The Rite of Spring: The Dragon Hunter

The Rite of Spring: Fragment 02

The Dragon Hunter
in which Linnain hunts a dragon, but finds something different

All hunters are interested in turds. You'll find there are any number of fancy names for them. There's fewmets, pats, scats, spraints, stools, dung, chips, faeces - you'd think there was a different word for every state of them, and every kind of animal that leaves them. Hunters will tell you that they can tell everything there is to know about an animal from the state of a turd. The turd I was looking at was about the size of my thigh; it was a glossy grey colour, and had a slightly mineral smell. It steamed gently in the high cold air.

I could tell everything I needed to know about the beastie that left this turd. It was large, and it was down, and it was close.

I had with me my mule, and four goats I had brought for bait. There was no cave anywhere close to put them in, and there was no stream anywhere close to soak my clothes in. I can tell you I was close to leaving a turd myself. Anyway I staked my beasts, grabbed my lance, and started to sneak forwards very quietly.

I suppose most people just think that the Rim is just a circle of mountains; as if the God had thrown a stone at the world while it was still liquid, and the wave had frozen. Well, it isn't like that. It's not like a wave but more as if the rock, pushed out from the middle, had piled up on itself in great slabs. There's an outer ring which is the highest, but inside that there's a valley, and inside that again a lower ridge, and another valley, and so on. The outermost valleys are hardest to get into, but they're the best places for dragons. Anyway, where the Midnight Pass crosses the Rim, a mountain has fallen into the outermost valley, forming a ridge which completely blocks it. The road goes over the ridge. The cwm I was in is on the outerside of the outermost valley, just under the east side of the ridge. It's just a narrow twisting gully. Nothing grows there. The whole place is just a mess of broken, fallen stone, very steep and difficult, especially in spring when the ice which binds it is melting.

As I sneaked up the cwm I saw a big dragon go up much further ahead. I could see by the way he was flying that he'd made a heavy meal. He started to climb very gradually in a wide spiral, wings stiff, golden, riding the warmer air sweeping up from the plains. Eventually he made it up to the ridge, and perched there. I more than half hoped he was the boy who laid the turd - he was big enough, fully ten man-heights, I thought, across the wings. I'd rather tackle a little dragon, I thought. Leave the big mothers for someone else.

Anyway, as I stood there looking up at him, I heard the crunch of a big bone further up. Like a fool, I kept on going. I came round a great lump of broken rock, and there in a hollow were two big mothers. There were about four dead horses there. Each of the beasties was lunching on one of them. There were three dead people, as well. I cricked my head back to look up where they must have come down - it was dizzying. The shattered grey wall of the cwm climbed unstably into the deep blue sky, occasionally rattling as another chunk of shale came loose and clattered down into the bottom.

The beasties were just getting on with their dinner. It didn't feel like there was much I could do about it. If I made a play for one of the mothers, the other might very well make a play for me. Anyway, I'd have a piss of a job hauling anything useful down from up here, even if I did get the pisser. I had just decided that by the time a dragon had got past a certain size, he'd earned the right to feed in peace, when one of the dead people made a noise and flopped over.

I was pretty annoyed. I just couldn't see the point of getting crisped for someone who was almost certain to die anyway. But you can't just leave someone like that. I waited for a bit, hoping the corpse would hurry up and die. It was a barbarian woman, by the clothes, more I couldn't tell at that range. She had on a high-necked sleeveless black bodice, a long black skirt, a long sleeved blouse of green stuff, and riding boots. A black scarf - or more probably, if she was a barbarian, veil - was tangled round her head and neck. The problem was she was on the far side of the hollow, and the beasties were between us. Big dragons can't go up from a hollow. And when a beastie can't go up, that makes him even meaner and nastier than he usually is.

So I looked at the beasties and thought about the problem and waited. These mothers weren't going anywhere till they'd finished supper. You hear a lot of stories about dragons, and most of them are so much shit. In the stories, dragons carry off armoured warriors or people on horseback, snatching them up from level ground and flying off. Rubbish. Even a small dragon needs a long run to get up off the flat. A big mother just won't do it. He'll only take off downhill; and the bigger he is, the steeper the hill he needs. I think they have to get up a certain speed in order to fly, and the bigger they are the higher that speed is. Mind you I could be wrong; but if that isn't so, why do the little dragons have to sprint so pissing fast before they go up, and why do the big boys have to dive off ridges? They can run at least as fast as the little mothers when they want to.

I have seen dragons snatch people; but I've never seen one manage even level flight carrying a person. They sag away downhill looking for a comfortable place for dinner. That tells you all you need to know about stories in which people ride on dragons. More shit. Then of course there are the stories about people talking to dragons... You try it. Me, I like living.

The dead person seemed to like living, too. She moved again. One of the dragons - the greener one, nearer her - raised its head and hissed at her, the little ignition gland in its upper lip popping like a firecracker. Well, that's the first break, I thought. At least one of them has flamed itself out. I heaved a large and spiky lump of shale at the other. He turned in pretty short order and told me not to disturb him at mealtimes; but that told me he was flamed out too.

I grasped my lance just above the but, and, letting it trail behind me, sneaked as quietly as I could round the edge of the hollow. Each time one of the beasties got interested, I hunkered down and sat quiet. That got me round to the woman. I found that she was young, well made, and, considering she must have come down two hundred manheights, remarkably undamaged.

However, when I started trying to hump her back round the hollow, my bronzy friend started to sound seriously upset. I hauled up my lance as quick as I could, and managed to get it the right way round and pointing at him before he had fully decided to add me to the menu. We looked at each other down the four manheights of lance for a long moment, and eventually decided we didn't want to get any more intimate.

There are few moments when you bless a thing as pissing awkward as a dragon lance. That was one of them. I was still a bit bothered that Greeny might join in the fun, because you can't point one lance at two dragons at the same time. I was feeling like a one spine pissing hedgehog at that point! Fortunately, he seemed more interested in finding out whether Bronzy had chosen the tastier horse, and so they growled at each other instead. Manhandling the lance with one hand and the woman with the other, I managed to get back to my rock without too much interruption. Didn't that sound easy, when I put it like that? You try it. You try hauling your own weight across a scree slope. You can do that? Fine. Now try pointing a pissing dragon lance with one hand. You can do that too? Very fine. Now try both at once... Anyway, I did it, and we got back to the rock.

Past that, the going was easier, because it was steeply downhill. I didn't actually slide the woman - she seemed to be bashed enough already - so I had to stop waving the lance about. I hooked its thong to my belt and let it trail behind again.

At this point, halfway between the two big mothers and the place where I'd staked my mule, with a half-dead woman to shift, I saw another pissing dragon planing in below us, which felt like the outside of enough. I cached my burden under a rock where she wouldn't be seen from above, grabbed the lance, and went lurching down the cwm a lot faster than was safe. More by luck than judgement, I came on that pisser just as he was going for one of my goats. He didn't have room to turn and took the lancehead through his left eye. It surprised me that the lance didn't break. It surprised me that I didn't break - I felt I must be as bruised as the bint I'd been trying to fetch. But the dragon came down with a mother of a bang. He did break - his tibia, unfortunately, which is one of the more valuable bones. However, he was good and dead, which was a comfort. An injured dragon is not a lot of fun. My mule, bless her cussed nature, hadn't stirred a whisker. I lost the goats, but I'd got a dragon, so who cares?

Well, the next thing to do was wait till it got cool, and the further I was from the carcass the better, in case one of his brothers dropped in for a snack. I wasn't that worried. Dragons mostly won't eat fresh dragon, and who's to blame them? Pissing tough and stringy, most of it. Mind you, you shouldn't believe all the pissers who'll tell you that dragons won't eat carrion. Dragons are noble beasts, they say. Well, the other lot who say they're noble are the pissing Rhiconicfhearchaorusduadh, so maybe I was taught wrong about what the word means. You wouldn't believe what dragons will eat. Anyway, I took my mule, went up and got the woman, and started down to the nearest safe cave, which happened to have a stream. The woman was still moaning from time to time, but she was a long way from conscious.

I got a fire going and some water on to boil, unrolled my bedmat, heaved her onto it, and then started getting her clothes off her so that I could see the damage. She'd been pissing lucky. I guess she most probably landed on top of her horse, and then rolled off. Most of the mess was superficial: cuts and bruising, such as you get from rolling six manheights down a scree. She'd bust three ribs and a collarbone, all on the left; and something nasty - I guessed it might be a stirrup, but it might be anything, it might even have been a dragon claw - had ripped through the outside of her right thigh, and that needed a lot of darning. So I cleaned it up, and stitched it, and wasted a good warm undershirt on bandaging it, and washed her down and tidied her up a bit.

She was certainly a good-looking bint, that any man would make a play for. Her skin was the colour of old bronze, and she had bronzy lights in her hair and bush. That hair was thick, and long, and glossy. Her face was fine-cut and elegant. She was young yet, and not really filled out, but she had good round dugs, and a nicely swelling arse. Altogether quite a peach. I left her with a blanket over her, and went to make the mule comfortable.

When I got back, she seemed to be not so far out. Her breathing was a lot better, and her eyelids were moving a bit. I started getting some food organised. Then suddenly, in the middle of that, the bint went for me with my own knife! I was pissed, I can tell you. She didn't get me, and I got it off her. Then she started cursing me in high class Rhiconicfhearchaorusduadh, and I thought, oh no, of all the people I could have risked my neck for, it has to be one of those pissers. I told her so, straight, in the same pissing language, and that quietened her down a bit.

After that I fed her (and myself), and, as it was getting cooler and the beasties weren't likely to trouble me, went up to start cutting up the one I'd got.

(Click here to skip a long and tedious description of butchering a dragon)

The ridge above me was outlined purple against the faintly green sky; empty of beasties. I knew they'd be up there, all right, nestling in little gullies up near the ridge on the lee side, sleepy in the cooling air; I'd no fear to see any flying. When I got to the carcase, the light was so far gone it was pissing hard to see. Still, there'd be moon later.

I tried to size up the job before the light went entirely. I felt along the broken tibia; the break was near the elbow end. I'd maybe get seven good spans of straight bone out of it. Well, a seven span bone would keep me in food for a season; and his other tibia, the unbroken one, would be over a manheight, and so would each of his shins. I didn't like the smell around the break though. I'd have to be careful not to drop a knife so's to cause a pissing spark, or the whole mother could go up foom.

Every bit of a dragon's valuable, of course; but there's a limit to what I can get out, with my one mule, so I mostly go for the big bones and the wing membrane because they're light and make good money, and the teeth, because they're small and easy to handle. You wouldn't think dragon teeth would be good for much, but the shamans out on the steppe like to make their necklaces of them, and most warriors like at least one on a thong, so they fetch money too. And there's rich folk in the city who pay good money for dragon meat - some folk have way more money than sense. Mind, the wing muscles, or the hams, on a big dragon must be the biggest lumps of solid meat there are; but they take the piss of a lot of cooking, and they're still stringy when you're done. In any case, meat's too heavy, and too hard to preserve, for me to haul out. I leave it.

Time to start work. It's pissing black, up in the mountains at night; pissing black and pissing cold. That's part of why dragons hunters wear so many clothes. I had to work mostly by feel. First thing to do is cut the big arteries; the throat, the shoulder, the insides of the thighs. Nasty. Sticky stinking blood everywhere. Still, you need to get as much blood out as soon as you can, before it coagulates too much. Blood in the membranes isn't good for the price, because they don't clear properly.

After that you cut the mother up. The first incision, along the leading edge of each wing from the shoulder to the tip of the first dactyl, goes easy enough by feel. The next ones are not so easy. You have to slit exactly along the underside of each of the web dactyls, three on each side, without cutting the membrane. That's hard. If you nick the pissing membrane, it can wipe half the price off that wing; and it's easy to do, in the dark, when your knife skips across the knuckles of the dactyl.

The moon got up just as I was finishing that - it'd taken me a piss of a lot longer to do it than to tell of it. Each of those pissing dactyls was a manheight and three spans. I could have wished for moonlight sooner, but I knew I had a lot to get done, so what the piss. Still when it came to stripping the membrane off the bones, the light helped.

I was still dead nervous near the broken bone. The smell - I don't know what it is, it's whatever it is in dragon bone that makes it so light and makes it burn so fiercely - was pissing strong. I once watched a man cut a bone carelessly. I don't know what he did; perhaps he let his saw get too hot, or maybe he hit a spark off a stone. Whatever; there was this pissing enormous bang, and we were all thrown off our feet. The guy had splinters of bone in him all over. He was well dead; and there wasn't a right lot left of the bone.

Anyway, the night was wasting. I climbed onto the back of the mother, and cut back from the shoulder to where the leach of the membrane joins the body just in front of the hip, first on the left and then on the right. Climbing down again, I pulled the membranes well clear of the carcase, leaving them spread flat.

Next job is to get the wings off, so it's back up onto the beastie with the cleaver, and hack the shoulder joints apart. You always try to get in between the joints, because it's safer that way. It's still a pissing awful job; dragons are strong mothers, and their joints don't want to come apart.

By the time I'd got them both off, the sky was already paling along the ridge, and I was a piss of a lot more than tired. The legs would have to wait till the next night.

I dragged the first wing a good way down the cwm, hoping to find an ants' nest to help with cleaning it, although really I knew I was too high. Then I went back to the cave, saw that the bint was sleeping peacefully, got the mule and went back up for the rest. Sunlight was glinting on the pinnacles, though it was still dark in the cwm, and the beasties were up there, wings spread black in the sun, soaking up the heat.

People talk a lot of pissing crap about the beasties. You'll hear stories about a black winged dragon, or a red winged dragon, or whatever. The wings are black when it's cold. They're red when it's hot. When the beasties are just comfortable, they're a sort of transparent golden colour. I don't know why. It's something to do with blood; when they're golden, there's no blood in them, and that's the best time to bring a beastie down, because you get the best membranes. But that isn't all of it because the membranes keep on going black when they're cold years after you've hung them up as blinds - that's why people want them, after all.

Anyway, I piled the membranes onto the mule, and hitched up the other wing, and hauled them all back down to the cave before the mothers started up for the day.

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