They pitched the dragon/ over the cliff-top . . .
–Beowulf
Panting, Vander watched it fall and hit the high water below with a bloody splash that launched spray like a thousand seagulls taking flight. Even as high as he stood, he felt the touch of the salt spray on his fevered skin.
Next to him, Alder stood bent over, gripping his knees with red, raw hands, shaking and panting. “I never thought the damn-bitch treasure-hoarder would get over.”
Vander looked at his hands. They felt sunburned. The dragon blood was some kind of mild acid. Even congealed in the creases of his skin, it steamed in the cold air. The blood was everywhere, soaking into his patched clothes and staining the damaged grass black.
He began rubbing at the blood caked and burning on his hands. He looked at the sea where the great sky-scourge was nothing but a ripple moving against the incoming tide. It had taken hours to move the corpse over the edge, and only seconds for the sea to take it away.
His hands itched. If only the sea could scour away this poisoned blood, he thought.
“Slaves!”
Vander twisted around. Alder straightened sharply. The other battered, blood-covered slaves turned at the sound of their master.
The fat warrior glowered at them. “About gold-damned time,” he said, brandishing the whip he hadn’t dared use. The first slave he laid open with his favorite weapon had been poisoned by the dragon’s blood and had convulsed until he was nothing but raw skin and a twisted neck. For the last nine hours the warriors had been forced to watch the slaves move the monster’s body over the cliff with nothing more than vocal encouragements. They had shifted in their grandfather’s armor, and it had sounded like coins in a full bag. Vander met the fat man’s eyes, and then dropped his gaze to the man’s boots. The masters had stood and laughed like seagulls over a dead fish while the slaves dragged their conquered enemy to its watery grave. The sun was three hours past meridian, and it glared off the ocean, warm on Vander’s back.
The young warrior, slayer of the wyrm, had stayed to watch the work as well, and claim his prize. Almost as blood soaked as the slaves, he had crouched on his heels, leaning on the great sword while watching his ancient enemy pushed into the waves. While the other warriors had mocked and drank, he had simply watched the progress of the dragon to the edge of the cliff with calm grey eyes. Now he straightened from his crouch and walked to the cliff-edge. The tip of a metal shoe just touched the red smear in the earth where the dragon’s corpse had passed. He shifted his weight and the plated armor slid against itself, hissing.
“There’s light enough,” he said. “Send them into the lair for the gold.”
Vander shot the young warrior a glare, and then dropped his eyes again. The man had the voice of a prince, the bearing of a warrior. His armor shone like the dragon’s scales. Vander’s gut curled with bitterness. The slave had learned to hate both dragons and men. Something about the young warrior had seemed different, something old and patient and wise beyond his years, but that was vanished. He would send others in to collect his prize. A prize the likes of Vander would never taste.
“You heard his lordship! In, in, into the lair!”
The young warrior held up a hand, stopping the fat man from uncoiling his whip. “That’s not the way to bring out the gold intact,” he said dryly. His charcoal eyes, assessing the slaves, were thoughtful pools in his raw, dragon-burned face. “Will some of you volunteer to see the greatest treasure men or dwarves have ever seen?”
They looked at one another.
The wyrm-slayer smiled like he could read thoughts in their eyes. “I’d do it myself, but I am much wearied by my battle. Take this, and perhaps you will bring me a bauble of my adversary’s hoard.” He took a scorched wine skin from his belt and tossed it to nearest slave.
Vander caught it. Desperation made him grip it too hard and a dribble of wine poured over the sides and onto the blood-slicked grass. Hands shaking, he sprayed a shot of slightly tepid wine onto his tongue. The bitter drink tasted of metal and acid and dragon, but soothed his aching throat.
He passed the skin to Vitha, a dark, gaunt woman. She took it silently and quickly. He walked away from them toward the beast’s hole, followed by a handful of lean starved slaves.
The lair’s entrance was more of a sloping tunnel than a cave. Vander had to brace himself against the slick stone roof to keep his balance. Weedy roots grew down through the stone and dirt and cut into his battered hands. He lost his footing and caught a white root thin as a blade between his fingers. It cut. He released his temporary hold and moved on, the hand almost numb with pain, dripping blood. He quickly left the sunlight behind, but the tunnel was not completely dark. A strange luminous light oozed between the cracks of the walls. Soon, he could make his way more smoothly, ducking so the roots hanging down wouldn’t strangle him in their stringy white fingers.
Vander rested a hand on the cool, packed dirt of the tunnel. The walls were so smooth, well-polished stones peaking their heads out of the dark earth. How often had the great beast gone down to its gold? Had it scraped its belly against the walls age upon age? What had it done in the world above? What clans had it burnt? What kingdoms now dead had it feasted upon? What nations had seen the outline of the sky-scourge on the horizon and wondered at the beauty and the horror of the great beast? Curiosity, rekindled after too many years beneath the whip, moved sluggishly in his veins. What would it be like, the hoard of a gold-gatherer? He picked up his pace, eager to see.
He rounded the final curve running, and the glow of gold hit him like a flame, a weight, a feeling on his skin that sent him stumbling to a halt. The gleaming of the gold on his face felled his mouth and he could hardly breathe.
The cavern was huge, grander than the king’s hall where all his warriors and wives could feast. It stretched farther than the field where the young warriors practiced their horse-craft, preparing for the day when they would ride out like their ancestors to put the world to the sword. The cavern dwarfed both the hall and the field, reaching farther than he could see, and every inch was covered in gold.
Vander couldn’t identify half the treasures that gleamed up at him from the cavern floor. Gems, cookware, wooden horses with broken ears, staves, uprooted trees, birds made of enameled ceramic, and gold, silver, bronze, and iron coins in every size, shape and denomination drifted where the hoarder dropped them. Thousands of weapons and piles of shields in various states of rust and decay were half buried and broken amid the radiance of the precious stones and metals. Suits of armor struggled out of the hoard like drowning men. And gold. Gold lay everywhere, glowing by its own light. Vander could see where the sky-scourge had crawled into the treasure and wrapped itself in the gold. Its imprint had crushed the treasure into a single mass of broken treasures and soft, melted, precious metal. Each shining piece, worth the life of a slave or more, was dumped haphazardly, crushed into its neighbors until the delicate pieces of jewelry fused with the bulky metal works beside them, and crude carved statues of jade and obsidian had been molded to golden coins and crowns.
The cavern was vast, and sound vanished between the hanging stones teeth and the reaching stone jaw of the floor. The soft sound of dripping and Vander’s ragged, gasping breaths echoed against the earth and away from him. Beside those two sounds, there was only silence.
The sudden hiss of gold falling against gold was clearly audible. Moving slowly, like a claw was imbedded in his chest, squeezing his lungs closed, Vander turned his head and saw the sea of gold and metals shifting like a wave against the massive wall of the cavern. The treasure could have been a sea, but that was the only place where it moved. He was instinctively afraid.
The other slaves, who had moved more slowly through the dark tunnels, finally barreled into the cavern.
“Good gods,” Alder breathed. “The gold-hoarder kept half the world in its cave.”
His human voice thundered through the cavern, played with the hanging teeth of stone in the roof and completely engulfed the small, stealthy sounds that Vander strained to hear. He wanted to tell them to shut up, to let him listen, but he feared the echoes of his own voice. If his worries broke his lips, perhaps they would find him.
The slaves drank in their first gleaming view of the gold, but they quickly overcame the awe. A bright, greedy fire burning in their eyes, they moved quickly into the sea of treasure. Vander wanted to warn them, but he had to listen. He had to be sure. The gold could not call to him over the fear.
If anyone else felt the fear, their love of gold was greater than their wariness.
“Hey, hey! Look at this! A crown!”
“Swords and arrows! Good gods, what a great hoard this fire-wyrm had! It must have been dragging this back from the ends of the earth since before the god’s fell! Look, look, a golden spoon!”
Vitha stared out over the hoard and the broken armor, some with weapons still in hand. “So much death,” she whispered. She looked at Vander. “See how many men came against the gold-hoarder, and lost their lives. They lost their souls to her teeth, claws, and fire, and she kept their armor.” She reached out into the gold, and picked up a twisted silver crown with a broken sapphire in the center. “Perhaps they never got the souls back.”
She put the crown on her head, nodded regally to Vander, and then stepped into the gold. It shifted under her feet, and lapped against the hem of her pants. The ragged slaves waded into the gold, shouting back and forth to one another.
Vander was just about to step into the shifting treasure when he saw the golden ripples strengthen at the edge of the crushed area. No one else turned to watch it. The surface broke, and he saw a head. And then another. His throat closed on his scream. He knew that shape of head, the bright human-like jewel-toned eyes, the jagged teeth, and the long neck that moved languorously back and forth. The smiling lips always ready to part and sink needle-like teeth into the heart of the world.
Oh, yes, he knew that head. Only that morning, he had pushed one into the sea.
The young, small dragons moved through the gold like diving birds, the tips of their black, clever heads appearing and disappearing beneath the rippling gold, moving steadily toward the oblivious slaves.
Vander stumbled backward, his warning cries lost in the cavern. He took another step, his chest hammering like a drum. On his third step, he tripped on an ancient golden staff, twisted, and landed on his hands and knees facing the exit.
The first muffled scream stabbed into his ears, and Vander crawled toward the exit until he could find his feet and run.
He had seen at least two heads. As he ran through the long, round tunnel, Vander heard the death-screams of the slaves. He imagined infant-wyrms following him on silent claws, the hot, red human blood flowing down their jagged teeth as they took their revenge for the death of the old one.
Through the long, twisting tunnel with its sickly light, he thought he heard the steps coming after him, the breath on his neck, their long flickering tongues catching the scent of their dam’s blood on his skin. And then it wasn’t his imagination but the soft whistle of the hoarders, the cries just behind him, and he pushed all he had into reaching the open air.
He broke into the sunlight before them.
The dragon-killer stood in his gore-stiffened armor, waiting at the entrance, leaning on his sword. He saw Vander first. One step forward brought him into the slave’s path.
Vander hit the other man’s chest hard enough to drive armor into his skin. The other man gripped him by the shoulders and held him away.
“What is it?” the young warrior demanded. His liquid eyes met Vander’s and held them without glancing away. Sadness rested in the eyes. Resignation. He didn’t know, but somehow he suspected his time was coming.
Vander answered the question because of that gaze. If the fat man had asked, he would have spit in his face. With death behind him, he would cower at nothing mortal. Neither dragons nor men would make a slave of him again.
“Gold,” he gasped. “More gold than I have ever seen in my life. But the sky-scourge had younglings. Small ones, no larger than a horse. Killing us, following me.”
The other man’s eyes closed, his head tilted back. The warrior pushed the slave away, reaching for his battered sword.
“Run,” he said. “Did you touch the treasure?”
“No.”
“You took nothing, handled nothing? Then you only need worry about the blood. They hunt blood, but they follow their gold forever. Run and never stop.”
Vander stared. The warrior’s words rang in him, made him bold. “What makes us different from them? Men hunt blood and dragons do; men hunt gold, and dragons keep it. Men hunt the gold-hoarders, and the hoarders hunt men.”
The young warrior hefted his blade and shot him a tired smile. “Just run. Don’t stop until you die.”
He turned calmly to the tunnel. For that second, with darkness behind him, the sun gleaming on his armor, and his face hidden in shadow, he looked like one of the ancient suits of armor from the dragon’s hoard, dragged from the gold, prepared again to battle the beast that had taken a thousand lives. The armor had a soul again. The violent, bloody, cycling past had spun around returning to this day and this hour.
Then Vander ran. He shoved past the slaves and warriors. The fat warrior uncurled his whip, but Vander dodged away from the lash, and it only caught the edge of him. Blood sprayed off his shoulder, leaving red on the fat one’s shining scaled armor and dripping it on the dampened grass.
And then he reached the cliff and launched himself over the edge.
The sea rushed up to him. The salt wind blew against his face while the deep-consuming blue stretched out before him. He wondered what it would be like to stretch out wings and catch that wind, soar into the blue of the day, to try and reach the sun. What it would be like to see other lands, even if they were the same as this one, landscapes of blood and gold? But thoughts like that were futile. He would never see those lands. He was a slave, doomed to the cycle of pain and death without a golden heartbeat. Human beings don’t fly like dragons do.
But here I am, he thought.
And then the water hit him like a sheet of stone and the sea that had swallowed the dragon swallowed him also.
