Long ago, when Charlemagne was Emperor of the Franks and the Lombards and Irene of Athens ruled in Byzantium, there lived near the city of Rouen a tribe of dragons.

Of course, to just say 'dragons' is not enough to describe such creatures, for there are many types of dragons.  Some are green and make their homes among the roots of mountains, where they keep vast libraries and know almost everything that is worth knowing.  Others are blue, and these inhabit oceans and lakes, making their dens in the hulls of sunken ships.  Red dragons live in the mouths of volcanoes, incubating their eggs in the fires of the earth.

There exist also silver dragons and gold, who guard relics and watch over pilgrims - such a dragon is said to have greeted Sir Galahad at the resting place of the Holy Grail.  More rare even than these are the white dragons, who live all their lives among the clouds without ever descending to solid ground, and sing songs more beautiful than any human music.  And fortunately for other creatures, the fewest of all are the black dragons, that serve evil masters and at their bidding do terrible harm.

But the Dragons of Rouen were none of these types.  They were, instead, the most common and in some ways the worst of all dragons - they were brown, and were interested in nothing besides themselves and their own comfort.

Everything the tribe owned and everything they ate was stolen; parties of them would feast upon crops or flocks, and reduced many an unfortunate farmer to ruin.  They stole wine, also, and enjoyed it immensely, and they kept huge heaps of riches hidden away in their dark caves, where they counted coins for hours and jealously guarded every tiny piece.  In their eyes, other creatures existed only to create things for the dragons to take, and because as well as being greedy they were also large and fierce, they had never yet met anyone or anything that could correct this opinion.

Though all of them were mean and covetous beasts, the very worst and most selfish of all the tribe was a creature called Larek.  His was the only egg of his mother's clutch that survived to hatch, the rest having been destroyed by a rival with whom she'd quarreled, and so she doted on him and spoiled him.  With his mother utterly blind to any misbehavior, he grew up to be terribly vain, convinced that he was the finest living thing ever to grace the world with his presence.

He rarely spoke to the others except to play tricks upon them, for he was quite clever in a nasty sort of way, and loved to lie to and toy with others.  Of course, as he grew to maturity they learned to expect such things of him and would no longer believe a word he said, so instead he turned to bullying them in order to assert his superiority.  Eventually, the entire tribe came to shun him, and would have little to do with him save to envy his gold and his strength, for he had plenty of both.

Larek, in turn, scorned their company and indeed seemed to take pride in the fact that he had not a friend in the world save his own mother.  If the dragons would not allow him to tyrannize them, then they were unworthy of his time, and he would seek targets elsewhere.

This he did, and there were many to choose from.  There was a road that led east through the woods from the city of Rouen, crossing the Seine only a few minutes' flight from the dripping caves in which the tribe made their homes.  Few among the men and women who used it were capable of challenging any dragon, and Larek was bigger and nastier than most.  He found a place in the woods where the route bent to avoid a giant tree, large enough that he could hide in its shadow on moonlit nights, and he took to lying there in wait for unlucky travelers.  In this way he terrified many people, devoured several horses, and enriched his hoard by picking up anything valuable his fleeing victims might happen to drop.

And so, on a night in late autumn when he had drunk rather more wine than is good for anybody, including a dragon, Larek set off to engage in his favourite pastime.  He crouched in the shadow of the great tree and waited... and did not have to wait long.  No more than a quarter of an hour had passed before he heard the sound of hooves on the road.  Larek's muscles tensed as the sound drew nearet.

The traveler was a girl, alone with only one horse and what possessions she could carry.  Her name was Isobel, and her father was the mayor of the Emperor's household in Rouen.  She was young and pretty, with sandy hair in curls and soft gray eyes, exactly the type of girl that legends say dragons will kidnap and keep as pets or slaves... but Larek was not interested in her name, or in a pet or a slave.  As far as he was concerned, the Lady Isobel was important only as his plaything.

Her horse was becoming nervous, for it could smell Larek waiting, but she urged it on until she was only yards away from the dragon's hiding place.  As soon as she was near enough for escape to be impossible, he sat up and opened his wings with a thunderclap, and although brown dragons cannot spit fire, Larek made a terrible trumpeting roar.  The horse screamed and threw its rider before galloping off into the woods, leaving Isobel sitting dazed in the mud of the road.

She began to rise, then shrieked and threw herself on the ground again to avoid Larek's huge forepaw as he swatted at her like a cat might at a mouse.  On hands and knees she scrambled to the edge of the forest, where she got up and followed her horse into the shelter of the trees, not even pausing to untangle her legs from her muddy skirts.

Larek leapt into the air to follow, his spread wings casting a great shadow in the moonlight, and he kept himself entertained for some time by watching the girl blunder lost and terrified through the woods.  She tripped over roots and her own long wet gown, and branches lashed at her face and legs, making Larek laugh to see anyone so absurdly clumsy - it was if the pathetic creature could barely even see!  But eventually she crawled into a hiding place where he could not reach her, beneath the roots of a tree.  He circled and dove, trying to frighten her into coming out again, but she remained where she was, curled into a little shivering ball and refusing even to give him the satisfaction of a scream.

"Come out!" he bellowed.

"No!" she shouted back.

"Then I shall stay here until you do," Larek declared.  "Or until you starve!"  But in truth he had not the patience to do any such thing.  He waited only a little while before deciding that it would be far more fun to return to the road and the tree to seek another victim.

So he did.   This time he had to wait far longer, and was near to giving up and going home before one finally presented itself... but the second person Larek met that night was not one to be menaced in such a fashion.  Perhaps some higher force had decided that this particular dragon had roamed too long unchecked, or perhaps Larek was simply very unlucky.  The next person who passed down that road was not a farmer or a merchant, or another girl.  Instead it was the sorcerer, Astolpho.

Many tales were told of him, although little enough was known for certain beyond that he was very old and extremely rich.  No one could say his true age, but it was said that though he looked no more than forty, he had in fact lived for many centuries and remembered Rome and Troy.  He was a huge man in both height and breadth, with bushy red hair and a red beard streaked with silver, and a face lined from years in the sun.

On this particular night, the sorcerer was riding a huge black horse and galloping in a great hurry out of Rouen.  He had no time for interruptions in any shape, least of all a very drunken dragon.  When he approached, Larek did as he had with Isobel, sitting up and bellowing in a fashion that had never yet failed to terrify anyone... but though the sorcerer's horse stopped short and then pranced to and fro impatiently, it did not bolt, and its rider sat on its back, quite calm.  After a moment, Larek ran out of breath to roar with and dropped back onto all fours to peer, puzzled, at his intended victim.

"Are you quite finished, then?" the sorcerer wanted to know.

This was not at all the sort of thing Larek was used to hearing from his prey... in fact, he could not actually recall anyone ever stopping to speak to him before.  "Are you not afraid of me?" he asked, his voice slurred with wine.

"I am not," the sorcerer replied.  "Now get your great scaly hide out of my way.  I am on an important errand."

Most people - and indeed, most dragons - would have heard such an order from a man in the blue and gold robe of a sorcerer and obeyed immediately.  But Larek was drunk and arrogant, and considered his own amusement far more important than any errand could be.

"I am not a dog, to come and go when I am ordered," he snarled.  "If anyone is to be getting out of the way, it is you who will get out of mine!"  He gathered himself back on his haunches like some enormous cat, and sprang at his victim.

Astolpho did not move or speak, but it seemed that he must have done something, for in the middle of his leap Larek seemed to meet an invisible wall.  The shock of the impact jarred him hard enough to start his ears ringing, and he fell heavily to the ground, wings and tail lashing as he cried out in pain and surprise.

"Why should you seek to harm me?" the sorcerer asked, as Larek struggled to pick himself up, bruised and dazed.  "I have done nothing to you."

"Because I will enjoy hearing you scream, that is why," Larek replied darkly.  He was becoming angry now - this tiny person had humiliated him, and that was not something he allowed anyone or anything to get away with.

"And you think I ought to settle for being your evening's entertainment?"

"I think you have not any choice," Larek sneered.  "Look at yourself, human - you cannot even walk, but must borrow the legs of a horse to get from place to place.  You cannot keep warm without wearing someone else's skin.  You have neither talons nor teeth, but must make them from metal.  I am a dragon, the mightiest of creatures, and if I wish to make sport of you, I should like to see you try to stop me!"

Astolpho's small eyes narrowed.  "If you continue to say such things," he said, "I may yet have to do so.  I shall ask only once more: do you mean to let me past, or must I teach you to respect me?"

Having already been stopped in an attack without the sorcerer doing so much as raising a finger, perhaps even Larek would have thought twice about insulting him again... but the man's condescending tone made him so angry he could barely see.  "I owe no respect to such a puny thing as yourself!"

"The choice was yours," the sorcerer replied, "and since it seems you need to be punished, it is fitting that you have yourself told me what you might consider the most horrible fate I could bestow upon you!"  And so saying, he held up a hand and spoke some magical words.

Larek began to leap, then stopped as a wave of dizziness came over him, and he seemed for a second time to run hard into some solid object, though he had not yet moved.  He shut his eyes and shook his head to clear it, then looked again only to find himself suddenly eye-to-eye with the sorcerer's horse.  It reared up, hooves flailing, and Larek panicked.  He had in his life dealt with many things, but never a horse larger than himself, and like most bullies he was at heart a coward.  But when he attempted to open his wings and fly away, all he accomplished was to abruptly lose his balance and fall on his face... where he could only lie, terrified, as he waited for this monster to bear down upon him.

Yet it did not do so.  Instead, he was left behind as horse and rider thundered off down the road on their important errand.

When he was certain the danger had passed and his heart had slowed its beating to where it no longer felt as if it might burst, Larek raised his head and got up... or rather, he tried to.  For when he did, he found that somehow, all fours was not far enough.  The dragon looked down at what ought to have been his forepaws, and to his horror saw human hands instead.  He was a dragon no longer; the sorcerer's magic words had transformed him into a man.

After a moment of appalled shock, he grew furious.  How dare anyone do this to him?  He shouted and ranted, calling Astolpho and all his ancestors by names his mother would have been horrified to think that he knew.  By holding on to the rough bark of his tree, Larek managed to pull himself to his feet and from there took a few staggering steps, meaning to run after the sorcerer and somehow force him to undo the enchantment.  But it had rained earlier in the day and the road was wet and slippery.  His feet slid out from under him, and for a second time he fell face-first in the mud.

He tried once to get up again, but did not make it more than halfway before the combination of drunkenness, shock, and anger overtook him.  The world before his eyes faded first to gray and then to black, and he lay there for a very long time, not moving.

Then, though he was in no position to realize it, something very fortunate happened.  There were any number of people who might have come upon him there, lying unconscious on the road from Rouen.  He might have been found by brigands, who would most likely have killed him after determining that he had nothing of value.  Or by the Mayor's men, who would have thought a man drunk and alone in the woods was probably a robber or cutthroat, and thrown him in prison.  But by very good luck indeed, the first person to discover him there was not either of these, nor anyone else who might have meant him harm.

It was, instead, the Lady Isobel.

When she fled from the attacking dragon, Isobel had not worried much over which direction she was taking - in fact, the idea of becoming lost had not even occurred to her.  All else in the world paled in importance next to the great and terrible monster wheeling overhead, and for what seemed like long hours she stumbled through the woods in tears while it circled and dived, laughing at her when she fell or when her skirts and sleeves caught in the brambles.  It seemed that at any moment it would swoop in and carrying her off... but just as she began to think that there could be no escape, Isobel came upon a dead tree with twisted roots overhanging a gully.  There was space beneath them for a person to hide, and the dragon would be unable to reach her there.  She crawled inside and crouched in the tiny space.

The dragon's huge shadow passed over again and again while she lay there, and its booming voice called to and taunted her... but then, at last, the sound of wings faded.  A long time passed before Isobel felt brave enough to come out, and when she did she half-expected the dragon to appear again and snatch her up.  But it did not come, and there was nothing moving in the sky.  She had escaped.

At first she felt quite limp with relief, but it did not last.  As she looked around, being lost suddenly became a very real and awful problem, indeed.  These woods were strange to her; she had not the barest idea of where she was, or of how to find out.  Isobel's father liked to say that his daughter's eyes were her best feature, but though they might have been lovely, they were not at all sharp.  She could not even see the stars well enough to find which direction was north.

However, now that she did not have a dragon chasing after her, it was much easier to keep her head, and after pondering the problem a while she decided that the thing to do would be to retrieve her horse.  The animal was trained to come to the person who whistled for it, so whistle she did, and called its name over and over.  It took so long to come that Isobel nearly decided it had run off too far to hear - or perhaps had not been lucky enough to escape the dragon - but then the bush parted, and it came trotting up.

Overjoyed, Isobel hugged it and stroked its long grey face, telling it many times what a fine, brave beast it was.  Then she swung herself into the saddle and set off, allowing the horse to go where it pleased - she knew that animals were often better at working out the lay of the land than were human beings, and this horse was not any exception.  It made directly for what it thought of as home, and so Isobel soon found herself looking down from a wooded hilltop at her father's city.

From there it was a very simple matter to turn around, return to the road and get back on her way, none the worse for her encounter with the dragon and very much pleased with herself for having found her way unscathed out of such a dreadful situation.  But even so, she had lost hours she ought to have spent in traveling, and the sky would soon be getting light.  Isobel spurred her horse into a gallop to try to make up the time, but then told it to slow again as, a couple of miles up the road, she came to the great tree where she had met the dragon.

Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears as she approached the bend in the road, but to her great relief, there was no sign of a dragon or at first of any other living thing.  Isobel allowed herself to breathe out and prepared to give her horse another kick...

... And then she noticed the man, lying facedown in the mud beneath the dragon's tree.

Isobel's first thought was that she ought to just hurry along.  She was wise enough to know that a man apparently dead or injured in the woods was just as likely to be trying to put her off-guard so that when she came near, he could seize her and rob her - or worse.  But then she stopped to consider where she was.  Why should the dragon not have returned to this spot, which was so perfect for use as an ambush, after it lost track of her.  And if it had... then likely as not, this poor fellow had been another victim of it.

Having made up her mind, she dismounted and, holding up her skirts so as to be ready to run should things go amiss, she gently prodded the man's shoulder with her toe.  He did not move.  Encouraged, Isobel knelt down to shake his shoulder.

"Hello?" she asked.  "Are you all right?"

The man did not answer and did not wake, but he made a small sound, and his body was warm - alive then, only unconscious.  Perhaps he had fallen from his own horse and been unable to get up again.

Whatever had happened, he was clearly in need of some help... but Isobel was not entirely certain she wanted to be the one who provided it.  Seeing him close to, she found that she did not particularly like the look of him; something in the man's face made him look like someone she would not want to be too quick to trust.  His clothing was a peasant's, rough and covered with mud, and his hair, which was brown, was long to past his shoulders and in tangles.  He did not resemble anyone a mayor's daughter ought to be associating with.  And furthermore, if there were not people pursuing Isobel already, there would be by morning, and she was not nearly so far ahead of them as she had hoped.  Another person, and one who could not travel under his own power, would only slow her down.

But having stopped, she found that she did not have the heart to simply leave this poor man where he lay.  The next person who came this way might not be so charitable as she, or perhaps no one would come along at all, and he would simply be left to die there.  No, having already stopped, she must try to do something for him.  With some difficulty, for he was much heavier than she, Isobel got his limp body into her horse's saddle before resuming her interrupted journey for the second time, and now on foot.  Failing all else, maybe he would at least be able to offer her something in return for her help.  Though looking at him, Isobel rather doubted it.

The sun was high and bright in the sky when they arrived at the town Isobel had originally hoped to reach before morning.  The brown-haired man still slept, and Isobel rather wished she could say the same for herself.  After being out all night, she was quite exhausted; her feet dragged with every step, and it seemed a terrible effort just to keep her eyes from closing.  Even so, when she found a boarding house and bought a room, she was not so tired that she forgot to tell the proprietor that he must not tell anyone - serf, sorcerer, steward, or Charlemagne himself - that he had seen her. 

Perhaps there were other precautions she could have taken, but she was too sleepy to think of them.  So she closed the shutters in the room to keep out the sun, and hung up her dirty cloak and gown so that the mud would dry and could be brushed off of them.  One room was all she could afford, so she had two girls who worked in the boarding house bring in extra blankets to make up a bed on the floor for the brown-haired man.  She thanked and paid them before climbing into bed.

But as she did, she paused to wonder if there was anything else she ought to do for her unconscious companion.  He had not stirred when she'd taken him down from her horse, or when the serving girls had put him to bed.  Perhaps he was ill, or badly hurt in some way she had not been able to notice.  She did not want to have gone to such trouble only to have him die while she slept because she had overlooked something.

Before she let herself sleep, then, she would first have to wake the man and make sure he was not in need of a physician.  Shaking and calling to him had not worked, so clearly more drastic measures were needed.  In her night-dress, Isobel fetched a bucket of very cold water from the well in the boarding house's yard and brought it up to pour over the brown-haired man's head.

Its effect was immediate: his eyes flew open and he sat up with an alarmed yelp, then quickly lay down again, clutching his head.  "Oh!" he moaned.  "I do not know who you are, but you may burn in hell!"

"That is a lovely thing to say to somebody who has gone to some trouble to help you," Isobel told him, setting the bucket down on the floor.  "I could have left you on the road to be robbed or killed, you know."

The man opened his eyes again - she was startled to see that the irises were gold, the colour of cats' eyes - and blinked at her in confusion.  He began to reach out as if to touch her, but stopped and looked at his hands, then at the wet hair hanging in his face, and then at Isobel again.  She began once more to worry, but encouraged herself with the thought that if he did mean her any harm, he seemed at present too ill to be capable of inflicting it. 

"Are you all right?" she asked.

He winced as if the words were painful, and when he spoke, it was in a hoarse croak.  "No.  What are you?"

"What am I?" she echoed, both surprised and annoyed by the rude question.  "I am a girl - have you never seen one before?"

The sarcasm appeared to be lost on him; he only sat there staring at her.  Isobel shook her head in disgust.  She was beginning to have a good idea what his symptoms represented; he must have been drinking the night before, and was now suffering the aftermath - her father often did likewise.  That this man's illness was self-inflicted did not make her want to be any kinder to him, but he was a stranger and arguing would not make him more pleasant, so she attempted to be polite.

"My name is Isobel," she said.  "I found you on the road last night.  Did the dragon attack you?"

This only seemed to puzzle him further.  "The dragon?" he asked.  "But I..."

"Yes," said Isobel.  "There was a great brown dragon, hiding in the shadow of the tree.  I only barely escaped from it myself.  Did you meet with it?"

He offered no response, other than to continue staring at her very much as if he had indeed never seen a girl before.  Isobel was becoming quite frustrated, but determined to try one last time.

"What were you doing on the road all alone?" she asked.  "Or do you not even remember?"

"I do not think that I do," he replied, looking now almost as if he were afraid of her.

She thought she knew why.  "Well, do not worry," she assured him.  "You did nothing to me; in fact, you have hardly moved since I first saw you.  What is your name?"

The man bent his head and shut his eyes.  "It is Larek.  Now go away and let me sleep.  My head feels like it is about to explode, and I do not want either pity or help.  Especially from you."

Had he known Isobel at all, he would not have spoken to her in this fashion, for she could be remarkably contrary when anyone tried to order her about.  Her mother and father had learned long ago to be very careful when they asked her to do anything, because if she put a word in the wrong place she would avoid obeying just to spite them.  The Mayor of Rouen often said that it was a sign that God was wise indeed that Isobel had been born the daughter of a nobleman; she would have been no good at all as anyone's servant.  And when Larek told her not to pity him, he did so in precisely the tone of voice that made her want to be obstinate.

She stood up, hands on her hips.  Here she had gone to such trouble for this sorry drunkard, and in return he behaved like an ungrateful ass?  Well, before she parted ways with him, she would hear him thank her once at least!  "I do not think you are in any state to say whether you need help or not," she said.  "Now, I shall send down for a raw egg in ale.  That is what my father takes to clear his head after drinking, though he complains that it never works.  And I shall buy you supper tonight before I leave.  No need to thank me, of course," she added bitterly, "helping my fellow man being its own reward and all of that.  I ought to have left you to be dinner for the dragon!"

Larek glared at her.  "You know nothing," he said.

Isobel could not figure out why he would say that, she so elected to ignore it.  Instead, she did as she had said she'd do, and called the two serving girls back to bring the egg and ale.  It took all three women together to force Larek to drink it.  He seemed all for the idea of something to help his head, until he actually tasted the foul concoction - after that he squirmed and scratched, and the girls had to hold him down so that Isobel could pour the rest into his mouth.  He very nearly vomited it right back up again, and called Isobel by a great many uncomplimentary names, which she refused to react to.  It was plain enough that he only wanted to rile her, and so she would not allow him to do so.

"There," she said, brushing off her hands on her nightdress as the servants fled the room.  "Now you may sleep off what you drank, and I shall sleep off all this traveling, and perhaps when we both wake, you will want to be just a bit more grateful."

"I shall be grateful when you cease talking," he snarled.

"And I should be grateful to wake and discover that this entire horrid day has been nothing but a very bad dream," Isobel replied.  She then turned her back to tell him that the conversation was over, and snuffed the candles so that both she and her thankless guest could take some much-needed rest.