The Saint of Dragons: Samurai

CHAPTER THREE Of Serpents and Samurai

There were decorations in the steel-walled house, but very few things that did not directly reflect Najikko’s profession. What caught the eye would be the Samurai suits of armour that lined the halls. Always keep a little something of your enemy close by. It helps you to conquer your hate.

And how he hated the human warriors.

Najikko’s cold stare travelled past the suits of armour to a room where six new “visitors” awaited him. They had come seeking help, like many others. They were beautiful women and yet all he could see were imperfections. Ugly as sin they were to him.

Najikko looked out of the window at one of many cities that he owned and wondered how long it would be before a challenger came to his doorway.

CHAPTER FOUR The Dragonhunter’s Home Life

If anyone asked, Simon would say he lived in New England, but he was rarely there. He lived in a chilly, rundown, ex-British castle – a former fortress built in America during the Revolution and later modified to resemble a true baronial manor in the 1880s by a lord who wanted a touch of home in the States. And it must have succeeded in looking authentically English, for it was the only place Aldric could be convinced to make into a permanent residence. It was not yet a home in Simon’s mind, just a stand-in for one, though he welcomed the stone walls after the heat of Africa. In his first few months as Dragonhunter, he had been all over the map. Now he moped around the giant house, feeling snappy and tired, unable to sleep.

Simon felt fifty years old and wondered how his father managed all this travel. There Aldric was, clanging around the big kitchen with all of the energy of a cat, making some kind of sausage breakfast, and all Simon could do was stumble towards an old chair and hope his father remembered to make him something (sometimes he didn’t).

As Simon slipped past the stove, Aldric spun about taking some biscuits out of the oven, and bumped into him, dropping the biscuits on the floor.

“Simon!” his father barked.

“Relax, I didn’t mean to get in your way,” said Simon, sinking into the chair. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re always saying sorry,” grumbled Aldric.

“You’re always making me,” Simon sighed. They had grown into better coordination on the battlefield, but at home, they were all left feet and elbows and chaos. He watched as his pet fox Fenwick dived for the spilled biscuits.

Simon listened to the familiar sounds of Aldric chasing the fox with a flyswatter and looked out of the wide windows towards his old schoolhouse, the Lighthouse School for Boys. It was a rare, clear day and he could see the lighthouse tower and the Revolutionary War buildings in all their rundown beauty, and for a moment he wondered what the boys there were thinking of him. Crazy Simon St George, the hermit kid, who lived in the castle and studied at home behind closed doors. Little they knew.

“You’re up. I knew I heard some ridiculous tirade,” said Alaythia, entering the room with a plate of sausages and a basket of piping hot biscuits of her own. There was also the less appetising smell, Simon noted, of sulphur and ancient herbs. Alaythia often had unusual and interesting fragrances around her; Simon had found that her cooking would do that.

She strode past a surprised Aldric.

“What’s all this then?” Aldric stared.

“I decided to avoid the usual arguments – and the usual shortages, since you always forget me and Simon – and just make breakfast myself, in the alchemy lab,” chirped Alaythia, and she sat down to serve herself the meal. “Simon?”

“I’m going to skip breakfast,” said Simon, trying not to look disgusted.

“Not a great idea,” she said, but didn’t push the issue. She was good that way.

“Rancid stuff, smells of burned rats,” grumbled Aldric. “Just ’cause yours looks better doesn’t mean it’s good.”

“Simon thinks my food is spectacular, he’s just not hungry. And Simon has excellent taste, don’t you, Simon?” She winked at the boy.

Aldric frowned. “His opinions frighten me.”

“Well, there may have been rats in the vicinity and they may have got torched – but none of them found their way into the sausages,” she said, and continued eating.

“I don’t need any help making breakfast,” Aldric said, but Simon noticed he sat down and helped himself. “I’ve managed well enough without your help all these years, haven’t I? What I will say for you is that you’re getting a touch better each time out.” He half grinned at her.

“Glad you think so,” she said. “There may be rats in the sausage after all.”

And as they discussed this possibility in playful and somewhat aggravated tones, Simon tuned them out and moved away towards the window. He didn’t like the way his father and Alaythia flirted; he wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t seem serious enough about each other, or because Simon himself had begun noticing Alaythia’s prettiness a bit too much, an uncomfortable thought he sent away quickly.

Fenwick stood up at the worktop and pushed in Simon’s direction a stray biscuit which Aldric had saved from the floor. Simon actually took it.

His white horse was trotting in the field outside and, watching it, Simon snapped out of his sleepy state. Deciding he needed a ride, he grabbed another biscuit from the table and headed for the door.

“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Aldric.

“Into town.”

“Not for long, we’ve training to do. Lances today.”

Simon kept going, keeping the debate to a minimum. “Training again? When am I going to prove myself enough to you?”

“It’s not about proving yourself, it’s about keeping up your skills. This isn’t a bloody game, is it? You can’t fail at this.”

Simon left the big stone kitchen and headed down a cold hallway, but their voices echoed behind him. “You know, a little of that goes a long way,” Alaythia told Aldric good-naturedly. “You can never just let things be, not even for a second.”

“What’re you going on about? My father used to knock me down if I tried to walk off like that.”

“Well, you can look forward to the same wonderful relationship with Simon. You don’t have to browbeat him so much, he’s not afraid of hard work. He hates himself enough already.”

“Oh, and why is that?” grumbled Aldric.

“Because he isn’t you. Obviously,” said Alaythia. Listening in the dark hallway, Simon could feel his face turn red. “Let him fail,” she added. “It’s how you learn, right?”

Simon went on to the hallway, filled with newspapers from around the world which might hold signs of supernatural events – the hallmarks of stray dragon magic.

There were circles around articles like “African Forest Fires at All-time High” and “Strange Lifeform Sighted in Jungle” and so on. Simon was actually obsessed with these strange activities. They gave him nightmares, filled up his thoughts, gave every action in the world a darker purpose. Like his father, he now saw a dragon presence in everything and he worried constantly over every news story, from strip-mining and pollution to crime and – right there, he thought, his eyes on a small headline. What is that? “Factory Laying off Thousands of Workers in Unusual Move.” That’s one of them, spreading hate, expanding its little domain of misery, that’s what that is. This was all he ever thought of now; it was just worry, worry, worry; he could hardly see the forest for the trees. Was there any end to this stuff? Was he losing his mind?

His ears pricked up for a second. To his embarrassment, he could still catch the talk in the kitchen.

“He’s got a girl,” he heard Alaythia say.

“How do you know that?” wondered Aldric. “If he met a girl, he’d clean himself up more.”

“That’s why I say he’s got a girl, not he ‘met a girl’. If she didn’t already like him, he’d have fixed that sloppy hair of his.”

Simon heard the remark and left the house, patting his hair down in sudden regret. But going back would mean a lot of chatter about who she was and all that, and there was nothing he wanted less than advice from his father. His hair was a blond, wiry, standing-at-attention deal anyway; not much changed that.

And anyway, the horse ride to town would mess it up.

And anyway, the girl liked him enough to see past all that.

As he rode Norayiss down the long driveway, Fenwick scampered alongside. Simon wondered how the fox knew he was leaving. Aldric came to the door and shouted after him, “Be back by eleven! After training, we’re going to look for Order members.”

You do it yourself. What a waste of time, thought Simon, galloping down the tree-lined trail. For months, the St Georges had been trying to find new converts to the Dragonhunting cause and it wasn’t going well. No one else could see the serpents in their true form, so more often than not, Aldric and Simon ended up looking like complete nutcases.

It used to be that the Order of Dragonhunters found soldiers from the families who had sworn to protect the St Georges since way back in the Middle Ages. These were people who passed the job down to their sons and daughters, and so on, and so on. But the modern world had forgotten Simon’s ancestor, the ancient knight Saint George the Dragonslayer, and those who knew the truth had been destroyed by the serpents. It felt hopeless. There was only Simon, Aldric and Alaythia against the hundreds of dragons listed in the White Book of Saint George.

As Simon slowed his horse to a trot, watching the dusty, pebbled road pass under him, he remembered the last meeting he’d had with a distant cousin of an Order member. The poor construction worker from Massachusetts had never heard of Dragonhunting. The ordinary man had sat across from Simon and Aldric, near a half-finished skyscraper, and munched on his sandwich, looking bewildered.

The guy thought Simon and Aldric were insane, and it had been no better with any of the other six candidates they’d gone to see, all descendants and distant relatives of dragon fighters. The Order of Dragonhunters was clearly a dead issue, but his father never gave up on anything.

Simon’s horse was moving now into the town of Ebony Hollow. Past the first few quiet streets he found the novelty shop where his girlfriend – he hoped he could call her that pretty soon – was saying goodbye to her father, the shop owner, and walking to school.

“Simon!” said Emily, surprised to see him. “You’re back from …”where was it again, Spain?”

“Africa actually,” Simon replied, trotting his horse alongside her. “We went from Spain to Africa.”

“On a job with your dad, right?” she said, looking at him sideways, a bit confused. “Are you ever going to tell me what kind of job he actually does?”

I may do that, thought Simon, looking at her pretty eyes in the morning light. I may really do that.

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride,” said Simon, offering his hand, and she smiled cautiously, but kept moving.

He trotted down the street beside her, crossing the trolley car tracks. Any time he had someone his age to talk to, things would come pouring out of him. It just happened. It was this desperate habit he was developing. Actually, to be honest, it was just around her. She was the only one he really talked to, or tried to anyway.

“You said it was toxic waste disposal, I think,” said Emily. “Why do you have to go round the world to do that?”

“Well, there aren’t a lot of people who know how to handle the kind of …”dangerous material we deal with.”

“It doesn’t make you glow, does it?” she said and laughed.

“Uh, it can,” he said. He pretended to have trouble keeping Norayiss on course, pulling the reins to flex his arms. He was pretty sure Emily noticed how big he was getting. He was growing stronger every day with training – constant training, so he knew he’d gained quite a bit of muscle – though he wasn’t as tall as he’d like to be.

“Nobody understands why you don’t go to school,” Emily remarked.

“It’s just home-schooling.” That didn’t sound too strange, did it? “It’s not a big deal, I just travel so much, helping my dad, that I can’t really …”Have you ever thought about my name?”

“Your name? Simon?”

“No, St George. He was a real person. The legend says he fought a dragon, a long time ago, in the deserts of North Africa. A real dragon, OK? I mean, it’s not a legend, people say it was a real creature, whatever it was.”

She creased her brow, half-amused. “And that relates to you …”how? I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

He paused. What if there were real dragons, but they didn’t look like dragons. And they did really terrible, really evil things, making all these supernatural events you hear about that no one can ever explain, and hurting people, and killing people, and someone had to stop them from doing this. Oh, no, no, no, don’t say that …

“It’s not toxic waste dumps, that’s not what I deal with,” he said at last.

“And what do you deal with?”

A species. He answered in his head. A species that drives people to do evil because it feeds off misery, soaks it right into the skin. It tortures people. If the serpent doesn’t actually do these things himself, he forces people to do it for him …

“Maybe we can talk about this later,” Simon mumbled. Luckily, there was no more time for talking. They’d reached the school.

Emily looked up and manufactured a smile. “I’ve got to go. Your horse is amazing, she’s really calm. So, um, I’ll see you around the shop, I guess. Maybe I could finally meet your dad,” she said.

“He’s not real social,” said Simon, embarrassed.

“Well, you can bring him by if you want.”

She walked off across the grass and joined a group of girls, and he noticed her shoulders were raised and tight. When she finally shot him a glance, it was strange and Simon knew he had now put up a barrier between them. She was scared of him; he occupied a land of fairy tales and craziness. Or was he just thinking too much?

He wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

At that moment, a terrible shadow passed across the sun, but then was gone before it could be deciphered. He wondered if the menace was all in his mind; his world was always ordered by threat and fear.

Fine. Live in your fantasy land, he thought, looking at the mean-eyed girls with Emily. This is real and I’m one of the few people in the world who can protect any of you. You need me. He wished they knew it.

But he had no stomach for sulking; that was his father’s habit – Aldric’s genetic gift that he had probably passed down – and Simon didn’t want it. Strong, silent type. Right. What a joke. Silence is weak. It means you’re afraid. He couldn’t have got his father’s strength and agility, oh, no, that would have been too good, so he’d inherited a total inability to talk to anybody.

Or had he? Maybe he would get along with everybody just fine if he got more of a chance to hang around them; if his father wasn’t always dragging him around the world or shoving hard work in his face.

Stop it. Come on. Get out of your head, Simon thought. Here he was talking to himself instead of to other people and he realised he’d been staring at the girls as they walked away. I’m not staring at you, I’m just thinking.

He tried to figure a way to look natural. Stop sleepwalking, he told himself. This is your life.

Sometimes it seemed like the ordinary world was the one that was like a dream.

CHAPTER FIVE A Home Life Destroyed

Simon left the school and Emily, riding back home upset. He passed some teenagers pulling in with their cars and it finally hit him that he must look incredibly stupid to Emily on his horse. How great and impressive I thought I was. Look at me. What an idiot. All the kids looked so confident, so ordinary, with nothing to worry about except homework or a Friday night date.

I don’t know how to act, I don’t know how to be, he was thinking. What do people expect? I’m a human disaster, I don’t even have anyone to tell this to, except Alaythia.

As his horse weaved through the light traffic and back to the weed-sprouting trolley car tracks, Simon passed a group of boys in suits headed for the Lighthouse School further away, their hands full of a junk-food breakfast from the corner shop.

They watched Simon pass. He was the mysterious boy, the one who had left the boys’ school on Halloween night and then came back to live hidden in the old castle house outside of town.

“Simon St George,” he heard them whispering. He had always wanted to be a legend at school. He never knew it would make him feel so alone.

“Doesn’t all that riding make you bar-legged?” said one boy, as if challenging Simon.

“Bow-legged,” said another boy. “Not bar-legged. Idiot.”

“Whatever,” said the other. “He’s so weird. He never leaves his house, his horse is his only friend.” He made kissing noises. “It’s his girlfriend.”

Pathetic jokes. Simon rode past them. They still lived in their little land of dumb humour and stupid pecking orders.

He knew things they would never know at the Lighthouse School – the darkness under life, the pain and fear of battle – and he was content to know all this, but it felt like the days of struggle ahead were endless, the enemy unconquerable, and he would never be done with the fighting until he was dead.

He could see boys lining up for roll call on the field beside the lighthouse, neat rows in neat uniforms, and for a minute he wanted to wrap himself in their perfect boring school day, to avoid the disorganised, rambling lessons he’d get later from Alaythia, and the harsh training he’d get from his father.

He saw his old friend Denman, the lighthouse keeper, heading into the tower. The gruff old Scotsman and his wife had practically raised him from infancy, but now Simon felt they were strangers, caretakers who did a job and rarely smiled. Without knowing it, Simon had been a burden, a danger to them because of the dragons who were always hunting him, and he was a precious thing too, the last of the Dragonhunters, bringing a responsibility that made the old couple weary. He knew his father disapproved of the way they raised him. To this day, Aldric seemed to begrudge them the fact they had seen Simon’s growing-up years. Simon still spent time with Denman now and then, but not today. There was no time.

Simon turned Norayiss, moving away from these old memories.

As he came up the hill and rejoined the road, he noticed there were no birds chirping in the trees. The world had been enveloped in a strange quiet. When he looked down at the horse’s hooves, they made no sound on the pavement; it was as if Simon had momentarily gone deaf.

He stopped his horse, worried.

And then …”the shadows began to shift. The ones on the left side of the road vanished and suddenly the shadows of the trees on the right side of the road began to stretch towards him. The darkness reached forward, like a set of black claws. It was as if someone had moved the sun to the wrong side of the sky.

Simon swallowed hard.

Then he noticed that the trees far off in the forest, near his home, were beginning to rustle as if tremendously agitated. The whole forest there was shaking. A great, immense thing was moving in those trees, or causing the trees to shudder somehow. And it was headed for his house.

He spurred Norayiss on.

The horse sped down the street and tore off into the forest. As he neared the castle, struck with panic, Simon realised he had only a small silver dagger for protection. He never dreamed he’d need body armour this close to home. He felt open; easy prey.

He took hold of the knife. Silver was the finest weapon against dragons, but it was the deathspell that killed them – and if it was a serpent on the attack, he had no idea which spell to use as they were specific to each dragon.

So which one was on the attack? There were hundreds of the beasts listed in the White Book of Saint George.

The horse dashed through the Ebony Hollow forest and Simon noticed with horror that the ground was rippling with beetles which were pouring out of the ground. Green-yellow insects wriggled from the earth and swarmed around the horse’s hooves.

This kind of warping of nature could only mean a dragon in their midst. But where?

As he thundered down the road to the castle, he found no sign of the killer, just Aldric and Alaythia outside in the field, brushing Valsephany. Simon felt calmer, thinking perhaps the serpent had merely been spying on them, and the idle talk he caught between his father and Alaythia relaxed him for an instant.

“It’s just really weird, what happened in Africa,” Alaythia was saying. “The brothers knew where we were, they were ready for us, they set a trap. And they knew how to trick me into coming in first. They knew we were coming into that village just at that time, and they knew exactly where we were.”

“Keep it down,” he heard Aldric say. “Simon’s coming. He doesn’t need to know all of this.”

“Listen, something’s happening,” Simon warned. “There’s something here—”

Suddenly, a set of claws snatched him around the shoulders from behind and hoisted him off the horse, into the air. He screamed, childishly, instantly hating himself for it, but he couldn’t see what had him.