Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons - Samurai

“It’s not toxic waste dumps, that’s not what I deal with,” he said at last.

“And what do you deal with?”

A species . He answered in his head. A species that drives people to do evil because it feeds off misery, soaks it right into the skin. It tortures people. If the serpent doesn’t actually do these things himself, he forces people to do it for him …

“Maybe we can talk about this later,” Simon mumbled. Luckily, there was no more time for talking. They’d reached the school.

Emily looked up and manufactured a smile. “I’ve got to go. Your horse is amazing, she’s really calm. So, um, I’ll see you around the shop, I guess. Maybe I could finally meet your dad,” she said.

“He’s not real social,” said Simon, embarrassed.

“Well, you can bring him by if you want.”

She walked off across the grass and joined a group of girls, and he noticed her shoulders were raised and tight. When she finally shot him a glance, it was strange and Simon knew he had now put up a barrier between them. She was scared of him; he occupied a land of fairy tales and craziness. Or was he just thinking too much?

He wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

At that moment, a terrible shadow passed across the sun, but then was gone before it could be deciphered. He wondered if the menace was all in his mind; his world was always ordered by threat and fear.

Fine. Live in your fantasy land , he thought, looking at the mean-eyed girls with Emily. This is real and I’m one of the few people in the world who can protect any of you. You need me . He wished they knew it.

But he had no stomach for sulking; that was his father’s habit – Aldric’s genetic gift that he had probably passed down – and Simon didn’t want it. Strong, silent type. Right. What a joke. Silence is weak. It means you’re afraid . He couldn’t have got his father’s strength and agility, oh, no, that would have been too good , so he’d inherited a total inability to talk to anybody.

Or had he? Maybe he would get along with everybody just fine if he got more of a chance to hang around them; if his father wasn’t always dragging him around the world or shoving hard work in his face.

Stop it. Come on. Get out of your head , Simon thought. Here he was talking to himself instead of to other people and he realised he’d been staring at the girls as they walked away. I’m not staring at you, I’m just thinking .

He tried to figure a way to look natural. Stop sleepwalking , he told himself. This is your life .

Sometimes it seemed like the ordinary world was the one that was like a dream.

Simon left the school and Emily, riding back home upset. He passed some teenagers pulling in with their cars and it finally hit him that he must look incredibly stupid to Emily on his horse. How great and impressive I thought I was. Look at me. What an idiot . All the kids looked so confident, so ordinary , with nothing to worry about except homework or a Friday night date.

I don’t know how to act, I don’t know how to be , he was thinking. What do people expect? I’m a human disaster, I don’t even have anyone to tell this to, except Alaythia .

As his horse weaved through the light traffic and back to the weed-sprouting trolley car tracks, Simon passed a group of boys in suits headed for the Lighthouse School further away, their hands full of a junk-food breakfast from the corner shop.

They watched Simon pass. He was the mysterious boy, the one who had left the boys’ school on Halloween night and then came back to live hidden in the old castle house outside of town.

“Simon St George,” he heard them whispering. He had always wanted to be a legend at school. He never knew it would make him feel so alone.

“Doesn’t all that riding make you bar-legged?” said one boy, as if challenging Simon.

“Bow-legged,” said another boy. “Not bar-legged. Idiot.”

“Whatever,” said the other. “He’s so weird. He never leaves his house, his horse is his only friend.” He made kissing noises. “It’s his girlfriend.”

Pathetic jokes. Simon rode past them. They still lived in their little land of dumb humour and stupid pecking orders.

He knew things they would never know at the Lighthouse School – the darkness under life, the pain and fear of battle – and he was content to know all this, but it felt like the days of struggle ahead were endless, the enemy unconquerable, and he would never be done with the fighting until he was dead.

He could see boys lining up for roll call on the field beside the lighthouse, neat rows in neat uniforms, and for a minute he wanted to wrap himself in their perfect boring school day, to avoid the disorganised, rambling lessons he’d get later from Alaythia, and the harsh training he’d get from his father.

He saw his old friend Denman, the lighthouse keeper, heading into the tower. The gruff old Scotsman and his wife had practically raised him from infancy, but now Simon felt they were strangers, caretakers who did a job and rarely smiled. Without knowing it, Simon had been a burden, a danger to them because of the dragons who were always hunting him, and he was a precious thing too, the last of the Dragonhunters, bringing a responsibility that made the old couple weary. He knew his father disapproved of the way they raised him. To this day, Aldric seemed to begrudge them the fact they had seen Simon’s growing-up years. Simon still spent time with Denman now and then, but not today. There was no time.

Simon turned Norayiss, moving away from these old memories.

As he came up the hill and rejoined the road, he noticed there were no birds chirping in the trees. The world had been enveloped in a strange quiet. When he looked down at the horse’s hooves, they made no sound on the pavement; it was as if Simon had momentarily gone deaf.

He stopped his horse, worried.

And then …”the shadows began to shift. The ones on the left side of the road vanished and suddenly the shadows of the trees on the right side of the road began to stretch towards him. The darkness reached forward, like a set of black claws. It was as if someone had moved the sun to the wrong side of the sky.

Simon swallowed hard.

Then he noticed that the trees far off in the forest, near his home, were beginning to rustle as if tremendously agitated. The whole forest there was shaking. A great, immense thing was moving in those trees, or causing the trees to shudder somehow. And it was headed for his house.

He spurred Norayiss on.

The horse sped down the street and tore off into the forest. As he neared the castle, struck with panic, Simon realised he had only a small silver dagger for protection. He never dreamed he’d need body armour this close to home. He felt open; easy prey.

He took hold of the knife. Silver was the finest weapon against dragons, but it was the deathspell that killed them – and if it was a serpent on the attack, he had no idea which spell to use as they were specific to each dragon.

So which one was on the attack? There were hundreds of the beasts listed in the White Book of Saint George.

The horse dashed through the Ebony Hollow forest and Simon noticed with horror that the ground was rippling with beetles which were pouring out of the ground. Green-yellow insects wriggled from the earth and swarmed around the horse’s hooves.

This kind of warping of nature could only mean a dragon in their midst. But where?

As he thundered down the road to the castle, he found no sign of the killer, just Aldric and Alaythia outside in the field, brushing Valsephany. Simon felt calmer, thinking perhaps the serpent had merely been spying on them, and the idle talk he caught between his father and Alaythia relaxed him for an instant.