The dragon hunt - 1

The dragon was a fixture in the kingdom, often very literally a tourist trap. A monster - a true monster from the near forgotten past of the world - it brought death and destruction wherever it went, with none of this silly business of ritual sacrifices and pacts with humans. Yet few disliked the great winged beast, except on a wholly general level of course. And when the occasional attempt was made to get rid of the marauding creature, well, there was nothing personal about it.

Thog, one of the last of the barbarian heroes lefts who hadn't been swept aside by civilisation, pondered thoughtfully on all this as he listened to the messenger from the village.

And so when the villager asked him very reasonably to come remove the dragon, in exchange for being paid very reasonably, it was a few moments before the old adventurer replied.

"Killing a dragon. Now that's risky business," he finally ventured. The villager remained silent, and Thog wondered if it was already time to start the theatrics. He grinned widely, letting the villager look politely at his crooked and frankly repulsive teeth. Still grinning he drew his sword. It was long and thin and glittery. And very pointy.

He pointed it now, at the villager, and said, "You're offering me a reasonable amount, it's true. But the truth is son, there's no one but me to do this now, not after the last three guys were cooked. So if you don't mind," grinning wider now, and waving the point of the sword, he continued, "I'm going to be a little unreasonable."

The villager didn't even wait for the last word to finish, and asked, "How much?" Thog was momentarily nonplussed and wondered if he was losing his style, and then he said, "The old price. Nothing less will do. Half of everything you have."

The messenger took nearly a second to think about this. It was the very limit of what the village elders had agreed upon, and he should have haggled. A good bargain would up his reputation in the village. A bad bargain though, he knew, could down his height by one head. And the sword was very pointy, and it was making him very nervous, and so, very quickly, he said yes.

After the usual deal sealing rituals were completed between the barbarian and the villager, the younger man went back to the inn to sleep, because he would be leading Thog to the village with the break of dawn. Thog meanwhile, sat in his tent, muttering over things. For one thing, no one person had been able to kill a dragon in over a hundred years. It had taken small armies, machines the size of houses and also some sorcery to deal with a dragon. There was a reason everyone was scared of the things. And for another, Thog wasn't even sure if he wanted to kill the dragon. In a way he had more in common with the dragon than the village, which was a signpost of civilisation, and a civilised world has as little room for him as it did for the dragon.

Still, he was running very low on funds. The time had come to be heroic, he decided. He muttered, "Has anyone been able to poison the bloody things I wonder?" A trip to the library he kept in a chest in his tent was clearly in order. Reading was a strange skill for a barbarian, but Thog was a survivor, and he'd evolved to meet the needs of civilisation. The dragon hadn't. And that was all there was to it, he thought with a shrug.