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Dragon Slayer
Chapter One
A cold midwinter breeze rustled across the stony hill. Even the small monastery seemed to lurch and cower before the howling gust. The monks ignored the foul weather. A little storm was nothing.
But then darkness without cloud was cast over their heads. There was a loud crash and the sound of thunder. The shadow vanished and it was mid-day.
A friar on the road froze in shock at the sight of the burnt and torn up road, as though a mighty stone had fallen there. A hideous beast sprawled on the edge of the smoking crater. A dragon! And a foul, evil black demon it had been. The stench made him gag and tear up. He forced himself to look closer. There was someone lying wounded and bleeding beside a bloodied sword.
A dragon-slayer.
The friar crossed himself and hurried to the monastery as fast as his wayward legs could carry him.
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“Look! Look! There he is!” Brother Nicholas shouted. He ran down the hill. He could barely see the man, but he was moving. Faintly and deliriously, but moving. “Come quickly, Brothers. He is still alive!”
But then he reached the wounded man’s side. He froze, appalled. The man was wounded horribly, but as though with knifes. Blood caked one side of his face and his strange armor was in tatters. Nicholas had seen many worse battle wounds before, but this man…
He gasped out, “By all the Saints and heavenly host! This man has evil blood!”
The monks halted. He gestured. “Look! Black blood. And his ears!”
Friar Gregory ignored his comment about the man’s ears. His voice trembled from fear. “Black blood?” He crossed himself with a shaky hand. “It is no man, but an evil spirit from the darkest dungeon of hell, clothed in flesh to deceive and devour. We must exorcise him back into the pit were he came!”
“Nay, my brother, if he’s a demon, why would he have slain this horrible dragon?” Answered Abbot Norbert. “Satan doesn’t fight against Satan. I fear it is an evil curse from the devil himself upon him. Carry him to the monastery! Hurry!”
Despite the Reverend Father’s reassurance, the monks hesitated. One cast a coarse fleece over the strange warrior. They rolled him up and heaved him up. The monks ran as fast as they could bear their heavy load.
The others were anxious to see who it was. They set the unconscious man on a bench. His thin lank hair clung around his foul head and pointed ears. His misshapen nose was almost completely flattened near the tip, but not from injury. “Bind his wounds! We must bring him to Baron Charles. He can’t stay here, lest he defile this holy house.”
They cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds and changed his clothes. Brother Edgar pointed to a blade-wound that had gone from ribs to back and noted in a disbelieving whisper, “He should be dead. No man could’ve survived these wounds for long.”
“Do you suppose he is a warlock who has been accursed of God for his rebellious ways?” Gregory asked, studying the stranger’s face with renewed skepticism.
“Or maybe he was cursed by the devil, like Father Norbert believes. We’ll see, if he lives.”
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Thunder crashed across the upset sky. A gray drizzle of cold rain poured down on the world. Beasts trembled within the safety of their nests and dens. Without though, the monks shivered beneath their coarse robes within the town on the edge of the castle. There was a gloomy silence broken only by mucky splatters. Icy sludge clung to their feet like sandals and their garments were waterlogged, hems plastered in mud. Only the firm shoulders under the bearer carrying the wounded dragon-slayer stayed dry, though aching from the long burden.
Men came forth and helped them bring the unconscious man to the hospital, but the town clergy crossed themselves and asked, “Why do you bring this creature here? Be gone with him!”
“But…” stammered a poor monk, shifting his sore shoulder beneath its heavy load.
“Go! Do not defile this house of prayer!”
“But…”
“Ah! I know! You wish for me to exorcise him.”
A second monk said, “Nay, he’s a dragon-slayer. Cursed by the devil—“ and the monks crossed themselves, “—himself for his noble fight against impure spirits. I heard the end of the great battle. ‘Twas mid-day and the weather was in a tempest (methinks from the demon’s rage). Without warning, the day turned to night and there was a loud racket as towers falling, then thunder rumbled across the land and the shadow past. We found him lying beside the beheaded corpse of a hideous black dragon. The earth was burnt and broken about them and this man had taken many a terrible blow from the beast’s claws like knives.”
The other monks nodded their full-hearted agreement. A clergyman of the hospital carefully said, “What you say sounds unbelievable. Why couldn’t God and all the saints have protected the man? Yet I am convinced by time that you are honest men. We will take him. Rest here for the night.”
The rain departed. Pale stars gleamed down on the soggy world.
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The clergy continued in service, praying for the sick and dying, but they would not touch the dragon-slayer. Instead they placed a mat beside him and laid hands on it.
A week or two passed with little progress until the fourth day of the third week. A groan broke from the wounded man. Brother Aelfwine ended his prayer abruptly with the sign of the cross and stepped away nervously from the stirring man. The dragon-slayer grunted and coughed up nasty streaks of black blood, breath ragged. His sunken eyes within his diseased yellowish skin opened faintly. They were blue. Normal blue, but dirty and age-stained. They closed again. He lay still for a moment, then jerked to awareness.
“Mal?” The dragon-slayer snarled in a hideous voice, lurching forward. His voice was strange. Only an unholy being could sound so sinister. Unless, of course, he had been cursed. At the sound, the monks and nuns jumped up in shock and crossed themselves frantically. Aelfwine pushed the wounded man back down. The slayer started thrashing, yelling with an inhuman voice like a beast, eyes wide with rage and terror. “Mâdr-izg-ob, glob hau!” He shouted.“Mâdr-izg-ob!”
“Calm! Be still, my brother. We won’t hurt you. We want to help you,” said Brother Aelfwine, holding empty hands out to show the thrashing man. He placed his free hand on the struggling dragon-slayer’s shoulder. “Try to relax. You’re still healing.”
The cursed dragon-slayer snarled at him. He made to move again, this time to lunge. A shudder ran through him. His twisted frame hunched and he gave strange choking clicks. He vomited dark green liquid specked with black blood. He collapsed with a vague grunt and lay still, gasping and growling feebly.
Aelfwine took a deep breathe of relief and carefully went on to the next patient, who was staring with large scared eyes at the dragon-slayer, head leaned far away from his body to stay away from the man.
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The man’s narrowed eyes trailed after his enemy. The robed fool busily mumbled and made ridiculous signs that the wounded man had no desire to understand. And over an ailing wretch that obviously needed immediate attention. The sight was so despicable the man felt much happier. Or at least he supposed he was a man. His mind was still rattled by his last fight. What had been his last fight? Puzg…lab! Grish-lat… krulkul… bûb! But he had been speaking in a different tongue than his own. A tongue he couldn’t even remember now at the moment. He had only a few snatches of what he said anyway.
He remembered a ladder. Blue eyes. Rage and hatred, and pain. A horrible, shocking pain from behind that drove his breathe out painfully. A painfully glowing sword. A voice talking behind him. Once more in that tongue he had completely forgotten, and he could only remember snatches of the strange words. Not… stick you…Then darkness. Everything else before and after was jumbled together. It hardly mattered in his situation, but the confusion and pain was enraging.
He supposed he was being held captive. Perhaps their senseless babbling and signs were part of a foreign torture procedure. On the other hand, no one else seemed bother by it. Most seemed greatly comforted.
The man-beast coughed up clear liquid. He wanted to wipe the offending liquid away and demand an explanation to where he was, but his traitorous limbs felt too heavy. So he contented himself for a moment with glaring at the robed fools skittering around nervously as he flexed underused muscles. He stretched and demanded, not as harsh and vicious as he wished, “Mal-kul-izg? Ghashkrut-izish!”
The man gave a start. He answered, but not a single word sunk in. The man suddenly looked thoughtful and asked something in a surprised voice. The man-beast scowled at him. The man sunk into irritating thoughtfulness.
He cautiously propped up the man-beast so he would be comfortable. The robed man took a piece of burnt wood from the fires and knelt on the ground. He drew a pathetic stick figure holding a spear, pointed to his extremely annoyed and irritated patient, then sketched a hideously amusing picture of a winged monster only a slice away from losing its head. He pointed to the man again, made a spear gesture, and pointed to the winged monster again, speaking slowly. “You—slay-- dragons…”
He didn’t understand the words, but he caught the drift. They thought he was a dragon-slayer. The idea was too bizarre to be even mildly amusing. But who was he to reject the prospect? For all he knew, he could’ve been, but what memories he had didn’t bear with it. His lips curled in a snarl and he tapped a thick nail on his temple.
The fool pointed to his wounds. He folded his hands together. He pointed to himself, then folded his hands. He ended with the ridiculously large sign over his head and chest. The dragon-slayer-might-have-been burned his frustration into him. The man sighed and stood. He began to reel around and collapsed in a loud imitation of a sick person. He pointed to the dragon-slayer and stood up again. He imitated another robed fool, knelt where the wounded would’ve been, and began to mumble and cross himself more. He imitated the now healed man walking away with arms lifted over his head in celebration. An awkward silence fell. Right…
“Thlûk!” He snapped. “Skai!”
The ratty fool turned bright red and he stormed off in a huff.
Idiot.
He saw no more.
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