The Dragon Slayer: The Dragon Slayer, #1

By David Harvey

To some village folk, he was the Dragon Slayer. To the King of Zorgonia, he was their Guardian. To Liam himself, it was a mystery. He'd grown up with the dragons and he loved them.

King Garrin loves his prosperous country, and all its people. It is surrounded on three sides by high, jagged snow-capped mountains, but its way of life and prosperity has always made it a target for brigands and armies of thieves.

When Zorgonia is threatened again by a large army preparing to invade, the King knows that this time, the archers and unicorn army will be too small to handle the sheer size of the invasion.

The country needs the dragons, the most fearsome creatures in the world (or so the dragons think!) But other than looking fearsome, there is not much they can do.

Can Liam find a way to use the dragons and save Zorgonia? Can he use them in a way that they can go beyond just looking fearsome to being fearsome?

If Zorgonia is to survive this threat he will need to do something bold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave
• Release date: Dec 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393443841

Book preview

Chapter 1

Dunneg the Dragon

Dunneg the dragon, gate-crashed Liam’s dream in typical fashion. Liam had been fast asleep, dreaming he was soaring through the skies of Zorgonia like an eagle, or a dragon. They, too, could glide effortlessly and magnificently through the sky when they weren’t playing games.

In his dream, Liam wasn’t sure what he was, but he was tumbling and turning, gliding through the sky, swooping low and then soaring high, becoming a tiny speck. When the plaintive, drawn-out cry pierced his dream, it took time to register.

The drawn-out Liaaaaaaaam, repeated several times, eventually forced him into a fuzzy state of semi-consciousness, dragging him reluctantly from the sky and into uncomprehending bleary-eyed wakefulness. As he lay there wondering what part of his dream it fell into, he heard it again. Another drawn-out Liaaaaaaaam, followed by the sound of a heavy thud which not only shook the house but the very earth itself.

That got his attention, and he leapt out of bed, rushing outside into the cool morning, where Dunneg, one of his dragons, lay just outside the front door in a groaning, crumpled heap.

He had what looked like many arrows lodged in various parts of his body and if a dragon could look miserable, unhappy, embarrassed and angry, simultaneously, that would describe what Liam saw. As his mother and father, Sandrine and Seward, also rushed from the house, Liam was communicating with Dunneg and trying to get him to sit upright. He needed to see the extent of his injuries.

Normally, dragon’s skin was very thick and too tough to penetrate with anything but an arrow fired from close range, and the only area they were really vulnerable was where their heart was, for some peculiar reason. Liam would have thought the area around the heart would be where their skin was thickest, but that was not so. For some strange reason, an arrow could easily kill dragons if hit through the heart where their skin was thinnest.

Fortunately, though, this was not the case for Dunneg. But he looked as though he had been used for target practice.

‘What on earth did you do to yourself?’ Liam asked when he finally convinced Dunneg to sit up straight, so he could walk around and check him carefully.

‘What happened?’ Asked both Sandrine and Seward. (They often said the same thing at the same time, quite by accident, but as though they both went through the same thought processes at the same moment!)

‘I was just asking him,’ Liam replied. ‘I wanted him to sit up first and see how many arrows are stuck in him.’

‘Has he told you what happened?’ Seward asked as he walked around Dunneg behind Liam while they counted the arrows together.

‘I asked him once, but he didn’t answer. I’ll try again now,’ Liam said, as he stopped in front of Dunneg, reached up on his tip-toes and pulled his massive head down and looking at him directly in the eyes.

‘No-one would dare shoot arrows at you in the Kingdom, so where have you been.’

‘I was on the other side of the Norzogragen Mountains.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Hunting for wild sheep.’

‘And?’

‘And in the valley on the far side of the mountains was an army of people. They shot at me when I flew over them to see what they were doing.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘It looks like they were training for something.’

‘Training for what?’

‘I hardly had time to stop and talk to them now, did I? If they shot arrows at me while I was flying, I don’t think they were trying to invite me to stop and spend some time with them and share a few sheep for an early breakfast.’

‘Were there a lot of them?’

‘Yes. Many, many of them.’

‘Okay. We’ll talk about that in a moment. First, though, I want to get all these arrows out of you. It might hurt when we take them out, depending on how deep they are. Don’t move around and fidget when we do that.’

Liam looked at Seward and Sandrine and said. ‘He says he was hunting wild sheep on the other side of the Northern border and there were people in a valley who were practising. They shot at him when he came close to see what they were doing.’

‘Many people or only a few?’

‘He says there were a lot. But he’s ready for us to take the arrows out and then we can find out more.’

While Sandrine went back inside to make breakfast, Seward and Liam gently removed all the arrows, putting them together in a pile, which they counted as they pulled them out. ‘There are thirty-seven,’ Seward exclaimed. ‘That seems like it was an attempt to kill him, not scare him away.’

Liam walked back in front of Dunneg. ‘They hit you with thirty-seven arrows, which means they were very serious about trying to shoot you down. The King is going to want to hear about this, so tell me what they were doing.’

‘I told you. They were practising.’

‘Yes, but practising for what?’

‘I would say they were practising for war. It is the only thing that makes sense, seeing as there were archers and other soldiers and horses and enough tents that they filled the valley.’

‘Thank you. Dad and I will talk about it and if we think it is necessary, we will speak to the King. Please do not go back there. I want you alive, my friend. A stomach full of sheep is not a reason to get yourself shot at again.’

‘I will try. But it is fine for you to have a sheep any time you want, which is your favourite food. You do not allow us poor dragons to eat goats anymore, which is our favourite food, and the best sheep are the wild sheep in the mountains.’

‘Goats are not the same as sheep. You can eat all the wild sheep you can find. I do not want you getting yourself shot at again just for a few sheep is all I am saying. Stay this side of the mountains.’

After he flew off again, Seward and Liam went inside and ate breakfast, discussing what Dunneg had seen and how much of a threat it might have been to Zorgonia itself. They spoke about it long into the morning but eventually left it because, as Seward said, the risks of trying to cross the mountains made no sense given how extraordinarily difficult it was.

The Norzogragen Mountains were too high, the snow was too deep, and because of the difficult terrain, very few large armies had successfully crossed into Zorgonia in the past. Those who had invaded Zorgonia were usually smaller and more mobile and looking to supplement their food supplies by stealing from villages and farms they raided once inside Zorgonia.

By that stage though, the dragons, who constantly flew around the mountains either playing or searching for tasty mountain sheep, would alert the King by flying around his castle continually and the unicorns and archers were then sent to follow the dragons and if necessary, sent into battle.

All that changed though, several years after Liam was born.

Chapter 2

Zorgonia’s past.

The day before Liam was born, the heavens opened in a display of thunder and lightning not experienced in anyone’s living memory. And even perhaps before.

For Seward and Sandrine, his parents, this was a sign that their unborn child, whose name would be Liam, was going to be special. They did not yet know how, but they knew in time, they would find out.

And in time it proved to be.

But long before Zorgonia become the Kingdom of Zorgonia; in fact long, long before this story began, the country, rich in natural resources and blessed by nature with fertile soil, bountiful water and long warm summers, with short but bitterly cold winters, was periodically visited by marauding, pillaging gangs of violent men. These men roamed many countries in search of slaves, food and as much wealth as they could carry away.

Despite the riches within the country, it didn’t happen as often in Zorgonia, as unlike their neighbouring territories, high, snowy mountains, difficult to climb over or through, surrounded Zorgonia on three sides. It was only in the very southernmost part of the country where there were roads to cross into Zorgonia. Traders used these to criss-cross the Kingdom, selling or bartering their wares.

For marauders, having experienced the difficulties of being forced to give up before they could finish crossing, most stayed well away from even attempting, searching instead for easier countries.

And, as if trying to cross the mountains wasn’t bad enough, according to legends, there were also fire-breathing dragons living there, that were impossible to kill or escape from, once they spotted you.

It was on one such raid, though, that Zorgonian history changed. No-one knew this at that stage, but what happened set in place the events which over generations into the future would mark the passage of Zorgonia from ordinary to extraordinary.

This was the time that Liam’s great, great, great grandmother, was rescued by a dragon after her mother and father, together with the rest of their village, were killed by one such group of roving bandits. The little girl had crawled away and hid, and two days later, when the dragons arrived to clean up the rotting bodies, one of them found her and brought her to their home.

Over time, the little girl grew into a bigger girl and learned to love her adopted mother and a rather strange family.

When she was old enough to leave her dragons and move to a new life with people just like herself, she made them a promise. She would be back. And years later, with a husband and two children, a boy and a girl, she was.

And that is how the tradition continued. When a child or children were old enough, they left their parents and the dragons behind and went in search of their own worlds, to return later with their own families. But each new generation spent less time with the dragons and more time with their own kinds of people until Seward arrived with his wife Sandrine. They settled down happily with the dragons.

To stop the roving bandit gangs from pillaging Zorgonia, many changes had taken place. The country now had a King, elected by all the people, and he served for a single term of two years unless voted to the position again. The role of the King was to protect the country and all its people. To do that, he had an army of five hundred fighting unicorns and five hundred archers who rode the unicorns into battle.

Over the last hundred years, they had been used over fifty times and each time had ended with the survivors of the invading army chased back through the mountains, never to return.

Seward had been the finest archer in the King’s army and now he spent half his time training them and the other half looking after his wife Sandrine and son Liam. He had also passed his skills and knowledge onto Liam.

Chapter 3

Liam’s story

Silly me, silly me, silly me, Liam thought as he stumbled down the side of the hill trying to stay as far in front of Hornephant, the dragon who was chasing him, as he could.

Although he had, on rare occasions, been referred to as the ‘dragon slayer,’ Liam knew he was in danger of being referred to in the future as ‘slain by the dragon’ if he didn’t quickly outrun the one chasing him down the mountain. Because if she stumbled and fell, well, she would roll down the mountain and squash him. And it wasn’t as though it was his fault he’d stumbled over her while she was fast asleep.

Usually, they snored like... he thought about it, gasping for breath as he bounded from boulder to boulder... well, like dragons, really. They were noisy as anything and could be awfully grumpy when woken up abruptly. But this one had been sleeping silently, and he hadn’t been watching where he was going. As a result, he’d accidently stood on her tail and then stumbled and fallen on top of her.

And that had been enough to wake her up and, being grumpy as a result, did what all dragons did when they got a fright which was to chase after the source of their grumpiness.

When Liam was born, the son of Seward and Sandrine, many things had changed over the centuries, but his parents, like their parents before them, had remained close to the dragons. On the day he was born, the night after the gigantic storm, his mother named him Liam, because, as she told him when he was old enough to understand, the name meant guardian.

And that’s what he would be, she told him; the guardian of dragons because he had a special gift. This was the gift given on him the night before he was born, out of the monstrous lightning and thunder announcement to all the people of Zorgonia.

No one knew what the gift was until Liam turned five years old when the three of them discovered he could use his mind to communicate with the Kingdom’s dragons and unicorns.

And so, it was natural that once Seward and Sandrine told the King, he was appointed as the official guardian of the Kingdom’s dragons on one condition. It was to stay a secret and was to stay between a handful of people, if for no other reason than for Liam’s safety.

There was already a guardian for the unicorns, and he was the same person responsible for their training as the war cavalry. When unicorns went into battle mode, they did not need any guidance as their superb instincts and intelligence, combined with their training, were all they needed.

Dragons, on the other hand, were not blessed with super intelligence and were big and ungainly on the ground. It was only once in the air, they were beautiful to behold as they flew naturally like eagles, soaring high into the sky as they took advantage of the winds and clouds to play games with each other, like hide and seek.

He knew he was called the dragon slayer in the alehouses he sometimes frequented because he was reputed to have killed dozens in deadly battles, and dragons trembled when he appeared. According to how the legend was told. He wasn’t entirely sure why, as he loved their company (dragons, that is), having grown up with them and accepting them as part of his life. Which was another reason the King had appointed him as their guardian.

It might have been because people believed he was the only person in Zorgonia who did not fear them, and the only reason they could think of why was because he had defeated many in battle.

Unlike the legends handed down for centuries, dragons did not breathe fire. They were the cleaners of the forests and plains, but sometimes what they ate took time to move through their stomachs, which left them with lots of gas. Which they belched out in noxious fumes.

Occasionally, if they’d eaten the right food, their gas was so bad that when they belched, the fumes would rush from their mouths and quite soon after meeting oxygen in the air, would explode and burn. Over hundreds of years, when one of those events occurred and was witnessed, people assumed that dragons breathed fire, which made them dangerous and scary. Those random sightings were to become the source of dragon legends.

Dragons breathed fire. They would hunt down any person they saw and burn them and eat them.

The truth was that if someone did get burned to a crisp, it was