Chapter 23 Precisely Overpacked
Robert cut around jutting rocks, flying low and fast through rugged Dvergamal. The dragon sensed the magic of his missing sword, as though the weapon was crying out to him, crying out against the thieves who had dared to steal it away. Robert knew these thieves, had smelled their toofamiliar scent when he had returned to his lair. If that scent wasn't enough of a clue, the missing pot of gold certainly was.
Now he would find the miserable leprechaun and his companions, find them and melt them away with all his fiery fury.
He came up over one low peak, then dropped fast into a ravine. He thought he saw some movement below - a large man scrambling - but he whisked away overhead, compelled by the calling sword.
Then Robert saw it, held aloft proudly by the man, Gary Leger from Bretaigne, with that miserable rat Mickey McMickey sitting on the ground beside him, counting the pieces of gold in his retrieved pot.
How dare they! the dragon fumed. Standing tall and proud on an exposed ledge, so open, so vulnerable to Robert's wrath. Their impudence drove the dragon on with all speed. He swooped high and issued a tremendous roar, then stooped powerfully and loosed his killing breath.
To Robert's horror, both his sword and the pot of gold melted beside the thieves. The dragon started to bellow out a denial, and only then realized that he had been lured by a simple leprechaun illusion. Robert blinked his reptilian eyes, looking closer, as his dive brought him beyond the area, and there was only the empty high ridge, scorched by his fires, some of the stone bubbling still.
"I know you are near!" the dragon bellowed. "I will tear down the mountain," he promised.
For Gary Leger, looking up at the not-so-distant wyrm, seeing the unbridled fury and the bubbling stone, Robert's last words did not sound like any idle threat.
According to the plan, Gary had to call out, and Mickey, invisible in a deep nook behind him, prodded him to do so. Gary rationally reminded himself that he must, that Robert's fiery display had surely been seen across the miles and the plan had already been set fully into motion. But at that time, mere logic seemed a useless tool for Gary Leger in his battle against the plain horror of the dragon.
"Here," he started to say, but his voice cracked and he had to stop and clear his throat. Robert banked sharply and rose straight up, breaking his momentum, his long neck snapping about so that he could look in the direction of Gary's meek call.
"Over here," Gary called again, more firmly. He stepped out from around a boulder, coming into a flat stone clearing just below the plateau that held the dragon's dwarfish-stuck sword.
Robert came in slowly, making an easy pass, eyes narrowed that he might better study the young thief. He noticed his sword, then, and issued a long and low growl.
"What tricks have you left, young thief?" he asked from on high.
"The deception was necessary," Gary replied, trying to hide his relief that the dragon had actually paused long enough to speak with him. Wind buffeted Gary as Robert did as close to a hover as a massive dragon could.
"Of course, mighty Robert could fly past and burn us away," Gary went on, speaking quickly and glancing somewhat nervously to the northeast. "But that would ruin what you came to retrieve. "
"What you stole!" Robert corrected.
"That, too, was necessary," Gary quickly continued, before the dragon's ire could gain momentum once more. "Stole, yes, but not to keep. You may have your sword back, mighty Robert. " He held his hand out towards the embedded weapon and, to his relief, the dragon plopped down behind it, eyeing it curiously, suspiciously.
"It was I who took the dagger," Gary explained, his hand dramatically banging against his chest. His tone changed, deepened, as he recited the words, as though he was some actor in a grand Shakespearean production. "The dagger that allowed you to escape the terms of banishment. "
"Again, a theft!" Robert interrupted, his drool sizzling from the edges of his dagger-lined maw.
"Again, necessary!" Gary shouted back, pointing an accusing finger the wyrm's way. "How else might I have lured Robert from his lair? How else might I have found the challenge that I deserve and demand?" Robert's great head moved back, a clear signal that the dragon was somewhat confused.
"Did you think that I had come all the way from Bretaigne simply to play lackey to an overly proud elf?" Gary asked incredulously. "Of course I did not! It was my desire to see the spear reforged," he admitted, holding the magnificent weapon aloft. "But it was my greater desire to view mighty Robert, the legendary wyrm, whose reputation has come to all lands. "
Gary sighed deeply, and snuck another glance to the northeast. What is taking so long? he wondered.
"I have defeated every knight in my land in honorable combat," Gary went on. "I have defeated the dragon of Angor. "
"Where is Angor?" Robert demanded.
"It is an island," Gary replied quickly, trying not to get caught in his sticky web of lies.
"I know of all dragons," Robert sneered. "Yet I know not of any island called Angor!"
"A small dragon, he was," Gary stuttered. "Certainly of no measure against Robert the Wretch . . . Robert the Righteous. "
The dragon chuckled, a curiously evil sound, at the apparent slip of the tongue. Old Robert knew well enough what the peoples of the land called him. "I am Gary Leger of Bretaigne," Gary cried suddenly, proudly. "And I make my challenge against Robert honorably. Will you fight with me, mighty dragon? And will you withhold your killing breath?"
"Withhold my breath?" the dragon echoed incredulously, and Gary thought that the game was up, thought that Robert would fry him then and there. "Unless you are afraid," Gary stammered. Again, he looked nervously to the east. "I have brought your sword, and the spear which I took from Dilnamarra. I had thought . . . "
"Behold Robert!" the dragon bellowed, and Gary's ears hurt from the volume. "He who killed a hundred men on the pass at Muckworst. He who cowed the painted savages of the Five Sisters, and who brought the humanoid newts under his protective wing. He who . . . "
The dragon's list of accomplishments - mostly horrible accomplishments - went on for many minutes. Gary was glad for the delay, but wondered what in the world was taking so long.
"Easy, lad," Mickey whispered from his hiding place behind Gary, sensing the man's distress. "These things take time. "
Robert stopped suddenly, bellowed again - it seemed as if he was in some pain. And then, before Gary's incredulous stare, the dragon began to transform. He rolled his great wings in close to his sides, where they melded with his red-gold scales. His long neck contracted, as did his tail, and all his great dragon form hunched down and began to shrink. The marks on the wall behind him became visible to Gary, and the young man nearly fainted.
Then Robert, the great red-bearded human, grasped the huge pommel of his stuck sword. Corded muscles flexed and tugged, and the stone itself groaned in protest.
Robert let go and rubbed his hands together, then grasped the hilt and tugged again, with all this strength. Amazingly, the stone held fast; the sword would not come free.
"What trick is this?" the dragon growled at Gary.
Gary shrugged helplessly, as surprised as Robert. "I did not think the simple dwarfish magic would prove the stronger," he said, slyly putting his emphasis on the word "simple. "
Robert's eyes flared dangerously. "Stronger?" the dragon echoed. "Let us see who is the stronger!"
Gary was glad for Robert's roars in the ensuing moments, as the wyrm reverted to his gigantic dragon form, for they covered the man's heaving, relieved breaths.
"They better hurry," Gary managed to remark privately to the hiding leprechaun.
There came no reply, and Gary was surprised only for the instant it took him to realize that the leprechaun, having lost faith in the plan, had slipped away for safer parts.
When Gary turned back to the higher plateau, he was facing the mighty dragon again, Robert the Wretched i
n all his evil splendor.
"Let us see who is the stronger!" Robert roared again. "I will melt the stone away, and then hack you down, foolish Gary Leger of Bretaigne. " Gary nervously clutched tightly to his spear, and the dragon, noting the movement, actually laughed at him.
"Would you like an open throw?" Robert invited, arcing his wings back and sticking his massive, armored chest out towards Gary. "Throw, then, feeble human!" the wyrm invited. "A clear shot, but one that will do you no good. Do you believe that your puny weapon, though it be the most powerful in all the land, could bring harm to Robert?" The dragon laughed again, his rumbling shaking the mountain stones, and Gary had no response, could find no words at all in the face of his terrible predicament.
"Shield your eyes from my breath," the dragon warned. "And make peace with whatever god . . . "
A hissing, whistling sound stopped Robert short. "What?" he demanded, turning his gaze, as Gary had turned his, to the northeast.
The M&M Delivery Ball, its cannon precisely over-packed to heave it at two hundred and seventy-three miles per hour, soared into Buck-toothed Ogre Pass, caught the dragon at the base of his left wing, smashing his seemingly impenetrable scales to little pieces. The wyrm's evil face twisted in sheer disbelief in the split-second he remained on the ledge before the force of the blow sent him tumbling, serpentine neck over tail, into the canyon west of Gary's position. The very ground shook under Gary's feet, and the sound of the falling wyrm outdid any thunder the young man had ever heard.
Stones dropped down behind the falling monster, Robert's weight bringing about a small avalanche. But these mountains of Dvergamal were old and solid, and the upheaval died away to dusty stillness in a few moments. "Oh, ye got him, lad!" Mickey cried, becoming visible and leaping out from his nook. A crack on the stone wall opposite the target plateau split wide, and out hopped Geno, shaking his head in disbelief, his gaptoothed smile, the look of a mischievous little boy, as wide as Gary had ever seen it.
"Bah, I knowed ye wouldn't be going too far!" Mickey roared at the dwarf. Geno laughed aloud - the first time Gary had actually heard the dwarf do that - and, to Gary's surprise, it came out as the laughter of a little boy, not the grating and grumbling sound the young man would have expected.
"Suren the world's a brighter place!" Mickey squealed, hopping a little dance all about the high pass.
A roar from below stopped the leprechaun's quick-steps and erased Geno's smile.
Gary rushed the ledge and looked down. There flopped Robert, sorely wounded, with one wing wrapped all the way around his back and a huge garish wound running the length of his side. He thrashed and kicked among the boulder-strewn debris of his fall, tangled along a row of low mounds. The sheer violence of the dragon's actions split the stones apart, but caused more injuries from the flying debris to mighty Robert.
"We've got to finish him," Gary said to his companions, who had come up beside him.
Both Geno and Mickey stared at the young man in disbelief. "You want to go down there?" the dwarf scoffed. Geno's face crinkled suddenly. "Oh," he said as if he had just remembered something. "The fat Baron's somewhere down there. "
"Show me the path," Gary insisted, and Geno willingly obliged, pointing out a narrow trail leading down the canyon's side.
Gary spun to go, and bumped into a hovering dragon scale.
"Take it, lad," Mickey said grimly. "If ye're meaning to go. Take it and use it as a shield. Robert's hurt, but he's got his breath left, don't ye doubt. " Gary grabbed the thing out of the air, found it to be nearly as large as he, and wondered how in the world he was supposed to carry it along. He found it surprisingly light, though, and looking at Mickey, he understood that the sprite was still concentrating, still using his magic to partially levitate the thing.
Gary found a handhold along a crack on the back side of the scale, and, with a deep breath to steady himself and a silent reminder that they would never find a better chance to end this, he started off down the path.
"Oh, valiant young sprout!" came the expected call from the bloodthirsty spear.
"Oh, shut up," Gary mumbled back, feeling more stupid than brave and wanting nothing more than to wake up in the woods out back of his parents' home next to Diane.
Robert spotted him coming when he was halfway down the exposed trail. The wounded wyrm stopped its thrashing, its reptilian eyes narrowing to evil slits.
"Here it comes," Mickey whispered to Geno, and the leprechaun quickly ended his levitation of the scale and instead enacted an illusion to make Gary's position appear a few yards to the side.
Gary dropped the suddenly too-heavy scale-shield atop his foot, cried out in pain and fear, and fell back against the mountain wall behind the thing. Then he screamed in sheer terror as Robert's breath, the dragon not fooled by the leprechaun's illusion, completely surrounded him, licking at him from around the heavy scale.
Rock melted away; the hair on Gary's arm holding the shield disappeared, his skin turning bright red. He thought he was surely dying, then realized that he was falling, for the ledge beneath him had been burned to dripping liquid.
He crashed down among the stones, slamming hard, feeling as though he had broken every bone in his body, his lungs aching as though they would soon explode. His helmet flopped around so that he could not see, and he didn't want to see, expecting the dragon's great maw to fall over him, snapping him in half. He thought of the shield that had saved his life, but it was far gone, nowhere near the stunned man.
Gary lay dazed for a few moments, moments that passed too slowly, and then he realized that the dragon was crying out in pain. Gary slowly lifted his head and turned up the bottom of his backward helm. He saw Robert, thrashing again as a steady stream of hammers twirled through the air and banged against his unprotected, grievously wounded side.
The dragon's head came around to face the ledge, to face Geno and Mickey, and Robert hissed sharply, sucking in the air, fueling his inner fires. A wall of protest rose within Gary Leger an outrage that stole his pain. He felt the spear lying beside him and grabbed it up, clambering to his feet and throwing aside his troublesome helm.
"No!" he cried, running as fast as he could go in the bulky armor. He went up the side of a mound and leaped ahead, spear extended as he flew for the dragon's throat.
The distracted Robert saw him coming at the last moment and tried to spin about as he loosed his fires. Gary was in under the line of the blaze, though, and then the huge tip of his powerful weapon was into the dragon's neck, caught fast under the creature's maw.
Gary felt the waves of energy running the length of the hungry weapon, coursing through its metal and into the roaring dragon. Robert thrashed about, sending Gary on a wild ride, back and forth. Up went the dragon's long neck, lifting Gary high into the air.
"Hang on!" the spear implored him, perhaps the most ridiculous request Gary had ever heard. Hang on? What the hell else was he supposed to do? Then Gary felt a tingling rising from the bottom of his feet, like the pins and needles he might experience if he sat with his leg curled under him for too long. This tingling continued to spread, though, rising throughout his body, then leaving him altogether and, he somehow understood, climbing through the spear. Robert screeched in pain, and Gary, to his own horror, came to realize what the sentient weapon had done. The spear was sucking out his very life force, converting it to energy and blasting it into the wyrm. And to Gary's further amazement, the ploy seemed to have had some effect. Down went the serpentine neck, bowed under the tremendous assault.
Gary felt his grip weakening, and suddenly he was flying free, crashing again against the rocky ground. It took him some time to reorient himself to his surroundings, some time to remember even that he was in big trouble.
When he finally looked back, he saw not a dragon, but a huge, red-bearded man, one arm hanging limply at his side, blood dripping from an open wound in his neck. Throaty growls erupted from Robert's bloody mouth as the be
ast stalked over and hoisted the fallen spear. Blue energy arced into Robert again, smoke rising from his hand and forearm.
On the ledge, Geno whipped his last hammer.
Robert only growled at the spear's impertinence, turned Gary's way, and lifted the weapon for a throw.
"Flee, young sprout!" came the call, and Gary understood that the sentient weapon could not match the dragon's willpower or sheer strength, and could not help him. Gary knew in that instant that he was doomed. Robert's arm shot forward; the dwarf's hammer clipped his hand and the spear, and the throw went wild.
Robert looked incredulously to the ledge, then back to Gary. He gave an evil snarl and held aloft his working arm, clenching his hand so that his cordlike muscles bulged to superhuman proportions.
Gary nearly fainted. Robert would simply walk over and throttle him! Would just reach down and crush his skull as though it was some empty eggshell! Despair told Gary to lie back and close his eyes, get it over with as quickly as possible, but Gary, thinking once more of the fleeing folk of Braemar, of the carnage the dragon would soon cause, reacted explosively instead. He scrambled forward on all fours, got up to his feet just long enough to roll over one mound, then cut quickly to the side.
Robert did not hesitate, charging right for him.
With a wild leap, diving straight out, Gary got his fingers around the spearshaft. He spun and came up to a sitting position, and the dragonturned-man skidded to a stop barely inches from the waving weapon's tip. Robert's surprise showed clearly on his face, an instant of hesitation, a slight and short-lived opening.
Gary lurched forward, tucked one foot under him, and pushed ahead with all his strength. The spear's tip slipped more than an inch into Robert's massive chest before the red-bearded man could clamp his hand onto its shaft, abruptly stopping its progress.
Robert and Gary stood facing each other, gruesomely joined by the metallic shaft, staring defiantly into each other's eyes. Robert looked down to his newest wound. When he looked back, he was smiling evilly once more. "I will grind your bones," he promised.
Gary felt another tingle sweep through him, a pulse of energy that the spear had sent to blast the dragon's hand from the metallic shaft. Jolted and surprised once more, Robert reached back for the weapon immediately, but was too late to stop Gary's brutal surge.
"To make your bread?" the young man spat sarcastically, driving the enchanted spear through the dragon's heart.
Robert's breath went in, his chest heaving one final time. He grabbed up the stuck spear and yanked it free from Gary's grasp, stumbling back several steps.
"Well done," Robert offered, his tone full of surprise and admiration. He held in place for a long while, trembling, the shaft protruding from his muscled chest and quivering gruesomely, its end fast staining with the wyrm's lifeblood.
And then the dragon who had terrorized the land of Faerie for centuries fell down and died.