic sword must always kill its user, even if at the same time it gave him victory.
The scaly treetrunk above Mark's body began to twitch. Timing his efforts as best he could to its irregular pulsation, he worked himself a few centimeters at a time out from under the dead or dying mass. He was quivering in every limb himself, and now he began to feel his bruises, in addition to the slowly fading pain of the small burn. Still he was unable to detect any really serious injury, as he crawled and then hobbled away from the corpse of the dragon into some bushes. The only clear thought in his mind was that he must continue either to try to hide or to run away, and at the moment he was still too shaken to try to run.
Sitting on the muddy ground behind a bush, he realized gradually that, for the moment at least, no danger threatened. The dragon had chased the cavalry away, and now the sword had killed the dragon. He had to go back to the dragon and get the sword.
Standing beside the slain monster he couldn't see the sword. It must still be buried where his hands had last let go of it. It must still be hilt down in mud, under the full weight of more than a thousand kilograms of armored flesh.
Going belly down in mud again, Mark reached as far as possible in under the dead mass. He could just touch the sword's hilt, and feel, through it a faint, persistent thrum of power. The blade was hilt-deep in the dragon; though Mark could touch the weapon, it seemed impossible without moving the dragon to pull it out.
Mark was still tugging hopelessly at the handle when he heard Ben's voice, quiet but shaken, just behind him.
"Bigger'n any dragon I ever saw… where's Nestor?"
Mark turned his head halfway. "I don't know. Help me get the sword out, it's stuck in, way down here."
"You see what happened? I didn't." Without waiting for an answer, Ben planted his columnar legs close beside the plated belly of the beast, then raised both hands to get leverage on one of the dragon's upper limbs, which appeared to be already stiffening. Grunting, he heaved upward on the leg.
Mark tugged simultaneously at the sword's handle, and felt it slide a few centimeters toward him. "Once more. "
Another combined effort moved the hilt enough to bring it out into full view. When Ben saw it, he bent down and took hold — there was room on that hilt for only one of his hands. One was enough. With a savage twist he brought the blade right out, cutting its own way through flesh and scale, bringing another flow of blood. The colors of the blood were dulling quickly now.
As soon as Ben had the sword free, he dropped it in the mud, and stood there rubbing the fingers of the hand with which he'd pulled it out. "I felt it," he muttered, sounding somewhat alarmed. He didn't specify just what it was he'd felt.
"It's all right," said Mark. He picked up the weapon and wiped it with some handy leaves. His hands were and remained black with mud, but, as before, the sword was clean again with almost no effort at all.
Mark became motionless, staring at the hilt. It showed no castle wall, but the white outline of a stylized dragon.
Ben wasn't looking at the sword, but staring at Mark's face. "You got burned," Ben said softly. "You must have been close. Where's Nestor?"