A Dragon at Worlds' End (5 page)

It collapsed in a fountain of gore and twitching hind limbs. Relkin saw the potential at once.

"You know, I think we solved our food problem, Baz. We just keep cooking these critters and we'll always get more of them. Forget the herbivores, they're too much trouble."

"By the breath, this dragon thinks you right."

They went back to feasting on the meat already cooked. When they could eat no more, they built up their fire to a blaze. They could see eyes glinting in the forest around them. The fires would frighten the forest predators away for a while, perhaps all night. Bazil and Relkin butchered the red-brown beast and threw the viscera and larger bones into the jungle, where things squabbled over them with coughs and roars and weird but chilling whines.

They each took turns sleeping, while the other kept watch and fed the fire. The flames were enough that first night to keep the eyes at bay.

At dawn there was a changeover of hunters and one lot went to their lairs while another emerged to sniff the day. Bazil and Relkin took the opportunity to snatch a quick breakfast and then make their getaway, carrying with them enough meat for a second enormous feast.

Weighed down with meat, they only made ten miles in the whole day. The dry forest gradually gave way to wetter lands, and when they came on some small hills jutting out of the river forest, they climbed one and pitched camp. The woods here were drier than the bottomlands and furnished better firewood. Their position was also more defensible. They were set on a wide triangular ledge sticking out of a cliff about ten feet from the bottom, and attacking beasts could only really come at them along one side of the ledge.

Again they built a huge fire and burned it down to the coals, which they covered with wet palm leaves and meat before burying.

Relkin wasn't nearly as hungry as he'd been the first night of feasting, but he made a determined attack. Still, it was Bazil who really tucked in.

The cooking smell brought the usual audience, but the travelers' position on the high stone ledge deterred most attack, and when a mid-sized beast with long legs and a greenish hide tried, Bazil slew it and butchered its hind legs and tail and tossed the rest off the ledge in chunks.

The darkness below the ledge erupted with growls and struggles while Bazil proceeded to dress the new meat and Relkin prepared it for transport the next day. He had collected some palm fronds for the task and was devising ways of weaving them together to form meat baskets, a huge one for Bazil and a small one for himself. He stripped out withe from the palm stalk and used it to stiffen the leaves by braiding it through them. He reinforced sections at opposite corners by doubling over the palm fronds again and again. Then he made a fibrous rope from twining together vines which he passed through the crude baskets, exiting at the reinforced sections. His first try with the big basket was a failure. The meat was just too heavy. He reinforced it with more rope and some springy branches torn from a nearby conifer. At length it made a sort of small hammock that would hold the huge haunches of the night's kill. The smaller parts went into Relkin's own hamper along with some of the already cooked meat. From now on they would eat regularly, three meals a day. Relkin made a mental note to look for fruit. In the Legions they had all learned of the need for certain acids in the diet, to prevent scurvy. Now that they had all the meat they could eat, Relkin started to think about the medium to long term.

Later the moon rose. Various creatures wailed and roared to greet it. Relkin looked up at the moon and thought of other times he had stared at her beauty. For instance, from the dragon house in Marneri, on cold crisp nights, when the moon was a silver coin bathing the white city in an ethereal glow. Or from the camp house at Dalhousie, in Kenor, where they'd spent several years on duty. The moon in Kenor hanging above the trees on summer nights.

Most of all he remembered how it had looked from the top of Wattel Bek, with his arm around Eilsa Ranar-daughter, his true love and his wife to be.

And with this thought his calm was shattered. For he was now separated by more than time and distance. He was completely out of touch with the army. It was just him and the dragon, and they were on the other side of the world from the Argonath and the lands of Clan Wattel.

Ah, the fair hills of the Argonath, how far away they seemed suddenly. Would he ever see them again? Could he and Bazil, alone, get out of this ancient jungle and back to the distant coast alive? One part of him insisted that they could. Another was not so sure.

The river landscape was flat and huge, the air hot and damp, but the mosquitoes were not as bad as Relkin had expected. They moved slowly along the mud flats, heading downstream. Relkin was considering building a raft.

"We could sail it up the coast."

"Good." Bazil had become monosyllabic with the gathering heat of the day. The landscape had grown wide and flat since they'd emerged from the forest. The smell of the river overwhelmed everything else, though Bazil had noticed a couple of odiferous trails as they'd moved northward. There were other animals around, but as was so often the case in this fragment from an ancient world, they weren't to be seen.

"Question is, though, what are we going to build it from?" Relkin deliberately posed the difficult point for them.

The nearest sizable trees were a quarter mile distant, up above the high tide mark. The land was very flat and the river sprawled miles wide. Cutting timber for a raft and moving it down to the river would be a slow business.

"Not good to use dragonsword as ax."

Relkin nodded. "That's true."

Ecator was all they had, though, for the heavy work. Relkin had his own sword and a dirk, but these were insufficient for cutting down trees. Dragonsword, however, was mighty enough. The work would, however, dull the great blade, and they lacked a good whetstone.

"Still, it may be all we can do."

Relkin spotted some driftwood ahead, a stranded tree trunk brought down from somewhere far away on the flood and deposited at the high tide mark. They stepped across to inspect it.

It was a mighty tree, an ancient hardwood that had come downstream hundreds of miles and then snagged. The bark had been worn away in places and the branches were broken off, but it was still sixty feet long and must have weighed several tons. It had been there for years. There was other debris, branches, dried-out mats of weed wrapped about the main trunk. Relkin despaired of ever moving it until the next high flood tide, and they might have to wait months for that. Even then it would be tricky with just his and Bazil's strength to rely on. Relkin clambered about the tree, checking its moorings in weed and sand. He came to the riverward end and just happened to look up and see a boat drifting by about two hundred feet out. It was a large canoe or similar type of craft, apparently empty, heading slowly downstream. Relkin pointed, amazed.

"Man-made boat," said Bazil.

"Yeah, but it looks empty."

Relkin ran down to the water's edge, shed his sword, but retained his dirk in case something unseen attacked him from the water, and waded in. There were no crocodiles visible in the vicinity, though he and Bazil had seen quite a few just a little farther upstream. He plunged on and kicked out toward the boat.

The water was pleasantly cool and the current was light. Relkin was a strong enough swimmer to easily master it. He reached the canoe's side but found that it was too high out of the water for him to reach up to the top. He swam around to the other side and was rewarded with a crude net slung over the side. It was a well-constructed craft, capable of carrying five or six passengers. He took hold and swung himself into the canoe.

Then came the first shock. There was a girl lying on her side in the middle of the boat.

He shifted forward carefully on the balls of his feet. Was she dead?

Her eyes were closed, but her rib cage rose and fell gently. She lived. More than that, she was beautiful, with her soft brown skin, large eyes, and a firm, generous mouth. Her nose in profile was large but handsome.

Now he noted the wound on her shoulder and neck and the big bruise associated with the long, ragged cut. The wound had begun to fester at the cut end. Relkin knew that he would have to operate on her at once and clean out the wound and dress it with Old Sugustus, or she would die.

In the next moment, he realized that the girl also possessed a tail. The shock of this revelation made him grunt and sit back on his haunches. It was a sinuous brown tail, about four feet long, that projected through a slit in the girl's one-piece garment at the base of the spine. The tunic was fine work, made from animal skins neatly sewn together. The tail was undoubtedly part of her, with the same light brown skin, and ending in a tuft of black hair, exactly like the hair on her head.

Relkin swallowed heavily and shifted back a foot or so.

"By the old gods," he whispered. He stared at the tail, then tentatively reached out and touched it. It felt firm, exactly as he imagined her arm might feel. For some reason this discovery made him feel dizzy and he put out a hand to the side of the boat to hold himself steady. After a moment or two he recovered.

He touched her shoulder. She continued to breathe slowly and softly, but she did not awaken. The tunic had been cut through across her shoulder blade and there was massive bruising. Something long and hard had struck her across that shoulder. He felt gingerly for broken bones, but detected nothing. Her head fell back. Her glossy hair was cut to shoulder length and braided.

Struck by her beauty, Relkin felt a number of strange, untoward thoughts running in his mind. The tail was uncanny. It brought on strange feelings of unease. He found his palms were sweating. At last, he snapped himself out of the trance and stood up. The canoe was equipped with paddles; there were three in plain sight. He was drifting seaward, on a slow current. Time was wasting. He took up the nearest and started paddling to get the canoe's head turned around and pointed to the shore. It took a few strokes to get it in the right direction.

Bazil was walking slowly along the shoreline, about two hundred feet away. At Relkin's wave, he increased his pace to catch up.

Relkin paddled hard, first on one side and then the other. The river's current was running into the incoming tide, which was growing stronger, and this made it fairly easy to reach the shore.

At last the canoe ground on sand. The dragon came down to the water's edge to heave it up onto the drier ground. His eyes popped as he looked inside.

"Where does this girl come from?" said Bazil.

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like her."

"I should have expected it, I know. If anyone can find a female in complete wilderness, it would be you."

There came an audible intake of breath into mighty lungs.

Bazil had noticed the shocking, unusual attribute.

"She have tail!" The big eyes had gone round. He clacked his jaws. "This is very sensible. Dragons always wonder how humans can live without tail."

"She's hurt real bad, Baz."

Bazil had just noticed the wound himself.

"This dragon has eyes in the head, fool boy."

"Then help me move her."

"Where to? Where do you suggest?" Bazil clearly didn't think there was anywhere better than where they were.

Relkin looked up and realized the truth of this. They were a long ways from anything remotely defensible. The boat would have to do.

"I've got to cut those skins off and clean the wound, and then I've got to sew it up. We've got a little Old Sugustus, I think we can save her. I'm going to need a big fire, though. And we'll want to build a barrier around us, too."

"She need to eat."

"When she wakes up I expect she'll be hungry."

"What do we do first?"

"Got to make a fire. Need to heat the knife to cauterize the wound. Need to heat some water as hot as we can make it."

"There's plenty of driftwood."

Indeed, it took them little time to accumulate enough dried-out wood to get a fire blazing. Relkin pulled out some more dead branches a little farther upstream and dragged them down to the fire. It blazed high while he cut away the skin garment, revealing a slim body, nicely muscled, with a young woman's firm, round breasts. Swallowing hard, he cleaned the wound and examined it carefully. Fortunately, while the bruising was severe, the cut was modest. Her one-piece garment had taken just enough of the blow. Still there was an obviously infected place that had to be cauterized. He sharpened the dirk as much as possible and heated it on the hot coals before using it to swiftly cauterize the wound, while ignoring the stench of the sizzling flesh.

The girl moaned, struck out with her arms, and he had to hold her tightly to keep her still, but she did not emerge into full consciousness. Gradually her struggles ebbed and she fell back into motionlessness once again.

He then set about heating water. First he and Bazil trekked along the shore in search of rocks. Fortunately they found a jut of rock, much eroded and broken up, not far downstream. From its cracks they extracted a lot of good-sized pieces, which they took back and put into the fire. Then Relkin and Bazil searched for a hollow log. This sent them scouting back along the forest's edge for quite a ways, but eventually they found a suitable one, partly rotted but not entirely, and hollow for much of its length. Bazil cut the bottom part free and carried it to the waterside and Relkin washed it out as best as he might, working with a sharpened stick to rouse out all the loose bits and pieces at the bottom.

Then he had Bazil fill it and bring it back to the fire. Relkin had already cut down some tree branches with which to pick up the red-hot rocks, which he then dropped into the water-filled hollow trunk. When the water began to steam, he tore up some strips of cloth from his ragged jerkin and put them in the water and stirred them around with his dirk. Then he used them, wet, to wash down the wound area and get it as clean as possible. Next he took an end of a cloth and soaked it with Old Sugustus and went over the wound again. Then he used the strips for a field dressing, under her arm, over her shoulder, and down across her breast, which was darkly nippled. He tied off the dressing and made sure it would hold.