Draco Mundani
People think dragons don’t have problems—they’re wrong. My current dilemma involves Nudlkopf, a sorcerer who ordered me to kill and devour his worst enemy. Not necessarily in that order.
I’ll come back to that in a moment, but first, you need to understand that we really do have problems.
Oh, sure, magical beasts don’t die from old age, and dragons aren’t just an apex predator; we’re the apex predator. (Grandad, when he’s sober enough to speak coherently, which is rare, still brags about hunting behemoths eons ago at the Turning of the World.) At a ton-and-a-half, with a fifty-foot wingspan, and standing five feet at the shoulders when we’re on all fours, there aren’t any predators of comparable size on land. Add steel-melting dragonfire and scales that will turn most weapons, and reasonable folk (excluding brownies – don’t get me started on them) agree our impressive equipage of fangs and talons are overkill.
But no problems? Did you know that boredom can be fatal? After living a few centuries, most dragons have seen and done everything countless times. How often can you carry off a maiden, storm a castle, or wreak havoc on a village before it all becomes mundane, just another day on the job?
So, we drink. A lot. And a good dragondrunk is like diving off a thousand-foot cliff headfirst into a pool of molten gold, with white-hot ice sluicing your brain while grinning imps tickle your spine with a thousand feathers. Then it gets good. (Okay, I might drink a bit more than others, but what’s the big deal? It’s never caused problems for me before. At least, not many. I’ve always been able to stop when I wanted to and have done so a dozen times that I can recall.)
Beside the magical buzz we get from the hooch, there’s also the fact that male dragons need to be significantly impaired of judgement to visit our mates, female dragons being small but deadly and having the temperament of a shrew on mind-altering herbs. (We love a good fighter, and the more vicious the better, but there’s an obvious downside to that.) It’s also worth mentioning that freshly hatched baby dragons are so vile that even the females have been known to take refuge in a frothy mug. Hence, our abiding fondness for the water of life.
And when a truly exceptional knight appears, one worth fighting, we have a lottery, and the winner gets to tackle Sir Manhood.
Sadly, more dragons die flying into a cliff while drunk than from any other cause (don’t drink and fly, kiddies.) The worst way to go, for us, is from lethargy. When a dragon loses the joy of life, he curls up for a nap and never wakes up. After a few decades he petrifies and it’s game over.
So, yeah, we’ve got problems. Mine began on an early spring morning in the unlovely land known as Wurstshire…
Just to be clear, I wouldn’t have been in this predicament if it weren’t for that damn troll, Stonegrinder.
It was a warm day in May when I first ran into him in the Fortunatus Mountains, the kind of day that makes you set down that tankard of ale and say, “Wow!” The scent of pine and jasmine permeated the air, heather and goldenrod decorated the hills with their purple and gold blooms under a steel-blue sky, and flocks of little birds filled the land with their joyful (and uncharacteristically in tune) song.
I was minding my own business, sitting on a mountaintop and enjoying the sunrise after a quiet night raiding farms and carrying off sheep, when a troll popped out of his hole in the rock and said, “Hi!”
Well, that scared the bejesus out of me! I mean, firedrakes are tough, but a good bit of sharp steel in the right place and Bob’s your (late) uncle, if you follow what I mean. And there’s always some human out trying to make a name for himself killing dragons, so we sleep with one eye open. I was most upset to have somebody sneak up on me like that.
But trolls are different. Bad reputation, of course, but really just happier with a bite of mutton than gnawing on somebody’s shinbone. Even better, they brew the best mead in the Four Realms.
After I let the troll up, I dusted him off and apologized for crushing him under my bulk on account of being surprised and all that. Then we introduced ourselves properly.
“Me Stonegrinder,” he said in a voice that could pass for a fart at the county fair.
“Draco,” I replied, “at your service.” I didn’t suppress the subsonic undertones in my voice and could tell that pleased him greatly. Trolls like having a good tickle, but with skin made of stone, there’s not much that can do the job. The low frequencies of a dragon’s voice can make a mountain tremble or a courtesan blush, and old Stonegrinder got a good dose of it.
When he stopped giggling and thrashing around on the ground, he got up and patted me on the shoulder.
“You good fellow! Me not laugh like that since Chalkhands fall off cliff and break into pieces!”
“I’m glad I could oblige.”
“Now me return favor. You like mead?”
Well, of course I like mead. I’m a dragon, and we all have a weakness for the stuff. In fact, that’s how the whole nasty business of knights killing dragons got started. Seems one of my uncles had a bit too much for his own good and got into a brawl with some local humans. The bar fight escalated, and next thing anybody knew the whole village was burnt to the ground. There’ve been hard feelings on both sides ever since.
I folded my wings and plopped down next to Stonegrinder’s hole. It took him a while to fetch a barrel out of his cellar, which must have been deep under the mountain because the mead was a perfect drinking temperature; cool, but not cold. Just right for a morning in the sun.
As ol’ Sol rose, we swapped stories and gossiped until the barrel was empty. Stonegrinder got up to get another but was drunk and stumbled, falling down his hole. I heard him bounce a couple of times before he reached bottom, which I calculated to be about fifty feet down. I called down, but there was no answer. I figured he must’ve knocked himself senseless, which wouldn’t be a far distance to go, given the limited mental facilities he started with.
Anyway, it looked to be a while before he made it back up with a second barrel, and feeling just a bit woozy after polishing off the better half of the first one, I curled up on the sun-warmed granite to nap. There really is nothing better than a good nap with the sun on your back; one of the few points everybody in my philosophy discussion group could agree on. Even the nihilists admitted that. Heh.
Which was how I got caught. Nobody to blame but myself, but then a fellow should feel safe taking a nap on a remote mountaintop, shouldn’t he? I mean, what kind of jerk would sneak up on somebody doing that? Apparently, my current master was of that ilk.
I found out later that the rascal had seen me drinking with Stonegrinder from a nearby ridge, and when I laid down to nap he hustled over hoping to catch me sleeping. And while I was contentedly snoring away, the wretch cast a spell of obedience over me.
Now, the key thing to remember is that I was asleep because it takes a polished wizard over half an hour to recite the mantra. It fails if any interruption occurs, such as the dragon killing and eating the mage, so it’s rarely used. Except when you catch one of us napping.
When he finished the incantation, my new boss cried out, “Awake, fiend of heaven! Hear my commands!”
That’s no way to rouse somebody from his morning nap. Annoyed, I took a breath to snort some fire at whoever was responsible, only to have it stall out before I could flambé the miscreant. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. Still a bit tipsy and not fully awake, I asked, “Who are you, and, well, do you really need to shout? I’ve kinda got a headache”
“Know, fell drake, that I am a mighty wizard, schooled in the dark arts, and deep in hidden knowledge! I am Nudlkopf, and soon all lands will speak my name in fear.”
“You don’t look that frightening to me. Most magic doesn’t work on dragons. Give me one good reason not to do the world a big, big favor and toast your lily ass like a marshmallow on a campfire.”
“Because while you lay in a drunken stupor, I cast the German Spell of Obedience over you. Now you are in my power forever and must obey my commands!”
“Really? Try something.”
“Owblay ightymay indway! “
“Hmm?” I puzzled over that for a minute, flogging some old brain cells awake before I recognized the language. “So, what’s with the pig-Latin? That was a party joke mocking a dead language before the Turning of the World, and I don’t think anybody’s used it in the eons since then.”
“It is the language of the arcane! See how the gale stirs at my command!”
“Arcane, my ass. More like the language of wannabes. And I wouldn’t call a summer breeze a gale.”
“Oh?” Nudl narrowed his eyes. “Give it a minute.”
“Yeah. I’m waiting. Still waiting. Still, yikes!” To my astonishment, a monster tornado appeared over the mountainside, bearing down on us.
“Do you see my power now, unbeliever?”
“I see that we’re about to get walloped by that funnel. Don’t know about you, but I’m out of here!” I spread my wings and prepared to lift off.
“Not yet, fiend! I’m not done with you.”
Gesturing like a bad actor in a melodrama, he screamed:
“Ibi manere!”
And with that, I found myself pinned to the ground, wings fluttering uselessly as the tornado bore down on us. Not that I was worried the storm would kill me, but a sprained wing would ground me for a couple of days, not a good scenario for somebody who’s on multiple knights’ hit list.
“Fine! Now tell me what you want before we both get shredded by the storm!”
My ears curled in dismay as Nudl smiled. “I command you to kill my worst enemy!”
“Who’s that? You must have plenty.”
Nudl sneered. “Not yet slave. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you who, but I can’t have you getting drunk and blurting out that information in a bar. Don’t worry; you won’t have long to wait. Events are in motion, and by September’s Harvest Moon your fangs will run red with my foe’s blood. Now begone, slave!”
Nudl disappeared in a puff of green smoke that smelled like a dead rat, which was what he was going to be as soon as I figured out how to get out from under his spell. But first, I leapt off the mountain and veered away from the storm at flank speed.
