Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons

“Add to that the fact that humans hate fire. Pyrothraxes love fire. Their favourite place is inside the heart of a good blazing fire. They play with fire, they eat fire, they sleep in fire. Most of the time when you hear about a building going up in smoke, it was a Pyrothrax having some fun.”

Aldric lit a match, to show Simon the power of a simple flame. He put it into Simon’s hand, nearly burning him, as he continued.

“Ow!” said Simon.

“And that is but a small taste of a dragon’s power. The worst part is, they are addicted to fire. They have to have it, and more and more of it every time. If the Pyrothrax had no fire, he would go mad. And, since humans are the enemy of fire, dragons are the enemy of humans.

“For a long time, there were warriors who would fight dragons alongside certain magicians who had learnt about serpent trickery. Each warrior had a magician to help him. In ancient Egypt, magicians banished the most terrible beast, the Serpent Queen, into a never-ending slumber and sent her away into a shadow realm, never to be seen again. Dragons have never forgiven the humans for doing this.

“Over the millennia, dragons were hunted down until there weren’t many left, and very few females to continue the species. So the serpents retreated from man, into hiding. Slowly they changed themselves. They made themselves smaller and outwardly more like us, so they could live in cities and towns and not be noticed. They learnt a kind of magic that would make people see what the serpents wanted them to see.

“Today, because of this magic, a man could look a dragon right in the eye and not see it for what it really is. The dragon can make itself look like another ordinary human being, unless it’s an old dragon, or a weak one whose magic is wearing thin. But you and I are special, Simon. We can see right through that magic.

“In the past few years, the serpents have grown very strong. They have turned the tables on us. They have hunted down all of the magicians, every last one. There are no magicians left. And there are only two knights left. Me … and you, Simon.”

“Me? I’m not a knight.” Simon recoiled.

“You will be,” said his father. “It’s your duty. You see, in the Middle Ages, the knights did battle with dragons and destroyed most of them. A very great knight named Saint George killed a very nasty dragon in the Arab desert, and from that day forward his sons and their sons, and the entire family for centuries and centuries, went after the dragons to protect the world. We are his descendants, Simon. And the job must go on.

“It was the tradition of the Order of Dragonhunters to bring their sons into the battle when they reached the age of fifteen. When a boy reached fifteen, he was ready to become a knight. But I have need of you now.”

What about what I need? Simon thought to himself. What if I don’t want to do this?

“I’ve no one to turn to,” Aldric added. “My fellow knights have all passed on. Even my brother Ormand has been killed.”

“Your brother?”

“The bravest of us all. He was older than me. Cleverer. Trustworthy. Good-natured – everyone loved him. I made strategy and he held the knights together. They were from families that long ago pledged to defend the Dragonhunters. I don’t know if they would have followed me alone, had they lived. But they are all gone now. And I have work left to do.”

“You want me to fight dragons with you?” asked Simon, bewildered.

“I don’t have any choice. You have to come with me, there’s nowhere safe for you to go. Don’t worry, boy, I’ll be with you all the time now. The challenge is real, but we’re up to it. And there’s good news. There’s only one Dragonman left to find.”

That was the good news? Simon couldn’t believe this. It was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. And since when could he count on his father for anything? If this was his father.

Simon did his best not to upset the man, father or not. “I think,” he said, coughing from the awful pipe smoke, “you’d better take me back to school now.”

Aldric looked displeased. “That place is not safe for you. You couldn’t stay there if you wanted to. The Pyrothrax is looking for you. It has spies all over the world. It knows that I am the last knight, and if they get rid of me, and you, there will be no one left to stop it. We can identify the creature – do you think it would allow that? It owes a great debt in blood to the St George family. It would love to find you and get its revenge. That lighthouse keeper is getting older – you think he could protect you? Don’t you see? The wretched thing knows where you are. All these years I’ve kept you secret, but now it knows you exist.”

Simon’s mind flashed back to the strange man in the trench coat crossing the street, the man who seemed to have a tail. But that was just a shadow, surely. Or was the man in white one of the dragon’s agents? This simply can’t he happening, he thought.

Aldric interrupted his musings. “I’m sorry all of this is rushed, but I’m on to something. I think I know where the dragon is. I was closing in on him weeks ago, until my brother called me away to help with a serpent he’d found in the heartland. That was when I realised you were in danger. We’ve got to get back on the hunt. You are the only one in the world I have left. Your mother passed away years ago and there is no more family; you are the last of the bloodline.”

Simon was shocked. He had decided he wouldn’t like his mother, whoever she was, but he always imagined she was alive, out there in the world, sipping fancy wine on a big yacht and never giving her son a thought. It shattered something in him to know that he would never meet her.

“We have very little time,” continued Aldric. “If the Pyrothrax knows we’re on his trail, he’ll move on and we’ll miss our chance.”

Simon was now convinced the man was off his rocker. But then Aldric added something: “I don’t expect you to swallow this story without any proof. I’m going to show you what I’m talking about.”

Simon’s head hurt from so much information. It must have shown on his face. “In the morning,” Aldric said. “In the morning I will show you proof that the creature is real and things will be much clearer.”

Smoke burned in Simon’s eyes and he thought he was going to faint.

“Now get some sleep,” he heard his father say, but he was already slipping into dreamland, worn out. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, but his brain had shut off. It had had enough.

The real shock was that morning would prove to be even more amazing.

Come morning, he would indeed be joining the family business …

Simon felt a large tongue licking his face. He was being eaten.

In shock, he opened his eyes and rolled on the floor. He scrambled to his feet, ready for battle. But the creature he was looking at was not a dragon. It was a horse.

Aldric must have moved Simon into the hold of the little ship while the boy was sleeping. He had put him down to sleep in the hay. Not very comfortable, thought Simon. Not very nice.

Nevertheless, he had slept without waking once, even with the tilting and swaying of the ship. He must have been totally drained.

He backed away from the horse and looked around. The hold had a tidy and sizable space for the animal, and along the wall there were some chickens in pens.

“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice from above. Simon looked up at the hatch that led to the galley. His father threw down a bunch of apples. “You can feed the horse.”

Simon looked up at him, but all he could see was his shape, lit by the bright sunlight flooding into the hold. Simon picked up the apples. He’d been awake two seconds and already he was doing chores.