Current mood:

cautious

Help please
So for the last two days I've had this story running through my head. You see, I read Holes by Louis Sachar earlier in the week. I loved the book and I absolutely loved the way the author kept telling the story that was happening and the stories in the past at the same time. I was trying to emulate that style (and some of the humor and non-humor) in this story. I don't know if I've come close to success or even if what I have so far makes sense.

Which is why I need you nice people to look over it. It's original and will eventually be yaoi though nothing indicates that so far. I just want to know if this makes sense so far (and any grammer/spelling mistakes that are so obvious as to be painful). Keep in mind that this is a rough draft. Things may change if I work on it.

Okay, enough justifying. On with the show.



There was a dragon that had moved into the old gnome warren in the Trumpeter Peaks. The villages of Applebe weren't really surprised. This would be the third dragon that had taken up residence since the village was founded nearly 200 years ago. All in all, this one had to be the best. It stuck to eating deer and rabbits on the forested slopes, and only occasionally snitched a sheep or two in the spring. Even those sheep could have been lost to wolves and not the dragon.

Maybe.

Still, a dragon was a dragon, and if left alone for years they would only grow bolder. And bigger. Big dragons were a real problem because they could carry off bullocks, horses, and virgins. Bullocks could feed an entire family for a winter. Horses were worth their weight in gold in the farming valleys. Virgins were in short supply as it was in the mountain village. Better to nip this in the bud.

The last time a dragon had appeared, well over a century ago, the town had put in a request to the crown to have a knight sent out to take care of the problem. Things had changed, progress had been made. Nowadays towns could contract with a dragon slayer directly instead of waiting months for the crown to deign to acknowledge that there was a problem.

Luckily for the town of Applebe, one of the most famous dragon slayers haled from their town. In fact, he lived there now. Unluckily for them, it had been almost three years since he'd slain a dragon. Now he lived with his parents once more and helped around their homestead.

He also fooled around. A lot. This is important.

---

"I am not going to marry you."

"What?" Ritter asked as he dropped the pitchfork he'd been using to shovel manure. The air was filled with the scent of horse and shit in the confines of the barn. "The wedding is less than four days from now."

"There's not going to be a wedding," Alysa said. "I'm not marrying you."

"Really? And have you told your parents this?" Alysa had ringlets. Very tight brown ringlets that probably took hours with a hot iron to make every morning. Her family wasn't rich any more, but they had been back when ringlets were in fashion in the capital. Five years ago.

"No, but I'm sure they will agree that I cannot marry you." Alysa held a handkerchief over her nose to block the smell.

"Your parents have already paid for everything. It's not like they have money to just throw around anymore," Ritter said. He'd spent the night tossing and turning, too hot to sleep. It was the middle of summer. Heat and humidity hung in the valleys.

If he had had enough sleep, Ritter would have thought before he opened his mouth. He'd been trained to be polite and diplomatic at court. But he hadn't slept well the night before. At all. It didn't matter because he'd promised to muck the stables this morning, which was why the sun had barely risen and he was ankle deep in hay and manure.

It was really hard to be diplomatic when you were standing in horseshit.

"That's why I'm not marrying you!" Alysa shrieked. One of the dogs started howling outside, and more than one horse snorted and stomped at the sudden sound. Ritter had forgotten had loud females could be when they were truly offended. Like harpies. "You are supposed to be courteous and noble and genteel and... and... you are not! How can you call yourself a knight?"

"I'm not a knight. Not any more. Just like you are no longer a lady." The slap was not totally unexpected.

"How dare you! I am still a lady." Ritter managed to stop himself from correcting her just in time. Given the number of times they'd tossed the sheets when Alysa's parents weren't home, Ritter knew for a fact that his betrothed was no lady. Hell, it wasn't like he was her first even.

Tiredness caught up with him and he stifled a yawn. That only seemed to infuriate Alysa even more. "Cur. Swine. Oathbreaker."

Ritter watched Alysa storm out of the barn, her head held high and her skirts gathered to avoid soiling the edge. He shouldn't get mad. It was the truth at least as far as everyone was concerned. Besides it wasn't like Alysa didn't blow hot and cold by turns all the time. She'd come around in an hour and beg him to take her back.

She didn't.

---

Once there was a dragon slayer, one of the best in all the land. He came from a small farming village along the western edge of the kingdom near the mountains. Dragon country lay just across the border. His name was Ritter Bris of Applebe.

Most dragon slayers were given to the guild when they were six, trained as knights and heroes until they were eighteen, and then sent to defend the countryside from dragons. Few made it past the first year of slaying. Fewer still made it to twenty-five, the age when the crown would grant them lands and let them go on with their lives having served their country.

Ritter Bris of Applebe was fifteen when he took the oath to defend his country from the chaos of the world, embodied as the dragons, which burnt the fields and stole from the villagers. He was sixteen when he killed his first dragon. By the time he was eighteen his name was legendary. People flocked just to watch him pass through the town. Villages could not afford to hire him and duchies or principalities were the only ones to ask for his services.

When he turned twenty-three, people wondered if the crown would let him retire early. If anyone deserved it surely it was Ritter Bris of Applebe. He had put in his seven years of service to the crown. Ritter had smiled and told all who asked that he would serve until he was twenty-five, confident in the way only the young were that he would live to see his birthday.

Half a year after his twenty-third birthday, the most famous of dragon slayers ascended a mountain to face his biggest dragon ever.

Three weeks later, long after everyone had given him up for dead, he came back down. He rode to the nearest Slayer guildhall, turned in all his equipment, and turned his back on his sworn duty

Oathbreaker. They whispered it behind his back or shouted it to his face. Oathbreaker. The letter from the crown had stated, black ink against heavy parchment. Oathbreaker.

It was true.

---

Half a day after Ritter had been dumped, the entire village knew about it. Two days after Ritter had been dumped and rumors were flying about whom he'd slept with this time to send Alysa into a rage. Three days after Ritter was dumped and he still believed that any second Alysa would change her mind and the wedding would be on.

The day he was supposed to have been married, Ritter spent it getting drunk on beer that was more water than alcohol. They'd barred him from the tavern. It wasn't that Ritter couldn't pay his tab. It was that Ritter tended to be something of a belligerent drunk.

Which was why Ritter had had to break into Berne Rice's cellar and drink the piss he called beer in order to drown out his disappointment.

"I didn't even cheat on her this time," Ritter said to the rows of jellies and spiced fruit, vegetables and dry goods. "There was absolutely no good reason for her to go and break off the engagement like that."

Oathbreaker meant that all contracts with him had to be signed by his parents as well since he couldn't be trusted to keep his word. He couldn't hold any jobs that required trust. After all, he was an oathbreaker. Only the most desperate of women would marry him because once they did, his shame became their shame.

Ritter had thought that Alysa was desperate enough to ignore that fact. Her family had fallen on hard time while his had prospered. He'd had enough manners and stories to impress her. She'd had enough looks and spirit to impress him. His shame shouldn't have mattered.

"You know what I should do," Ritter said to a sack of potatoes that were beginning to go to seed. "I should show her. I should show them all."

He stumbled to his feet, dipping his tankard into the barrel of watery beer he'd opened once last time and taking it with him as he tripped up the stairs. And it was his tankard. Ritter felt that it was all right to steal someone's beer but not with their own tankard. That was just plain cruel.

It was hard to ignore the sunlight drilling into his eyes, but Ritter managed. Harder still to keep his feet under him and moving in the right direction, but Ritter managed that as well. Tree roots kept trying to grab his toes and once a fence jumped up and smacked him on the head.

None of that mattered though. He had a quest. A quest to prove that he was more than everyone in the village thought he was.

By sheer luck, Ritter wound up at the very tavern that he'd been barred from. He'd stumbled into the main room, blinking as it went from light to darkness. He couldn't see if anyone was watching him, but that didn't matter. He knew what he had to do.

"I..." Ritter shouted. "I am going to kill the dragon to prove that I am worthy of Alysa Wyneheart. I swear it on my honor!"

Then he threw up on himself and passed out.

---

The shield had been blue, with a gold square in the upper right hand corner. A black lion dominated the square; rising on his hind legs to strike while looking over his shoulder to make sure no enemies were coming up behind him. The lion had had two tails.

There were proper ways to describe his coat of arms. There were words like "azure" and "or" and "sable" and "canton" along with phrases like "rampant reguardent" and "double queued." It didn't matter because it was taken from him. After all, such things were only awarded to knights. Dragon slayers had to be knights, and so to be a dragon slayer was to be automatically knighted.

The letter from the crown had caught him on the road, before he'd even reached his home. Ritter had sat on his charger, the one thing he'd refused to give up, and had read the letter. The herald who'd delivered it to him and waited on his horse as well, sweating in the hot sun as it beat down on the road.

It could all be his. The crown would forgive him. Ritter was the best dragon slayer there was. All he had to do was pick up his lance and go back to face a dragon that was tormenting the duchy of Norand.

Ritter had told the herald where he could shove the crown's offer. His coat of arms was retired and he was banned from ever wearing or flying or displaying the colors blue and gold and black in any combination ever again.

Most days the knight never noticed the loss. Sometimes, when another knight proudly displayed his colors, Ritter felt something deep inside hurt. He had made his choice. He refused to regret it.