How to Slay a Dragon

They call him
Greghart, The Dragonslayer

But Greg Hart can’t slay a dragon. He’d be lucky to win a fight against one of the smaller girls at school.

His only real skill is that he can run faster than any other twelve-year-old boy in his class, a necessity, since that’s who he’s usually running from. Oh, it’s not like he’s never been the hero at the center of an adventure. It’s just the kind of adventures he’s been involved with have always been the made-up kind he’s written about in his journal.

Now the magicians of Myrth have yanked Greg into a strange new world, where the monsters he must run from are far scarier—and hungrier—than anything he’s ever run from before. He tries to tell everyone there’s been a mistake. Ruuan is a very large dragon, while Greg, on the other hand, is neither large nor a dragon. He’s barely much of a boy. Unfortunately, such trivialities could never stop the people of Myrth from believing Greg will rescue King Peter’s daughter from Ruuan. After all, Greg has been named in a prophecy, and no prophecy has ever been wrong before.

Why, Greg wonders, does he have to be at the heart of the first one that is?

How to

Slay

a

Dragon

Journals of Mryth

Book One

Bill Allen

Bell Bridge Books

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

ISBN: 978-1-935661-87-0

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 by Bill Allen

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo credits:
Dragon  © Alexey Bakhtiozin | istockphoto 

:Lhd:01:

Dedication

In memory of Mom, who, along with Dad,

inspired more absurdity than anything on Myrth.

A
cknowledgments

Many thanks to Raymond and Barbara Feist for their encouragement in the beginning, to the members of the Brevard Scribblers and the Space Coast Writers’ Guild for their feedback along the way, to Gene Davis for helping give the book its second wind, to Debra Dixon and the many others at Bell Bridge Books for helping me to make Greg Hart’s story a better one, and most of all to my wife, Nancy, for enduring it all.

The Mighty Greg Hart

Greg Hart’s name had never caused him trouble before.

It was nothing like the name for Winnie Weimar, who everyone at school was always calling “Whiney” Weimar. And it was way better than the one pinned on poor Richard Kinickey, more commonly known as “Icky Ricky” Kinickey. It wasn’t even as bad as the one for Dewey Doolittle, who everyone called—well, Dewey Doolittle. No, Greg Hart had a perfectly normal name, which is why, for the most part, the other kids just called him Greg and were done with it.

Problem was, for twelve years now Greg’s name may have simply been biding its time.

In the center of the woods behind Greg’s house stood a large oak, where between two boughs rested a smattering of scrap wood that might have been called a tree house, had a person been feeling especially generous. There Greg sat, cross-legged on the creaking wood floor, writing in his journal, his tousled brown hair jutting out in all directions. Another boy might have written about the events of his morning, or even about his apprehension over starting junior high tomorrow, but not Greg. As always he chose stories more to his liking.

Today he’d been chased by a giant.

I was a little worried at first. With each step the giant took, the ground trembled and split. Huge boulders dislodged and crashed across my path. Trees toppled. Then it hit me.

An idea, that is, not the giant. Or a tree.

I screamed out a warning. The giant yawned. (It’s not that easy to capture the attention of a giant.)

That’s when I charged. Poor beast never even saw me coming. Imagine its surprise when I wedged my shoulder between two enormous toes and easily brought it to its knees.

Greg paused and held his pen to his chin. Truth was, he’d be lucky to survive a fight with a classmate, let alone one with a giant—compared to Greg, his classmates were giants—but the Greg Hart from his journal was capable of countless feats Greg would never take on himself, so he shrugged and scratched out an end to his tale.

A deafening roar shook the forest as the giant teetered first forward, then back, and dropped like a falling skyscraper, splaying the last of the trees. For twenty minutes the ground trembled, short in comparison to the hour it took to climb my way out of the newly formed cavern.

I didn’t mind. Small price to pay for saving yet another kingdom.

“Cool,” Greg told himself as he snapped his journal closed and crammed it into the pocket of his jeans. What he wouldn’t give to win a fight against a giant.

Of course, it’s not like he’d never been in a fight before. It’s just to date his experiences always leaned more toward getting beaten up rather than throwing any punches. About the only thing he had in common with the Greg Hart from his journal was that he could run really fast. Here he had plenty of experience—way more than any boy would have liked—but less, he feared, than he would need at his new school tomorrow.

No, Greg’s strength was simply not one of his strengths. His smile drained away, and he fell back against the wall of the tree house, ignoring the groan of the buckling lumber.

Greg had spent all morning exploring the woods behind his house, where it was not uncommon for every bush to hide a monster, for the trees to pick up and move when he wasn’t watching, and for animals to chase him at blinding speeds down the twisted paths, nipping at his heels with every step.

Imagining you’re a hero could be exhausting work.

Soon Greg’s eyelids began to droop and his head began to list, but his imagination was just getting its second wind. Before him appeared a courtyard filled with people, all shouting and waving their arms.

“Greg Hart! Greg Hart! Greg Hart!” they cheered, and there was Greg at the center of it all, grinning so wide it looked as if his head might split in half. Eyes fully closed now, the daydreaming Greg smiled too. He’d have fought a giant twice the size for half the glory.

Gradually the picture blurred and reformed, until next to Greg stood a pretty young maiden in a long, flowing gown. A huge man in a

magenta  robe  and  gold crown  strode forward, a  king,  who spoke  in a most grandiose tone.

“Our greatest thanks to you, young man. I must say, only the very bravest of heroes would have willingly marched into the lair of that fire-breathing dragon. No words can express our gratitude. No words at all. We shall remain forever in your debt.” In his mind Greg saw the maiden reach up on tiptoes to give him a grateful kiss, and the spectators threw their hats in the air and cheered even louder than before.

Greg woke with a start. Where would he ever find a young maiden who needed to stand on tiptoes to kiss him? Where would he find one willing to kiss him at all? He pushed the thought from his mind and tried to return to the courtyard, but the image wouldn’t come.

He was still straining when a sudden rustling outside caused him to jump. It was not the sound of a giant, or a dragon, or even some unthinkable monster lurking in the bushes. It was worse. It was the sound of a big kid.

Greg leapt to his feet and peered between two scrap boards at the trail below.
Ogre!

If only.

Greg recognized the crooked jaw, the squashed nose and bulging red cheeks, the jet black eyes set deep beneath the single heavy brow. It was a face that would have been happy on a boxer, but no, the face was not happy, and the boy was no boxer—at least not by profession. His name was Manny Malistino, only everyone called him Manny Malice, or better yet,
Sir,
if they thought he might be listening.

No sight in the world could have disturbed Greg more. True, Manny was in Greg’s grade, but he seemed bigger than all the other boys at school combined. Surely he’d have graduated high school by now if he hadn’t been let back so often—perhaps even got a good start on a technical vocation, provided he found one where he didn’t need to think.

A sudden movement caught Greg’s eye, and he knew at once he’d been wrong. There
were
worse things than the sight of Manny approaching. Kristin Wenslow was there too!

Quite possibly the cutest girl on the planet, Kristin was an unbelievably tiny thing (though certainly no shorter than Greg himself) with long, brownish hair that turned blond at the surface where the sun struck.
Did she always have that many freckles?
Too bad she didn’t even know Greg was alive. Not that he was complaining—Greg always preferred going unnoticed to being chased by the big kids who did notice him—it’s just, well, sometimes he wished he could be chased by Kristin. He couldn’t believe she was out with a brute like Manny Malice, or that she of all people was going to be here to witness Greg’s inevitable beating.

“Last one there’s a rod and egg,” Manny shouted. With a shove he sent Kristin stumbling aside, and Greg wasted a lot of valuable time watching her flail her arms for balance when he should have noticed Manny running straight at him.

A normal boy would have taken at least a minute to climb the large oak. Manny took a more direct route. He let out a battle cry and jumped, and Greg jerked back as a row of cucumber-like fingers latched onto the edge of the opening in the floor at his feet. Threatening cucumbers, like those left out too long in the sun. Not that they were squishy or anything. On the contrary, they looked big and hard, and Greg had an idea they would look even bigger and harder if Manny rolled them into a fist.

The fingers squeezed. Greg’s bowels squeezed harder. Maybe Manny did resemble the giant he’d just defeated on the pages of his journal, but Greg would have been a fool to think he could fare as well in real life. Manny’s forearm shot up through the opening and braced against the wood floor. In a moment his head would pop into view.