Six: More Than One Way to Skin a Dragon
First get them talking.
The Consultants’ Handbook
The Baggot Place was about a mile out of town. Since the mayor and council didn’t offer to provide transportation, Wiz and his new apprentice had to walk.
It was a fine morning for walking. The sky was clear, the air was cool, the sun golden, and the morning light made the dew on the brilliant green grass sparkle and glitter as far as the eye could see.
They weren’t the only ones on the road. Ahead and behind them, people were trooping out of town along the road. Occasionally an apprentice or schoolboy would overtake them and run on ahead.
“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Wiz asked Malkin.
“This is the way to the Baggot Place and that’s a fact,” Malkin replied, tossing and catching something shiny as she strode along, her long legs letting her match Wiz stride for stride.
“Then why are all these people coming this way? Don’t they know they’re headed toward the dragon, not away from it?”
“Course they know,” Malkin said. “They want to see the show.”
“The show?”
“The dragon burning down the farm. Or maybe even you destroying the dragon.” The way she said it made it obvious which way Malkin thought it would go.
“Hmmpf!” Wiz snorted. Then he got a closer look at the shiny thing his companion was juggling. It was a heavy gold chain with a big medallion attached.
“Where did you get that?”
“Pinched it when old baggy eyes wasn’t looking,” Malkin said gaily. “He never even noticed it.”
“Well give it back!” Wiz commanded. “Preferably so he doesn’t know you took it.”
Malkin turned sullen for a moment and then brightened. “You mean un-steal it? Put it back around his neck so he doesn’t notice? Now that could be fun.”
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.
“Helllooo,” the dragon’s honey-and-iron voice rang in Wiz’s skull. “Do come in.” The last part was said pleasantly, but there was no doubt it was a command.
Wiz stepped through the gate as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He found himself standing between two enormous clawed forepaws and staring at an expanse of armored chest.
The dragon stretched his neck out until his head was nearly twenty feet above the ground. Then he cocked his head to one side and regarded Wiz unblinkingly. Wiz resisted an impulse to wave inanely to the beast and a much stronger impulse to turn and run. So he just stood there, hands at his side and with what he knew must be a monumentally silly smile plastered on his face.
“My, you are a bit odd, aren’t you?” the dragon said at last.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Normally the only humans who approach us are warriors who come blustering and bashing, or magicians who come hurling all sorts of dreadfully tacky spells. But you’re not doing either. I wonder what you could be?”
“I’m a negotiator. I’m here to arrange for the release of the hostages.”
“Hostages? Oh, you mean those.” The dragon jerked its head toward a corner of the farmyard and Wiz saw several people huddled together. One young man scrambled to his feet as if to dash for safety through the open gate, but without turning his head the dragon lifted his tail and brandished it threateningly. The youth turned white and sank to his knees.
“Actually they’re not hostages. More in the nature of provisions.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Wiz said.
“You’re not frightened, are you?”
“No,” Wiz lied.
“Oh, I do hope you’re not,” the dragon said. “These-“ he twitched his tail at the cowering knot of people “-are frightened positively speechless and I was so hoping for some amusing conversation before dinner.”
“Uh, I don’t suppose I could convince you to make a meal of beef?”
The dragon licked his chops and his fangs glinted evilly in the morning sun. “Oh, certainly. As a second course.”
Then he was all mock civility again. “But I am being churlish. Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Griswold.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Wiz lied once more. “I’m Wiz Zumwalt.”
“Ah, yes,” Griswold said, regarding him closely. “And a wizard too, I see.
My, my. How opportune of you to come to call.”
Wiz was feeling that it was less opportune by the moment, but he didn’t say that.
“Yes, ah, now about releasing these people . . .”
“Oh, quite out of the question, I can assure you. But surely you knew that before you arrived?” The dragon heaved a great gusty sigh. “You humans, always thinking that wishing for something can make it happen. You are amusing, but you are so dreadfully illogical.”
“And dragons are logical?”
“Of course.”
For a mad instant Wiz tried to imagine what the NAND diagram for a logical dragon would look like.
And then he saw his opening.
He hesitated. The last time he had tried this with one of this World’s creatures he had nearly lost his soul. But he didn’t have much choice. He sure couldn’t fight the monster, he didn’t think he could out-magic it on the spur of the moment and he didn’t have any other ideas.
The people of this world didn’t think in the abstract. Abstractions and mathematical thought tended to puzzle and confuse them. Wiz devoutly hoped the same was true of dragons.
He cleared his throat. “Then surely you are skilled in all forms of applied logic. Riddles, say?”
“Dragons are excellent at riddles,” Griswold said loftily. “Surely you’re not proposing playing the riddle game with me?”
“Yep. And if I win you turn these people loose and agree never to bother them again.”
“And if I win?” Griswold asked, leaning forward so Wiz had to crane his neck to meet the dragon’s eye.
“You get them.”
“My dear boy, surely it hasn’t escaped your notice that I have them already. No, you’ll have to offer something more.” The dragon licked his chops in anticipation. “Yourself, for instance.”
It occurred to Wiz that the dragon had him too, but he tried to ignore that.
“All right, but if I win I want a larger prize, too.”
Griswold looked amused. “Gold? Jewels?”
Wiz almost agreed; then he caught sight of a farm implement leaning against the wall. It was a pruning hook, its two-foot curved blade wickedly sharp along its inner edge.
“Uh, no,” Wiz said. “I was thinking of something a little more personal.”
“What then?”
Wiz smiled as unpleasantly as he could manage. “Well, dragon skin does have a number of magically useful properties.”
The dragon hesitated for an instant. “Done and done,” he exclaimed.
“Fine. I’ll go first,”
Griswold nodded. “Tell me the riddle, then.”
“It isn’t one I tell you. I have to show it to you.”
The dragon brightened. “Charades? I haven’t had a good game of charades in ever so long.”
“Here are the rules,” Wiz told him. emac. Instantly a two-foot-tall demon wearing granny glasses and a green eyeshade popped into existence next to him.
Griswold watched him closely, alert for any sign of treachery.
APL dot man list exe, he commanded.
The demon drew a quill pen from behind one bat ear and began to scribble furiously. Line after line of fiery letters grew before them. Each line defined one of the commands of Jerry’s version of APL. There were a lot of them and the emac took several minutes to write them all in the air.
“Hmm. Ah, yes,” Griswold said.
“Now, have you memorized them?”
“Of course.” The dragon didn’t sound quite so confident now.
“Fine,” Wiz said. emac.
? replied the editing demon.
clear end exe. The emac rubbed the air furiously and the characters vanished. The demon bowed and it vanished as well.
“Now.” Wiz picked up a stick and scratched furiously in the dirt.
“I’ll bet you can’t tell me what this does.”
Griswold craned his neck forward to stare at the symbols in the dirt.
“Um, ah . . .”
“Come on,” Wiz said. “It’s perfectly logical and quite unambiguous. What is the result?”
“Well . . .”
The dragon drew his brows together in a mighty frown. He stuck his forked tongue between his ivory fangs and let it loll out one side of his mouth. He cocked his head nearly upside down to get a better view of the characters.
Whistling tunelessly, Wiz strolled over to the wall and picked up the pruning hook. He ran his thumb along the edge nonchalantly and hefted it experimentally.
“You’re forfeit, you know,” Wiz said, turning back to the dragon.
“Time,” Griswold said desperately. “Give me more time!”
Wiz had never seen a dragon sweat before. He decided it was an interesting effect.
“Can’t you solve it?”
“Of course I can solve it,” Griswold said pettishly. “I just need a little more time.” His voice rose to a whine inside Wiz’s head. “The rules didn’t say anything about a time limit.”
“Very well.” Wiz laid the pruning hook aside and gestured magnanimously. “I will give you until the Moon is full again to solve the riddle. Now go.”
Griswold sagged with relief. “Thank you,” he practically blubbered. Then he hesitated and looked back at the humans huddled behind him. “Uh, I don’t suppose . . . just one . . . for a snack, you know?”
“GO!” Wiz roared, reaching for the pruning hook. Muttering to himself, the dragon leapt into the sky.
“Whhhoooooo,” Wiz breathed and collapsed against the wall, using the pruning hook for a cane. He was immediately engulfed by the hysterically grateful Baggots, all of whom were laughing, crying and hugging him simultaneously. Since the entire family apparently enjoyed garlic as much as they disdained bathing, and since their idea of a thankful hug could snap the spine of an ox, Wiz was less appreciative than he might have been. In fact, by the time he got out the farmyard gate he was limping and holding his ribs.