Vengeance Is Mine

Vengeance Is Mine

By

Patrick T. Kilgallon

I

A tale writ in flames upon the stone wall in a great cave somewhere upon the isle and it begins thus in deference to human nature:

The oak and the pine trees stood majestic, and the leaves dappled what sunlight broke through only to fall upon a dragon that lay defeated. Its lips twisted as it remembered how it was cast out by the others. Left-wing broken, the right side of the jaw split to the bone, its deformed left arm burnt to resemble the dead branches that fell from the trees high above. All it wanted to do was to lose itself to the many forest creatures that would feed upon its wrenched form. There went Joilus, plopping from between the haunches of a grunting bear. Look, over there, Joilus exiting from a gaggle of squirrels upon the rocks that poked from the ground. Up there, Joilus upon its last flight splattered from the stink hole of a feathered creature flying above. It snorted, expelling steam from its nostrils. How can it find its demise unfunny if it must refuse to feel sorry for itself?

It crept, one eye swollen shut from a heavy blow. It could taste its own blood drooling from the lips that droop over its fangs upon the ground for the last ten thousand paces. Vertigo caused it to feel as if it climbed a sheer cliff as it dragged itself further into one of the clearings. Its cumbersome head-raised, battered snout inhaled the smell of dirt, stone, pines, and water. A new savory scent.

Its attuned hearing picked up the sound of a mournful cry. A wailing of something lost, hungry, and alone. A last morsel of flesh and then find everlasting peace. The delicate flesh sat; her eyes scrunched shut, the dent of a mouth squalling. Niblets of her fingers clutched at the empty air as she stretched her pudgy arms and let out another cry of outrage. Only a few hundred paces away, and it could have itself a taste. It growled.

The youngling, pup, fawn, yearling, piglet, whatever humans called her, she did not turn and look back. Instead, she leaned and fell forward on her face. Then her stubby legs spread, and her feet planted in the dirt. Her round head lifted, and her arms pushed the earth. For a time, the dragon and toddler both lay crouched. She then propped herself up further, her legs braced, then she stood on wobbling legs. Curious, it raised its head above her. Only when the broad shadow of its head fell upon the clearing and covered everything, did her gaze move from examining her dusty palms to the beast that leaned over her. Her face looked surprised. It glared, but its tongue flopped out from the ripped jaw, and it stumbled to the right, rapping its head on the branches of one oak tree. The girl reared her head back and screeched. Her entire body convulsed in laughter. She would have been roasted in flame before she could draw another breath or be torn apart with an indifferent sweep of a claw. But it felt a kinship with the abandoned toddler. It withdrew its tongue.

Her laughter ceased and she gesticulated to a tree limb high above. It heard the chirping. A stretch of its neck and it squinted at the nest above. The beast stood on its hind quarters, the cumbersome head raised until it was snout to beak with a hawk dripping food into her hatchlings. In resignation, the mother hawk tried to cover her children with her wings. Flames spew.

The roasted nest along with the smoking occupants plopped at the girl’s feet from an unfeasible height above. She stooped and tried to feast upon it, but the ashed feathered skin and the coarse flesh were too much for her pudgy hands to pull. A great wall of sharp teeth appeared before her, nipped at the entire offering, and chewed as it mulled over her fate. The paste made from meat splattered her face. She pressed her splayed hands to her face and then licked the mess. Her hands dripping from saliva and meat pudding made a second sweep of her face and she ate the rest.

Now they needed water. It could hear the burbles of rushing water further away. It lowered the useless wing to the ground. The hazel corneas, big as dining plates, flicked to the girl. Then the heavy head turned and gave a meaningful gaze to the limp skin laying on the grass like a blanket. Cleverer than she appeared, she waddled to the dead wing and sat on it. The brook was two hundred and fifty paces away, but it took most of the afternoon for the dragon kept stopping to glance over its shoulder for it could not feel her presence at all, her body weight the same to it as the ashes burnt from a feather. At the brook, it drank its fill and sprayed the toddler in a fine mist. With a smile on her face, her tongue lapped at the gentle shower as she also drank. It gathered the nearby comfrey leaves and chewed them into mulch, and when done, its snout prodded her to each wound. It only took a stern look for her to start smearing it on each wound. Because of her size, it took until nightfall for the dragon to be satisfied with her labor. Exhausted, they slept with the girl tucked under its left wing for shelter and warmth, her slumber undisturbed by the steady booms of its boulder-sized heart.

II

“So, for each fornication, it should be reasonable for me to dock my sheep herder’s a groat worth of pay,” Thel finished. His beady eyes squinted from his knot-shaped head in the torchlight.

The ri’s adjudicator sat on the stool, his head in his palm, moderating a disagreement between two subjects of Knell Ri, The Gobbling Serpent, in a village south of the port landing.

“What say you, Odarius?”

The shepherd looked down at him with sunken eyes. A sign of low intelligence, the adjudicator believed.

“My lordship, the lad is a simpleton. I merely gave him the labor out of pity in my heart,” Thel interrupted.

“I am just the ri’s messenger. You can call me just Mac,” Cadian Macalister said. “I was instructed by the village elders to listen to all testaments. So, it is Odarius’ turn.”

The shepherd hunkered in the hut. From beneath the edge of his loincloth, all could observe how uncut the frenulum remained. Impressed, Mac clutched his Incisor still in the scabbard and shifted further away from the two. With a finger raised, the shepherd's face turned solemn. A hoot and the stench from flatulence filled the hut. The light from the torch brightened and dimmed. A gag from the farmer as he retreated to the outside. Mac stayed, the neckline of his cloak already pulled up to cover his nostrils and mouth, an old trick he learned to block the odor of huddling unwashed bodies onboard longships. The same trick can be used to endure festering wounds and the stink of the dead.

“Oh no, the farmer forfeited when he ran outside!” Odarius cried out

“Wish it was simple as that,” Mac said, his chuckles stifled by the cloak. “Thel is upset about you using his primmest sheep as a...er...source of amusement. Should he be compensated for that?”

“But I do not have enough.”

“Do you not have a girl?”

“They said I’m too big.”

“What about the thralls?”

“No thralls here.”

“What about the port landing?”

“It is too far, fifty hundred thousand king’s paces away. A day’s journey by boat in the river.”

“What will it take for you to stop this with the sheep?”

“I can take all day and the next to go back and forth to the port landing. And if Thel pays some, I think I can get some coins together to pay for the rest of it.”

“I will see what Thel has to say about that,” Mac said with a sigh of relief.

“Just Mac!” the farmer’s voice shouted from outside.

“It is bearable in here,” Mac called back.

“Oh, bother the inside! Get out and heed this!”

A scream of despair echoed. Alarmed, his calloused nicked hand seized the hilt of his sword, whipped the scabbard off it, and he hurtled outside in one smooth movement. Better to leave it in the hut rather than end up wandering the fields afterward, searching. Several villagers ran past, their faces ashen as their mouths howled for refuge. He caught the elbow of Thel, the farmer who tried to join the flight.

“What is this?” Mac shouted at Thel.

“It tore the entire family apart from limb to limb and ate them!” The farmer sputtered before he yanked his elbow away and ran past toward the center of the village to hide in one of the many thatched cottages.

Southwest of the village under the dusk of the sky, a hideous beast bellowed fire upon a large cottage engulfed in flames. Spirals of sparks rose to shine upon the sheen of the blood of the family splattered upon the earth. Father, mother and two strapping sons gobbled up and the only thing left was the headless body of a daughter. It roared again, fanning the flame with one beat of its working wing, and it clutched a round object in its withered left claw.

With ease from training, Mac raised his blade high in a center guard position. Show them who you are, he told himself, and they shall sing of your bravery; if not your stupidity. Soon you will feast and drink in the great hall or plow one of the many maidens. Hmm, nice.

The head of the dragon rose to block the rim of the setting sun. It had the face of a bruised beardless human male, but with elongated features. Thoughts of stories about the Nephilim race of giants sputtered through his mind. And women who lie with demon spirits. It sneered and tossed something round, underhanded, or under-clawed. Still holding up his sword ready, he removed one hand from the hilt and caught the burden, the force enough to make him stagger. The thing reeled southeast past him, and the reptilian breath from a maw of fangs gushed over his head, toppling him. Close now, he saw the bare feet and legs of a naked savage girl, riding astride on the back of the great creature’s neck. Her other arm clutched a netting full of severed arms. His wide eyes flicked upward to land on her face. With a vulpine grin, she screamed in triumph as they bounded for the forest beyond.

Alone in the navy-blue darkness, his sword forgotten, Mac rolled off his back and propped himself until he knelt. He used the light of the flames to peer at what he had caught. At last, he could recognize the savage girl. Her face was the same as the slack face that gazed back at him with fixed eyes as it dangled by the hair entangled in his grasp.

III

In the morning, the villagers buried the body. Mac had lowered the head of Lousie Maine to join the body wrapped in a shroud using a borrowed shawl. His sword was returned to him, honed and polished by the village blacksmith, and sheathed in the belted scabbard that Odarius had found in the far corner of the hut. After the stilted ceremony, he met with the village council. The previous conflict resolved, (‘Bah,’ Thel said, waving off Mac’s offer of negotiating a compromise. “Odarius can have a go at the sheep. I cannot stand for him to have two days off and pay for his release.”) Mac started a petition for the ri’s army.

“Tell me of the Maine family,” Mac asked the haggard faces of the village council.

One of them stood, his face weak-chinned. He stayed silent until Mac nodded to him.

“I am their neighbor, Se. The honorable family of threshers for the southland village demise is felt by us. Much is lost.”

“Is that all?” Mac asked.

Se gulped then nodded, his eyes to the ground. As a trained observer, Mac could tell they were hiding something. The other villagers shuffled and looked at one another.

“What about the girl?” Mac asked. “Why does she look so much like Louise Maine?”

Their silence made him lose his patience.

“It is not as if I conjured her out of my imagination. You might have not known for all of you had scattered before that girl showed. But I could tell you know of that girl.”

“Just Mac,” Thel said, resigned. “I fear we all have done you an ill. We know of the girl that must have appeared before you a mystery.”

“Out with it then.”

“She was Lousie Main’s twin sister. We had mourned her passing ten reapings ago. She is dumbstruck and cannot hear anything. Toir told us that when he and she went out gathering in the forest, the pitiful thing had not heard the boar charging her. I am beginning to see that was not true. I wish he had told us the truth for we might have understood.”

“I am not overwhelmed with affection for your former thresher. In my life, I have seen slaves become kings, and kings become slaves. I have seen blind doddering sorcerers have visions that run through clear and sharply than you and I ever could. My fellowship in arms, I have seen them still lead even with limbs hewn. The road to fortune does not fall on wholeness but on will and luck. That girl could have grown to do things better than you and I could. But now, because of your eagerness to accept how life could be extinguished without the discovery of what that life can do, she might have grown to be even more of an adversary than the dragon.”

“So will you petition the ri to have the girl and the dragon destroyed?”

“It depends.”

“On what, Just Mac?”

“Whatever you whole damned cowardly lot are worth saving.”

Mac stalked past them and stomped outside of the hut back to his lodging at one of the smallest cottages. He grabbed his already packed gear and left to see someone about a boat back to the port landing where his ri ruled.

IV

"My lord, it was like being trapped in the dream of a witch.”

Like other ris before him, and pretenders vying for the throne by him, everything Knell, the Gobbling Serpent King, set his eyes upon belonged to him only, whether it be sturdy-legged lads, comely maidens, a fortified castle, his army of grim-faced warriors, the sky high above, the great expanses of land and sea, and the stars that come out at night. He imagined his grip of power as the unhinged jaws of a snake enveloping the egg that was the entire realm. He slouched on his throne as he listened to his favored messenger.

The messenger was a slight but slim man, with a clean-cut face that resembled a sinister rat. As he told the court his story of the village in the southland, he kept rubbing at his temple with one hand, nursing a hangover.

“Good time last night, eh?” the ri asked.

“Yes, I just needed to fortify myself to report what I have seen of one of your villages under attack.”

“The last one who spoke of dragons, I had him cast out and outlawed for such nonsense. Care to proceed, you...”

“I am Cadian Macalister and I have spoken true. The village south of here had been attacked by a dragon and the girl.”

“And that takes precedence over the sheep herder who lies with lambs?”

The ri’s lips curled in amusement. The messenger’s loud drunken complaints had been overheard by the patrons of the inn last night, including his servants.

“My lord, the conflict has been resolved to their satisfaction. If you wish to further investigate the attack on the village, I can return but will need a hunting party to put an end to the attack by your decree.”

“It is not wise to send warriors during peacetime. I still need eyes to the west and south for pretenders to my throne and their raiders.”

“If it pleases the ri, the village to the south lost their threshers. It would ensure their loyalty if you could send some assistance. We can do much more under your command.”

“It would be a wise ri to provide more threshers to the forsaken village. And a hunting party at the same time.”

“It would be. I can set off for there in the afternoon.”

“By my command, you will travel there with the others tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Macalister bowed.

V

Curraches plied the shore of the river nearest the southland village. Each craft, made from animal skins tied to wood frames, contained two to three people, their swords, spears, shields, and thresher tools bundled together between them. On one of the boats, Anie remarked to Mac, “That must be the herder tig that you told me about on the way here.” Mac looked and saw the familiar shepherd who was clinging to the top of the sheep on one hill and could not stop laughing as they rowed past.

The first four boats breached the shore, and eight warriors leaped out, sword or spear in hand, carrying shields. They scattered toward the fields as spotters. The rest carried their gears and set camp by the burnt frameworks of Maine’s family house. The spotters returned and rested. Seven others picked up the thresher tools. It comforted the villagers to see how the ri’s threshers started working to finish the task for the next sowing. The village once again bustled with activity as the grateful families brought bundles of wheat and barley and sacks to collect the seeds to be sown in late summer. In solemn acknowledgment of the tragedy, they labored in silence in the fields and the threshing pits.

After rest, the villagers milled to their homes for the day. The warriors moved into a line formation as the helms, plates, studs in their leather armors, steels of their weapons, and shields, gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Cad faced them and shouted through cupped hands.

“We are hunting for a giant creature and the girl who has gone wild. They have the cleverness to survive in the forest for ten years. Stay alert and no foolhardy acts.”

The leaves of the oat trees kept blocking the sunlight as they all entered the forest so the further into the forest, the darker it became. Soon, a putrid odor strung his nostrils. Upon the next clearing, flies buzzed around a block of turd with a severed arm stuck in it. Several of the warriors raised their hands to their faceplates, and Mac heard their disgusted reactions.

“Those beasts!” Cera cried as she covered her bare face with her elbow. “See how the banshee girl fashioned the hand to point us further into the forest!”

“That does not bode well for us,” Aine said, chuckling, his eyes wide.

“We have our order from the ri,” Cad said, beckoning all to move forward.

It only got darker as they encountered the next clearing. The next hand on the severed arm pointed in such a languid way that it should belong to a person sunning himself on a rock rather than in a grave. They all followed the direction of the dead finger. They came upon the brook.

“They are not bad as you make them out to be,” joked one wearing boots made from what he claimed to be a Leviathan as they all lay or knelt to slake their thirst. A few of the wise ones filled their bag of skins with water. They rested for an hour before pressing on to the next clearing. The arm that stuck out from a smaller block of the foul matter was supple and the fingers were more delicate as to belong to a woman.

“The first pair had fine gray hair, and the second pair is more supple and ladylike. They are using the arms of the Maine family. Two sons mean we have four more clearings to go,” Cera said, her voice full of cheer. Her bronze-colored cheeks lifted in a broad smile. “On with the hunt.”

“Never seen such hatred for the poor family,” one of the men in helm remarked.

“What the family did to the innocent child makes it hard to forgive,” Mac said as they tracked to the next clearing.

Numbed to the ghastly sight and the next inevitable sight, some of the party members speculated how much the dragon had to eat to create such enormous leavings. One reason was also why there were no animals around. They tracked the last one like the ones before, looking at parted and broken branches above and the drag marks of the broken wing. Nightfall came by the time they reached the last one. Some of the warriors took out tinderboxes from the supply bags and pressed hand drills to old mushrooms and with gentle breaths, blew on them until they smoked from friction. Cloth wrapped around broken branches and oil made torches to see the night through. By the torchlights, the last clearing looked cozy, even inviting.

“I think it’s a trap,” the one wearing Levithan boots said. “They are lying in wait, like spiders biding their time before we became stuck to the web.”

“Even if you are right,” Cera said. “There is nothing much a broken dragon and senseless girl can do against seventeen of us, heavily armed. But I will search around first.”

She and a torch bearer crept around the clearing. She halted and raised her hand. To signal what she had seen, she ran her hand down her dark arm and pointed to the other side of the turd. Mac gave her an exaggerated shrug and made a circular motion with his finger, indicating which direction. Cera’s furrowed brows lowered in confusion, and she pointed to the ground.

“What is she saying?” One of the men in the helm whispered.

Mac moved closer to see what Cera meant. As he approached, he saw the arm pointing downward at the ground. Then it moved as if a disembodied ghost. A muddy naked form emerged and tossed the severed arm into the space of the trees, shrouded in darkness. The torch bearer near Cera reached for the shape.

VI

“And what happened next?” Knell the high king demanded of the messenger before him.

In the earliest grey morn, the ri could see how the front of Mac’s cloak was damp with piss-stain. His armor had been abandoned to flee faster. Cera’s own color had gone from bronze to ashen. Only two had survived that night. The banshee that Cera had shoved to the stone floor, still bound by twines ripped at their roots amid the humiliating retreat, whimpered.

“The giant face appeared on the other side of the clearing like a full moon and let out a dreadful howl. It had called the other dragons. The entire forest was infested with gaping jaws, claws, and teeth, and as we stopped to fight at each clearing, flames would consume some of us, blackening melting faces, screaming in agony. Aine launched the leather bag of water at the streams of fire, but the jaws snapped through the fine mist and cleaved him in half. Torches lost in oblivion, the beasts were free to hunt the rest of us. In desperation, some of us hacked at each other’s legs, hamstringing them to slow the dragons down but those who forgot fellowships were also slaughtered, the darkness full of cries for mam. If it pleases the ri, we must raise an army of thousands and thousands-”

“IT DOES NOT PLEASE THE RI!” Knell’s fist pounded the armrest. “Do you think even for a moment what would happen if I pulled all the army to this one sole task of ridding ourselves of these creatures? False rulers abound, assorted colors banners parading straight up the ass of this port, worshippers' tongues waggling about one true jealous god, all want my army. Have I built all these years to live and die by their words, and not my deeds? This realm will stay under my rule. Mine! Now any other suggestions before I decide to kill the rest of you miserable lot!”

Mac took a deep breath and spoke.

“Then burn the whole fucking forest down.”

VII

They did not burn down the forest. One thousand villagers in the ported land along the north traded places with the warriors, to become the eyes to the west and to the south for Ri Knell. Hundreds of boats streamed down the river to the southland village for two nights. By the third morning, one thousand entered the forest in groups of one hundred warriors. Many brought their own teeth in the form of trained hounds and bears. They roamed the forest, following Mac and Cera as either shoved the bound banshee girl from one clearing to another. Night fell.

Mac, cunning as the broken dragon and the banshee girl, ordered a bonfire built at each clearing one at a time, luring one or two of the dragons. Fooled by thoughts of easy prey, each charged among the trees, only to face hundreds of spears, animals’ teeth and claws, and nets weighted with steel chains and ball bearings. Scores of dragon hearts had been carved out, and their quivering flesh was shared by hundreds of warriors, basking in the hot blood. By then the human quarries had become hunters.

By dawn, the severed heads of dragons had been dragged out of the forest, fifty in all in horse-drawn carts, making huge funnels upon the earth. The savage girl remained a prized prisoner of Knell. This narrative turned to legend, then to myth whereas the gods claimed to play a role with the passage of time. Never have they found the first dragon with the deformed arm.

This story remained unwritten until I, Joilus, the last of the tribe upon this isle, scraped the last word with my claw and breathed fire into the tracing upon the stone. For hundreds of years after the fall of the king's priveledge, I have studied the language of man from tomes stolen from the bodies of monks traveling to and from the new monastery who dared to linger by my cave. For hundreds of years, I fed upon the creatures of the forests, including wandering humans. I kept my minimal mark upon this world, not to be discovered.

Soon, I will rid this world of human parasites. Along with language, including poetry, I have studied science. I discovered dragons, smaller than your eyes can see in a cave like this one that can smite the entire world with unending fury.

One day, one of you might descend into this cave. And you might look upon this wall and wonder. You might see the bones of Joilus, the dragon that spent hundreds of years writing each letter on this wall. Or I might still lie in wait for the newest prey and the last thing you see would be the great wall of decaying teeth. The next of you will come. But I will need to make sure at least one of you might emerge into the sunlight, glorified in such a disbelieving tale. You might try to keep it to yourself, but bursting with a secret that nobody knows, you will run and find someone. That is what I need you to do. Not to tell my story but to find just one who will tell another. Then another.

Pathogens, it rhythmed with dragons.