SOURCE: "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany (The Sword of Welleran & Other Stories, 1908)

DESCRIPTION: "'He is the dragon-crocodile who haunts the Northern marshes and ravages the homesteads by their marge. And the hide of his back is of steel, and his under parts are of iron; but along the midst of his back, over his spine, there lies a narrow strip of unearthly steel. This strip of steel is Sacnoth, and it may be neither cleft nor molten, and there is nothing in the world that may avail to break it, nor even leave a scratch upon its surface. It is of the length of a good sword, and of the breadth thereof. Shouldst thou prevail against Tharagavverug, his hide may be melted away from Sacnoth in a furnace; but there is only one thing that may sharpen Sacnoth's edge, and this is one of Tharagavverug's own steel eyes; and the other eye thou must fasten to Sacnoth's hilt, and it will watch for thee. But it is a hard task to vanquish Tharagavverug, for no sword can pierce his hide; his back cannot be broken, and he can neither burn nor drown. In one way only can Tharagavverug die, and that is by starving.'" ("The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany)

NOTES: Leothric must kill Tharagavverug to obtain the sword Sacnoth. The young man wants the sword to save his village from the evil Gaznak. To kill the unkillabel dragon-crocodile, Theodric uses himself as bait for "His food is men!" Striking the dragon on the nose repeatedly for days, Theodric starves the creature. The sword Sacnoth is taken from Tharagavverug's body, including one of his steely eyeballs as the pummel of his sword.

HISTORY: Tom Shippey in The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories (1994) selects this story as one of the very first sword & sorcery tales in which a warrior takes on a wizard, a theme often attributed to Robert E. Howard twenty-five years later. David Drake would use a similar giant croc in "King Crocodile".

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