Dragon's Blood

By Michele Acker

Excerpt

“What’cha got for me, Nells?”

I picked up a hefty slab of bloody meat and plopped it down on the scale. “Prime, grade-A unicorn. An adult mare. Meat’s tender and juicy, best to be had anywhere,” I said with justifiable pride. Unicorn wasn’t an easy animal to hunt and I was the best unicorn hunter within a thousand miles. No one else knew the secret to catching them while preserving the flesh’s aphrodisiacal properties.

“So you say, so you say.” Grady pursed his lips. He turned his head and spat, the inky black juice landing on the dirty,straw-covered floor. “I’d like to figure that out for myself if you don’t mind.”

I didn’t know when the floor had last been swept and I didn’t much care. Grady’s butcher shop paid well and that’sall that mattered. What he did with the meat after I left was his concern, not mine. “How much is it worth?” I asked. Prices for poached animals, especially magical ones, changed on a day-to-day basis.

Grady finished weighing the meat, gesturing for me to remove each slab and replace it with another. Using the abacas he held and doing some figuring in his head, Grady finally said, “I can give you two hundred for the lot.”

“Two hundred? That won’t even buy me a good plow horse. I got fields to plow and seeds to plant. Are you saying horse flesh is worth more than unicorn?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Six months ago, you’d have given me five times that.”

“Times change and so do tastes. Ever since Lord Randall served dragon steak at his birthday party, everyone’s been clamoring for it. Problem is, not many hunters are capable of catching the beasts. Now if you were to bring me dragon meat … ”

I shook my head. “I don’t hunt dragon.”

Grady shrugged and spat again. “Sup to you. But unless you got something else to sell, our business is finished.”

I thought for a moment, trying to decide what was more important, pleasing my wife, or keeping my family fed. I sighed. There really was no choice. I headed out to my wagon, reached under the seat and pulled out a package wrapped in linen. When I got back inside, I opened the package and showed Grady a beautiful pelt, white as snow and completely unblemished. I had planned on giving it to my wife, but I knew she’d understand.

Grady fingered the pelt’s softness and then held it up to the torchlight to reveal the faint, but unmistakable shimmer of silver. “Beautiful,” he breathed. “I’ll give you three hundred fifty.”

Pitiful, absolutely pitiful. A pelt this fine should have brought a thousand easy. But there was no sense in arguing. Grady’s was the only place within a week’s ride that bought illegally hunted animals, magical or otherwise. No other shop in South Fork would buy from me or those like me. I had no choice but to accept his meager offer and the bastard knew it.

“What about the horn?”

“Already sold it.” The sale of that had been almost as disappointing as the sale of the meat. Altogether, I barely had enough for the new horse, let alone for the seed I needed to plant. And planting season was approaching quickly. If I didn’t have my seed in the ground in the next three months, I might as well forget planting anything this year at all. No planting meant no crops and no crops meant no money.

“That’s two hundred for the meat and three fifty for the pelt. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it.”

We shook, sealing the deal. Grady counted out the payment and passed it to me. “Sure you won’t consider bringing me a dragon?”

“I don’t hunt dragon. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

I shivered. “They’re spooky. It’s said they can … they can read people’s minds, make them see things. I don’t want those … creatures … reading my mind. It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”

Grady shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if you ever change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

“If you do. The pay is fifty a pound.”

Fifty a pound? And dragons weighed what, half a ton? A ton maybe? Fifty thousand for one kill? I could buy all the seed I needed, plus have enough to try that new tobacco crop I’d heard so much about. If the crop was successful, I could stay home with my family. I’d never have to hunt again. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy hunting, I did. But it kept me away from home for more than half of every year, leaving my wife and children to fend for themselves, and me to worry about their safety. Then I thought about all the rumors, the horror stories of those who’d tried to hunt dragon in the past. Tried and failed and in most cases, tried and never returned. What good would it do me to hunt a more valuable animal if it meant I’d never go home at all? “I don’t hunt dragon,” I said again, but my voice lacked conviction. And if I could hear it, so could Grady.

He did. “And the blood too. The witches in Mir’lok pay hefty for a cup of the stuff. I’ve heard they use it in their spells or something.”

“No dragon.”

Grady shrugged and called for his assistant to take care of the unicorn meat.

I grunted and left the shop, the payment stuffed inside my boot. I could just imagine my wife’s voice when I got home and showed her the money. “We’ll get by, we always do,” she’d say. I sighed, climbed in the wagon and headed home. “We’ll get by, we always do,” my wife said later that night when I told her the story and showed her the pitiful wad of cash. “We’ll just have to cut back, eat a little less, make our clothes last another year. Don’t worry, my darling, we’ll be fine.”

I looked into those loving, forgiving eyes and felt guilty. She never pushed me, always accepting my decisions. Sometimes I hated her for it, wishing she would argue with me once in awhile, yell at me, something. But she never did. I kissed her gently and then rolled over to sleep, knowing in a week’s time I’d be in the forest at the foot of Razor Mountain, hunting dragon.