He did not realize that it meant to pass him by until he could make out the legs and the row of spikes along its back. It had been swinging closer and then farther, a child perhaps of indifference or a slothful arrogance, and he kept waiting for it to drop down for the gold and blood as he knew it would. The drumming of its wings now unmistakable.
But it did not. It flew on in that pendulous motion and swung past his field of stone and ice. He thought he saw the head turn in his direction and gaze at him for a moment, and then the wings beat twice, three times as it pushed for more speed and he stood and felt in his gut something like the twisting of a screw and an immense falling and he brought up the bow but it was much too far.
The tail flicking through the air as it turned. The shoulders and the long neck twisting. Lungs like a bellows forcing air into the furnace of the ancient world.
He wanted to run and did not, for there was nowhere to run.
At long last it rose slightly in the air, the talons coming up under it, the neck arching. Preparing to dive. He could not hear the voices on the ground but he had been there when the red dragon emerged from the shadows and when this one fell upon the keep, and he knew the screams and terror that must live there.
The dragon seemed to hover in the air for a moment, suspended and unmoving, and then it called out once in a horrid and primordial shriek and it fell like a stone. Wings furled as it dropped, then snapping out as it neared the ground. In Brack's vision, the ridges and hills rising to block what he could see. Just before it fell out of sight, the jaws flared and a wall of flame poured out, a torrent of living fire, the sun itself being birthed suddenly on the ground.
The fire struck the unseen earth and raged and the beast's black body was for a moment washed in the curling orange light of flame. And then it was gone, falling too low to see, descending on that town with its small ring of homes and the bar where once a blind man had played for the ears of drunks and miners.
He watched for a long time as he walked. All of him yearning to run but it was miles and he'd killed the horse and there was nothing to be done. So he ran at first and now walked in fevered exhaustion and felt the distance with every step. Throwing the plate aside in the snow. The crossbow on his back and the sword uselessly in his hand. Watching as the dragon rose and wheeled like some black soul cast from another world and into this one with a ferocious anger and the tail snapping behind it and the beast diving again with the lance of billowing flame before it.
Rising and falling, this bringer of fire and light and death. Dealing in that which it had dealt since the world was raw and empty and it crawled from the cracks below to test those infantile wings on this new air. Claws clicking on hardened stone, a heart of magma.
So the legends told. He had never believed that and did not now, but it was easy to understand how the stories had been crafted as that fallen archangel rose in the sky to hang floating on black wings and then dipped one and dove with a screech to kill again. For what else could a man surviving that destruction think than that he'd seen the very evil all men knew was in the world, this manifestation in scale and bone?
At long last it was done. The dragon circling twice and looking down on its killing field. Beating its wings intermittently to stay aloft, the sharp eyes always on the ground. Looking for anything alive in that fiery carnage into which it could lay its claws, its teeth. Then, satisfied that even the bones had burned, it came about a final time and hung in the air.
And looked at him.
Too far away to be sure, but Brack knew dragons and he knew it turned toward him where he stumbled both hunched and beaten. The wings drumming softly to hold it there, the smoke rising all around and behind in a backdrop of the dead. That smoke still mixed with orange flame and sparks flying aloft, but already the fires burning out.
When cabins burned down to the snow, there was nothing else for the flames to devour.
He did not feel time pass and he did not turn away. The bow and sword very heavy. Then the dragon turned, the head and neck going first and pulling the body around and the wings increasing their beat and he watched as it grew smaller, soaring over those snowswept mountains like an arrow itself, and once it called out long and high and full of rage and then it was gone.
Only then did Brack stop and stand still, lingering now at the top of an embankment. He tried a step and stumbled and dropped to one knee and stood again. A feeling inside him deep and wrenching. Falling again and again rising.
Then he turned at the top of the bank and he walked in his own washed out bootprints back the way he'd come. Traversing it all a third time to the field in the ring of stone. Walking forward to that caldera's heart and beginning to pick the gold out of the blood and meat and putting it back in the bag. His fingers were numb and he kept dropping the gold and then finally he had it all and he stood and began walking back toward the town, the towering pillar of smoke to guide him, fading slowly into black as night claimed the land.
In that darkness drawn on by the distant glow of the burning world.
He went through a tall and thin walkway between two immense stones, the walls rising and so close his shoulders touched each side as he walked and on the walls of those stones some robust lichen growing thick in this hidden place where the wind could not touch and when he came out the far side Juoth was there and sitting his horse in the middle of the path.
Brack stopped and looked at him. His clothing was blackened on one side and his hair burned. The flesh along the edge boiled and smeared with blood, but only just below the hairline. His eyes still alert. He wore one glove and kept the other hand in his coat and he was wearing both sword and bow.
“Is he dead?” Brack said.
“You saw.”
In that the world entire.
Juoth folded and unfolded his hand. Looking up at the sky and something in his face like a deep pain and he did not touch his head at all and closed his eyes. “It's all gone. Down to the foundations by now. The fire eats everything.”
“Is he dead.” It was no longer a question.
“Ironhelm.”
“Tell me.”
“Yes.”
Brack was silent. He had known but it was different to know than to be told and now he had both. He bowed his head and put a hand back on the rock behind him and then he could stand on his own again. But he felt deep in his gut something breaking off and moving through his body, something with a life of its own and the same darkness as the dragon's form wheeling in the sky and he knew that if it worked its way through his veins and heart and to his mouth he would scream until there was nothing left of his voice and it was ragged and tattered and broken. And so he closed his mouth and he guided it and he did not let it escape and after a time he did not feel it anymore and he could look up again.
“How'd you get out?”
“Ran during the first dive. Everyone runs at first and if you run later there's no reason. So I ran and it couldn't chase us all and I got to the horses and I got out.” He paused. “He told me to run.”
“I know he did.”
“Brack.”
He waved a hand. “Don't. I don't blame you.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“To the town?”
“Yes.”
Brack nodded. For just a moment that thing was loose in his blood again and he had to force it back down and then he thought he might be sick but he wasn't. He nodded again. “I have to.”
“It didn't come for you at all?”
“No.” Brack looked up and his eyes were flint and steel and he walked toward the horse. “But he saw me.”