Lasairfhíona and Hallborn told stories and spoke of themselves until the dawn started to creep over the horizon. The red-haired maiden looked up when a cockerel began to crow, bolted up, and barely said a word to Hallborn before she ran off into the line of trees.
“Oh, all right,” he muttered. “Yes, goodbye, nice talking to you too.”
But it was time, he thought, to go find the knights and slay a dragon.
Or be slain. Whichever came first.
***
Hallborn narrowly dodged a jet of flame that issued from the dragon’s roaring mouth. It singed the edges of his bear-shirt; he felt the heat prickle dangerously close to his skin, a mere breath away from being the next meal on the dragon’s barbecue.
He roared with the mouth of a bear, and with its strength and his ancestors’, charged the dragon and swung his battle axe. The terrible blade sang. Hallborn saw the dragon’s pupil contract in fear--ah, yes, for the creature could fear--before the axe chopped across the dragon’s face, and left its jagged mark across the monster’s green eye.
With a roar and a flap of its wings, the dragon flew into the sky, retreating from battle.
***
Night again. Hallborn had once more convinced the king’s men to drink with him. “A dying man’s wish,” he said, “before I finish the dragon off tomorrow, or it finishes me.”
They drank. They sang. They even laughed like old friends. And once more when the wine had lulled them to sleep, Hallborn absconded to the forest, to Lasairfhíona’s spring.
The red-haired, green-eyed maiden was at the edge of the spring when Hallborn arrived, looking into the still waters and singing. There was an angry gash over her eye; she cupped the water to it, and the water seemed to glow like stars.
“And here you are, dragon,” he said.
Lasairfhíona did not jump or startle at his voice. She knew he would be coming. “And here ye are, bear.” She frowned at him and said, “Come to finish me off?”
He showed her his hands, empty of anything. No battle axe here, no mace or sword. “To talk,” he said. “Only to talk.”
So they talked as Lasairfhíona tended to the wounds with the spring’s healing waters, and allowed Hallborn to tend to his. He told her he was the king’s prisoner; she said she was no better than a prisoner, herself. Every morning when the sun rose, she became the dragon, and every other month or so the king would send his men to try and slay her, though she had done nothing wrong, and only wanted to be left in peace.
Hallborn contemplated the surface of the spring. A thought began to form in his mind. “It seems that you and I have a common enemy. I want him to set me free, you want him to leave you alone. Perhaps”--he began to smile--“we deal with him together.”
Lasairfhíona’s brows knit themselves together. In the moonlight, she inched closer to the berserker, her ear pointing to his mouth. “I’m listening,” she said.
And so the Dragon and the Bear planned their conquest. The Kingdom of Perith, it is said, would never be the same again.
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