The Hero And The Crown

 

SHE RODE HOME in a merry mood. The time and the soap (fortunately she had thought to bring a great chunk of the harsh floor-scrubbing soap with her) it had taken to get the yellow stuff out of her hair could not dampen her spirits, any more than had the cold night, and she with only one thin blanket.

Even another dreadful court affair, with an endless diplomatic dinner after it, could not completely quell her happiness, and when the third person in half an hour asked her about her new perfume - there was a slightly herby, and a slightly charred, smell that continued to cling to her - she couldn't help but laugh out loud. The lady, who had been trying to make conversation, smiled a stiff smile and moved away, for she resented being laughed at by someone she was supposed to pity and be kind to.

Aerin sighed, for she understood the stiff smile, and wondered if she were going to smell of herbs and burning - and slightly of clean floors - forever.

There was an unnatural activity at her father's court at present; Thorped had been only the precursor of a swelling profusion of official visitors, each more nervous than the last, and a few inclined to be belligerent. The increasing activity on Damar's northern Border worried everyone who knew enough, or cared to pay attention; there was more traveling among the villages and towns and the king's City than there had been for as long as Aerin could remember, and the court dinners, always tense with protocol, were now stretched to breaking point with something like fear.

Aerin, after the morning her father had given her permission to take Talat out alone, had begun to visit the king at his breakfast now and then, and always he looked glad to see her. Sometimes Tor ate with the king as well, and if Arlbeth noticed that Tor joined him at breakfast more often now that there was a chance he would see Aerin as well, he said nothing. Tor was home most of the time now, for Arlbeth had need of him near.

Aerin persisted in being unaware of the way Tor watched her, but was acutely aware that conversation between them was awkward at best these days; a new constraint seemed to have come between them since the night Tor had told his cousin of the Hero's Crown. Aerin decided the new awkwardness probably had something to do with his having finally begged off crossing swords with her. She had perfectly understood that with the current workload he had had to, so she tried to be polite to show she didn't mind. When this didn't seem to help, she ignored him and talked to her father. It did seem odd that Tor should take it so seriously - surely he gave her credit for some understanding of what the first sola's life was like? - but if he wanted to be stiff and formal, that was his problem.

So it was the three of them lingering over third cups of malak one morning when the first petitioner of the day came to speak to the king.

The petitioner reported a dragon, destroying crops and killing chickens. It had also badly burned a child who had accidentally discovered its lair, although the child had been rescued in time to save its life.

Arlbeth sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. "Very well. We will send someone to deal with it."

The man bowed and left.

"There will be more of them now, with the trouble at the Border," said Tor. "That sort of vermin seems to breed faster when the North wind blows."

"I fear you are right," Arlbeth replied. "And we can ill spare anyone just now."

"I'll go," said Tor.

"Don't be a fool," snapped the king, and then immediately said, "I'm sorry. I can spare you least of all - as you know. Dragons don't kill people very often any more, but dragon-slayers rarely come back without a few uncomfortable burns."

"Someday," said Tor with a wry smile, "when we have nothing better to do, we must think up a more efficient way to cope with dragons. It's hard to take them seriously - but they are a serious nuisance."

Aerin sat very still.

"Yes." Arlbeth frowned into his malak. "I'll ask tomorrow for half a dozen volunteers to go take care of this. And pray it's an old slow one."

Aerin also prayed it was an old slow one as she slipped off. She had only a day's grace, so she needed to leave at once; fortunately she had visited the village in question once on a state journey with her father, so she knew more or less how to get there. It was only a few hours' ride.

Her hands shook as she saddled Talat and tied the bundles of dragon-proof suit, kenet, sword, and a spear - which she wasn't at all sure she could use, since, barring a few lessons from Tor when she was eight or nine years old, she was entirely self-taught - to the saddle. Then she had to negotiate her way past the stable, the castle, and down the king's way and out of the City without anyone trying to stop her; and the sword and spear, in spite of the long cloak she had casually laid over them, were a bit difficult to disguise.

Her luck - or something - was good. She was worrying so anxiously about what she would say if stopped that she gave herself a headache; but as she rode, everyone seemed to be looking not quite in her direction - almost as if they couldn't quite see her, she thought. It made her feel a little creepy. But she got out of the City unchallenged.

The eerie feeling, and the headache, lifted at once when she and Talat set off through the forest below the City. The sun was shining, and the birds seemed to be singing just for her. Talat lifted into a canter, and she let him run for a while, the wind slipping through her hair, the shank of the spear tapping discreetly at her leg, reminding her that she was on her way to accomplish something useful.

She stopped at a little distance from the dragon-infested village to put on her suit - which was no longer quite so greasy; it had reached its saturation point, perhaps - and then adapted, as well-oiled boots adapt to the feet that wear them. Her suit still quenched torches, but it had grown as soft and supple as cloth, and almost as easy to wear. She rubbed ointment on her face and her horse, and pulled on her long gloves. Shining rather in the sunlight then and reeking of pungent herbs, Aerin rode into the village.

Talat was unmistakably a war-horse, even to anyone who had never seen one before, and her red hair immediately identified her as the first sol. A little boy stood up from his doorstep and shouted: "They're here for the dragon!" and then there were a dozen, two dozen folk in the street, looking at her, and then looking in puzzlement for the five or six others that should have been riding with her.

"I am alone," said Aerin; she would have liked to explain, not that she was here without her father's knowledge but that she was alone because she was dragon-proof (she hoped) and didn't need any help. But her courage rather failed her, and she didn't. In fact what the villagers saw as royal pride worked very well, and they fell over themselves to stop appearing to believe that a first sol (even a half-foreign one) couldn't handle a dragon by herself (and if her mother really was a witch, maybe there was some good in her being half a foreigner after all), and several spoke at once, offering to show the way to where the dragon had made its lair, all of them careful not to look again down the road behind her.

She was wondering how she could tell them delicately that she didn't want them hanging around to watch, since she wasn't at all sure how graceful (or effective) her first encounter with a real dragon was likely to be. But the villagers who accompanied her to show her the way had no intention of getting anywhere near the scene of the battle; a cornered dragon was not going to care what non-combatant bystanders it happened to catch with an ill-aimed lash of fire. They pointed the way, and then returned to their village to wait on events.

Aerin hung her sword round her waist, settled the spear into the crook of her arm. Talat walked with his ears sharply forward, and when he snorted she smelled it too: fire, and something else. It was a new smell, and it was the smell of a creature that did not care if the meat it ate was fresh or not, and was not tidy with the bones afterward. It was the smell of dragon.

Talat, after his warning snort, paced onward carefully. They came soon to a little clearing with a hummock of rock at its edge. The hummock had a hole in it, the upper edge of which was rimed with greasy smoke. The litter of past dragon meals was scattered across the once green meadow, and it occurred to Aerin that the footing would be worse for a horse's hard hoofs than a dragon's sinewy claws.

Talat halted, and they stood, Aerin gazing into the black hole in the hill. A minute or two went by and she wondered, suddenly, how one got the dragon to pay attention to one in the first place. Did she have to wake it up? Yell? Throw water into the cave at it?

Just as her spear point sagged with doubt, the dragon hurtled out of its den and straight at them: and it opened its mouth and blasted them with its fire - except that Talat had never doubted, and was ready to step nimbly out of its way as Aerin scrabbled with her spear and grabbed at Talat's mane to keep from falling off onto the dragon's back. It spun round-it was about the height of Talat's knees, big for a dragon, and dreadfully quick on its yellow-clawed feet - and sprayed fire at them again. This time, although Talat got them out of the worst of it, it licked over her arm. She saw the fire wash over the spear handle and glance off her elbow, but she did not feel it; and the knowledge that her ointment did accomplish what it was meant to do gave her strength and cleared her mind. She steadied the spear-butt and nudged Talat with one ankle; as he sidestepped and as the dragon whirled round at them again, she threw her spear.

It wouldn't have been a very good cast for a member of the thotor, or for a seasoned dragon-hunter, but it served her purpose. It stuck in the dragon's neck, in the soft place between neck and shoulder where the scales were thin, and it slowed the dragon down. It twitched and lashed its tail and roared at her, but she knew she hadn't given it a mortal wound; if she let it skulk off to its lair, it would eventually heal and re-emerge, nastier than ever.

It bent itself around the wounded shoulder and tried to grip the spear in its teeth, which were long and thin and sharp and not well suited for catching hold of anything so smooth and hard and narrow as a spear shaft. Aerin dismounted and pulled out her sword, and approached it warily. It ignored her, or appeared to, till she was quite close; and then it snapped its long narrow head around at her again and spat fire. It caught her squarely; and dragon fire had none of the friendliness of a wood fire burning by the side of a river. The dragonfire pulled at her, seeking her life; it clawed at her pale shining skin, and at the supple leather she wore; and while the heat of it did not distress her, the heat of its malice did; and as the fire passed over her and disappeared she stood still in shock, and stared straight ahead of her, and did not move.

The dragon knew it had killed her. It was an old dragon, and had killed one or two human beings, and knew that it had caught this one well and thoroughly. It had been a bit puzzled that she did not scream when it burned her arm, and that she did not scream now and fall down writhing on the earth; but this did not matter. She would not trouble it further, and it could attend to its sore shoulder.

Aerin took half a dozen stiff steps forward, grasped the end of the spear and forced the dragon to the ground, swung her sword up and down, and cut off the dragon's head.

Then there was an angry scream from Talat, and she whirled, the heat of the dead dragon's fresh-spilled blood rising as steam and clouding her vision: but she saw dragonfire, and she saw Talat rear and strike with his forefeet.

She ran toward them and thought, Gods, help me, it had a mate; I forgot, often there are two of them; and she chopped at the second dragon's tail, and missed. It swung around, breathing fire, and she felt the heat of it across her throat, and then Talat struck at it again. It lashed her with its tail when it whirled to face the horse again, and Aerin tripped and fell, and the dragon was on top of her at once, the claws scrabbling at her leather tunic and the long teeth fumbling for her throat. The smoke from its nostrils hurt her eyes. She yelled, frantically, and squirmed under the dragon's weight; and she heard something tear, and she knew if she was caught in dragonfire again she would be burned.

Then Talat thumped into the dragon's side with both hind feet, and the force of the blow lifted them both - for the dragon's claws were tangled in leather laces - and dropped them heavily. The dragon coughed, but there was no fire; and Aerin had fallen half on top of the thing. It raked her with its spiked tail, and something else tore; and its teeth snapped together inches from her face. Her sword was too long; she could not get it close enough for stabbing, and her shoulder was tiring. She dropped the sword and struggled to reach her right boot top, where she had a short dagger, but the dragon rolled, and she could not reach it.

Then Talat was there again, and he bit the dragon above its small red eye, where the ear hole was; and the dragon twisted its neck to spout fire at him, but it was still dazed by its fall, and only a little fire came out of its mouth. Talat plunged his own face into the trickle of smoke and seized the dragon by the nostrils and dragged its head back; and still farther back. Its forefeet and breast came clear of the ground, and as the dragon thrashed, Aerin's leg came free, and she pulled the dagger from her boot and thrust it into the dragon's scaleless breast. The dragon shrieked, the noise muffled by Talat's grip on its nose, and Aerin stumbled away to pick up her sword.

Talat swung the dying dragon back and forth, and slashed at its body with one forefoot, and the muscles of his heavy stallion's neck ran with sweat and smudges of ash. Aerin lifted up the sword and sliced the dragon's belly open, and it convulsed once, shuddered, and died. Talat dropped the body and stood with his head down, shivering, and Aerin realized what she had done, and how little she had known about what it would involve, and how near she had come to failure; and her stomach rebelled, and she lost what remained of her breakfast over the smoking mutilated corpse of the second dragon.

She walked a few steps away till she came to a tree, and with her hands on its bole she felt her way to the ground, and sat with her knees drawn up and her head between them for a few minutes. Her head began to clear, and her breathing slowed, and as she looked up and blinked vaguely at the leaves overhead, she heard Talat's hoofbeats behind her. She put out a hand, and he put his bloody nose into it, and so they remained for several heartbeats more, and then Aerin sighed and stood up. "Even dragons need water. Let's look for a stream."

Again they were lucky, for there was one close at hand. Aerin carefully washed Talat's face, and discovered that most of the blood was dragon's, although his forelock was singed half away. "And to think I almost didn't bother to put any kenet on your head," she murmured. "I thought it was going to be so easy." She pulled Talat's saddle off to give him a proper bath, after which he climbed the bank and found a nice scratchy bit of dirt and rolled vigorously, and stood up again mud-colored. "Oh dear," said Aerin. She splashed water on her face and hands and then abruptly pulled off all her dragon-tainted clothing and submerged. She came up again when she needed to breathe, chased Talat back into the water to wash the mud off, and then brushed and rubbed him hard till she was warm and dry with the work and he was at least no more than damp.

She dressed slowly and with reluctance, and they returned to the battlefield. She tried to remember what else she ought to have thought of about dragons. Eggs? Well, if there were eggs, they'd die, for new-hatched dragons depended on their parents for several months. And if there were young dragons, surely we'd have seen them - ?

With much greater reluctance she tied together some dry brush and set fire to it from her tinder box, and approached the dark foul-smelling hole in the rock. She had to stoop to get inside the cave at all, and her torch guttered and tried to go out. She had an impression of a shallow cave with irregular walls of rock and dirt, and a pebbly floor; but she could not bear the smell, or the knowledge that the grisly creatures she had just killed had lived here, and she jerked back outside into the sunlight again, and dropped her torch, and stamped out the fire. She didn't think there were any eggs, or dragon kits. She'd have to hope there weren't.

She thought: I have to take the heads with me. The hunters always bring the heads - and it does prove it without a lot of talking about it. I don't think I can talk about it. So she picked up her sword again and whacked off the second dragon's head, and then washed her sword and dagger in the stream, re-sheathed them, and tied her spear behind the saddle. The dragons looked small now, motionless and headless, little bigger and no more dangerous than rabbits; and the ugly heads, with the long noses and sharp teeth, looked false, like masks in a monster-play for the children during one of the City holidays, where part of the fun is to be frightened - but not very much. Who could be frightened of a dragon?

I could, she thought.

She tied the heads in the heavy cloth she'd carried her leather suit in, and mounted Talat, and they went slowly back to the village.

The villagers were all waiting, over a hundred of them, gathered at the edge of town; the fields beyond the village were empty, and men and women in their working clothes, looking odd in their idleness, all stood watching the path Aerin and Talat had disappeared down only an hour ago. A murmur arose as the front rank caught sight of them, and Talat raised his head and arched his neck, for he remembered how it should be, coming home from battle and bearing news of victory. The people pressed forward, and as Talat came out of the trees they surrounded him, looking up at Aerin: Just the one girl and her fine horse, surely they have not faced the dragon, for they are uninjured; and they were embarrassed to hope for a sol's burns, but they wished so sorely for the end of the dragon.

"Lady?" one man said hesitantly. "Did you meet the dragon?"

Aerin realized that their silence was uncertainty; she had suddenly feared that they would not accept even the gift of dragon-slaying from the daughter of a witchwoman, and she smiled in relief, and the villagers smiled back at her, wonderingly. "Yes, I met your dragon; and its mate." She reached behind her and pulled at the cloth that held the heads, and the heads fell to the ground; one rolled, and the villagers scattered before it as if it still had some power to do them harm. Then they laughed a little sheepishly at themselves; and then everyone turned as the boy who had announced Aerin's arrival said, "Look!"

Seven horsemen were riding into the village as Aerin had ridden in. "You weren't supposed to get here till tomorrow," she murmured, for she recognized Gebeth and Mik and Orin, who were cousins of hers a few times removed and members of her father's court, and four of their men. Gebeth and Orin had been on many dragon hunts before; they were loyal and reliable, and did not consider dragon-hunting beneath them, for it was a thing that needed to be done, and a service they could do for their king.

"Aerin-sol," said Gebeth; his voice was surprised, respectful - for her father's sake, not hers - and disapproving. He would not scold her in front of the villagers, but he would certainly give Arlbeth a highly colored tale later on.

"Gebeth," she said. She watched with a certain ironic pleasure as he tried to think of a way to ask her what she was doing here; and then Orin, behind him, said something, and pointed to the ground where the small dragons' heads lay in the dust. Gebeth dropped his gaze from the unwelcome sight of his sovereign's young daughter rigged out like a soldier boy

, who has seen better days, realized what he was looking at, and yanked his eyes up again to stare disbelievingly at red-hatred Aerin in her torn leather suit.

"I - er - I've gotten rid of the dragons already, if that's what you mean," said Aerin.

Gebeth dismounted, slowly, and slowly stooped down to __stare at her trophies. The jaws of one were open, and the sharp teeth showed. Gebeth was not a rapid nor an original thinker, and he remained squatting on his heels and staring at the grisly heads long after he needed only to verify the dragonness of them. As slowly as he had stooped he straightened up again and bowed, stiffly, to Aerin, saying, "Lady, I salute you." His fingers flicked out in some ritual recognition or other, but Aerin couldn't tell which salute he was offering her, and rather doubted he knew which one he wanted to give. "Thank you," she said gravely.

Gebeth turned and caught the eye of one of his men, who dismounted and wrapped the heads up again; and then, as Gebeth gave no further hint, hesitated, and finally approached Talat to tie the bundle behind Aerin's saddle.

"May we escort you home, lady?" Gebeth said, raising his eyes to stare at Talat's pricked and bridleless ears, but carefully avoiding Aerin's face.

"Thank you," she said again, and Gebeth mounted his horse, and turned it back toward the City, and waited, that Aerin might lead; and Talat, who knew about the heads of columns, strode out without any hint from his rider.

The villagers, not entirely sure what they had witnessed, tried a faint cheer as Talat stepped off; and the boy who announced arrivals suddenly ran forward to pat Talat's shoulder, and Talat dropped his nose in acknowledgment and permitted the familiarity. A girl only a few years older than the boy stepped up to catch Aerin's eye, and said clearly, "We thank you."

Aerin smiled and said, "The honor is mine."

The girl grew to adulthood remembering the first sol's smile, and her seat on her proud white horse.