Once mighty were the weary bones that now groaned under gem-crusted hide. Aching creaking muscles rippled ‘neath wrinkled skin, and barely did the gaunt sinews still hold aloft ragged folded wing and venerable head. Drowsy eye drooped and haggard breath wheezed from snarling, half-open mouth, wherein lay deadly yellowing row of sickle-sharp jagged teeth. In sleep’s tender embrace slumbered that wicked and glorious tyrant, steam rising from his nostrils as the sun gazed in through the cavern’s mouth and danced heedless upon ruby-reddened body.
In ruined hole he dwelt, once-grand echo of bygone glory. Cunning wrought were its mighty chambers and its domed roof rose tall, and of flowing gold was his bed and jewels his blanket. In magnificence he tarried and there was a terror about the face of his cold-grey mountain. This was his dominion, and no usurper had yet wrested it from his dreadful stewardship, and so he idled in content conceit.
Foes he had met and foes he had slain, their spears pricking and their swords scarring. Now their bones slept all about his bed, and their armaments were piled high in heaped hoard, each one a memory of some old wound. For many miles spake villagers his name in hushed horror, and farmers fled when his shadow blotted the sun, abandoning their flocking charges to his cruel mercy (and of that he had none). But many a year had it been since any knight bold had sallied forth to threaten his dominion, when sudden a silvered horn rang forth! Harsh and lonely cried the banns issuing challenge, piercing dream and waking wickedness.
Up rode the rival to his doom, in mail fine and clinking! Out blared the cry to battle, bugle’s note mingled with a sudden bestial roar. Down sprang the dragon fierce, fire spraying and toothed maw snarling. Shining spear was raised defiant, as barded warsteed stamped and snorted and struck the earth with mighty hoof and noble knight charged forth into the very mouth of peril to land his fell blow and end the tyrant’s reign, or perish in the act and win renown.
Then up! pulled the dragon short, soaring to the near peak of a great rock and curling about its craggy cap. The battle was dodged, and the great strife of foes yet unsatisfied. So the knight pulled up his mare to a halt and in clarion voice cried, “Ho there now yon wicked worm, be thee craven as well as crooked? Come on down and meet thine end, or slay me where I stand! But shouldst thou flee from this place, with scorn wilt thine name ever be mocked by meekest child!”
Yet the dragon tarried, neither fleeing nor fighting, his dim yellow eye squinting at the grey-haired warrior. “Ho there now and yon indeed,” growled the dragon. “What insult is this? What farce are you, so ragged and feeble a challenger?”
For now he had seen that though the knight’s mail was once fine and burnished, rusty and broken were its rings. His lance was splintered and the tip was dulled, and his shield was dull and dented. His horse’s eyes flamed but her step haltered, for she was grey and laming. Cracked were his leathers and rough his scabbard, and his pennantry was ragged, and long faded were its noble devices.
Yet the knight’s bold voice rang out strident (though it was hoarse and wavering), “I have come to challenge thee! No longer wilt all the lands about tolerate thine wicked deeds, and so shalt I end thee! Aye, verily wilt I, Sir B…”
But the dragon cut the noble challenge short with a cough of fire and a puff of smoke. “Yes yes, all very good and well,” he snarled with some irritation. “I know all the old forms too, you know. But how little do these lands regard me, if they see fit to send such a one as yourself to slay me. Why, if you’re a day under sixty winters, I’m a newt. And if that spear doesn’t shatter upon my mighty hide, I’ll go to church and renounce my ways. Shameful, I say, ‘tis shameful indeed for one of high regard (such as I most surely am) to be ‘challenged’ by so mean a champion.”
The knight sniffed, his well-worn pride wounded. “Aye, well, maybe I’m a little past it, but that does me no discredit! Besides,” and he glanced up closer at the dragon’s pale eyes and flaking scales, at his lean saggy skin and tattered wings. “You’re not such a sight yourself, you know.”
The dragon huffed, for he was of ancient and imperial lineage and the Terror of the Land besides, and the feeble mockery of an old knight should be of little consequence to one so grand as he. But deep down, he knew that no spear could have stung so fierce.
“Well, that’s hardly the right way to address one’s enemy on the field of war,” he grumbled, for among his many accomplishments he was a skilled hypocrite. “But even so, to ride against me so poorly equipped, and without company or proper fanfare, is low indeed. Unless…I didn’t accidentally kill your father, or your betrothed, or maybe your cow, did I?” he asked with sudden suspicion. For he knew that knights might sometimes do very silly things, especially when they felt that such slighting and minor grievances as devoured fathers and fiancés needed avenging.
Yet the knight shook his head sternly. “Nay, this be no selfish gratification for my part! My quest is not one of personal vengeance, but vengeance for all the land! For many are the fathers and betrotheds and yea! even cattle that you have slain. Razed are the farmlands and trembling the honest townsfolk, and you have snatched away their maidens to your dank hole, and ravaged the treasuries of mayors, and with flame have you scourged…”
The dragon could tell the knight was getting carried away again, and again impatiently interrupted. “Yes, yes, well, all of that’s perfectly true,” he said with a certain dismissive pride. “But to ride thusly, without some personal grievance, and (I must now presume) with plenty of time for you to prepare? Where is your retinue? Not even a squire, who might steal a gilded cup from under my nose and rashly stir up my wrath?”
The knight coughed and mumbled. “Oh, yes, well. I do have a squire. But he’s waiting a little way down the mountain. He’s a good lad, but seemed a bit nervous about actually meeting you, so I left him there. He’ll go and tell the king of my noble passing if I don’t return ere tomorrow’s end.”
“Pity,” growled the dragon. “It sounds like he might’ve made things a bit more interesting…or traditional, at any rate. But maybe you could go back down and bring him up here? It seems such a pity to go a-dragon-slaying and to have a squire so near, and then not use him at all to fulfil one of the Proper Functions.”
The knight shook his head. “Alas, I doubt he’d fulfil any function, proper or otherwise…he’s not even much good for eating in all likelihood, the poor scrawny boy. To tell the truth, I think he rather would not have come even this far. He’s a good lad, you know, but I think he only became a squire at all because it would advance his career. He wants to become a Politician one day.”
“Really?” said the dragon. “Heavens!” For being an enlightened and learned creature, he had always known that (outside of fanciful tales) politicians do not exist. It was a real shock to him to discover that they might be real, and he wondered if perhaps he had not misheard, for the old knight did occasionally mumble his words.
But the knight continued, “Yes, indeed. And the poor fellow seemed so terribly frightened at actually arriving here that I didn’t feel up to commanding him any further.”
“Well,” said the dragon hopefully. “Perhaps he’ll have a change of heart upon realising the error of his ways, and come running up here just in time to see me eat you up, and then he’ll take up your sword and stab me and become the Darling of the Land, yet forever have to live with the guilt of having failed you. That could work, I suppose.” But though his tone was hopeful, something in the knight’s words caused his heart to misgive him.
“Perhaps,” said the knight, less hopefully, and with no fewer misgivings.
An awkward silence fell, and the dragon wondered if he shouldn’t swoop down in fire and rage and rent the knight and mare alike with his raking talons. But somehow, he didn’t really feel like it just yet. The rakeful talons on his left claw had been aching a bit recently, and the weather was a bit damp. But most of all, he wondered if it hadn’t been a mistake to interrupt the knight’s worthy and warlike monologuing before.
“So, a politician, eh?” asked the dragon at length, perhaps looking to confirm that he had heard aright. To his dismay, the knight readily confirmed just that.
“Are politicians popular nowadays, then?” continued the dragon.
“Well, yes…well, no actually, not really, but sort of,” stammered the knight, now himself unsettled in turn. “There’s an awful lot of them at court at any rate, and the king seems to be very interested in them…though I don’t think even he likes them that much.”
“Oho? And which king would that be?” asked the dragon, his ears pricking up. It was a stroke of good fortune, for he had been quite unsure how to keep talking about politicians, but with kings he was on far surer ground.
“King Ignavus Vegernus Otiusus Rex Terriblis, Protector of All His Governance & Regent of the Protectorate,” said the knight.
“Oh, old King Ignavus?” asked the dragon amiably, for he made a point of keeping up with current affairs (so as to appear Well Informed, and also because he had little else to occupy him). “Why, now isn’t he the keeper of Wing-hacker?” (For so that noble sword’s venerable title is rendered in the vernacular, or by disrespectful folks.)
“Verily, ‘tis true,” said the knight. “The fell blade Alysector is counted among his many and worthy treasures.” (For the knight did not habitually call upon the vernacular and so that noble sword’s venerable title is rightly rendered in high tongues.)
The dragon suddenly eyed the knight’s own blackened sword sheath a little suspiciously. “You haven’t got it here, have you? That’s a mean trick, challenging one of high station (such as I am) to battle and not even mentioning the lineage of your own gear.”
But the knight laughed sadly and drew the sword from its sheath, and it did not blaze with the glory of a thousand stars and sing in the tongues of the Heavenly Host (as Alysector was wont to do), but was notched and rusting. “No, the blade ‘tis my own, my second best sword. I…had to sell my best sword, for my armour was ruined and I had no coin for its repair.”
The dragon cared not about best or second best swords, but was a little disappointed not to see a dragon-slaying blade of great renown. “A pity. It’s been a long time since I saw a real magic sword.” He squinted. “Did the king refuse you the lend of it, then? Or are there so many dragons about these days that he could not spare you the use of it?”
The knight shrugged. “I did ask,” he said, “but it was seen as a bother to remove the sword, and that it might be damaged in the adventure beside. For it is displayed now in a Museum, where it is exhibited as a Relic of History and a reminder of Mankind’s Old & Foolish Strife with Primordial Curiosities of a Nature Little-Understood. Every Tuesday, the museum’s curator uses it to dub visitors of a Tender Age, to the delight of visitors and parents alike.”
The dragon snorted. He had never before been referred to as a curiosity of any sort, least of all a primordial one, and though he was not sure that he fully understood these tricky modern ideas, he knew he did not much like them.
“Seems like a terrible shame, to have a sword like that wasting away in some storehouse,” he said. “Still. I suppose the king must value it highly, then.”
The knight scratched at his stubborn beard. “To tell the truth, I think he values the idea of it more than anything else,” he said. “Or the idea of owning it, anyway. But the king’s not terribly interested in swords nowadays, nor is his court.”
“Ah, I see. Maces back in fashion, then?” asked the dragon idly. Dragons are wondrous beasts in many regards, but even they can suffer from limited imaginations.
“When I left on this quest,” replied the knight, “The chief interest at court was Hats. There was a most passionate discourse brewing as to whether the magnificence of a plume or the modesty of none is to be preferred in a hat, and further whether the colour of the hat makes any difference as to its suitability to be enplumed.”
“Hats, indeed?!” said the dragon. “Plumed hats?!” He thought for a moment. “My hoard lacks for hats. Though, I must confess…even now, upon realising its lack, I cannot say that I am compelled by the well-known Greed of my Race to acquire any. I would most likely accidentally sit on them sooner or later and put them much out of shape, I expect. No, King Ignavus may keep his hats, I shall not ravage his treasury of them. Doubtless he will be glad to hear of my glorious magnanimity in this matter.”
“He will be relieved indeed,” said the knight, and it was kindly of him to say so.
A longer, awkwarder silence fell, as the dragon pondered hats and wondered if he perhaps shouldn’t try and acquire a few anyway, just in case. Meanwhile, the old knight continued to sit on his mare, neither retreating nor advancing in challenge, but shifting ungracefully here and there on his saddle, half watching the dragon and half glancing about as if he had dropped a penny and was trying to find it.
“Are you alright there?” asked the dragon. “You can get off your horse for a bit if you’d like, you seem mighty uncomfortable.”
The knight blinked in surprise. “Why, well yes, I am a little sore. But I, erm…I’m trying to get a peek inside your den, if you don’t mind.”
“Whatever for?” asked the dragon, quite baffled. It was a great novelty and curiosity to him that anyone might want to see inside his den, for every person he had ever met had been quite anxious to try and get out of there as quickly as possible.
“Well,” said the knight, “I was told that you had recently snatched up a maiden and borne her here, to do with as you would and satisfy your Wickedest Depredations. So I figure I should probably rescue her, at the least.”
“Oh!” said the dragon, and thought. “No, I haven’t snatched a maiden in a little while now…near ten years, I’d say.” He sighed heavily, and accidentally puffed a little smoke right down into the knight’s face (though, as a gentleman and a scholar of genteel manners, the knight did not mention it). “Wherever did you hear such a tale? Perhaps it was my cousin, the Pittempton Worm? He lives nearby, you know, and is quite fond of a bit of maiden snatching.”
The knight shook his head resolutely. “‘Twas the parson of yonder hamlet at the foot of this mountain who told me, and he told me most distinctly that he saw the dragon return to this very peak.”
“Ah, well,” said the dragon. “That particular parson has held a grudge against me for years, I’m afraid.”
“Has he now?” asked the knight.
“Indeed. Some years back, I swooped right over the church while he was giving Sunday Mass upon the Feast of St Athanasius, and all the villagers dashed right out of the church to watch my passing. And I cannot imagine God or His Son or even that old Athanasius were much displeased at this occurrence (for I am, it must be said, magnificent and rare besides and thus a sight well worth beholding), but the parson seemed dreadfully put out upon Their behalf, and he called all number of curses and maledictions after me, naming me a Thrice-Blighted Rampallian and the Spawn of Satan and Wickedest Doer of Deeds and a Right Nuisance to boot.”
“Well,” said the knight. “That is indeed cause for the parson to bear some slight grudge, yet I am now the more surprised that he told me such a scandalous falsehood, and for such a minor inconvenience besides.”
“Ah,” said the dragon, and he shifted uncomfortably. “Well. It must be said that, ever since that day, I have made sure to sup upon one of the parson’s prize heifers every so often.”
The knight replied gravely (though within his bushy beard now twinkled a smile), “Ah. Well. That would, I suppose, go some way toward explaining his falsehood.”
“But only,” added the dragon hastily, “Only every so often, not as a matter of habit, so as to cause him irritation and not any great inconvenience.”
“Of course,” said the knight. He scratched his head, though seemingly out of simple habit, for his gauntleted hand merely clanked against his helmed noggin. “Actually, to tell the truth, I am starting to feel a bit sore in the saddle, and I don’t doubt that Betsy here would welcome a break. Do you mind if I do dismount, just for a little while?”
The dragon extended one gracious claw. “Be my guest,” he said airily. And, though dragons are known to be terrible deceivers and wicked to the bone, the old knight gratefully and wearily dismounted from Betsy, who placidly chewed at a tuft of grass, heedless of dragon and knight alike. And, though the knight dismounted terribly slowly, and without much grace, and had his back shewn to the dragon for a full five seconds as he slid uncomfortably off Betsy, still the dragon waited, curled about the crag, his luminous eye dim and fixed upon his enemy.
After the old knight had completely dismounted, sat down, and recovered his breath somewhat, he said quietly, “He’s dead, you know.”
“Who? The parson?” asked the dragon without much interest.
“No. Your cousin, the Pittempton Worm.”
“Is he now?” said the dragon in some surprise. “Gracious! And to think, I’ve been meaning to drop by his place sometime any day now.”
“Aye,” said the knight. “Slain when I was but a boy, by Sir Gellertus of Avignon.”
The dragon stirred, and scratched at his side with one long claw, where a great near-healed gash still scarred his mighty body and had suddenly begun to itch. “Sir Gellertus? Tall fellow, big axe? Overly fond of his very long and very flammable crimson cloak with a most delicate gold embroidery?”
“The very same,” replied the knight.
“I see,” said the dragon, and lapsed back into thought. “Well. Pittempton and I were really only second cousins. And we were not close. In truth, I found his fondness for maidens rather wearing after a while, and imprudent besides.”
The knight smiled a little. “I met Sir Gellertus but once, when I myself was still a squire. He mistook me for his own squire, and boxed my ears for having misplaced his stirrups before a tournament. I believe he later found the stirrups already prepared on his horse.”
“What about you?” asked the dragon, now curious. “Have you ever killed a dragon before.”
“Two, in fact,” said the knight. “One far far away, when I travelled the world as a youth seeking Fame and Renown, and so came across a dreadful beast in an exotic land. So I did challenge the drake to battle and won the day. ‘Twas near Damascus, if you’ve ever been there?”
The dragon shook his head. He, too, had travelled far in his youth, but he had found that foreign food (not to mention foreign folk) disagreed with him, and he had now forgotten much of what he had seen and done in those years. It had been a great while since he had taken a holiday overseas.
“The second I fought was near twenty years ago, to the day. The Uffington Worm, a fearsome and savage foe, and surely was I guarded by the Virgin and all her angels that day, or else I would not have prevailed in that dreadful strife.”
“Ah, the Uffington Worm!” said the dragon, who was much more interested in local news. “Yes, of course. I always wondered what happened to him.”
“And what of yourself?” asked the knight, for it is courteous to repeat such questions for the benefit of the questioner. “You must have fought a fair few knights in your day.”
The dragon nodded his great and regal head slowly. “A fair few, yes. Many, and the least noble, I could not name, for they tried all manner of trickery and deceit in attempting to slay me, and did not observe the Proper Forms that such occasion demands. But aside from Sir Gellertus, let me see, there was Sir Jimenez, Seamus the Crimson, Baron Barron, Sir P…P…”
“Sir Petrarch?” offered the knight helpfully, but the dragon shook his head in denial. “Ah, well. He was slain by a dragon a few years ago, so I wondered…”
“No, no, it was not he,” said the dragon. “But thanks for trying.”
“The least I could do,” answered the knight.
Another, longer and deeper silence fell, the longest and deepest of them all. But there was no discomfort in this silence. For his part, the knight gazed up at the dragon, but there was no suspicion or anger in his tired eyes (indeed, his spear had rolled away from him while he struggled from his mare and he had quite forgotten to retrieve it). As for the dragon, he looked not at the knight at all, but stared out across the mighty green rolling hills that crested and vanished for miles all about, his pale eye unblinking and misted.
Then, after many minutes or hours had slipped by, the dragon lowered his head upon the knight again and fixed him with his fearsome gaze. And he said, “The sun is setting. And the view of it is fine from my peak – I often watch it wester, when I am not too tired.”
“Aye, I can see that,” said the knight. “It is a fine view indeed.”
“Will you watch it with me?” asked the dragon.
“Aye. I would like that,” said the knight.
So the dragon uncurled from his high refuge, and soared down to rest beside the knight, and together they sat and they regarded the burning sun as it lit the hills and pierced the clouds and sank out of sight. They did not speak but merely watched, graven figures carved solemn from the mountain’s bones against the twilit sky. And then, as the sun vanished, a great and fearsome blaze of glory rolled from it over the land, a final reddened burst of light and joy that consumed the entire world in its passion. But the night was cold and dark.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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