Hangovers and dragon slaying made a bloody lousy mix. The gurgle of Morgan ap Cynydd's guts served notice of this fact, as he peered at the greying old man on his doorstep.
"It coom back," said Farmer Howel.
"Really," Morgan croaked.
"This time the heifers. Ye've got a job to do, lad. Lord Guy will want the end of this."
"Right. Just give me -."
Morgan's stomach lurched and he lurched with it, past his unwanted guest to puke in the dewy grass. Messy business, but when done he felt better. His head steadied and he could focus both eyes on Howel's dour expression.
"I'll expect you directly," the old man said.
With a final scowl, Howel clambered into his wagon seat and rumbled off down the fog-shrouded lane.
"Bloody wonderful," Morgan groaned, and fumbled his way back inside.
Not long after, he glanced down at the chest containing the tools of his everyday trade: the chisels, planes, augers, hammers and saws of a carpenter. However, he reached into a tall wardrobe by the window and from it withdrew a sword, a quiver of arrows and a long-staved yew bow. He belted on sword and quiver then held the polished length of yew for appraisal.
"Well, old boy," he said, "it's you and me, again."
#
Howel waited for him at the pasture gate, wreathed in sunlit morning fog. Morgan could see two mounds of bloodied brown and white lying amongst the meadow's green.
"Two of my best," Howel said, as they studied the ravaged carcasses. Massive tooth marks confirmed the predator's identity. "That's two would have been good milkers, come time."
"I know." Morgan nodded, and winced as his brain thumped the inside of his skull.
Everything he needed he carried with him, short of a speedy way to cut off his own head and end his suffering.
"You get the damned thing, boy," Howel said, pale eyes fierce as he stared at Morgan. "You get him and you finish him!"
Rather than risk another nod, Morgan tilted his bow in salute and walked away. Others in the country could do his job, but no one else wanted it, and he did enjoy the pay.
He tracked the thing readily, gouged earth here, churned gravel there, the splintered pale bone of a cow's femur. Half an hour later, he noted scuffmarks where fingers of hazy sunlight pried between the trees.
"Ate your fill, did you?" he muttered. "Then too fat and full to move."
Finally, the tracks vanished on the edge of a bluff. At his feet spread a wide mosaic of forest, fields and meadows, bathed now in morning sun. Green hollows held shreds of mist while a silvery river, the Afon Glas, curled in and out of view. Few chose to dwell so near the Gwaun Mawr, the high northern moors.
Morgan squinted towards the hills across the valley, their barren crowns forming the moors' southern rim. There he spied a cleft in the hills, its top crowned with elbows of stone.
"That's where you'll be," he murmured. "Yonder up that pass where the rocks warm by day. Sleep well, boyo. Soon you'll sleep for always."
Down a steep path and under the trees, he loped beneath a verdant roof of forest, and upon crossing the river, he turned northwest. An hour past noon, he reached the foot of the pass.
From there he clambered over half-buried rocks and shaggy tussocks of grass, the effort burning away the last haze of beer. His path took him well above the forest, leaving him uncomfortably exposed, but the cool smoothness of the bow in his hand and the weight of the sword at his hip lent confidence.
The smell warned him of his quarry's proximity, thick and musky, and his pulse quickened. He slid an arrow from his quiver, nocked it to his bowstring and stepped with a careful tread: a tread that squelched into a ghastly, noisome stink. His stomach twisted as he looked down at what clung to his boot. With a growl of irritation, he wiped it on a tussock of grass and climbed on.
Soon the animal stink mingled with a metallic odor, like that of a blacksmith shop, and Morgan's heart tried to kick a hole in his ribs. A cave opened above and he flexed his grip on his bow; let the thumb of his right hand brush the arrow's stiff fletching. Then he blew a sharp breath and resolutely ignored the shrieks of his better sense.
"HOY!" he shouted. "Come out, old worm! Come out!"
A moment's pause, then a shattering roar clouted the mountainside and his horizon filled with a vision of jagged jaws and eyes ablaze. Fear clawed Morgan's throat, but he heaved to his feet, roaring back.
"Ahhh, shut up!" And he loosed his first arrow.
The beast bellowed as it rose up to beat a thunder of leathern wings, propelling a reek like swamp water in a forge. Morgan's second arrow clattered against his bow as he drew.
And he loosed but never saw the arrow's flight. A jet of flame burst full in his face and he hurled himself backwards and down. Furnace heat lashed over him, crisping his eyebrows and gone, and he lunged once more to his feet. Nock and shoot and shoot again, ere a massive blow slammed him, tumbling all knees and elbows, headlong among the boulders. He scrambled for his bow, scrambled anew for the arrows spilled from his quiver, and fire roared again and he screamed shrill as a girl. Yet he found himself curled bug-like amongst the heather with only the ends of his hair singed.
For a moment, stillness reigned. Morgan warily raised his head, dirt and weed-bits clinging to his scruff of beard. Up the slope, the great beast rumbled and its head slowly recoiled, the pale quills of Morgan's shafts jutting at ugly angles from its hide. For a moment it seemed not to see him, huddled there among the grass and stones. But as he gathered himself, the neck whipped around and great, slitted eyes fixed on him with terrible awareness. The jaws dropped open – and Morgan stood and drew and a clothyard shaft of good Brynshire yew flashed into the creature's maw.
The resultant shriek nearly burst his ears. He ducked as the dragon thrashed about in throes of awful pain, but he'd come to do a job, and now he had it to finish.
"You got me--" pulse hammering, he firmed his stance, "--out of a comfortable bed--" thock, the arrow smote home, "--when I could have slept off a hangover!"
Two more shafts struck their mark. The roaring reached cataclysmic intensity, while vast wings beat the hillside and Morgan needed this to just end, please God.
With a madman's howl, he leapt up the slope and threw himself and his sword past clashing jaws that could cleave him like day-old sausage. Then he bellowed his own cry and with both hands swung a mighty blow--and another and another and another.
When at last he stopped, heaving for breath and sword dragging, only the echoes of roars remained.
As the vast body collapsed with a final groan, Morgan staggered back and dropped to sit on a rock nearby. There he swore he could feel his sinews rattling against his bones.
"Besides that," he panted to the corpse, "you made me step in a pile of dragon shit!"
He sat with his sword propped between his knees for quite a little while, until he could comfortably breathe. Comfortable being relative, as various scrapes, knots and bruises began to make themselves known. Finally, glancing up, Morgan frowned at the dragon's now-silent hulk. Sunlight gleamed on metallic hues of black, deep purple and copper, while the wings lay heaped like dark, crumpled sails. A thing of awful beauty, terrible and grand to behold in flight, which few men saw and fewer survived.
"Damn fool," Morgan grumbled. "Should have stayed up here."
Then he collected his sword, his bow and his lingering hangover and trudged back down the pass.
#
That evening, Morgan walked through the village of Hen Ystrad and up the hill to Lord Guy's manor. Light shone in high, narrow windows and spilled across the lawn. Above the front entryway, a stone arch bore the defaced sigil of a rampant lion, its crowned head bludgeoned away by hammer-blows. Thus went the symbols of the old rule, since Lord Guy and his ilk brought war a decade ago. New laws, new lords now governed the land.
The servant who answered the door let him in without question, and Morgan strode through the cavernous interior of the great house. The servant caught up in a flurry of slippers just in time to open a heavy oak door for him.
"My lord," the servant announced, "Master Morgan ap--."
"Yes, yes," grumbled Morgan and pushed past into the room. "He can see for himself. Hello, your lordship."
Never yet had Morgan called one of the conquerors "my lord," not with the bloody fields of Glynhir and Aberdu still haunting his dreams.
Pale, piercing eyes in a florid face studied him over the top of an extraordinarily large book. Though grey-haired and dressed in the robes of gracious leisure, the man still owned the hard-muscled frame of a soldier.
"Ah, Morgan, my good man." Be-ringed fingers flicked the servant on his way. "Come in. I trust the job is complete?"
Even after ten years in this country, Guy still spoke with the softened r's and mushy vowels of his mother tongue.
"Dead as a stone," Morgan replied, and halted with both thumbs in his belt.
"Did you bring proof?"
"With all respect, I'll be two days putting an edge back on my sword, as it is. I didn't want to ruin a good knife adding to your dragon toenail collection."
Lord Guy's expression looked pained as he closed the book and set it on the couch beside him. "Dragons do not have toenails, dear fellow. They have talons."
"As you like. But I'd think a nice wolf or bear hide would make a more useful trophy. How about I bring you one of those?"
Most ruling lords would hand Morgan his head for such cheek, but Guy seemed to find his impudence amusing.
"Ah, yes," he chuckled, and got up, stepping to a nearby oak secretary. "It is a sad testimonial to the knighthood of this country, when the only man I find willing to solve our depredation problems--." Reaching into one of several pigeonholes, he pulled forth a small, heavy purse and turned to his guest. "-- is a carpenter."
Morgan shrugged. "Tricky lot, us carpenters," he said. "Never can tell what mischief we might get up to."
Guy's ruddy features bent into an indulgent smile. "You are a curious man, Morgan. I wonder how close we came, upon those fields of battle. Odd to think we may have been a sword-stroke away from ending our association before it could begin."
Morgan made no reply. He didn't reckon Guy expected him to, as he deposited the purse in his hunter's palm.
"Keep this well, Morgan," he said. "I look forward to the day when it will be the deed to your house and land that I place in your hand."
"Thank you."
Guy met Morgan's gaze somberly. "I shall hope this is the end of it," he said. "There is no place for dragons in this world any more. We have built a new order, a new hope for greatness." He dropped a firm grip onto the younger man's shoulder and let go. "You are part of this, Morgan, in your rustic way. This country needs scholars and thinkers, but it will ever need men of action, ready to answer the call."
"Thank you, Lord Guy," Morgan said, and sketched a short bow ere turning away. The weight of coin rested comfortably in his pocket as he made his way to the door. Once outside in the stone shadows of the courtyard, he stopped and exhaled gustily. Opportunistic dragons and ex-soldiers of a lost war: neither held a proper place in this world.
"Answer the call?" he muttered. "Last call, more like, and I've worked up a thirst."