The Dragon Griaule

‘Where do you mean?’ he shouted, and then saw chains slither down across a slight convexity at the edge of the mound where they were piled only four and five feet deep. His heart jumped in his chest, but there was no further movement.

‘The mound’s settling, that’s all!’ He glanced up to Yara. ‘How do I get you down?’

‘Are you sure?’

He waited a bit, watching the mound, and said, ‘Yeah!’

‘Go to the panel – key in nine-nine-nine! That’ll start the chains moving down!’

‘Don’t you want me to come up?’

‘I can hang on long enough to reach the floor!’

A rattling at Snow’s back – the chains shifted, the base of the mound bulged, and then a bloody-knuckled fist punched out from it and Jefe’s fingers clawed the air.

Galvanized with fear, Snow ran for the stairs. He pounded down the steps, grabbed the machete, and raced back again, pausing on the landing to gather his courage, and his breath, and then re-entered the lair. Lengths of chain were draped around Jefe’s torso and legs, but he had fought mostly free of them and gotten to his knees. Blood welled from splits on his chest and arms – it was as if his skin had not been torn or abraded, but rather had cracked like a shell. He stared balefully at Snow, yet spoke not a word and made no threatening movement. Yara shouted, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Jefe did not react to her, continuing to watch Snow, who approached with trepidation, holding the machete behind his head, poised to strike.

He assumed Jefe would lunge at him when he came near, but he closed to within a few feet, just beyond reach, and Jefe had not moved, merely tracking his progress. This gave him confidence and he aimed a blow at Jefe’s head. Jefe flung up his arm to block it and the blade skimmed along the inside of the arm, taking with it a shaving of skin. Not human skin, but a rind of sorts, a thick sheath protecting his flesh, and Snow, as he retreated, remembered how hard Jefe’s hand had felt when he slapped him.

‘Don’t let him stand up!’ Yara shouted. ‘If he stands, he’ll be harder to get at!’

Snow did not believe Jefe could stand and he was uncertain whether or not Yara’s statement was accurate. The mound made it impossible to get behind Jefe and his range of motion enabled him to defend attacks from every available angle. On his feet and badly wounded, he might be vulnerable to a range of attacks – in his current posture there was no option except to try another frontal assault. Snow stabbed with the point of the blade and Jefe deflected it with ease. He feinted a backhand slash, shifted his stance, and swung the machete straight down at the top of Jefe’s head – but he strayed too close to his target. Jefe clubbed his wrist, sending the machete skittering across the floor, and snatched at his shirttail. Snow broke free and hurried to retrieve the weapon. As he stooped for it, Yara shouted a warning. Jefe had clambered to his feet and was heading toward the stairs, dragging his right leg, his torso bent to the right, staggering, going off-course and having constantly to correct it, a crooked man on a crooked path. Snow darted after him and took a swing at the side of Jefe’s good knee, hoping to cut a tendon, but due to the awkward angle at which he delivered it, the blow had little force and did no discernable damage. Moving with an old man’s stiffness and deliberation, Jefe turned to him and gave a hissing cry, like that of an enraged cat. His face had lost every ounce of humanity, revealing it to have been a cunning mask behind which some odious and repellent thing had hidden, and now that the tissues of the mask were dissolving, a corrosive anger shone through, directed not only toward Snow, but toward all things not itself, a vicious, wormy hatred that had kept it alive for millennia and become its sole reason for existence. All of this conveyed by a mere glance. It was as if a germ of the dragon’s vileness had spanned the distance between them and infected Snow, breeding of an instant its semblance in his brain and inspiring in him a consonant anger. As Jefe labored toward the stairwell, Snow let that anger spur his actions and guide his hand.

Leaping forward, sensing the truth of the blow as he swung the machete, he sank the blade into the side of Jefe’s neck, the tip transecting the hindward portion of his jaw. Jefe made a cawing noise and jerked away, tearing the machete from Snow’s grip, so firmly was it embedded in meat and bone. Blood seeped from around the edges of the blade. Jefe stumbled out onto the landing, his step grown discontinuous. He slipped, clutched ineffectually at the railing, and then pitched forward, bumping down the stairs on his belly and onto the landing below, dislodging the machete. He picked himself up and kept going, blood fron the wound cape-ing his back with a darker crimson.