Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

"Come here often?" Wiz asked casually.

"Often enough. The Prancing Pig’s the place to be if you want to meet folks in the Bog Side."

Glancing around, Wiz couldn’t imagine going up to anyone in this place and asking him his sign.

Cully slapped down two leather mugs before them. From the stuff that slopped on the table Wiz could see the contents were beer. He picked his up and took a sip. It was thick, potent and flavored with some kind of bitter herb besides hops. The pine pitch used to seal the leather gave it a resiny aftertaste. Wiz was no judge of beer, but the stuff wasn’t bad.

"This is the real city," Malkin said. "The folks down here don’t put on airs and there’s none of that social scramble and bicker, bicker, bicker you get on the other side of the bridge. Folks in the Bog Side stick together."

"When they’re not slitting each others’ throats you mean."

Malkin shrugged. "That’s in the way of business." She took a long pull on her mug and slapped it down with a lusty sigh.

Wiz followed with a smaller pull on his tankard. "That reminds me. Those big buildings on this side of the river. Are those warehouses?"

Malkin shrugged. "Some were. A long time ago. Farmers’d bring in wool. Some of it would be spun and woven here and more would be traded downriver as it was."

"What happened?"

Malkin looked at him as if he was a touch slow. "Dragons is what happened. You can’t grow much wool when there’s dragons using your flocks as a lunch counter, not to mention snapping up the crew of a riverboat or two. The farmers still graze sheep, but there’s not so much wool as there used to be. Not so many come to buy, either."

It made sense, Wiz thought as he took another pull on the oddly flavored beer. Dragons matured slowly and few survived to adulthood. But in a place with little natural magic there was nothing to threaten an adult dragon and they lived a very long time. Over the centuries there would be a slow, steady increase in population and that would mean more dragons to bedevil their human neighbors.

"It couldn’t have all been one-sided, though. Otherwise people would never have gotten established in the valley. You had to have ways of fighting back."

Malkin snorted into her mug. "Buying peace, more like. Used to be the council would make a deal with dragons. So many sheep, or cattle, or maidens a year and the dragons would leave the rest alone-mostly."

"But that doesn’t work any more?"

"Seems like there’s a different dragon every year."

Population pressure again, Wiz thought. Somehow Malthusian economics looked different when you were part of the consumable resource instead of the expanding population. Pretty clearly buying off the dragons wasn’t the answer. All that got you was more dragons exploiting the resource.

"You must have had other ways of fighting back."

Malkin thumped down her now-empty mug and considered. "There’s children’s tales of heroes who could kill dragons. I suppose they’re true because there used to be statues to them in half the squares in town."

"Used to be?"

"Dragons didn’t like it. They’d swoop down and melt the statues where they stood. Burn down a lot of the town in the process." Again the shrug. "That was a long time ago, too."

It didn’t feel like a solution to Wiz, but he persisted. "Still, you could kill dragons."

"A hero could. Had to be a hero who would face a dragon in single combat. Sometimes the dragon’d win and burn the town. Sometimes the human would win and we’d be free of dragons for a bit. But heroing ain’t what it used to be. Not so many of them any more and there’s more dragons, seems like."

"I understand why you have more dragons, but why aren’t there more heroes?"

" ’Cause win or lose most of them are only good for one fight." She jerked her head back toward the bar. "Cully here. He’s the only one around now."

"Cully fought a dragon?"

Malkin nodded. "He’s the one I want you to meet. Hey, Cully," she called over her shoulder. "The wizard here wants to meet you. And bring us a couple more while you’re at it."

As the bartender made his way over with a pitcher of beer Wiz looked at him closely. He was a big man, run to fat now in late middle age and his skin blotchy from sampling too much of his wares. He moved with a pronounced limp with his withered left arm pressed close to his side. For all that he must have been formidable in his youth.

"So you’re the wizard, eh?" Cully said as he plopped the pitcher of beer down on the table. Wiz saw he had brought a jack for himself.

"More a consultant just now," Wiz said. "I’m working with the council on their dragon problem."

"Scared a dragon right out of the Baggot Place," Malkin put in. "Frightened him so bad he flew away without harming anyone."

Cully looked Wiz up and down. "So I heard," he said in a tone that wasn’t quite a challenge.

"It’s a skill," Wiz shrugged. "But you actually fought a dragon and won."

Cully filled his own jack and passed the pitcher to Malkin. "Aye. It’s a dragon’s treasure that got me this place. And as for winning-" He shrugged his good arm. "Well, I’m here and the dragon ain’t."

Wiz leaned forward. "Did you have some kind of special weapon?"

"What’s the matter, Wizard? Your own methods not good enough?"

"Oh, my methodology for dragon abatement is perfectly adequate. But like any practitioner I seek to add to my knowledge base."

The big man digested that while he drained most of his tankard.

"Oh, aye, there’s all kinds of lore on killing dragons." Cully grinned. Since half his face was a mass of burn scars the result was not only lopsided, it was something to terrify small children. "Thing is, most of it don’t work." He twitched his bad arm and Wiz saw the skin was mostly scar tissue. "That’s how I got like this, following some of that advice."

Wiz wondered if the dragons exchanged tips on fighting humans.

"Still, you beat a dragon in a single combat."

Cully’s grin grew even more lopsided. "I never said it was a straight-up fight. That’s not in the rules, you see."

"There are rules?"

"Of a sort. If you don’t follow them the dragon won’t fight you. It’s his choice, you know, seeing as how he can fly and you can’t."

"What are the rules?"

"Only show up at the appointed place at the appointed time, all by yourself. After that anything goes."

"How’d you do it?"

"How do you do it, Wizard?" Cully shot back.

"I do what any good consultant does. Mostly I talk them to death."

Cully considered. "That’s a new one anyway. I wish you the luck of it." He paused. "As for me, I started by hiding in some rocks and braining him with a boulder. Then?" The big man shrugged. "Then it was just one hell of a fight." He looked over Wiz’s shoulder as if seeing something miles away. "One hell of a fight."

The mood held for a long minute as Wiz considered the implications.

"And no one’s done it since you?"

Cully’s eyes focused back on Wiz. "Not for more than forty years. There’s some as have tried. But none with any luck, you see."

"Are the dragons getting smarter?"

"There’s them as says that," Cully admitted. "Or maybe those would-be dragon slayers is getting dumber. Or softer." He let out a gusty sigh and drained the last of his beer. "I’ll tell you one thing, Wizard. Dragon slaying ain’t what it used to be." Then he grinned again. "But then neither’s much else."