arms and armour. Of gem-encrusted everythings. The silver standard of some long-lost legion thrust up at a jaunty angle. A throne of rare woods adorned with gold leaf stuck upside down from the mass. There was so much it became absurd. Priceless treasures rendered to gaudy trash by sheer quantity.
‘Fuck,’ she muttered one last time, waiting for the metal beast to wake and fall in blazing rage upon this tiny trespasser. But it didn’t stir, and Shy’s eyes crept down to the ground. The dotted tracks of blood became a smear, then a trickle, and now she saw Waerdinur, lying back against the dragon’s foreleg, and Ro beside him, staring, face streaked with blood from a cut on her scalp.
Shy struggled up, and crept down the bowl-shaped floor of the chamber, the stone underfoot all etched with writing, gripping tight to her sword, as though that feeble splinter of steel was anything more than a petty reassurance.
She saw other things among the hoard as she came closer. Papers with heavy seals. Miners’ claims. Bankers’ drafts. Deeds to buildings long ago fallen. Wills to estates long ago divided. Shares in Fellowships, and companies, and enterprises long deceased. Keys to who knew what forgotten locks. Skulls, too. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Coins and gemstones cut and raw spilling from their empty eye sockets. What things more valued than the dead?
Waerdinur’s breath came shallow, robe blood-soaked, shattered arm limp beside him and Ro clutching at the other, Shy’s broken arrow still lodged near the shoulder.
‘It’s me,’ Shy whispered, scared to raise her voice, edging forward, stretching out her hand. ‘Ro. It’s me.’
She wouldn’t let go of the old man’s arm. It took him reaching up and gently peeling her hand away. He nudged her towards Shy, spoke some soft words in his language and pushed again, more firmly. More words and Ro hung her shaved head, tears in her eyes, and started to shuffle away.
Waerdinur looked at Shy with pain-bright eyes. ‘We only wanted what was best for them.’
Shy knelt and gathered the girl up in her arms. She felt thin, and stiff, and reluctant, nothing left of the sister she’d had so long ago. Scarcely the reunion Shy had dreamed of. But it was a reunion.
‘Fuck!’ Nicomo Cosca stood in the entrance of the chamber, staring at the dragon and its bed.
Sergeant Friendly walked towards it, sliding a heavy cleaver from inside his coat, took one crunching step onto the bed of gold and bones and papers, coins sliding in a little landslip behind his boot-heel and, reaching forward, tapped the dragon on the snout.
His cleaver made a solid clank, as if he’d tapped an anvil.
‘It is a machine,’ he said, frowning down.
‘Most sacred of the Maker’s works,’ croaked Waerdinur. ‘A thing of wonder, of power, of—’
‘Doubtless.’ Cosca smiled wide as he walked into the chamber, fanning himself with his hat. But it wasn’t the dragon that held his eye. It was its bed. ‘How great a sum, do you think, Friendly?’
The sergeant raised his brows and took a long breath through his nose. ‘Very great. Shall I count it?’
‘Perhaps later.’
Friendly looked faintly disappointed.
‘Listen to me…’ Waerdinur tried to prop himself up, blood oozing from around the shaft in his shoulder, smearing the bright gold behind him. ‘We are close to waking the dragon. So close! The work of centuries. This year… perhaps next. You cannot imagine its power. We could… we could share it between us!’
Cosca grimaced. ‘Experience has taught me I’m no good at sharing.’
‘We will drive the Outsiders from the mountains and the world will be right again, as it was in the Old Time. And you… whatever you want is yours!’
Cosca smiled up at the dragon, hands on hips. ‘It certainly is a remarkable curiosity. A magnificent relic. But against what is already boiling across the plains? The legion of the dumb? The merchants and farmers and makers of trifles and filers of papers? The infinite tide of greedy little people?’ He waved his hat towards the dragon. ‘Such things as this are worthless as a cow against a swarm of ants. There will be no place in the world to come for the magical, the mysterious, the strange. They will come to your sacred places and build… tailors’ shops. And dry-goods emporia. And lawyers’ offices. They will make of them bland copies of everywhere else.’ The old mercenary scratched thoughtfully at his rashy neck. ‘You can wish it were not so. I wish it were not so. But it is so. I tire of lost causes. The time of men like me is passing. The time of men like you?’ He wiped a little blood from under his fingernails. ‘So long passed it might as well have never been.’
Waerdinur tried to reach out, his hand dangling from the broken forearm, skin stretched around the splintered bones. ‘You do not understand what I am offering you!’
‘But I do.’ And Cosca set one boot upon a gilded helmet wedged into the hoard and smiled down upon the Maker’s Right Hand. ‘You may be surprised to learn this, but I have been made many outlandish offers. Hidden fortunes, places of honour, lucrative trading rights along the Kadiri coast, an entire city once, would you believe, though admittedly in poor condition. I have come to realise…’ and he peered discerningly up at the dragon’s steaming snout, ‘a painful realisation, because I enjoy a fantastic dream just as much as the next man…’ and he fished up a single golden coin and held it to the light. ‘That one mark is worth a great deal more than a thousand promises.’
Waerdinur slowly let his broken arm drop. ‘I tried to do… what was best.’
‘Of course.’ Cosca gave him a reassuring nod, and flicked the coin back onto the heap. ‘Believe it or not, so do we all. Friendly?’
The sergeant leaned down and neatly split Waerdinur’s head with his cleaver.
‘No!’ shrieked Ro, and Shy could hardly hold on to her, she started thrashing so much.
Cosca looked mildly annoyed at the interruption. ‘It might be best if you removed her. This really is no place for a child.’
Greed
They set off in a happy crowd, smiling, laughing, congratulating one another on their work, comparing the trophies of gold and flesh they had stolen from the dead. Ro had not thought ever in her life to look upon a man worse than Grega Cantliss. Now they were everywhere she turned. One had Akarin’s pipe and he tooted a mindless three-noted jig and some danced and capered down the valley, their clothes made motley by the blood of Ro’s family.
They left Ashranc in ruins, the carvings smashed and the Heartwoods smoking charcoal and the bronze panels gouged up and the Long House burned with the blessed coals from its fire-pit, all forever stained with death. They despoiled even the most sacred caves and tipped the Dragon over so they could steal the coins that made its bed, then they sealed it in its cavern and brought down the bridge with a burning powder that made the very earth shake in horror at the heresy.
‘Better to be safe,’ the murderer Cosca had said, then leaned towards the old man called Savian and asked, ‘Did you find your boy? My notary salvaged several children. He’s discovered quite the talent for it.’
Savian shook his head.
‘A shame. Will you keep searching?’
‘Told myself I’d go this far. No further.’
‘Well. Every man has his limit, eh?’ And Cosca gave him a friendly slap on the arm then chucked Ro under the chin and said, ‘Cheer up, your hair will grow back in no time!’
And Ro watched him go, wishing she had the courage, or the presence of mind, or the anger in her to find a knife and stab him, or rip him with her nails, or bite his face.
They set off briskly but soon slowed, tired and sore and gorged on destruction. Bent and sweating under the weight of their plunder, packs and pockets bulging with coins. Soon they were jostling and cursing each other and arguing over fallen trinkets. One man tore the pipe away and smashed it on a rock and the one who had been playing it struck him and the great black man had to drag the two of them apart and spoke about God, as if He was watching, and Ro thought, if God can see anything, why would He watch this?
Shy talked, talked, different than she had been. Pared down and pale and tired as a candle burned to the stub, bruised as a beaten dog so Ro hardly recognised her. Like a woman she saw in a dream once. A nightmare.
