February Content Update: Remember That Time We Killed a Dragon? (Pt 2) (Patreon)

The trip out from Torinhall would have been uneventful if not for one rather inconvenient fact.

You see, when the Duke commissioned us on this quest of his, he made the mistake of announcing it to his entire court, which meant that they announced it to the rest of the city. By the time we finally went out the gate the next day, we were flooded with hangers-on, all from that silly little class of not-quite-children and not-quite-adults who were old enough to leave home, but not quite old enough to know that dragons don't actually exist. There were maybe four or five dozen of them, enough to pass for a sizeable war party.

They were armed like one too. Most of the peaceable folk of the city were busy, of course. They had work to do expanding the big circuit of walls you can still see if you visit Torinhall today, or refurbishing the Sanctuary, where you can now see that famous stained glass hall showing Torin breaking the heart of the Tower of Thorns. No, it was the idle who came along with us - which was to say, the wealthy and the well-born, the bored children of merchants, squires on leave, even a fellow Errant or two, all of them bringing their own helms and shields and weapons. Some of them even brought their own maille with them, which I took as something of a vote of confidence at the time - at least it meant they were taking it seriously.

And they did take it seriously at first. As we set out from the city, we moved at a crawl, with eyes pitched upwards, anticipating an attack from the sky that might come from any time or place. Of course, the fact that we had faced no such attack on the way to the city had evidently escaped our young and foolish minds, as we were just as apprehensive as the others. Some of them would take turns riding on the back of mules, with arbalests pointed directly at the sky, as if a Dragon from so high up might be able to see, let alone be threatened by such an implement. As a result, that first day, we covered maybe a quarter of the distance we could have covered by ourselves. 

This wouldn't last though. The thing about youths is that they might be all enthusiasm at first, but that ardour quickly wears away when confronted with the actual reality of campaigning. I knew I'd been when I'd first set out with Leo not so long before all this had happened. It was really only my knight's oath and the eyes of my best friend and future liege which kept me on the road. (Leo, of course, didn't show a single sign of reluctance or hesitation. I think he was simply different that way). Our own little baggage train had no one to keep them on the straight and narrow, and soon enough, after a day and a night of constant travel and sleeping on the ground, some of them started to go home. A few of them had not packed bedrolls and simply got sick sleeping in the open. Others got bored. A few, laden down with all their gear, simply declared that they were going to have a break, and never caught up with us again.

I was told that all of them made it safely back to the city - which seems obvious in hindsight, given how little progress we had made.

On second thought, an actual fear of confronting a real live dragon was probably something that got a few of them turning for the way home too. In the years since, I've seen all too many instances of those who were eager and excited at the prospect of glorious adventure and combat, only to balk when they give it some thought and remember that battle has winners and losers - and that even the winners stand a chance of having a very unpleasant time. It's almost always for the best. Better that those who endure all the sufferings of battle be the ones who are completely committed to it.

In our case, the ones who were completely committed to it seemed to consist only of the three of us and our guides. By the time we actually returned to the village. We were the only ones left. The ruins of Sendehafen were empty too - at least of dragons. There were wild dogs and the like around, which the locals who'd come with us quickly set to driving off, leaving us alone to investigate what had happened - and where this dragon had come from.

"I hope the Duke is willing to provide charity to the villagers," Leo remarked as we searched the fields. "With their crops burned, I do not think they will have a chance to plant and harvest again before winter."

I nodded to that, idly, my attention elsewhere. Evidently, the third of our party was paying a bit more attention.

"The crops were already harvested." Elias said.

He pointed at a patch of field which had not quite been burned entirely - and the stubble of wheat stalks on it - wheat stalks which had been reaped neatly with a scythe.

"Must have been good timing then," I replied.

"Not necessarily," Leo answered. "It would have simply burned with their granary, instead of in the fields."

"Only if their granary actually burned."

Some of the buildings had survived the fire not intact, but in good enough shape. Hoping that the village granary had been one of them, we interrupted our search to look for it.

The guides we had along quickly pointed us to it - or at least to where it used to be. It was as if the Dragon had held a particular grudge against that building in particular. Even while the surrounded cottages still had some bits of their frames left standing, the granary was burned almost entirely to the ground, with barely a pile of ashes left.

Between you and me, we probably would have left it at that and gone back to our search, if not for one of the wild dogs which the locals had driven off earlier. Somehow, it'd managed to get past us, to begin pawing and digging at the ground where the granary had stood. At first, we just assumed it had smelled some trace scent of burned meat or something, but our guides suddenly sprang into action, trying to chase off the poor creature with what could only be described as frantic desperation, almost as if they had been trying to protect something.

Our suspicions raised, we began to pick up where the dog had left off, digging into the ground with the mountain picks we'd gotten for our trip over the passes. One of the villagers seemed about to stop us, but evidently thought better than to interrupt two armed nobles and a mage. Even so, we could see their expressions shift from anxiety, to fear, to despair as we dug deeper and deeper.

Until we'd dug down the whole height of a man, and struck wood.

It was the top of a chest, one of a great many, all of them packed with threshed grain, salted meat, onions, beets, carrots, and all manner of other crops, carefully wrapped and preserved, and kept entirely safe from the fire which had burned the granary above.

All three of us were thinking the same thing at that point. I certainly was, and I could see it in the others' eyes. The problem was saying something. It seemed at the time like it would have been bad manners, especially for knights who'd sworn to defend people just like the ones around us.

Luckily for both of us, the third member of our party possessed neither a knightly oath, nor manners.

"You burned the village yourselves," he said after a moment. "There was no dragon."

The truth came out after that, like the fill of a curtain wall breached by a trebuchet. There was no dragon. The Duke's renovations of his seat were being paid for by repeated taxes, levied almost every year. This year's just happened to be too much. The people of Sendehafen had barely enough as it was without sending off a tenth of it to rebuild a city they'd likely never see more than four times in their life. So, faced with a choice between destitution or rebellion, they picked a third option, they picked cunning instead.

They had known that their Duke was a man fond of fanciful stories, and so they decided to concoct one of their own. They brought everyone and their valuables to safety, buried their food, and burned their own village to the ground - taking care to do so early enough to rebuild for the coming winter, and late enough so that they could go before their liege with a straight face, and tell him that there was no time left in the year for a second planting.

And it probably would have worked, if the first people to come across their scheme had not been adventurers.

This, naturally, left us in something of a bind. As Knights, we were sworn to protect the weak and the innocent, and although you could probably make the argument that "burning down your own village to commit tax fraud" probably wasn't the way most people would describe the actions of the entirely blameless, it was obvious to us that it was desperation, not malice, which drove them to such lengths. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to just burn their home to the ground on principle, and even if one person did, there was no way the entire village would have gone along with it unless they were all up the same creek.

On the other hand, we were also sworn to tell the truth, especially to those who could call themselves their superiors. Errants were bound to the laws of whatever realm they passed through - which was why Knights-Errant are allowed such free passage in the first place - and although Leofric would be a Duke one day, he wasn't one yet. We had an obligation to report accurately to the Duke of Torinhall, even though it'd probably mean that the villagers involved would be punished for it. Judging by the looks on our guides' faces as we left them, it seemed clear to me which way we were going to go.

But it wasn't, not to any of us, the whole ride back to Torinhall. Elias was perhaps the luckiest of us. He had no oaths to uphold either way. He didn't have to say anything to anyone, and it was pretty clear that he didn't intend to. That left the two of us.

Leo had every reason to tell the truth. He had always been more of a stickler for law and order than I was (probably because soon enough, he'd be the one writing the laws), and more than that, the last thing he needed was bad blood with the Duke of Torinhall when he eventually became Duke of Kendrickstone - especially given how at that time, there were still Torinhallers who claimed Hallowford as their rightful territory, and not ours. 

By the time we'd returned to the city, I was basically committed to answering first. The problem was, I didn't know what I was going to say either, even as we walked up the steps and bowed before the Duke, I was still weighing the merits either way. 

It was only when the expectant old man in front of us demanded an answer that I came to a decision. I drew myself up, took a breath and-

"It was a Dragon," Leofric replied, before I could. "We killed it. That's all."