log into the darkness. It spun to a flaming halt in the center of the road.
Tombli slammed a flagon onto the table before Saskia and challenged, 'Drink or fight.'
A chill breeze cut through the room and Saskia's eyes flashed from beneath the trim of her hood. The inn erupted with cheers and catcalls when the barbarian pushed the flagon away.
Saskia rose slowly and stretched like a cat, her lips pulled into a grim smile. Wagers were made and grimy coins changed hands. By the time the barbarian had shed her cloak and tied her sleeves up, every warrior sober enough to walk had stumbled outside. Laying her sword to the side, Saskia strode out into the street to drunken shouts and wild applause.
A biting pain erupted from the back of Saskia's thigh. The barbarian fell to her knees in surprise, a war dart buried deep in her leg. Tombli stood silhouetted in the doorway, another dart readied to throw.
'Civilization is making you slow,' Tombli laughed. 'Half a year ago, it would have been impossible to hit you. Now I'd have to try to miss.'
He drew back his arm to throw again.
Cursing, Saskia flung herself to the ground. A dart hissed past, but she was prone, with no way of dodging the others that were sure to follow. With a swipe of her hand, Saskia hurled a scattering of gravel at the dwarf. It was a desperate move. Nothing could distract the dwarf lord's trained arm.
Tombli's laughter was cut short when a pebble exploded against his chest in a flash that lit up the night. The dwarf staggered back, momentarily stunned. Saskia was equally surprised, but a life spent hunting beasts on the wild tundra had trained her to seize every opportunity, no matter how improbable. Saskia's vision went red and she sprang at Tombli, roaring like a tiger. The pair fell back inside the inn, Saskia's fierce blows raining down on Tombli's face.
It took half a dozen Chimeras to pull her off the dwarf. Tombli sat up slowly, his face pulped and bloodied.
'Hold her down,' he mumbled through a swollen lip. Tombli tore a tankard out of the hands of the nearest Chimera and stumbled forward until he stood above the barbarian. His beard was soaked with blood and his forge- hardened face grimaced in pain.
'To the Company of the Chimera!' Tombli shouted, raising the tankard high. The company echoed the dwarfs toast with sullen murmurs. Gripping Saskia's hair in his fist, he emptied the tankard over her head. 'To the Company of the Chimera. Many heads, one purpose.'
'Lie still,' Grummond ordered, his greasy hands working the tip of the dart from Saskia's leg. The company's surgeon was a smashed nose half-ore who had seen more battle with his one good eye than all the rest of the company together.
'Fightin' the captain,' Grummond scoffed. Pressing his hands to either side of the wound, Grummond leaned into her leg and sank his teeth into the tip of the dart. With a jerk of his head he tore the dart loose and spat it onto the floor. 'Were you half drunk or half daft?'
'The dwarf thinks too highly of himself,' Saskia said, 'and he's guiled you all into fearing him.'
'Tombli's a war-caster o' Abbathor. Nothing but trouble, that one.' The half-ore poured a rust colored syrup over the ragged wound and gave her thigh a slap. 'His father was an exile o' the Rift Clans, his mother a duergar princess. Ain't no dwarfhold gonna adopt a half-gray bastard. Tombli's been takin' that pain out on the world ever since.'
'If he's such an almighty priest, how come you do all our healing?'
'Not every priest's a healer,' Grummond said, his one good eye on the door. 'But if n you hate him so much, why stay with the Chimeras?'
Saskia shrugged. 'A wolf needs a pack, an Uthgardt needs a tribe. It is the way of things.'
Grummond studied her. He had known many barbarians, but there was something different about Saskia. The North-lander had no mirth to match her melancholy. She didn't fight out of bitterness, like Tombli, or greed, like the company. Instead it was as if a war-worm had curled up inside her belly, giving her a hunger for battle that refused to be sated. The only challenge worthy of her respect would be the one that killed her. Anything less merited only disdain and scorn.
Grummond turned to put away his oils and salves and said, 'So how'd you witch up that bit o' magic?'
'What do you mean?'
'The flash, the boom!' Grummond laughed. 'I lost a pair o' gold crowns to that pretty little trick.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Saskia growled, something ancient and cruel flashing in her blue eyes.
'All right,' Grummond held up his hands in defense. 'Didn't mean nothin' by it. You know who your friends are.'
A shout went up from the common room.
'Gruumsh's blood,' the half-ore swore. 'What now?'
Tombli leaned into the room, jerked a thumb at Saskia, and said, 'Get up and put some civilized clothes on. I need your eyes.'
A band of trappers had ridden into the waystation. The company gathered to meet them, crowding around the men and their heavy iron cage. By the time Saskia had limped outside Tombli was already engaged in a shouting match with a swarthy Calishite, trying to drive down the trapper's price by bluff and bluster.
The man's armor was brutally torn in several places and a long bandage wrapped the length of his leg. Whatever was in the cage had given the trapper and his fellows a hard time of it.
Saskia eased through the crowd then stopped short.
The trappers had caught a dragon.
Saskia had seen images of drakes before. She had seen the likenesses of great wyrms inked onto scraped hides, carved from ivory and wood, gilded in gold and silver, and painted on cavern walls. But the miniature dragon, no larger than a cat, had something every representation had lacked. Like an exotic sword polished to a razor's edge, the dragon was beautiful.
Long lines of sinewy muscle tensed and corded beneath glossy scales the color of wine. A pair of sharp horns curled above dark eyes that flashed violet, framing a savage maw filled with needle-sharp teeth. Its delicate wings strained anxiously against the tight confines of the cage, and the body ended in a serpentine tail tipped with a single ivory barb.
Tombli whispered from Saskia's elbow, 'What in the Nine Hells is it?'
Saskia struggled to translate the Uthgardt word to Common, but the best she could manage was a vulgar approximation of: 'Apseudodragon.'
Tombli snorted. 'A sort-of-dragon?' He spun back on the Calishite and shouted, 'Cheating son of a djinni! One hundred golden lions and not a falcon more!'
While Tombli and the Calishite fell back into vicious bargaining, Saskia knelt before the cage. The wyrm's gemstone eyes were timeless, utterly indifferent to the concerns of man. Its scaled kin had reigned long before the press of cities and farms, and would exist long after the last eldritch tower crumbled to dust.
Free me, sister.
Saskia flinched. She hadn't heard Uthgardt spoken since she had fled her home. The dragon hissed with impatience. Again the words leaped into her mind.
Free me!
As a girl Saskia had been plagued by dreams in which entire flights of great wyrms filled the skies. Worse, her dreams had worked tiny miracles on the world around her. When Saskia had nightmares, lights danced across the northern skies, sentries reported watch fires flaring blue and red, and rusting blades were made bright. The tribe's aging shaman, terrified of what he couldn't explain, declared her visions to be portents of evil and did everything in his power to purge her of the wicked taint. But every ritual and ceremony failed and in the end Saskia was branded a witch, damned by an untapped potential she couldn't control.
Free me!
'No,' Saskia said, her voice a fierce whisper. Her eyes narrowed to shards of ice and her words slipped into Uthgardt. 'I sacrificed fortunes to your troves, swore my spirit to your totem and placed my body upon your altar.' She spat on the ground. 'Your kin denied me.'
Before Saskia could stand, the dragon's long tail shot between the bars of the cage. It struck once, as delicate as a lover's caress, slashing a crimson arc across her cheek.
