I looked from Will to the General.
“That’s where I come in to do what?” I asked.
“The location of the Etherstones,” Claire said quietly, nudging me with an elbow.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Cool. Sorry, it’s been a busy couple of days, you know.”
General Shiloh gave me a poker-faced stare. She looked like she wanted to call me some sort of fresh name, but before she could do so, there was a clamor of trumpets from somewhere in the opposite direction to where the center of Dodge City lay.
“What in the blazes is that about?” General Shiloh snapped.
Claire looked totally unperturbed, but as a woman who was renowned for being able to look into the future, that might not have struck anyone as very surprising.
The tent flap was torn aside yet again, and the same guard that had come in with Hana poked his head inside. He looked flustered.
“General Shiloh,” he said. “Enemies approach from the southwest!”
General Shiloh, Scrutor, Claire, Hana, and I hurried outside. Escorted by a squad of soldiers, three of whom were my trusted coterie, we made our way without delay to the southwestern outskirts of the Galipolas Mountain encampment.
“There, Ma’am!” a watchwoman said. “Over yonder. Atop the hills. You see them?”
“I see them,” General Shiloh said.
It was hard not to see these newcomers.
Three warriors, riding on the backs of three massive bears. Lit by the light of the noon sun that had burned off the wispy clouds, I could see that the bears were all different. As different as one dragon was to another. One was white as your typical polar bear, the second was a deep russet red, and the last bear was covered with fur that lay somewhere between blue and black.
Hana, standing next to me, said proudly, “They are my kin. If they are here now, they wish none of your Mystocean troops any harm. They must have a grave reason for risking everything to be here.”
“And how did they enter the Mystocean Empire unseen, and get so close to our encampment without raising the alarm?” General Shiloh asked.
“The same way I did,” Hana replied in her lilting voice.
“You still haven’t informed me as to how you did that,” the General grumbled ominously.
“And I’m afraid, General, that I never will,” the bearmancer said mildly.
General Shiloh looked like she would have loved to tell the athletic, willow-switch of a woman just what she could make her say, but she swallowed her tongue when she caught Claire’s eye. She gritted her teeth, then gained control of herself.
“Prepare my tent for a meeting,” General Shiloh snapped to a guard at her elbow. “Food and drink suitable for distinguished guests. We will see what these Vetruscans have to say.”
Hana walked out to meet the three bearmancers, acting as an unofficial mediator. She was accompanied by half a dozen pikemen wearing full Imperial colors.
As I watched the three bearmancers escorted slowly toward us, down the hill that they had been standing on, I felt a pressure on either side of me.
“Don’t think you’re getting away from us that easily, Mike,” Penelope said into my ear. Her polite, studious voice was just as seductive in its own way as Tasmin’s foul mouth was.
“Yes,” Renji said. “We want our dragonlings, Mike. We want to help the Empire too…”
The djinn’s breath was cold as mountain air on my face and revived my sleepy senses somewhat.
“Well,” I said, “you’re going to have to wait, ladies. It sounds like we’re going to have to lay siege to a giant bronze fortress before I can get hold of more Etherstones.”
Penelope moved her head back so that she could scan my face for a punchline. When she saw no joke or lie in my eyes, she said, “Giant bronze fortress…”
Renji gazed at me and smiled her silver-toothed smile. Her blue-skinned hand trembled slightly, with anticipation, as she lay it on my chest.
“It is true then, what they say,” she said in her calm voice.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Veritably, there is no rest for the wicked,” the djinn said.
I snorted and put my arms around the two women.
We stared out at the approaching bearmancers, as they made their stately way toward the gathered Imperial troops on the back of their massively muscled beasts.
“No rest for the wicked,” I mused. “I guess that means there’s no rest for anyone, then.”
I looked out at the pristine mountain landscape that backed the approach of the three bearmancers. Gorgeous woodlands of fragrant firs, rivers that ran like threads of silver, and broken rocks formations of gray and purple and black. It was a wonderous, savage, and stunning land that lay out there. Mysterious and exciting. Much like the future that lay at my feet.
What would it hold?
I’d already met one bearmancer, and I was about to meet three more. What were they like and what were their intentions toward us? Hana seemed to me to be trustworthy, but was she a paragon of her people, of these Vetruscans?
Their very existence and coming here brought up another interesting point: what other mancers lived out there, out beyond the borders of this strange Empire that I had given my allegiance to?
I could only wonder at that.
I shook my head slightly, feeling the press of warmth from the women on either side of me. There were many questions surfacing now. Many thoughts whirling and jostling to be inquired over in my oversaturated and weary mind.
Three such queries that bubbled to the fore of my brain were; what were the wild dragons, truly? What mysteries did the Subterranean Realms have to offer me and the Mystocean Empire? We had barely scratched the surface there, I reckoned. And how many dragonlings would I father?
I looked out
