“Except you.”

  “I’m an old wife,” she said. “And I know. They don’t eat human beings, either. They’re strict vegetarians. But they kill. From time to time they kill.”

  “Why, if they aren’t hungry for meat?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. She started to walk away, back into the forest.

  “Wait!” Bork called. “How far will the dragon be?”

  “Not far,” she said. “Not far, Sir Bork. He’s waiting for you. He’s waiting for you and all the fools who come to try to free the virgin.” Then she melted away into the darkness.

  Bork lit a torch and followed it all night, turning when the flame turned, unwilling to waste time in sleep when Brunhilda might be suffering unspeakable degradation at the monster’s hands. And behind him, Winkle forced himself to stay awake, determined not to let Bork lose him in the darkness.

  All night, and all day, and all night again Bork followed the light of the torch, through crooked paths long unused, until he came to the foot of a dry, tall hill, with rocks and crags along the top. He stopped, for here the flame leaped high, as if to say, “Upward from here.” And in the silence he heard a sound that chilled him to the bone. It was Brunhilda, screaming as if she were being tortured in the cruelest imaginable way. And the screams were followed by a terrible roar. Bork cast aside the remnant of his food and made his way to the top of the hill. On the way he called out, to stop the dragon from whatever it was doing.

  “Dragon! Are you there!”

  The voice rumbled back to him with a power that made the dirt shift under Bork’s feet. “Yes indeed.”

  “Do you have Brunhilda?”

  “You mean the little virgin with the heart of an adder and the brain of a gnat?”

  In the forest at the bottom of the hill, Winkle ground his teeth in fury, for despite his designs on the kingdom, he loved Brunhilda as much as he was capable of loving anyone.

  “Dragon!” Bork bellowed at the top of his voice. “Dragon! Prepare to die!”

  “Oh dear! Oh dear!” cried out the dragon. “Whatever shall I do?”

  And then Bork reached the top of the hill, just as the sun topped the distant mountains and it became morning. In the light Bork immediately saw Brunhilda tied to a tree, her auburn hair glistening. All around her was the immense pile of gold that the dragon, according to custom, kept. And all around the gold was the dragon’s tail.

  Bork looked at the tail and followed it until finally he came to the dragon, who was leaning on a rock chewing on a tree trunk and smirking. The dragon’s wings were clad with feathers, but the rest of him was covered with tough gray hide the color of weathered granite. His teeth, when he smiled, were ragged, long, and pointed. His claws were three feet long and sharp as a rapier from tip to base. But in spite of all this armament, the most dangerous thing about him was his eyes. They were large and soft and brown, with long lashes and gently arching brows. But at the center each eye held a sharp point of light, and when Bork looked at the eyes that light stabbed deep into him, seeing his heart and laughing at what it found there.

  For a moment, looking at the dragon’s eyes, Bork stood transfixed. Then the dragon reached over one wing toward Brunhilda, and with a great growling noise he began to tickle her ear.

  Brunhilda was unbearably ticklish, and she let off a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Touch her not!” Bork cried.

  “Touch her what?” asked the dragon, with a chuckle. “I will not.”

  “Beast!” bellowed Bork. “I am Sir Bork the Big! I have never been defeated in battle! No man dares stand before me, and the beasts of the forest step aside when I pass!”

  “You must be awfully clumsy,” said the dragon.

  Bork resolutely went on. He had seen the challenges and jousts—it was obligatory to recite and embellish your achievements in order to strike terror into the heart of the enemy. “I can cut down trees with one blow of my ax! I can cleave an ox from head to tail, I can skewer a running deer, I can break down walls of stone and doors of wood!”

  “Why can’t I ever get a handy servant like that?” murmured the dragon. “Ah well, you probably expect too large a salary.”

  The dragon’s sardonic tone might have infuriated other knights; Bork was only confused, wondering if this matter was less serious than he had thought. “I’ve come to free Brunhilda, dragon. Will you give her up to me, or must I slay you?”

  At that the dragon laughed long and loud. Then it cocked its head and looked at Bork. In that moment Bork knew that he had lost the battle. For deep in the dragon’s eyes he saw the truth.

  Bork saw himself knocking down gates and cutting down trees, but the deeds no longer looked heroic. Instead he realized that the knights who always rode behind him in these battles were laughing at him, that the King was a weak and vicious man, that Winkle’s ambition was the only emotion he had room for; he saw that all of them were using him for their own ends, and cared nothing for him at all.

  Bork saw himself asking for Brunhilda’s hand in marriage, and he was ridiculous, an ugly, unkempt, and awkward giant in contrast to the slight and graceful girl. He saw that the King’s hints of the possibility of their marriage were merely a trick, to blind him. More, he saw what no one else had been able to see—that Brunhilda loved Winkle, and Winkle wanted her.

  And at last Bork saw himself as a warrior, and realized that in all the years of his great reputation and in all his many victories, he had fought only one man—an archer who ran at him with a knife. He had terrorized the weak and the small, but never until now had he faced a creature larger than himself. Bork looked in the dragon’s eyes and saw his own death.

  “Your eyes are deep,” said Bork softly.

  “Deep as a well, and you are drowning.”

  “Your sight is clear.” Bork’s palms were cold with sweat.

  “Clear as ice, and you will freeze.”

  “Your eyes,” Bork began. Then his mouth was suddenly so dry that he could barely speak. He swallowed. “Your eyes are filled with light.”

  “Bright and tiny as a star,” the dragon whispered. “And see; your heart is afire.”

  Slowly the dragon stepped away from the rock, even as the tip of his tail reached behind Bork to push him into the dragon’s waiting jaws. But Bork was not in so deep a trance that he could not see.

  “I see that you mean to kill me,” Bork said. “But you won’t have me as easily as that.” Bork whirled around to hack at the tip of the dragon’s tail with his ax. But he was too large and slow, and the tail flicked away before the ax was fairly swung.

  The battle lasted all day. Bork fought exhaustion as much as he fought the dragon, and it seemed the dragon only toyed with him. Bork would lurch toward the tail or a wing or the dragon’s belly, but when his ax or sword fell where the dragon had been, it only sang in the air and touched nothing.

  Finally Bork fell to his knees and wept. He wanted to go on with the fight, but his body could not do it. And the dragon looked as fresh as it had in the morning.

  “What?” asked the dragon, “Finished already?”

  Then Bork felt the tip of the dragon’s tail touch his back, and the sharp points of the claws pressed gently on either side. He could not bear to look up at what he knew he would see. Yet neither could he bear to wait, not knowing when the blow would come. So he opened his eyes, and lifted his head, and saw.

  The dragon’s teeth were nearly touching him, poised to tear his head from his shoulders.

  Bork screamed. And screamed again when the teeth touched him, when they pushed into his armor, when the dragon lifted him with teeth and tail and talons until he was twenty feet above the ground. He screamed again when he looked into the dragon’s eyes and saw, not hunger, not hatred, but merely amusement.

  And then he found his silence again, and listened as the dragon spoke through clenched teeth, watching the tongue move massively in the mouth only inches from his head.

  “Well, little man. Are you afraid?”

  Bork tried to think of some heroic message of defiance to hurl at the dragon, some poetic words that might be remembered forever so that his death would be sung in a thousand songs. But Bork’s mind was not quick at such things; he was not that accustomed to speech, and had no ear for gallantry. Instead he began to think it would be somehow cheap and silly to die with a lie on his lips.

  “Dragon,” Bork whispered, “I’m frightened.”

  To Bork’s surprise, the teeth did not pierce him then. Instead, he felt himself being lowered to the ground, heard a grating sound as the teeth and claws let go of his armor. He raised his visor, and saw that the dragon was now lying on the ground, laughing, rolling back and forth, slapping its tail against the rocks, and clapping its claws together. “Oh, my dear tiny friend,” said the dragon. “I thought the day would never dawn.”

  “What day?”

  “Today,” answered the dragon. It had stopped laughing, and it once again drew near to Bork and looked him in the eye. “I’m going to let you live.”

  “Thank you,” Bork said, trying to be polite.

  “Thank me? Oh no, my midget warrior. You won’t thank me. Did you think my teeth were sharp? Not half so pointed as the barbs of your jealous, disappointed friends.”

  “I can go?”

  “You can go, you can fly, you can dwell in your castle for all I care. Do you want to know why?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you were afraid. In all my life, I have only killed brave knights who knew no fear. You’re the first, the very first, who was afraid in that final moment. Now go.” And the dragon gave Bork a push and sent him down the hill.

  Brunhilda, who had watched the whole battle in curious silence, now called after him. “Some kind of knight you are! Coward! I hate you! Don’t leave me!” The shouts went on until Bork was out of earshot.

  Bork was ashamed.

  Bork went down the hill and, as soon as he entered the cool of the forest, he lay down and fell asleep.

  Hidden in the rocks, Winkle watched him go, watched as the dragon again began to tickle Brunhilda, whose gown was still open as it had been when she was taken by the dragon. Winkle could not stop thinking of how close he had come to having her. But now, if even Bork could not save her, her cause was hopeless, and Winkle immediately began planning other ways to profit from the situation.

  All the plans depended on his reaching the castle before Bork. Since Winkle had dozed off and on during the day’s battle, he was able to go farther—to a village, where he stole an ass and rode clumsily, half-asleep, all night and half the next day and reached the castle before Bork awoke.

  The King raged. The King swore. The King vowed that Bork would die.

  “But Your Majesty,” said Winkle, “you can’t forget that it is Bork who inspires fear in the hearts of your loyal subjects. You can’t kill him—if he were dead, how long would you be king?”

  That calmed the old man down. “Then I’ll let him live. But he won’t have a place in this castle, that’s certain. I won’t have him around here, the coward. Afraid! Told the dragon he was afraid! Pathetic. The man has no gratitude.” And the King stalked from the court.

  When Bork got home, weary and sick at heart, he found the gate of the castle closed to him. There was no explanation—he needed none. He had failed the one time it mattered most. He was no longer worthy to be a knight.

  And now it was as it had been before. Bork was ignored, despised, feared, he was completely alone. But still, when it was time for great strength, there he was, doing the work of ten men, and not thanked for it. Who would thank a man for doing what he must to earn his bread.

  In the evenings he would sit in his hut, staring at the fire that pushed a column of smoke up through the hole in the roof. He remembered how it had been to have friends, but the memory was not happy, for it was always poisoned by the knowledge that the friendship did not outlast Bork’s first failure. Now the knights spat when they passed him on the road or in the fields.

  The flames did not let Bork blame his troubles on them, however. The flames constantly reminded him of the dragon’s eyes, and in their dance he saw himself, a buffoon who dared to dream of loving a princess, who believed that he was truly a knight. Not so, not so. I was never a knight, he thought. I was never worthy. Only now am I receiving what I deserve. And all his bitterness turned inward, and he hated himself far more than any of the knights could hate him.

  He had made the wrong choice. When the dragon chose to let him go, he should have refused. He should have stayed and fought to the death. He should have died.

  Stories kept filtering into the village, stories of the many heroic and famous knights who accepted the challenge of freeing Brunhilda from the dragon. All of them went as heroes. All of them died as heroes. Only Bork had returned alive from the dragon, and with every knight who died Bork’s shame grew. Until he decided that he would go back. Better to join the knights in death than to live his life staring into the flames and seeing the visions of the dragon’s eyes.

  Next time, however, he would have to be better prepared. So after the spring plowing and planting and lambing and calving, where Bork’s help was indispensable to the villagers, the giant went to the castle again. This time no one barred his way, but he was wise enough to stay as much out of sight as possible. He went to the one-armed swordmaster’s room. Bork hadn’t seen him since he accidentally cut off his arm in sword practice years before.

  “Come for the other arm, coward?” asked the swordmaster.

  “I’m sorry,” Bork said. “I was younger then.”

  “You weren’t any smaller. Go away.”

  But Bork stayed, and begged the swordmaster to help him. They worked out an arrangement. Bork would be the swordmaster’s personal servant all summer, and in exchange the swordmaster would try to teach Bork how to fight.

  They went out into the fields every day, and under the swordmaster’s watchful eye he practiced sword-fighting with bushes, trees, rocks—anything but the swordmaster, who refused to let Bork near him. Then they would return to the swordmaster’s rooms, and Bork would clean the floor and sharpen swords and burnish shields and repair broken practice equipment. And always the swordmaster said, “Bork, you’re too stupid to do anything right!” Bork agreed. In a summer of practice, he never got any better, and at the end of the summer, when it was time for Bork to go out in the fields and help with the harvest and the preparations for winter, the swordmaster said, “It’s hopeless, Bork. You’re too slow. Even the bushes are more agile than you. Don’t come back. I still hate you, you know.”

  “I know,” Bork said, and he went out into the fields, where the peasants waited impatiently for the giant to come carry sheaves of grain to the wagons.

  Another winter looking at the fire, and Bork began to realize that no matter how good he got with the sword, it would make no difference. The dragon was not to be defeated that way. If excellent swordplay could kill the dragon, the dragon would be dead by now—the finest knights in the kingdom had already died trying.

  He had to find another way. And the snow was still heavy on the ground when he again entered the castle and climbed the long and narrow stairway to the tower room where the wizard lived.

  “Go away,” said the wizard, when Bork knocked at his door. “I’m busy.”

  “I’ll wait,” Bork answered.

  “Suit yourself.”

  And Bork waited. It was late at night when the wizard finally opened the door. Bork had fallen asleep leaning on it—he nearly knocked the magician over when he fell inside.

  “What the devil are you—you waited!”

  “Yes,” said Bork, rubbing his head where it had hit the stone floor.

  “Well, I’ll be back in a moment.” The wizard made his way along a narrow ledge until he reached the place where the wall bulged and a hole opened onto the outside of the castle wall. In wartime, such holes were used to pour boiling oil on attackers. In peacetime, they were even more heavily used. “Go on inside and wait,” the wizard said.

  Bork looked around the room. It was spotlessly clean, the walls were lined with books, and here and there a fascinating artifact hinted at hidden knowledge and arcane powers—a sphere with the world on it, a skull, an abacus, beakers and tubes, a clay pot from which smoke rose, though there was no fire under it. Bork marvelled until the wizard returned.

  “Nice little place, isn’t it?” the wizard asked. “You’re Bork, the bully, aren’t you?”

  Bork nodded.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t know,” Bork asked. “I want to learn magic. I want to learn magic powerful enough that I can use it to fight the dragon.”

  The wizard coughed profusely.

  “What’s wrong?” Bork asked.

  “It’s the dust,” the wizard said.

  Bork looked around and saw no dust. But when he sniffed the air, it felt thick in his nose, and a tickling in his chest made him cough, too.

  “Dust?” asked Bork. “Can I have a drink?”

  “Drink,” said the wizard. “Downstairs—”

  “But there’s a pail of water right here. It looks perfectly clean—”

  “Please don’t—”

  But Bork put the dipper in the pail and drank. The water sloshed into his mouth, and he swallowed, but it felt dry going down, and his thirst was unslaked. “What’s wrong with the water?” Bork asked.

  The wizard sighed and sat down. “It’s the problem with magic, Bork old boy. Why do you think the King doesn’t call on me to help him in his wars? He knows it, and now you’ll know it, and the whole world probably will know it by Thursday.”

  “You don’t know any magic?”

  “Don’t be a fool! I know all the magic there is! I can conjure up monsters that would make your dragon look tame! I can snap my fingers and have a table set with food to make the cook die of envy. I can take an empty bucket and fill it with water, with wine, with gold—whatever you want. But try spending the gold, and they’ll hunt you down and kill you. Try drinking the water and you’ll die of thirst.”