Blessed Are the Merciful
Author's Note: Since most of my original stories are Secondary World fantasy novels, I thought I'd use the @inklings-challenge to write something in one of those worlds I've already developed. This is the backstory of one of the supporting characters in my story The Ambassadors. In the main story, he's a middle-aged man, so it was lots of fun to catch a glimpse of him when he was much younger. He's one of my favorites, so I hope you like him!
Something that would be clear if you knew the main story, but I couldn't figure out a smooth way to explain in the prose of this story, is that the character changes his name in between scenes. The POV character remains the same throughout.
Also, Gyvael = guh-VIE-ell
With one last, earth-shattering roar, the great dragon crashed to the ground, shuddered, then fell still. For a moment, a ringing silence. Then a chorus of a dozen ragged cheers echoed off the mountainside as knights raised swords, shields, and bows in triumph.
Gavin didn't cheer. All he could do was stand, breathing hard and staring up at the green-scaled haunches rising over his head like a shimmering green hill. The long, spiked tail he'd been desperately dodging mere moments ago now lay still on the ground, like one of the huge snakes they said lived in the wild forests to the south, that bore no venom in their bite but could wrap around a man while he slept and crush him to a pulp.
He looked down when he heard a rattling sound, and realized his hands trembled on the hilt of his sword. The plates of his armor clanked together quietly. He quickly sheathed his sword again. It had not tasted blood.
With greater difficulty than he should have had because of his trembling hands, Gavin pulled off his helmet, breathing deeply of the fresh mountain air. It was over. His legs felt like jelly, his heart thudded dully in his chest...but at least it was over.
“Friends!” cried a voice. “My brothers!”
Looking up, Gavin saw Sir Renwick standing on the back of the felled dragon, holding his sword aloft. He'd taken off his helmet as well, and now his black hair fluttered in the breeze like a banner.
“At last we have slain the beast! We have won much honor today!” The knights lifted their voices in another rousing cheer, and Sir Renwick waited for them to quiet again. “But more importantly, the flocks and fields of Grenmoor need fear this monster no longer. And we have taken one more step on the path to peace in our land!”
“Three cheers for Sir Renwick!” someone called, and everyone joined in while Sir Renwick grinned and lifted his sword in response.
Everyone except for Gavin. He tried to feel the exuberance the others felt—his first dragon! Protecting the innocent people of his kingdom! It was all he'd ever wanted, all he'd ever dreamed of when he'd become a squire so long ago.
And yet Gavin found his gaze straying to the head of the enormous green dragon. He could see one eye, half-open and staring blankly at nothing. Just minutes ago, those eyes had been flung wide open, filled with fear. Desperate terror. Furious rage. It wasn't all that different from the eyes of cornered animals on the hunt...and yet....
“So how do you feel, Sir Gavin?” A hearty voice and a hand clapped loudly on his shoulder broke Gavin out of his thoughts. Looking up, he saw Sir Renwick examining him with a shrewd eye and a sympathetic smile. “You are now a dragon slayer!”
Gavin swallowed, finding himself unable to look his captain in the eye. “I didn't...my sword barely touched the dragon.”
“Ah, true.” Sir Renwick put his hands on his hips, surveying the dead dragon with satisfaction like it was a field they'd just tilled with their own hands. “But your distractions with its tail were vital to our success. Sir Sigmund and I could never have driven home the killing blows if we'd had to worry about being clobbered with that.” He pointed at the cluster of deadly spikes at the end of the dragon's tail lying a few feet away. One had scraped across Gavin's breastplate and left a gouge in it that he doubted any amount of buffing would get rid of.
Looking back at Gavin's face, Sir Renwick's expression sobered. “You showed true bravery today, Sir Gavin.” He put a hand on the younger man's shoulder again, shaking him slightly. “I assigned you to the position I did, not because I didn't think you could handle the greater responsibility, but because I knew you would not let me down. And you have not. You should be proud of what you've done this day.”
Gavin nodded. He tried to smile, but his muscles didn't seem to want to obey him.
“Also,” Sir Renwick added in an undertone, glancing around to be sure no one was eavesdropping, “there is no shame in feeling a bit unsteady after your first dragon. I keeled over in a dead faint after mine. But if you want to get sick in privacy, I might suggest the cave.” He nodded to the den from which the dragon had emerged. “The men will be a while collecting trophies anyway.”
With another bracing clap on the shoulder, Sir Renwick turned and headed over to where a couple of the other knights seemed to be trying to remove the dragon's huge head. Several others were sawing away at talons or scraping off the enormous green scales. Sir Jarold seemed to be trying to catch some of the blood still dripping from the dragon's wounds in a flask. Dragon blood was worth twice its weight in gold at an apothecary.
It was the same as when they felled a boar or hunted down a pack of wolves. They would skin the animal, eat its meat, and sell its pelt. So why did his fellow knights' actions suddenly feel like a violation?
Gavin followed Sir Renwick's advice and trudged into the cave, though he didn't exactly feel sick or faint. He just couldn't stop trembling. And he couldn't get the sight of that mighty beast out of his mind—rearing up on hind legs, wings stretching out to either side, roaring and snarling with eyes so full of fear....
He sighed, shaking his head as he wandered farther into the cave, trailing a hand on the rough wall. What was wrong with him? It must just be the nerves. Never mind that he had been in danger countless times, even killed a man when they'd surprised a camp of brigands who'd been waylaying travelers. But he supposed it made sense that a dragon would be on a completely different level.
Gavin suddenly realized he'd turned a bend in the passage and could no longer see the cave mouth. He halted, intending to turn back...but then he realized the cave wasn't completely dark as it should have been around the bend of a rock wall. Farther in, a dim shaft of light filtered down from some opening high above, gently illuminating the inmost chamber.
Something glittered on the cave floor, casting prismatic reflections on the walls. There were all those tales of dragons sleeping upon a bed of treasure, hoarding it for years until an intrepid adventurer stumbled upon it and made his fortune. Never mind that Sir Renwick had laughed and told him that no dragon he'd ever faced possessed so much as a single golden coin—for what use could such riches be to a senseless brute?
Nevertheless, Gavin continued into the inmost chamber to investigate. Several bones lay in the corner, a testament to the dragon's meals, but much fewer than Gavin would have expected from the den of a ferocious predator. And the stench of death and decay was absent from the cave, as if the dragon routinely cleaned its living area. A pile of dead leaves and branches lay against the far wall, with a depression in the middle like an enormous nest.
And there, safely ensconced within the space where the dragon must have lain to sleep, sat an enormous egg. Almost as big as Gavin's head, it lay in a puddle of light from the hole in the ceiling. And this egg wasn't white or brown like any egg Gavin had ever seen, nor was it blue like a robin's egg. This egg glimmered a vibrant purple, like a single enormous amethyst.
Sinking to his knees in the nest of soft leaves, Gavin pulled off one of his gauntlets and reached out a trembling hand. His fingers brushed the smooth shell, warm to the touch in the sunlight. Upon closer inspection, he saw faint pinkish striations in the purple shell, almost like veins in a stone.
Then, as his palm caressed the smooth curve of the egg, something moved inside.
Gavin froze. There it came again, a gentle nudge on the other side of the thick shell.
Suddenly everything made sense. The fear in the dragon's eyes, the ferocity of its battle against them even though the nearby villagers said it would only raid their flocks under cover of night, and fled immediately as soon as it saw them. It—she—hadn't merely been fighting for her life. She had been protecting her child.
Gavin knew what he ought to do. What Sir Renwick would no doubt order, if he knew what was in here. They couldn't risk another dragon growing up to terrorize the countryside again. And leaving it to die alone on the mountainside would be cruel. It wasn't a fate they would deal out even if this were a wolf cub.
While his left hand fell to the hilt of his sword, Gavin's right hand still rested on the dragon egg, so warm he could almost believe it was living flesh. Within the safety of the eggshell, there was living flesh. A small version of the enormous beast they'd just slain, so small it could fit into his arms. Would it have scales as green as its mother? Or would they be the same lovely purple as this egg?
It would be so easy to put an end to this dragon. Crush the shell, let its contents bleed across the floor. Then he could truly call himself a dragon slayer. He would rid the world of another menace to humanity. Bring the days of peace closer, as Sir Renwick had said.
Slowly, he drew his hand back and pushed himself to his feet again. He stared down at the egg. So beautiful, so helpless. So full of life.
Gavin squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sigh, realizing he'd already chosen his path. Making the sign of the Eagle on his forehead, he muttered, “Great Eagle shade me.”
Then he gingerly took the egg in his hand and, after a moment's thought, placed it gently in his helmet that he still carried with him. Pulling off his other gauntlet, he carefully laid them over the top, hoping to hide the glimmer of the shell somewhat from prying eyes. Maybe the others would still be busy about the dragon's corpse, and he could wrap a blanket around the egg before anyone thought to look for him again.
Strange. When he'd been facing down the mother dragon, intending to take her life, he'd been shaking in his boots. Now that his mission was to preserve life, he found himself incredibly calm.
Maybe that meant this was the right thing to do.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Glaive trudged up the mountainside, carrying the basin of dishes he'd just washed in the river in one hand and a bucket of fresh water in the other. His feet followed the path they now knew by heart, which had probably first been beaten down by deer, or perhaps foxes.
Neither one came anywhere near anymore. Not when two members from the top of the food chain had taken up residence here.
When Glaive stepped over the moss-covered log he'd started to think of as the front gate, he caught sight of the deadly predator who'd scared off all but the smallest and swiftest of rodents.
Gyvael lay on her back, leathery wings sprawled to either side, long tail twitching, while she batted with her claws at a large orange butterfly. It didn't seem to mind, dipping and dodging between her claws as if they weren't there, then descending to perch delicately on the tip of Gyvael's snout.
Glaive paused for a moment, smiling fondly at the sight of his dragon going cross-eyed as she tried to keep the butterfly in view. Gyvael's scales glittered in the sunlight like a pile of amethysts, a treasure trove just lying in the grass as if someone had carelessly dropped it there.
With a trill of delight, Gyvael wriggled about on the ground. “It tickles!”
The butterfly fluttered away, and Gyvael tried to leap up and catch it again. Her wings flapped wildly, but she only rose a foot above the ground before she dropped back to earth again with a disappointed sigh. She watched the butterfly zip out of sight with a longing that Glaive had begun to notice more and more with every passing day. She wanted to take to the skies herself. It was where she was meant to be.
The smile slipped from Glaive's lips as he set down his burdens just inside the mouth of the cave they called home. She still had much growing to do before her wings would be strong enough to carry her weight...but she was growing so fast. Already, as she loped up to meet him at the fire pit, her head came up to his shoulder. Soon, she would be taller than him. Bigger than him. Soon, it would be easier for her to protect him than the other way around.
Gyvael greeted him in her usual fashion of butting her head under his hand so he could run it over her skull and down her neck like petting a cat, even though now she had to bend her long, sinuous neck much farther down than those early days when she was fresh out of her egg and could fit in the crook of his arm. She looked up at him with sharp amber eyes, her pupils mere slits in the bright sunlight.
Immediately, Gyvael stilled, resting her chin on Glaive's chest as she gazed into his eyes. “What is it? You look...sad.”
Glaive grunted, but couldn't keep a small smirk from the corner of his mouth. “Growing too perceptive, you are.” He tapped the tip of her snout. She crossed her eyes in response.
Stepping around one huge, leathery wing, Glaive strode over to the fire pit and sat down on his usual stump, staring into the pile of white ash from the morning's fire. Gyvael flumped down next to him, settling into the depression she'd made in the ground from many days and nights of sitting right here to eat her meals. Glaive had given up long ago on reminding her there was an entire other side of the fire she could fill, rather than sitting right next to him every time.
Gyvael rested her chin on his knee, looking up at him expectantly. “Are you going to tell me a story, Glaive? But it isn't bedtime.”
He reached up to pat her on the head, then thought better of it and let his hand fall again. Clearing his throat, he looked away—at the ashes, at the sky, at the boring rock wall, anywhere but at those big, adoring eyes. “Yes. I have a story to tell...but I'm afraid you won't like it.”
Gyvael shifted to a more comfortable position, resting her head on his foot instead. “It's true,” she said thoughtfully. “Some of your stories aren't very nice—like the one about the scorpion and the frog. But I always learn something from them.”
Glaive swallowed painfully. He wished she would never learn what she was about to. “This is a story I've known for a long time I needed to tell you,” he said, licking lips suddenly gone dry. “I told myself I would wait until you were old enough, until you were ready...but now I think you have been ready for a good long while, and really I've been waiting until I was ready. But I never will be. I can see that now, so I think I need to simply tell you.”
“You should, because you're not making much sense like this.” Her voice carried the dry humor he'd grown to love so much from her, but she just gazed at the fire pit, like she usually did after begging him for a story after dinner. He couldn't tell what she thought of his stumbling attempts at an introduction.
He drew a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then began. “I've told you how I found your egg in a cave, haven't I? How your mother was not there, and so I took you home, where I hoped to hatch you and raise you in safety.”
“Yes,” Gyvael murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.
Glaive clasped his hands together to keep them from trembling. “I...did not tell you the entire story of that day. I didn't simply stumble across the cave while wandering about. I was there...because of your mother.”
He told her everything, the ugly words spilling out like blood from a wound. She already knew he'd been a knight before he'd been forced to flee for both of their lives. She knew the knights would be called to protect the defenseless from those who wished them harm. But he'd never told her that one such cause of harm had been her mother.
He talked of the journey to Grenmoor, the frightened farmers who spoke of a great shadow in the night that sent their animals into a terrified frenzy. Sheep and cattle stolen from the fields. The terror clouding everyone in that village, wondering when the dragon would grow tired of mutton and eat one of their children instead.
Glaive told her everything of how the battle had unfolded. Though he spared her some of the more gruesome details, such as the head now mounted on Sir Renwick's wall, he didn't hold back anything of his own part, how he'd harried the dragon and distracted her just enough so the others could strike the killing blows. So they could cut her down where she stood, desperately defending her unhatched child.
Finally, he reached the part where he'd hidden her egg and carried it all the way back home to hatch in safety. Gyvael knew the rest, how Glaive had tried to keep her secret, until inevitably they were found out and had to flee for their lives. How long ago it all seemed, though they'd barely been in this rough home of theirs for a mere six months.
“I did not strike your mother down with my own hands,” Glaive finished heavily. “But without me, the man who did so may not have succeeded. Had I not been there...perhaps your mother would be alive today.”
He couldn't bear to look down at her. He didn't know which he dreaded to see more: anger at him for what he'd done, or the aching sadness of the mother she would never meet. Every now and again, she would mention her mother, wonder where she was, cautiously hope that one day their paths might cross and she could get some answers.
Now she had the answers. But what would she do with them?
Many long minutes passed, the air weighing heavier with each one. It seemed the birds had forgotten to sing and the insects to buzz, as if all nature waited with bated breath for the verdict.
Finally, Gyvael pushed herself to her feet. She moved slowly, as if with great effort. “I...would like to be alone,” she murmured. “Please don't follow me.”
She trudged off into the trees, head hanging low. Glaive watched her go. Even her scales looked dull in the sunlight, the purple of a bruise rather than an amethyst.
Glaive dropped his head into his hands. He remained sitting by the dead fire for a long time.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The night held no rest for him. Glaive lay on his blankets, staring out into the moonless night and listening to the crickets. The absence of a large, warm mass lying next to him and breathing loudly made it surprisingly impossible to sleep.
Up before the dawn, Glaive set about his usual routine of lighting a fire to ward off the chill of the mountain air. He'd had nothing to eat since breakfast the day before, but he still didn't think he could force anything down. He didn't even put his little kettle on the fire to make the herbal tea he'd developed a taste for, though Gyvael always wrinkled her nose and said it smelled like skunk.
As if the thought of her summoned her presence, the bushes rustled nearby, and out stepped Gyvael. Moving slowly with drooping head and wings, she looked as though the night had been just as rough for her as it had been for him. It wasn't as easy to find signs of tears on a dragon's face as it would have been on a human, but he'd seen her cry plenty of times before, and he could read the signs now.
She looked up at him, and he hastily dropped his gaze. He didn't think he could stand to see hatred or fear in her beautiful amber eyes. Or even worse...cold indifference.
On impulse, Glaive reached over and grabbed the sword he still kept by his side at all times out of habit, though it hadn't left its sheath in months. It still slid smoothly out for all that neglect, and glittered in the early morning light as Glaive thrust it point-first into the ground before him. The gesture was unnecessary, with Gyvael's sharp claws, but....
Glaive threw himself to hands and knees on the ground, bowing low before Gyvael with the back of his neck exposed. It was the same position he'd seen several times before in his lord's castle, when a murderer had confessed to his crimes or an official had been caught in some scandal.
“I have wronged you,” he said. “I have taken from you that which can never be restored. I do not ask your forgiveness, for I know there is none for one such as I. Therefore I submit to you, that you may do with me as you wish.”
Words he had heard so seldom before, and such a long time ago, now fell so easily from his lips. Even that seemed to confirm his guilt. He was a murderer just as surely as the man whose execution he had witnessed.
Gyvael stepped closer, her hot breath curling on the back of his neck. Glaive closed his eyes, waiting....
Her head slipped under his chin, nudging it upwards just as she always did with hi hand when she wanted him to pet her. For a wild moment, he wondered if he would feel her sharp teeth crush his throat...but all she did was push him upright, and then leave her head tucked under his chin.
Glaive opened his eyes and saw her wings raised over his head like a great purple tent. Then she began to purr.
Tears sprang to his eyes at the familiar vibrations reverberating through his whole body as she leaned up against him. “You should hate me,” he whispered. “You should...want me dead.”
“Then I would have no one.”
There was such an aching loneliness in her voice, Glaive reached up to lay a hand on her neck before he could think better of it. But she didn't seem to mind.
“Maybe...you are part of the reason my mother's dead,” Gyvael whispered. He could feel a hot, wet spot expanding on his shirt where her tears soaked through. “But you're also the only reason I'm alive. It would've been easier to kill me, but you didn't. I'm not going to kill you for that. What would that solve?”
Glaive drew a deep, shuddering breath, as if suddenly, his lungs could expand again. “I'm sorry,” he gasped out. He realized that was the first time he'd spoken those words since he'd begun his story the day before. Because if he let himself apologize, that would open the door for....
“I forgive you,” Gyvael said.
Glaive wrapped both arms around her as tightly as he could, while she purred a soothing rhythm in his ear.