The Green Hero (13 page)

“We know that he is manacled to the massive pillar under-earth, and that he is to be reached by entering the cave whose mouth opens out in the slope of that ice mountain yonder. We know also that he is guarded by a dragon.”

“It is that dragon who gives me such a poor opinion of our chances,” said Kathleen. “You must admit you have painted a fearsome picture of the beast. All he has to do is breathe on us, and there we are, ice statues standing in a cave forever. And that’s the best that can happen to us.”

“We face a battle,” said Finn. “And we have to know the worst so that we can do our best.”

“I haven’t had an easy life,” said Kathleen. “But this worst is worse than any worst I’ve ever known.”

“Well, now, the question is what do we do?” said Finn.

“ ’Tis the question indeed. I’m all agog waiting for your answer.”

“We have discussed the dragon’s powers, now we must think about his appetites, for therein may lie a weakness. For instance, what does he eat—besides walruses, which are not his favorite food.”

“I can just imagine,” said Kathleen, shuddering. “He counts as delicacies, no doubt, lad and lass, and cat and hawk.”

“No doubt. But we’d make only a mouthful for him. He needs a more substantial dish, that one. He eats seals by the hundred. Hunts whale and octopus and giant turtle. As for land creatures, he prefers oxen, and such huge viands. Here in the icy waves where game is hard to come by, his favorite meat is polar bear.”

“Does he find them way down there at the bottom of the cave?” said Kathleen.

“No,” said Finn. “And you have put your finger on the very thing that may give us our chance. To hunt his food he must leave off guarding Lyr and climb to the mouth of the cave, and out upon the ice. There he lies in wait until he spots a polar bear, or a pair of them, and then he dines.”

“Stop right there!” said Kathleen.

“What?”

“I’m beginning to get a glimmer of your idea, and I don’t like it a bit.”

“What don’t you like?”

“What you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That you and I in our polar-bear cloaks and polar-bear hoods—why we look like the dragon’s favorite dish ourselves. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“You’re a clever girl.”

“Not for long. Soon I’ll be a dead girl if I don’t look out. Dead and devoured and digested. Oh, why didn’t I stay in my father’s midden? Why did I have to leave the safety of that stinking pigpen and go husband-hunting across the river? Now look at me—a thousand miles from home and freezing cold and widowed almost before I was wed, and about to become dragon fodder. Oh, woe and wail-away!”

“Have you done with your lamenting?”

“Only for the moment.”

“Well, do you want to hear the rest of my plan?”

“Might as well. Don’t have anything better to do, and soon things will be much worse.”

“Listen, then. In a few hours the dragon will get hungry. He will climb up out of his hole, up through the mountain, out the mouth of the cave, and onto the ice. And what will he see? Well, he will see two polar bears asleep. That’s what he’ll think he sees, for it is dark, and dragons are nearsighted anyway. So he’ll come toward these two sleeping polar bears, who will be us, of course—and we will be waiting for him.”

“Without any eagerness whatever,” said Kathleen. “Speaking for myself, that is.”

“All right … he’ll come up to the first one, who will be me, and open his great jaws, and prepare to dine.”

“Must you go into all this horrible detail,” cried Kathleen. “I get the picture.”

“Not yet you don’t. Look at this.”

With a swift movement Finn shed his white cloak and hood, and stood in a black sealskin cape and cap. Kathleen could see only the glitter of his eyes and the shine of his smile. When he tossed his mantle on the ice, why it lay there plumply, looking for all the world like a polar bear.

“I’ve stuffed it with feathers,” said Finn, “which the hawk has been collecting from every bird she strikes down, and which I have been saving for this purpose. Look … does it not seem like a polar bear asleep?”

“Yes, it does. And that’s about all I can say for it.”

“That hide will hold not only feathers,” said Finn. “When I finally doff it, it will hold something else, which the dragon will swallow down when he devours this counterfeit bear. And that something else will be this.”

He whipped something from his belt and held it toward Kathleen. She peered at it in the firelight.

“Your magic pouch—bearing the seeds of fire!” she cried.

“Exactly. That is what the dragon will swallow. And, perhaps, it will give him the biggest bellyache since bellies were made.”

“What about that second sleeping polar bear?” said Kathleen. “The one who’s me? Or am I stuffed with feathers and fire too, and hiding in the shadows in a sealskin cape—which, by the way, you haven’t given me.”

“No,” said Finn. “It will be you crouching on the ice in your white cloak. And I have a special task for you. For the dragon will never reach you, if my plan works at all. Once he swallows the seeds of fire he should be very busy for a while. And I will deal with him, and try to control his wrath for our own purpose. And you, you will slip into the mouth of the cave and descend to the depths of the cavern, taking my sword with you. There, you will strike a blow for the shining waters of the world. You will raise my sword, which has been magically honed and can cut through any manacle—you shall wield my sword, you yourself, Kathleen ni Houlihan, too long a daughter, too soon a widow, you Kathleen, beautiful girl, brave and lovely one, who has chosen to leave the bag of bones that was her husband, and come adventuring with Finn McCool into this dire peril. Yes, you will use the sword which passed to me from my father, the great Cuhal, and you will strike the manacles off the god of the sea, and release him to resume the war against the foul-weather fiend and all his cohorts, who hold the seas in bondage and shrink the sun, and starve our folk. You will do this as I do that. Between us, if fortune smiles, and we do not blacken her smile with our own fears, between us we shall conquer.”

Kathleen stood tall. There was a deep throb in her voice as she said:

“By the high gods, you can charm the birds off a tree and a girl out of her judgment. I don’t know if I’m brave or foolish, but I’m with you till the death.”

“What do I do?” said the hawk.

“I have a task for you. You must fly high and strike well to deal with the winged mist-crones who will try to spread a fog about us to bewilder our enterprise.”

“And I?” said the cat.

“You will accompany Kathleen to the bottom of the cave, attending every step of her descent. You will need all your wits and claws and all the sorcerous tricks you learned from the Fish-hag to fight off the legions of frost demons that dwell in the cave and make a ferocious horde with their white leather wings and icicle teeth. Task enough for any tom.”

“Until then I’ll take a catnap. Wake me up when it’s dragon-time.”

Finn and Kathleen lay on the ice floe in their polar-bear capes. The uncanny night had fallen at noon, and a creeping mist had put out the few dim stars. Kathleen tried to keep perfectly still, tried to clench her jaws to keep her teeth from chattering, but she was torn by fear. She began to cry, soundlessly, without sobbing. Her tears froze and fell tinkling on the ice.

“What’s that?” whispered Finn.

“My tears falling. They’re frozen, and chiming when they hit.”

“Why are you crying?”

“From fear. Aren’t you afraid? I thought you were such a coward. Why aren’t you afraid?”

“I’ve been a coward for a long time. I know how to handle it. Now stop weeping. The dragon will grow suspicious. Sleeping polar bears don’t chime.”

Kathleen stopped weeping, and waited for the dragon to come. Now Finn had warned her to lie there with her face hidden and not to look up. He didn’t want her to see the dragon coming. He was afraid that the sight of it would so terrify the girl that she would call out and warn the dragon before he reached Finn, and that the monster would realize that he faced enemies, would pause to blow his breath on them, freezing their marrow and turning them into blocks of ice to be devoured at his leisure. So Finn had warned Kathleen to keep her eyes down and not to look up. But she found this very difficult. She heard a scraping slithering sound, and it grew louder, as if heavy chains were being dragged across the floe. She knew that the dragon was coming out of his cave and crossing the ice toward them.

She couldn’t help herself. She had to raise her head and look. Then she wished she hadn’t.

What she saw at first were two strange smoldering pits, far apart, but level, growing brighter and redder as they came toward her. She couldn’t imagine what they were. But then, as the chain dragging grew heavier until the very ice trembled beneath her, she realized that these smoldering pits of light were the dragon’s eyes. Then, by their light, she saw the whole terrible length of him—the huge snout full of teeth, the ridged spine, the great spiked tail. She heard its claws now scraping on the ice like enormous shovels, as the beast grew closer and closer. Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She let her head fall into her hands again with a little moan.

Then she heard a loud rasping snuffle which was its breathing, and she knew the beast was almost upon them, coming to inspect the two sleeping polar-bear shapes that were herself and Finn in their white fur mantles. She looked up again and, horror of horrors, saw its jaws gape, and snap up the white heap that lay beside her. She couldn’t believe that Finn would be quick enough to slip out of the skin, but he did. In the glare of the dragon’s eyes she saw the black shape of Finn’s body crossing her. And then, an unbelievable roar, a mind-shattering rumbling howling cry was torn from the dragon, who practically stood on his tail in agony. She didn’t dare rise to her feet. Simply curled herself into a ball and rolled away as fast as she could over the ice. She saw the dragon fall its full length, then scramble up and begin to beat its leathery wings with enormous force, and then rise into the air spouting flame like a volcano. And she knew the monster had swallowed the seeds of fire which were wrapped in the polar-bear skin, just as Finn had planned, and that there was a fire in its belly, and that it was in torment.

She watched in amazement as a huge gout of flame shot out of the dragon’s mouth and touched an iceberg, lighting up the snow with radiant whiteness. She saw the iceberg hiss away in a giant plume of steam.

She tried to get to her feet then, but was flattened by the terrific downdraft of the dragon’s wings as he beat them in his agony, flying in circles above the ice mountain. She struggled to her feet again, peering about for Finn, but she didn’t see him anywhere. The dragon bellowed again, and spouted flame. And by its light she saw an unbelievable sight. Finn riding the dragon’s head, a dagger in each hand, stabbing the leather skull first on one side, then the other, trying to steer the monster in its flight. She understood what Finn was trying to do. Every time the dragon gushed flame the ice would melt and the sea would spring free. She understood then that Finn, riding the dragon’s head, trying to steer it by dagger thrust, was using the monster as a giant flamethrower to melt the ice by which Vilemurk had locked the seas.

“Oh, grief,” said Kathleen to herself. “He’s a dead man. How long will he be able to ride that fearsome head? He’ll be burned alive by the flame, or shaken free and gobbled up by the dragon, or lashed by that terrible tail. Good-by, Finn, unwilling hero, gray-eyed stripling of golden tongue. Farewell, my boy. …”

But she had no time for mourning. Finn had told her what she must do. She picked up his sword, and made her way across the slushy ice toward the mouth of the cave where Lyr lay bound.

Kathleen was right. Finn was in mortal danger. But he was in ecstasy too. There was something about being perched high in the air on this brute head, steering the monster with daggers, and watching the great streamers of flame melt the icebergs and crack the ice floes, and seeing the sea leap free—there was a glory about this that dissolved his fears just as the ice was melted by the flame. The great joy he knew then was a joy given very few men to feel, and those men are all heroes, of one kind or another. It was the joy a man feels when he turns one of the great keys of nature—which is usually far beyond any man’s power—for Finn felt then that he, actually, himself, by his own efforts, by his own wit and daring, was changing the weather—unlocking the seas, restoring the life of its creatures, and rescuing from starvation those who draw their bounty from the sea. And when a man or woman feels that joy in turning one of nature’s stubborn keys, then he is apt to forget all lesser pain, forget his fears, doubt, hesitation. He knows the ecstasy of being a great natural force. The winds blow through him, he is warmed by the primal flame, and for a brief moment, before he flares into death, he knows that he has melted the icy indifference that reality turns to man’s hopes.

That is why Finn, who was no stranger to fear, as we know, kept riding the leather head, stabbing it this side and that with his daggers, steering the beast in its clumsy leather-winged flight so that the flame of its breath played over iceberg and ice floe, vaporizing the massy piles of ice, splitting the floes, and letting the green waters boil free.

So intoxicated was he with the joy of flight that he hardly realized it when the dragon, growing more accustomed to the savage flame in its belly, became aware of the lesser torment on its head, and snapped its enormous length like a whip, sending Finn high into the air. The dragon then did a half-somersault, pivoting upon its great wings, putting it in position to lash out with its tail at the falling body.

Now the air was thick with the steam of the melting icebergs, thick as soup. Finn saw the dragon turn, and poise its tail, and he knew what the beast intended. Falling as he was, Finn doubled up his legs and kicked out with all his might like a broncho sunfishing, and was able to lodge himself in a thicker column of steam, which was what he wanted. It slowed his fall somewhat, and partially hid him from the dragon. And the dragon struck too soon. The flailing tail missed Finn, but only by inches. He felt the point of its spike tear away his sealskin mantle, and the wind of the terrible lashing tail sent him blowing like a leaf, skittering sideways through the air. The force of it knocked him into a swoon. He fell onto a wedge of floating ice headfirst, and lay crumpled there, bleeding from the head.