middle-aged man in green-dyed deerskin.
“Ho, there, boy,” the man said at Tobas’ approach. “Are you looking for a quick and easy road to wealth and glory? I’m looking for a few brave souls who are willing to help my homeland of Dwomor in its hour of need.”
“What sort of hour of need?” Tobas asked warily. “A war?”
“Oh, no, my lad! Not a war at all! Merely a minor nuisance that’s been harrying a few of our far-flung mountain outposts.”
“Bandits?”
Before the recruiter could answer, the soldier was at Tobas’ shoulder.
“Is this the one?” he demanded.
Terrified at the prospect of being caught in a lie and sold into slavery, as either vagrant or enemy alien, Tobas nodded. “This is he, sir.”
“You’re signing this boy up?” the soldier asked the recruiter.
The recruiter was not about to pass up an opportunity like this. “Yes, indeed, sir, it’s all agreed!”
“All right, then; get on with it.” He turned and stalked away.
Tobas watched him go, then turned back to the recruiter and asked, “Now, what’s this nuisance of yours, bandits?”
“First, lad, I’ll ask you to sign here.” He pulled a document from his sleeve.
“Oh, no!” Tobas protested, “not until I know what’s going on!”
“Oh, indeed? Shall I call back that fine soldier and tell him I made a mistake and that I never saw you before this morning?”
Tobas glanced at the soldier’s retreating back and reluctantly accepted the proffered pen. He signed his name neatly, “Tobas of Telven,” then handed back the pen and demanded, “All right, what’s this nuisance?”
“It’s not bandits, it’s a dragon. It’s been eating people up in the mountains, and when it doesn’t eat people, it eats sheep, which is almost as bad.”
“A dragon?” Tobas stared for a moment, then looked after the soldier again, wondering how bad slavery could be.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” the recruiter said. “And the reward is really something worth having, the hand of a princess in marriage, a respected position for life at Dwomor Keep, and best of all, one thousand gold pieces!”
Tobas gaped stupidly for several seconds. “A hundredweight of gold?” he squeaked at last.
“That’s right.”
After all, he thought, how dangerous could a dragon be? Every well-stocked wizard had ajar of dragon’s blood on his shelves, and the legends said that during the Great War dragons had been tamed and trained. A reward of that magnitude was worth a little risk, with that much money he could, as his advisor had suggested, come back and buy a few spells. Not that he’d need to; he could live quite comfortably for the rest of his life on that much! And all that without even considering the position or the princess.
The princess, he was not at all sure he wanted to marry anyone as yet, princess or otherwise. If one of the prettier young women in Telven had shown an interest, he might well have married, but they had never really taken him seriously after he apprenticed himself to old Roggit, and he was not eager to wed a stranger, someone from an entirely different background. Well, if by some miracle he somehow did kill the dragon, surely he need not accept all the reward; let some worthy prince marry her. Tobas would settle for the money.
Of course, he thought, he mustn’t count the money before he had it; he had no idea how to kill a dragon. He knew almost nothing about dragons. He had never seen any, but they had figured in various stories he had heard as a child; they reportedly came in various sizes and shapes and colors. Some were said to breathe fire; some were said to speak in various languages and to be as dangerous with their clever tongues as with their claws and teeth. During the Great War, both sides had reportedly trained them to kill the enemy. A dragon could be almost anything. He would need to look the situation over carefully and see just what the story was, what sort of a dragon this Dwomor had roaming the hills. If the odds looked too bad, and realism told him that dragon slaying couldn’t be easy, if these people had sent a recruiter all the way to Ethshar to find volunteers, he would simply leave. At least he would be somewhere new; Dwomor, whatever and wherever it might be, might well have more opportunities available to him than Ethshar. He would not be an enemy there simply by virtue of his homeland, either; he had never heard of anyone sinking or capturing ships from any place called Dwomor.
He could not possibly be much worse off wandering in Dwomor than wandering in Ethshar, he told himself, and at least, as a recruited dragon slayer, he wouldn’t have to worry about being sold into slavery as a vagrant.
“All right,” he said. “You’ve got a recruit. When do we leave?”
The recruiter smiled. “Oh, not for some time yet; I’m hoping to bring back a dozen young adventurers like yourself.” He raised his voice and began calling to the handful of Ethsharites entering the market square. “Here’s your chance for riches and glory! A chance to travel and see the world! Come over here, folks, and let me tell you all about it!”
Tobas’ stomach growled, and he sighed. He was committed now; he would either have to face a dragon of unknown size and ferocity or break his signed agreement and desert somewhere in the Small Kingdoms. He could not stay in Ethshar.
At the very least, if the recruiter wanted Tobas to reach Dwomor well enough to go dragon hunting, the blackmailing scoundrel would have to feed him sometime soon.
CHAPTER 8
When they finally boarded the ship, there were nine of them in all; the recruiter seemed well pleased with his catch.
Tobas was not well pleased with anything. His companions seemed to be either fools or blackguards, which made him wonder which category he belonged in. The ship was small, crowded, and stank of fish, and Tobas had doubts about its seaworthiness. Worst of all, the meals were sparse and unappetizing, consisting largely of stale bread and ill-flavored cheese served with cheap, warm beer.
Even this food, however, was better than nothing, and his narrow, scratchy hammock was better than sleeping in the streets.
He could not quite bring himself to complain to the recruiter about the conditions; but by the second night at sea, he could no longer resist complaining to someone and unburdened himself to the rather plump, baby-faced young man, roughly his own age, in the adjoining hammock.
“Oh, but it’s an adventure!” Tillis Tagath’s son burbled happily. “Hardship and sorrow toughen a man for battle!”
Tillis, in Tobas’ opinion, was very definitely one of the fools among the recruits.
“I don’t think they’re toughening us for battle,” Tobas replied. “I think they’re just too cheap to do better. It makes me suspicious about that reward of a hundred pounds of gold.”
“Oh? Do you think they’re lying?” Tillis turned and stared at him with wide, worried eyes.
Tobas sighed. “Not exactly lying, perhaps,” he said. “But exaggerating a little.”
“Oh, but they wouldn’t dare refuse anything to the man who slays the dragon! What would the people think? Surely the peasants would rise up against any king so treacherous as to refuse the kingdom’s savior what might be due him!”
Tillis, Tobas thought, talked like a storyteller and was undoubtedly aboard the foul-smelling and nameless little ship as a result of listening to too many storytellers. “I wouldn’t put much trust in peasants,” he said. “Nor in kings, either. Do you know anything about this place we’re going to, Dwomor I think it’s called?”
“It’s in the mountains in the Small Kingdoms, and they say it was the original capital of Old Ethshar.”
Startled, Tobas asked, “Who says so?”
“The Dwomorites, of course!”
“Oh, of course.” He settled back in his hammock again. From what he had always heard, virtually every one of the Small Kingdoms claimed to be the original capital — or else its government claimed to be the rightful
