Escaping the dragon

It is a strange thing that the games children seem to enjoy most are those with a strong element of fear, even that fear of pursuit which is a haunting terror to most people in later life. As a child myself, I remember running away from my brother in that way – though I think he took more pleasure in the game than I did – and the same delight was shown by my elder son as soon as he was old enough to be capable of a stumbling run. It was thus that I became a dragon.

It had to be a dragon because at about the same time, Elboron became fascinated by the tale of Smaug of the Lonely Mountain as told – with enormous zest and emphasis – by Master Samwise, very proud to have known the hero of it. Though Elboron often sought assurance that the Lonely Mountain was a long way off and that the King would not allow dragons in any part of Gondor, particularly Ithilien, he also longed to see them, and when I declared myself a dragon and gave a tentative roar, he was beside himself with delight, and yet backed away and finally ran, shrieking with mingled laughter and fright, with me in pursuit. After that, as small children will, he insisted on the game being repeated with quite maddening frequency until one day, when perhaps exasperation made me roar more ferociously than usual, he gave a howl of genuine terror and bolted for Morwen his nurse, sobbing as she gathered him into her arms, ‘It burned me! It burned me!’ But even as Morwen soothed him and took breath to scold me, Elboron’s sobs ceased abruptly, he scrambled down, toddled over to me and demanded ‘More dragon, atarinya! More dragon!’ And we were off again.

Some years later, when Fíriel reached the same age, Elboron persuaded her to ask for the dragon-game. I roared (rather more gently than for her brother) and she dutifully ran away; but Fíriel could never see any point in running away from me and after two attempts, she declared firmly that if I was a he-dragon, then she was a she-dragon and she was going to make a nest and lay dragon’s eggs. She seized a couple of cushions and ran off, while Elboron rolled his eyes and said ‘Girls’, and I reflected on what I had lost in my childhood by having no sister.

Fíriel’s resolve to be a she-dragon had unexpected consequences when we next visited the City, by which time everyone but Fíriel herself had forgotten it. I arrived in the Citadel one morning to find the place in uproar, with the entire royal household rushing about in a frantic search for no one quite seemed to know what. After much enquiry I gathered that two rare and precious gifts to the King out of a far country had vanished and were presumed to be stolen. Theft of any kind was so rare in Gondor that there would have been consternation even if the stolen objects had gone from the lowliest cottage; that they should vanish from the King’s own hall was catastrophic.

‘What are these gifts?’ I asked.

‘Two great globes chased with gold and set with gems,’ answered a chamberlain, tearing his hair. ‘They only arrived yesterday – a gift out of Rhûn, I understand, and when the Ambassador finds out it will probably be a cause of war and the ruin of Gondor, and all of us in the household will lose our heads…’

‘You seem to have lost them already,’ I said dryly. ‘Perhaps a little thought might be more efficacious in the recovery of these globes. Can you describe them more closely? How large were they? Were they heavy and unwieldy, or easy to hide and carry away?’

He considered. ‘Well, they weren’t so much globes as ovals – egg-shaped. Very like large eggs, in fact. Not very heavy – hollow inside maybe. I suppose they could be carried easily enough.’

I stood in thought while the chamberlain resumed his panic-stricken search. Eggs … large eggs…

Then I remembered two things. First, a tale the King had told a while back, about his wanderings in the far country of Rhûn where he had seen a great bird that did not fly but ran at great speed and used its taloned feet to tear the bellies of men. A great bird that would surely lay very large eggs.

Secondly, my little she-dragon and her nest.

I returned to my town house as quickly as dignity would permit and ascended to the high turret room which I had once shared with Boromir and which Fíriel, following Elboron, had annexed as her nursery to the great inconvenience of the servants. Sure enough, Fíriel was sitting there on the floor, humming broodingly, and on a cushion next to her reposed two large globes, chased with gold and set with gems – as fine a pair of eggs as even the noblest she-dragon could have produced.

This was difficult. The disappointing of Fíriel – who had assuredly not acted as a thief in the night but merely assumed responsibility for a couple of eggs left adrift by their mother – was painful to me, but I could scarcely let her become the cause of deadly war between Gondor and Rhûn, or of the mass execution of the royal servants. I gathered my wits together.

‘Sweetheart,’ I said, ‘There is a great panic in the City because a certain she-dragon is before the gates and calling for her eggs. You have kept them safe for her, but don’t you think she ought to have them back?’

She looked up tearfully and a long argument ensued which I will not record, but in the end she allowed me to take the dragon eggs away, but refused to come down with me, announcing that she was going to stay in the turret all day and mourn them, which,being a remarkably resolute – or should I say obstinate – child, she did. Bedtime found her still desolate, but by that time, the safety of Gondor and the royal household being assured, I had arranged for consolation. The next morning a royal envoy in the full splendour of trumpet and surcoat called at our door with a message for Lady Fíriel. It transpired that the grateful she-dragon had agreed for one of her offspring, now safely hatched, to be fostered in Gondor, and here it was – a baby dragon with golden scales, a forked and fiery tongue and the most magnificent red-and-green wings, still damp from the egg (that is, the paint hastily applied by the wood-carver was still slightly tacky). Fíriel’s delight was unbounded, and her respect for me as a negotiator with irate dragons was greatly increased. In fact, from that time onwards both she and Elboron believed, or affected to believe, that I could become a dragon at will.

Lest this belief increase my self-esteem unduly, the kindly Powers ensured that my second son, Túrin, poured scorn on all such pretences and pointed out that since I wasn’t a dragon it was silly to pretend that I was. And that would have been the end of my wormly career, if were not for the gossip of servants. Evidently one of them let the secret out, and in an appallingly short time my nickname among the household and the White Company in Ithilien became ‘the Dragon’ – later ‘the old Dragon’ – and whenever I showed signs of anger, ‘the Dragon is roaring’ would be whispered from mouth to mouth, and I did not miss the grins that were hastily smoothed from some faces, including Beregond’s, as I went by. The effect on the wilder spirits was chastening, however, and I decided that my new name was one of the things it was better that I did not, officially, know about. 

Whether or not they feared the Dragon, the soldiers of Ithilien were doughty fighters and feared little else, as they proved over the years in many skirmishes and not a few pitched battles. We were often hard put to it and never defeated, but one encounter provided us with an easier victory than I had expected. We had marched to give yet another a lesson to the rebels south of Pelargir who appeared to think that because Gondor was ready to be merciful, it was also ready to be made a fool of; and we were prepared for a hard fight, for a thousand years of enmity had proved that this pirate folk were well-nigh impossible to subdue. Instead, they fled at our first charge, few of them even pretending to strike a blow, and the prisoners we took looked on us with terror stronger than hatred in their eyes, though as usual none would speak in answer to my questions. I dispatched them quickly to the City, for easy as our victory had been I knew the importance of following it up; and so it was that when one of them found his tongue (from sheer boredom, I think, not because any torment was put on him), it was the King to whom his tale was reported, and not to me.

‘It seems that these rebels gave you little trouble,’ said the King when I returned.

‘Little enough,’ I replied.

He smiled. ‘That is unlike the Haradrim,’ he said.

‘True enough,’ I answered.

‘But then’ – his smile broadened – ‘it is seldom that the Haradrim are faced with an enemy that breathes fire and smoke and devours a dozen men at a gulp.’

‘I have no memory of that,’ I said, ‘though it is true that there was fire and smoke: the Haradrim fired the grass themselves, trying to blind us as we charged, but the fire was too scant to trouble us much.’

‘According to the unanimous account of your prisoners,’ said the King, ‘as soon as your charge began you became a dragon, blasted them with fire, and devoured a great number so that the rest could only save themselves by flight, or surrender once you had eaten your fill. It appears’ – and the smile became a grin – ‘that the old Dragon has been roaring to good effect.’

Truly is it said that Rumour is a deadlier weapon than the sword. I might have known that my nickname would have reached the King’s ears, though he had never alluded to it; but that it should have travelled south of Pelargir was astonishing. Nevertheless it had saved us a good deal of trouble. 

‘They saw only one dragon, then?’ I asked thoughtfully.

‘So it seems,’ said the King. Then our eyes met and the idea sprang from one mind to the other so quickly that neither of us could have said where it began; it was often thus between us.

Two days later I ordered the companies of Ithilien to parade before me and congratulated them on their victory.

‘And to make the next victory even more certain,’ I added, ‘the old Dragon’ (and I laughed inwardly to see so many users of the name betrayed by their guilty looks) ‘is going to teach you all to roar.’