“Come forth, foul dragon!”
The call is bold as brass, as audacious as a sudden sunrise, pure and sweet as a morning trumpet and I know it’s THAT time of week already.
So I sigh, and I slither, and I coil and eel all two and a half leagues of myself throughout my caverns into a semblance of a slothful slug’s-worth of posture and sally forth to the mouth of the cave.
“Tarry not here,” I bellow. “This doth be mine domain, man of soft flesh and frail bone. Begone and keep thy life,” I add, and that’s surely done it because suggesting they might value their lives at all is like a red flag to these jokers. Don’t they have any speck of gratitude for all the trouble their mothers went to make them?
“Come forth, foul beast,” he cries, predictable as the turn of the seasons, and I sigh and I belch venomous flame down the entire hillside, scorching it to the bare earth. Again. Then I heave myself upright and squint down it, looking for the horse. I like horses. They’re good snacks, and this one’s well-trained – see it trembling there, tied to the distant tree on the moor I keep precisely for that purpose.
I squirm out of the cave mouth, take three long writhing heaves, and am struck by a sudden pain in my rightmost heart, which is coming from the sword that’s lodged in it.
“Got you, fiend!” cheers the small armour-covered human from somewhere beneath me, hidden in a little foxhole among the network of trenches and gutters criss-crossing the dead soil, which I now realize are filling up with an awful lot of my blood.
Oh. He was one of THOSE kind of heroes.
Christ, what an asshole.
***
I jolt out of my geography slumber at a godawful shriek, sitting bolt upright so fast that the page I’d drooled over sticks to my face and comes ripping right out of the book, ruining the work and effort of hours of careful transcription from some long-dead monk.
“Oh DARN,” I swear carefully, employing the strongest language a lady may be expected to keep. I’m going to get lectured on this for HOURS, and etiquette is already my least favourite class. But that’s not my only problem – there’s footprints coming, pit-a-pat-pit-a-pat-pit-a-pat, and a big armoured man bursts into my stone cavern, covered in blood and reeking of poison and soot.
“What ho, fair maiden!” he hollers directly into my face. “I hath saved thee from thy doom, gadzooks and zounds! Behold the proof! Mine sword hath tasted a dragon’s heart, and now it speaks!”
“Hey nice to meetcha.”
“By my TROTH his tongue be as ill-mannered as a hound’s, ‘tis true. And now we ride for your home and your father!”
“I’m not really sure I’m allowed to leave,” I manage, leaning a little farther back from the enormous blade he’s waving around excitedly. “You should probably ask my tutor first-”
“Harken and heed, half the kingdom and your hand be my price for the deed, so needs must apace ‘fore the day grows long in the tooth,” he exclaims, grabbing my arm in one hand without asking and towing me apace through the entire cave complex. The sunlight hurts my eyes. “To your noble sire we doth return – we ride forth now!”
“How?” I ask.
The knight stares down the hillside. At its base, the dragon lies groaning atop the splintered remains of what was probably the only tree for miles. A single sad hoof juts from underneath its belly.
“We march forth now,” he admits.
Christ, what an asshole.
***
“The princess has returned!” comes the call from the town.
“The princess has returned!” comes the call from the towers.
“The princess has returned!” comes the call from my gate and wouldn’t you know it, right in the middle of court.
“We’ll pick this up later,” I sigh, and the last courtier is barely risen from the seat before the door is slammed open and in comes the smelliest thing I’ve ever seen on two legs, and I’ve observed chickens.
“What ho!” it hollers, and oh no it’s HIM, helmet in one hand, towing my daughter in the other. Her expression is my thoughts exactly. “Mine adventure is successful, mine quest doth be complete! Your fair eldest daughter is returned from the scaly clutches of that reptilian devil, and mine honour is swollen righteously with nobility and valor! Praise me with great praise!”
“Did you kill the dragon?” I demand.
“What ho?”
“Did you kill it.”
“Mine sword did taste its heart,” he says, and unsheathes that giant meat-cleaver of his with little a care in the world. “Now it speaks the tongue of man! Observe!”
“Hello there, my lord,” proclaims the blade.
“Have you been talking to this sword?” I ask my daughter, who’s wandered casually as far away from the knight as is polite when you’re one of three people in the summer court.
“There wasn’t much else in the way of company, dad,” she says. “And I needed the etiquette practice.”
“Yes you do, clearly, since it’s much more mannered than you are.”
“What ho?” says the knight again, and my headache finally bursts.
“You IDIOT. You’ve gone and rescued my daughter from her education, horribly wounded her tutor – who has TWO hearts, by the way, and I sincerely bless your lack of brains and dedication in missing that detail – and put my deniable violent-adventuring-moron disposal out of commission!”
“Err. Half the kingdom? The maiden’s hand?”
“Megan?” I ask.
She gives him her hand, backside-first.
“Zounds! Ow.”
“I wouldn’t give you half the PRIVY. You’re lucky I don’t call for the executioner right this second. As it is, I’m going to give you a choice: you can lose your head, or you can undertake a somewhat different quest for me. And this time I’ll be very, very, very upset if you DON’T do it properly, understand?”
His lip is trembling.
Christ, what an asshole.
***
“He’s coming,” my sword announces.
“Shh!”
“Posture check. Slump more. Lean into the wound. Go on. You’ve taken a mortal dose of poison to the face; look more sunken in the cheeks. Did you smear soot all over your visor? Your chest? Your-?”
“Shh!”
“Hark! A fellow knight!” booms out in greeting, and indeed it is another of my order, a man broad in shoulder and fierce in spirit, with blade in one hand and shield in the other and discipline and grace in both. “And one laid low! What has done this to thee, mine brother?”
“The dragon,” I wheeze out from trembling lips. “The serpent’s doom has doomed me, though I brought it to its last breath ‘fore it took mine. It groans its last farther in. You must… the princess.”
“Say no more, noble friend,” he solemnly intones, slamming a fist to his breast. “I will avenge thee with the beast’s death, and also name my half of the kingdom after thee. What is thy name, fallen friend?”
“Asuckersayswhat,” provides my sword.
The knight stares at the blade in my hand. “What?” he asks, and in that moment of complex thought – perhaps the first he’s had in many years, if he’s anything like I was six months ago – I put it through his visor.
“Good job,” says my sword. “Now remember to dispose of this one PROPERLY. You left it near the river last time, and that’s no way to treat your drinking water.”
“Shh,” I repeat, fruitlessly. There’s no way to silence a tool your job relies upon. “Shh.”
“Shh yourself. He left his horse down around the hillside, I can smell it; we’ll have to make a second trip. Chop chop now – geography class is done in an hour, and after that’s etiquette. I want to sit in on that again, I think I’m getting the hang of it. No no, lift with your legs, not your back – do you WANT to pull something?”
I drag away the body of my brother in arms, as behind me the faint echoes of sinister reptilian whispers mutter on hydrography and erosion. The betrayal weighs heavy on my mind even after a dozen times, though I find the physical mass of this particular brother in arms weighs heavier still. He could’ve stood to skip more meals.
Christ, I’m an asshole.