Dragon Business, The Read Online Free PDF Page A

casing the town and subtly inquiring as to which peasants might easily be bought off and sent away.
    Reeger’s mule let out a loud braying when the knight and squire arrived. Cullin had never been able to tell whether the mule made the noise as a happy greeting or out of annoyance.
    Reeger had strung a rope between two trees, rinsed some of his garments in a nearby stream, and hung them up to dry directly in the path of the smoke wafting from the campfire. He looked up at them with his cockeyed gaze. “Rust! You two took your sweet time.”
    “Nobility has its own pace,” said Sir Dalbry. “But King Ashtok is hooked. I am officially hired to slay the dragon. I won’t be able to collect our payment for a few days. We have to allow time for me to stalk and kill the monster.”
    “When we get paid, we could use some new pots.” Reeger used a stick to nudge a battered pot over the campfire where several potatoes were boiling. “I killed a snake, skinned it, and added the meat to the broth. You two eat all you want. I’m not terribly hungry.”
    “You? Not hungry?” Cullin asked. “Are you sick?”
    “No, but I just had a roast chicken before I came here.”
    Chicken sounded better than snake. Or their usual squirrel.
    Dalbry fished out two chewy dried apricots from a pouch at his side. “I’ll continue to eat the apricots from my magic sack, which never gets empty.” He popped the leathery fruit into his mouth.
    Reeger snorted and grabbed his crotch. “I’ve got a magic sack.”
    Dalbry rolled his eyes in distaste. “And that is why we can’t let you be seen at court.”
    The other man picked at his teeth, found something there, and pulled it out. “That’s why I’m good at the dirty work.”
    “I don’t mind camp food for a few more days,” Cullin said. “In the meantime, Sir Dalbry could share his apricots.”
    “If I do that, then my magic sack will get empty.”
    “I thought it was magic,” Cullin said.
    “Magic only extends so far. My magic sack never gets empty because I am wise enough to refill it when necessary.” Dalbry chewed on his apricot, spat out the pit, and placed it in another sack on the opposite side of his waist. “I may have to put on a disguise tomorrow and go to market to buy some more.”
    Cullin found a green twig and poked at the simmering water, the lumps of potato, and the blobs of rubbery snake meat. Their nourishing stew wouldn’t be done for some time yet.
    Sir Dalbry wore his armor only when he had to play the part of dragon slayer; he changed clothes now into more comfortable camp attire. The companions had several outfits so they could appear as different strangers each time they went into town. In fact, the first time Cullin had met the two men, they were dressed as wandering friars.
    He smiled at the thought. How that day had changed his life!
    The two men had come to Cullin’s town dressed in roughspun cloaks, barefoot, chanting a somber but well-coordinated song. They claimed to be holy friars with a heavy burden and an important mission, and everyone in town believed them. After all, who would lie about such a sacred subject?
    Cullin had grown up in a town called—depending on who was asked—Miller’s Folly or Honey’s Folly; he had been only a boy when the village realized it needed a name at all. He was the son of the town’s miller, a good man but a poor accountant, who never seemed to have any coins in his pockets. The reason for this, the miller eventually discovered, was that his pockets had holes in them, and each time he got paid, the coins would drop out along the ground; other townspeople had a habit of shadowing him wherever he went.
    The miller’s brother was a woodcutter who harvested dead trees around the mill. Fortunately for the woodcutting business, though not for the health of the forest, a beetle infestation had killed many of the trees, and the woodcutter could harvest plenty of wood without going far.
    One sunny day, the miller