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When the laughter died, Karlson rocked forward so that all four legs of his chair touched the floor. He leaned over, rubbing the tears from his eyes, unable to erase the smile from his face. “What...?” he began before another fit of giggling overcame him. He waved a hand as if to proclaim his good health then pressed a palm to his forehead. “What did you say?” Karlson repeated. “I said that I’ve come to kill the dragon.” The explosion of the crowd’s laughter was no less restrained for hearing it a second time. It was obvious they would react this same way into the wee hours, until they tired of asking him. Which was perfectly understandable, of course, seeing as how Bryon was only an eight-year-old boy. He was dressed as any of them were, in rough clothes that looked to have been made on a farm. His shoes were sturdy leather, worn from the long walk into the secluded town of Dewbury. A belt looped over his shoulder, for it never would have fit his waist; a nondescript pommel stuck out of the scabbard that almost scraped the floor. Upon his head was a footman’s helmet, well padded so that it didn’t slip down over his eyes. “Who sent you, boy?” Karlson asked as he tried to drown some of his mirth with ale. “Nobody sent me,” he replied. “I came to kill the dragon.” “Please,” Karlson said, barely heard over the renewed ruckus, “don’t say it again. My sides can’t take it.” He lifted the mug and drained it in three big gulps. When he slammed it down on the table he seemed contrarily more sober. “Go home, boy,” he said without ungluing his eyes from Bryon’s. “This is a dangerous place you’re in.” Bryon lifted the pouch from his belt and tossed it onto the table. It jingled with the unmistakable sound of imprisoned coins. “I brought the fee,” said Bryon. Quite suddenly the laughter stopped, and the thirty or so people assembled in the tavern stared down at the tabletop. Karlson reached out his hand and undid the bag’s laces as he tipped it up. Twenty pieces of silver tumbled out. “So, when do I get to kill the dragon?” Bryon asked. This time, nobody laughed. Karlson continued to stare down at the coins for an uncomfortably long time. Then he scooped them up and put them back in the bag. He pulled the laces shut and flipped the pouch back at Bryon, who caught it after it bounced off his chest. “Go home,” Karlson said, and Bryon suddenly thought that the dangerous place that had been mentioned was the space before Karlson’s table. Any other small boy would have turned and run out into the twilight, but Bryon simply lifted the pouch back up and placed it at the edge of the table. “I want to kill the dragon.” It would have sounded better had his voice been richer and deeper and not very much the way an eight-year-old girl sounded.  “In Dewbury this is serious business, boy,” Karlson said, aware that he had an audience. “We have an arrangement with that dragon. We let challengers come in here for a fee, and the dragon gets a steady supply of food. This way, that dragon leaves us alone. I don’t know what it would do if we sent you there.” “It’d laugh at us,” someone called out from near the fireplace. “I don’t think it would appreciate the joke,” said someone else. “I know one thing,” said Old Man Jennipers, his voice quivering. “That dragon would eat this boy in two bites. Maybe even less than that.” As a chorus of agreement erupted around him, Karlson noted that throughout all the talking and general emotionalism, the boy hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle. “Look,” Karlson said without touching the pouch on the table. “The kind of fellas that come here and put coin on my table all have thick necks, big swords, and no brains. They march into the hills and are never seen again. The dragon lets John Smith over there scavenge the pieces of armor that are left. I’m not sending a boy up there.” “Enough mollycoddling,” said Big Thom Acres as he forced his way through the crowd. “Just shoo this pest out the door.” A massive hand as big as Bryon’s head aimed for his chest. It was really more heard than seen, but the sharper-eyed of the crowd saw Bryon reach over his shoulder and draw his sword. The boy side-stepped and swung the sword up with both hands. The blade connected with Big Thom’s arm, and a smart slap resounded through the room. Another ducking motion preceded another slap, and before Big Thom could withdraw his arm in pain, Bryon thrust at the man’s head. As Big Thom stumbled backward, limping on a knee that had also been struck with the flat of the blade, he saw his cap skewered halfway down the length of the boy’s sword. Bryon let the crowd stand in silence for a moment more than necessary then flicked the cap off his sword. He lifted up a hand and pulled at the belt around his middle, and without looking over his shoulder slid the blade into its home. He reached out to the pouch on the table and pushed it forward several inches. Karlson merely picked it up and placed it inside his vest pocket. “Tomorrow?” Bryon asked. It didn’t take long for Karlson to find his voice. “Someone’s already going tomorrow,” he said, his voice squeaking only once. “The dragon doesn’t like us to send more than one up each day. Day after tomorrow. I’ll show you myself.” “Okay,” replied Bryon. “I can wait.”  “Don’t usually come up here.” Karlson’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Why not?” asked Bryon. “Too long a walk?” Karlson shook his head. “If you’ve seen the dragon eat once, you pretty much don’t want to see it again.” Bryon nodded. From the corner of his eye, Karlson could see Bryon trembling. Karlson readied himself to say something fatherly and comforting when a sound coming from the valley floor distracted him. The horse was a magnificent beast, the kind Karlson had seen hauling felled trees. Yet despite its size the man riding it was not dwarfed, for he sat tall in the saddle and was draped in thick plate. The horse, too, was covered in armor, links of chain mail that extended to its knees. As it splashed through the shallow riverbed, it kicked up spray that obscured its legs, and if Karlson hadn’t heard the clip-clopping of its hooves he would have thought the horse was gliding. The warrior held a lance couched beside his right leg; from it fluttered two lengths of purple and white ribbon. A tall shield was in his left hand, a crest painted on it that blurred into jumbled colors with distance. As the late morning sun caught segments of their armor, the warrior and his mount glowed brilliantly. “He’s beautiful,” Bryon said, the words escaping his mouth in an awed breath. Karlson hummed a casual agreement. He had seen it before. The armor was different, and there were sometimes plumes, but it was all just dragon food. The monster burst from the cave as if the earth had spit it out. Even separated by hundreds of yards Karlson and Bryon jumped backward, and Karlson believed that if he had not been lying on his belly he would have run from the hillside. He heard Bryon’s gasp and knew the boy hadn’t run either. The dragon came straight at the warrior, charging with its wings held tight against its body. It churned up water and rocks and snapped its jaws down on the space where a man and a horse had been only a fraction of a moment before. The warrior had spurred the horse forward, ducking beneath the great head as he aimed his lance’s tip just above and to the right of the dragon’s heavy breastplates. At the impact he released the spear and drew a wide sword so fluidly Karlson didn’t see the transition. The dragon bellowed, a roar unlike the ones that had split the night for years. It was the sound of pain, and while the wound did not look mortal Karlson knew the warrior had done something very few others had done. The monster opened its wings and used them to turn, a devilishly quick maneuver that did not catch the warrior by surprise. He had wheeled his mount in the same instant and kicked it forward again. The dragon snapped its jaws, once again connecting with nothing more than air as the warrior galloped past. The ringing of metal on hard scales told Karlson the warrior had tried for the neck and been rejected. The dragon howled again as the warrior cut a long wound across the leather of its wing. Distance separated the fighting from its own clamor. The cloud of flame billowed out soundlessly for a heartbeat before the thunder of it reached the hill. Karlson had heard of the flames but not seen them. When they jetted out at the warrior Karlson felt his bowels loosen. The horse and warrior appeared out of the cloud as if it were only mist. Both were covered in black smears, scorched everywhere. The horse had lost its mane and tail yet continued to move forward toward the beast that seemed genuinely surprised anything lived through the inferno. Karlson recalled the warrior had mentioned a liniment that could protect him, but he paid the man little attention. Speaking with the warriors was very much like speaking to clouds, for in a short while neither would be there. The warrior drove the point of his sword deep into the dragon’s breast, then released it and pulled another, longer and slimmer sword from the left side of his saddle. And suddenly it was over, thirty seconds after it had started. The dragon bent its neck at an angle that no beast should be able to bend, closed its jaws on most of the man and a good portion of horse’s rump. It lifted them into the air and shook its head. Pieces of armor, horse, and man rained down into the ankle deep water. Karlson was impressed. The fight had lasted twenty-eight seconds longer than it usually did. As the dragon clawed at the sword stuck in its body Karlson wondered if any of the pieces of armor were more than just scrap metal. “I’ve seen enough,” Bryon said. Karlson looked at him and saw the boy was white-faced. Instead of crawling away from the hillside Bryon simply stood and walked off, meandering a bit as if confused before seeing the path. A clanging sound came from the valley. Karlson turned to see the dragon had dislodged the sword. It must have landed on the warrior’s shield. As it lowered its head to feed, Karlson crawled backward and followed the boy back to town. With the sun down, the tavern was nothing more than a mélange of shadows. A caravan of merchants had stopped for the night, and Goody Maven and her husband were frantically trying to keep food and drink in front of all of them. Karlson suspected the boy in the dark corner would have been ignored even without the presence of all the travelers. Bryon had eaten a plate of sausages and turnips and drunk a little water. Some fool had bought the boy an ale, still untouched more than an hour later. Karlson stood to go home, stared at the door for a good, long minute and finally turned around and sat down next to the boy in the corner. “Why are you here?” he asked. Moving nothing more than his eyes Bryon looked at him. “We’ve been over this. I’m here to kill the dragon.” “Dammit, boy!” Karlson slammed his palm down on the table’s surface so violently that the ale mug danced a brief jig and vomited its contents onto the floor. The tavern’s patrons went silent, including the merchants who knew from experience the sound of trouble in a tavern. Many in the crowd looked into the corner. Most, though, avoided eye contact altogether. “Are you eager to die?” Karlson drew the fat knife out of his belt and held it under the boy’s chin. A hand emerged from the crowd and paused beside Karlson’s shoulder, ready to act. Then the owner’s hand thought better of it and withdrew. Karlson held the blade steady and stared with all the venom he could muster. Bryon sat at the table with the knifepoint before his face and only blinked. “Your town has been under the yoke of that monster for too long,” said Bryon. Karlson lowered the knife. “And I will free you from those shackles.” “Were you watching today?” Karlson had tried to scream, but his words came out with less force than he wanted. Practically none, in fact. “I saw a people cowering,” Bryon said. “With good reason, I should think.” “I also saw a dragon. I did not see a reason.” With a scream of rage Karlson stabbed down, burying the blade two fingers deep in the table. The handle vibrated as he let go of it. Bryon only blinked again. “Tomorrow you will die,” said Karlson. “That is my choice,” Bryon replied. “Much the same way it is yours.” Karlson pulled the pouch out of his vest pocket and threw it beside the knife. Half of its contents glittered out into the firelight. “We refuse your fee,” he said. “I will not take back the coins.” “They are yours.” “I have paid my fee. Tomorrow I will go out and kill the dragon for you.” Then Bryon stood up and walked out into the night. Soon thereafter Karlson found himself surrounded. “You’re not going to allow him to go up there,” Goody Maven said, and it was without a doubt a statement and not a question. “He knows where the cave is now,” said Karlson. “He will go there if he wants.” “This is no swaggering knight. He’s a boy.” Old Man Jennipers made the declaration as if nobody had noticed the fact of Bryon’s age. “He may be a boy,” said Big Thom Acres, “but he’s a boy that bested me.” He tapped his chest with a massive finger. “Me. I think this lad might be the one to kill the dragon.” “I will enjoy feeling like just a blacksmith again,” said John Smith. “Instead of a whore.” They looked at Old Man Jennipers. Goody Maven nodded silently. “If we refused their fee,” John Smith said, “then we wouldn’t be profiting from sending them up there.” “If we did not ask a fee,” said Karlson, “then every challenger would come and search on his own. They would disturb the dragon, and it would take out its wrath on us. I will not permit that kind of destruction again.” “We could move away from here,” said Goody Maven, and she held her eyes down in embarrassment as she said it. “We all know we can’t,” Karlson replied gently. “It killed thirty when they tried and didn’t bother to eat anyone so that we would understand the message.” “This boy is our savior.” Big Thom glowed with confidence. “Tomorrow we will know for sure,” said Karlson, and they drifted away from him. Karlson went back to a table near the kegs and drank another ale. Much later, when he lifted himself up onto wobbly legs, he noticed the coins were gone from the table. It did not ease his conscience. The sounds of the population of Dewbury were all around him. Karlson had crept close to the edge of the riverbed, to one of hundreds of thick stands of oaks that were waist deep in rapids during the rainy season. The warrior from the day before had at least been with his horse. Karlson felt the boy shouldn’t be alone when he died. No possibility of that existed, of course, for it seemed that everyone from town had hidden themselves around the cave mouth. He reminded himself his intention was noble, but Karlson wondered if he were no more than a curious spectator as well. The sword was heavy on his hip, the scabbard’s belt pressing into the bone with no relief. It had been a whim for him to take it from the box under his bed. The leather on the pommel was cracked and flaking, but the blade was as sharp as it had been when he left the city. It disturbed him to see a speck of rust near the hilt, and he had spent all morning working it with an oiled cloth to no avail. The sword had been attacked, damaged because of Karlson’s neglect. A stick bent and cracked, and Karlson’s old training moved his hand to his sword as he spun around. Big Thom was behind him, creeping closer while keeping his eyes on the cave still a good distance off. He was a frightening tower of a man, especially with his logging axe held casually in one hand. His smile did little to help his image. “Good spot here,” he said, to which Karlson only nodded. They would certainly not miss anything. A susurrus worked through the evergreen trees, a chorus of hushing sounds that came closer like it was a wave rolling to shore. Karlson knew before he looked that Bryon had arrived. The boy walked down the same hill from which they had watched the dragon the day before, his sword hanging from his back, his too-large helmet making his head look ridiculously ill proportioned for his body. He marched straight down and into the riverbed. When he stumbled over some loose stones Karlson thought he looked smaller than ever. A sound came from the cavern, and Big Thom clucked his tongue in disappointment that the prelude ended so quickly. Karlson had also expected there to be something else, perhaps a speech, but suddenly there was nothing but the dragon. The hill had been the closest Karlson had ever been to it, and from just a few hundred feet away the dragon was like nothing else. It was a wall of scales and claws and leathery wings that defied description, for there were no words that could create for someone who wasn’t there the sheer presence of the beast. Most of all, it was a blur as it barreled towards Bryon. Only a few people were looking at Bryon when the dragon appeared. They were the privileged handful to see him drop down into a crouch and draw the blade into his hand. He stood like a dancer as he awaited the onrushing of the monster. Then the dragon stopped, so quickly that it launched bits of dirt and water that cascaded around Bryon. It looked down and considered the boy before it. Bryon gently put his other hand on the hilt of his sword. Deep down in the place that Karlson knew the truths of the world, he could feel that something spectacular was about to happen. The dragon snapped its head forward and swallowed the entirety of the boy and his rough boots and his helmet filled with padding. The sword clattered on the stones of the riverbed. Karlson was close enough to hear crunching. Big Thom launched himself from the stand of trees, his axe held with upraised head. His scream was the purest barbarian from which his bloodline descended. The dragon cleared its throat by swallowing the meat in its mouth, and twenty running steps from the dragon a cloud of blinding flames engulfed Big Thom. Karlson felt the water spraying on his legs before he became aware of his actions. Somehow the sword had appeared in his hand. The dragon that had been so large from a distance became larger still as he ran toward it. Had its features not been so alien, Karlson would have thought the dragon smiled as it looked at him. Then the dragon roared in pain, pulling its hind leg up closer to its body, the foot at the end hanging limp. Old Man Jennipers was there beside the beast, its blood dripping down a long blade more rust than steel. He lifted the sword again only moments before the dragon stepped down with its hamstrung leg and crushed him against the riverbed. Again the dragon howled as the upright sword skewered its lame foot. The people of Dewbury were everywhere, invisible in Karlson’s tunnel vision until they were next to him raising their weapons. Asheton Turner’s oldest son drove a spear into the dragon’s side only to have it deflected by the sturdy scales. The dragon opened its wings and brushed away the boy only barely a man, and the body of what was once Asheton Turner’s oldest son flew through the air over the heads of dozens of his peers. The great tail swept across the water’s surface, flinging Jared and Andrew Cooper aside as if they were only thoughts. With both hands Karlson thrust his sword at the tail that stopped mere inches from his legs. The blade found a space between scales and penetrated halfway to the hilt. When Karlson withdrew to thrust again he saw that blood covered it all the way to the rust mark. They pressed on, fighting like a colony of ants against a great beetle, scoring one hit for every ten that proved insufficient to the dragon’s armor. The beast laid into them with recklessness. Many of the people of Dewbury fell, and Karlson knew that despite their best efforts and his own bloodlettings they would lose. Perhaps it was because of luck or divine intervention. Certainly some credit must be given to John Smith, if not for his prowess with the blade then his undeniable skill at crafting them. He raised the sword that had taken him a whole winter to forge and brought it down with all the strength of a blacksmith’s two arms. It was impossibly strong and as sharp as a grandmother’s tongue. And as the blade came down to the bottom of its arc, it just so happened to find the top of the dragon’s skull. The dragon had a head covered in scales at least as strong as those on its belly, scales that had resisted much of what had happened in the last few minutes. What did happen in the instant before the sword buried itself in the shallow mud of the riverbed was that it cleaved open the dragon’s head and covered John Smith with blood and pieces of the dragon’s brain. He would later discover that it had not dulled the blade a bit. Like a forgotten doll, the dragon dropped and settled into the stones and silt. Those at the end furthest from the head continued to attack it, stopping only when they realized no more of them were dying. The people of Dewbury didn’t know what to do. Some of them began to move between the bodies, to bind the wounds of those that might live and ease the suffering of those who wouldn’t. Many more simply did nothing. Karlson was one of the select few who dropped his sword, fell to his knees, and cried with a smile on his face. Then there was cheering. The image of an eight-year-old boy stood in the foothills above the cave and surveyed the scene in the riverbed valley. Beside him appeared a ripple of reflected sunlight. “That was well done,” said the sunlight. “It was so close,” Bryon replied in a voice only the sunlight could hear. “Still, they prevailed.” Bryon examined the battleground closely, for distance was a concept unfamiliar to him. He saw bone and gristle and very much blood. Of Big Thom Acres there wasn’t even a scorch mark. “So much death,” said Bryon, though he was beginning to think of himself less and less as Bryon. “They would have died eventually.” “It would not have been today.” “They died a long time ago,” said the sunlight. “It wasn’t until today that they started to live.” “Twenty-four of them,” Bryon said. “And ninety-two people get to go to bed every night for the rest of their lives with the knowledge that they slew a dragon.” “We are responsible for them, are we not?” asked the watercolor brushstroke that was once called Bryon. “We are only responsible for showing them the path. It is their decision to take it.” Had the gentle breeze that used to be Bryon still possessed a head, he would have nodded. Instead, the two of them blended into the background and moved along. Down in the valley there came the soft conversation of water trickling over rocks and silt, the chirping of sparrows, and cheering louder than all of that.
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