Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [13]
Wheldrake, scrambling to his feet, began to run unceremoniously towards the town and Elric could do nothing else but let his pack animals run with him. The albino was left confronting a monster in no doubt on whom it wished to exercise its anger. Already its sinuous body moved with a kind of monumental grace as it turned to glare down at Elric. It snapped suddenly and Elric was crashing to the ground, blood pumping hugely from his horse’s torso as the beast’s remains collapsed onto the track. The albino rolled and came up quickly, Stormbringer growling and whispering in his hand, the black runes glowing the length of the blade and the black radiance flickering up and down its edges. And now the dragon hesitated, eyeing him almost warily as its jaws chewed for a few moments upon the horse’s head and the throat made a single swallowing movement. Elric had no other course. He began running towards his massive adversary! The great eyes tried to follow him as he weaved in and out of the corn, and the jaws dripped, shaking their bloody ichor to sear and kill all it touched. But Elric had been raised among dragons and knew their vulnerability as well as their power. He knew, if he could come in close to the beast, there were points at which he might strike and at least wound it. It would be his only chance of survival.
As the monster’s head turned, seeking him, the fangs clashing and the great breaths rushing from its throat and nostrils, Elric dashed under the neck and slashed once at the little spot about halfway up its length, where the scales were always soft, at least in Melnibonéan dragons; yet the dragon seemed to sense his stroke and reared back, claws slicing ground and crop like some monstrous scythe, and Elric was flung down by a great clot of earth, half-buried, so that he must now struggle to free himself.
It was at that moment some movement of the beast’s head, some motion of the light upon its leathery lids, gave him pause and his heart leapt in sudden hope.
A memory teased at his lips but would not manifest itself as anything concrete. He found himself forming the High Speech of old Melniboné, the word for “bondfriend.” He was beginning to speak the ancient words of the dragon-calling, the cadences and tunes to which the beasts might, if they chose, respond.
There was a tune in his head, a way of speaking, and then came a single word again, but this was a sound like a breeze through willows, water through stones; a name.
At which the dragon brought her jaws together with a snap and sought the source of the voice. The iron-sharp wattles on the back of her neck and tail began to flatten and the corners of her mouth no longer boiled with poison.
Still deeply cautious, Elric got slowly to his feet and shook the damp earth from his flesh, Stormbringer as eager as always in his hand, and took a pace backward.
“Lady Scarsnout! I am your kin, I am Little Cat. I am your ward and your guider, Scarsnout lady, me!”
The green-gold muzzle, bearing a long-healed scar down the underside of the jaw, gave out an enquiring hiss.
Elric sheathed his grumbling hellblade and made the complicated and subtle gestures of kinship which he had been taught by his father for the day when he should be supreme Dragon Lord of Imrryr, Dragon Emperor of the World.
The dragon-she’s brows drew together in something resembling a frown, the massive lids dropped, half-hiding the huge, cold eyes—the eyes of a beast more ancient than any mortal being; more ancient, perhaps, than the gods …
The nostrils, into which Elric could have crawled without much difficulty, quivered and sniffed—a tongue flickered—a great, wet leathery thing, long and slender and forked at the end. Once it almost touched Elric’s face, then flickered over his body before the head was drawn back and the eyes stared down in fierce enquiry. For the moment, at least, the monster was calm.
Elric, virtually in a trance by now, as all the old incantations