Chapter 14 #2
As much as my heart soared with how much of him was back in my arms after our days of distance, it dropped just as easily with what horror my mind had wrapped its slithery folds around.
“No, no, no,” I cooed. “You were right all along. I think we need to stay. We need to defend ourselves. We’re meant to be here.
This is our home.” I tried to assure him.
I don’t know if what I was saying was a lie.
I’d like to think I didn’t know what I wanted yet, that I just needed a minute to think.
I wanted to hide behind that minute for days. But we had run out of time.
“No—seriously, George—I don’t think this is our fight anymore.” Simon’s face was white and sharp in the dark. “We need to
get out of here because they’re all here now. The army is here. They’ve arrived.”
Human plague had swept over our smallholding. The land was barely recognizable. Prince Edward’s abandoned tent had expanded
into a sweeping festival of men, nearly as big as the king’s battalion at Thirsk. A sea of men and horses and battle equipment
and filth littered the land. Their occupation had come as instantaneous as if they had arisen right up from the ground.
“They arrived a while ago,” said Simon. “While you were gone.”
The men had come from the most exhausted front lines of the north. Like Prince Edward’s harem of men, this new regiment seemed
relieved at their dispatchment out here, a respite from the real war going on elsewhere. The men were joyous. This was a party.
One of our sheep had already been slaughtered and was roasting over a fire, there was music, buckets of mead, the ground muddy
from the overflowing canal, ruined by too many men bathing, pissing, wrestling, no order, ultraviolence, unintelligible speech—this
was a horde not an army.
Prince Edward had made good on his promise.
We could not pass through the encampment without pinballing into a man, a bonfire, a stack of metal armor, a tanklike pony, a pile of swords like toothpicks, a pile of arrows like hairs on a head, and even what appeared to be a catapult, complete with a gang of men crowding around it, hands on hips, chins stroked, deep in drunken discussion about wind direction and ammo and one of the men breaking away, spotting Simon and I, marching toward us.
A sentient mountain of fleshy bulbs introduced himself as Commander Smear.
“Spear?” I clarified.
“Smear, boy, Commander Smear,” he bellowed. Four teeth in total lined a bread-flecked tongue too big for its own mouth. He clasped
my shoulder with a giant, calloused hand. “Smear like what I do to my enemies. We’re here to slay the dragon. Your squire
said you’ve been out plotting its movements, examining its dung.”
I almost corrected the commander and said Simon wasn’t my squire but then I looked behind me and saw him—saw him carrying
the cloak I had taken off, carrying my cough medicine, carrying a flask of water for me—and for a moment I didn’t know what
he was. Campfires and clowns reflected in his darkened eyes, and I did not see myself in them.
Commander Smear pulled me into our stone hut, which he and his men had completely taken over. We couldn’t get through the
front door and Commander Smear had to yell and barge his way through. He introduced me to other soldiers under his command—their
ranks nonsensical, their names more variations of grunts. Our bed had been turned over to its side and pushed against the
wall. On the ground was a crude map of the surrounding woodland and nearest towns. Scarborough and the sea to the east, Wykeham
to the south, an expanse of forest to the west and north, with a crude drawing of a dragon in the middle of it.
Commander Smear garbled through his plan of attack, something about a staggered ambush, a surprise from all sides, the advantage of that western ridge where they could set up the catapult.
The other men stuffed in the hut shared grins and even smug chuckles among themselves.
This was all merry amusement, I realized, war as hobby.
The battle-scarred commander was playing toy soldiers and the toy soldiers were just gig workers, half dressed, clutching flagons of beer.
What looked like dirt and mud across their ragged tunics and leather armor was actually dried blood.
They had seen the worst of humanity already.
Hunting a reclusive lizard would be a holiday.
“You’re all going to die,” I said. I held a piece of charcoal in my hand. The commander had wanted me to indicate the size
and location of the impact crater. Suddenly I had become possessed by a time traveler’s hubris. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take
you there. I don’t want to be responsible for sending you all to your deaths.”
Some of the soldiers smirked and shared looks with each other, unbelieving. I felt Simon’s questioning eyes on me. I had said
we needed to stay and defend our home, but not like this, not with soldiers. I didn’t know how to convey the dragon’s clarity—the
business meeting I had just had with him—how he wasn’t a wild beast beyond imagination, but something worse. He was a coherent,
coordinated thinker and speaker, and we were a dot on his schedule.
“The dragon doesn’t give a toss what you want,” said Commander Smear. “This is about what His Majesty wants and he wants that
monster’s head on a pike.”
One of the soldiers called out, “Is the dragon freshwater or saltwater?” He broke into laughter with the goons who had dared
him to ask.
“The dragon’s bigger than this whole smallholding,” I said. “It’s real and none of you will stand a chance. Simon—you saw it, tell them. It’ll kill everyone here with a swipe of its tail.”
“Yes, it’s huge,” said Simon. “It took out a whole chunk of the forest, we can’t let it do that again. There’s a huge field
of ash, we’ll take you all there tomorrow.”
“We can’t,” I said directly to Simon, my eyes pleading with him. I said to everyone else, “The dragon won’t attack if we just
leave it alone.”
“And let the devil instate his globe of fire?” said the commander. Another soldier snorted with laughter. An elbow was thrown.
“I’m saying just wait,” I said. “The dragon killed two soldiers already, but only because they were foolish enough to try
and attack it. He isn’t blowing fire because he wants to.” Eyebrows were raised at my degree of personal insight. “He does
it because it’s part of his feeding process. They’re his . . . expulsions. He has to hack them up and we have to stay out
of the way.”
“Like a cat,” someone said.
“How do you know it’s a he?”
Everyone was laughing except the commander and Simon. Simon looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. I might as well have
been wearing a suit and tie and giving a presentation—something I had never done in my old life, just as meager and helpless
then as I was now, unrallied by cloying men, my own mind nefarious and tucked away, horny with nostalgic grief. “Simon,” I
said feebly, with nothing more to say, just his name like a plea to trust me, be the squire.
A torch was raised. Commander Smear stood in the center of the hut with a flame held high.
“Here’s the deal, Oh Benevolent George. You’ll take us to the dragon tomorrow, or we’ll burn down your house.
” Flames crisped a stray piece of straw that dangled from the roof above us.
“If you don’t take us to that fiery furnace of Satan’s pet, then we’ll just have to build one here. Choose the place you want to die.”