Dragon Hoard

A Deal is a Deal-2

Clutching the gold, the woodcutter pulled himself up and stumbled back along the wandering hall. Once outside he tried to close the door quietly but it leapt from his hand and slammed shut.

In the lair far beneath, the dragon turned and winked in its sleep.

The woodcutter lay at the base of the big tree, panting fresh forest air until he felt the nag nosing his pockets in search of her morning oats. He had not slept a wink. He found his axe, collected the empty victual bag and heaved himself onto the nag’s back.

By the time he reached his cottage that night, he might have forgotten the burning air except his reflection in the pool looked strange with only stubble for eyebrows. Furthermore he felt tender from so much riding. He slipped the guilders under his pillow and fell into bed exhausted, but he dreamed such odd dreams that in the morning he woke with a start.

His back ached worse than usual, and he struggled to climb out of bed. With some effort he hoisted the suspenders of his trousers into place. As he reached for his left boot, a shadow skittered between his legs. “Rat,” he mourned, but he had no strength to capture the fellow. When he leaned down for the right shoe, he saw it again.

At least, he saw something. With the boot still dangling from his hand, he searched the room, but to no avail. He lifted his foot to a stool and laced the second boot. Straightening up, he groaned and rubbed the offending backbone.

His fingers met tattered cloth. For a moment he felt lucky to have discovered the tear before arriving in town. But the very next instant his hands encountered a protuberance. He snatched his fingers around front and inspected them closely. Then he grabbed the wooden spoon from the porridge pot and waved it behind himself in the neighborhood of his bottom. It struck something. And that something felt cold and sticky where the porridge rubbed off.

With uncharacteristic caution, the woodcutter worked slowly down his back until he reached the tender bulge. Trembling, he craned to the side, running his hand as far down the smooth, scaly thing as he could. But his body twisted, and the thing whisked beyond his grasp and smacked the bedpost. “Ouch,” he yelped, but in truth it hurt less than it surprised him.

He fled to the pool, searching for an angle that would reflect his backside. When this did not reveal anything, he spread his legs and doubled over. He could see the end of its green and yellow spines, but it sprang away when he grasped at it through his feet. The further he reached, the higher it bobbed. In desperation he tried to catch its end from the side, but no matter which way he turned, it flicked in the other direction. He arched his back and felt the oddly distant sensation of it brushing the earth. Shifting his foot warily, he pinned the tip to the ground. Then, crouching, he grasped the wily thing in his fist.

“Gotcha!” he shouted triumphantly and let go the tail instantly, for its spines had sliced open his palm.

He bandaged the hand as best he could and lowered himself gingerly onto a stool. What use were guilders in the hand with a tail at his back? The innkeeper would never let his daughter go if he knew the gold to be ill-gotten. A woodcutter with a dragon tail might as well shout the source of the coin from the village green. He considered the matter for some time and finally arrived at a conclusion. He would feign a head cold.

He trapped the tail again with his boot. This time, he captured it carefully, avoiding the thorns. Looping a rope around the tip, he leashed the pliable end to one of his suspenders, pulled it tight and hid the whole thing under an old coat. The coat was too hot for summer and it bulged where the tail was stiff and thick, but he hoped the innkeeper would hear him cough and assume he had caught the chills.

Driving all day, he passed the village and entered the town where he bought a new copper pot, fresh bed sheets and several pints of ale. He could almost pretend he had not grown a tail except it was wedged uncomfortably between his bottom and the back of the tavern chair. That and the coat was woefully hot. The next morning he returned to the village to collect the innkeeper’s daughter.

Neither the innkeeper, nor his daughter, were pleased with the woodcutter’s speed in meeting his end of the bargain. She took one look at the prickly place where his eyebrows had crooked upward and rolled her own eyes in disgust. Then she flounced away to pack her other frock. Her father glared suspiciously at the man’s coat, but the woodcutter coughed and fetched a handkerchief and the innkeeper’s coins out of his pocket.

His tail to the wall, the woodcutter counted. “One,” he said loudly enough for everyone in the common room to witness. “Two.” He held the second guilder aloft before clinking it into the innkeeper’s outstretched palm.

“Three,” acknowledged the whole room as he handed over the final coin.

“A deal’s a deal,” the innkeeper reminded his daughter sadly as he bade her goodbye. This time she did not cry, for she had decided she must take matters into her own hands.

Immediately upon their return to the cottage, she set to work. First she stripped the straw tick of its old bedding and hauled the mattress out to the meadow. There she beat it with a stick until it no longer billowed with dust. Then she swept the cottage free of the woodcutter’s rubbish and scrubbed the walls. She shoveled several buckets of ash out of the fireplace and set the irons with dried logs, which seemed to be the only household items in abundance. When the fire burned hot, she filled her new copper pot with water from the pool and hung it on its spit to boil. Then she dragged in the mattress and made the bed with her new sheets.

That night, she slept in the bed, while the woodcutter slept on the floor. The moment he had removed his coat, she had shrieked and jerked up her feet as though a snake were loose in the cottage. “You’ll slice my fresh sheets to shreds with that tail of yours, and likely me, too!” she told him. Her father might insist a deal could not be broken, but the woodcutter’s tail turned her stomach. For his part, the woodcutter could not argue. His hand still stung sharply in spite of its bandage, so he made his bed on the floor.

While they slept, the dragon finished waking.

When the woodcutter opened the dragon’s door, he had let in a draught of cold air. The beast might have ignored the breeze, but the woodcutter had also left his scent in the cave. The worm might have charged the thief-smell to a bad dream, but the woodcutter had actually stolen from its hoard. Not only had he robbed the dragon, he had taken twice what he needed.

Dragons kept notoriously careful accounts, and a dragon’s sense of smell was most sharply attuned to greed. It had been asleep for over a century, but when it finally woke, the dragon knew immediately that the mound was short six guilders and that three of those guilders were not needed. As night fell, it crept out of its lair, following the trail of those filched gold coins.

One of the guilders had been deposited in the town’s bank by the coppersmith. Scenting the coin’s new location, the dragon slinked out of the forest and launched into the open air. Flying straight as an arrow, it reached the town by midnight.

Most folk were abed and the dragon might have roused little attention, but it roared when it blasted the bank with fire. Being rather aggravated and not at all cautious, it set upon the crumbling roof, pounding iron vaults with its tail. Folk were soon out of their houses, shouting for water and weapons. The dragon picked its missing guilder out of a hundred-weight bag of gold, beat its wings and hurried into the sky as several bowmen let fly their arrows. The next morning the citizens summoned their local knight.

While they were spinning dragon-tales in town, the woodcutter was setting off to chop a tree. At least, that is what he hinted to his wife. He had wealth enough not to work, yet he dreaded telling her about it. Instead, he hid the guilders in his filthy mound of sheets. She had already taken away his bed. Had she known about the coins, he feared she would take charge of them, too.

What she took was some thought concerning her plight. As far as she knew, the woodcutter possessed no property of consequence, no common sense whatsoever, and on top of it all, he had a tail. Even the sight of the extremity horrified her. She could hardly stand its smooth, reptilian skin and the twitching motions it made when the woodcutter was not paying attention.

As she contemplated her predicament, she leaned over the pool to fill the copper pot. What she saw appalled her even more. Reflected over her shoulder was the muzzle of a massive dragon.

The beast had come in search of the woodcutter’s two greed-guilders. It might have thumped the cottage into toothpicks and eaten her immediately—for she did look more toothsome than a woodcutter—but it was as fascinated by the pretty girl as it was hungry.

“Hello, my lady,” the dragon said politely.

She let fall the copper pot. Very slowly, she turned to face the worm. “Wh-who are you?” she stammered, adding “sir” at the last moment, for it was difficult to maintain courtesy with a dragon looming over her.

“I am the injured party in a theft,” uttered the dragon, using formal words of complaint. “You do not smell like the burglar. Who are you?”

“Not a thief,” she squeaked. It was looking into her eyes rather specifically.

“Who are you, then?”

“I-I’m an injured party, too.” She did not quite understand what that meant, but it was better than giving her name. “My father married me to the woodcutter who lives here yesterday. For this copper pot. And three guilders.” She did not want the dragon to think ill of her father’s bargain.

The dragon’s lids lowered primly at the mention of money, but its breath heated.

“And, he has a tail. I don’t know what I shall do. I thought I would marry a rich knight and live in town on the plunder from his drag—oh.” She did not know why she was babbling. She squeezed her eyes shut, but after a long while during which the dragon did not eat her, she opened them again.

“I see,” it said, for the tail comment had confirmed its suspicions. “Perhaps we can help one another.”

She did feel anxious to mend her blunder. “Help?”

“Against my will, the woodcutter has taken something from my home that does not belong to him. Against your will, the same has taken you from your home though you did not belong to him. If you will return my possessions to me, perhaps I can return your freedom to you.”

“The woodcutter took your possessions?” she wondered carefully. She had not seen a thing in the cottage she wanted, so she could not imagine any of the contents suiting a dragon. On the other hand, the woodcutter’s abilities rose a mite in her regard.

“If you look, you shall find two guilders. And some change. Bring the money to me.”

“Two guilders?! That cheap, cheating. . . .” She paused mid-rant, thinking of the frocks that even the change from a guilder might buy.