It was raining heavily in Wulfgar, Nordmaar’s City of the Plains. Water ran in curtains from rooftops and turned the famous horse arena into a lake. The distant Khalkist Mountains blocked out the setting sun, but the heat of the earlier day gave strength to the humid air.
This is what passes for summer here, thought the Red Dragon highmaster. She stood on one of the balconies of the Palace of the Khan, looking down upon the city from an impressive height, taking in the steamy view while sipping from a tall glass of chilled wine. Highmaster Rivven Cairn was blonde and half-elf, the latter evident in her upswept ears and arched eyebrows. That alone would have been enough to make her stand out in Wulfgar. The highmaster wasn’t content with that, however; she was never seen without her garish red and black armor and the curving elven sword worn on her back.
The Red Wing of the dragonarmies under Highlord Phair Caron had occupied Nordmaar almost ten years earlier, one of the causes of the War of the Lance. Caron was gone, killed in Silvanesti and replaced by Verminaard. Verminaard was gone, killed in Abanasinia, and replaced by Emperor Ariakas himself. Ariakas was gone, replaced by a succession of would-be highlords. The current claimant, Karelas, was skulking in the ogre lands of Kern, while Rivven Cairn, highmaster to all of them, held Nordmaar alone.
Rivven watched as a messenger ran up the streets of the city, through the main gates that led to the sloping approach to the palace, and on through the various open courtyards. She set her glass on a side table and took her horned great helm from its stand by the bed. When the young boy finally burst in through the royal bedroom doors, flanked by a pair of baaz draconian guards, she was ready.
“Hand it over,” she said, her voice resonating though the mask. The terrified messenger handed her a scroll sealed in red wax. Rivven waved him off, and as the draconians roughly escorted the boy outside, she broke the seal-that of her black robe mage in Pentar-and scanned the scroll’s contents.
“Aubec!” she shouted, getting to the last line of the message. Her chief aide, a stocky, bald Nordmaaran who had thrown his lot in with the dragonarmies years earlier, appeared in the doorway moments after.
“My lady?” he said, watching the highmaster pace back and forth. “Troubling news?”
Rivven crumpled the scroll in her mailed fist and shook it in Aubec’s direction. “Idiots!” she shouted. “The wizard Cazuvel writes that somebody in my army took it upon themselves to make an attempt on Lord Glayward’s life.”
Aubec nodded. “Overzealous,” he said.
Rivven Cairn removed her helmet and threw it onto a nearby armchair. “I will not abide this kind of behavior from my officers. I don’t care how bored they are or how much the baron mocks them over the lines of occupation. We have a system here, and it works.”
Aubec shrugged. “He lives yet?”
“They failed, yes. Some Ergothian swordsman intervened, and I lost six draconians.” Rivven kept pacing back and forth. “I’m not going to be able to get any more of those from Neraka either! Incompetents.”
Aubec produced a sheet of parchment and crossed to a writing desk. “I shall draw up the necessary orders of reprisal to Captain Annaud, my lady.”
“Cazuvel has been watching Annaud for the past three months,” Rivven said. “Annaud’s going to wonder how I got hold of this information. He’ll start to ask questions, and that’ll annoy Cazuvel. I need Cazuvel. And he’s more useful to me when the captain thinks he’s working for him.”
The red Dragon highmaster was, like others in the upper echelons of the Dragon Queen’s forces, quite conversant with arcane magic. She was not in the late Ariakas’s league, nor even that of the white Dragon Highlord Feal-Thas. The moons of magic were just a means of tracking the passing of days to her.
But Rivven had acquired a number of minor magical skills in her time, enough to bolster her considerable martial talents and enough to get a good read on black-robed mages such as Cazuvel. The human was far more studious and crafty in the arts than she, but he lacked what she possessed. He lacked the razor edge of conviction, a razor honed in flames.
Rivven caught herself musing about her younger life, before the dragonarmy, before Ariakas. He’d seen in her an obsessive nature that rivaled his, and a zealot’s spirit. Unlike the dragon emperor, whose efforts were driven toward the acquisition of power and strength, Rivven focused on being where she needed to be. She could outlive all of the other highmasters and highlords. She knew it, and she knew Ariakas had known it. Leave the grandstanding and infamy to Kitiara or that general in the black army, Marcus Cadrio. Rivven could wait.
The highmaster stopped her pacing near the window and reclaimed her glass of wine. As Aubec began writing, she looked out again over steamy Wulfgar, the dragonarmy banners hanging limp in the rain, and exhaled. “Six draconians vanquished, Cazuvel says. Make a note, Aubec, when you’re finished.”
She looked over at her scribe then into her glass. “I want to know who that swordsman is.”
CHAPTER THREE
Before dawn Vanderjack woke with a grunt.
It was still dark. His room in the manor house was drafty and small, with only one window opposite the cramped bed he’d been given. Outside, the rain had stopped. The red and silver light from the two crescent moons let the sellsword see pink-edged silhouettes in the room but little else.
A mercenary lives his life in the dawn, one of his past associates had told him. Get up with the baker, gather your kit while the bread’s in the oven, and be on the road while breakfast is still warm in your hand. Vanderjack didn’t hold with every sellsword custom, but he had never been able to sleep in. He lived his life in the dawn.
He didn’t know the manor house well enough to be used to its noises, to know if a creak in the floorboards was the shifting of the timbers or an intruder. But he had excellent hearing, and he could tell that an interesting conversation was going on elsewhere in the house. He heard voices that didn’t belong to the baron, his aide, or the driver.
Vanderjack slipped out of his bed, pulled on his arming doublet, trousers, and boots, and strapped the baldric and scabbard for Lifecleaver around his waist. He pulled the sword an inch out of its scabbard and felt the Sword Chorus materialize around him.
“Enjoying the comforts of the wealthy, I see,” said the Aristocrat.
“A little too much,” said the Balladeer.
Vanderjack frowned. “You must be looking at a different room than I am.” He approached the door and carefully opened it until a thin crack let him hear the voices more easily.
“Sneaking about is hardly honorable,” said the Cavalier.
“Wait-there is danger,” said the Hunter, and the ghost’s insubstantial form disappeared through the wall.
The Hunter was often keenly aware of a problem without Vanderjack even having to mention it. Vanderjack could always count on the Sword Chorus for that kind of thing, especially when it catered to their individual roles. Some, like the Cavalier, were helpful in a fight. The Conjurer, alternately, had saved Vanderjack a number of times by identifying magic as it was being cast; could even allow the sellsword to react before a spell went off.
Vanderjack blocked out the comments of the other ghosts for a moment as they continued to discuss the audacity of standing quietly in the dark. He placed his ear close to the crack in door. He could definitely make out the baron’s voice too.
“… have no right to come in … time of night …”
A baritone voice, in response: “… causing us to pay a visit … highmaster never approved of the attack …”
The baron again: “… leave before I have you thrown out!”
“… simply here to warn you to be careful … Ergothian mercenary …”
At that last, Vanderjack winced. The visitors must be from the dragonarmy. How brazen were they, first attacking the man on the road, then showing up at his very house?
The Hunter returned moments later. “Red Dragonarmy,” he said, confirming the sellsword’s suspicions. “Three draconians, one human officer. Two more draconians outside.”
