"Into the mouth!" He had to yell against another moistly triumphant trumpet blast.
"Those teeth-"
"Now!"
The misshapen head struck down. They pitched the hot branches directly at it.
Most struck the lips. A few lodged in the corners of the yellow eyes, the crisp flames sending up quick puffs .of steam. Fewer still tumbled between the snapping sharp teeth and down its gullet.
"Go!"
They scrambled back as the head jerked and swung. A wet blue tongue flicked out and caught the Englishman by the wrist. It started to draw him in, toward the mouth. Markham chopped down with the Springfield and the tongue bristled suddenly with needle-point poison shafts.
These tiny swords stabbed the rifle, with demented verve, as if it were the enemy rather than the man who held it.
The Springfield started smoking. Markham dropped it. A sour stench made him choke. The tongue slipped back into the mouth and the Englishman wrenched free.
"Jump!"
They both dropped to the ground and rolled away from the lashing, aimless thrusts of the head.
The beast flapped languidly above, six feet from the ground, its head seeking them. A gust of wind blew it sideways, bringing into view an underside corrupted by fungus and open sores.
Markham crawled uphill. If they ventured out from under the thing, it could catch them as they fled. On the other hand, once it realized they were hiding under it, the demon dragon would simply land on them.
He heard a crump of something igniting. The beast shuddered and Markham rolled under the heaving, brassy scales of the belly. Small, skinny, almost vestigal legs hung there. They ended in stubby webbed duck feet of a delicate, pale tan.
"Grab on!"
"But-" The Englishman followed Markham s lead and grasped the feet. "Your fire idea certainly didn't frighten it."
"Helium wouldn't give it enough lift, so I figure." The beast twisted, struggling.
The Englishman's eyes widened in delight. "Ah! Hydrogen.'"
They felt rather than heard a dull, heavy whump.
"Then-"
The demon dragon lifted. Slowly, then faster, the igniting hydrogen deep in its belly blended with oxygen to yield a pure blue flame that shot from the head, cramming it back into the muscled neck, against the bulbous body. The escaping gas acted like a rocket, driving the demon skyward, ass-first.
The .Englishman screamed and Markham shouted, "Hold on! We'll get out of this mess!"
They arced above pines and rocky ridgelines, the venting gas driving them in a blunted parabola above the crackling rifle fire below. Wind whipped them against the steel-solid plates of the beast's coppery underbelly.
Markham felt them slowing, sensed the exhaustion of hydrogen inside. As pressure eased in the beast the rocket effect lessened. The thing curved downward, fuel spent.
They were high, but maybe not too high ... He had already died several deaths in Hell, and falling seemed to be an element in every one. This time ...
"Swing the way I do!" Markham yelled.
"I-can't-"
"Just do it."
The demon was falling. Its wings flexed weakly. Trees below swelled and Markham hoped they would come down in ones with high branches. Otherwise...
"Harder!"
They swung, clinging, Markham feeling his arm muscles knot painfully. The demon barked angrily and a wing batted at them.
"Make it tumble!"
"I don't see-"
Their timed swinging caught the beast off balance. It squawked with brassy rage. Flame leaped from its mouth but it could not spit past its own distended belly.
At their outermost extension, the weight of the two men was enough to send it tumbling sideways, wings ineffectually whacking the air. The thing kept falling and now it turned slowly in air, all skillful vectors lost.
The ground rushed up. The dragon spun over, belly-high - Markham slid down onto it. His shoes thumped into the mica-thin plates and he shouted, "Hang on!"
He had just enough time as wind whistled by him to grab a spindly thrashing leg.
The demon hit the trees with its face turned impotently skyward, yellow eyes blazing with dumb rage, Boughs broke beneath it crock-crock-crock and pine needles stung the men on faces and arms as they swirled downward with it, their world a mass of rushing green and shrieking demons.
It struck with a solid thunk. The belly bulged. It burst with a liquid poof.
A last branch lashed Markham across the face and he pitched forward onto soft humus.
He rolled over in time to see the demon give a quiver, a foul belch of hydrogen sulphide, and close its stormy eyes. The Englishman lay sprawled like a rag doll beside it, blinking and wheezing as if these both were new experiences, rich with sensation.
Markham brushed himself off. "Devil of a ride," he said.
The great demon-blimp had splattered scarlet gobbets among the pines and elms, speckling branches and leaves so that the very forest seemed to bleed. Markham kicked the crusted plates of its side and read the lines inscribed there in ornate Germanic script,
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER THE CITY OF LAMENT
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER INTO PAIN ETERNAL
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER WHERE THE LOST ARE SENT.
"Dante," the Englishman said.
"Must be like those people who wear sweatshirts that say. Property of San Quentin Prison-pure bravado."
"True, this demon didn't do very well at inflicting pain eternal on us."
"What's the rest of it say?" Markham tried to shove against the sagging belly plates and see the next line, buried under a wall of quickly purifying flesh.
"If I remember correctly, these are the famous words chiseled above the entrance to Hell. A few lines on are the famous ones,
'ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YE THAT ENTER.
These words of colour touring and obscure, I saw inscribed on high above a gate.'
Or so as I recall. Defunct languages weren't my passion."
"I knew I should've gotten a classical education."
"Rubbish. No use to you here. This isn't Dante's Hell."
"Whose is it?"
"No theologian even remotely dreamed of something like this. No rules seem to apply."
"Not entirely," Markham said with a slight smirk. "Physics did this one in."
"The little trick with the hydrogen?" A begrudging smile. "You burned his buoyant gas, yes."
"I figured the dragon couldn't let much oxygen into its system, because hydrogen and oxygen explode. But it had to have a metabolism that involved oxygen-after all, it was breathing the stuff. But the two gases mingle safely-"
"Ah yes, I recall. Unless they're heated ..."
"You bet!" Markham said, eyes bright. "So our burning branches ignited the mixture, deep down in the demon's belly.
"But there was limited oxygen..."
"So it detonated slowly, pushing the hot residue out the throat"
"Which acted like a rocket."
"Yeah, luckily. I couldn't figure whether the exhaust would go out the mouth or me ass. So I grabbed on below. But if the hot stuff had come out the ass, we would've had to jump or get scorched."
"Clever, I'll grant."
"Better than that-it proves that there are physical laws that work here.
Hydrogen combined with oxygen in the presence of a hot enough flame makes them unite explosively."
"Oh, I'll agree to that, on Earth. But you haven't shown that's what happened here. Or that it will ever happen again."
"Look, we just rode this dragon to safety. How-"
"Only careful experiments can show-"
A furious flapping of wings startled them to silence. Above the trees a dark angular shape cruised, searching.
"Hustle!" Markham whispered.
They scrambled away, slipping on pine needles. Through the dark and clotted brush of the forest the heavy regular beat of wings rose, then gradually died as they made progress. Markham listened carefully.