The dragons of Zoloty Dolina

‘There weren't always dragons in the Valley,’ Kolar slurred as he took another swig of his ale.

The large empty jug on the table, a grey, oaty, froth around its rim, sat there solidly, a witness to Kolar’s inebriation.

‘Yes, yes, and you weren’t always a drunken, good for nothing,’ Kolar’s wife shouted from another table.

It was a ritual, whenever a newcomer entered the inn, Kolar would tell his tale.

So, when the fresh-faced Radko Baran, came into the humble establishment on a frosty autumn evening, Kolar made a beeline for the stranger.

With both hands securely braced on the table he rose on unsteady feet, burped loudly, and zigzagged over to Radko.

‘Welcome, friend, I am Kolar Doubek, what brings you to our town,’ Kolar slurred. ‘By the looks of you, you’re no dragon slayer,’ he roared slapping the table and laughing, waiting for everyone to join in.

But the regulars just ignored him, and his wife snorted disapprovingly.

Radko, on the other hand, raised his head and looked Kolar straight in the eye.

‘Oh no I don’t want to kill a dragon; I want to study them.’

It was then that the laughter came, a hysterical wave of it, from every soul in the house.

Kolar searched the young man’s face for a hint of sarcasm.

Drunk as he was, he was good at reading faces and he saw before him a serious young man, steady blue eyes, Roman nose, neatly kitted out, yes, he thought, someone he could trust.

And so, gathering his large frame closer in, and speaking with great deliberation, he began to share his story.

‘No, no, no, there weren’t always dragons in the valley, back before my father and my grandfather, the valley was a paradise,’ Kolar said.

‘The pasture was rich and the livestock fat,’ he said swaying slightly, his eyes closed as though conjuring the scene.

‘There were wildflowers and woods, and a great happiness in the lives of all who worked the land.

‘The only things to fear were wild boars, or mother bears protecting their cubs.

‘Those were the days,’ he mused, as though he had lived them himself.

Tears welled in his eyes.

‘It was greed, and love and greedy love that cursed the valley,’ he shouted.

Not a soul looked up, the murmur of evening conversation continued as though Kolar wasn’t there at all.

‘My grandfather warned them, he knew the consequences, but would they listen…of course not. Blithering idiots. He knew where the eggs were…he knew what would happen….’

Kolar’s bloodshot eyes, began to droop, and mid-sentence his head slipped from his supporting hand and slammed unconscious onto the table.

He was out for the count.

Radko smiled sheepishly.

He scribbled down a few notes – LOVE? greed, eggs. Who was Kolar’s grandfather?? (Doubek). Finishing his stew, he packed up his belongings and paid the innkeeper for his meal and a room for the night.

Kolar’s wife, not too sober herself, leaned in and told him to ignore the ravings of her useless husband.

‘He was always a bit mad; I knew that when I married him, but the drink, you know, it makes him crazy more often than not, these days,’ she said.

Radko nodded, a slightly indulgent smile on his face, and then he headed upstairs.

As he curled into the small cot bed in his tiny room, he was sure he could hear the swooshing of a dragon in flight, a way away, across the river and over the arching valley that stretched down the mountain range and ultimately wound out to the Bergen Sea.

In his mind he went through his check list of known facts about the dragons of Zoloty Dolina, the Golden Valley.

He had never seen a real dragon, but it was said, they were huge, as big as a house, as long as four horses and carts end to end.

And for every dragon slain by adventurers and noblemen seeking fame and fortune, another five were hatched.

They were opportunistic. It was not that they particularly craved human flesh, in fact the few experts on the subject, believed they preferred one or two fat cows or simply grazing on lush grass, but humans did present themselves so often that the legend of ‘man-eating dragons’ had grown beyond all proportion.

They did live in caves, but also settled in pine forests and in nests carefully constructed high in the mountains.

They flew to hunt prey but had been known to occasionally frolic in the warm updrafts above the valley, apparently just for the pleasure of it. And they never ventured far off the coast. In that sense they were a landlocked species.

For Radko, the big questions remained, where did they come from and was there any hope that they would disappear from the valley. Was extinction, or more gently he pondered, eviction, even possible?

In the morning Kolar was nowhere to be seen. Radko had risen early, and half expected to find the old man where he’d left him snoring and slouched over a table.

He’d asked the Innkeeper where he might find Mr Doubek, but the man stared at him coldly and said, ‘why would you want to do that?’

A brisk walk around the village to get his bearings warmed him up, and after getting directions from other early risers, he found himself at the end of the main street in front of a small cottage that had seen better days.

There was no answer when he knocked on the front door, so he waited, enjoying the small patch of sun that streamed through an otherwise cloudy sky.

He was about to go to find something for breakfast, when he heard stirring in the house.

‘Get up you lazy, good for nothing,’ Mrs Doubek shouted.

Then a thump and the door flew open. Propelled from the door Kolar staggered outside with Mrs Doubek hot on his heels carrying a bucket of water.

She raised the bucket and with one almighty swoop doused her husband with the icy water.

He swore and straightened up. His eyes blinking, he saw Radko and motioned him over.

‘So, you want to know about the dragons,’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘Just let me dress and shake this infernal woman and I can tell you all I know – maybe you can buy me breakfast?’

Now back at the inn, with fresh hot tea and bowls of porridge, Kolar began his story.

‘When I was a very small child, we suffered a great tragedy. I was six or seven and had been helping my grandfather in his fields when a dragon visited the family home. It had been stealing cattle for more than a month and my father had decided no more.

He thought long and hard about how he might deter the dragon and settled upon dynamite.

If the dragon came close, he was going to blow it up. He saved and bought 18 sticks of dynamite with extra-long fuses and stored them in the barn.

When the dragon landed in our paddock, he was ready, dynamite in hand, he lit the fuse on one stick and lobbed it close to the beast.

But they are cunning those dragons, and this one lifted its wings taking the stick of dynamite in its claw and took flight.

For one brief moment my father must have felt victorious, but the dragon released the stick over the barn. The explosion rocked the valley. The single stick of dynamite coupled with the 17 remaining, blew the barn, our home, and my entire family to smithereens.

In an instant I was an orphan. No parents, no brothers no sisters, alone except for my grandfather.

And how we mourned. That is when my grandfather started drinking much too much vodka. And I have to admit, that is when I started to drink too.

When grandpa was good and drunk, he told me how the dragons came to live in our beautiful Zoloty Dolina.

It all started with a beautiful girl. Her name was Zora, and she was just 15 years old, but possessed the kind of beauty that made men and women stop in their tracks. Thick golden hair that hung to her waist, ocean blue eyes and plump rosy lips, she had a smile that was like sunshine.

Every man and boy who saw her fell in love with Zora, including my grandfather.’

However, Kolar explained, Zora loved just one boy, Janos the tinker.

Zora’s father was well aware of her value, and there was no chance he would allow her to squander her assets on a tinker. He had other plans – he would match her with someone who would pay handsomely for her virtue and her beauty.

‘He set upon a scheme to auction his daughter off to the highest bidder,’ Kolar frowned. And the bidding was lively. He didn’t care about the quality of the bidder only the colour of their money.

‘The oldest bidder was 74, a rich but essentially miserly man who thought 50,000 Koroni should do the trick. But the price climbed steeper and steeper, K100,000, K200,000, K500,000 and the light of greed in Zora’s father’s eyes grew brighter and brighter.

Then the offers grew beyond cash to objects of inestimable value, ancient coins, art from great masters, castles, diamonds, and rubies from faraway lands.

And through all of this, Zora grew more and more despondent. Wracked with heartache at the thought of being sold off and never seeing her beloved Janos again, she was even more wounded by her father’s greed.

“I am his child, flesh of his flesh, yet he cares nothing for my happiness,” she said crying on her brother’s shoulder.

Her brother could do little for her though. Their father was crazed with greed, and no-one could reason with him.

Meanwhile Janos was in agonies of despair. How could he, a travelling tinker compete in this bidding war, he could not. But how could he see the girl he loved with every pore in his body be married to another, he could not.

He needed a plan, something ingenious.’

Kolar coughed loudly, breaking the thread of his tale.

‘What time is it?’ he asked, licking his lips.

It was close to midday and from the sweat forming on Kolar’s brow, Radko could see he needed a drink.

‘More tea?’ Radko asked.

‘I’d rather a vodka,’ Kolar replied hopefully.

If that is what it would take to hear the end of this story, Radko thought, he was willing to buy the vodka.

‘Two glasses of vodka please and a plate of olives,’ Radko said, as the innkeeper smirked, pouring the vodka, but leaving the bottle uncorked on the bar.

Kolar took the vodka in one shot and reached for an olive, before raising one eyebrow archly.

‘Another…just for good measure?’ he asked, and Radko slid his glass over slowly.

‘So, what was Janos’ ingenious plan?’

‘Well,’ Kolar continued, ‘he was sure he could not join the bidding himself; Zora’s father knew him and was likely to greet him with a shotgun rather than a handshake and a glass of wine. Instead, he enlisted the help of his cousin, unknown to anyone in the valley.

‘Only they had to think through their approach. Cousin Anton needed a backstory and most of all they needed Zora’s father to believe that what they were offering was beyond all imagining in its value. What Janos hadn’t counted on, was that Anton too would fall under Zora’s spell, and that was where things got really complicated.’

A thunderous crack broke off their story time.

A split second later, the Innkeeper was running to fling open his cellar door, his wife and children scuttling down the dark stairs like mice.

Over the screams of horses and humans from the street, a loud horn could be heard blasting a warning.

And above that was the strange sound of air being pushed up and down.

White faced, Kolar scrambled to the bar and lunged for the bottle of vodka before heading to a cupboard under the stairs.

‘Come quickly you fool, it’s a dragon and its close,’ he shouted.

But Radko couldn’t hear him, his heart was pumping so loudly, that Kolar’s voice seemed a mere whisper from another room. His whole body was tingling with excitement, every muscle poised for movement.

And when he did move it wasn’t a mad dash for safety but a solid stride outward to the door, the street, and the full face of chaos.

He’d spent years pouring over books about dragons, studying their anatomy, their behavioural characteristics, every last word written on the subject.

Now, now he would see one for himself.

Alone, save for a fluffed-up chicken running in circles around an overturned barrel, Radko looked up.

And there it was, perched precariously on top of the town hall, wings half tucked, tail resting along the roofline and curled onto the building’s verandah, its mouth was half open in a heavy pant, but its reptilian eyes were vigilant, flicking from side to side in anticipation of movement.

Radko stood perfectly still. He was scared but overcome with wonder, taking mental pictures of every aspect of the beast – its scales, its colouring, the size of its claws, shape of its head – and then as though it could sense his scrutiny, the dragon arched its back, raising its neck up to stretch, unfurling its wings and tail.

He felt the pull of air as the dragon lifted off and it knocked him off his feet, so that when the beast flew closer, he was unaware it was closing in on him.

Kolar had finished half of the vodka while hiding under the stairs and it had made him more like his usual self, clumsy and reckless.

By now Radko was flat on his back, trying hard to pretend to be a rock.

And that was when Kolar began to sing, and bang pots together. His singing was so awful that it set dogs howling. And the howling made the already terrified children of the village scream and cry. And tucked away in their hiding spaces, the crying children made the men angry, and the men shouted at their children which upset the women and as arguments broke out and voices raised the sounds ricocheted around the village in an awful cacophony.

And with one roaring screech, the dragon took off.

Radko learned two things that day; dragons don’t like discordant sounds and Kolar was no fool.