Wiz groaned. Obviously his new associate’s profession was an avocation as much as a necessity. Kleptomania he hadn’t counted on.
“Why’d you spring me anyway?” Malkin asked, tucking the chain away in her jerkin.
“Because I needed someone who knows this place to tell me what’s going on. And so far you’re the only honest person I’ve met.” Then he eyed the bulge in Malkin’s clothing.
“So to speak,” he added.
Little knots of citizens had already gathered on the hill overlooking the farm. They stood about in groups of two or three and gossiped and pointed down at the farmstead below. Wiz noticed none of them ventured even a little ways down the grassy slope toward the stricken dwelling.
As Wiz and Malkin toiled up the road the crowd’s excitement grew.
“The wizard’s coming!” an adolescent male voice shouted. “Here comes the wizard.” Heads turned and people shifted to catch a glimpse of Wiz and Malkin as they climbed toward the brow of the hill.
The farmstead at the base of the hill was built of warm yellow sandstone with a dark slate roof. There was a three-story farmhouse, a large stone barn and several stone outbuildings, all clustered tightly around the farmyard. Where the buildings did not touch they were connected by a high stone wall.
Protection against dragons, Wiz realized. Only this time it hadn’t worked. Wiz could hear the terrified lowing of cattle in the barn and in the courtyard he saw the flash of sunlight off scales as the dragon moved.
The gawkers edged closer to Wiz and Malkin, some of them shifting their position so they could see both the wizard and the farmhouse at the same time.
Obviously they expected him to produce a white horse and suit of armor out of nowhere and ride down to do battle with the monster. Or at the very least start throwing lightning bolts.
But Wiz didn’t have a spell for horse and armor handy and he suspected lightning bolts would only annoy the creature. Besides, he doubted he could kill it before it burned the farmstead to the ground and killed everyone inside.
In fact, Wiz realized, he didn’t have the faintest idea just what he was going to do next. So far everything had been reaction and reflex. Now he needed something more and he simply didn’t have it. He felt the townspeople’s eyes boring into him from all sides and he flushed under the weight.
Well, he wasn’t going to accomplish anything from up here. He’d have to confront the dragon.
“You wait here,” he told Malkin. “I’m going to go down there and try to talk him out of this.”
Malkin looked at him. “You’re going to go in there?” she asked. “Just like that?”
“Well, yes.”
“And you’re going to talk to the dragon. Get him to release his prisoners?”
“I hope so.”
Malkin eyed her erstwhile employer. “Around here we’ve got a name for people what talks to dragons.”
“Traitor?” Wiz asked apprehensively.
“No. Lunch.”
It was a long, long way from the top of the hill to the farmyard gate. Well, Wiz acknowledged, it may have only been a few hundred yards, but it felt like a long, long way. By the time he got to the door of age-grayed oak planks in the yellow stone wall he was sweating, even though the dew was still on the grass.
Wiz stood before the gate for a moment, gathering his courage and mentally reviewing his plan. But his courage wasn’t cooperating and reviewing his plan only reminded him he didn’t have one, so he took a deep breath and knocked on the gate.
The door opened a crack and a three-foot talon hooked through the slit and pulled it wide. Suddenly Wiz was face-to-face with a very large dragon.
It wasn’t a monster on the scale of Wurm. Objectively he knew the creature couldn’t be much more than a hundred feet long. But objectivity doesn’t count for much when you are one easy snap away from a set of jaws that are longer than you are high, all studded with fangs as long as your forearm. It doesn’t help any when those jaws start salivating as soon as you come into view.