

Weredragons Dare

A Duncan & Mallory Novelette

By

Mel. White  
& John DeLaughter

D&M Number 2

Copyright © 2018

The Obligatory "Famous People Review the latest Duncan And Mallory Adventures" Section

"If you only read one new Duncan and Mallory story this year, read this one!" - _Abraham Lincoln_

"A hilarious adventure from my favorite dragon!" - _St. George_

"Who are you people? Why are you in my living room? I'm calling the police!" - _Roxie Harte_
Table of Contents

Chapter 1 6

Chapter 2 13

Chapter 3 20

Chapter 4 26

Chapter 5 32

Chapter 6 37

Chapter 7 41

Chapter 8 47

Chapter 9 57

[  
Chapter 10 64](tmp_518da567f793fb7fd3b8f070b511e0c4_WWmCLE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_009.html#x11._Chapter_10_outline)

Chapter 11 67

Chapter 12 72

Chapter 13 80

Chapter 14 85

Chapter 15 90

About The Authors 93

**Legal Notes**

No dragons (were or otherwise), werehumans, basilisks, sheep, or fish were harmed in the creation of this book.

Duncan & Mallory © Mel. White 2018. The 1984 graphic novel series by Robert Asprin and Mel. White was based on characters created by Mel. White in 1982

# _Chapter 1_

The landscape looked as peaceful and harmless as a tourist's photograph, a vista of serene blue sky and emerald-colored grass. Fluffy white sheep roamed the hillsides, grazing with the single-minded intensity of a flock of robotic lawnmowers, systematically avoiding the small ponds that dotted the landscape like beauty marks on a model's skin. A distant river gently chuckled to itself over some joke as it flowed over well-worn boulders and underneath a copse of tall trees.

On the riverbank stood a mail-clad human warrior and a slender blue dragon, both covered in sweat and grime and neither one happy about it. With a sudden scream, the warrior flailed his sword wildly and charged at the dragon, which crouched and arched its back. Just before his sword turned the dragon into shish-kebab, the human skidded to a stop, panting and exhausted.

The dragon shook his head. "Duncan, you need to put a little more wrist in that backswing."

"Right, Mallory. Backswing on the wrist."

It had been a very long morning for Duncan.

Mallory shook his head sadly, sending the white fringes around his jaws flapping. "And your war howl needs practice."

"Not enough vowels in it?" Duncan said sarcastically.

"You're supposed to be the scariest thing around, not a schoolgirl with her first mouse. The sound should come from deep in your chest before rumbling out. And show more teeth."

Duncan sighed wearily, backed up to the starting line, and tried again. Grimacing like a chicken laying an ostrich egg, he screamed "YEAAAAARRRRGHHHHHH!!"

"Well, that's better." At Duncan's surprised look of relief, Mallory snorted. "But it's still not good enough. For this scam to work, you have to be terrifying!"

"Mallory, this will never work."

"Not with an attitude like that, it won't!"

Duncan shoved his sword into its scabbard and sat down heavily in the grass. "Break time. What's for lunch?"

"Whatever you didn't eat at breakfast."

Duncan groaned and looked around. Growing nearby were some short bushes with olive-green leaves and dotted with red flowers and purple berries.

"At least it's bumbleberry season. We won't starve." He picked a handful of berries and gulped them down. "Do you honestly think this plan will work? I don't think folks around here that easily spooked."

"It's all in how you approach the thing. When I terrorize towns everyone runs and screams." The dragon examined a sharp talon with a smug smile.

"Yeah, but the folks you've been scaring are small and easily damaged humans. Not tall, scaly, fire-breathing dragons." Duncan muttered around another mouthful of berries.

"People don't run because I'm a fire-breathing dragon," Mallory explained. "People run because they've been told that dragons are scary."

"So?"

"So in Apkurd, we have only one major port on the Great Sliding River. That's where all the big financial stuff is and the big trading areas are, but it's crowded and noisy and most dragons don't get there. A few humans show up there, but it's mostly for gambling or for financial matters."

"Yeah, so?"

"So most dragons have never even seen a human. All they have to go on is what they are told. And they have been told that humans are scary \- and crazy. It wasn't that long ago when knights like George hunted us down and kill us for sport."

"I thought George didn't exist. That's what my Dad always told me."

"George may be a legend but the facts of what happened were real enough. Humans came here. Humans hunted dragons."

Duncan's face went still as he remembered the dusty dragon head trophies that hung in the armory in his father's keep right next to the mounted trophies of stags, wild boars, and things he had always called "Monsters That Your Ancestors Caught". He had always assumed that dragons were simply animals since his family's second favorite sport was Hunting Things That Are Likely To Kill You First. Now the ugly spectre of doubt was beginning to rear its head. "It was long ago?"

"Oh, that kind of thing hasn't happened since the Treaty back in twenty-eight-something, but we still tell children that if they aren't good then 'George will get you!' And some of the best horror stories involve werehumans; dragons that turn into humans when the Sun is bright and the bumbleberry bushes are in bloom. My Nana used to scare the willies out of me with those stories. And everyone has a Nana."

Duncan shook his head; his Nana hadn't scared him with stories about dragons, were- or otherwise. She'd told him stories about hungry caterpillars who ate everything. "So if I run around in broad daylight, swinging my sword and screaming like a lunatic, I'll be so very scary."

Mallory nodded reassuringly. "That's right. Everybody panics and then the locals hire me to get rid of the werehuman and we make out big time."

"Just like that?"

"Oh, come on. You over think things. It's worked on any number of humans with me as the big, bad dragon. What could possibly go wrong?" Mallory casually flicked his talons in rejection of the notion that anything could ever go astray with one of his plans.

Duncan smiled slowly and leaned forward. "Oh, I don't know. You might give all of our money to a child. Twice. Or you might meet the dragon equivalent of Humphrey, who then decides to get rid of you and hunt me down himself."

"That'll never happen. Dragons don't hunt. We're diplomats and financiers."

"Diplomats?" Duncan asked skeptically. He could picture Mallory doing many things, but arranging a peace treaty wasn't among them. Being the reason that a peace treaty was needed, on the other hand...

"Who is going to argue with someone who can burn down the village if negotiations don't go well?"

Duncan had to admit that Mallory had a point. Of course, he'd never admit that to his partner, but that was beside the point.

"Wait a minute! If you're all enlightened diplomats and financiers, why do dragons kidnap virgins?"

"Oh, that's another tale for another time," Mallory said - perhaps a little too quickly. "Anyway, in order for this to work, you have to be a werehuman because the local dragons won't run away from someone as normal as me, no matter how crazy I act."

Duncan began wiping his sword blade with a cloth rag. "Normal? Those dragons would bolt for the hinterlands if they really knew you. And they'd take their money with them. Speaking of which, you never did tell me what happened at our last stop and why we left without the supplies I ordered. The supplies we needed. You know, little things like food?"

"I, um, ran into a limited-time high-risk, high-reward investment opportunity."

Duncan translated Mallory's obfuscation with the ease that only a long partnership provides. "So you wagered the whole bundle on something that looked like a sure bet?"

"No," Mallory replied with what dignity he could muster. "I'd never do anything that foolish. I divided our funds into three bundles and bet each of them on a different event that offered some very good odds. If any one of them had come in, we would have tripled our money."

"Let me check something," Duncan asked sarcastically. "You bet one-third of our money on something that would triple in value if it won, giving us exactly what we started out with. And then you did it again. Twice."

"It sounds pretty bad when you say it that way," Mallory admitted. "But if two of them had come in, we'd have made a killing."

"But none of them came in!"

"Well..."

"So we're broke, stuck in Apkurd, and reduced to running the 'dragon and the George' scam."

"It's our best option."

"That's a depressing thought." Duncan paused as a glimmer of a memory emerged from the depths of his mind. "Wait a second. You once told me that you came from somewhere here on Apkurd. Let's go visit your folks. You can introduce me and we can hang out at your place for a bit. At the very least they'd feed us and they might even come up with a short-term loan."

"No. Heck no. Not even if I were reduced to working for a living no. I am not going to listen to my father drone on for hours about all the wonderful thing my brother Morty-the-lawyer has been up to. And I'm not in the mood to have my mother try to set me up with every single dragon in the county while hinting I should have as many whelplings as Morty has. I'd rather starve!"

"Well, unless this works, you may get your wish!"

#

#  _Chapter 2_

Two days and many hours of practice later, Mallory declared that he was finally satisfied with Duncan's werehuman act. It's true that Duncan's bellowed war cries still showed a tendency to drift into the soprano range but at least his sword swinging had more control and wasn't likely to accidentally remove body parts from onlookers -- or himself. After four days of a mostly bumbleberry diet, supplemented with all the fresh air and river water they could stand, their growing hunger added an authentic air of desperation to the performance. It was time to stop rehearsals and move on to actually turning their skills into funds by moving on to financially promising areas.

The next morning, they docked their riverboat in a tree-lined cove and set up a hiding place near a copse of thick bushes that Mallory declared was "just far enough out in the sticks" so that they wouldn't get mobbed.

Unfortunately for them, these sticks were a little too far out; by noon the only travelers they'd seen were a confused heron flying North for the winter and a large toad wearing a long scarf who was driving a very large and loud motorcar. Duncan had started to drowse when the perfect mark finally came strolling down the road; a short, stout crimson dragon with a pink polka-dot bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses, pulling a small sledge behind him as he pored over a thick book of home cures. Every so often, he'd stop and scratch his scales then turn the page.

Mallory nudged his partner awake and pointed. "Here comes a live one. He's not paying attention to anything. Perfect mark. He might as well have a 'Kick Me' sign plastered on his back."

"He's kinda big."

"Feh. He's a bookwyrm. They're harmless. Go terrorize him!"

Duncan drew a deep breath, held his sword high, and lunged from his hiding place, screaming "YEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGGG! DIEEEEE!!!!"

The dragon blinked myopically and almost dropped his book before stepping back. "Oh, my. Good heavens."

"YRRRRRRRAAAAAAAH!"

"Goodness! Are you in pain? You sound awful!" Rummaging in his pack, the dragon held out a small lozenge. "Cough drop?"

Things were not going according to plan. Duncan held his sword up in front of the dragon's nose, pointy bit angling right at the flaring nostrils and tried to not think of them as exit points for quite a lot of very hot fire. He took a deep breath and tried again.

"YARRRRGH!"

"Well, you poor thing. That's just awful," the mark commiserated. "I think my cousin had the same thing." He opened his book and thumbed through the pages. "Are you able to flame? Lost your fire? Seeing spots on your scales?"

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"That's what I thought. Listen -- there's a herb-monger in Apgnast, the next town south. He's a little odd but he does know his herbs. Tell him that you need some Scale Powder. Don't be embarrassed; it happens to everyone." And with a pert nod, the dragon swept aside the sword point, opened his book to the page he'd been reading, and pulled his sledge past a dumbfounded Duncan.

There was a sound in the bushes that might have been Mallory sniggering.

That encounter turned out to be the highlight of their week. Passing dragons looked past Duncan's sword and into his broad and earnest face before giving him advice on everything from his halitosis to his love life. One dragon tried to sell him dance lessons. Another offered him shares in a tarantula ranch.

Before the week was through, he'd been diagnosed with neuritis, neuralgia, a head cold, stress, beriberi, athlete's foot, tennis elbow, mildewed grout, and high tideritis; he'd been given directions to healers, shamans, professional quacks, pharmacies, exorcists, bathrooms, and bathhouses. And through it all, the sounds of Mallory's not-so-quiet mirth punctuated each new failure. After the last dragon suggested that he try fresh air, exercise, and a diet, Duncan had had enough.

"'Fresh air'? 'Exercise'? That's all I've had for the past week!" he fumed.

"Have a little patience. It will work," Mallory reassured his partner. "You're actually getting much better at the screaming. And that face you're making now -- it's absolutely perfect. Just lift that right lip a little higher and you're there."

Duncan's inner worm finally turned. "No. If you want dragons scared so badly, YOU do it. I'm going back to the boat." He squared his shoulders and turned on his heel and marched back toward the river and the haven of the riverboat they called home.

Mallory watched his partner's quick, furious strides and decided to remain behind for a little bit. From their long partnership, he knew that Duncan's anger never lasted longer than a few minutes. Give him a chance to stomp off the frustration and turn a few logs into kindling and he'd be right as rain. Besides which, the dragon had to admit that Duncan had been doing most of the work on this scheme. Perhaps the right thing to do would be to show his partner how easy it really was.

Mallory had his chance a short while later. A school of very small dragons led by a timid-looking female dragon wearing spectacles and a Mother Hubbard dress walked around the bend, stopping every few paces as one of the students picked up a bug or lizard only to be ordered to put it back in place by the schoolwyrm. He waited until they were a few feet away and stepped out onto the road, waving his arms. "Look out! Go back!"

The students stopped and stared, the littlest dragons crowding around the adult.

"What's wrong? Who are you?" The schoolwyrm demanded.

Mallory looked back over his shoulder and then back at the group. "You're in terrible, horrible, awful danger! I think it's gone for right now, but it come back any second."

"What's gone?" The schoolwyrm no stranger to theatrics thanks to her many young charges, cut to the chase before Mallory could build up more steam.

"You'll never believe me," Mallory said darkly. "But it is more frightening than you can imagine."

"I can imagine quite a lot."

"It's a werehuman! Last saw the thing by those bushes over there. I've been chasing the dreadful beast for half the morning. I'll have to circle back and pick up the trail."

"Werehuman?" The schoolwyrm asked incredulously as her charges giggled.

"There," Mallory pointed. "I last saw the vicious monster right over there."

The female backed up a step. "I think we'll go back now," she said. There was a chorus of "Awwww"s from her charges who had been enjoying the show the crazy dragon put on.

"What's a werehuman, Miss Shafafa?" one asked.

"It's a dragon that turns into a human," she said. "Remember that funny story that Storyteller Tymmie told us about the Big Bad Well of Dimsleydale? That was about a werehuman. But we don't have to worry about them here."

"Not worry?" Mallory huffed. "Then what have I been chasing? The sun is shining bright and the bumbleberries are in bloom and you know what the story-tellers say about that!"

"Storytellers will say anything for a coin. In fact, they'll even spin a yarn about a scurrilous relative and an unfortunate guano habit if you pay them enough." The tone of her voice suggested that she might have some experience with this.

"Madame, I am NOT a storyteller and that thing is still around here. You should get these little darlings back to safety before it comes out of the bushes again. If it grabs one of these dear little whelplings, you'll have a hard time explaining to their parents why they gave you a beautiful young dragon and you're giving them back a hideous human."

At that most propitious of moments, Duncan came back over the hill, head low, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed in his pockets It was obvious that he was here to apologize. However, at the sight of the gathering below him, Duncan did what any reasonable con-man would do -- he improvised. With a full-throated scream, he pulled his sword out of the scabbard and charged at the schoolwyrm and her pupils as Mallory roared back his defiance.

"Back, back you fiend!"

Unfortunately for Duncan and Mallory, none of the school group flinched an inch. Indeed, two of the smaller ones moved closer as if to see what the funny human was going to do next.

"You aren't a werehuman," the littlest dragon said with the contempt that only a child can muster.

"I'm not?" Caught off-guard, Duncan resorted to the only impromptu tool in his mental armoury: insistence. "I am so. I'm a werehuman." He struck a pose and waved his sword for emphasis.

"No, you're not," the whelpling replied. "Ain't I right, Miss Shafafa?"

"'Aren't I right', dear," the schoolwyrm dragon gently corrected. "And, yes you are. Class, how do we know he's not a werehuman?"

"Because he's been in the bumbleberry bushes!" the whelplings chorused.

"That's right! Bumbleberries are supposed to kill werehumans. But this person has been eating them - and rather messily I might add - judging by the stains on his mouth and clothes. So he can't be a werehuman! And as you can see, his companion really isn't startled."

"Not scared!" a whelpling shouted.

"They're just a couple of actors from a traveling show. We're not interested. We have a good children's theatre and a local storytelling group. We don't need tin-pot thespians." With a final flip of her tail, the schoolwyrm led her class on down the road. Just before they went around the bend, the last whelpling in line turned and stuck out a long tongue at Duncan and Mallory.

#  _Chapter 3_

The sky was blue and fields spread across the rolling hills were green, which was always a good sign after a skip. Nearby, a collection of woolly white quadrupeds grazed over these hills with the single-minded dedication of an animal that was more intent on eating dinner than avoiding becoming one in the form of lamb chops, mutton stew, lamb fries, and possibly even haggis. A small creek ran down a hillside, gently chuckling to itself as it poured into a small pond in the vale below. In the middle of the pond were a man and a woman, both covered in mud and muck and various green squishy things and neither one particularly happy about it.

"You had to do it, didn't you" Sadie said in a resigned tone of voice as she sat up, wiped viridescent goo off her face, and plucked a lily pad from her head. "You couldn't leave well enough alone; you had to draw to an inside curve."

"Look, I felt bad for the guy, OK?" Bilgewater replied. Taking off his hat, he squeezed the water from it before putting it back on his head with a squelch. "I wanted him to win at least one hand."

"But he didn't win; you ended up with four dragons. And we ended up running for our lives through alleys. Again."

He wiped his glasses with the edge of his frock coat. "It's really not my fault. I didn't deal those cards into my own hand. I think that woman, Mharki, did it."

"You know better than to leave things to chance!"

He sighed. "Remember what I've been teaching you - if you are going to cheat at cards, you have to make the game look natural. I made it look natural, right?"

"You did make it look like you expected to lose. That's what seemed to have tipped off the others."

"Caught me off-guard."

"Remind me again what sort of lesson you were going to be teaching me about cards and gambling?"

Bilgewater waved his arms for balance as he headed toward the slippery rocks at the edge of the pond. "Gambling's a science and an art."

"And this time it was...?"

"It should have been science. But when you've got a nymph who's trying to seduce an absent-minded satyr and two humans who are trying to cheat everyone else in the game while you're trying to play it straight, it's hard to control the cards," he paused for a moment in thought. "Especially when you're being set up as the fall guy."

"I thought you were supposed to make all of them the fall guys. Did I miss a lesson somewhere?" A stone slipped under her foot and she stumbled. "Besides which, you didn't even check out the crowd standing around the table."

"Actually, I did. I saw the casino's goons and knew they wouldn't be trouble."

"Yeah, but it wasn't the casino's goons we were running from," Sadie said acidly as she managed to get to her feet. "How did you miss Mharki's pack of enforcers? They spent half the evening butting in to bring her drinks, for goodness' sake!"

Knowing that he'd never win the argument, Bilgewater sighed before drawing himself up to his full six feet of height and wringing out his jacket. Extending a wiry hand to his partner, he helped her stand up; together, they waded through the shallows and onto dryer ground.

Sadie moved to a mossy piece of ground under a tumtum tree before sitting wearily. With a sigh, she began picking apart the waist-length braid of her long hair, stopping every so often to pull out a weed or tadpole as she muttered imprecations about clumsy card-sharps. Bilgewater looked at her and decided on the better part of valor.

"Why don't I head over that hill and see if there is a town nearby? You can wait here and rest a bit," he asked with careful politeness. When your getaway route relied on the help of a talented human transporter who could "skip" you through a number of interconnected universes to the world of your choosing, you needed to be very thoughtful. An annoyed Skipper had dozens of ways of taking care of problematic clients, including leaving them on a backwater planet with no discernible coffee shops in sight. Being nice to the person who took you through the web of universes was more than common courtesy; it was just plain common sense.

"That -- sounds good," Sadie answered. She felt limp and drained and headache-y, sure signs that her blood sugar was low. Running down the alleyway to make their way to the tangle before the outraged marks could demand their pound of flesh (or worse, their money back) in person had half worn her out and the physical drain of taking them from a dangerous spot to a place of safety had finished the job, sanded it smooth, and put on a fresh coat of paint.

Still, it didn't pay to get too annoyed. When your partner was the one with the skills to conjure gold from gullible marks, being nice to the person who bought the meals was more than common courtesy; it was just plain common sense.

He bent over her, his face tight with worry. "Are you sure you're okay? Fast skips always take a lot out of you."

She smiled and waved a hand dismissively. "It wasn't so bad. I started planning a getaway the moment I saw Mharki signaling to her goons. Give me some time and I'll be OK. But I am feeling a bit wobbly right now and need to rest for a bit." She made a half-hearted attempt to remove her shoes and leaned against a tree.

Bilgewater handed her a slightly soggy cookie from the depths of his coat pocket. "Managed to nab this from the buffet earlier. Eat this and I'll see if I can find some more food for both of us."

"Food. Check. If it's on a tree and it's a fruit, it should be edible. Stay away from bushes and so forth."

"How do you know that?"

"The good news is that I've been here before. We're on a world called Apkurd. It doesn't have many visitors or tangles to bring them in, so there's only one Guild hall here, and it's a small one."

"What's the bad news?"

"Apkurd is a world of dragons."

Bilgewater's eyebrows jumped up and down as if they were doing calisthenics. "A world full of people like Mallory?"

"No, fortunately, not all dragons are like him."

"I don't know whether to be relieved or horrified," Bilgewater muttered.

"The world is run by a 'Nomarch' - a governing body of dragons from all the different clans. In general, you can tell which clan a dragon is from by the way it looks, but there's been a lot of intermarriage so that doesn't always work. Most of the dragons here are like humans back on your world; they just want to eat, drink, and be merry." Sadie stretched her arms and yawned. "It was about the safest place we could get to quickly."

"Right. You did good. Take a nice nap while I go explore. I'll be back in a bit." Bilgewater waved and started up the trail leading over the hill. He was not entirely surprised to find a small road on the crest of the hill that led toward a wooded area. Beside him was a signpost with an arrow that read "Dimsleydale 5".

He scowled at it. "Five? Five what -- miles? Furlongs? Roods? Fathoms?" The universe did not seem disposed to answer, so he began walking in the direction indicated by the arrow. "I sure hope they don't mean 'sagans,' he muttered.

# _Chapter 4_

Dimsleydale was a quiet town, surrounded by fields of waving wheat and meadows full of sheep that were unaware of their looming appointment with mint jelly and ketchup. White-washed houses were arrayed beside winding lanes bordered with blooming flowers and children playing the usual games of youth, most of which involved running, falling down, and screaming for their parents as loudly as possible. Both humans and dragons lived in the town, sharing in its highs and lows and gathering every weekend in the town center to drink, dance, and trade each other what they had but didn't need for what they needed but didn't have. Until this morning, the biggest scandal in town had been the time that the Rooney boy had been caught with the pig and the lipstick.

The arrival of Judge Hamner had changed all that.

He had ridden into town just before noon, traveling in a blood-red carriage drawn by a pair of palomino hippogriffs with blood-red harnesses and jet-black trim. As the vehicle creaked to a stop, the groom, tastefully dressed in a blood-red waistcoat, jumped from the back and placed a set of wooden stairs below the door. A heavily-maned dragon with black robes and a scowl that could frighten a gargoyle emerged from the interior and descended regally. Onlookers drew back and whispered nervously among themselves as he stared around the town square of Dimsleydale.

After a moment, two smaller dark-maned gray dragons stepped out of the carriage. Both wore identical clerical robes. One carried a large case that appeared to be stuffed full of books, the other held a large gong and a scroll that had a number of wax seals dangling from it. As the groom climbed back onto his perch, one onlooker timidly asked the driver, "Who are they?"

"Judge Hamner 'n his clerks. They's werehuman 'n weredragon hunters," was answer as the grim trio marched toward the Town Center building, which housed Dimsleydale's town offices, post office, souvenir shop, and jail, complete with a root cellar that doubled as a 'dungeon'. "They's here to defend the land."

"Who's going to defend us from them?"

"As long as youse keep yer nose outta stuff, it don't need no defendin, see?" He popped the tip of the whip over the hippogriffs' ears and putting them into motion and ending any further attempts at conversation.

The newcomers lost little time in establishing their credentials. Within an hour, the Dimselydale town officials put up a proclamation that said Judge Hamner, Clerk Sedletz, and Clerk Quackenbush were agents of the Nomarch sent to fight the "curse of therianthropism") a phrase which caused half of the town to go running to the library to borrow the dictionary for a moment) and should be given their due and proper treatment. The proclamation also included impressive sounding expressions that the town officials were happy to finally find a use for, phrases such as "foremost of the deputies" and "authorized lawmakers" and "swift justice -- almost instantaneous, in fact." A large wax seal at the bottom signified its legitimacy.

The town officials quickly granted the trio a number of privileges not usually given to travelers; whether Dimsleydale's officials had any choice in the matter or not was a matter never brought up. These dispensations included the use of a chamber office and a jury room inside the Town Center Building and a suite of rooms at the town's only inn, breakfast and dinner included, free of charge. At the judge's scowl, the meals were expanded to include lunch, low tea, high tea, and tiffin.

With their thick tomes of law and faces that only smiled at another's misfortune, the judge and his clerks unnerved adults and children alike. They seemed to have an uncanny ability to be almost everywhere at once. Though the most the clerks ever said was "hmmm", they said it in such a sinister manner that after two days of being stalked by the judicial pack, the entire town was jumping at shadows and ready for things to change -- preferably for the better.

They got their wish on the third day when the clerk with the gong stood in the town square and after assaulting the morning air by pounding enthusiastically on the instrument, announced in a loud voice that there would be a meeting of 'all concerned citizens' in the town square at noon. There was an not-entirely unspoken implication that anyone who failed to show up or was not concerned enough might just discover that they were not actually citizens any longer. The second clerk produced a fairly large wooden platform with a set of steps. They stood guard over the structure until noon, when Judge Hamner himself stalked out of the inn and climbed the wooden stairs to face a crowd consisting of nervous, scared, and annoyed townspeople, most of whom were feeling all three sentiments. The judge raised his claws to the heavens and shouted dramatically, "THE REIGN OF THE THERIANTHROPES ENDS TODAY!"

He paused.

The crowd exchanged blank glances and waited.

Only after one of the crowd turned to her partner and loudly whispered "he means weredragons and werehumans" did the judge proceed.

"Therianthropes are a curse on the land! These vile beasts walk among you, pretending to innocence but preying on your whelplings as surely as the wolf preys on the sheep!"

A voice from the back of the crowd shouted, "Not around here; we've got really good shepherds!" There were a few nervous laughs, but most others began sidling out of reach of the heckler just in case a thunderbolt was going to suddenly drop out of the heavens.

The judge smiled like a shark contemplating a particularly tasty snack. "Why don't you step up here, my good dragon, so we can see who is trying to defend the werehumans around here. Let's see the faces of the ones who are giving the wolves an open path into the fold. Instead of protecting the sheep, they want to lead them like lambs to the slaughter."

The heckler, who had moved to a different part of the crowd, shouted "So which are we? Lambs or sheep?"

"Baah!" bleated a different voice. There were more chuckles.

Judge Hamner's grin looked like a death rictus as he pointed a sharp talon towards the middle of the crowd. The two clerks each took a short step forward. Those with some sense of self-preservation began shuffling away.

"Well, my friend, let us reason together," the judge sneered. "You make light of the danger. And you may be right; there may be no werehumans here. But if there are not, then what have you to fear from me and my clerks?"

Warming to his task, Hamner continued. "There are certain signs that can tell us of the presence of werehumans; my clerks and I are trained in their discovery. Marks like a lisp or a peculiar bald pattern or strange freckles. And then there's the matter of the doubly crossed lines on the palms of their hands. We know the constable isn't a werehuman -- we looked. But what about you? Or you? or YOU?"

As he spoke the townspeople began to edge away from each other and flinch away from the moving finger. Some put on hats; others pulled their robes and cloaks tight to hide sun-dappled arms. Most stared down at the palms of their open hands and then pretended that they hadn't really been looking.

Meanwhile the clerks roved through the crowd, stopping now and again to take a closer look at this human or that dragon. The ones who seemed to pass muster fell in the relatively safer space behind the pair. And then they abruptly stopped beside a burly brown male dragon, pulled up one of his tunic sleeves, and nodded.

On that signal, the judge pointed his talon directly at the dragon, shouting for the world to hear "There-- there's the weredragon that's been haunting this town! Seize him!"

"Who? Neil?" Murmurs of disbelief ran through the crowd. "He's just a potter! He owns the shop at the end of Overingdale road. Makes pots and things and souvenir soul-turnip lanterns for Soul Night."

Another voice chimed in. "Made a right nice plate for my Nanner's hunnert-an-eleventh birthday present."

"You think he's an innocent potter?" Hammer thundered as the dragon looked around with the expression of a rabbit that knows the foxes are circling. "Look at the marks on his arms! He's here to steal away your children! He is a savage monster capable of murdering every innocent in town!"

Friends and neighbors moved away from Neil as if suddenly afraid of what he might do.

"DO YOU THINK WE'RE ALL FOOLS? LOOK AT THE PALMS OF HIS HANDS!"

Neil turned then, ears flattened against his head and eyes wide and wild. The crowd gasped and shrank away from his touch as he shoved the clerks to the ground and bolted down the main street toward the fields beyond. As he reached the first cross street, he dropped to all fours and began running faster.

"After him!" Judge Hamner cried. "Don't let that animal get away!"

With marked reluctance, the townspeople gathered behind him and began the hunt for one of their own.

# _Chapter 5_

Sadie's headache and her annoyance with her partner had mostly evaporated by the time her clothes had dried. Sure, Bilgewater had gotten them into a tight spot again but it wasn't anything that they couldn't handle. And there were worse things than being dropped into a pond; they could still have that pack of thugs on their trail.

Having reached that philosophical conclusion, she stood up to see more of the where that they were. She'd been forced to make the hop toward Apkurd before she could get a good fix on her destination. It was obvious that she missed the standard landing area in the guild hall by some miles. Then again, as she was no longer in the guild, she didn't really mind missing the hall at all.

Nothing in the little vale looked familiar to her. The pond was a small depression surrounded by stately willows, puffy tumtum trees, and patches of reeds. A burbling creek ran into the pond on one side and slunk away on the other, as if ashamed of what it had done in the meantime. Some type of enthusiastic amphibians bum-rum-rumed in the water and birds tweeted from the branches while a warm breeze wafted through the dell, bringing summer's unmistakably heady aroma.

Apkurd wasn't the best place in the multiverses to hang out for a few days rest since they could hardly pass for dragons. But at least the locals had comfortable houses and were fairly open to gambling, so there was a good chance they could pick up enough money for a decent bed and some breakfast as soon as Bilgewater found a game to join.

There was a sudden movement to her left, startling her out of her reverie. Galloping swiftly over the crest of the hill was a large brown dragon crouched down and running on all fours. He kept looking over his shoulder as he pelted down into the hollow.

Sadie had just enough time to gasp "Hey!" before he careened into her, tumbling her back into the pond and sending him stumbling away from the path.

She splashed up from her watery resting place like a hungry trout snapping at a fly. "Hey! Watch where you're going!"

The dragon tossed a quick apology over his shoulder as he darted through a hedge and vanished into the trees on the other side of the glen. She staggered back upright, growling to herself as she slogged out of the pond once more. A second trip into the mud hadn't helped her shoes, her coiffure, or her patience. She squeezed the water out of her hair and began unbraiding it again, grumbling darkly about runaway dragons.

Yet more movement on the hillside caught her eye. A tall dragon in black robes stood on top of the same hill where the brown dragon had appeared. Standing by his side were two smaller dragons wearing robes, and just behind them she could see the tips of a number of ears that suggested there might be yet more dragons.

The small gray dragon on the left was the first to spot Sadie. He reared back in surprise and pointed. "There! There! Werehuman!"

She sneered in his general direction and continued raking the water weeds out of her hair as he trotted up to stop within an arm's length of her.

"Werehuman," he announced, pointing down at her.

Her sense of humor was wearing as thin as her patience. "Here human," she scowled, pointing at herself and then to the dragon. "There dragon."

The second dragon joined them. "Obviously a mentally deficient specimen, Sedletz."

"Obviously, Quackenbush."

"Why don't you guys take the comedy act on the road," Sadie snapped at them. She was wet and tired and feeling as if the universe owed her a cozy room and dry clothes and possibly a warm drink that involved cocoa, marshmallows, and maybe a bit of something that her mother would disapprove of.

"Be still, both of you," the tall dragon ordered as he strode up to the gathering.

"Yes, Judge Hamner!" the pair chorused. A mob made up of humans and dragons began edging slowly down the hill, trailing the judge by several yards. Unlike most mobs, they seemed almost reluctant to do their mobly chores of shouting, brandishing threatening implements, and generally being obnoxious. Instead, they shuffled forward almost shyly as they followed the trio of dragons down the hill and surrounded Sadie with a half-hearted growl and a somewhat abashed shake of their shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction.

The tall dragon stood before the mob and raised his hands in victory. "As promised, we have caught the werehuman!"

"Er, are you sure she's the dragon you were chasing?" one of the mob asked.

"Of course! Do you see any other werehuman in the area?"

"Uh, no."

"That proves it then! She thought to confuse us by changing from her dragon form into the unnatural shape of a human, but justice is not fooled!"

"What do you mean 'unnatural'?" asked one of the humans in the mob.

"Unnatural for her, of course. For you, I am sure that being human is as natural as being a dragon is for me." Warming to his topic, the judge raised his voice in full oratorical mode. "Indeed, it is because these evil werehumans --"

"As I told you, here human." Sadie rose, drawing herself up to her full five feet, three inches height, which left her staring at the middle of the dragon's chest. Pointing helpfully at Hamner, she continued. "There dragon. And there and there and there."

Some of the members of the mob sniggered, only to be silenced by the judge's icy glare. Looking around with an expression that implied disapproval of and immediate removal for any person guilty of shenanigans, mischief, or foolery (tom- or otherwise) he waggled a talon at the mob. "Do not be taken in by her innocent appearance. She is a vile werehuman and must face the penalties! Take her prisoner and bring her with us."

"I've had enough of this," Sadie growled. Adrenaline coursed briefly through her as she cocked her fist.

The judge gave an amused smile and snapped his fingers. From behind her, Quackenbush dropped his cape over her head and then wrapped her in his arms, angling her thrashing legs away from his shins. Something rattled and clanked and she was rudely shoved forward.

"Cage the thing and bring it back to Dimsleydale," the judge ordered. "It's time we had see to some justice around here!"

Sadie clawed the cape away from her face just in time to see the iron cage door shut. A human woman twisted the key in the lock.

"Sorry, stranger, but it's you or us," she muttered as she handed the key back to the judge.

#  _Chapter 6_

Duncan followed Mallory along the dusty red road that threaded through the long valley. Their packs were light, mainly because they didn't have anything to put in them except the most basic of camping gear. The only food on the riverboat was limited to oatmeal and oats; by common agreement they decided to take their chances with the bumbleberries that grew wild on the hills around them and hoped for something less monotonous when they got closer to a town.

The pair also struck an agreement on the weredragon scam. If the first few dragons didn't run from Duncan, they would go into the town and look for a card game instead. Duncan wasn't particularly optimistic about this plan, though Mallory kept insisting that their luck would change once they reached town. Duncan suspected that any change in luck would probably be for the worse, which meant they'd probably run into Sadie and Bilgewater.

A flock of birds scattered as they approached a cluster of road signs that festooned a tall wooden pole. Several of them seemed to be the names of roads that connected to the marker, but others appeared to be the names of towns. Duncan felt confident that at least one of the places had to be filled with gullible locals ready to give up their gold to a pair of stalwart heroes -- or even to himself and his partner.

"Why are we going to Dimsleydale when it looks like Gabal is just as close?" Duncan asked.

"You heard the schoolwyrm. They already know about werehumans. That makes your job a lot easier. Maybe now you'll be able to scare us up some customers!"

It didn't take a genius to see what direction the conversation was going to head. Duncan decided to head the discussion off at the pass. "And how many customers have you managed to scare up in the past week?"

"That's irrelevant," Mallory waved aside the objection. "You are supposed to be the scary one, not me!"

Duncan's reply was lost to the ages as a young, lithesome woman ran over the hilltop and crashed directly into him, spilling them both on the grass. Together they slid and tumbled down the hill ending up in a tangle of limbs, clothes, and other accoutrements. Pulling the woman's foot from his ear with as much delicacy as he could muster, he stared at the angel that had fallen from heaven and into his arms.

"Uh, hello," he began carefully. "Are you alright?"

"I will be as soon as you get your boots off of my stomach!" the vision snapped. "Why don't you watch where you are going?"

"You ran into me," Duncan corrected. "And I'll move my boots just as soon as you get your arm out of my scabbard belt."

"Oh. Sorry!"

With fits and starts the pair untangled themselves as Mallory walked back down the hill to watch. He was impressed by the woman's surprisingly wide vocabulary; he'd never heard anyone suggest using a dagger in such a manner before but, on reflection, had to admit the idea had merit. And given her stout clothing and strong arms, he was willing to bet she could do it, too.

"You'll have to forgive my clumsy friend," Mallory said in a smooth tone of voice reserved for court officials and suckers. "We were discussing philosophy when you arrived. I'm Mallory and this ... person is Duncan."

Duncan smiled nervously. At a high sign from his partner, he changed tack and, in his most charming voice, added. "Yes, please accept my apologies, ma'am. I hope you're not hurt."

"Oh. Sorry. It's really okay," she replied as she absentmindedly tugged on her tunic to straighten it. "I should have been watching where I was going. I'm Inga."

"You really were in quite a hurry. Where are you going?"

"I'm headed to the, er, stables at Dimsleydale to pick up the, ah, potter's old hippogryph."

"Then we're the perfect companions for your travels!" Mallory shifted into full used-chariot salesman mode. "Not only can we protect you on your way, we can help you find what you are looking for. And our rates are the best you'll find for miles around."

"Aren't you the only people for miles around?" she asked.

"See! Now you know how I got my reputation as 'Honest Mallory'!"

"Have you ever been to Dimsleydale?" Inga asked.

"First time for us. We're having an adventure," the dragon enthused. "Fresh air, a change of pace, fabulous country, and the chance to see exotic Dimsleydale. What more could you ask for?"

"Gold," Duncan muttered.

"We'll worry about that later," Mallory grinned. "Right now, let's get moving. The last signpost said it was only three leagues. We should be there in time for a nice late lunch."

"Gee. If only we had some money to buy lunch with," Duncan said sardonically.

Mallory tossed a pack to Duncan. "Bah! Let's not worry about our stomachs when adventure waits for us and this lovely young lady in the charming town of Dimsleydale."

# _Chapter 7_

Bilgewater felt a rising sense of despair as he passed the sign that read "Welcome to Dimsleydale." The brightly colored pamphlets in its visitor center touted the place as 'quaint' and 'old-fashioned'. A more accurate description would be "depressingly wholesome", what with the flowers along the streets and the chickens in the yards, all of which were distressingly empty of other life forms. Wholesome he could deal with; some of his best cons had been run on wholesome people. But empty was another matter. You can't make gold from a turnip and you can't con a person who isn't there. Bilgewater knew this for a fact, because he'd tried doing both.

After he wandered through the vacant town, he settled down by the fountain in the town square opposite the jail. One thing he knew from experience was that sooner or later, everyone comes to the town fountain or to the jail. On more memorable occasions, they did both at the same time.

He had been sitting only a few minutes when he heard the sounds of a mob heading his way. In the years since he had become a professional gambler, Bilgewater had become a connoisseur of mobs, able to judge the strength of the crowd's anger to within one pitchfork based on the amount of muttering and some of the more interesting verbs that were bandied about. Based on the level of muttering and foot-dragging from this mob, he placed their level of rowdiness as somewhere between "10% off at Gimbel's" and "Timmy got stuck in a well". Their shouts just didn't have the full-throated roar of a Bastille Day or the savage howl of a half-price wedding gown mob, but it wasn't as quiet as a "Morning After A Significant National Holiday Traffic Jam," either. He could work with it.

Standing straight by the fountain, he pushed up his glasses and put on his best "I'm really an honest guy and these are mostly real diamonds" smile just as a dragon in judicial robes wearing a scowl that indicated he was in favor of mass decapitations leavened by the occasional defenestration came stalking around the corner. He was trailed by two smaller dragons in similar robes, who wore glasses and carried large books. A few paces behind this grim trio was a mixed group of dragons and humans carrying a cage that contained the rather forlorn and bedraggled figure of Sadie.

"Take the werehuman to the jailhouse dungeon! Don't let her out of her cage!" the judge cried, pointing to a thick oak door. There were a few half-hearted shouts that became wholehearted as the judge turned his basilisk glare on them, and then the mass of townsfolk hid Sadie and her cage from view.

Bilgewater made his way over to the edge of the throng where the less enthusiastic ones were standing around, looking as if they wanted to be somewhere else. He summoned up his most friendly "I'm just here from out of town" expression and approached a pair of humans who had gone from muttering loudly to mumbling under their breaths. "Who's the big dragon? What's going on?"

A woman turned toward him. "That dragon is Judge Hamner. He's a weredragon hunter. Just a bit ago he accused Neil the potter of being a weredragon. They tried to catch him and take him to the jail. Neil started running."

"Yep! We all ran after him. Caught her, too." An older man who was obviously a pitchfork aficionado added, punctuating his sentences by waving several farming implements enthusiastically.

Using a fingertip, Bilgewater delicately moved the blade of the scythe away from his kneecaps. "Well, my goodness! What are they going to do to that wretched being?"

"Don't know, but it's bound to be FUN!" the pitchfork fan declared before wandering off to slap his fellow wielders of farm implements on the back in congratulations for their victorious hunt.

Bilgewater reflected that the implement crowd's enthusiasm suggested a number of outcomes, none of which were likely to meet with Sadie's approval. He was pretty sure she could skip out of most dangerous situations, assuming she'd had enough food and enough rest. And he was almost certain that he could talk her out of trouble, assuming that the trial and execution didn't start within the next ten minutes. All he needed was a plan and some help. Preferably from someone who didn't hold a grudge against them.

A movement on the other side of the plaza caught his eye. Coming down the street was the unpleasantly familiar sight of a well-muscled human warrior in a red tunic accompanied by a tall blue dragon. Only their companion, a silvery-haired woman in a poorly fitting tunic who was looking around nervously, was new. It wasn't exactly the cavalry coming over the hill for a rescue but it would have to do. With a sigh, Bilgewater walked across the square. He'd almost have rather it had been Bastille Day.

Mallory pricked his ears and smiled as he walked up. "Ah look. It's our old buddy, Bilgewater. Now what can he possibly want, and what has he done with Sadie?"

"She's probably lurking in the underbrush somewhere, plotting something," Duncan grinned.

"That's very likely. So what are you doing here in this lovely little hamlet, Bilgewater? Fresh out of tarantula? Inciting another mob, perhaps?"

"I came here looking for work," Bilgewater said defensively. "And now I'm looking for some help."

"If it's cards, you're out of luck. Or dice. And if it's tarantulas, you're on your own."

"I'm not in the mood for your jokes, Mallory" Bilgewater scowled. "You see the mob? And that big dragon in the black robe? Apparently he thinks Sadie's a werehuman. That mob rounded her up and shoved her in a cage. Now they've locked her in jail."

"Oh. She's not usually in that much trouble. What did she do and how much is the bail?"

"Don't know, and don't know. We'd skipped here just an hour or so ago. I left Sadie resting in a safe place and came here to see what the chances were of getting food and a place to sleep. I was looking around when that dragon over there and his buddies came storming in with that bunch following them, dragging a cage. I saw Sadie in it. They took her into that building where the jail is and shut the door."

Inga began backing away, her eyes wide. "Oh no. That's Judge Hamner. From Lokinge. I should be going. I'll get the cart another time."

"Cart?" Duncan looked puzzled. "I thought you said it was the potter's old hippogryph."

"It was. It's attached to the cart," Inga extemporized.

Mallory and Duncan exchanged a Significant Look before the dragon held up his hands. "Wait, please. You seem to know about this judge. I'd like to hear more about him."

"Me, too," Bilgewater added.

She glanced over her shoulder towards the countryside, her body poised as if to run. Mallory reached out and gently caught her wrist in his hand. "I think you need help, don't you? You're going to have trouble getting that cart and your goods back. Unless I miss my guess, that's a lot of somebody's money, right?"

She nodded as she pulled her hand free. "I can wait," she said defiantly.

"Look, we can help you. Why don't you and Duncan go set up a camp back where we first saw you. Bilgewater and I will see what's going on at the jail and in town and we can check on your cart as well. We'll all meet at the camp later and we can figure out a way to get your cart back and get our friend out of jail without causing major damage to ourselves or anyone else."

"I don't know..."

Duncan shouldered Mallory's pack and walked toward her. "Please? Please come with me."

She paused a moment and then nodded. "Okay. But be careful. Judge Hamner is a very scary dragon."

"He won't suspect a thing. Trust me," said Mallory.

"Hey! Wait a second! Why not stay at the inn?" Bilgewater asked. "It's closer and no one will ask questions."

Mallory gave him a hard stare. "Do you have any gold?"

"No."

"Then why did you ask?"

Bilgewater shrugged. "Last dregs of hope, I guess."

Mallory started forward. "Come on, Bilgewater. We've got a princess to save."

"Sadie's not going to like you calling her a princess, you know," Bilgewater said as they walked toward the jail.

# _Chapter 8_

Duncan led Inga out of town to a small glade by a stream that neatly divided a farmer's field into "watched" and "not watched". He looked around for a moment then snorted in satisfaction.

"Home, sweet home - or good enough for now."

"This grove looks just like every other place along the road," Inga said. "Why this spot?"

"It's got all the features that make a night under the stars memorable," Duncan grinned. "Running water, rocks just big enough to dig into your back in the middle of the night, trees that are suspiciously free of firewood." He pointed at a squirrel that had stopped to scold them. "It's even got furry little animals to keep us awake by making odd sounds all night long. What more could you want?"

"I'll get some firewood. And before you ask, I know how to tell what kind of wood burns best." She seemed a little defensive, as though she'd had her skills questioned before. "Potters need to know how to get the right kind of fires going for their kilns."

"Never doubted it." He handed her a small hatchet from his backpack and wandered over to an appropriate spot at the edge of the grove of trees. Digging in the two rucksacks, he pulled out the essentials that turn a vacant lot into a camp: a coffee pot that had no coffee, a bedrolls that were too thin to sleep on, and a lantern without a candle. He dumped these on the ground and kicked a few rocks into a loose circle for a fire pit. Finally, he dragged a couple of tree stumps over to use for seats and sat down with a satisfied sigh.

Inga returned with a small armload of firewood. "Shall we start a fire?"

"It's a bit early for that. Don't want to waste our firewood."

"Well, you should at least gather some more firewood so that we can have a nice fire for tonight," she replied. "I'll get some water for coffee while you do that."

"Why? We don't have any coffee."

"Really?" She sat on the log across from him and folded her hands, staring at him as if she expected a very rational reason why the most essential beverage in the multiverses was missing from the packs of supplies.

It was the sort of look he remembered his tutors giving him when they started asking him things like "what was the date of the Battle of Bulgy Barn" and "how many splenks are in a gadha battle mace"? Given that the truth was "we ran out of coffee after a week of practicing weredragon attacks", he decided that something other than the exact truth was needed. It wasn't likely to win any friends in this particular situation.

He hedged his bets. "It's kind of complicated. Don't really want to go into it."

"I see."

Silence stretched between them. Inga watched him with an expression he couldn't decipher. Duncan could feel his nerves fraying as the hysterical urge to do something, anything, right away rose up and threatened to overwhelm him.

He'd been raised with his father's advice to "treat a woman like a duchess and a duchess like a woman", a mysterious homily that turned out to be a recipe for many social disasters. On one memorable occasion, he decided that this meant he should demand that the Duchess of Leurbost fetch his stuffed dragon and take him to bed. Of course, he was four years old at the time, but it was one of those legendary social faux pas that families never let you forget.

He smiled nervously at her, trying to remember how detectives in Sadie's dime novels questioned the female suspects. All he could remember was that it seemed to involve either closed rooms and a lot of detectives and bright lights or soft lighting and a bottle of wine - all of which were in remarkably short supply in this sheep inundated countryside.

Inga was watching him with her head cocked, waiting for him to say something.

"Um, so, the weather sure is nice here. All those puffy white clouds. Hope it doesn't rain tonight." Duncan smiled tentatively, inwardly cringing at how banal his words sounded. He thought about adding "so tell me about weredragons" but couldn't think of a way to make it sound natural.

Inga ignored his words and took their meaning before smiling sweetly, "You know, I think I'm very glad that you came along with me."

"Oh?" Thoughts of asking about judges and weredragons promptly faded from his mind.

"You're a knight, aren't you? From Romanca or maybe Knecthame?"

"Um, yes. I'm a Romancer."

"That explains why you're so gallant." She moved a little closer to him.

People had called Duncan a lot of things during his lifetime, but 'gallant' was not one of them. Clueless, yes, and clumsy, not to mention chicken, childish, and cretinous. But never gallant. He stared at his battered and scuffed boots, praying for inspiration or divine intervention. Was she going to try and trap him into doing something for her?

Although the children of Romanca nobles were supposed to be the cream of the local society, Duncan had never mastered any of what the Romancers considered "social graces" - a failure that annoyed his mother and infuriated his father. They had raised six other children and each of those were paragons of courtly manners and elegance. Duncan seemed to be the only one of the flock that completely missed the point of all the lectures and lessons.

The art of small talk was completely lost on Duncan. He could recite poetry but he couldn't remember which knights were featured in the most recent WEEKLY HERO HERALD. He knew how to tie eight different kinds of nautical knots but couldn't figure out how to aim a catapult properly. He could ride a horse and in fact knew how to handle a sword but he was very reluctant to cut bits off of other people. In short, he was a failure as far as the nobles of Romanca were concerned.

This made social gatherings something of a nightmare and he usually made awkward excuses to leave parties and events shortly after he arrived. He left even more quickly when conversation turned casual and flirty. In many cases, his exit was encouraged by the young lady's parents, siblings, or nearby relatives.

Nevertheless, Inga seemed rather determined to get to know him better. "I have heard many tales about Romanca," she said, wiggling her hips to find a more comfortable place on the log and ending up even closer to him. "I hear that knights are the sons of the nobles of the realm."

"Yep. Only way to be a knight. Can't get out of it." He groaned inwardly. This wasn't going well at all.

What he really wanted to do was to get up and bolt for the hills, but that seemed a bit rude, so he settled on praying under his breath for some sort of intervention - divine or otherwise. Even Humphrey would have been a welcome distraction.

The heavens didn't seem to be listening. Inga moved closer and raised her hand to touch his hair, pulling a strand of it back from his face. "I think I would like a nice hot drink. I bet you'd like something, too. Why don't you go take a bath and I'll make us some tea."

He looked around desperately. "Uh, no tea, either. Haven't had some in awhile. All gone. Like the coffee."

"That's no problem. There's snowbush over there beside the road. It makes good tea; you don't even need sugar or lemon in it. I'll make us some while you get cleaned up."

In Duncan's limited experience, when someone suggested a bath several times in the space of one minute, it was generally a clue that he needed to march to the nearest water and decontaminate himself. "Bath. Right. I'll be back soon."

"I'll be waiting."

Having obtained permission to flee, he fled.

There were little sheep-worn paths that led down to the water, winding their way through the undergrowth. Duncan followed one of them down to the stream where he stripped off his shirt and splashed water all over his torso and face and then carefully scrubbed his skin with the sand from the riverbed. He cleaned an old berry stain from his tunic and another from his pants. Dealing with boots and socks would take hours, so he contented himself with just brushing off the leather.

Sticking his head under the stream, he swirled his hair in the water until it was relatively clean, ignoring the fish that had come to the surface to complain about the oil slick he was leaving behind. He hastily dried off and checked his appearance in the stream. He looked soggy but reasonably presentable.

There were bumbleberry bushes growing nearby, so he ate a few and then picked a handful of the brightest colored fruit and walked back to camp singing a rusty tune that frightened the squirrels into giving up hazelnuts for Lent. Stopping before Inga, he smiled and asked "Better?"

"My hero." she smiled gently.

He held out the berries. "I, um, I brought you something to eat."

Her expression changed and she shrank back. "That's so sweet of you but I'm really deathly allergic to them. Can you put them somewhere and then wash your hands?" Her eyes pleaded for understanding. Crestfallen, he turned back to the stream where he sat for a few moments and then ate the berries before washing his hands very carefully.

Inga looked up as he came back, smiled warmly, and patted the log beside her. "You're so kind and understanding. Come sit here beside me."

He perched nervously near the other end of the log. She scooted toward him.

"I'm glad you came along to keep me safe."

"Um, thanks. Err, so..."

"So?" She arched an eyebrow.

Duncan rushed into the intervening silence with the only topic he knew that she knew something about. "So what about the judge?"

"He frightens me."

"He's a grim-looking sort."

"Grim... isn't quite the word. He's unstoppable. I've seen him go after others. I'm afraid that he might think I'm one of his werehuman-dragons." She broke a stick and tossed it into the fire pit and then sat down next to him.

"He really seems to hate them."

"I've heard he kills them, you know; kills people he thinks are weredragons and werehumans. I think he would like to kill me."

He patted her hand awkwardly. "It's okay. We won't let that happen to you."

"You're very brave."

Compliments had been few and far between in Duncan's life, and once again he wasn't sure how to proceed.

Bravery, in his opinion, was highly overrated. Anytime someone in his family mentioned bravery, it was usually accompanied by descriptions of how the heroes ran into battles, waving swords and chopped the heads off of various things. Duncan preferred to avoid these frays mainly because this meant that the other side was also running into battle and wanting to chop off your head, and he was rather fond of the connection his head and his neck had developed over the years. It didn't seem to be a very good time to mention this, however, so he blushed and mumbled, "Well, it's what a knight's supposed to do."

She was sitting beside him now, her body touching his. His skin felt hot where her leg pressed against his. He was afraid to move and afraid to look at her, so he settled on staring at the fire.

She touched the braid on the sleeve of his tunic. "When I was little, we read about how a lady would give a knight a small present, a favor, to wear into battle. Do they do that in Romanca?"

"Uh huh." He could feel heat rising in his body.

"Would you wear my favor, then?" She reached into a pocket of her tunic and pulled out a small blue and white pottery medallion strung on a leather thong. The face was painted with the design of a bird.

"I made this one myself. The bird represents the spirit and how we always yearn for something higher that's just beyond our reach." She placed the cord around his neck and tied the leather thong. Her hands rested on his collar bones now, and he could feel their heat through the cloth of his tunic.

His heart was hammering against his ribs and his chest was tight. "Oh. Ah. Thank you. It's beautiful."

She leaned in close. "It's traditional that the lady kiss the knight when she gives him a favor."

He could feel her breath on his face, warm and fragrant and oh so desirable, and panic gave way to the excitement of the moment. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and felt the soft touch of her lips on his.

As the kiss deepened, he sent a desperate prayer skyward to all the deities that Mallory and Bilgewater wouldn't come back too soon and ruin it all.

# _Chapter 9_

Dimsleydale's town offices were housed in a one-stop medium sized building that hovered over the town square like a nervous chicken. It was the type of "one-stop" government center common to many small towns that managed to contain a courthouse and a jail, souvenir stand, and a large room that served as the council's meeting hall whenever there was an issue that needed to be aired. Architecturally, it was a nightmare - a squarish stone building with a rather squat tower over the entrance that looked out of place among the framed cottages and whitewashed walls. Detractors said that it had been designed by an absent-minded seven year old -- which wasn't far from the truth. It was the brainchild of the nephew of the town's last mayor, who insisted that the sophisticated design with porticoes and tall columns and a prominent tower would show the area that Dimsleydale was a center of modern innovation. The tower, which had developed a rather pronounced sag in its middle, was a major reason that he was the last mayor and not the current mayor.

Bilgewater examined the building's main entrance carefully. When one of the consequences of going into a place was other people becoming very unhappy with your presence, it was a good idea to notice which way the door swung and if there were handy hiding places on either side of the portal.

Mallory, with all the confidence of a being who could flame his way out of almost any situation, boldly knocked on the door. Bilgewater edged nervously to one side as the oaken door, elaborately carved with scenes from the law including a satyr suing for defamation and a hare giving a tortoise a speeding ticket, slowly swung open to reveal the judge's clerks. They solemnly eyed Mallory and Bilgewater for a moment before shouting in unison "We're not home!" and slamming the door shut.

Mallory frowned at the closed door. "Not very friendly, are they?"

"But swift. You don't often see the doors of justice moving that fast." Bilgewater, who had some experience with the matter, added.

"Yes, well they say that the power of the law is in the hands of the people."

"These guys don't seem to agree. I don't think we're going to get anywhere if they keep slamming the door in our faces."

Spying a loose cobblestone, Mallory leaned it against the bottom of the door near the jamb. "Just the thing we need. Now watch and learn." Standing back up, he knocked again, even harder than before.

The door squeaked open again. "We told you, we're not open right now," Quackenbush said as Mallory quietly toed the rock between the door and the door jamb.

"Surely you have time to see us."

"No." Quackenbush gave the door a hard shove. It bounced against the cobblestone and slapped into Sedletz's nose.

Bilgewater and Mallory pushed their way into the courthouse hall as the clerks fluttered in confusion.

Smiling his toothiest smile, Mallory asked "Now, are you sure you're not at home? We've got business with the judge."

"Sedletz told you! Judge Hamner is too busy to see anyone," Quackenbush said.

"He's busy getting ready for tomorrow's trial and execution," Sedletz added.

"I think that he might really want to see us. We're friends of the accused," Bilgewater said as he trimmed his nails with a long, sharp dagger. Before Mallory could warn him with a kick, he added "Wealthy friends."

"Are you trying to bribe us? Listen to this, Quackenbush! He might be trying to bribe us," Sedletz leaned in until he was snout-to-nose with Bilgewater.

"Oh, my!" Quackenbush rubbed his hands in glee. "And he actually admits to being a friend of a werehuman!"

Mallory leaned his own nose into the situation. "Don't you think the Judge wants to actually follow the law in this case?"

"Oh, he is. And we've got the books to prove it.

"Really? I don't see any sign that this poor unfortunate human woman has a defender. If he's not giving her a fair trial, it makes him look like he was just running around hanging people for amusement."

"That won't make him look very good, will it?" Bilgewater added. "It's going to make everyone around here very nervous."

"I'm sure that people will be asking if he's just going to execute and ask questions later," added Mallory.

Sedletz turned to his partner. "Well, perhaps, just this once."

"Indubitably! It isn't often that the judge gets to meet someone who defends fiends."

"And is friends with a fiend!"

"She's not a fiend!" Bilgewater growled. "There's a perfectly logical explanation here. She's just a normal human who was in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

A deep voice came from the doorway leading into the courtroom proper. "Or perhaps she was in the right place at the right time for justice to finally be done!"

Mallory sidled up to the courtroom door frame. "Aren't you jumping the gun a bit, Hammy old boy?"

"That's Judge Hamner to you, whelpling! And I'm not jumping the gun. We have the evidence. We saw it with our own eyes."

"Do tell?"

"We saw the marks of her werehuman form when she was pretending to be a true dragon. When we accused her of being a werehuman, she ran. She transformed into a human to try and escape justice just before we caught her. Ergo, by her own actions she is not only accused but convicted!"

"Did you actually see her transform from dragon to human?" Bilgewater asked.

"No, but that wasn't necessary. Going up the hill, she was a dragon. Coming down, she was a human. Q.E.D."

"Q.E.D.?" Bilgewater asked.

"Quit Enraging Dragons," Mallory replied. "It means he's got his mind made up and nothing and nobody is going to change it. Right, Hammy?"

"That's 'Judge Hamner', you scale-bound swamp drake," Quackenbush growled.

"Crudely put, but what else could we expect from werehuman supporter?" Judge Hamner sneered.

"And that's another thing - what do you have against werehumans anyway?" Mallory asked the judge. "I haven't heard that there's any law against being a werehuman."

Hamner frowned down at Mallory. "Is it not enough that they are vile, reprehensible creatures who seek only to do evil?"

"Well, since I've never seen one, much less seen one being vile, reprehensible, or doing evil, I'd have to say no."

The judge adjusted his robes and touched the stack of books on his desk. Using his talon, he flipped open the top book. "The weredragons have been a source of misery in Apopmag for many years. Legends say that they killed over a thousand of us in a hunt that was led by King Kagyu."

"That's a legend; a fairy story." Mallory pointed to the title of the book, "YSOPET'S FABLES FOR YOUNG DRAGONS."

"And there's stories from Old Stormharm," Sedletz added, hefting his book.

Mallory poked the cover. "THRILLING TALES OF HORROR. That's pretty thin evidence. And so's LEGEND OF THE WEREDRAGONS", he added, pointing at Quackenbush's tome.

"We have plenty of evidence that there's truth in these old legends!" Quackenbush huffed. "There's stories of a tribe of the things up in the hills."

"And for a few coins, you can get a storyteller to give you a tale about weredragons haunting your teacup."

Sedletz placed a hand on the Judge's shoulder. "Most of all, we know it's true because people have had their kids taken by the weredragons."

The judge bowed his head. "At Lokinge we lost three of our children to the weredragons. One was my own son."

Bilgewater blinked. "Your own son? When was this?"

"A decade ago."

"Oh?"

Hamner sighed heavily. "We heard rumors from another town about people turning into weredragons and werehumans, but we thought they were just wild stories. Then one evening, I put my boy to bed. Read him his favorite story about the Dragon and the George and the last thing I said to him was 'be good or the werehumans will take you away and eat you!'"

Hamner paused and swallowed hard. "You never know what your last words to someone will be. In the morning, he was gone. There were human footprints outside his window. Can you imagine how a parent feels if the last thing they ever say to their child is that they will be eaten by a monster - and then your child is taken by the very monster you threatened him with?"

The room was silent. Finally Quackenbush said softly, "That wasn't the only child taken that night."

Sedletz nodded. "Two others were stolen that same night. Quackenbush's cousin - my neighbor's daughter - was one. My niece was another. Both gone in the morning with nothing but human footprints outside their windows."

Judge Hamner drew a long, shaky breath. "We hunted for them for a month, praying every day that they would be found. In the night, we would hear screams and children crying. We hunted day and night, packs of us. We searched every inch of the area but we never found any trace. We did see the weredragons, though. They were small, like your friend. And they were naked and acting like wild monkeys."

"I shot at one," Quackenbush said, "but it ran off. I guess we scared them out of the area because we never saw them again."

Hamner slammed his long talons down on top of his law books. "Ever since that night, the three of us have traveled together, hunting these fiends and driving them out of every place we can find them. They tremble at our names. I will not rest and I will not allow any werehuman or weredragon to live so long as I have breath!"

#   
_Chapter 10_

Duncan wanted the kiss to last forever, lost in the experience of Inga's soft lips against his and the warm scent of her skin. But as the kiss deepened, her lips were suddenly smooth and hard and her scent was strangely changed. Something was definitely wrong.

He cautiously opened one eye and found himself eyeball-to-nostril with the business end of a dragon's snout. It was a very large and somewhat flared nostril, he noted, which was usually a sign that the person who was staring down the nostril should consider ducking very quickly.

He opened his other eye and awoke to a terrible realization. What he was kissing was not the beautiful young maiden of his dreams, but a dragon. A large dragon. A large, angry-looking dragon. A large, angry-looking male dragon. A large, angry-looking male dragon who screwed up his snout in distaste as he searched for exactly the right word to use in this most awkward of circumstances.

"Dammit," the dragon said. "You ate those bumbleberries, didn't you?"

Duncan managed a bewildered "Ggnmph?" which the dragon correctly interpreted as "who are you and what have you done with Inga?"

The dragon pulled back and turned his head away. "I'm Neil," he said, his voice heavy with what might be regret. "And I'm also Inga."

Duncan's face twisted in confusion before comprehension dawned like the hangover after a glorious night out. "You mean you're...?"

"Yes. I'm a weredragon."

"Oh."

Duncan wasn't aware of any protocol for how to respond in situations where the person you were kissing turned out to be an entirely different sex and species in mid-kiss; at least, his father had never covered this in all of his talks about the birds and the bees and What Men Should Do With Women.

Wiping his lips didn't exactly seem to be the tactful thing to do. Nor did trying for another kiss -- not that he was very interested in that option. Duncan settled for inching away from the dragon, though he could tell from the way that the dragon's ears sagged that there wasn't any threat of an attack.

Inga, or rather, Neil, sighed heavily. "I sort of owe you an explanation, don't I?"

"That would be lovely," Duncan said drily. It sounded more menacing than he had intended.

"I really did mean what I said, though," Neil said softly, staring at his hands. "You have been kind and gallant. I felt safe with you. And I really am terrified of Judge Hamner."

Although Duncan didn't have much experience with human women, he did have a lot of recent experience with dragons. "The judge doesn't exactly seem like the type to make friends easily. More the 'flame first and sort out the remains after' kind."

"Yes. And his two clerks are even worse. I wouldn't be able to get a word out before they'd turned me into a pile of ash."

Duncan put a hand on the dragon's shoulder. "We said we'd help, and we meant it. So tell me about Hamner and the others. How do you know them and what do you know about them."

"It's a very long story."

"I have all the time in the world."

# _Chapter 11_

Tempers were beginning to fray in the judge's chambers as the argument about Sadie continued with no sign of resolution. Even after three hours of wrangling, neither side had materially changed their position. The judge held that the only way to see justice done was to submit Sadie to a trial and execution; Bilgewater was of the opinion that perhaps it would be more just to put the judge in Sadie's place. Mallory thought Bilgewater was too kind and the clerks should be included as associates before, during, and after the fact. The clerks felt that both Mallory and Bilgewater were mutant-aberrant were-beings and had somehow managed to hide the obvious marks.

"Why should she admit to being something she's not, Hammy?" Mallory asked for the thirty-third time. Hamner ignored him and began writing on a legal-looking sheet of paper.

"How many times do you have to be told -- he's Judge Hamner!" Quackenbush hissed.

Sedletz merely stared at the blue dragon over his glasses and commented, "If you want answers, whelp, you'd better mind your tongue and your manners. Bravura may be fun but the law can toss you out of any establishment."

"And keep you out. Permanently," Quackenbush added.

The judge continued writing.

Bilgewater stepped in. "You're civilized people. You've got laws. There's no law against being a were-person-dragon."

"Actually, we're processing it under the Dangerous Creature Ordinance," Hamner said as he continued writing. "As a magistrate, I can order any dangerous creature to be put to death."

Quackenbush waved a thick book. "Ordinance number 180, section 5. Right here."

Hamner dipped his pen in the inkwell. "We know she's a werehuman; all of the signs point to it: Her short size, the long hair, the sarcasm, the freckles, and the crossed lines on her palms. It's there in the books."

"If she's a creature, how can there be a trial? It's like putting a chicken on trial!"

The judge's eyes glittered as he stared at Bilgewater. "In fact, we can and we have. At any rate, this is a classic open-and-shut case. If she confesses, then she gets to pick how she dies. If she doesn't confess, then we get to decide how she dies."

"That's not much of an incentive," Mallory shot back. "Unless 'old age' is one of her choices."

"Sorry, no," Sedletz said.

"A werehuman tried it in 4715; the judge ruled it was 'cruel and unusual punishment' and ordered a beheading instead." Quackenbush put in.

"Losing his head wasn't cruel?" Bilgewater asked.

"Oh, no - they used a very sharp axe," Quackenbush assured him.

"So how can we prove that she's not a werehuman?"

"Oh, that's easy!" Hamner said, waving his talons for emphasis. "We just set her on fire. If she doesn't burn up, then she's a werehuman. If she burns to ashes then she was innocent."

"Perhaps something a little less incendiary?" Bilgewater suggested. The pencil he was twisting in his hands snapped; absentmindedly, he tossed it into the fire, trying not to visualize Sadie in the same position.

"Well, we could try piling stones on her," Quackenbush offered. "If she's crushed, she's innocent. If she isn't crushed, then she's a werehuman and we'll have to kill her."

"Let's try again," he urged. "I'd really rather not lose my favorite human if I can help it."

"What about dunking?" Sedletz suggested.

"No, she'd have to drown," Quackenbush replied. "You could try the rack; some people live through it."

"Don't you see the problem with your trials?" Mallory asked testily.

"What?"

"They only have two outcomes: dead or convicted. How is this fair?"

"Well, we do apologize if the person was innocent." Hamner assured him.

"And the state gives them a really nice funeral," Quackenbush added.

"That really doesn't do them much good does it?"

"No, I guess not," the judge admitted. "But the law isn't about the individual. It's about the state."

Mallory paced the room, letting off puffs of smoke from his nostrils as he thought. Suddenly, he turned to the judge and asked "How long have you been doing this again?"

"Ten years," Hamner replied. "Ever since my beloved boy was taken from me."

"And how many werehumans have you caught in that time?"

"Caught? Or caught-caught?" the judge temporized.

"What's the difference?" Bilgewater asked.

"I've found and captured 247 werehumans in the past decade," Hamner said. "However, because the werehuman scourge is so well-organized and so wide-spread, very few have actually come to trial. Most were helped to escape before justice could be done. We intend to change this with the new werehuman laws."

"'Very few'? How few is very few?" Mallory pressed.

"Exactly?"

"Yes, exactly. A nice exact judge like you should know exactly how many people he's put on trial for therianthropy. So how many was it?"

"Well, none, actually."

"None?" Mallory blinked and exchange a telling look with Bilgewater. "That's interesting. All of them just vanished from your custody, did they?"

Hamner bared his teeth in a snarl "The werehumans are obviously organized into cabals that are centered in large towns like this one and they have managed to buy or scare a lot of townspeople into helping them. Our current restraints are now both dragon-proof and human-proof, as well as acid-proof, axe-proof, fang-proof, and alcohol-proof."

"And that's why you've got Sadie locked away in a portable cell inside the cell in the dungeon of the jail." Bilgewater observed. "You aren't taking any chances this time."

"That's right," the judge agreed. "Now I'm finished talking. The docket for the trial has been set and the officials have posted it all around town while you were in here yammering like a pack of puppies over a bone. Tomorrow morning, the werehuman called Sadie will stand trial and face justice at last. She will be an example of what happens to any foul abomination that tries to stay on our land. And there is nothing that you can do to stop it."

On that ominous note, the meeting adjourned.

# _Chapter 12_

Camping in the countryside is enjoyable when you know that you have the option to head back to civilization when it gets rainy, or cold, or when the ground is too lumpy to be comfortable. Camping in the countryside when there's no other option and the only food you have is berries and tea is one of the strongest motivations for inventing civilization, credit cards, and hotel chains. Or at least moving to someplace that has civilization, credit cards, and hotel chains.

Duncan's campsite would never have made it into the MULTIWORLD GUIDE TO LOCAL FEATURES AND CREATURES, despite the fire, tea, and rock cakes that Inga had baked, but it was a welcome enough sight to Mallory and Bilgewater after the hike from Dimsleydale. They limped to the logs and sat heavily, looking both weary and discouraged. As they shook their heads despondently, a brown dragon handed them steaming cups of tea.

Duncan lifted two pieces of warm rock cake from the stones that ringed the fire and passed them to the weary travelers. "I take it that the news is not good?"

"That would be an understatement," Bilgewater replied.

"In fact, it's so far under an understatement that you'd have to drill for it," Mallory sighed as he rubbed his eyes.

Duncan prodded at a pale slab of rock cake that lay draped like a sagging clock over the rock that gave it the first half of its name. "So what's the situation?"

Bilgewater glumly contemplated his scuffed shoes. "Time's running out and neither of us has any ideas. The judge won't budge. He's got this idiotic set of rules and ordinances that he's following and a book full of stupid signs that says Sadie's guilty."

"And to prove how good he is at protecting the innocent, he's scheduled her trial for tomorrow, to be followed by an execution immediately afterward. They're already building the execution scaffold. The whole district's been invited to watch the demise of the horrible weredragon," Mallory added.

"Not surprising. Neil here says that the judge is a real hard case."

"Neil?"

Duncan nodded to the brown dragon. "That's Neil. He's a weredragon."

"Oh. Hi," Bilgewater said.

Mallory frowned and his ears flicked up alertly. "A real weredragon?"

"Eee-yup. And he's willing to help us."

Mallory stared at the dragon, eyes narrowed, as if sizing him up for a coffin.

Bilgewater crumbled a piece of rock cake with his fingers. "Well, that's something positive. Let's put all our heads together. Where's the young lady?"

Duncan gave a slow smile. "Neil's a weredragon."

"I got that one. You didn't answer. Where's the young woman?"

Duncan merely grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

Bilgewater dropped his rock cake. "Were -- weredragon? So Neil and that young woman are..?"

"Weredragon. Right there, dragon. When he's not busy being a dragon he's a human female named Inga."

Bilgewater cocked his head and frowned. "So what is he? Or she? Really? A dragon or a human?"

Mallory flattened his ears and hissed, "Doesn't matter. It's really not natural either way."

"Are you afraid it's going to rub off on you?" Neil said testily.

"No." Mallory snapped.

The two dragons were staring at each other, necks stiff, and tails rigid. Mallory's ears were angled forward, their points looking almost dagger-like. Neil's ears were pinned back and he leaned slightly away. If they'd been dogs, Duncan thought, their body language looked like the fight of the century was about to break out. He wondered if he needed to find a bucket of water to throw on them or if he should sell tickets.

Bilgewater seemed oblivious to the tension. "A werewolf is a human that turns into a wolf so, um, wait..."

Neil turned his head toward Bilgewater and Duncan saw Mallory relax just a little. "A werehuman is a dragon that has changed into a human. A weredragon is a human that has changed into a dragon. I was born a dragon, and that makes me a werehuman."

"But aren't you both?" Bilgewater asked. "When you're a dragon, you can change into a human and so therefore you're a werehuman in dragon form. And when you're human, you're actually able to change into a dragon so aren't you a weredragon in human form?"

Neil looked at Duncan. "He makes my head hurt."

"Mine too."

"And if you're a double-where, well, where did all of this come from?"

Neil sighed and picked up his cup of tea. "It all begins with George."

Mallory stared at his fellow dragon as if he'd just grown a pair of wings. "George? 'Slash, hack, hack, slash, die, die, DIE' George? That George?"

"Yes, that George."

Bilgewater gnawed on a corner of rock bread. "Okay, I'm out of the loop, here. I haven't been hanging around with dragons. What's this 'Slash-n-Hack' George story?"

Mallory flicked his fingers in a gesture of disgust. "The story my Nana told me was that a dragon named Aalin was accused of raiding and pillaging a place called 'Silene.' So the humans sent a knight, a lunatic in plate mail armor with the temper of a poked rhinoceros, to get rid of the dragon. He ambushed Aalin and killed him and then chopped off the dragon's head and stuck it on a pole and rode around for awhile. George liked it so much, he spent the next twenty years attacking dragons and killing them. End of story."

Neil held his hands out to the fire and stared reflectively into the flames. "That's one version of it. I'm sure the humans have another. In Silene, however, we have the story as it was written by George and Aalin."

"Both?" Bilgewater sounded intrigued. "Written? As in diaries?"

Mallory sneered.

"If you doubt it, Silene is a ten leagues from here and you can just hop over there and read the truth for yourself." Smoke was trickling from Neil's nostrils, a sign that the dragon was starting to feel irked.

"So what is the truth?" Bilgewater asked.

"Love. Love is the truth," Neil said. Holding his hands out to the fire, he stared reflectively into the flames before starting the story. "Aalin was a beautiful young dragon, but she was very naive. One day she went into town to buy some fruit; her favorite was bumbleberries. But when she got there the townspeople took advantage of her and stole all of her money. She was upset and fled the town, vowing revenge. The townspeople were worried. What if she came back with other dragons and treated them as they had treated her?"

"Are you sure that's how it goes? That's not anywhere near the version my Nana told me," Mallory scowled.

Duncan stepped between the two. "Look. Let's save the culture wars for later. Let him finish the tale and if you really want, the two of you can argue over who's got the best story later."

Mallory glared at him but settled back on the log and bit into a rock cake, chewing noisily.

Neil nodded and continued. "As fate would have it, a noble but not very bright knight errant by the name of George came by the town the next day looking for adventure. The townspeople told him a story about an evil dragon that had killed their livestock and stolen their gold. So George set out to slay the dragon. For three days he hunted Aalin, allowing her no rest, driving her over hill and through dale, until he finally cornered her at the edge of a cliff.

"Just as his arm drew back for the mighty blow which would slay her once and for all, the cliff crumbled out from under them. Aalin caught the knight and curled around him, protecting his frail body as they tumbled down into the valley. When they landed, George was unhurt but Aalin had broken her ankle. What was he to do? True chivalry only allowed one course."

"Oh, brother," Mallory muttered.

Neil ignored him. "George nursed Aalin back to health. He bound her ankle and put salve on her scrapes. He fed her and put together a soft bed for her to lie on. And every day, he hunted far and wide for the bumbleberries that she loved so much. As he took care of her she told him what had really happened in the town; his heart filled with rage for the duplicity of the townspeople who had abused those who trusted them. But something else began to fill his heart as well. George began to love Aalin. And miracle of miracles, Aalin loved George as well.

"It was gentle Aalin who talked George out of destroying the town in revenge for their in-hospitality. And it was strong George who taught Aalin how to be brave and defend herself against rogues and thieves. Through it all, their love grew deeper as did their sorrow. For how could a man, no matter how good, and a dragon, no matter how comely, ever be one?

"Now some say that the gods looked down on them and blessed their love. Others say it was a mischievous sprite who did the deed. But the who doesn't matter, only the what. One day, while eating their bumbleberries, George turned into a dragon and Aalin turned into a human. Then, with another mouthful, they turned back. And so the race of weredragons and werehumans was begun, born in the intimacy of two innocents who sought love instead of revenge."

Neil smiled into the fire before giving a flourish of his hand, like a storyteller's signal that a story ended and the audience was to throw coins or other tokens of gratitude.

"That's beautiful," Duncan said, handing Neil another rock cake.

"That's hokey," Mallory growled. "And that's not the way it goes. Nana said that weredragons were created when an evil human scientist injected bumbleberry genes into dragon eggs and force-grew them in a magic incubator and that George was a common mass-murderer."

Neil snorted a ring of smoke. "What kind of a lame story is that? Everyone knows you can't mix plants with dragon eggs in an incubator! It was magic, not science!"

"Whoa there!" Duncan stepped between the two dragons again, feeling less flameproof than ever. "We need to rescue Sadie. The two of you getting into a flame war is likely to burn the woods down and cause a mess and at the END of it, Sadie will DIE." He turned on Mallory. "And just what IS it with you and weredragons? You were perfectly fine with them when you wanted ME to be a weredragon."

"I told you! They're monsters. Ask anyone!" Mallory shook his hands in frustration. "So now this whelp has got you thinking that weredragons and werehumans are all really nice folks who just want to live in happiness and peace, tra-la-la? Well, that's just great. Every dragon and every human on Apkund, including ME, has heard about werehumans and how evil they are. Who is going to believe the word of one lone weredragon? What are you going to do? Have him eat bumbleberries and skip around through the meadows in a pinafore?"

Duncan started to reply then paused as an idea burst into his brain, brandishing a warrant and demanding everyone put their hands on the wall. "What if we had more than one?"

"What do you mean?" Bilgewater and Mallory asked together.

"What if we could get more than one werehuman or weredragon to show up? Weredragons and werehumans that everyone knew? What if we could show that they were just ordinary folks trying to live their lives in peace?"

"And what if we could change turnips into gold?" Mallory replied sarcastically. "It will never happen."

"Trust me," Duncan said with a beatific smile. "I've got this one."

# _Chapter 13_

As trials go, this one was nothing special. A hanging judge, a quick execution, and dinner by five. Nevertheless, it was probably the most popular event ever staged in Dimsleydale simply because it was the first trial in years. By 9 AM the courtroom floor was packed and the galleries were filled. Every dragon for six counties had come to see the trial of the century. Hamner had finally brought a werehuman to trial and now he was going to put her on display and expose their evil ways to the world. Children of all ages shivered in anticipation of the forbidden fruits that would be put on display while adults shook their heads mournfully at the lack of good sense to be seen. Anticipation ran high as local markets did a brisk business in matches and marshmallows.

Sadie stood, locked in her cell which had been moved in one piece into the courtroom, looking out at the mob that had come to see her convicted and then put to death. She'd spent the last night hoping that Mallory would come up with a brilliant plan to save her. Instead, Duncan had swept into her cell this morning bearing news and a hair-brained scheme that had the virtue of simplicity. No matter what, he assured her, by this afternoon it would all be over.

She was almost looking forward to it.

There was no sign of Mallory, but Bilgewater was there at the bench with Duncan, looking nervous and bleary-eyed. She wondered if he'd gotten any sleep. Duncan looked oddly out of place, dressed in black judicial robes, wearing an odd five-pointed flat cap on his head and a blue pendant with a bird around his neck. He gave her a smile and a "thumbs up" sign, which did nothing to appease her nerves.

A brown dragon in a long blue dress and head shawl scurried in and quickly handed a book to Duncan. She could make out the words, "LEGENDS OF WERE-EVER" embossed in gold on its cover. Apparently something new had been added to the defense. She hoped it would work, whatever it was.

A brassy gong rang and the door behind her opened. Hamner strutted in like a windjammer under full sail, accompanied by his two clerks. He was wearing velvet trimmed black robes and rather improbably had a tiny powdered wig sitting on top of his thick black mane. He looked like a dragon with something to prove and someone to execute.

"Everybody rise," Quackenbush intoned and the crowd scrambled to its feet.

"Court is now in session," Sedletz continued.

Together they bowed and finished "The honorable Judge Hamner presiding."

Hamner sat down at the chair behind the plain oaken table that would serve as his seat of judgement during the trial. He stared at the silent audience and then brought his gavel down on the table's surface with a sound like a crack of lightning. "Sit." he thundered.

They sat.

There was a brief pause as Sedletz and Quackenbush scuttled around to sit on either side of him, and then the judge thumbed his legal journal open to a blank page and looked at Sadie and asked the question of the day. "Is the accused ready to plead?"

Duncan stood up and looked the old dragon straight between the eyes. "I represent the accused, your honor. We are ready to plead."

There was a soft rustle of paper as the clerks readied their law books and adjusted their bookmarks, ready for battle. After ten frustrating years, they were more than ready to finally have their way in court with a werehuman.

"And how do you plead?" The judge leaned forward, looking anxious to get the formalities over with so he could get down to the fun of actually trying a werehuman.

"We plead guilty, your honor. Sadie is a werehuman."

Hamner's head jerked and his wig fell off. A gasp filled the courtroom. Sedletz and Quackenbush gaped at each other in a mixture of astonishment and disappointment, then started quickly riffling through pages of their law books.

"You said 'guilty'?"

Duncan nodded.

"This, this was the first werehuman trial in a decade. And you plead 'guilty'?" The judge's frustration was almost palpable. He had so looked forward to pointing out in court all of the ways you could detect a werehuman and now they were taking his chance to shine away from him.

"We do, your honor," Duncan reaffirmed.

"Yesterday you and your associates had a rather spirited defense of this creature. Now today you're suddenly pleading guilty?"

He looked over at Sadie. She nodded, her lips pressed grimly together.

Duncan gave a tight smile and continued "Since she has pled guilty, the defendant claims the right to choose how she will die."

The clerks dived for their law books again. Hamner nodded reluctantly. "Those are her rights within the law. The court will rise and Clerk Sedletz will enumerate the methods of execution."

He slammed the gavel down again and the audience rose to their feet as one, murmuring in surprise. Glaring at the courtroom, he said "What are you? Dragon-jump-ups? That was to conclude the trial. Now sit back down!"

The people filling the room sat again, abashed.

Sedletz cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "Methods for execution of werehumans: Beheading, drowning, torn apart by angry beavers, cliff-diving into volcanoes, attacked by psychotic chickens, paper-cuts ..."

Duncan interrupted the monologue. "Death by bumbleberry."

The crowd burst out in cries of astonishment.

Hamner gaveled the court into silence with an icy glare before lowering his head and staring at Duncan the way he might look at a wild beast or a crazed politician. "Our laws prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. It is recorded in the Basia Basilicum Meum7 that it took a weredragon a full three days to die from bumbleberry and that the unfortunate fiend screamed in agony the entire time. They had to send out for extra ear plugs."

"It is neither cruel nor unusual," Duncan replied. "Bumbleberries are known to be poisonous to werehumans. Since the purpose of the execution is to kill a werehuman, feeding her bumbleberries both usual and, err, non-cruel."

Turning to Sadie, the judge asked "Is this truly your choice? You wouldn't want something quicker and less painful like being fed to a hungry badger? We can rustle one up in a few hours."

She drew a deep breath. "No. Bumbleberries."

He shook his head and intoned solemnly, "So be it. Unfortunate but maliciously evil werehuman Sadie, you will be taken this afternoon to the town center where you will eat bumbleberries and die for the heinous crime of being a werehuman."

The town beadle in full regalia scuttled up to the bench and whispered something to the judge. He nodded and sat back and made a note. "Due to the scarcity of the fruit in the area, your execution will take place at 3 PM so that a good supply of the berries might be brought in."

With that, Judge Hamner rose and left the building with the quiet dignity that only success after long years of defeat could provide. Duncan smiled and winked at Sadie as she slumped to a seated position in the cage.

Waiting was all that was left now.

#  _Chapter 14_

As the clock on the wobbly town center tower rang three times, Sadie emerged from the jailhouse door and slowly walked to the large stand that had been erected in the town center. Duncan held her arm as she climbed the scaffold and stood behind a table laden with bumbleberries. The square was filled; every villager and farmer in the area had shown up. Some had come for curiosity's sake, others because of a deep-seated need to see someone else suffer. But most of them were there thanks to Bilgewater and Mallory who had spent the time before the scheduled execution wandering the town and reminding people that failure to show up for the execution would be as much as admitting that they were werehumans, too.

Hamner and his aides waited at the far side of the stage with quiet dignity, dressed in their finest judicial robes. Once Sadie had reached her appointed place, Hamner strode forward and read out her death sentence in stentorious tones.

"This creature, having pled guilty to the charge of being a werehuman is hereby sentenced to death. By her own choice and of her own free will, she shall eat of the bumbleberry which is known to be poison to all who suffer from the evil affliction known as therianthropy." Turning to Sadie, he nodded. "You may begin."

Sadie looked at the plate of purplish berries in front of her. Deliberately, she picked up the fattest, juiciest berry and put it in her mouth before chewing it slowly and purposefully. Then she smiled and took another one and popped it into her mouth, folding her hands on the table as she chewed and then swallowed. The crowd rumbled in a combination of dismay and amusement as nothing happened.

"Check her mouth," Hamner muttered.

As Quackenbush rose, she turned toward the judge, opened her mouth wide, stuck out her now-purple tongue and said "Ah!"

Murmurs ran through the crowd. She could see Quackenbush and Sedletz peering anxiously at a book titled "HOWE TO SPOTTE YE WEERE-DRAGGIN." They glanced at her as she selected a large berry and very deliberately bit down on it.

"It's not working!" The voice sounded like a child's voice.

"Can't be! I know it works!" someone in the crowd shouted.

Sadie grabbed a handful of berries and tossed them in the direction of the voice. She ate several more berries and then picked another handful and threw them out into the crowd. Tiny blue missiles rained down from the sky as Mallory, Neil, and Bilgewater joined in with their own ammunition from the rear of the crowd.

Someone shouted "Here now, what about the judge!"

With a gleeful smile, Sadie bombarded the judicial bench with a fistful of blue fruits as Hamner and his clerks tried unsuccessfully to duck.

Before long, the townspeople decided to join in the fun, scooping up berries and tossing them at others. What started out as a somber group of onlookers soon turned into a full-fledged food fight. Berry after berry burst on the bystanders. Purple stains spotted nearly every face as purple juice ran down the gutters, causing dragons and humans to slip and fall in a cascade of hilarity. Hamner's crusade against weredragons was as dead as last week's fish and everyone was giddy with relief.

But as the berries splatted through the crowd, people here and there shifted and transmogrified. Dragons changed into humans. Humans changed into dragons. And everyone was amazed to find that it didn't matter after all who was what, for underneath the hair and the scales they were friends and lovers and families and comrades.

Duncan sat on the edge of the gallows table. "Judge Hamner, I'm afraid your crusade was doomed from the start. Most families around here seem to have one or more werefolk in their lineage."

Hamner was standing, frozen in astonishment. Everything he'd been taught, everything he'd practiced, everything that had held his world together was crashing down before his eyes. "But, but we know that werehumans, they kill. We've seen it! I've seen it! We know it happens."

Duncan gestured and Neil came up, pulling a shawl off his head. "It's been ten years but I think you can still recognize this one. His name's Neil."

The young dragon's smile was hesitant and perhaps a little fearful. Hamner reached up a shaking hand and touched the cheek of the brown dragon. "Neil?"

"Daddy. I'm sorry, so, so sorry. I tried to come back to you but I was stuck as a girl and then Mr. Sedletz shot at us and we were scared and ran away."

Hamner whispered breathlessly, "We?"

"Nieva and Dicam and me."

Sedletz edged closer. "Nieva? He's alive?"

Neil nodded. "Dicam, too, even though it was her dare. We were reading about bumbleberries and she said she knew where some bumbleberries were and we dared each other to sneak out at night and eat some. Only when we did, we all changed. It scared us and we didn't know how to change back. We tried to run home, but people yelled at us and tried to hurt us, so we ran."

Quackenbush swallowed hard. "You were the ones crying in the night."

"We were so scared. We ran. Then a farmer found us and gave us clothes and food and told us that there were towns with werehumans and weredragons and they would help us there. I ended up in Overdale where a nice potter took me as apprentice and taught me a trade and then sent me here to Dimsleydale to be safe. Nieva and Dicam are here, too. Nieva teaches school and Dicam is a constable."

He looked at Hamner and then Sedletz and Quackenbush. "We knew we couldn't go home, but we tried to make you proud."

Judge Hamner just gathered his son into his arms, crying "my beautiful boy! My beautiful boy!"

Then Neil pushed his father away. Holding up a berry, he bit down on it. His body convulsed and changed and became softer and rounder. Silvery silken hair cascaded from his head, covering his face and shoulders. After a moment, Neil looked up and the Judge and his clerks saw the face of Inga for the first time.

"This is why we were afraid. But we'd really like to go home again. We miss you so much."

With a sob, Hamner dropped his gavel and gathered his child back into his arms. "My beloved child! My beloved child!"

#  _Chapter 15_

The best gamblers know when to collect their money and bow out of the game. And so a happy Duncan, a perplexed Mallory, a grateful Bilgewater, and a relieved Sadie bowed to their instincts and left Dimsleydale while there was still enough light to find their camp, even though the celebration was still in its early stages. After all, the food had run out and they were all heartily sick and tired of bumbleberries.

"How did you know?" Sadie asked as she poured out the last of the tea while sitting by the campfire.

"Look at the fields," Duncan replied. "Not a bumbleberry bush in sight. Just lots of sheep and grass."

"But bumbleberries grow almost anywhere," Mallory put in. "They're all over Apkurd."

"Exactly! The only possible reason that there wouldn't be any bumbleberries right around here is that the townspeople dig them up. But why would they go to all that trouble?"

"Because they were afraid of them!" Sadie exclaimed. "Because they worried that they'd blunder into the bushes or children might eat them and they'd accidentally be changed!"

"Right! And when I spoke to Neil and heard his story, things started to click. Dimsleydale is actually full of werehumans and weredragons, but they were worried that their neighbors might find out what they were. After stories of the werehuman hysteria started and the judge started going around, the situation got worse. Everyone was afraid that someone might go tell the rest of Apkurd that there was a whole community of weres right there in Dimsleydale. So they stayed hidden, hoping for the best. And then Judge Hamner rode into town with his clerks and his crusade and his law book."

"And he caught me," Sadie said. "Probably the only person in the area who wasn't a were of one type or another."

"Right. And all it took was a good food fight to break the system."

"But was it right to expose their secret that way?" Sadie asked. "I mean, it did save my life and I'm grateful, but what happens now?"

"That's really up to them. It's their system and their government and their laws. The only thing that we did was expose was the hypocrisy," Duncan replied. "They were so afraid of being exposed that they let others push them into doing stupid things. Now that everyone know the truth, nobody will ever be tried for being a werehuman or a weredragon in that town again. And the weredragons now have a strong champion in Judge Hamner."

"There's just one thing you've forgotten," Mallory put in. "In your rush to save Sadie and protect the town you forgot one little, tiny, vitally important thing!"

"What's that?"

"Now that everyone's found out that a lot of their friends and neighbors are werehumans and weredragons, nobody will be afraid of them. So now what are we supposed to do for money?"

"Well, we could always try your 'changing turnips into gold' idea!"

Sadie turned and gave him a hard stare. "Is this another one of those 'sure thing' gambles? Like one of Bilgewater's 'sure thing' gambles?"

Bilgewater made an "I'm not involved in this argument" gesture and backed away.

"Well, it's a sort of sure thing," Mallory began.

"Nevermind. I've had enough rest and I've had just enough food. I've got enough energy to jump all of you and your equipment over to the guild hall here, where we can get real coffee, and a decent meal, and where I can find a nice bed and a bath and a lot of creature comforts that this creature needs. I'm going to be doing the Skip in five minutes and if you're not packed and ready, you can just walk to wherever it is you're going."

The response was immediate.

Shortly thereafter, a passerby would have seen a blue and red glow light surround the little camping area and heard the soft inrush of air as a group of travelers made the short Skip toward civilization, credit cards, and decent coffee. The little squirrel in the tree scolded briefly and went to hunt a forgotten nut as the evening birds sang a lullaby to the darkening skies.

END

#

#  About The Authors

A pair of PhDs who met at a Steampunk convention and bonded over re-enacting Feynman's spaghetti breaking expeiment. John is sailing around the Caribbean with his cat (Nimrod) while Mel. stays at home with her husband and cat (Lily Lightpaws) and teaches Fun Ed courses when she's not collecting degrees.

John's page at Amazon

 https://www.amazon.com/John-DeLaughter-PhD/e/B0091GUWZW

Mel.'s page at Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Mel-White/e/B007FHDCHE

 This happened in Duncan & Mallory #1. Don't believe us? Buy a copy and see!

 See Duncan & Mallory graphic novels #1, 2, 3 – and just about everything else.

 See Duncan and Mallory: The Bar-None Ranch!

 The kind that gets brought up at EVERY family gathering.

 At least, according to Duncan's parents. Not everyone agreed with them. But no one argued with them... at least, not more than once.

 Often followed by nice bardic descriptions of how they died bravely immediately thereafter.

7 It means "Kiss My Basilisk" in Latin. Because everything sounds better in Latin.

