Chapter 24: The Dragon-Guard Talisman

After the merchant had goods taken from him on the southern road, no further reports of similar losses reached us.

That didn’t mean the road had become safe.

People climbing to Rue Village began walking with anyone they met who shared their destination, while people descending from the village waited for companions if they weren’t in a hurry.

I wasn’t assigned to patrol the road.

Even when I flew in the morning, I checked only the same area around the village as before.

Still, as more humans used the southern road, things that had never existed before began to find their way into the village.

That day, three men arrived before noon with two packhorses.

One was Heinz.

Another was a merchant who’d stayed in the village before, and I didn’t recognize the last man.

“Three of you today?” Dario called from the entrance.

“We joined up along the way,” Heinz replied. “Better than walking alone.”

“That’s fine, then.”

The two horses noticed me.

One merely slowed, but the other flattened its ears, so I moved away from the road.

That was when I noticed a wooden board hanging beside the stranger’s cargo.

It was a little larger than his palm.

A creature with spread wings had been carved into the board, which had a cord threaded through it.

Four legs.

A long tail.

Protrusions that looked like horns.

It was unmistakably a dragon.

But it looked nothing like me.

Its wings were unnaturally large, and several horns sprouted from its head.

“What’s that?”

Lina had noticed it too.

The merchant looked back while unloading his cargo.

“This?”

He removed the wooden plaque and showed it to us.

“They called it a dragon-guard, I think.”

I raised my head.

“A dragon-guard?” Dario repeated.

“I bought it on the way here. They said I should carry one if I was going to the village with the dragon.”

Heinz’s hands stopped.

“What is this nonsense?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

Heinz took the plaque from the man’s hand.

He examined the front, then turned it over.

“They don’t sell anything like this in Rue Village.”

“What?”

“I’ve been here many times, and this is the first I’ve seen of it.”

Naturally.

It was the first time I’d seen one too.

“Who sold it to you?”

The chief had come over.

“A man I don’t know. He was selling them just before the road enters the mountain.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That I’d be safer if I had it while going to the village where the dragon lives.”

“Safer from what?”

“I think he said it would ward off misfortune on the road and make the dragon less likely to see me as an enemy when I reached the village…something like that.”

I tilted my head.

I couldn’t remember ever changing how I viewed a human based on whether he had a wooden plaque.

“Did that man say he was from Rue Village?”

“No. He didn’t say that.”

“Did he say the village had asked him to sell them?”

“Not that much…”

The merchant narrowed his eyes as he searched his memory.

“But I think he said something like part of the money would go toward the village with the dragon.”

“We haven’t received a thing.”

The chief’s voice dropped.

“Don’t blame me. I’m only learning this now.”

The merchant hurriedly took the plaque back.

“How much did it cost?”

After hearing the amount, Heinz snorted.

“Not a fortune. That makes it easier to persuade people to buy.”

“Are you saying I was tricked?”

“At the very least, it has nothing to do with the village,” the chief stated. “There is also no agreement that Val will protect someone because they carry that plaque.”

Everyone looked at me.

I shook my head.

The merchant’s face went stiff.

“Are you sure?”

I shook it again.

“You’ve never seen anything like it, have you, Val?” Lina asked.

I nodded.

“See?”

“‘See’ isn’t helping…”

The merchant stared at the plaque he’d bought.

The other nearby merchant burst out laughing.

“Anyone who buys one is partly to blame.”

“You can say that because you’ve already seen the real dragon.”

“You thought one scrap of wood would settle things with a dragon?”

“Imagine being told there’s a dragon in a village you’re visiting for the first time. You’d be a little worried too.”

I could understand that much.

To humans who didn’t know me, merely heading toward a village where a dragon lived must be frightening.

If someone then said, “This will make you a little safer,” some people would buy it as long as the price was within reach.

“Did you see anyone else buying them?” Heinz asked.

“Several people had stopped when I saw him. I think about two of them actually bought one.”

“Do you know where they were going?”

“No.”

The chief looked at the plaque.

“Did the man selling these seem to have seen Val before?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Did he seem to have visited this village?”

“I didn’t ask.”

In the end, they learned almost nothing about the seller.

I brought my snout closer to the plaque too.

The scent of wood.

The scent of human hands.

I couldn’t tell anything beyond that.

“Can you tell anything?” Lina asked.

I shook my head.

It looked like nothing more than a piece of carved wood.

“This will become troublesome if we ignore it,” Heinz said.

“It’s only a wooden plaque,” Dario replied.

“The plaque itself isn’t the problem. It’s what they’re saying to sell it.”

Heinz pointed at the object in the merchant’s hand.

“If someone who bought one gets attacked by a magical beast in the mountains, they may start complaining, ‘But I bought a dragon-guard.'”

“That’s the responsibility of whoever sold it without permission.”

“We think so. That doesn’t mean the buyer will.”

Heinz turned back to the chief.

“It’s even worse if they’re taking money while claiming it benefits the village. People below may start thinking Rue Village is using a dragon to collect money.”

The chief’s expression grew severe.

The manor’s reply, which Elmer had brought, had also warned them not to use me to pressure the surrounding area.

Even if the village wasn’t actually doing it, the situation would change if that was how it looked from the outside.

“Heinz.”

“What?”

“If you see another one, tell people it has nothing to do with this village.”

“I can do that much.”

“And the claim that Val will protect them if they pay is also false.”

“I know.”

The chief also addressed the man who’d bought the plaque.

“If you see the seller on the way back, can you ask whose name he’s selling them under?”

“I can ask. But if it looks like it’ll cause trouble, I won’t approach him.”

“That’s fine. I’m not telling you to capture him.”

There was no discussion of sending villagers down to hunt for the culprit.

They didn’t even know whether the seller remained in the same place.

Rue Village also couldn’t spare the labor to search everywhere.

“What do I do with this?”

The merchant held up the plaque.

“You bought it,” the chief answered. “Keep it or throw it away as you please. Just don’t think it makes you safe.”

“When you put it that way…”

The man stared at it for a while.

“I suppose I’ll take it home as a souvenir of being cheated.”

“You still want it?” Lina asked.

“I paid money for it.”

He sounded strangely adamant.

I thought I’d be angry enough to throw it away.

Heinz and the others began trading as usual.

Finding the plaque didn’t make the purpose of today’s visit disappear.

Salt, needles, and small tools were laid out, while the village brought out charcoal and other goods.

I returned to a spot a little farther away.

After a while, I heard the chief and Dario speaking.

“What a nuisance.”

“It’s one wooden plaque.”

“They’re taking money with that one wooden plaque.”

“We aren’t the ones selling it.”

“That’s exactly why it’s a nuisance.”

The chief looked toward the plaque in the merchant’s hand.

“Someone we don’t know is deciding what Val will do without asking any of us.”

“This would be quicker if he could talk,” Dario said, looking at me. “He could say, ‘I never made that promise.'”

“Grrr.”

I rumbled in my throat.

“What was that supposed to mean?”

Nothing.

“I don’t understand.”

Of course he didn’t.

I understood the human language.

That didn’t mean I’d become capable of speaking it.

Dario shrugged.

“Guess the village will have to tell them.”

“Only the people who come here,” the chief replied. “I’m not going below merely to announce it everywhere.”

That was the end of the discussion.

Several days later, another traveler arrived at Rue Village with a similar plaque attached to his baggage.

But the story he’d heard was a little different.

No one had told him money would reach the village.

Instead, he’d been told, “Most people traveling to Rue Village carry one of these.”

“Who carries one?” Dario asked in disbelief.

“How should I know? It’s my first visit.”

The chief explained only that they weren’t sold in the village.

When the traveler learned that even I knew nothing about them, he removed the plaque.

“Are you throwing it away?” Lina asked.

“No. I paid for it.”

He placed it in the pouch at his waist.

The same thing again.

I was slightly impressed.

Even the sales pitch had changed.

I couldn’t tell whether a different seller had been involved from the beginning, whether one man was changing his story, or whether people who heard it were passing it along to still more humans.

But I did understand that it wasn’t only the tale of “the village with a dragon” spreading. False stories had begun attaching themselves to it.

Several more days passed, and even merchants without the plaques knew about them.

“I saw them below,” Heinz said as he unloaded his cargo.

“Did you buy one?” Lina asked.

“Of course not.”

His answer was immediate.

“I know Val himself. Why would I buy a wooden plaque and ask it to keep me safe?”

I agreed.

“What about the seller?” the chief asked.

“When I saw him, he was calling out to people walking along the road. But once I told him Rue Village didn’t sell those things, he ended the conversation at once.”

“Do you remember his face?”

“More or less. But I didn’t chase him.”

“That’s fine.”

“Still, I learned one thing.”

Heinz lowered a cloth-wrapped bundle from his cargo.

“I don’t think anyone who knows Val made that plaque.”

“Why?”

“You can tell just by looking.”

Lina laughed.

“It doesn’t look like him at all.”

I breathed through my nose.

I’d thought that from the beginning.

“The number of horns is wrong, and the wings are strange too,” Dario added.

I hadn’t asked for a critique of the carving.

“But the seller probably doesn’t need it to resemble the real Val,” Heinz said. “Most of the buyers have never seen him.”

The chief fell silent at that.

I remembered the plaque too.

A dragon entirely unlike me, with enormous wings and several horns.

Yet humans imagined “the dragon of Rue Village” and paid money for it.

That evening, the first merchant who’d brought one of the plaques visited the village again.

Apparently, he hadn’t met the seller on his way back.

“You still have it?” Lina asked.

“Of course.”

The man took the plaque from his bag.

“You didn’t throw it away?”

“I told you. I paid for it.”

Then he held it out to the chief.

“But I’ll leave it here if you want a sample.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I won’t be cheated again. And you can compare it if anyone else arrives with one like it.”

The chief thought for a moment before accepting it.

“Then I’ll keep it.”

“In exchange, don’t laugh the next time I come.”

“About what?”

“The fact that I bought it.”

“You’ve already been laughed at enough.”

“What a terrible village.”

The man was smiling.

The plaque remained with the chief.

I couldn’t read writing, nor could I discover anything special from the piece of wood.

But I could at least tell that the carved dragon wasn’t me.

As the sun lowered, Lina brought it to me.

“It really doesn’t look like you.”

She compared the plaque and me in turn.

“This one has lots of horns.”

She looked at my head.

“And its wings are too big.”

She compared the wings too.

“The face is scary.”

Tell that to the person who carved it.

Lina laughed and turned the plaque over.

“But people who’ve never seen you think this is what Val looks like.”

I looked at it.

It was a thin board.

I could easily break it by stepping on it with one foreleg.

Yet it was being sold somewhere I didn’t know, and humans who knew nothing about me were paying money for it.

Lina ran to return the plaque to the chief.

I watched her go.

Before long, the men who’d finished trading for the day descended along the southern road.

No plaques hung from their loads.

Instead, the merchant who’d seen me for the first time kept looking back.

It seemed he would return remembering the real me rather than a dragon carved into wood.