Dragon Slayer
Michael Swanwick
Every road and open doorway is a constant danger to a man of wandering disposition. Olav had stood on the threshold of his cottage one spring morning and the road had looked so fine that he couldn’t resist setting foot on it, and the next thing he knew, it had carried him to the sea. There he chanced upon a merchant ship in need of a new hand. He learned the sailoring trade, fought pirates, killed a kraken, grew a beard, pierced an ear, and one memorable night won a handful of rubies at a single turn of the cards and lost them all to a barmaid who doped his ale. Two years later, he was shipwrecked off Thule and briefly married to a witch-woman who had blackwork tattoos on her face and had filed her teeth to points.
The marriage did not last, however. One day, Olav returned from the hunt with a red hart slung over his shoulders and found his wife coupling with a demon she had summoned up from one of the seven hells that lie at the center of the world. He slew them both, threw the fire pot onto the thatched roof of the witch’s hut, and left his memories burning to his back.
So it was that, having nothing better to do, Olav set out on foot to see what lay to the south. Always there was something interesting just a little farther down the road. Always there was good reason not to stay.
. . .
