Cheeks rosy once more, blonde hair largely feather-free, Sir Crispin de Harriff-Scarnley, knight of Norlandia and dragon-slayer extraordinaire, stood and regarded his captors.

His captors—two now more-or-less sober apothecary students and an endangered, rather loquacious dragon with a scar on his bum—regarded him right back.

"Er, right," said Alyx, at length. "We all know who you are, but I guess we'd better introduce ourselves. I'm Alyx, this is Kayt and...well, I guess you've already met Rarg!."

Sir Crispin blinked. "I'm sorry—who?"

"Rarg!," repeated Alyx. "You know. The dragon? The one you're trying to kill?"

"It has a name?"

Alyx placed a calming hand on Rarg!'s flank, as the dragon's eyes flashed dangerously and twin trickles of smoke drifted from its flared nostrils.

"Yes," snapped Kayt, "he has a name. And that name is Rarg!."

"Rarg?"

"No." Alyx shook his head. "That's his uncle. It's Rarg!."

"But that's what I said!"

"No, it isn't. You said..." Alyx thought back to his own recent introduction to dragon nomenclature. "Look, never mind. Close enough. Now, you said you wanted to, um...to parley?"

"Yes, indeed." Smoothing his rather rumpled tunic as best he could, Sir Crispin stood a little straighter. "Firstly, I feel congratulations are in order for the effectiveness of your incursion detection apparatus. Most, er...effective. Of course, had I been in full possession of my faculties, I'm quite sure I should have bypassed them, but in the circumstances it would be churlish to deny that, regardless of their childish simplicity, they proved adequate to the occasion."

"Hang on. Your faculties?" Kayt looked the knight up and down. "Are you saying you're drunk? Or on something? Was that why you were all staggery and fell on your butt? Some kind of pre-battle upper, to get you going, huh?" She gave a nod of professional appreciation. "Right, now I get it—you were dosed up on a bit of the old Irmish courage."

"I beg your pardon?" Sir Crispin's expression was one of pure affront. "I most certainly was not. I would never dream of sullying the sanctity of my person with any...any...substances. I can assure you, whatever courage I might possess is entirely mine."

"In that case," said Alyx, feeling a little defensive at the damning the knight's faint praise was inflicting upon his intruder-detection strategies, "what's the deal with your faculties, then?"

"Well, you see,"—Sir Crispin's haughtiness lingered a moment longer, before visibly deflating—"while under the influence of the concealment spell, I, uh...well, I'm afraid my senses are somewhat impaired. Hence my inability to detect your traps."

"Wait," said Alyx, "so you're saying when you're within the field of the spell, we can't see in—and you can't see out?"

"No, no, of course not. That would be quite ridiculous. I could hardly be expected to have slain the number of dragons I have if I couldn't see them, could I? No, it's just that the spell makes it so that I can't see very well. Er, at all."

Kayt sniffed. "Sounds like a bit of a rubbish spell to me."

"Now, now, I won't have that." Sir Crispin actually waggled his finger. "Count Mal—...er, that is to say, the kindly benefactor who provided me with the concealment hats is a thaumaturgist of the highest order, and his spells are equally first-class. It's just in this case I think there may have been a...transcription error in the accompanying incantation. Rendering it somewhat inappropriate, and therefore not suitable for an entirely accurate recitation. Yes, I'm sure it must have been something like that."

"So that's why you stabbed me in the backside?" Heedless of Alyx's restraining hand, Rarg! leant down to give Sir Crispin the full benefit of his indignant expression. "You thought you were going for something vital—and then got me in the butt?"

"Well, ah...yes. I suppose I did. As I recall, it was rather dark in your lair. My apologies. I can assure you, I will do better next time."

"Next time?" growled the dragon.

"Yes," said Sir Crispin. "That is the purpose of my parley, you see. To challenge you to battle. One-on-one, man-to-dragon, a fight to the death. As stealth has failed me, and I have exhausted my magical repertoire, I shall have to call upon simple cold steel and skill. Release your prisoners, allow them to retire to a safe distance, and then let us have at it. I demand the opportunity to wipe away the ignominy of my failure in the glory of combat."

"Men," sighed Kayt, shaking her head.

"Hey," protested Alyx, "don't lump me in with whatever this is."

She gave him a sceptical look. "Tell me honestly there's not at least a tiny part of your brain currently thinking, 'Ooh, knight vs dragon fight, cool.'"

Alyx opened his mouth. And then shut it again. He actually could honestly tell her that—mainly because it was far more than a tiny part—but fortunately had sufficient remaining mental capacity to recognise the folly of saying so (even though a good chunk was also taken up with processing the 'release your prisoners' thing).

"You," said Kayt, pointing up at Rarg!, who was clearly preparing to respond to the knight's challenge, "don't encourage him. And as for you,"—she turned her attention on Sir Crispin—"why don't you just quit while you're ahead and go home?"

"What?" The knight stared at her in blank incomprehension. "But...but I can't go home. I haven't slain the dragon yet."

"So?" she replied. "Who says you have to?"

The incomprehension became outright bafflement. "Well...everyone. Everyone knows that. You have to slay dragons."

"Why?"

"Well, because...they're dragons. They do, you know...dragon stuff."

"Such as?"

Sir Crispin's expression was by now so pained that Alyx almost felt sorry for him. "They...they kill people. They steal treasure. They...burn things."

"Oh," said Kayt, "is that so? The thing is, last time I checked, so do people."

"People?" queried the knight faintly.

"Yes," she replied. "People also do all those things. They kill, they steal, they burn things down. Guess we better slay them all too, huh?"

"What? No, of course not. Besides, that's only some people. You can't go around tarring everybody with the same brush because of a few bad apples. It's not the same thing at all."

The two students exchanged a look. They looked up at Rarg!. And then back to the indignant knight.

"Isn't it?" asked Alyx.