The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson

enjoyable. He let it kindle and grow until it suddenly occurred to him that it was a dragonly, rather than a human, anger he was feeling. Perhaps this was what Smrgol had been talking about when he had advised Gorbash not to let his dragon-fury run away with him.
    Jim made a determined effort to put the emotion aside, but the inward fire he had kindled did not seem disposed to go out that easily. He struggled with it, alarmed now, and—as luck would have it—just at that moment he caught sight of another dragon shape, down on one of the spits of land directly in front of him.
    The other dragon was concerned with something lying in the grass. What it was, Jim could not make out from this height and angle; but in any case, its identity was academic. The sight of the other dragon had been all that was needed to bring to full flame the fury now within him.
    " Bryagh !" The word snarled, unbidden in his throat.
    Reflexively, he nosed over and went into a dive like a fighter plane, his sights locked on the target below.
    It was a dive sudden enough to take the dragon underneath utterly by surprise. Unfortunately, it had one natural drawback. Even a small flivver airplane with its motor cut off makes a noticeable amount of noise descending in a steep dive; and a large dragon such as Gorbash had no less air resistance than the average two-seater light airplane. Moreover, the dragon below had evidently had some experience with such a noise; for without looking upward he made one frantic leap and went tumbling head over tail out of the way as Jim slammed down onto the ground at the spot where a second before the other had been.
    The attacked dragon came to the end of his tumbling, sat up, took a look at Jim and began to wail.
    "It's not fair! It's not fair!" he cried in a—for a dragon—remarkably high-pitched voice. "Just because you're bigger than I am! And I had to fight two hours for it. It almost got away half a dozen times. Besides, it's the first good-sized one to wander out onto the fens in months, and now you're going to take it away from me. And you don't need it, not at all. You're big and fat, and I'm weak and hungry…"
    Jim blinked and stared. He glanced from the dragon down to the thing in the grass before him and saw that it was the carcass of a rather old and stringy-looking cow, badly bitten up and with a broken neck. Looking back at the other dragon again, he realized for the first time that the other was little better than half his own size, and so emaciated that he appeared on the verge of collapse from starvation.
    "… Just my luck!" the other dragon was whimpering. "Every time I get something good, someone comes along and takes it away from me. All I ever get is fish—"
    "Hold on!" said Jim.
    "—Fish, fish, fish! Cold fish, without any warm blood in them to put strength in my bones—"
    "Hold on, I say! SHUT UP!" Jim bellowed, in Gorbash's best voice.
    The other dragon stopped his complaining as abruptly as if he was a record player whose plug had been pulled.
    "Yes, sir," he said, timidly.
    "What're you talking about?" demanded Jim. "I'm not going to take your cow away from you."
    "Oh no, sir," said the other dragon; and tittered as if to show that nobody could accuse him of not knowing a good joke when he heard it.
    "I'm not."
    "He-he-he!" chuckled the smaller dragon. "You certainly are a card, your honor."
    "Dammit, I'm serious!" snapped Jim, backing away from the carcass. "Go ahead, eat! I just thought you were someone else."
    "Oh, I don't want it. Really, I don't! I was just joking about being starved. Really, I was!"
    "Look," said Jim, taking a tight rein on his dragon-temper, which was beginning to rekindle, "what's your name?"
    "Oh, well," said the other. "Oh, well—you know—"
    "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"
    "Secoh, your worship!" yelped the dragon, fearfully. "Just Secoh, that's all. I'm nobody important, your highness. Just a little, unimportant mere-dragon."
    "You don't