Sven Olafson was the descendant of mighty heroes.
As he kicked his boots against the wall to shake off the last of the snow from last night’s snow fall he wasn’t thinking about his ancestors who had wrestled Ogres, fought Troll and Giants, drunk the blood of dragons or had relations with wolves.
No he was thinking that it was far too early to be turning up to work. Another day cooking burgers for enough money to pay his rent and not much more.
His boss hated him which is why he got to unlock and do the bins and clean up the mess the late shift would have done but never did.
Sven really hated his life.
“Psssssst”
Sven’s head came up and he looked around, nothing but snow and bins in the alley behind the kitchens.
As the last of the snow came lose Sven pushed open the door and stepped into the warmth.
The morning went as expected, some fool had dropped hot cooking fat on the table by the fryers and it had set overnight. The bins were overflowing and there was a nasty smell coming from the cupboard under the grill tray.
Another day up to his blue rubber gloves in someone else’s muck.
The boss wandered in ten minutes before opening time along with the more favoured staff and spent eight minutes carefully checking the place was clean and ready to go.
As usual not a word of thanks.
Sven really hated his life.
The morning went past quickly, the breakfast rush and then a pause before the lunch rush began.
The boss vanished for his usual hour and a half mid day break then came back in and declared the place was a mess and needed cleaning, Sven didn’t even look up from the grill, he knew who the boss was looking at.
~
The alley was still full of snow and bins. Dragging two bags of rubbish to the closest bin Sven lifted the greasy lid and threw both bags in with enough force to split one.
Sven really hated his life.
“Pssssssssst”.
Sven looked around. Bins and snow, snow and bins. Nothing else, well apart from that funny looking little man about four feet tall dressed in furs and some sort of metal breastplate thing out of a re-enactment event .
Oh and a beard. Lots and lots of beard. Down to his knees beard.
“Pssssssst. Long shanks, over here.”
It was odd, Sven thought to himself, that looked like a dwarf which was silly because dwarves didn’t exist outside of those D&D games he used to play before he discovered girls.
“Come over here ya silly bugger, ya want someone to see me?”
To Sven that actually made sense, being seen talking to a D&D creature in an alley would be strange even in this part of town so he stomped over and stepped into the gap between the big bins where the Dwarf was hiding.
“Right then lad, no time to talk, I be needin a Hero and you are it. Let’s be off.”
Sven looked down at the Dwarf then had to stop since he was well over six feet tall and looking down at the Dwarf was making the back of his neck hurt.
“I don’t understand, who are you, I’m not a hero, I’m a cook.”
The Dwarf looked Sven up and down which took some time given how tall the mankind was.
“Look lad its simple, I need a hero, you are the closest Son of Olaf I could find so that makes you the hero, so let’s go.”
Sven was strangely accepting of the whole situation but a little confused, he was an Olafson yes, his dad was a plumber, his granddad was a carpenter, no one in the family talked about the great grandparents though but that was it. No Hero’s, no one who had ever talked about dwarves. What next, was there going to be an Elf hiding in the plant pots on the balcony when he got home.
“I’m sorry, you have the wrong person, I have to get back to the kitchens.”
Sven turned away and made his way back to the kitchen door and the inevitable comments from his boss about how long it takes to get rid of a few bags of rubbish.
The Dwarf watched him go and let out a long sigh. Why was it they could never find a Hero in the middle of his Heroicness, why did they always find some youngster right at the beginning. It was almost like one of the sagas.
Very well, time to get sneaky. There were a few winter spirits that owed him a favour.
~
The mid afternoon lull came along and with it a fresh snowfall.
Sven son of Olaf finished yet another day and stepped out into the mid afternoon as the wane sun began to set and the long winter night began again. The fresh snow crunched underfoot and the flurries of snow became heavier and heavier till it was hard to see the road or the houses alongside.
Keeping his head down to watch where he was walking Sven made his way home through a world of white.
Then he suddenly stopped. He had walked this way every day for three years now and he didn’t remember any part of his walk being gravel. Looking round as the snow thinned and cleared he didn’t remember walking past rock faces either.
Then he turned round and round he had just walked into the mouth of a cave and that same Dwarf from the morning was standing there looking at him.
“Right lad, as I said there be a need for a Hero, which be you.”
Sven looked at the Dwarf then looked at the cave around him for a second time, he wasn’t surprised or shocked by this, in fact he seemed oddly calm about the whole situation.
It was probably shock, like after an accident, yes that was it he was in shock. What was it people did in shock, checked the eyes, asked your name.
“My name lad” said the Dwarf which told Sven he had said at least the last bit out loud, “I am Lord Steelbender of the Tinderwash peaks, House lord of family Steelbender, second to the clan lord of the Great Iron peaks clan, Father of seven fine sons, Grandfather of twenty six fine grandsons, Great grandfather of” the Dwarf paused as if in deep though, “ erm sixy one I think or it could be sixty two it’s hard to keep track. Great great grandfather of several hundred by now. Oh and a whole bunch of daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters and so on”.
“To be honest the hall isn’t big enough for the entire family these days though the wife insists we invite every single one of them to the winter feast.”
“Anyway lad lets be getting you properly armed.”
The Dwarf turned and walked deeper into the cave where it became a tunnel of fine dressed stone. He stopped at the first door he came to, a wide, short and solid looking block of timber bound with steel and with a pair of crossbow slits set in the middle.
Sven thought about running out of the way but finally decided that he would probably end up running back into the cave so he followed the dwarf to the door.
~
Opening the door the dwarf gestured for Sven to enter then followed him into what Sven immediately thought of as a guard room. One wall was a rack of crossbows; each had a bag of bolts hanging beside it. Another wall was all spears. Along the third wall was heaped breastplates, helmets and piles of metal rings. A table down the center of the room held a mix of weapons and it was to these that the dwarf pointed.
“Try them out an see what calls to ya lad.”
Sven picked up the war axe, a shaft as tall as his shoulder, an axe blade that could split a tree or a troll skull in a single blow. It seemed clumsy and heavy and too long and too top heavy so he put it down.
Sven picked up the war spear as tall as he was, hand carved of well aged Ash with a spear head that could pierce clean through a brick wall. It was too long and holding it in both hands he just got confused as to using his left or right hand first so he put it down.
Sven picked up the sword. A full yard of dwarf forged steel, an edge that cleanly cut elf silk or split an oak shield in two, sharp enough to shave with though with dwarves that was just a guess and so perfectly balanced only a complete idiot could cut himself with it. Sven put it back on the table with one hand while sucking the cut on the thumb of his other hand.
~
Up in Valhalla something of an argument was going on.
Havard Olafson who had killed a Troll in single combat was loudly denying that the youngster was anything to do with his branch of the family.
Thorfin Olafson the Berserker who had made it into Valhalla on account of getting a bit drunk and storming the feast hall of his closest enemy and singlehandedly killing all thirty one of them before dying of wounds received. He had a bit of a temper so no one ever mentioned the rumour that he was so drunk he got lost and was just looking for more beer. He was glaring across the table and saying the boy was clearly one of those useless sons of Kvistr.
Kvistr Olafson the squashed who had died when the Ogre he had just killed fell over backwards and crushed him was shaking a fist back at Thorfin while pointing a finger at Siggurd Olafsun who was sprawled in his chair further down the table with his feet up next to the Mead barrel.
The argument was just getting to the point where it would start the regular daily punch up when Ingrid Olafsdottir came past the group, a whole roast boar on a platter held in one hand and a barrel of mead held in the other. She kicked Siggurd’s chair so that he fell over and when he sat up she looked him straight in the eye and said “No feet on the table”.
She then looked each of the others in the eye and told them to leave the young lad alone before she walked off down the hall to deliver the food. A noticeable circle of good behaviour went with her.
There had a great deal of discussion about how she got here though never when she was close enough to overhear, she helped out but she wasn’t one of the serving staff, she was a Hero, well technically a Heroine but as she said after they dragged off the unconscious body of the last fool who said she had no place in Valhalla, she had earned the right and they would treat her as such.
She had even taken a male sort of surname.
No one seemed to know exactly what she had done to get in, the Valkyrie all referred to each other as the one who had let her in, Odin had been asked and he had summoned her to demand an answer then refused to talk about it anymore. Odin’s wife Frigga thought it was hilarious and the two women often spent an afternoon sitting at one end of the feast hall talking about the various failings of the Heroes nearby.
It was getting so bad the staff were starting to move the tables and chairs down to the other end of the hall and crowd everyone in there since they were all standing down there anyway.
~
Back down on earth Sven reached the end of the table and shrugged. Every single weapon felt wrong to him, nothing called to him as the Dwarf said it would. He looked at the Dwarf and shrugged.
Letting loose another long sigh the Dwarf picked up a bundle of metal from the shelf and threw it across the room to Sven who tried to catch the flexible rustling mass of mail before realising just how heavy it was.
Thrormondire Steelbender was as ancient as the hills, he had seen a hundred generations of mankind come and go, he had watched dozens of Heroes come and go, mostly feet first. But this one was really beginning to try his patience.
Now he looked at the tall blond young mankind with a mail hauberk draped across his shoes and sighed yet again.
Sven looked at the Dwarf and a question came to mind.
“You said you need a Hero, why exactly do you need someone like that.” The second question, why not just do it yourself wasn’t spoken out loud but it followed along anyway.
The Dwarf looked him up and down again slowly before speaking.
“It’s a bit of a problem lad and not something I can handle, it’s sort of against the rules for me to interfere.”
That comment was just asking for a long explanation and Sven stepped in and did the asking.
It turned out that Lord Steelbender of house Steelbender of the Tinderwash peaks was bound by ancient treaties to honour certain borders and not challenge whoever held them even when some of those borders were an old Dwarf hall which had fallen to Frost giants. If he set foot in the hall the protection against attack his own clan enjoyed as a result of the ancient treaty would be shattered and they would be up to their chins in Frost giants.
The dwarves didn’t like having Frost giants squatting in a fine Dwarf hold, the Frost Giants didn’t like not being allowed to raid the clan halls but as the All Father had said when he negotiated the treaty that was the essence of democracy, leaving everyone unhappy.
So no Dwarf could clean up the mess, they needed a mankind hero and the best they could find was, well it was Sven.
“Are Frost Giants anything like they are in D&D then” asked Sven?
“Dee an Dee, what’s that?”
“Dungeons and Dragons.”
Thrormondire looked slightly excited at that, “you know about these Dungeons an Dragons then lad” he asked.
Sven hadn’t played in a few years but he still had a cupboard full of the books though he kept them out of sight in case he had a girl round but he still remembered sitting round the table as his ranger explored one dungeon or another.
“A bit yes” he said.
“Good, very good” came the reply from the now almost happy looking Dwarf.
“So are they the same then?”
“Are what the same lad?”
“The Frost giants?”
“Don’t you be worrying about Frost Giants lad, they were driven out years ago, it’s just the Dragon in there now.”
Sven missed that last bit for almost three seconds, it was the shock, the word Dragon wandered past and then jumped back to catch his attention.
“DRAGON. A real Dragon? Are you insane, I can’t fight a Dragon. What sort of Dragon, what colour is it? I’m not fighting a Dragon. A real Dragon?”
It took Thrormondire several second to work it all out since Sven had somehow managed to say it all at once.
“Yes lad a Dragon, big fire breathing bugger it is. It chased out or killed the Frost Giants years ago and it has been sleeping since then but now it’s woken up and it’s calling for a female.”
Sven had vague memories of Female Dragons being the nasty ones but he wasn’t sure why and so he asked.
“Because lad the male is looking for a mate and he does that three ways, he has a great horde of treasure, he is the strongest dragon around and he prepares a feast for the female.
Now he has a pile of good dwarven gold the Frost Giants stole when they took the hall. He’s the only Dragon for hundreds of miles so that makes him the strongest. The problem is all that food for the female.”
Thrormondire paused and waited for Sven to make the connection then sighed when he didn’t
“Your town lad, it’s the closest to the old dwarf hold. Your town will be where he goes to hunt for food to tempt a female.”
Perhaps the shock was finally wearing off but that bit cut through the calmness Sven had been maintaining.
The problem was the Dwarf could not go into the old Dwarf Hall to help, dwarves fought dragons using great crossbows and thick stone walls. Going into a tunnel to fight a dragon up close, that was a job for a hero.
If the Dragon was outside the cave and therefore across the border then Thrormondire could help, he even had a great crossbow that would do the job, one dwarf steel crossbow bolt that would split a tank end to end and no more Dragon.
But the Dragon was down a tunnel, in a hall, across the border. So it was Sven’s job.
Sven wasn’t happy.
“Look I’m no great warrior, all those weapons, I can’t fight with them. The armour would give me a hernia. There is no way I can go into those tunnels and fight a dragon.
Unless he comes outside where you can shoot him I have no chance and the only way to get him out is if he is collecting food and I don’t have half a ton of meat lying around, it’s not like I work in a.......... Oh.”
~
Somehow it took only a few minutes for the two of them to walk from the cave mouth which hid the entrance of the Dwarf hall back to the centre of town.
The company van keys were in the manager’s office, the manager’s office key was on the key ring Sven had to open the place up in the morning. The freezer was floor to ceiling shelves stacked with burgers.
By the time they had filled up the van and Sven had followed the Dwarfs directions out of town and up a dirt track into the hills it was night. The snow came and went in flurries but with an almost full moon the countryside was bright.
From the outside Steelbender holds front cave looked like a patch of scrub covered hillside but slowly as he stared at it the cave came into view as the hill and the bushes became translucent.
There was two wheeled cart of some sort in the cave with a massive bar of metal on a wooden frame above the wheels. It was resting on a long arm that was obviously used to pull it and it even had a ring on the arm that allowed them to hitch it to the tow ball on the van.
Throwing the bolts in the back of the van on top of the burgers Thrormondire added a handful of weapons, mostly spears and a great axe.
Then they both got in the van and set off back towards town.
~
The Cave that led to the fallen Dwarf hall and the dragons lair turned out to be at the back of a patch of waste ground behind the old industrial estate. No more than a few hundred steps from the factory buildings.
Thrormondire explained that the glamour on the cave prevented anyone seeing it or building too close to it. The factory workers had parked their cars right next to a sleeping dragon and had never known. Still the whole industrial estate was disused now so they had the place to themselves.
The first task was to set up the crossbow, even with dwarven skill and engineering it took a full minute to ratchet the thing to full tension ready to fire. They had four bolts just in case but given how long it took to reload they were unlikely to ever need more than two.
Between the two of them it took nearly ten minutes to unload the van, then unpack and stack the burgers into a pile, five thousand of the cheapest mass produced processed quarter pounder burgers that money could buy. They were the product of a cow so technically they were beef but calling them meat was a bit of a stretch. Still they would do the job, probably.
~
Nothing happened. An hour passed and the pile of frozen burgers sat there.
Not a sniff from the cave mouth, clearly the frozen burgers were not tempting the Dragon.
Sven’s hind brain was jumping up and down and shouting by the time his fore brain noticed the word frozen had some significance in all this.
The van had a spare petrol can, there was a box of matches in the glove compartment along with half a pack of some sort of very strange French cigarettes.
Several minutes later the smell of cooking, erm, beef filled the air.
The Dragon was dozing lightly, he had already put out the call for a female and he needed to be ready to respond if one replied so when the smell of cooking drifted down the tunnels he noticed it right away.
He stood up and walked up the tunnel to the cave to have a look, the smell was both tempting and strangely repellent at the same time but it certainly fit the bill in terms of being cooked cow.
The Dragon looked round, one pile of cow cooking nicely, one empty wasteland, one big boxy mankind land dragon thing, the smell of, no, the smell of cooking cow covered every other scent.
Seeing nothing the Dragon came out of the cave, a medium sized example of the species, eight feet from front shoulder to rear end, twenty feet in total length when you went nose to tail.
The dragon took a tentative bite of the cooking meat, then another and another. The burning petrol didn’t worry a fire dragon but it did have an odd taste on its tongue. A sort of greasy furry taste.
It finished the entire pile of half cooked half raw burgers and looked around to see if there was any more out there
The Dragons stomach rumbled, a supernatural beast that could swallow a cow or horse whole without the slightest concern was having problems with half a ton of semi cooked fast food burgers.
The sound of tires on dirt alerted the dragon and it looked up to see the mankind box move sideways to reveal a Dwarf standing next to a cart. A mankind jumped out of the box and caught a spear the dwarf threw at it.
One Dwarf and a mankind, this wasn’t an ambush, this was a snack.
As the great crossbow fired the dragon reared and the steel bolt missed its throat by mere inches, Sven lifted his spear overhead and stepped forward, the thin belly scales of the dragon were an easy target and he threw the spear with all his might.
It flew straight and true.
Bounced off the dragon’s stomach and clattered on the ground.
The Dragon lunged forward and pounced on the crossbow like a cat, the wheels and frame collapsed under the Dragons weight then it turned its attention to the Dwarf. The mankind was ignored and left behind as he focused on the real threat.
Thrormondire Steelbender took a firm grip on his great axe; running was out of the question so if he was going to die at least he planned to do so with a bit of dignity. Shame about the crossbow, still the bow was intact so it was just a matter of replacing the frame, he could do it himself, well if he was still around tomorrow he could.
The Dragon looked straight at him and prepared to strike when its stomach rumbled again like the world’s biggest drain gurgling. The most foul stench imaginable came out of both ends and the Dragon suddenly felt sick and needed to relieve itself.
The problems in its belly were far more important than a dwarf and the dragon decided to sort that out first, keeping one eye on the dwarf it lifted its tail and prepared to deal with one problem before it had the Dwarf for a snack.
A sudden terrible pain lanced through the dragon, from its bowels to its stomach and up to its neck, the dragon coughed burning blood and suddenly felt weak.
It twisted its head to look behind it and it saw the mankind Sven staggering way from its backside, choking on the smell that had come out when he had thrust the entire seven foot length of a spear up the dragons rear end that had become exposed when the dragon lifted its tail.
The dragon tried to draw a breath to flame the mankind but he couldn’t seem to breath, he couldn’t seem to stand properly, his legs seemed to stop working and he collapsed.
It took the dragon an agonising hour to finally die, Sven had suggested putting it out of its misery but neither of them were prepared to get that close, the smell was burning the paint off the van so what it would do if you got close enough to hit the dragon was something best not thought about.
In the end Thrormondire sent a message squirrel to his family and a score of dwarves spent what was left of the night shoveling dirt on top of the now dead dragon. They did a nice job on the wooden fencing, it looked exactly like mankind made and made the place look like an old building site.
It was decided to keep an eye on the place and come back to clean up in a year or perhaps three.
The crowd of dwarves left as silently as they had arrived and the only remaining problem was how to reclaim all that good dwarven Gold without setting foot inside the hall.
~
Sven looked at the van, the paintwork all down one side had blistered and the open door revealed the packaging of an entire weeks burgers. He was out of a job that was for sure.
He let out a long sigh.
Thrormondire looked round at that and asked what the problem was.
Sven explained he was unemployed.
Thrormondire smiled ever so slightly.
“Well lad if you be having some free time there be a bit of a troll problem to the south”
Sven son of Olaf, descendant of Heroes sighed.
Then asked for directions.
As he kicked his boots against the wall to shake off the last of the snow from last night’s snow fall he wasn’t thinking about his ancestors who had wrestled Ogres, fought Troll and Giants, drunk the blood of dragons or had relations with wolves.
No he was thinking that it was far too early to be turning up to work. Another day cooking burgers for enough money to pay his rent and not much more.
His boss hated him which is why he got to unlock and do the bins and clean up the mess the late shift would have done but never did.
Sven really hated his life.
“Psssssst”
Sven’s head came up and he looked around, nothing but snow and bins in the alley behind the kitchens.
As the last of the snow came lose Sven pushed open the door and stepped into the warmth.
The morning went as expected, some fool had dropped hot cooking fat on the table by the fryers and it had set overnight. The bins were overflowing and there was a nasty smell coming from the cupboard under the grill tray.
Another day up to his blue rubber gloves in someone else’s muck.
The boss wandered in ten minutes before opening time along with the more favoured staff and spent eight minutes carefully checking the place was clean and ready to go.
As usual not a word of thanks.
Sven really hated his life.
The morning went past quickly, the breakfast rush and then a pause before the lunch rush began.
The boss vanished for his usual hour and a half mid day break then came back in and declared the place was a mess and needed cleaning, Sven didn’t even look up from the grill, he knew who the boss was looking at.
~
The alley was still full of snow and bins. Dragging two bags of rubbish to the closest bin Sven lifted the greasy lid and threw both bags in with enough force to split one.
Sven really hated his life.
“Pssssssssst”.
Sven looked around. Bins and snow, snow and bins. Nothing else, well apart from that funny looking little man about four feet tall dressed in furs and some sort of metal breastplate thing out of a re-enactment event .
Oh and a beard. Lots and lots of beard. Down to his knees beard.
“Pssssssst. Long shanks, over here.”
It was odd, Sven thought to himself, that looked like a dwarf which was silly because dwarves didn’t exist outside of those D&D games he used to play before he discovered girls.
“Come over here ya silly bugger, ya want someone to see me?”
To Sven that actually made sense, being seen talking to a D&D creature in an alley would be strange even in this part of town so he stomped over and stepped into the gap between the big bins where the Dwarf was hiding.
“Right then lad, no time to talk, I be needin a Hero and you are it. Let’s be off.”
Sven looked down at the Dwarf then had to stop since he was well over six feet tall and looking down at the Dwarf was making the back of his neck hurt.
“I don’t understand, who are you, I’m not a hero, I’m a cook.”
The Dwarf looked Sven up and down which took some time given how tall the mankind was.
“Look lad its simple, I need a hero, you are the closest Son of Olaf I could find so that makes you the hero, so let’s go.”
Sven was strangely accepting of the whole situation but a little confused, he was an Olafson yes, his dad was a plumber, his granddad was a carpenter, no one in the family talked about the great grandparents though but that was it. No Hero’s, no one who had ever talked about dwarves. What next, was there going to be an Elf hiding in the plant pots on the balcony when he got home.
“I’m sorry, you have the wrong person, I have to get back to the kitchens.”
Sven turned away and made his way back to the kitchen door and the inevitable comments from his boss about how long it takes to get rid of a few bags of rubbish.
The Dwarf watched him go and let out a long sigh. Why was it they could never find a Hero in the middle of his Heroicness, why did they always find some youngster right at the beginning. It was almost like one of the sagas.
Very well, time to get sneaky. There were a few winter spirits that owed him a favour.
~
The mid afternoon lull came along and with it a fresh snowfall.
Sven son of Olaf finished yet another day and stepped out into the mid afternoon as the wane sun began to set and the long winter night began again. The fresh snow crunched underfoot and the flurries of snow became heavier and heavier till it was hard to see the road or the houses alongside.
Keeping his head down to watch where he was walking Sven made his way home through a world of white.
Then he suddenly stopped. He had walked this way every day for three years now and he didn’t remember any part of his walk being gravel. Looking round as the snow thinned and cleared he didn’t remember walking past rock faces either.
Then he turned round and round he had just walked into the mouth of a cave and that same Dwarf from the morning was standing there looking at him.
“Right lad, as I said there be a need for a Hero, which be you.”
Sven looked at the Dwarf then looked at the cave around him for a second time, he wasn’t surprised or shocked by this, in fact he seemed oddly calm about the whole situation.
It was probably shock, like after an accident, yes that was it he was in shock. What was it people did in shock, checked the eyes, asked your name.
“My name lad” said the Dwarf which told Sven he had said at least the last bit out loud, “I am Lord Steelbender of the Tinderwash peaks, House lord of family Steelbender, second to the clan lord of the Great Iron peaks clan, Father of seven fine sons, Grandfather of twenty six fine grandsons, Great grandfather of” the Dwarf paused as if in deep though, “ erm sixy one I think or it could be sixty two it’s hard to keep track. Great great grandfather of several hundred by now. Oh and a whole bunch of daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters and so on”.
“To be honest the hall isn’t big enough for the entire family these days though the wife insists we invite every single one of them to the winter feast.”
“Anyway lad lets be getting you properly armed.”
The Dwarf turned and walked deeper into the cave where it became a tunnel of fine dressed stone. He stopped at the first door he came to, a wide, short and solid looking block of timber bound with steel and with a pair of crossbow slits set in the middle.
Sven thought about running out of the way but finally decided that he would probably end up running back into the cave so he followed the dwarf to the door.
~
Opening the door the dwarf gestured for Sven to enter then followed him into what Sven immediately thought of as a guard room. One wall was a rack of crossbows; each had a bag of bolts hanging beside it. Another wall was all spears. Along the third wall was heaped breastplates, helmets and piles of metal rings. A table down the center of the room held a mix of weapons and it was to these that the dwarf pointed.
“Try them out an see what calls to ya lad.”
Sven picked up the war axe, a shaft as tall as his shoulder, an axe blade that could split a tree or a troll skull in a single blow. It seemed clumsy and heavy and too long and too top heavy so he put it down.
Sven picked up the war spear as tall as he was, hand carved of well aged Ash with a spear head that could pierce clean through a brick wall. It was too long and holding it in both hands he just got confused as to using his left or right hand first so he put it down.
Sven picked up the sword. A full yard of dwarf forged steel, an edge that cleanly cut elf silk or split an oak shield in two, sharp enough to shave with though with dwarves that was just a guess and so perfectly balanced only a complete idiot could cut himself with it. Sven put it back on the table with one hand while sucking the cut on the thumb of his other hand.
~
Up in Valhalla something of an argument was going on.
Havard Olafson who had killed a Troll in single combat was loudly denying that the youngster was anything to do with his branch of the family.
Thorfin Olafson the Berserker who had made it into Valhalla on account of getting a bit drunk and storming the feast hall of his closest enemy and singlehandedly killing all thirty one of them before dying of wounds received. He had a bit of a temper so no one ever mentioned the rumour that he was so drunk he got lost and was just looking for more beer. He was glaring across the table and saying the boy was clearly one of those useless sons of Kvistr.
Kvistr Olafson the squashed who had died when the Ogre he had just killed fell over backwards and crushed him was shaking a fist back at Thorfin while pointing a finger at Siggurd Olafsun who was sprawled in his chair further down the table with his feet up next to the Mead barrel.
The argument was just getting to the point where it would start the regular daily punch up when Ingrid Olafsdottir came past the group, a whole roast boar on a platter held in one hand and a barrel of mead held in the other. She kicked Siggurd’s chair so that he fell over and when he sat up she looked him straight in the eye and said “No feet on the table”.
She then looked each of the others in the eye and told them to leave the young lad alone before she walked off down the hall to deliver the food. A noticeable circle of good behaviour went with her.
There had a great deal of discussion about how she got here though never when she was close enough to overhear, she helped out but she wasn’t one of the serving staff, she was a Hero, well technically a Heroine but as she said after they dragged off the unconscious body of the last fool who said she had no place in Valhalla, she had earned the right and they would treat her as such.
She had even taken a male sort of surname.
No one seemed to know exactly what she had done to get in, the Valkyrie all referred to each other as the one who had let her in, Odin had been asked and he had summoned her to demand an answer then refused to talk about it anymore. Odin’s wife Frigga thought it was hilarious and the two women often spent an afternoon sitting at one end of the feast hall talking about the various failings of the Heroes nearby.
It was getting so bad the staff were starting to move the tables and chairs down to the other end of the hall and crowd everyone in there since they were all standing down there anyway.
~
Back down on earth Sven reached the end of the table and shrugged. Every single weapon felt wrong to him, nothing called to him as the Dwarf said it would. He looked at the Dwarf and shrugged.
Letting loose another long sigh the Dwarf picked up a bundle of metal from the shelf and threw it across the room to Sven who tried to catch the flexible rustling mass of mail before realising just how heavy it was.
Thrormondire Steelbender was as ancient as the hills, he had seen a hundred generations of mankind come and go, he had watched dozens of Heroes come and go, mostly feet first. But this one was really beginning to try his patience.
Now he looked at the tall blond young mankind with a mail hauberk draped across his shoes and sighed yet again.
Sven looked at the Dwarf and a question came to mind.
“You said you need a Hero, why exactly do you need someone like that.” The second question, why not just do it yourself wasn’t spoken out loud but it followed along anyway.
The Dwarf looked him up and down again slowly before speaking.
“It’s a bit of a problem lad and not something I can handle, it’s sort of against the rules for me to interfere.”
That comment was just asking for a long explanation and Sven stepped in and did the asking.
It turned out that Lord Steelbender of house Steelbender of the Tinderwash peaks was bound by ancient treaties to honour certain borders and not challenge whoever held them even when some of those borders were an old Dwarf hall which had fallen to Frost giants. If he set foot in the hall the protection against attack his own clan enjoyed as a result of the ancient treaty would be shattered and they would be up to their chins in Frost giants.
The dwarves didn’t like having Frost giants squatting in a fine Dwarf hold, the Frost Giants didn’t like not being allowed to raid the clan halls but as the All Father had said when he negotiated the treaty that was the essence of democracy, leaving everyone unhappy.
So no Dwarf could clean up the mess, they needed a mankind hero and the best they could find was, well it was Sven.
“Are Frost Giants anything like they are in D&D then” asked Sven?
“Dee an Dee, what’s that?”
“Dungeons and Dragons.”
Thrormondire looked slightly excited at that, “you know about these Dungeons an Dragons then lad” he asked.
Sven hadn’t played in a few years but he still had a cupboard full of the books though he kept them out of sight in case he had a girl round but he still remembered sitting round the table as his ranger explored one dungeon or another.
“A bit yes” he said.
“Good, very good” came the reply from the now almost happy looking Dwarf.
“So are they the same then?”
“Are what the same lad?”
“The Frost giants?”
“Don’t you be worrying about Frost Giants lad, they were driven out years ago, it’s just the Dragon in there now.”
Sven missed that last bit for almost three seconds, it was the shock, the word Dragon wandered past and then jumped back to catch his attention.
“DRAGON. A real Dragon? Are you insane, I can’t fight a Dragon. What sort of Dragon, what colour is it? I’m not fighting a Dragon. A real Dragon?”
It took Thrormondire several second to work it all out since Sven had somehow managed to say it all at once.
“Yes lad a Dragon, big fire breathing bugger it is. It chased out or killed the Frost Giants years ago and it has been sleeping since then but now it’s woken up and it’s calling for a female.”
Sven had vague memories of Female Dragons being the nasty ones but he wasn’t sure why and so he asked.
“Because lad the male is looking for a mate and he does that three ways, he has a great horde of treasure, he is the strongest dragon around and he prepares a feast for the female.
Now he has a pile of good dwarven gold the Frost Giants stole when they took the hall. He’s the only Dragon for hundreds of miles so that makes him the strongest. The problem is all that food for the female.”
Thrormondire paused and waited for Sven to make the connection then sighed when he didn’t
“Your town lad, it’s the closest to the old dwarf hold. Your town will be where he goes to hunt for food to tempt a female.”
Perhaps the shock was finally wearing off but that bit cut through the calmness Sven had been maintaining.
The problem was the Dwarf could not go into the old Dwarf Hall to help, dwarves fought dragons using great crossbows and thick stone walls. Going into a tunnel to fight a dragon up close, that was a job for a hero.
If the Dragon was outside the cave and therefore across the border then Thrormondire could help, he even had a great crossbow that would do the job, one dwarf steel crossbow bolt that would split a tank end to end and no more Dragon.
But the Dragon was down a tunnel, in a hall, across the border. So it was Sven’s job.
Sven wasn’t happy.
“Look I’m no great warrior, all those weapons, I can’t fight with them. The armour would give me a hernia. There is no way I can go into those tunnels and fight a dragon.
Unless he comes outside where you can shoot him I have no chance and the only way to get him out is if he is collecting food and I don’t have half a ton of meat lying around, it’s not like I work in a.......... Oh.”
~
Somehow it took only a few minutes for the two of them to walk from the cave mouth which hid the entrance of the Dwarf hall back to the centre of town.
The company van keys were in the manager’s office, the manager’s office key was on the key ring Sven had to open the place up in the morning. The freezer was floor to ceiling shelves stacked with burgers.
By the time they had filled up the van and Sven had followed the Dwarfs directions out of town and up a dirt track into the hills it was night. The snow came and went in flurries but with an almost full moon the countryside was bright.
From the outside Steelbender holds front cave looked like a patch of scrub covered hillside but slowly as he stared at it the cave came into view as the hill and the bushes became translucent.
There was two wheeled cart of some sort in the cave with a massive bar of metal on a wooden frame above the wheels. It was resting on a long arm that was obviously used to pull it and it even had a ring on the arm that allowed them to hitch it to the tow ball on the van.
Throwing the bolts in the back of the van on top of the burgers Thrormondire added a handful of weapons, mostly spears and a great axe.
Then they both got in the van and set off back towards town.
~
The Cave that led to the fallen Dwarf hall and the dragons lair turned out to be at the back of a patch of waste ground behind the old industrial estate. No more than a few hundred steps from the factory buildings.
Thrormondire explained that the glamour on the cave prevented anyone seeing it or building too close to it. The factory workers had parked their cars right next to a sleeping dragon and had never known. Still the whole industrial estate was disused now so they had the place to themselves.
The first task was to set up the crossbow, even with dwarven skill and engineering it took a full minute to ratchet the thing to full tension ready to fire. They had four bolts just in case but given how long it took to reload they were unlikely to ever need more than two.
Between the two of them it took nearly ten minutes to unload the van, then unpack and stack the burgers into a pile, five thousand of the cheapest mass produced processed quarter pounder burgers that money could buy. They were the product of a cow so technically they were beef but calling them meat was a bit of a stretch. Still they would do the job, probably.
~
Nothing happened. An hour passed and the pile of frozen burgers sat there.
Not a sniff from the cave mouth, clearly the frozen burgers were not tempting the Dragon.
Sven’s hind brain was jumping up and down and shouting by the time his fore brain noticed the word frozen had some significance in all this.
The van had a spare petrol can, there was a box of matches in the glove compartment along with half a pack of some sort of very strange French cigarettes.
Several minutes later the smell of cooking, erm, beef filled the air.
The Dragon was dozing lightly, he had already put out the call for a female and he needed to be ready to respond if one replied so when the smell of cooking drifted down the tunnels he noticed it right away.
He stood up and walked up the tunnel to the cave to have a look, the smell was both tempting and strangely repellent at the same time but it certainly fit the bill in terms of being cooked cow.
The Dragon looked round, one pile of cow cooking nicely, one empty wasteland, one big boxy mankind land dragon thing, the smell of, no, the smell of cooking cow covered every other scent.
Seeing nothing the Dragon came out of the cave, a medium sized example of the species, eight feet from front shoulder to rear end, twenty feet in total length when you went nose to tail.
The dragon took a tentative bite of the cooking meat, then another and another. The burning petrol didn’t worry a fire dragon but it did have an odd taste on its tongue. A sort of greasy furry taste.
It finished the entire pile of half cooked half raw burgers and looked around to see if there was any more out there
The Dragons stomach rumbled, a supernatural beast that could swallow a cow or horse whole without the slightest concern was having problems with half a ton of semi cooked fast food burgers.
The sound of tires on dirt alerted the dragon and it looked up to see the mankind box move sideways to reveal a Dwarf standing next to a cart. A mankind jumped out of the box and caught a spear the dwarf threw at it.
One Dwarf and a mankind, this wasn’t an ambush, this was a snack.
As the great crossbow fired the dragon reared and the steel bolt missed its throat by mere inches, Sven lifted his spear overhead and stepped forward, the thin belly scales of the dragon were an easy target and he threw the spear with all his might.
It flew straight and true.
Bounced off the dragon’s stomach and clattered on the ground.
The Dragon lunged forward and pounced on the crossbow like a cat, the wheels and frame collapsed under the Dragons weight then it turned its attention to the Dwarf. The mankind was ignored and left behind as he focused on the real threat.
Thrormondire Steelbender took a firm grip on his great axe; running was out of the question so if he was going to die at least he planned to do so with a bit of dignity. Shame about the crossbow, still the bow was intact so it was just a matter of replacing the frame, he could do it himself, well if he was still around tomorrow he could.
The Dragon looked straight at him and prepared to strike when its stomach rumbled again like the world’s biggest drain gurgling. The most foul stench imaginable came out of both ends and the Dragon suddenly felt sick and needed to relieve itself.
The problems in its belly were far more important than a dwarf and the dragon decided to sort that out first, keeping one eye on the dwarf it lifted its tail and prepared to deal with one problem before it had the Dwarf for a snack.
A sudden terrible pain lanced through the dragon, from its bowels to its stomach and up to its neck, the dragon coughed burning blood and suddenly felt weak.
It twisted its head to look behind it and it saw the mankind Sven staggering way from its backside, choking on the smell that had come out when he had thrust the entire seven foot length of a spear up the dragons rear end that had become exposed when the dragon lifted its tail.
The dragon tried to draw a breath to flame the mankind but he couldn’t seem to breath, he couldn’t seem to stand properly, his legs seemed to stop working and he collapsed.
It took the dragon an agonising hour to finally die, Sven had suggested putting it out of its misery but neither of them were prepared to get that close, the smell was burning the paint off the van so what it would do if you got close enough to hit the dragon was something best not thought about.
In the end Thrormondire sent a message squirrel to his family and a score of dwarves spent what was left of the night shoveling dirt on top of the now dead dragon. They did a nice job on the wooden fencing, it looked exactly like mankind made and made the place look like an old building site.
It was decided to keep an eye on the place and come back to clean up in a year or perhaps three.
The crowd of dwarves left as silently as they had arrived and the only remaining problem was how to reclaim all that good dwarven Gold without setting foot inside the hall.
~
Sven looked at the van, the paintwork all down one side had blistered and the open door revealed the packaging of an entire weeks burgers. He was out of a job that was for sure.
He let out a long sigh.
Thrormondire looked round at that and asked what the problem was.
Sven explained he was unemployed.
Thrormondire smiled ever so slightly.
“Well lad if you be having some free time there be a bit of a troll problem to the south”
Sven son of Olaf, descendant of Heroes sighed.
Then asked for directions.