Granny Trudy vs dragon

Trudy picked her way over spilled mugs and splintered furniture to the bar where the supposed Dolly had run out of weapons.

“Here you go,” Trudy handed over the rolling pin, with which Dolly quickly whacked the man in front of her over the chin.

“Thanks, sweetheart. Duck!”

Trudy did, and a barbarian was thrown over her head into the wine selection. The perpetrator came running up full tilt and Trudy boxed him on the nose once, which worked just as well as with Pig Pen.

“Impressive,” Dolly looked the other old woman up and down. “Ever been in a fight?”

“No, but I have a lot of pent up anger this week.”

“Looks good on you. Hand me that bottle, there’s a dear.”

Dolly threw a fine whiskey at the face of someone with a club.

“What’s your name, then?”

Trudy gathered all the bottles that fit into her arms and dispensed them over the counter as fast as her rheumatism would let her. The barbarians were doused but not discouraged by this. “Ermentrude Schlagnitweit, nice to meet you.”

“That’s a mouthful,” Dolly said, lobbing a jar of pickled eggs into the onslaught.

“You can call me Trudy.”

“Dolomita Nug, you just call me Dolly.”

Trudy whacked the next barbarian in the chin with a jar of pickled onions. “The young wizard over there would like a word if you’re finished here.”

“Sure. Head down!”

Throwing the snack contents of the bar, the pair of them rejoined Hungerford, who had avoided death nine times in the last five minutes. Trudy grabbed him by the robe sleeve, and they bolted towards the door, past Mole, who was sitting on a barbarian shouting “Uncle!” over and over.

“Mole, stop fooling around! We’re in a hurry,” Trudy said sternly, and indeed they were, for they had barely made it to the door when one of the barbarians shouted, “Don’t let her get away!”

Aunt Dolly winked at him. “Can’t stay, my grandson needs my help, urgently, today. Let’s be off, sonny.” She turned Munck around and smacked his backside like a horse. “Go, go, go, go, go!”

Dolly skidded to a halt outside the door when she spied the wagon. “Oh good, a getaway cart!” She clambered in and made frantic motions for the others to follow.

“Drive, skinny boy, drive!”

Dolly grabbed the reins out of Munck’s hands and made them snap, and the old mare they had barely been able to afford ran as if she’d spotted a carrot field. Dolly turned and waved to a group of barbarians breaking through the pub’s door before they were out of sight.

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“I think we’re far enough away,” Dolly said finally, letting the horse slow. “Thanks for the help, lad. Who are you?”

Hungerford pushed his pointy hat back the right way on after it had gone askew with the sudden speed. “Uh, Hungerford Munck, I’m a wizard ...”

“Yeah? Summon me a hip that won’t ache!” She cackled at her own joke and elbowed Munck to either get him to join in or spy out the whereabouts of his money purse.

“Why were those fighters after you?”

Aunt Dolly shook a mass of curls that had been dyed a lavender too subtle for the head it adorned and had likely started life as a rich hibiscus purple. “May or may not owe them a bit of money, not that you can prove anything. I’m definitely not the reason they no longer got horses to come after us with. Certainly didn’t blame it on one half of them so the other half would start fighting them. Now what do you want? Your granny says you got questions? Might cost you, just a word of warning.”

Munck blinked at the fast-talking disaster. “What? No. First of all, Miss Trudy is not my granny, nor is Mole my grandpa, and second, I think you’re my third?”

“Third? Third what?” Dolly looked Mole up and down. “I’ll be his third, and I don’t even care what we’re talking about.”

Hungerford’s – and Mole’s – face was approaching beetroot levels of blush. “No, I mean... where you born under unique circumstances?”

Aunt Dolly shrugged. “Sure, my folks found me in a tree trunk.”

The wizard slapped the driver’s bench in frustration. “Dammit, I was so sure...”

Dolly turned to the other two. “Is he a bit funny? Do you two need help? Blink twice if you do.”

While Trudy blinked twice several times, Mole was quick to diffuse the situation before the young wizard could suffer an aneurysm. “Friend Munck is on a holy wizard quest,” Mole explained.

“It’s not holy…” came the small, annoyed voice from the driver’s seat.

“He’s sworn to his late master he’d find the Children of a prophecy, the Children of the Sky.”

Munck gestured vaguely to Dolly, with plans in mind to drop her in the next town. “I thought it might be you, all the news I found pointed to it, but since you were in a tree …”

“Sure I fell from the sky. That’s how I got in the tree trunk,” Dolly explained.

Hungerford had finally learned when to be sceptical. “Really?”

“Yeah, nearly set the thing on fire. Here.” Dolly dug around in the pockets of her enormous and comfortable old lady trousers and produced a leather wallet that contained a faded miniature painting of two elderly people and a yellowed newspaper clipping titled “Meteort hitted tree on Nug estate: Turnted out to be infantte.”

“I can’t believe this,” Munck breathed and almost let the mare drag the cart down a ravine.

“That’s exactly what my mum said!” Dolly grinned as the wizard fought for control of the vehicle.

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“Well, I better tell you everything.” Munck repeated what he had already explained to the other two. Dolly listened carefully and entirely unimpressed.

“What’s in it for me?”

“A free ride to Muirburg,” Trudy said on the back of the wagon, only half-sarcastic. For the sake of getting the whole affair over and done with, she was even ready to help Munck be convincing. “And the boy’s eternal gratitude. Not his servitude, though, I already got that in writing.”

“S’ppose it might come in handy if a wizard owes you a favour. Righty, then, I’m in. Make room back there.” Dolly, being a bit shorter than Trudy but twice as wide, squeezed in next to her. “Well. This whole sky business, does this make us siblings, what do we think?”

She winked at Mole, who for the first time since Trudy had met him stuttered.

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The skull blinked its ghostly eyes at the scene. “So they found the third Child. Now what?”

Merunas rubbed his wrinkly hands. “Now they only have to go to the capital, do a little song and dance, literally on the song part, and it’ll start the summoning. Can’t be more than a week now. Everything is coming up Merunas.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the skull chattered teeth, its way of laughing.

“Well … like coming up roses. Only more specific.”

“I haven’t had a nose in three-hundred-fifty-six years, but I’m betting my wisdom tooth you don’t smell like a bunch of roses.”

Merunas took the skull and shoved it to the back of the shelf. “Well, then. I suppose I might as well pack up and get going myself,” he said to himself over sound of a possessed skull trying to free itself by hopping on its jaw.

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“… so then he says to me, ‘a cute little number like you needs something hot’, and I say, ‘I’ll give you something hot’, and I poured the soup right down his trousers!”

Guffaws echoed from the wagon. Hungerford sighed. Now there were three ancients telling long stories. At least it wasn’t far to the capital now. Shouldn’t take a week.

He half-turned to the back of the wagon. Something had been bothering him about Dolly from the beginning, and since they were in the middle of the road and no one could run away, or hobble at high speed, as it were, it was as good a time as any to bring it up. “No offence, Miss Dolly, but, uh … when we were coming into town, we heard about all the good you did?”

Dolly maintained an expert poker face with which she nodded humbly. “Of yes, did all that. Totally.”

Hungerford raised sceptical eyebrows that vanished under his hat. “So you bring books to the infirm?”

“Sure.” Dolly mumbled under her breath: “He doesn’t need to know that I get them a bit of the goods that way, eh?”

“And you collected money for the hospital, and it was stolen by bandits?”

“Sure.” She mumbled again: “He doesn’t need to know I got a cut of it.”

“And you’re aware that I can hear you?”

“Su… whoops. I thought I was backed safely against these crates.”

“We’re old, not deaf,” Trudy said sternly. “You’re a nuisance-maker!”

“Damn right!” Dolly slapped her on the back in rough camaraderie. “What am I supposed to do? My little town’s so boring.”

Trudy’s never overflowing supply of patience was running dry. “So move somewhere else.”

“You’re right. I suppose by now I’m unrecognisable from the wanted posters …”

“By any chance, did you attend the college of rogues?” Mole asked the important questions that no one understood. “You have the right attitude.”

“Nah, I flunked the entrance exam, never been stabby enough. But my mum did.”

Mole’s face brightened and his beard made way for an enormous grin. “Not Agneta Nug?”

“That was her name.”

“You’re kidding, I knew her! She was our rogue’s chapter master.”

Trudy had meanwhile been racking her brain, since the name rang a bell, but whoever was home needed a bit to get to the door. “Wait, Agneta, tall, red-haired, sweet tooth, especially for cinnamon rolls? She came in every day that summer when I was twenty, had business in town.”

Dolly’s lavender curls bounced excitedly around her head. “I can’t believe you both met my old mum!”

Trudy kept a smile on her face and raised her voice. “I can’t believe we all knew your mum and a wizard couldn’t find the three of us in seventy years!”

Out on the driver’s seat, Munck ground his teeth so hard he’d really upset his dentist.

Dolly shrugged. “Should have hired her, she was excellent at finding people. Also in making sure no one could find people.”

An hour passed in reminiscence, highlights of which included the time Agneta had hidden in a chandelier, the rogue Mole knew had tried to copy this manoeuvre and crashed, chandelier, candles, and all, into the guards he had been trying to avoid, how Agneta had tried to pilfer a few rolls from the bakery and was chased through the neighbourhood with a broom by Trudy’s mum, hid in someone’s chicken coop, got chased by said chickens for the rest of the morning, and ended up returning with an apology.

The cart no longer swayed side to side with every move; someone had finally fixed the road here. Dolly was the first to notice. “This road is really smooth,” she said appreciatively. “Hardly any rumpling at all. Must be getting close to the capital.”

Mole chuckled as if Dolly had made an amusing mistake. “Oh, that’s not the road, that’s the dragon.”

Dolly squinted up at Trudy to see if she was in on the joke. Then she looked at Mole, who returned a look of confused innocence. “What dragon?!”

Mole peeked through a hole in the wagon covering. “The dragon that picked up the cart. We should hear Munck any sec...”

On cue came a blood-curdling scream from the driver’s seat accompanied by panicked neighing, and Hungerford scrambled into the back. “There’s … there’s … there’s …”

“It’s a dragon, boy,” Trudy explained unnecessarily.

“I know that!”

“Well, don’t take it out on me.”

Hungerford dared to look out in the direction of the driver’s seat where the dragon’s red scaly underside was just visible. The regular fwhump of gigantic wings grew louder as the dragon was reaching cruising altitude. Wind whistled past the wagon and the increasingly panicking horse. “It’s not eating us. That’s good, right?”

Mole nodded. “I guess it’ll take us to its cave and feed us to the babies.”

Hungerford, pale as any laundress would like her sheets, trembled his way through his spellbook. “Oh yes, that doesn’t sound like a problem at all! Dragon, dragon … why is there nothing in here about dragons?”

Trudy peeked over his shaking shoulder. “So? Cast a fireball at the dragon.”

Hungerford looked at her with one watery and on twitchy eye. “Dragons are immune to fire, Miss Trudy. On account that they can breathe fire. They’d be setting themselves aflame and die out otherwise.”

“Poke it with a stick.”

“I can’t possible do that and cast a spell that will make the cart land softly!”

“But you can cast a spell that will make the cart land softly?” Trudy repeated, since this, to her, was the more important problem. After all, entire stretches of land existed that had no dragon-related issues, so getting rid of one should be easy enough.

“Yes, but I will need full concentration.”

“Alrigthy,” Dolly cracked her knuckles. “I’ll deal with the dragon.”

Three heads turned at her quizzically, recalled Trudy’s sudden death punches, and decided that stranger things had happened. “How?” Hungerford asked finally.

“I’ll climb along its back and poke it in the eye.”

“And how do you propose to climb back into the cart with the beast thrashing about?”

Dolly folded her arms and refused to look anyone in the eye. “I don’t hear you having any ideas.”

“I think the horse is about to have a heart attack,” Mole said, entirely calm. “This reminds me of the time when …”

He was shushed by a chorus of “Not now!”

Trudy tried to squint outside. “Say, Ford, is it true that dragons have a weak spot on their bellies?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re directly under its belly now, aren’t we? Well, couldn’t Mole climb up, stab it, and then you can cast the spell on the cart?”

Hungerford scratched his head. “No, we absolutely need the dragon to let go of the wagon first or the beast will crush us when it falls.”

“What if we turn the dragon upside down so we’d land on it?”

“Again: cart needs to be free falling or the spell won’t work. Oh, I’d need to cast a spell at it and on the cart at the same time, but …”

“Is this a mortal peril situation and do you think I could punch its foot? Or is it a paw?”

“It’s the climbing up and coming back part that’s worrying me, Miss Trudy. Oh, this is hopeless!”

Mole patted the young wizard on the back. “Now, now, Munck, nothing is ever hopeless. Let me tell you a story …”

“Not now, Mole!”

While Mole, over protests from Hungerford and even Dolly, began the riveting tale of the black dragon of Shostakovara Mountain, Trudy decided this wasn’t the way she was going to die. It was a good ten years to early, for one. For another, she refused to die before getting the bakery’s bookkeeping in order, leave very detailed instructions to the kids, supervise the job training of the grandkids, bake a five-tier cake, and recreate the three-fudge peppermint surprise she’d only managed once the winter of ‘56. Her brain was inching its way to a solution. “Immune to fire you say … also immune to explosions?”

“Mostly, I’d say,” Hungerford diagnosed over Mole’s chatting.

“But if it was distracting enough … Mole, empty that crate. I may have an idea.”