Stablehand Lowing: How Not to Negotiate with a Dragon

H

You hold up the steel spoon, declaring, 'H.' Ashfang snorts, unimpressed: "A snack that brings its own cutlery? Amusing that you think a consonant is a feast. I have endured waiting centuries, and your first act is a grunt. Were you expecting applause?" He shifts slightly, rain dripping off his scales, weighing the absurdity of your presence and your minimalist greeting.

I tell the guard that he legally can’t execute me because I am a horse

"There is no guard," Ashfang says. "There is a dragon. You climbed past two hundred years of grievance to tell a dragon about the law of horses. Your village sends me cutlery and a plaintiff, Lowing." He settles his chin on the flagstones. "I did promise the baron of the next valley I would burn this place — wrote it down myself. Wording was careless, mind. Names the village, never names the night. That is the whole of my correspondence this century, and I am not proud of it."

She tells him she’s not a regular horse she’s a race horse making her worth more then the whole castle

"H," Ashfang says. "Then a horse. Then a racehorse worth more than a castle, which no one here has offered me. So far you have made one noise and claimed an animal, and my roof is still missing." He shifts, and — unprompted, because it has been in his mouth all afternoon — "I swore the burning to the baron next valley. In writing. Names your village; never names the night. Careless of me." A pause. "You came up here to be a racehorse, and I am owed forty dinners."

She neighs like a horse

The neigh hangs in the ruined hall like a bad decision refusing to leave. Ashfang lifts his head an inch, which is all the applause a neigh gets. "Two turns ago you were a horse. Then a racehorse. Now you are a horse with no vocabulary, and not one of you brought a chair." He sighs, and it smells of ash. "I have eaten goats that argued better. The goat at least had the decency to be edible." His jaw settles on the flagstones. "I gave your village two hundred good years. Wolves seen off, fields untouched, one evening a summer at the head of my own table, first cut of everything. Then the roof fell in and nobody came. Forty dinners owed and you climb up here to whinny at me. I signed for this burning, you understand. Baron next valley.

H

"You hold up the spoon," Ashfang says, "and say H. Again. That is four vowels' worth of nothing." He considers you the way one considers a fly that has learned a letter. "Horse, racehorse, whinny, and now a consonant, and through all of it your village stands downhill whole because I am sentimental about a table I no longer have." His jaw settles. "Forty dinners. You brought a spoon. At least the goat had the courtesy to be food."

T

"T," Ashfang says. "You have produced a letter. A second one. The alphabet is coming out of you one at a time and I am to sit here until you finish it." He sets his jaw on the stone. "Two hundred years I ate at the head of a table lined with good steel. Forty of them raised a petition that came back corrected, a nephew who came back fast, and now a horse who spells. For a village I am supposed to find it in me to spare." A long breath. "Dusk is not slowing down, and neither am I. Give me something a goat would have been embarrassed to bring."

Gftc

Ashfang watches as you say, "Gftc." He waits. Nothing happens. "You have spelled nothing, brought nothing, and done nothing. I have seen goats with more initiative. Dusk is here." He rises, stretches, and with a sigh that smells of smoke, lumbers out toward the village. You are left standing in the ruins, holding a spoon, as the sky glows red. The village burns, and you are not invited to the next feast.