The War of the Lance t2-3 Page 11

  At a place where a flanking wall had fallen, some of them paused to stare at a tumble of great, iron-bound timbers that might once have been some piece of giant furniture but now was a shattered ruin. The thing lay as though it had fallen from high above, its members and parts in disarray. Having not the faintest idea of what it might be, most of them crept past and went on. One, though, remained, walking around the huge thing, frowning in thought.

  His name was Tagg, and an odd bit of memory tugged at him as his eyes traced the dimensions of the fallen thing. He had seen something like it before… somewhere. Tugging at his lip, Tagg circled entirely around the thing. A few others were with him now. They had seen his curiosity and returned, curious themselves.

  "Got a arm," he muttered, squatting to reason out the placement of a great timber jutting outward from the device. Within the twisted structure itself, the timber was bound to a sort of big, wooden drum, with heavy rope wrapped around it and a set of massive gears at its hub.

  "Fling-thing," he said, beginning to remember. It was like something he had seen from a distance, atop some human structure his people had skirted long ago in their travels. He remembered it because he had seen the Talls operate it, and had been impressed. It was a wooden tower atop a tower, and a lot of the humans — the Talls — had gathered around it and slowly cranked the extended arm around and back, then abruptly had released it. It had made a noise like distant thunder, and the thing that flew from it had been very large and had knocked down a tree.

  "That it," he decided. "One a' them. Fling-thing."

  Several other gully dwarves were gathered around him now. One asked, "What Tagg talkin' 'bout?"

  "This thing," Tagg pointed. "This a fling-thing. Throws stuff."

  "Why?" another wanted to know.

  "Dunno. Does, though. Throws big thing, knock a tree down."

  "I know. Cat'pult."

  "Nope. That some other kind. This called a… uh… dis.. disca… somethin'."

  "Okay." Losing interest, some of them wandered away again, though Tagg and two others lingered, creeping through the wreckage in wonder. One was a white-bearded ancient named Gandy, who was given to occasional bursts of lucid thought and served as Grand Notioner to the combined clans of Bulp. The other was a young female named Minna.

  Tagg was vaguely glad that Minna was interested in the same thing that interested him. He found her presence pleasant. His eyes lighting on a glistening bauble among the rubble, he picked it up and held it out to her. "Here," he said, shyly. "Pretty thing for Minna."

  Climbing among the twisted members of the fallen discobel, Tagg helped Minna across a shattered timber, then turned and stumbled over old Gandy. The Grand Notioner was on his knees, staring at something, and Tagg tripped over him and thudded facedown in the sooty dust.

  Barely noticing him, Gandy brushed his hand over a vague shape on the floor and said, "Here somethin'. What this?"

  Tagg crawled over to look, and Minna peered over his shoulder. The object was a big, iron disk with sharpened serrations all around its edge, except for one area where it had been blunted and bent.

  "That disk," Tagg said. "It what th' fling-thing fling. Knock down trees with these."

  "Knock down somethin'," Gandy decided, looking at the blunted edge. The disk had hit something very solid, very hard. He rubbed it again and looked at the dark stains on its surface. There were other stains on the cracked floor nearby, as though blood had congealed there. He scraped the stain with his finger, then tasted his finger. He frowned and spat. It was not any kind of blood he knew about.

  It reminded him, though, of the primary goal of the moment. He stood, tapping the ground with the battered old mop handle he always carried. "'Nough look at stuff," he proclaimed. "Look for food first. Come 'long."

  Obediently, they followed him out of the wreckage of the war engine, then paused and looked around.

  "Where ever'body go?" Tagg wondered.

  Gandy shrugged. "Aroun' someplace. Can't get far, followin' Highbulp. Glitch don' move that fast."

  From where they were, a dozen tunnels and breaks in the rubble led away. Choosing one at random, old Gandy led off, with Tagg and Minna following. "Now watch good," he ordered.

  "Watch what?"

  "What?"

  "You gonna do trick or somethin'?"

  "No! Watch for food. Need to find stuff for make stew."

  The tunnel they were in was a long, winding way created by the spaces between building stones that had fallen on one another. After a few minutes, Tagg asked, "What kind food Grand Notioner expect find here?"

  "He didn' say," Minna said.

  Just ahead of them, Gandy turned, frowning in the shadows. "Any kind food," he snapped. "Keep lookin'. If it moves, it prob'ly good for stew."

  "Okay." Moving on, Tagg stepped into the lead.

  They had gone only a few steps when Tagg, his alert young eyes scanning everywhere, saw something move.

  It was something that protruded, curving downward, from a crack between fallen stones. It was a tapered thing, about as long as his arm. Dark and greenish, it was almost invisible against the muted, mottled colors of the rubble around it. But as his eyes passed over it, it twitched.

  Tagg stopped, and the others bumped into him from behind. Old Gandy tottered for a moment, then regained his balance. Minna clung to Tagg, her pressure against him totally distracting him. He decided at that moment that any time Minna wanted to bump into him, it was all right as far as he was concerned.

  "Why Tagg stop?" Gandy snapped. "I nearly fall down."

  "Okay," Tagg murmured, paying no attention at all to the elder. "That fine."

  "Not fine!" Gandy pointed out. "S'posed to be lookin' for food, not foolin' aroun'. You!" He nudged Minna with his mop handle. "Leggo Tagg. Stop th' foolishness!"

  "Oh." Minna backed away, shrugging. "Okay."

  With a sigh, Tagg turned to go on, then saw the thing he had seen before. The thing that twitched. He pointed at it. "What that? Maybe food?"

  They gathered close, and Gandy bent for a better look. The thing was sticking out of a small crevice in the rubble. It was hard to tell in the subdued light, but it seemed to be round and tapered, with a sort of sharp ridge running along the top of it. Its color was dark green. And as they stared at it, it twitched again.

  They stumbled back, wary.

  "What it is?" Tagg asked.

  Gandy peered again. "Dunno. Maybe half a snake?"

  "Might be." Tagg approached it carefully, thrust out his arm and prodded the thing with his finger, then jerked away. When he touched it, it writhed with a motion that was more than a twitch. Like the tail of a huge rat, it swayed this way and that. But it seemed otherwise harmless. Whatever might be at the other end of it, this end had no teeth or claws.

  "This food?" Tagg asked the Grand Notioner.

  "Might be," Gandy decided. "Snake okay for stew sometimes, if not bitter. Check it out."

  "What?"

  "Taste it. See if it bitter."

  Reluctantly, Tagg approached the thing again, grasping it with both hands. It writhed and struggled in his grip. Whatever it was, it was very strong. But he held on, and when it seemed a bit subdued, he lowered his head, opened his mouth and bit it as hard as he could.

  Abruptly, the thing flicked and surged, flipping Tagg across the jagged tunnel into the far wall. And all around them, seeming to come from the stone itself, a huge roar of outrage rang through the air.

  Tagg got his feet under him just as the Grand Notioner surged toward him, running for his life, with Minna right behind. Both of them collided with Tagg, and all three went down, rolling along the cracked floor, a tumble of arms, legs and muffled curses.

  They had barely come to a halt when others — a lot of others — piled into them, over them, and onto them. The main party, led by the Highbulp Glitch I himself, had been emerging from a connecting way when they heard the roar and panicked. In an instant, there were gully dwarves tumbling all along
the tunnel, and a great pile of gully dwarves at the convergence where Glitch I — and everyone behind him — had stumbled over the flailing trio.

  It took several minutes to get everyone untangled from everyone else, and Tagg — at the bottom of the heap — was thoroughly enjoying being tangled up with Minna again until he looked up and gazed into the thunderous face of his lord and leader, Glitch I, Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place and Anyplace Else He Could Think Of.

  Glitch glared at the three just getting to their feet. "Gandy! What goin' on here?"

  "Dunno," Gandy grumbled. "Ever'body pile up on me. How I know what goin' on? Couldn' see a thing."

  "Heard big noise," the Highbulp pressed. "You do that?"

  "Not me," Gandy shook his head. He pointed an accusing mop handle at Tagg. "His fault. He do it."

  "Do what?"

  "Snakebite."

  Feeling that he should explain, Tagg pointed up the corridor. "Somethin' stickin' out over there. Like half a snake. Tasted it to see if it bitter."

  The Highbulp squinted at the twitching thing. "Is it?"

  The earlier roar had faded into echoes, leaving an angry, hissing sound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular.

  "Is now, sounds like." Tagg nodded.

  Cautiously, the clans of Bulp gathered around the green thing protruding from the rubble. Glitch scrutinized it carefully, first from one side, then from the other, then beckoned. "Clout, come here. Bring bashin' tool."

  A squat, broad-shouldered gully dwarf stepped forward uncertainly. On his shoulder he carried a heavy stick about three feet long.

  Glitch pointed at the twitching thing. "Clout, bash snake."

  Clout looked doubtful, but he did as he was told. Raising his stick over his head, he brought it down against the twitching thing with all his might. This time the roar that erupted, somewhere beyond the rockfall, was a shriek of sheer indignation. Stones trembled and grated, dust spewed from crevices, and the entire wall of fallen rock began to shift. The twitching green thing disappeared, withdrawn into the rubble, and massive movements beyond sent fragments flying from the rocks there. All around, the debris shifted and settled, closing crevices and escape tunnels.

  As gully dwarves scampered back, falling and sprawling over one another, the entire wall of rubble parted, and in the settling dust a huge, scaled face glared out. Slitted green eyes as bright as emeralds shone with anger, and a mouth the size of a salt mine opened to reveal rows of dripping, glistening fangs. The scale crest atop the head flared forward, and the head was raised to strike. Then the emerald eyes widened slightly and the mouth closed to a grimace.

  "Gully dwarves," Verden Leafglow hissed, her voice laced with pain and contempt. "Nothing but gully dwarves."

  For a time, she simply ignored them. Their pleas for mercy, the smell of their fear, the cowering huddles of them here and there in the shadows, were dimly pleasant to her, an undertone like music, soothing in its way.

  A gaggle of gully dwarves. They could do her — a powerful green dragon — no harm. They could not get away — all the exits they might reach were sealed by rockfall — and at the moment, she decided, they were not worth the effort it would take to crush them. So she ignored them, concentrating instead on her wounds. The indignities of a bitten and thumped tail rankled her, but she could deal with the perpetrators later, when she was stronger. They were trapped here in the rubble with her. They had nowhere to go.

  The saw-edged disk had ripped into her body, bringing her down in the rubble. In the darkness of the fallen castle, almost buried by debris, she had lain bleeding as the armies of the Dragon Queen passed by — passing, she thought bitterly, and leaving her behind. For that, she would not forgive Flame Searclaw. The huge, arrogant red dragon with his preoccupied human rider, had known she was there. In her mind, clearly, had been his dragon-voice, chiding and taunting her.

  Her left wing hung useless beside her, her left foreclaw was terribly maimed and it had been all she could do — through spells and sheer concentration — to close the gaping slash at the base of her neck. That wound alone could have killed her, had her powers been less.

  Still, the healing was slow, painful, and incomplete. In ripping through the armored scales at her breast, the disk had cut her potion flask — hidden beneath the scales — and carried away the precious self-stone concealed there. It was gone, somewhere among the rubble, and without it the powerful green dragon lacked the magic to reshape her maimed parts. The ultimate healing power was beyond her, without her self-stone.

  Focusing all of her concentration upon the damaged parts of her, she drew what strength she had and applied it to healing. And when the effort tired her, she slept.

  When their initial blind panic began to fade, replaced by simple dread and awe, the subjects of Glitch I — Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place, Etc. — turned to their leader for advice. They had to find him first, though. At first sight of the apparition that had appeared in the shifting rubble, Glitch had darted through the first several ranks of his subjects, crawled over, around and under several more layers of panicked personnel, and finally wedged himself into a crack behind all of them. Getting him out was a task made more difficult by the fact that he did not want to come out.

  Finally, though, he stood among them, gawking at the huge, green, sleeping head of the thing in the hole only a few feet away. "Wha.. " He choked, coughed and tried again. "Wha… what that thing?"

  Most of them looked at him blankly. Some shrugged and some shook their heads.

  "That not snake," Tagg informed his leader. "Not stew stuff, either."

  Emboldened by the Highbulp's restored presence, old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, crept a step or two closer to the sleeping thing and raised his mop handle as though to prod it. He changed his mind, lowered his stick and leaned on it, squinting. "Dragon?" he wondered. "Might be. Anybody here ever see dragons?"

  No one recalled ever seeing a dragon, and most were sure that they would remember, if they had.

  Then Tagg had a bright idea. "Dragons got wings," he said, adding, doubtfully, "don't they?"

  "Right," Gandy agreed. "Dragons got wings. This thing got wings?"

  Some of them crept about, trying to see around the huge head in the hole, to see what was beyond it. But the dim light filtering in from above did not reach into the hole. There was only darkness there. They couldn't see whether the creature had wings or not.

  "Somebody bring candle," Glitch I ordered. "Highbulp find out."

  With glances of surprise and admiration at such unexpected courage, several of them produced stubby and broken candles, and someone managed to light one. He handed it to Glitch. The Highbulp held it high, stood on tiptoes and peered into the darkness of the hole. Then he shook his head and handed the candle to Tagg, who happened to be nearby. "Can't see," he said. "Tagg go look."

  Taken by surprise, Tagg looked from the candle thrust into his hand to the fierce, sleeping features of the thing in the hole. He turned pale, gulped and started to shake his head, then saw Minna in the crowd. She was gazing at him with something in her eyes that might have been more than the candle's reflection.

  Tagg gulped a shuddering breath, steeling himself. "Rats," he said. "Okay."

  The huge, green head almost filled the hole in the wall of rubble. As Tagg eased alongside it, his back to the stones at one side, he could have reached out and touched the nearest nostril, the exposed dagger-points of the great fangs, the glistening eyelid. The spiked fan of the creature's graceful crest stood above him as he crept deeper, edging alongside a long, tapered neck that was nearly as wide as he was tall and seemed to go on and on, into the darkness.

  "Tagg pretty brave," Minna whispered as they watched him go. Instinctively, her hand went into her belt pouch and clutched the pretty bauble Tagg had found for her. Her fingers caressed it, and the great, sleeping creature stirred slightly, then relaxed again in sleep.

  "Not brave," Gandy correc
ted. "Just dumb. Highbulp gonna get Tagg killed, sure."

  Tagg crept through sundered rubble, just inches away from the big green neck that almost filled the tunnel. Then he was past the rubble, and raised the candle. The place where he found himself was some kind of cavern, beneath a rise in the sundered hill above. It was dim and smelled musty, and was nearly filled by the huge body of the green creature.

  Where the thing's neck joined an enormous, rising body, Tagg spotted ugly, gaping wounds in the scales. He stared at them in awe, then beyond them, and his eyes widened even more. The green thing was huge. Arms like scaly pillars rested below massive shoulders, and ended in taloned "hands" as big as he was — or bigger. The nearest shoulder had another ugly wound, and the hand below it was mangled as though it had been sliced apart.

  He raised his eyes, squinting in the dim candlelight. Above the thing, on its far side, stood a great, folded wing. Nearer, a second wing sprawled back at an angle, exposing yet another gaping wound.

  "This thing in bad shape," Tagg whispered to himself. "Pretty beat up."

  The huge body towered over him and its crest was lost in shadows above. Farther along, the body widened abruptly, and he realized that what he was seeing was a leg — a huge leg, folded in rest. Beneath it was a toed foot with claws as long as his arms. Beyond, curled around from behind, was the tip of a long tail. He recognized that appendage now. It was what he had bitten, when he thought it might be half a snake. The recollection set his knees aquiver and he almost fell down.

  Tagg's nerves had taken all they could stand. He had seen enough. He headed back.

  Just as he was edging past it, the nearest eye opened an inch, and its slitted pupil looked at him. With a howl, Tagg erupted from the hole, bowling over a half-dozen curious gully dwarves in the process. Behind him, the great eyelid flickered contemptuously, and closed again.