back towards the wyvern or dragon or what-have-you. Away from the grove and the wizard.
It was only when the grove had disappeared that the strangeness of it all settled over him. He’d never heard of King Keredic. Or a place called Elmet. Had the old man played a trick on him?
He’d heard it said, never trust any wizard. And now that he was clear of the grove, the stories he’d heard about the old enchanter swam through his mind. King Evan was, after all, Arthur’s descendent, and bards loved to visit Winchester and tell tales of the Round Table or the story of how Merlin, racked with guilt over Arthur’s death, lost his mind, fled from court, and seduced a young woman, who imprisoned him in a tower. Or something like that. Cador was missing a few details. Truth be told, he felt a bit dizzy and now, in addition to worry about the dragon and his king, he worried that he oughtn’t to have tried to bargain with a wizard.
So addled was poor Cador by his time in the clearing that he lost the trail he’d been following and was forced to turn back, looking in vain for any mark of blood or sign of his earlier passage. But it was as if the forest had sprouted new, unbroken twigs, and let fall new, unblemished leaves. He drew Sleek to a halt and considered sounding his horn or crying out for help. In undergrowth this thick, the king’s camp could be twenty feet away and he wouldn’t know it. But to summon help because he was lost? Disgraceful. He’d never hear the end of it. He nudged Sleek to a walk and gave the horse his head, leaning forward to rub the creature’s ears – this horse could always find the way home. He settled into thoughts of Merlin.
And that was how he rode for over an hour, the sun now far past its zenith, and so he would have continued to ride had the scent not arrested him (more accurately, it arrested his horse, but I’ll give Cador some credit. As soon as the horse stopped, Cador noticed the scent). The scent. It reminded him of the rotting disease that once overtook the flocks that grazed near Winchester. The peasants had been forced to throw the many half-decayed sheep onto a massive pyre. There was that self-same acrid smell now, the stinging of burnt hair, and also the smell of utter putrescence (I doubt he knew that word, but I trust you, listener, to appreciate my use of it). He held a scented kerchief to his nose – for no knight as winsome as Cador is ever without a scented kerchief – and listened.
Quiet. A snapping sound, like that of a clumsy man making his way through the woods – but magnified. Snap. Snap. He squeezed Sleek’s sides with his knees, urging the horse forward. Ahead, the forest thinned and Cador rode to the last row of trees, their trunks wreathed with ropes of mistletoe. Below, a bowl-like depression opened, its sides and bottom charred soil, devoid of vegetative growth beyond a few stumps that were blackened with soot or rot. Opposite his position, halfway up the far side of the valley, a dark hole gaped. The opening was surrounded by a tumble of grey stones coated with lichen the colour of verdigris and a smattering of white sticks, sun-bleached dead wood.
Again, the snapping sound bounced across the empty space, and something white shot out of the hole before tumbling to rest by the pile of … not sticks. Not dead wood. But bones. A large pile of bones.
May the Good Lord have mercy.
The dragon’s lair. Cador breathed slowly. If he was very, very careful, he could walk around this lair and proceed to put a safe distance between himself and this dragon. Not that he was fleeing, no, a knight would never flee. He simply needed to return quickly to the king to give him this valuable information about the dragon’s location. He pushed back his fair hair and settled his helm; the metal squeezed against his temples, a reassuring pressure. Then he pulled on his gauntlets and with some difficulty (curse the dragon for taking their squires!) he strapped his shield to his arm, wishing he was wearing full plates of armour and not just this leather and mail, which now seemed rather piddling.
Sleek sensed his fear and stepped lightly, not breaking the slightest twig. Below, snap, snap, another bone shot out. Don’t look, he told himself. But he couldn’t help it. He let his shield drop a few inches and squinted through the visor of his helm. From amid the pile of rocks, a green snout appeared, blunt and ugly as a snake’s head. Massive. The head alone was as big as Cador’s torso. From this distance, only the length of a village green, he could see two nostrils, flat and sinister, and, worse, the mouth below, where now a tongue – grey but streaked red with blood and forked – darted out. It occurred to Cador with a panicked lurch that perhaps the dragon could smell him … and know he was there. Not a pleasant thought. He raised his shield once more, his other hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and squeezed Sleek’s sides with his knees.
Sleek flattened his ears but stepped lightly through the undergrowth around the basin. Cador moved his hand from the pommel of his sword to his breast. He couldn’t feel it through the mail and leather, of course, but he wore a medal about his neck, given to him by his mother before she died, stamped with the image of St Michael. He pressed his hand against his chest and through clenched teeth, began to pray. ‘Holy Michael, Archangel of our Lord and saint who vanquished Satan the Drag …’ He couldn’t quite get that word out, for the very real, very unvanquished dragon in the basin to his right had once again licked the air with its massive tongue. ‘Oh Lord,’ he tried once more, but his throat had gone quite dry. The dragon’s fangs, he noticed at this point, were large. Very large. Perhaps as long as his arm. ‘Help me, help me, help me,’ he croaked. ‘Please … Help me.’
‘Well! Since you said please, I’m happy to help. Haw!’
Merlin’s voice, rough and cawing, grated at his ears and Cador glanced around wildly, expecting to spot the naked old man in the trees. But all that perched there was a crow, clicking its beak at him.
‘You think I’m fool enough to get close to that serpent’s den? Haw!’ the crow snapped, ruffling its feathers. ‘You can hear me, but I’m miles away. This bird has generously agreed to carry my voice. It’s an arrangement we have. Let’s see. You have a spear. Won’t do much good. But maybe it’ll distract her.’
It took Cador a moment to realize that ‘her’ meant the dragon. ‘It’s a she?’
‘Yes, a lady. Haw! It’s a female. Some day it might even be a mother. That makes it all the more important for you to kill her. Battling a dragon takes great courage. There’s only one way to kill her, and that’s to get close. No arrow, not even a lance, can slay a dragon.’
‘Wonderful,’ Cador said, clenching his teeth so they wouldn’t chatter. He rolled his shoulders back and gripped the shaft of the spear he’d just been told was useless. ‘So it sounds as if I oughtn’t to try to kill this dragon by myself. Rather, I’ll get back to King Evan and we can all go …’
‘Ah. No offence to you knights, but I’ve found that you have a tendency to avoid danger if you can. Quite understandable! It may even be judged a sign of intelligence! But I fear that if I let you go back to your king, he will want to gather an even larger army and make this into some sort of quest that might take months. And I have an interest in this dragon being vanquished much sooner than that. She tramples all the greenery and gobbles the mushrooms. Nothing left for poor hungry Merlin. Besides, you asked for my help.’ The crow hopped from one branch of the oak tree to another. Causing, Cador thought, an awful lot of noise.
‘No I didn’t. I was praying.’ He glanced to his left, where gorse grew in thick bunches, making a silent and swift escape impossible. With some reluctance, he glanced to his right. The dragon had extended more of its length from its hole and now its neck, long and sinuous, quested about the basin. Sunlight dappled down, setting its green scales sparkling. It looked almost to be made of liquid, it was so shiny and smooth, and in the way it moved, rolling like an ocean wave. Cador felt himself transfixed …
The crow squawked at him. ‘Haw! Worst prayer I ever heard. Help me? Really. Now listen. You can
