Chapter 15: Big Brother Will Take You Dragon Hunting~
Xia Ya was furious.
He swung a backhand slap across the mage's face. Bidar Duo let out a shriek, and two teeth flew out of his mouth.
"You think I'm easy to fool?"
Xia Ya snarled.
"A treasure? Do I look like a three-year-old to you? There's no counting the tales of treasure on the Wildfire Plain, and I've been listening to them for a dozen years. That kind of talk might just work on a child. Down in the Wildfire Town taverns you can buy eighteen treasure maps for a single copper, and every one of them a different version! And anyway, I heard the whole lot of you from up in that tree — you came here to hunt the lion beast, didn't you!"
Bida'erduo clapped a hand over his mouth, cursing every one of Xia Ya's ancestors back eighteen generations in his heart, while not daring to let a trace of anger show on his face. "Every word I've said is true... Sir Bandit, this... the truth is, we come from the Royal City, and my companions are all sons of noble houses. They've never once set foot outside in their lives. Shut up among a pack of noble youths, they call themselves masters, when in fact they have no real skill at all..."
"Huh? So you're a clear-eyed one — you know your companions are sacks of straw." Xia Ya was rather curious.
Bida'erduo covered his face and smiled bitterly. "Of course I know. They're nobles; they can afford to know nothing of the world. They practice a few martial moves, and their family's servants and retainers fall over each other to flatter them, and in time they really believe they're masters. But I'm a mage — a properly certified mage of the church, even if only first level. I know exactly what I'm worth."
He paused.
Seeing Xia Ya growing impatient, he didn't dare ramble on, and hurried out: "This trip — I was the one who talked the others into it.
I told them, since we're the four great masters, we ought to tour the world in proper style and carry the fame of the Four Masters to the far corners of the continent; only then would we truly be renowned under heaven. The fools were tempted, and I talked them into running away from home to go adventuring..."
The mage's own face went red, and he said with a bitter smile, "Naturally I had my reasons. I'm the lowest grade of mage. In the Royal City, where masters are as thick as clouds, who would ever look twice at a low-grade mage like me?
All I can do is coax a little money out of these noble boys to live on. But a few days ago, I got word through the Mage Guild. The source is absolutely reliable!
"My own strength is lowly, but my magic teacher is a true mid-grade mage — very famous in the Royal City. That day I heard my senior apprentice brother say the teacher would be away for a while, that he was going on a long journey with several mages famous throughout the Royal City. I fished around for a long time, and only when my senior brother was drunk did he tell me: the teacher and those other mages had all come to the Wildfire Plain."
Bida'erduo's eyes lit with excitement. "I hear there's been a great discovery on the Wildfire Plain! The teacher and several of the Royal City's master mages have come together to find out just what it is!"
Xia Ya was thoroughly impatient. "All this talking, and what the hell does any of it have to do with your get-rich secret?!"
Seeing Xia Ya's hand come up again, Bidar Duo clapped a hand over his face at once. "Don't! Don't hit me! Don't be impatient — I'm getting to it, nearly there, nearly there..."
In his heart he felt deeply wronged. A first-level mage is still a mage!
He swallowed and hurried on: "Getting rich — that part is true, of course... because that great discovery on the Wildfire Plain is none other than..."
Here he couldn't help but pause again. He gave Xia Ya a smug look, then slowly delivered the answer:
"A dragon!"
A dragon?
Even Xia Ya's face turned solemn at that!
A dragon? It really is a dragon?
Not that he had ever seen a dragon... Of course, the vast majority of people had never seen one; and those who had were mostly dead men by now.
On the continent, dragons were beings of transcendent power. In the taverns of Wildfire Town Xia Ya had heard every kind of legend, and practically every tale of how some legendary hero split heaven from earth included, without fail, a tacked-on and thoroughly hackneyed passage in which the hero duels a mighty evil dragon. In every one of those stories, the dragon existed purely as the ultimate final boss.
But legends were, in the end, only legends.
The reality was that dragons did exist on the continent — only their territory lay in the distant, unknown far north. So far away that you would have to cross the Odin Empire and keep going north... In any case, there were absolutely no dragons in the Byzantine Empire.
Thinking it through, Xia Ya grew doubtful — he at least knew common sense. There were no dragons in the Byzantine Empire, none on the Wildfire Plain, and probably none in the Odin Empire either...
"Everything I'm telling you is true!" Bida'erduo lowered his voice. "Think about it, Sir Bandit. I know very well how weak I am, and I'm not one of those noble brats who don't know how high the sky is. Without some special reason, why would I come to a dangerous place like the Wildfire Plain?"
That reasoning convinced Xia Ya.
True enough: with the little skill these fellows had, coming to the Wildfire Plain was like a hen wriggling into a weasel's den.
The fact that they hadn't been butchered as fat sheep in Wildfire Town along the way was probably because their gear and getup were frightening enough to scare people off.
"There really is a dragon on the Wildfire Plain! I got the news from my teacher, and that's exactly why he joined up with several formidable mages and came to the Wildfire Plain. Their aim is... to hunt that dragon down!"
Slay a dragon?
Xia Ya perked up, as though he were back in the old days, hearing stories in a tavern.
"There's no need to say how powerful a dragon is. Under normal circumstances, my teacher — a mid-grade mage, a man of name and standing in the Royal City — would be a joke to take on a dragon. So he joined forces with several other mages. And more importantly... I hear that this dragon hiding on the Wildfire Plain is, for certain special reasons, in a very weakened state. It's the perfect moment to strike!"
The mage grew more excited the more he spoke.
"Understand, a dragon is a treasure beyond price to a mage! Dragon hide, dragon scales, dragon bone, dragon teeth — even dragon saliva is the finest of magic materials! And better still, if you can dig out the dragon crystal, you can refine the power of the dragon's soul... it could send a mage's strength leaping up several grades at once!"
At this Xia Ya looked Bida'erduo over with a cold smile. "So you got ideas of your own and came running out here to hunt dragons? On the strength of that one spell of yours that turns you into a rabbit?"
Bida'erduo flushed. "I... I'd never be so foolish as to set my heart on slaying a dragon. Even if I went mad, I'd know I don't have that kind of ability — not in another hundred years. So I came for money."
Money?
"Dragons love shiny things by nature, so they collect all kinds of treasure. Any dragon's lair is usually like an enormous hoard, piled full of gems, crystals and gold that the dragon has gathered... piled up like mountains!"
Bida'erduo caught his breath. "To ordinary folk such wealth is a temptation, but to a mage it's just vulgar stuff. A truly formidable mage wouldn't be moved by treasure at all, and I doubt my teacher or those archmages who went with him will be either. Their goal is to slay the dragon; as for the dragon's hoard, if nothing goes wrong, they may well just leave it lying there once they've finished..."
Xia Ya understood, and gave a nasty little laugh. "So you mean to trail along quietly, wait until your teacher and his friends have killed that dragon and gone, and then go pick up the treasure they left behind?"
"...Yes." Bida'erduo nodded. "I'm a lowly mage, and my natural talent isn't good. There's no hope of my ever becoming a truly formidable one in this life. So money means a great deal to me — otherwise I wouldn't be running around with these noble sacks of straw. Only... I'm very poor. I couldn't even afford the travel costs from the Royal City to the Wildfire Plain, so I had no choice but to..."
"So you made up a story and talked these noble sacks of straw into coming with you, pretending you were taking them on a tour of the continent?" Xia Ya shook his head, then glared at the fellow. "Then cut the nonsense. Where are those mages slaying the dragon? Since you came all the way here, you must know the place!"
Bida'erduo sighed, and reluctantly fished a piece of parchment out of his robes, along with a stick of charcoal, and drew a map on it.
"Head west from here, cross two more ridges, and there's a stretch of marsh; that's where it is."
Xia Ya glanced at the map and laughed. "And how do I know you haven't drawn me a fake?"
Bidar Duo said hurriedly, "I wouldn't dare! My life is in your hands right now... Wealth is tempting, but you need a life to enjoy it. I'm a timid man... I wouldn't dare joke about my own life."
Xia Ya gave him a long, searching look, then smiled, hauled him to his feet, and pointed. "All right, you talk sense. Now you can go over there and clear out with your companions."
Bida'erduo, as though granted a general amnesty, scrambled up and limped over to his three companions, where he muttered away at them. Just what he said, and how this cunning fellow gulled those three sacks of straw, was no concern of Xia Ya's.
Sure enough, the other three of the Four Gallants of the Royal City threw terrified looks at Xia Ya, scrambled up, propped each other along, and fled in a wretched hurry.
Xia Ya stood under the tree and watched the four of them go far off. Only then did he raise his head and call up into the branches with a laugh: "Hey, you miserable wretch, jump down!"
The wretch's legs had gone numb from sitting, and he wouldn't dare jump. Xia Ya glared at him. "Jump, and I'll catch you! If you don't jump, I'll chop the tree down!"
The wretch was terrified on the spot — this horrifying fellow had brute strength enough to pull a great tree up by the roots, and he was crude and vicious besides; if he said it, he'd certainly do it.
So he had no choice but to shut his eyes and leap.
Xia Ya was decent enough about it: he put out a hand to catch the wretch and set him down on the ground.
"So you heard all that from up in the tree?" Xia Ya rubbed his chin and looked at the wretch.
"I... I heard." The wretch nodded — then suddenly let out a shriek and stared at Xia Ya in terror. "Hey! You — you're not going to kill me to keep me quiet, are you?! I — I've got no interest in any dragon treasure!!"
"I'm not very interested in killing people." Xia Ya shook his head. "Do you think what that mage said is true?"
The wretch hesitated. "I think... some of it's believable, but..."
He sat on the ground and looked up at Xia Ya. "Are you planning to go after that dragon's treasure?"
"Of course. Mountains of gold, mountains of silver — who doesn't like those?" Xia Ya snorted twice.
"Then... then what about me?"
"I'll give you two choices. Either you walk back to Wildfire Town from here by yourself. Or... you come with me, and when we find the treasure, you can carry the gold for me." Xia Ya grinned.
Walk back to Wildfire Town alone from here?
With my talent for getting lost even on an open walk... if I don't have this bumpkin to guide me, I'll probably go blundering straight into a dwarf's cave!
"Do I have a choice?!" the wretch answered bitterly.
"Good. When we find the treasure, I'll give you a third of it." Xia Ya was delighted. "I won't hurt you. You're no threat to me at all."
"I... why do I feel like you're up to no good — you agreeing to take me along so easily?" The wretch watched Xia Ya warily.
"All right, I'll tell you the truth."
Xia Ya's look was utterly open, the very picture of uprightness.
"An honest man does nothing in the dark! If we get there and those mages fail to kill the dragon and get killed by it instead... then naturally all I can do is run."
He paused, then explained: "When I was a boy, I used to go up the mountain to cut firewood, and I'd always take a live rabbit with me. I'd break its leg first, and if I ran into a wolf, I'd toss it down to draw the wolf's attention while I got away.
So bringing you along is the same idea."