Killbird

it back until, with a blast of sound and buzzing, teeth shredded it. The dragon had no shortage of teeth, despite his obvious age. «Please, let's go back,» Mar begged. «It is only one dragon,» I said, «and it spits teeth only from its middle.» Indeed, I had observed that as the dragon ruined my sleepskin. Three heads on its middle, on one of the separate segments of his body, turned and spat as I tested him once again, watching closely. The other segments had eyes, but they seemed to be of the sort which were on the cave of the giants, eyes without the deadly burning fires. I made a few more tests, just to be sure, and there was no burst of fire, only the teeth which made little popping sounds as they passed close by, outside the protecting outcrop. «We will kill him and rid the mountains of him,» I said. «He will kill us,» Mar said. «No. Now, here is what you must do.» I told her, and I left her there. The year with me had given her courage. I climbed to the top of the ridge and made my way carefully to a point overlooking the dragon's middle. There I positioned myself. Then, for I wanted more information, I shrilled out a signal to Mar. She heard and extended the tattered sleepskin on a stick. I watched. The three heads jerked and spat, and as they spat I stood in the open and yelled at the dragon. Immediately one head started turning, and I dived for cover. Yes, I knew then that the heads could turn individually and that I would have to work carefully. I went for Mar, took her to a safe distance, made our camp. At the sun, she insisting upon going with me, I went to the top of the ridge and studied the situation. This one was an alert dragon, sending his heads searching at the sound of my movements, hailing his spat teeth into the thick trees around us. In any forest there is an ample supply of deadwood, unless fire has passed recently, and this forest, although not overly thick, was littered with deadwood. First I cut green saplings, and, crawling on my belly and using rocks for cover, hearing the song of the spat teeth around and over me, but staying behind the protecting stones, I built a sort of hold, a bed of green saplings braced against rocks and half suspended over the cliff. Then, that part of it finished, the rest was easier. I was able to toss deadwood and debris onto my platform from the safety of the cover of the trees until, by nightfall, I had a huge pile. The weight of it sagged the saplings which held it. Since I wanted to be sure of seeing all of the action, I waited for morning, and then, with the sun, I tossed a burning brand into the huge pile of deadwood. The resulting fire spread quickly until, smoke reaching for the skies, there was a huge blaze which ate through the supporting saplings and sent the entire blazing mass down the cliff. It lodged exactly where I'd planned, against the living portion of the dragon. Now I followed through, sending the largest dead logs I could roll tumbling down the cliff into the blazing fire, until, after a morning's sweaty work, there was a heap of burning logs beside the dragon, which, as I'd suspected, could not move. From a place of safety we watched as the fire burned hotter and hotter, the thick logs blazing, the flames licking high on the dragon's sides. We waited. Once a head turned and sent an aimless spit of teeth into the air, and then all three heads went into motion. As we watched the dragon, which was obviously in pain, there was a flash of light followed by a boom of thunder louder than the summer storms, and the dragon burst as a green nut bursts when thrown into a bed of glowing embers. One by one his segments, the chaos of God following his body in two directions, from middle to front, from middle to back, burst with the thunder, and I knew great fear for both myself and Mar, for dragon flesh began to rain down everywhere. Only the fact that we were in dense tree cover saved us from injury or death as dragonskin fell, some of it sizzling hot, all around us, bouncing down through the branches, knocking away branches and leaves and needles. When all was quiet I ventured a look over the cliff. Only the dragon's head survived, and a segment of his tail. I led Mar down to the scene of his death, and there were bits of skin for the picking, some jagged and excellent for hardaxes. A fire was burning in the dragon's dead head, and as we watched it spread, apparently feeding on stored blood, which leaked and burned and engulfed the head and left, after a day of burning, only blackened shells of the dragon's head. In the shattered tail we found sharp pieces of eye, good for scraping and for decoration, and, most valuable, chair things covered with a sort of hide which was soft and warm. I told Mar we would come back for it to make her pretty skirts. And there was a treasure house of dragonskin all around me. Our new life would be started in ease and richness, and should I desire, I could march back to the people of the Stoneskull families and trade for many buythings with the skin pieces. Now, however, I wanted to see my valley. We walked down the rotted and broken dragon's path and came to a curious place where the path went into the mountain, into a blackness lined with a sort of white stone or bone. Eban the curious looked in and saw light at the far end. It seemed to extend under the ridge and come out the other side. «I will not,» Mar said. «The dragon is dead.» «You go if you must, and leave your child fatherless and your pairmate lonely.» «That would be a sadness,» I said, grinning. «So we go together.» So, unwillingly, she came, clutching my hand tightly. There was nothing. The dragon's hole simply went under the mountain and came out the other side, and we looked down upon the sweetest valley I'd seen since leaving the Valley of Clean Water. Gods of man, it was beautiful. It was a perfect bowl, and all around the hill rose to almost uniform height, with no gap that I could see. The dragon's path went around the inside of the ridge and spiraled downward toward the valley floor, I was too eager to take the long way. I led Mar down the slope. I noted a stream cascading down the side of the slope and knew that somewhere there had to be a way out of the valley, otherwise the entire bowl would be a lake. I would find the outlet for the stream later. I would explore every stone, every tree, for the valley was mine, mine and my pairmate's and our unborn son's. With an eye toward permanence, I found a pleasant knoll near the stream and selected a site high enough to prevent flooding when the snows melted. «Here we will build our house,» I told Mar. I had one fresh deerhide, and there were signs of plenty of game. I left Mar beside a fire at the new homesite and went walking, took a huge stag near the camp, skinned him, and put Mar to work preparing the skin. We had fresh meat roasted over the fire and slept entwined to wake with a feeling of joy and anticipation. My valley was not as small as it first appeared. It took us several days to familiarize ourselves with it. There were wild fruit trees on the southern edge which offered a bounty, since the fruit was at its ripest; and there was an abundance of small game. I had, I discovered, my own farm of swimmers to be harvested as needed for clothing. Now, however, the main object was to finish the hidehouse. To gather the material I hunted alone and found, at the western end of the valley, the outlet of our stream. A natural cleft in the rock wall had been breached, and the stream tumbled through a narrow ravine with towering hills on either side, the depths of the gorge seldom seeing the sun, so narrow was it. I made a tentative probe into the ravine, wading and noting that fat fish lay in shallow pools. I was no more than an arrow's flight into the ravine when I saw the warning gleam of whiteness. From long habit I froze and then sought cover. Dragons in that deep and narrow ravine? Not likely. And yet, as I looked carefully, I saw another and another pile of weathered white bones of death, and I set out to study the situation. I saw nothing. There was no space for a dragon's path, and I began to think that the animal had been a victim of a lion or a bear. However, I knew that rashness is danger, so I did not plunge into the ravine, but, rather, retreated and sought to climb the hill to the north to get an overall view of the ravine. I startled a deer, and, since deerhide was my objective, I loosed an arrow which took the beast in the shoulder in a nonfatal spot. Panicked, in dire pain, no doubt, the poor animal bolted, saw me, and turned to run into the ravine, splashing along the bed of the stream. He had gone only a short distance when, with a chatter of horrible proportions, at least two dragons, one on either side of the ravine and high up on the hills, began to spit teeth in such a hail that the deer was slain in midleap. I saw the flash of an eye, high near the top. I did not like that development. Dragons on the hills. They could, it seemed, have a view of the entire valley. However, both Mar and I had walked near, within range of a dragon's teeth, and had lived. It was a puzzle. I began to climb the slope, finding the going tough as the side of the hill steepened, and kept an eye out for the telltale signs of the bones of death. There were none. I made a slow approach to the spot from which I had seen the gleam of an eye, and, in the dense growth, was closer than I wanted to be when I saw the bloodstained hide of a dragon showing through the trees. I crept close. This was a peculiar dragon, I found, with no feet. His body was half a globe, sitting on the ground, and his head was not eyed all around. There were eyes on the front side, facing the ravine, and holes from which the dragon had spat teeth. I studied how to kill the beast, to rid my valley of him. Since he was on top of the hill, I could not roll rocks down on him, and that left only fire. However, to burn him meant exposing myself, and I had little inclination to do that. But behind the dragon were no bones of death. Looking past him into the ravine I could see several white spots. Could he not, then, turn his head? To test him I exposed myself, ready to leap for cover. There was no action from the dragon. I taunted and jeered and crept ever closer until I was close enough to cast stones which rang off his tough hide. He seemed not to notice. However, when I threw large stones past him his head jerked and followed their roll down the steep side of the ravine. A peculiar dragon, indeed. I crept to his side and put my hand on his cold and bloodstained hide. He did not seem to know I was there. I began to gather dry wood and built a fire at his back, stacked it with logs and went back into the trees to watch. The fire burned for a long time and I kept awaiting the blast of his bursting, but when there were only embers his hide was blackened by smoke but intact. He was a tough one. I knew that he had a mate on the opposite side of the ravine, and keeping behind him, I began to search out the other dragon. At last, hidden in underbrush, I saw the sun reflect off an eye, and then, to my concern, I saw another reflection a bit farther down the ravine, still at the top of the hills, however. I scouted on my side and came