Chapter 11: Destruction

    Lindír understood now. He had never been able to wrap his head around the idea of rampaging carnage that seemed to be the perennial pastime of his species. It was just mindless destruction, burning and roaring and killing to no actual end, or so he had previously thought. But now, with the endless rage burning within him, he understood that the purpose of ruin was to feel the moment when something gives beneath one’s hands. The moment when resistance fails, when collapse goes from impossible to inevitable: that is the essence of destruction.

His previous attempts had been abortive at best. He was young, barely sixteen and a starved fragment of his true potential. Since then he had spent three years glutting himself on meat, growing strong. Even standing on all fours he rose well above the thatched roofs of the peasant huts, and by rearing onto his hind legs he could reach most of the way up a church steeple.

Earth and stone and wood alike bore no resistance to him. Most small houses he could simply charge through, three and a half tons of draconic muscle plowing aside packed earth and woven branches and wood frames alike in a satisfying explosion of cracking timbers and flying dirt. Stone structures proved more difficult. Those he had to tear down by hand, ripping at them with claw and horn, or crashing against them again and again with his brute mass until at last the mortar shattered. Most stone buildings were churches, he found. How beautifully they had been carved into shape, and how wonderfully they shattered.

But Lindír did not need to use his strength to destroy, for he had flame. Flying at full tilt, a single burst of Lindír’s flame would rain down onto an area larger than a rich man’s field parcel, causing all underneath to ignite at once. There were villages that he could not even bring himself to land for, so furious was he, so desperate to feel his wings beat against the air. And so he would let them burn.

The fire felt truly inexhaustible. More than that, it needed to be let out. Flame filled Lindír’s belly to the bursting, growing hotter and hotter as more and more of it spilled out from that mysterious, never-ending source right next to his heart. There were times when he would burn even to his own detriment, turning entire fields of rich livestock or stands of soft-barked trees into char and cinder just to deny himself the pleasure. Lindír needed to burn things, he had to. Villages, towns, castles, forests, farms, fields, pastures, all burned alike, and Lindír would cross his claws in front of his chest and relish in the embers that fell from the smoke-choked sky once he was done.

He hated it all, hated the world that had hurt him, hated the dragon that he had become, hated that he had been robbed once again. Grief shot through heart and mind no matter how far he ran, as unavoidable as the wrath of a furious divinity and as painful as the point of a lance. So long as Lindír was in pain, he needed no other excuse. It was only the nature of those in pain to inflict pain. Only the nature of dragons to cause carnage.

He was blind and deaf and mute with fury. Every time he slowed down or tried to rest it would rise up within him and sting at eye and joint, making him restless until he was next able to drown out the feeling with the numbing liquor of destruction. Neither lack of sleep nor lack of rest made him sluggish or weak, for Lindír was fueled by rage and spite alone. The flames within burned his heart and soul for fuel, and each sleepless night and restless day only left him in greater agonies and fueled him to more extreme acts of destruction.

Most humans treated the arrival of the dragon as the coming of the apocalypse and fled before him. Lindír’s favorites were the ones who decided to fight. And though they were few compared to those who fled for their lives or collapsed to their knees in desperate prayer, there were more than enough fights for Lindír to understand how humans fought.

A few of the larger towns had their own militias. These were common folk, clad in quilted cloth and bearing rusted spears and hunting longbows. They were nearly effortless kills; Lindír would walk through their pinprick arrows and reedy spears with all the difficulty of ankle-deep water, then kill them one at a time with a swipe of claw or a crush of teeth. Sometimes their resistance would be so paltry that he wouldn’t bother to fight, and instead simply burn them from above like all the rest.

The lone heroes and dragonslayers were similarly boring. They would ride up on their steeds, lance in hand, all clad in mail, and announce themselves by name and title and country while Lindír indulged them with snarls and puffs of smoke. Then they would lower lance, or draw sword, or on one memorable occasion ready a large club, and charge. Lindír would crush man and horse alike with a single blow of his tail, or simply leap into the air and burn them from comfortably out of reach.

Mages, too, seemed to easily catch the dragonslaying bug. Once a wily quicksilver-wizard attempted to beguile Lindír into a pit trap with illusory gold; but though he used his magics to turn himself invisible, he failed to conceal his scent. Once he had been devoured, the illusion faded quickly. Another of a similar ilk squatted upon a cloud, hurling down insults and conjured quicksilver arrows in equal measure. He had expected that the small size and great agility of his mount would prevent Lindír from catching him in the air or upon the ground; but he failed to account for dragon fire, and so perished. It was the sole salt-witch he encountered, a woman of nearly three score years with tangled white hair and a brilliantly knitted shawl, who treated Lindír as a fair opponent. With snaring vines and walls of earth she attacked him, and when he rushed her down and batted her with his paw, she survived, for her flesh became as hard as iron. Only by burning the trees, flying above the earth, and crushing her in his jaws did he secure victory. But so exhausted was he, so bruised his flesh, that he lacked the stomach to burn the next village he found.

It was the larger efforts that proved most interesting. As Lindír made serpentine motions up the western coast of Gulliheim, he inevitably drew the attention of the rulers of the countless petty princedoms, duchies, and so-called kingdoms which made up the region. Few of them could muster an army of more than a score of mounted knights, but even such a small army proved a worthy challenge. A lance at full charge was the only mortal weapon Lindír had encountered that could pierce his scales, if only shallowly. He would drop low, wings half-spread, tail writhing through the air, and watch as the horsemen fell upon him in waves. He would leap and glide, turn and lunge, create cover with blasts of flame and strike from the least expected angle. Worse yet were those who brought archers with them, forcing Lindír to always be conscious of the patch of scaleless skin over his heart as he fought.

Still, though he would be left panting for breath, his blood dripping onto the soft earth, not even the largest and most skilled of those great hunting parties could conquer him, and Lindír continued ever northward. Even in the depths of his madness, Lindír knew that Hvalheim lay to the south. Two whole seasons passed in that way, days all aflame and nights wracked with torment as Lindír raged against the world that had betrayed him. He could not have the things he wanted most; but he was a dragon in his element.

There was a time when, having burned a fertile river valley down to the root, Lindír was forced to fly across a high mountain range where none but poor shepherds and wandering trolls dwelt. The thinness of the air over those mountains sapped his strength and made the net of scars on his muzzle ache in chorus with a score of other, lesser injuries obtained in the heat of battle. For a day and a night he fought across that mountain range, unsure of when it would end, eager to find another place upon which to let loose his wrath. And indeed, upon the far side, there was. A great plain lay there, unusually flat for Gulliheim, run through by a half-dozen rivers flowing down from the glaciers high.

It was spring, then, and the land was brilliant with new life. Lindír came across a few small villages, and there did as he was used to. But the fires he lit were only fires, not conflagrations. And he allowed some sheep and cattle to live when it suited him, and only damaged the spires of the churches instead of tearing them down to the foundation. And for a while he scarcely set down at all, but instead flew, flew with the fullness of his speed until his lungs burned and his heart hammered and his wings stung with the cold air and his eyes could see nothing but the bloody red sun upon the western horizon. Lindír landed in a patch of well-mannered woods, and to the sounds of squirrels and ravens he fell asleep.

The next morning, he was awoken well after sunrise by the thudding of hoofbeats and the rattling of mail. He arose slowly, pained by an empty stomach, sore wing-muscles, and a shattered heart. The source of the sound was obvious as soon as Lindír opened his eyes, for standing a short distance away was a score of horses, and upon those horses sat men, clad in mail, with lances and swords at their sides. Quite evidently they had come to do him challenge, but could not bring themselves to close, and so stood caught between duty and cowardice until he had awoken.

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“Who would you be, then?” Lindír said. “Knights, obviously, come to kill me, of course, but your sort usually has some titles to give or the like.”

The leader of the knights spurred his horse a step forward, then shouted out, “We come in the name of our Lady, the Countess of Stokvöllur. You, dragon, have burned her crops, slain her peasants, and otherwise done harm against her domain. Answer to that crime, dragon.”

The man spoke one of the northern dialects which Lindír had learned from the giant, though with an odd accent. He had never heard of Stokvöllur, nor of the Countess thereof, but the use of the feminine term intrigued him deeply. A score of knights would be a good challenge, but nothing he had not faced and beaten before.

    And yet, as he considered the prospect, Lindír found that there was no appeal to it. He did not want to fight, to face greater exhaustion and more bruises, just for the sake of fighting. He huffed loudly, an almost porcine chuffing noise at the back of his throat. “I assume that you would intend to have me answer for that crime by killing me, then?”

By their silence, Lindír knew that he was correct. He began to advance toward the knights, head held high, his stride as casual as a panther of the woods. “You would die in the attempt. But I don’t feel like fighting right now. Take me to the Countess and we might perhaps come to an accord. Who knows, maybe something interesting will happen. No bonds, though. The first man who tries to bind me will find his bottom half separated from his top half.”

The knights conversed amongst themselves. There seemed to be a good deal more argument this time, until at last the leader, the one who had first spoken to Lindír, settled them all with a brief round of shouting. Two of the knights, apparently under orders, set off at a gallop. The leader then addressed Lindír again.

“Follow us. But know that your threats do not cow us, worm. If you cause any more damage, we shall kill you where you stand.”

Stokvöllur was about ten meadows away; the knights must have ridden some time to reach the wood where Lindír had landed. It was far and away the largest city Lindír had ever seen, dwarfing even great Nederborg. It sprawled across both sides of the river Glerken, spilling out beyond walls that had not seen use in some time. But it was not to the city itself that the knights led Lindír. Instead they took him slightly downriver, crossing to the northern bank by means of a barge while Lindír swam, thankful to get the dust out from between his scales.

On the northern bank lay Stokvöllur Castle, the Countess’s dwelling. It was no Red Citadel, a typically grey and squarish human construction, built atop an artificial mound surrounded by a moat near the riverbank, looming over the barge traffic coming in from the sea. Just across the drawbridge, in a grassy field set aside for grazing sheep and jousting tournaments, a wooden chair had been carried out onto the grass, and a carpet placed down to give the place a modicum of dignity. Other, smaller chairs sat to either side of the main chair, where sat the Countess herself.

Lindír burst from the sea, and with four huge flaps of his wings he carried himself past the docks, crashing down on the grass immediately before the Countess and her makeshift throne. One man, a portly noble, was knocked entirely onto his backside by the wind of Lindír’s descent. Even as her hair blew in the wind coming off the dragon’s wings, the Countess was entirely unfazed. She raised a hand to her jaw in a contemplative gesture and looked Lindír up and down appraisingly.

“Then you would be the dragon I’ve heard so much about?”

 

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