feet, his belly on the rankly grown ground, a gaping hole in his side. He looked as dead as the dragon I'd killed. «Here, dragon,» I called, standing for a moment, exposed. I leaped back, but there was no hail of teeth, no flash of deadly eyes. While Mar cowered among the trees, I stepped out into the weed-grown field and dared them, all of the tens of dragons which I could see. None moved. All were holed, battered, dead on their feet. I danced and sang. I called out to them, always ready to leap for safety. Nothing. Leaving Mar in shelter, I crawled toward the nearest dragon. I gained the shelter of its tough-skinned hide, below the holes which spat teeth and the glaring eyes, most of which were shattered. He was dead. Very dead. I looked into the hole in his side, and there, exposed, were his guts. I made use of them, jerking them out one at a time, and, sitting there calling for Mar to join me, I wove a necklace for her. She refused to come. She was frightened. I kept calling, and finally she edged out, broke into a run and fell heavily down beside me, winded. I put the necklace of dragon's guts around her neck. She threw it off and shuddered. That woman. Throwing away what any civilized woman would have done most anything to own. I retrieved it. «Look,» I said, «I know you're uneducated, but this is silly.» «I don't want dirty dragon's guts on me,» she said. «Are they not pretty?» «Well, yes, in a sort of way,» she admitted. «Among my people they are treasured and worn by only the bravest of the brave, those who have slain dragons.» «Ugg,» Mar said, as I put the necklace back around her neck. Slowly, cautiously, I began to explore the field of the dead dragons. Soon I became confident. They were all dead. I moved freely from one to the other. All were damaged. One was split wide open. I explored. There were plenty of veins for the taking, so I stocked up and then found smaller pieces of broken skin suitable for arrow heads. A clear piece of something, dragon's bone, maybe, was so sharp I kept it. It would be great for scraping skins. It was rounded on one edge, about a finger's joint thick, and sheared into a sharp edge which ran across the curve of it. I could look through it and see things on the other side, but they were distorted and twisted, curved and funny. Never had I seen such a treasure as that field of dragons. «It must be,» I said, «where all dragons come to die.» «Then let us leave, before one comes which is not quite dead,» Mar said. The animals of the fields had made nests in some of the dragons. It was good hunting. We slept there, in that graveyard of terrible beasts, Mar
clinging closely to me. And then, since I, too, felt the hovering spirits of the dead during the dark and chill night, we put it behind us and crossed a huge dragon's track. We had seen many tracks, all weed-grown, broken, rotting, but this was the largest. I thought that mates, two dragons, had beaten it down, for there were twin paths which ran side by side, up rise and down slope into the distance. There were no fresh tracks. Since the dragon path went east, I elected to follow it. I learned more about dragons, deciding that they were wondrous beasts, able to use white bones to span streams, their paths suspended high above the water below. We came, after two days of following the dragon's path, to an area of God's chaos and had to leave it with the warning of the spirits tickling my belly. I killed a small deer and dressed it, but upon doing the work which, at home, was done by the house of Yorerie the Butcher, I felt the warning tingle, very faint, and narrowed down its source to the bones of the stunted deer. It was my first experience of the kind, and it created wonder in my mind. That night, as an experiment, while cuddled close to Mar, I opened myself, making my skin its most sensitive, and pressed tightly against her. In the areas where her bones were near the surface, as on the wrists and ankles, I could feel it, ever so faint, the small tingle of warning. It caused me much alarm. I reasoned, however, that any contamination would have already been accomplished, and she, herself, seemed healthy enough. Indeed, in spite of our constant travel, with my provisions she had gained weight and was now more womanly, rounder, softer than ever. It was a puzzle, however. The next day proved to be one of the more eventful ones of my life. We set out eastward early, but skirting the large chaos on the dragon's path. We saw ahead a woodland which seemed out of keeping with the stunted and twisted trees of the region, and I made for it, thinking to kill an untainted deer, or at the least to add another deerskin—I had saved the other one, since there was no spirit warning in the hide—to our stock of bedclothes and apparel. It was a beautiful wood, with huge trees bearing the nuts eaten by the climber, trees which had trunks so huge that a hidehouse could have been hidden behind without showing. The ground was soft with the fall of seasons and seasons of leaves. There was game sign. I did kill another small deer, but it too had the warning spirit in its bones, so we ate none, much to Mar's disgust. Now, indeed, the rodents and hares had the spirit in their bones, and our diet was narrowed to nuts and to the climbers, tough and stringy as they were. I experimented, and the root things which grew in the ground gave me the tiny tingle of warning. I was concerned, but there was no tingle as long as I did not come near a buried root thing which had been unearthed, or if I did not break into the bones of the animals from which came the warning. «Look,» I said, «here we are not freaks, for even the trees have hair.» It was so. They were festooned with gray hair. It gave the woods a sober, secluded and lonely look. It was not true hair, of course, for upon examination it proved to be a tasteless thing of vegetable material, not strong enough to use for any purpose. «I like it here,» Mar said. «And I am tired of travel. Let us build a house and stay.» «We will explore the woodland first,» I said, leading her deeper into the darkness of the huge trees. I was teaching her to use the hunter's stalk, to walk silently. We crept ahead as quietly as two ghosts, and I saw up ahead something which caused my blood to soar and send me for cover, pulling Mar behind me. It was the glint of dragonskin. There was no mistaking it. Leaving Mar in safety, I crept from tree to tree until I could see the nature of the thing. It was a strangeness, webbed in regular patterns like a spider's nest. Three times my height, it extended to right and left. I threw a stick at it from a safe distance, and there was nothing. I threw another and hit it and there was a sound, but no spitting of teeth nor flash of deadly eyes. And then I began to notice that beyond the web was a greenness which was unlike anything I'd ever seen. I crept closer. There was an expanse of grass, but growing low and evenly. In patterns in the grassy field there were bushes, some with large white flowers which were totally out of place in the winter. After testing each step carefully, I stood beside the dragonskin web. I touched it with my hardax. Nothing. I tried to cut it. My hardax bounced off. There was no danger. I went back for Mar and showed her the wonders. Nothing would do but for her to have some of the white flowers. I touched the web. It was cold and hard, dragonskin. I tried to climb it. By putting my toes in the mesh I could. I gained the top and reached down for Mar and lifted her. Then we dropped to the other side, though with some painful cuts caused by sharp edges on the top of the web. The grass was soft and pliant under our feet. We walked toward the nearest bush with white flowers, I on the alert, listening for any sound, sensitive to spirits. Mar ran ahead and was plucking the white flowers. They smelled sweet. «It's beautiful here,» she said. «The grass is sick,» I said. «It grows thickly but directly atop the dirt.» I didn't like it. «Still, you feel none of what you call the warning,» she said. «No.» But there was a strangeness. And then I knew, for I heard it, a whining creak, not as loud as the wail of my slain dragon, but of the same texture of sound. I searched for a place to hide. There was only the bushes. They would offer no protection against a hail of dragon's teeth. Suddenly I understood. There were dragons and there were dragons, and this was a type of dragon which beat down grass for his path instead of dirt and stone. I pulled Mar into the bushes, and we crouched as the sound drew near, coming toward us from clumps of bushes and trees which hid the view. I held my breath. He came around a clump of bushes. He was a small dragon, about as wide at the ground as I was tall, but shorter than my body. He would come, I estimated, to my waist. He moved slowly, and he was eating, cropping the grass and spitting out the unused portions behind him. He made creaking and humming sounds. He came directly toward us. I would have to fight if he sensed us, hidden behind the useless bushes. He had only one eye, directly in front, and his head seemed to be a part of his body, unable to turn as had the head of my dragon. That gave me hope. I might be able to come up on his blind side. I readied myself. The dragon came directly toward us, and I tensed, ready to leap and die trying to blind him with an ax stroke to his one vulnerable spot, the eye. But just before he entered the bushes, seemingly bent on seeking us out, he turned and went away. Dragons, thank the gods of man, had no noses. What? Was I a little disappointed? Perhaps. I had traveled far and I had seen the dying place of the huge dragons, and this tiny dragon who had come so close seemed to me to be easy prey. In my pride, I leaped up, ran after the fleeing dragon lightly, leaped upon his back and with one crushing blow smashed his sensitive eye. He stopped. There was a dying hum from inside. He was dead. «Come and see,» I called. Mar came fearfully. I turned the dragon onto his back. He had teeth with sharp edges, huge teeth, stained by the grass which was his food. I beat upon him a bit with my ax, but did not want to ruin the edge, so we left him upturned, vanquished. «How can you be so brave?» Mar asked admiringly. My chest swelled. «Smaller dragons slain to order,» I said lightly. I didn't feel so brave when, walking along in the direction from which the dragon had come, there was a sudden hiss of sound and it rained from the ground. Water, rain, flew upward, wetting us. Mar screamed. I was frozen for only an instant. It was only rain, and if it came from the ground, what else could we expect in this strange land? Mar tried to run, and I grabbed her arm. We walked through the rain and rounded a clump of bushes, and there, face to face, we came upon another of the grass-eating dragons. He had us, eye on. I yelled and rushed, expecting an instant hail of spat teeth or a flash of burning eye, but the creature, instead of spitting or blazing, merely continued toward me, making a creak and a hum and I killed him head on, smashing his
