Rogue Dragon

III

The mob did not manage to free the convicted man but did manage to wreck the Court House thoroughly, and was in the act of burning it when the hastily summoned soldiery attacked. The standing army of the City-State of Peramis was small, but it was disciplined and the mob was not. Hence the battle, though nasty and brutish, was also short. The plebs, still roaring defiance, scattered, leaving their dead behind them.

The murderer, who had killed the Gentleman in a fight over more compensation for his hunt-trampled crops, was executed as scheduled; and in the usual manner: bound and gagged and hanged by his feet in the main square, he was filled with arrows by a squad of masked archers.

Whether this was a mistake or not, was much discussed at the Lodge. Chief Commissioner Narthy, killing time until the arrival of the weekly aerospace ferry for ConfedBase — the only area of Earth under direct Galactic rule, it was located on the landmass which the Kar-chee had created out of the Andaman Islands—“Hunter” Narthy treating the lounge-bar to a farewell round of drinks, insisted it was a mistake.

“Why, they’ve given the mob a martyr,” he said, sipping. “Everyone of those poor, down-trodden plebs that witnessed the execution is a potential rebel leader. No… the execution should have been carried out privately, if at all. Then a program of education and land-reform, taking into cognizance the legitimate aspirations of the pleb-peoples—”

But an elegantly-dressed trader from the Blue Worlds shook his head. On the contrary, he said, to do in secret what had always been done in public would have been to admit to a fear of the mob. And nothing, he said, is more calculated to increase a mob’s power.

“Besides,” he went on, caressing his glass, “what legitimate aspirations of the pleb-peoples’ exist? Every Doghunter would like to be a Gentleman, and who can blame him? But who can agree that this is a legitimate aspiration? An armada can’t consist of all admirals, can it? As for the right of Hunts to go across plowed land — why, it’s part of the age-old principal of eminent domain. This planet has no other resource but its Hunts, no other justification for Confederation being here — or for anyone from outside ever visiting the place.”

A middle-aged Company PR man nodded. “And without us,” he said, “the place would sink back into barbarism. You can’t base a civilization on planting potatoes. No, we owe it to our ancient Mother World to continue our fructifying contact with it.”

However convinced the lounge-bar was, much of the population of Peramis thought otherwise. The atmosphere in the streets was hostile, several visitors were jostled or stoned, and that night a Gentleman’s country seat was attacked and burned and a number of its loyal servants slain. All in all, Jon-Joras thought he understood why Dr. Cannatin had decided to set up his base of operations elsewhere. He sought out Jetro Yi.

“What do you think of arranging my king’s hunt in another city-state?” he asked. “Sartor or Hathis or Drogue? It would not do for his visit to be disturbed by all this unrest.”

Jetro shook his head. “It would stir up jealousy, P.M. Utterly. We always try to avoid creating antagonisms of that sort.”

Jon-Joras scanned the map. His finger pointed. “How about this area called The Bosky? Base the hunt in Peramis, officially, but have it there, in no-man’s-land.”

However, Jetro even more earnestly opposed this. He doubted that such arrangements could be completed in time — he was, in fact, certain that they could not. Jon-Joras afterwards concluded that Jetro was likely much more concerned with the loss of his commission if the Hunt was held in another district… but he felt himself ill-equipped to argue against those who held the local ground. He allowed himself to be persuaded that the trouble was dying down (indeed, it did seem to be), and set to work on his own task of preparing for Por-Paulo’s visit.

The estate of Thuemorix seemed quite satisfactory, despite its distance from the town — more than twice as far as Aëlorix, for instance. He hired a flyer, contracted for food, equipment, extra servants, entertainment, and all the thousand and two things needful. It was not only that he wanted his efforts to be successful from a career point of view. He sincerely liked Por-Paulo. The elective kingships of M.M. beta were mankilling jobs. Por-Paulo needed the change.

Thuemorix himself, a middle-aged man with a wry sense of humor, had made the very courteous gesture of sending his family on ahead to Hathis-port, where they had close friends. He stayed behind to offer his assistance to Jon-Joras. “I find that the warmth of affection is often in inverse proportion to the distance between the friends,” he said. “As it is, they’ll give me such a hail-and-fare-well party in Hathis that we’ll never forget it. Between sea-sickness and the fact that we’ll have to spend at least four months with my wife’s aunt in Bachar, I’ll be needing all the pleasant memories I can get.”

He brought out his best from the strong-rooms and storerooms to furnish the quarters engaged for Por-Paulo and his aides and guests, moving furniture with his own hands to be sure it was arranged right. Jon-Joras had been helping him, and they were looking around them in sweaty contentment, when the signal of a flyer brought them out to the wide park-like lawn where the vessel had put down.

“What’s up, Roe?” the host called out as they approached. “Don’t tell me — an imprompt?”

Roedeskant nodded while several Gentleman called greetings. “Yes, your High. Wish you’d come along. A big drag’s been sighted by the river fallows what’s part of the Lie lands, and as its Gentleman’s owed me a drag this two-three years, why, he’s kind enough to have give me the hunt of it. Now, your High will recollect that I owes you a drag. So, if he don’t mind taking it now as an imprompt—?”

Thuemorix didn’t mind at all. His face lit up. “Just the thing for a send-off,” he said, directing his servants to get his huntgun. “And one for my young guest, too. I don’t think it improper for you to take a chance on a shot,” he said to Jon-Joras, “before your liege arrives, since it’s an imprompt, and hardly counts. Won’t give you a title if you pierce your dragon, you see. We are so particular about the dragons, you see,” he said, his manner suddenly becoming much more serious, “because the dragons used to be so particular about us. Do you know what I mean? The Kar-chee used them like dogs, to hunt us down. That’s why, I suppose, that we never use dogs to hunt anymore. Fact. Only of course they are a bit bigger than dogs, a bit fiercer… and, leaving sarcasm aside, infinitely more intelligent…”

Jon-Joras said, “I had really known nothing about all this—”

Thuemorix nodded. “It’s a wonder that there were any of us alive at the end, there, at all… Well.” He relaxed, smiled a bit, and with a wave of his hand invited the outworlder to admire the view below.

Over the forests, denser and denser as they proceeded upriver, the thick meadows and marshlands, the flyer made its way. The atmosphere was cheerful and relaxed. An impromptu hunt was evidently quite a different thing from a regular one. Many of those aboard were younger sons — some of them surprisingly young, including that son of Aëlorix whom Jon-Joras had seen at target practice. Evidently the archers today were all gentlemen amateurs.

“Drag’s a monstrous big one, I hears,” said Roedeskant. “The tenant at Lie village sent word down by boat. Don’t know his call, they says.”

“A wanderer, I suppose. Seems to me that there’ve been rather a few more of those than usual, wouldn’t you say, Roe?”

A shadow seemed to fall over the Master Huntsman’s face. “P’raps so, your High,” he muttered. Young Aëlorix looked at him, suddenly somber. Then someone started a song, and, one by one, everyone joined in.

“Getting there,” someone said. “There’s the island—”

It was hardly great music or good poetry, Jon-Joras thought, wryly. In fact, it was rather dreadful. But it had a swing and a beat to it. The Aëlorix cadet was singing lustily, beating his fists on his naked knees.

The rest of the words were lost to Jon-Joras in the babble of voices as the flyer put down in a clearing in the woods, not a great distance from the river. A small group of men was waiting for them; one of them, a tall stalwart fellow in his thirties, dressed in fine-spun, proved to be the tenant — the others were his sub-tenants. By his manner of speech he might almost have been a Gentleman himself, and, indeed, Jon-Joras had learned from the casual comments of the company, that he was the natural son of one.

The bannermen were in the acts of fastening the colored wefts to the ends of their long poles when the low, rather mournful cry broke upon their ears. All heads went up, turned this way and that. They sniffed the wind like animals. “Not too far off,” Thuemorix muttered. “None too far off…”

Roedeskant quickly got things in order; while he was doing so, Thuemorix repeated the instructions he had given Jon-Joras in the flyer. “Don’t fire until you’re told to,” he concluded, “if you are told to. And aim only at the crux of the X, remember that. If you hit it, you pierce the only nerve-ganglion that counts. Otherwise you can spend the rest of your life shooting into him, if he’d let you — Holy Father! Already!”

He shouted. Lights glinted onto faceted eyes. Thuemorix shouted, Roedeskant flashed his arms, cymbals sounded and shawms blared. The dragon came hurtling out of the woods. The bannermen danced and waved to draw him to the right. He ignored them. Cymbals clashed, arrows flew. He ignored them. Bannermen and archers closed in towards him, running. The dragon, running swiftly, too, ignored them. He reared up upon his hind legs and the archers filled the hide of his belly with their barbs and this time he did not ignore them.

Pivoting upon one great jointed column of a leg, he came pounding down upon the archers. “Oh, blood!” someone cried. “A rogue! A rogue! Rogue dragon!”

The bannermen flew like deer, teasing their bright flags under his very snout. He roared. They downed their poles and fell, hidden, to the grass. The dragon did not stop, came charging on. Screams and turmoil in the grass.

Blood upon the great clawed feet of the dragon.

“Shoot free, shoot free!” Roedeskant shouted. “Any with a sight—shoot free!”

Jon-Joras saw three men raise their guns, fire almost together. The dragon came on, the dragon came on, two more shots, then three, then four, the dragon came on. The archers held their ranks, firing their useless shafts. Not one turned to run. And the dragon, hissing, screaming, flanks and chest and sides and stomach bristling with arrows, bleeding, eyes flashing dreadful beauty, the dragon stooped upon the archers. His talons swept to right and left, his head darted down, came up, jaws grinding, head tossing through the reddened air.

The son of Aëlorix fired his last shaft as the great bull-dragon’s claws swept him off his feet. The boy’s mouth was open, but no song now came from it.

The beast was everywhere, and so, at last, he was in the sights of Jon-Joras’s gun. Aim only at the crux of the X … He remembered Thuemorix’s voice (where was Thuemorix now?) saying the words. But the crux of the X had been obliterated by all the shots poured into it, was a gaping and bloody chasm. Unthinking, automatically, into it he fired his own shot. And fired. And fired. And—

Someone ran into him full-tilt. His last shot before the gun fell went wild. The man, whoever he was, beat upon him with clenched fists, screaming in terror; at last threw him down and ran. Stunned, scarcely able to breath, Jon-Joras felt the concussion of the great beast’s feet, saw out of the corner of his eye, something vast, something bloodstained go sweeping by. There were screams and screams. A voice cried out, shrill, thickened, ceased.

The sky darkened, wheeled, became a whirling concentric circle. Jon-Joras felt himself go sick and cold. And all was black.

Somewhere in between his fainting and his awakening he had heard what he now identified as the sound of the flyer. A sudden tenseness of his muscles warned him just in time to turn his head. He vomited. Then, fearful, lay back for a long moment. But there was nothing to be heard except the drone of flies.

The sun was out and birds called. How many people had come on the impromptu hunt? Jon-Joras, numbed by the sickening sights that lay all about, did not know. Nor could he guess how many might have made their escape in the flyer (if any but the pilot had) or into the woods. No one answered his calls… at first…

Only when he held the bloodied head on his knees did he realized that he had never known the boy’s name. Aëlorix’s boy stared blindly right into the sun. “Tell… tell my mother…” he began.

“I will. I will,” Jon-Joras said. And waited. And waited. But the dead lips spoke no more. Tell his mother! What could he tell her, he wondered, that she had not already guessed and feared!

Numbly following the custom of his own people, he laid a clot of earth on each closed eye, and straightened the arms at full length, folding the hands together in a loose clasp. “‘Ended is this scene and act,’” he said. “‘May the curtain rise upon a fairer one. …’” He could not remember the rest of it.

When you have no idea in which direction anything is, it makes as much sense to go in one direction as another. The river and the Lie village were not too far away, but he had no notion where. The sensible thing was obviously to wait right where he was until help came. But this was the one thing he could not do — not at that field of death, over which the dark birds had already begun to circle.

He made a circle of his own around the clearing, and took the first path he found. The afternoon was late indeed before he dared admit that, wherever the path led, it did not lead to the Lie village. And then he heard the dogs. It should not have come to him as the heart-swelling surprise it did. Where there were Doghunters, there were bound to be dogs. Besides, had he not seen their severed heads? Recalling the mottled teeth in the bloody muzzle, he broke into an awkward, stumbling run.

Someone was there; he saw the glimmer of cloth off to one side on the slope. Instantly upon his outcry, it vanished, and he left the path to follow, leaping over fallen trees and little rivulets running through the soft, mossy earth. Someone was there ahead of him in the darkening daylight…

A girl.

“Please!” he called. “I won’t hurt you! I don’t want — They’re all dead, all the others — the rogue dragon—”

She stopped at that; stopped and whirled around. The shock of it stopped him, too. For a moment they stood staring at one another. It was the girl he had tried to help on the Court House mall; the girl who had struck at him, run away, as she was, in the next instant, running now.

“Don’t leave me here alone,” he cried, despairingly. “The dogs—! The dogs—!” They were nearer now, and nearer and nearer; they seemed to be all around him. He could no longer see the girl. He snatched up a stick of thick wood and looked to see a large tree that he could get his back against — or, better, climb. But he was passing through an area that had been burned over not many years enough before; there were no large trees at all.

“Don’t run!” A man’s voice. He whirled around. The dogs had been on all sides of him because the men who were leading them on thick ropes of braided leather were on all sides of him. He let out his relief in a gusty sigh and let the stick drop.

“Oh, Lord… I’m so glad to see you… I was on the hunt, back there—” he gestured, indefinitely; he no longer knew just how far or in what direction “back there” was. The men were dressed in hides and cloth; two of them handed over their leashes to others and came towards him.

“It was a rogue dragon, and it wouldn’t die, it wouldn’t die—” The words caught and clicked in his throat.

The two men looked at each other. Little lights seemed to kindle in their eyes.

“Was it?” said one.

“Wouldn’t it?” said the other.

They came up to him and he put out his hand. With untroubled but with deft emphatic movements, one took that hand and one took the other and they swung them behind his back and tied them fast with thongs.

“Walk on,” said one. “Just walk. No tricks. It’s easier to let loose the dogs than to hold on to them.”

He picked up Jon-Joras’s stick and thumped him in the ribs with it. “Walk!” he said, again. Jon-Joras walked.