The horses clomped across the dead yellow grass. It was getting hot now. The men were sweating in their armour. Each carried a long metal lance, which they raised into position.
The lead horseman pushed open the front door with his lance and urged his horse forward. The others followed close behind.
The house had a long entryway and then a set of stairs. Little could be seen in the dim light. The smell was almost overpowering. The thing had not moved from this place in years.
“It’s not coming out,” said one of the horsemen. He was Irish. “We’ll have to ferret him out.”
“He’s coming,” said the leader.
“Indeed I am,” said a chilling voice. It seemed to come from their right, and then their left, and even behind them, offering no clues to the beast’s whereabouts.
“Come out, worm,” said the leader. “This waiting is pointless.”
“On the contrary,” said the voice, and again it was as if the walls themselves were talking. “I can smell the fear on you. It is growing minute by minute. You never really lose that fear, do you? Just a hazard of the job, I suppose …”
The lead man, Aldric, rode his horse deeper into the house. Now the light from the doorway no longer helped him to see.
“Do I seem fearful to you?” he said to the darkness.
“Oh, do be brave,” whispered the thing, mockingly. “Do come in closer. And by all means, do rush forward valiantly.”
The lead horseman hit a trigger on his lance and an iron cylinder shot into the room. It was a kind of white flare and it lit up with more intensity than any ordinary light could ever manage. But there was nothing to be seen. The voice was coming from nowhere.
“I’m not here, brave warrior,” said the voice. “I am sending you my voice from far away and your search has been in vain. I have already fled to the caves of a South American country and you have come all this way for nothing. You will have to begin again.”
Inside their helmets, the horsemen looked crestfallen. If this was true, untold hours had been wasted tracking and hunting this disgusting beast. Starting over would not be easy. Their hearts sank.
The lead man held his nervous horse. “You are a perfect liar,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” said the voice, and from out of nowhere a rush of heat knocked into the horse, which squealed terribly – and the man was nearly knocked from his mount. A claw had torn into his arm, right through his armour. The thing would not materialise, but the men could feel its heat and could see smoky, wavy lines like that of a mirage where the creature’s invisibility magic was wearing thin.
“Oh, but our games are fun,” said the creature.
The man was thinking they were anything but fun. Through his helmet, he could see waves of smoky heat ahead of him, marking the creature’s trail. His boots jabbed at his horse and, as they rushed down the hall, his lance slashed into the space just ahead of the smoky heat marks. Whatever was there made a splunking noise, as if the lance had struck against some kind of flesh, and the wall behind it collapsed. The sound that came out of that space was horrible, like a set of furious, squealing hogs, joined together with the cry of an eagle and the roar of a lion.
To the man it was beautiful, the sound of a wretched and terrible thing dying.
The man on the horse could not believe his luck. It had never been this easy before. His enemy must be an old one. Older than he thought, and frail.
“Be careful, Aldric,” said the tall man behind him. “Let me handle this.”
The knight growled back, “No, Ormand, the thing is mine.”
But Ormand went past him, rushing on foot into the wall’s broken space.
Aldric followed behind him, trotting his horse forward into the hole in the wall. He was now in the kitchen.
He could hear the wheezing breath of the wounded creature. Still, its magic was strong enough to keep it largely invisible. That might not wear off until hours after its death. It was not easy to be sure where the dead ones were. Sometimes the smell was the only thing you had to go by.
The kitchen was filled with the stink of rotting meat. The creature liked to let the meat go bad for weeks before it ate any of it. The man could smell pungent spices and sickly odours best left undescribed.
Above the kitchen counter, ironwork held pots and pans and dozens of sharp, sharp knives and cleavers and meat forks. They rattled and scraped as if trying to get loose. Then they did get loose. Six knives flew at the tall man and another four hit the man on the horse. The blades clanged off the armour, falling to the floor.
This was the last of the thing’s magic.
The engravings on the knightly armour glowed dimly, as if fighting to regain its magical strength. Each battle wore down the strength of the steel.
It was time now for the tall man to lay his hands upon the beast and call out the spell that would destroy it. This was the tricky part. He would have to get in close to the thing. First the man on the horse slammed his lance down into the invisible reptilian skin once more.
The thing gave out a painful howl.
If you had known all the evil things that this creature had brought about in this world, you would have been happy to know its life was at an end.
The creature’s shape began to show under layers of billowing grey smoke.
“Its strength is passing away,” said the horseman.
The tall man nodded and moved closer to the smoky shape.
“It should be mine,” said the horseman. “I should be the one to end this.”
But the tall man frowned back at him. “A child could do this one, Aldric.”
The other horsemen, alert in the doorway, relaxed.
Until the wheezing voice of the unnatural beast came scraping through the house. “I’m not …” said the voice, “finished …”
A light began to glow in the smoky shape in the centre of the kitchen. This was the heart of the creature.
Aldric pulled at his reins to halt his frightened horse.
Ormand moved in fearlessly over the light. “It’s over,” he said. “Your deceit is at an end.” And he put his hand on the glowing space, whispering with a touch of awe, “The heart of a dragon. The heart of evil …”
“Careful,” said the horseman in the glowlight. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“His life force, I’d wager,” said the tall warrior, “draining out of him.”
With that, the tall knight began to recite words that would have sounded bizarre to anyone except those gathered in the house. They were words that brought death to these creatures. Words of great magic. The light beneath his naked hand burned, but the tall warrior did not flinch.
The horseman who watched above him did not know anything was wrong. But his horse was thrown into terror. With a squealing neigh, the horse pranced backwards but could not get through the hole he’d come in.
“Whoa!” shouted Aldric, but any control over his horse was gone. In panic, it launched forward and jumped over the downed beast.
As man and horse leapt over the glowlight, it suddenly burned more intensely.
The light grew hotter and fiercer, and the nearly invisible dragon rose up with its last strength and began a fierce rush towards his attacker. The creature was old, wounded and could not see well, but it was full of wild rage and energy, and it blew Ormand backwards, carrying him towards the other horsemen in a giant growing wave of flame. The tall man flew backwards