“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.”
Again silence as both men sat lost in thought, Cully in his memories and Wiz in the implications of what he had learned. He needed to absorb all this and the heavy beer was going to his head.
“Well,” he said, pushing his end of the bench back from the table, “thanks a lot Cully. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
The big man grinned his terrifying grin. “Any time you need advice on killing dragons, come and see me.”
“Thanks, Cully.” Wiz turned to go but the tavern keeper cleared his throat.
“You forgot to pay for the beer.”
In a sinking instant Wiz realized he didn’t have any money with him. But Malkin reached into her belt pouch and flipped a silver coin down on the table.
Cully scooped up the coin, bit it, and nodded. “He’s got you paying for him, eh?”
“Wizards don’t use money,” Malkin said carelessly.
“Yeah?” the big man said skeptically. “What do they use then?”
“Plastic,” Wiz blurted. “Ah, little cards, like so,” he opened his fingers. “When you want something you just show them your plastic.”
Cully looked at him with eyes narrowed and Wiz felt foolish.
“And they take this plastic stuff? Just like that?”
“Well,” said Wiz, remembering the times he had gone over his limit, “mostly.”
For the first time the big man’s face showed respect. “You must be a mighty wizard indeed.”
“Where’d you get that silver?” Wiz asked as he and Malkin emerged into the cool evening air.
“One of those pickpockets back at the bridge wasn’t as good as he thought he was,” Malkin said with a radiant smile. “He had money in his pouch too.”
“You picked a pickpocket’s pocket while he was trying to pick your pocket?”
“It was a challenge.”
Wiz just sighed and followed his guide back down the alley, his head full of beer fumes and his mind full of dragons.
So the dragons were getting harder to kill, eh? That made sense too, in a way. The older, more powerful dragons staked out their territories in the center of the Dragon Lands and forced the younger ones to the periphery. That meant that the dragons the humans faced were less powerful and less experienced-less intelligent too, if Griswold was any example. But as population pressure increased bigger, smarter and more dangerous dragons were trying to grab territory on the edge. They’d be harder for human warriors to beat.
He nearly stumbled into a sewage pit and he had to rush to keep up with Malkin.
“Cully is the last of the dragon slayers, huh?”
Malkin nodded. “Far as anyone knows.” Her tone changed slightly. “He may be my father too. Big enough anyway.”
“You didn’t know your father?”