Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons - Samurai

His white horse was trotting in the field outside and, watching it, Simon snapped out of his sleepy state. Deciding he needed a ride, he grabbed another biscuit from the table and headed for the door.

“And where do you think you’re going?” asked Aldric.

“Into town.”

“Not for long, we’ve training to do. Lances today.”

Simon kept going, keeping the debate to a minimum. “Training again? When am I going to prove myself enough to you?”

“It’s not about proving yourself, it’s about keeping up your skills. This isn’t a bloody game, is it? You can’t fail at this.”

Simon left the big stone kitchen and headed down a cold hallway, but their voices echoed behind him. “You know, a little of that goes a long way,” Alaythia told Aldric good-naturedly. “You can never just let things be , not even for a second.”

“What’re you going on about? My father used to knock me down if I tried to walk off like that.”

“Well, you can look forward to the same wonderful relationship with Simon. You don’t have to browbeat him so much, he’s not afraid of hard work. He hates himself enough already.”

“Oh, and why is that?” grumbled Aldric.

“Because he isn’t you. Obviously,” said Alaythia. Listening in the dark hallway, Simon could feel his face turn red. “Let him fail,” she added. “It’s how you learn, right?”

Simon went on to the hallway, filled with newspapers from around the world which might hold signs of supernatural events – the hallmarks of stray dragon magic.

There were circles around articles like “African Forest Fires at All-time High” and “Strange Lifeform Sighted in Jungle” and so on. Simon was actually obsessed with these strange activities. They gave him nightmares, filled up his thoughts, gave every action in the world a darker purpose. Like his father, he now saw a dragon presence in everything and he worried constantly over every news story, from strip-mining and pollution to crime and – right there , he thought, his eyes on a small headline. What is that? “Factory Laying off Thousands of Workers in Unusual Move.” That’s one of them, spreading hate, expanding its little domain of misery, that’s what that is . This was all he ever thought of now; it was just worry, worry, worry; he could hardly see the forest for the trees. Was there any end to this stuff? Was he losing his mind?

His ears pricked up for a second. To his embarrassment, he could still catch the talk in the kitchen.

“He’s got a girl,” he heard Alaythia say.

“How do you know that?” wondered Aldric. “If he met a girl, he’d clean himself up more.”

“That’s why I say he’s got a girl, not he ‘met a girl’. If she didn’t already like him, he’d have fixed that sloppy hair of his.”

Simon heard the remark and left the house, patting his hair down in sudden regret. But going back would mean a lot of chatter about who she was and all that, and there was nothing he wanted less than advice from his father. His hair was a blond, wiry, standing-at-attention deal anyway; not much changed that.

And anyway, the horse ride to town would mess it up.

And anyway, the girl liked him enough to see past all that.

As he rode Norayiss down the long driveway, Fenwick scampered alongside. Simon wondered how the fox knew he was leaving. Aldric came to the door and shouted after him, “Be back by eleven! After training, we’re going to look for Order members.”

You do it yourself. What a waste of time , thought Simon, galloping down the tree-lined trail. For months, the St Georges had been trying to find new converts to the Dragonhunting cause and it wasn’t going well. No one else could see the serpents in their true form, so more often than not, Aldric and Simon ended up looking like complete nutcases.

It used to be that the Order of Dragonhunters found soldiers from the families who had sworn to protect the St Georges since way back in the Middle Ages. These were people who passed the job down to their sons and daughters, and so on, and so on. But the modern world had forgotten Simon’s ancestor, the ancient knight Saint George the Dragonslayer, and those who knew the truth had been destroyed by the serpents. It felt hopeless. There was only Simon, Aldric and Alaythia against the hundreds of dragons listed in the White Book of Saint George.

As Simon slowed his horse to a trot, watching the dusty, pebbled road pass under him, he remembered the last meeting he’d had with a distant cousin of an Order member. The poor construction worker from Massachusetts had never heard of Dragonhunting. The ordinary man had sat across from Simon and Aldric, near a half-finished skyscraper, and munched on his sandwich, looking bewildered.

The guy thought Simon and Aldric were insane, and it had been no better with any of the other six candidates they’d gone to see, all descendants and distant relatives of dragon fighters. The Order of Dragonhunters was clearly a dead issue, but his father never gave up on anything.

Simon’s horse was moving now into the town of Ebony Hollow. Past the first few quiet streets he found the novelty shop where his girlfriend – he hoped he could call her that pretty soon – was saying goodbye to her father, the shop owner, and walking to school.

“Simon!” said Emily, surprised to see him. “You’re back from …”where was it again, Spain?”

“Africa actually,” Simon replied, trotting his horse alongside her. “We went from Spain to Africa.”

“On a job with your dad, right?” she said, looking at him sideways, a bit confused. “Are you ever going to tell me what kind of job he actually does?”

I may do that , thought Simon, looking at her pretty eyes in the morning light. I may really do that .

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride,” said Simon, offering his hand, and she smiled cautiously, but kept moving.

He trotted down the street beside her, crossing the trolley car tracks. Any time he had someone his age to talk to, things would come pouring out of him. It just happened. It was this desperate habit he was developing. Actually, to be honest, it was just around her . She was the only one he really talked to, or tried to anyway.

“You said it was toxic waste disposal, I think,” said Emily. “Why do you have to go round the world to do that?”

“Well, there aren’t a lot of people who know how to handle the kind of …”dangerous material we deal with.”

“It doesn’t make you glow, does it?” she said and laughed.

“Uh, it can,” he said. He pretended to have trouble keeping Norayiss on course, pulling the reins to flex his arms. He was pretty sure Emily noticed how big he was getting. He was growing stronger every day with training – constant training, so he knew he’d gained quite a bit of muscle – though he wasn’t as tall as he’d like to be.

“Nobody understands why you don’t go to school,” Emily remarked.

“It’s just home-schooling.” That didn’t sound too strange, did it? “It’s not a big deal, I just travel so much, helping my dad, that I can’t really …”Have you ever thought about my name?”

“Your name? Simon?”

“No, St George. He was a real person. The legend says he fought a dragon, a long time ago, in the deserts of North Africa. A real dragon, OK? I mean, it’s not a legend, people say it was a real creature, whatever it was.”

She creased her brow, half-amused. “And that relates to you …”how? I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

He paused. What if there were real dragons, but they didn’t look like dragons. And they did really terrible, really evil things, making all these supernatural events you hear about that no one can ever explain, and hurting people, and killing people, and someone had to stop them from doing this. Oh, no, no, no, don’t say that …