“Don’t keep brushing stuff in my eyes, armor-cleaner,” growled Nettlebrand, swallowing a dozen will-o’-the-wisps who had foolishly flown into his jaws. “How am I supposed to look for water in this pesky desert with you flapping about all the time?”
He stopped again, blinking, and stared across the sand that extended like a yellow sea to the horizon. “Grrr, I’m so angry I could shed my armored skin! Not a drop of water for kilometers around. I’ll never get away from here! I never saw such a hopelessly drought-ridden place in my life.”
In his rage Nettlebrand stamped his foot, but the sound it made in the sand wasn’t particularly impressive. “I must devour something this minute!” he bellowed. “I must devour, destroy, dismantle, and despoil something!”
Gravelbeard scanned the desert in alarm. There was nothing to eat for kilometers around — except Gravelbeard himself. But Nettlebrand seemed to want something larger than him. Eyes streaming, the dragon glared all around him until his gaze fell on a cactus growing out of the desert sand like a column. Growling furiously, he marched toward it.
“No, Your Goldness, don’t!” cried Gravelbeard, but too late.
Nettlebrand sank his teeth into the cactus with relish, only to flinch back, howling. A thousand tiny thorns were piercing his gums — the only unprotected part of his body.
“Pull them out, armor-cleaner!” he bellowed. “Pull these sharp, burning things out!”
Hastily Gravelbeard slid down the huge muzzle, perched on the terrible front teeth, and set to work.
“He’ll pay for this!” bellowed Nettlebrand. “He’ll pay for every thorn, that stupid homunculus. Thick as two short planks, he is! I must find water. Water! I must get out of this desert!”
Then a fine film of sand suddenly rose in the hot air around the bitten cactus, forming into a creature that seemed to change shape with every breath of the desert wind. Its sandy limbs stretched and grew, until a veiled rider was sitting on a spindly-legged camel in front of Nettlebrand. The rider’s billowing cloak, like the rest of him, consisted of a myriad grains of sand.
“You want water?” whispered the rider. Even his voice sounded like sand crunching underfoot.
Gravelbeard shrieked and fell headfirst off his master’s muzzle. Nettlebrand was so surprised, he closed his sore mouth.
“What are you?” he growled at the sandy rider.
The translucent camel pranced up and down in front of the giant dragon, obviously not in the least afraid of him.
“I am a sandman,” whispered the strange being. “I ask again: Do you want water?”
“Yes!” grunted Nettlebrand. “What a stupid question! Of course I do!”
The sandman blew himself out like a tattered sail in the wind.
“I can give you water,” he breathed, “but what will you give me in return?”
Nettlebrand was so angry that he spat cactus thorns. “What will I give you in return? I’ll refrain from eating you, that’s what.”
The sandman laughed. His mouth was only a hole in his sandy face.
“What will you give me?” he asked again. “Tell me, you great tinny monster.”
“Promise him something!” Gravelbeard whispered into Nettlebrand’s ear. “Anything!”
But Nettlebrand lowered his horns, snorting furiously. Armor clinking, he leaped forward and snapped. His teeth crunched, and the sandman collapsed. Nettlebrand coughed as grains of sand went down his throat. Then he bared his fangs in a satisfied grin.
“So much for you!” he grunted, and he was turning away when Gravelbeard suddenly drummed frantically on his armored brow.
“Your Goldness!” he croaked. “Look! Look at that!”
Two more sandmen were rising from the place where the first had just fallen. Bright sunlight shone through the arms they were raising in the air, and a wind suddenly rose over the desert.
“Get away from here, Your Goldness!” cried Gravelbeard, but it was already too late.
The wind howled over the dunes, and wherever it whipped up the sand more and more sandmen rose up. They galloped toward Nettlebrand on their camels and surrounded him. Soon he was enveloped in a vast, impenetrable cloud of sand.
Nettlebrand bit like a mad dog. He snapped at the thin legs of the camels and at their riders’ fluttering robes. But for every sandman he managed to get, two more rose from the desert sands. They rode around him in the flying sand, circling around him faster and faster. Horrified, Gravelbeard put his hat over his eyes. Nettlebrand spat and roared, struck out with his claws, and kept snapping his terrible jaws. But all he got between his teeth was sand — gritty, dusty sand that scratched his nose and throat. Every time the sandmen completed another circle, Nettlebrand sank deeper into the sand, until even his snorting, sputtering head disappeared. When the sandy riders finally reined in their camels, there was no sign of the golden dragon and his armor-cleaner, nothing but a huge hill of sand rising among the dunes. For a few moments the camels stood there, breathing hard, while their masters’ sandy robes billowed in the breeze. Then the wind blew over the dunes, sighing, and the sandmen disintegrated and became one with the desert again.
A viper winding its way over the hot sand a little later heard a scraping sound inside the strange hill. A small head in a large hat emerged from the heap of sand.