Then was the real ruler that tall man, standing apart? Or someone else, not engaged in this subsidiary part of the drama ?
Once more, he postponed a decision.
The imperial procession had left the square when the shout went up.
“The dragon ! The dragon!”
He spun around, seeing a wave of catastrophic panic break across the market like a bore in a river-mouth. Buyers, sellers and entertainers alike streamed outwards from the square, overturning booths, scattering merchandise and trampling old people and children in the rush. Hao Sen stood his ground, waiting for a clear view.
When he got it, he was chilled. The dragon was no longer sullenly submissive. It was an incarnation of menace. On three of its sharp-taloned legs it stood over the corpse of its former master, slashing at his face and turning it to bloody ruin.
It tired of its play, and paused, its yellow eyes scanning the great square. Hao Sen had half-expected it to feed, for it would certainly have been kept hungry to weaken it. Yet its head did not dip to gnaw the corpse, and his heart gave a lurch as he realized that the square, apart from himself, was now completely empty.
He might have run. He had delayed too long. The slightest move would attract its attention, and somehow he was sure it could catch him, no matter how fast he fled. The reason why he had been made to leave his camel out of the square struck him like a blow. He had used his favourite trick once too often, and here was an opponent who employed it himself.
The dragon began to move, sidling towards him, its eyes unblinking and burning bright as the coals of the brazier it had overset. Hao Sen glanced frantically around for a weapon. He saw the broken shaft of a tent close by, and jumped for it. The instant he did so, the dragon charged.
He hurled the tent-pole javelin-fashion and dropped on his face. More by luck than accuracy of aim, the sharp wood hit fair on one of the mildew-weakened patches of scales. It made a barely noticeable gash, but the dragon howled with pain. It spun around and returned to the attack.
The first time he threw himself aside, dragging out his sword. The second time, he failed to dodge completely; the beast cunningly curled its tail in mid-air so that it caught his shoulder and the blow sent him sprawling. That tail was like a club, and the dragon must weigh as much as a man.
It landed now among a tangle of cords on a rope-seller’s stall, and was hindered long enough for Hao Sen to devise a tactic to meet its next pounce. This time, instead of leaping sideways, he flung himself backward, in the same movement bringing up his sword point foremost so that it sank into the dragon’s under-belly.
The hilt was wrenched away with such force it nearly sprained his wrist, and the impact made his head ring as it hit the paving. Shrieking with agony, the dragon scrabbled with its clawed hind feet, and a triple line of pain told him where the slashes penetrated his leggings.
He brought up one booted foot with all his force and kicked at the base of the beast’s tail. That hurt it sufficiently for it to forget him momentarily, while it doubled its neck back under its body and tried to pull the sword out with its teeth. Dark blood leaked down the hilt, but slowly.
Hao Sen rolled clear instantly. He considered attempting to gouge out the dragon’s eyes, but they were shielded by bony orbital ridges; he was more likely to lose his fingers. Desperately he sought a weapon to replace the lost sword, and saw none. The dragon abandoned its futile tugging at the sword, snarled, leapt again.
It came at him crookedly because the blade in its belly weakened one of its hindlegs; none the less, its heavy tail curved towards his head in what threatened to be a stunning blow as it passed him. Gasping, Hao Sen seized the tail in both hands — and began to spin on his heels.
For one fantastic second he thought it was trying to climb down its own tail to get at him. Then the weight on his arm gave place to an outward tug. Four times — five — the market whirled dizzily; the dragon’s blood spattered an ever wider circle on the ground. He added one last ounce of violence to its course, swinging it upwards, and let go.
Across the rope-seller’s stall it flew, over the spilt coins in the booth of a money-changer, and fell, its head twisted at a strange angle against the lowermost of the temple steps.
Hao Sen dropped his aching arms to his sides, panting. He looked at the dragon’s carcase — and beyond it, up the steps, until he met the gaze of the tall man who had stood there watching, leaning on a staff.
And then he knew.
19
“A good fight,” the man with the staff said in a tone calculated to suggest he had seen a dozen such. Hao Sen made no reply; his heart was hammering too violently. All his plans had gone to nothing now. He was utterly vulnerable.
His only hope was to try and maintain the fiction that his guise was merely the effect of the creation of a schizoid secondary personality in the general run of the fantasy. He spat in the dust, rubbed his hands together, and went over to the dragon to draw his sword from its belly.
A glance showed him it was useless; the hilt was bent at right angles to the blade. Cursing, he made to toss it aside.
“Wait!” said the man on the temple steps in a commanding tone. “A sword that has taken the life of a dragon is not a weapon to discard so lightly. Give it here.”
Reluctantly Hao Sen complied. The man took it and examined it carefully; then, muttering something Hao Sen could not catch — a charm, presumably — he made a ring of his thumb and first finger, which he ran the length of the staff he carried. He kept the ring closed while he put the staff in the crook of his elbow and grasped the sword-hilt with his free hand. Then he passed the ring down the blade.
The blood curdled and fell away, leaving the metal bright. When he reached the point where it was bent, it first quivered and then sprang to straightness, singing.
“I am the wizard Chu Lao,” said the tall man in an off-hand voice. “Here, take your sword !”
And the second after, he was gone.
Bleakly Hao Sen considered the facts as they presented themselves. They made a depressing total.
It was clear that for all his careful preparations he had made one hidden and potentially fatal assumption : that he was dealing with an opponent like his other opponents. He was not. He was up against a man capable of taking just such thorough precautions in the elaboration of his fantasies as in any other department of his existence. The patch of mildew on the flank of the dragon should have been warning enough. Detail like that was almost inconceivable unless either it was a product of Hao Sen’s reaction with his environment, or the dragon was a schizoid secondary, not a construct.
He’d used that trick himself often enough; he was planning to use it again when he conceived the camel Starlight. And whether by guesswork or foresight he’d had that gun spiked at once.
So the dragon had been a schizoid secondary, with its own “real” personality. And the master of Tiger City was not the Emperor, luxuriating in pomp and adulation. He was Chu Lao, the wizard.
Wizard! He shivered. No wonder the very first breaths of this fantasy had borne to him suggestions of magic !
True, he remembered previous occasions on which there had been magic incorporated into a world-picture. But then he had found it to be mere childish grandiosity, hastily cobbled together and lacking coherence. The magic practised by Chu Lao, on the other hand, would be consistent, rigorous, governed by carefully-worked-out laws — it would be as rigid and inflexible as science. And Chu Lao knew those laws. Hao Sen didn’t.