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challenge the beast, with the bolder villagers following at a respectful distance.
    Legend said he was magnificent. Legend said that he repeatedly challenged the dragon as he advanced on its lair over the still-smoldering uphill grade. His weapons glinted in the new sun. And, when his challenges seemed to bring no response from the beast, he resorted to taunts, filling the air with jibes and insults that reverberated among the cliffs and boulders. Legend said that when the dragon actually appeared, Baeldaeg was laughing scornfully.
    Seconds later he died.
    The dragon exploded screaming from the cave's mouth, a taut, taloned, leathery ton of reptilian horror, gouting its fury at the presumptuous thing directly in its path. The young hero had no chance even to brandish his sword. He was caught in a single dollop of fire and turned to charcoal on the spot.
    The villagers scattered, scampering under boulders as the dragon swept low overhead, caught two of Swanscombe's houses in a sweep of flame, and set ablaze a tract of forest on the mountainside that burned for two days. Then it veered to the west. What else it set aflame in its rampage the villagers would not find out for weeks, until rumors and tales drifted in from the devastated areas; but late into the night, long after the dragon had returned to its earth in what they were even then beginning to call "the blighted land," they heard it roaring amidst the caverns.
    That second night another meeting was held in the Granary. This time there were fewer volunteers to do battle, and at last it was decided that the names of all the men between seventeen and thirty-five would go into the pot for the lottery. The oldest woman drew. It was the name of a man just over thirty, Angenwit, father of two children. His wife screamed and fainted. Angenwit himself gazed comtemplatively at his name on the broken tile. He was no coward; in fact, he bore the scars of many a clash with Roman skirmishers and with brigands, and he was a skillful armorer. All night there was the sound of metal being fashioned in his shop, and when he emerged at sunrise to do battle he bore a stately shield, an elongated bowl sufficiently large for a man to he beneath, cunningly interlaced with strips of beaten iron. It was said later that he hoped to throw himself beneath this shield until the dragon had passed over and then to stab upward into the soft underbelly of the creature, but no one could confirm that this was indeed his plan, for his wife had been in a swoon throughout the night, and he had walked alone to the Blight, leaving the village without a ceremony and refusing to speak to anyone on the way.
    Once there, he issued a single, manly challenge to the beast, as befitted a Saxon warrior somber in his years, and he waited, his lance braced against his instep for the onslaught.
    He did not have to wait long. The dragon had been restive throughout the night, stalking the corridors of the labyrinth and the shores of the lake of fire, and when dawn came it was quite near the entrance. It had heard the warrior even before he issued his challenge, and it responded at once. Again the agility of the creature awed and amazed those who had been bold enough to creep to the edge of the Blight. Two strides from the mouth of the cave it was airborne, plummeting toward Angenwit, the edge of one great wing torn and flapping. The onlookers scarcely had time to gasp before the dragon was upon the man. It disdained to use its fire. Instead, its talons dropped and closed, twisting the spear like a reed, splintering and bending the brave shield, and piercing and crushing the man in an instant—so fast that he had no time even to scream his fear or to call the name of his god. Another instant and he was no longer human; he was merely strands of skin and liquid that streamed briefly from the spread talons as the beast rose shrieking its triumph, and turned again to assault the village. This time, ten houses burned, and the