The Dragon Book by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann Page A

“The dragons themselves are payment enough. And in any case, you wouldn’t have found me there before last month. I’m new here.”
    “A traveler, then?”
    “I am, sir. Have to be. When I clear wyrmin out of a town, they don’t come back. Pretty soon business dries up, doesn’t it?”
    “I suppose it would. Here we are,” said Smith, opening the garden gate. They wheeled the cart in over the lawn and parked it under the canopy-pine. As Crankhandle’s assistant scrambled to slide chocks under the wheels, Crankhandle turned and peered up at the roof. The dragons looked down at him. Crankhandle grinned wide. Smith saw that his teeth had been capped with gold.
    “There you are! Uncle’s come with treats, my little darlings. Oh, yes he has.”

     
    SMITH went indoors, got a beer, and came back out to watch as the youth unloaded all the cages from the cart. He set them up in a row and opened each one. His master, meanwhile, opened a panel in the floor of the cart, and, from a recess, brought out an iron strongbox. When he opened it, Smith glimpsed a dense greenish stuff, looking like damp compressed sawdust. Crankhandle broke off a cake of it and went to each of the cages, baiting each cage with bits of the cake. The dragon on his assistant’s shoulder turned its head and watched jealously. It began to squeak, doing the same head-bobbing and wing-fluttering routine it had gone through at Smith.
    “Here you are, little sweeting,” said Crankhandle, holding out a morsel of the stuff. The little dragon snapped at it avidly and gobbled it down. “That’s the way. Now! Arvin, send her up there.”
    The youth, Arvin, took the dragon in both his hands. He kissed the top of her head—she tried to bite him—and tossed her up in the air toward the roof. She unfolded her wings and flew to the roofline, landing among the other dragons there. They hissed at her, but only for a moment; presumably, they had caught the scent of the cake on her jaws, for they suddenly mobbed her, biting her in their excitement, snapping at crumbs. She squawked and fled, jumping off the edge and flapping back down to Arvin’s waiting hands. He clutched her to himself and dodged behind the open cages, holding her against his chest protectively as the other dragons came winging after her.
    But the whole flock—and Smith saw now there were a lot more than a dozen, more like twenty—pulled up and wheeled in midair as they noticed the bait. For a moment there was a confusion of beating wings, loud as spattering rain on rock, then each dragon had zipped into one of the cages and was ravenously eating the green cake. Crankhandle stepped forward and slammed the cages shut, one after another. Arvin stepped around to help him, as his dragon scrambled back on his shoulder.
    “And it’s done,” said Crankhandle, beating his gauntlets together. Arvin’s dragon peeped and begged. “And here’s your reward, good girl!” Crankhandle added, going to the strongbox and taking out a last bit of cake. He handed it to Arvin to feed to her and put the strongbox back in its compartment, shutting the panel.
    “Damn,” said Smith. Crankhandle swung round to him, grinning, and held up an index finger.
    “But wait! I have not completed my comprehensive removal! Arvin, get the ladder.”
    “Yes, Master,” said Arvin, as the dragon screamed in temper and bit him because the last of the cake was gone. He dabbed absentmindedly at the blood streaming from his ear and went to pull an extendable ladder from the side of the cart.
    Crankhandle loaded a basket with tools and, slinging it on his back, climbed the ladder one-handed, while Smith steadied the ladder for him and Arvin loaded the cages back on the cart. Arvin sustained a number of other bites doing this, amid a tremendous racket, because the dragon flock was in a group rage and hurling themselves against the bars; but Arvin kept working and only paused to tie a couple of bandages on his wounds before