…
Wonse sat alone in the dark, ruined hall. Waiting.
He could try running. But it’d find him again. It’d always be able to find him. It could smell his mind.
Or it would flame him. That was worse. Just like the Brethren. Perhaps it was an instantaneous death, it looked an instantaneous death, but Wonse lay awake at night wondering whether those last micro-seconds somehow stretched to a subjective, white-hot eternity, every tiny part of your body a mere smear of plasma and you, there, alive in the middle of it all …
Not you. I would not flame you.
It wasn’t telepathy. As far as Wonse had always understood it, telepathy was like hearing a voice in your head.
This was like hearing a voice in your body. His whole nervous system twanged to it, like a bow.
Rise.
Wonse jerked to his feet, overturning the chair and banging his legs on the table. When that voice spoke, he had as much control over his body as water had over gravity.
Come.
Wonse lurched across the floor.
The wings unfolded slowly, with the occasional creak, until they filled the hall from side to side. The tip of one smashed a window, and stuck out into the afternoon air.
The dragon slowly, sensuously, stretched out its neck and yawned. When it had finished, it brought its head around until it was a few inches in front of Wonse’s face.
What does voluntary mean ?
“It, er, it means doing something of your own free will,” said Wonse.
But they have no free will! They will increase my hoard, or I will flame them!
Wonse gulped. “Yes,” he said, “but you mustn’t-”
The silent roar of fury spun him around.
There is nothing I mustn ‘t!
“No, no, no!” squeaked Wonse, clutching his head. “I didn’t mean that! Believe me! This way is better, that’s all! Better and safer!”
None can defeat me!
“This is certainly the case-”
None can control me!
Wonse flung up his finger-spread hands in a conciliatory fashion. “Of course, of course,” he said. “But there are ways and ways, you know. Ways and ways. All the roaring and flaming, you see, you don’t need it . . .”
Foolish ape! How else can I make them do my bidding ?
Wonse put his hands behind his back.
“They’ll do it of their own free will,” he said. “And in time, they’ll come to believe it was their own idea. It’ll be a tradition. Take it from me. We humans are adaptable creatures.”
The dragon gave him a long, blank stare.
“In fact,” said Wonse, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, “before too long, if someone comes along and tells them that a dragon king is a bad idea, they’ll kill him themselves.”
The dragon blinked.
For the first time Wonse could remember, it seemed uncertain.
“I know people, you see,” said Wonse, simply.
The dragon continued to pin him with its gaze.
If you are lying … it thought, eventually.
“You know I can’t. Not to you.”
And they really act like this?
“Oh, yes. All the time. It’s a basic human trait.”
Wonse knew the dragon could read at least the upper levels of his mind. They resonated in terrible harmony. And he could see the mighty thoughts behind the eyes in front of him.
The dragon was horrified.
“I’m sorry,” said Wonse weakly. “That’s just how we are. It’s all to do with survival, I think.”
There will be no mighty warriors sent to kill me? it thought, almost plaintively.
“I don’t think so.”
No heroes?
“Not any more. They cost too much.”
But I will be eating people!
Wonse whimpered.
He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and-and here he felt the dragon’s genuine astonishment-of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape-the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of its eyes-we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
The dragon stretched its wings again, once or twice, and then dropped heavily on to the tawdry assortment of mildly precious things. Its claws scrabbled at the pile. It sneered.
A three-legged lizard wouldn’t hoard this lot, it thought.
“There will be better things,” whispered Wonse, temporarily relieved at the change in direction. There had better be.
“Can I-” Wonse hesitated-“can I ask you a question?”
Ask.
“You don’t need to eat people, surely? I think that’s the only problem from people’s point of view, you see,” he added, his voice speeding up to a gabble. “The treasure and everything, that doesn’t have to be a problem, but if it’s just a matter of, well, protein, then perhaps it has occurred to a powerful intellect such as your own that something less controversial, like a cow, might-”
The dragon breathed a horizontal streak of fire that calcined the opposite wall.
Need? Need? it roared, when the sound had died away. You talk to me of need? Isn ‘t it the tradition that the finest flower of womanhood should be sent to the dragon to ensure peace and prosperity ?
“But, you see, we have always been moderately peaceful and reasonably prosperous-”
DO YOU WANT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS TO CONTINUE?
The force of the thought drove Wonse to his knees.
“Of course,” he managed.
The dragon stretched its claws luxuriantly.
Then the need is not mine, it is yours, it thought.
Now get out of my sight.
Wonse sagged as it left his mind.
The dragon slithered over the cut-price hoard, leapt up on to the ledge of one of the hall’s big windows, and smashed the stained glass with its head. The multicoloured image of a city father cascaded into the other debris below.
The long neck stretched out into the early evening air, and turned like a seeking needle. Lights were coming on across the city. The sound of a million people being alive made a muted, deep thrumming.
The dragon breathed deeply, joyfully.
Then it hauled the rest of its body on to the ledge, shouldered the remains of the window’s frame aside, and leapt into the sky.
…
“What is it?” said Nobby.
It was vaguely round, of a woodish texture, and when struck made a noise like a ruler plucked over the edge of a desk.
Sergeant Colon tapped it again.
“I give in,” he said.
Carrot proudly lifted it out of the battered packaging.
“It’s a cake,” he said, shoving both hands under the thing and raising it with some difficulty. “From my mother.” He managed to put it on the table without trapping his fingers.
“Can you eat it?” said Nobby. “It’s taken months to get here. You’d think it would go stale.”
“Oh, it’s to a special dwarfish recipe,” said Carrot. “Dwarfish cakes don’t go stale.”
Sergeant Colon gave it another sharp rap. “I suppose not,” he conceded.
“It’s incredibly sustaining,” said Carrot. “Practically magical. The secret has been handed down from dwarf to dwarf for centuries. One tiny piece of this and you won’t want anything to eat all day.”
“Get away?” said Colon.
“A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack,” Carrot went on.
“I bet he can,” said Colon gloomily, “I bet all the time he’d be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it’s the bloody cake again.’ ”
Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices.
“There we are,” he said cheerfully. “One for each of us, and one for the captain.” He realised what he had said. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Yes,” said Colon flatly.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“I liked him,” said Carrot. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”
There was some more silence, very similar to the earlier silence but even deeper and more furrowed with depression.
“I expect you’ll be made captain now,” said Carrot.
Colon started. “Me? I don’t want to be captain! I can’t do the thinking. It’s not worth all that thinking, just for another nine dollars a month.”
He drummed his fingers on the table.
“Is that all he got?” said Nobby. “I thought officers were rolling in it.”