Jeff Crook - Dark Thane

“Welcome, General Zen. I trust you had no trouble on the road,” the Daergar said in affected friendliness.

The sivak hissed in amusement and stepped out to greet Ferro, reaching out one huge clawed hand to clasp the dwarfs smaller one. Ferro winced at the draconian’s strength, but continued to smile through gritted teeth.

“It was as you said it would be,” General Zen said in a voice that slithered like scales scraping over stone. He released the Daergar’s grip and made a sharp motion with his hand toward his company of draconians. Ferro tensed until he saw them lower their weapons and appear to relax, though they remained well outside the camp. The ones who had slipped off the road still hadn’t reappeared.

“I killed the loud one,” Zen said as he stepped past Ferro and approached the fire near the Daergar’s tent.

“Excellent,” Ferro said nervously as he followed the draconian. Zen stopped near the fire and spread his huge powerful wings, stretching them out to catch the heat from the glowing coals. Ferro ducked under the draconian’s wings and moved to the other side of the fire.

“Won’t you come into my tent so that we may discuss… things,” he said.

The lids of the draconian’s eyes lowered, and his black eyes seemed to grow somehow blacker. Folding up his wings, he stooped through the low opening of the tent. Ferro squeezed in behind him and tugged a cord, loosening the flap and allowing it to fall over the opening, closing them in.

There was hardly enough room for the huge draconian to turn around. Zen crouched opposite the cot, his folded wings scraping noisily against the canvas wall every time he moved. An oil lamp sat on the floor, smoking heavily in the damp air. The only other furnishings in the tent were a large leather chest studded with silver rivets sitting in the middle of the tent floor and a long wooden coffer lying in one corner with the lid thrown back, revealing a variety of dwarf-made weapons. Zen eyed these with undisguised envy. His own troop’s armaments weren’t half as good as these extras that the Daergar had brought along out of habit.

Ferro sat on the cot and realized that he was closer to the draconian than he cared to be, but there was no choice now. In any case, he made an effort to keep one hand near his sword at all times. He’d never before had an opportunity to observe a draconian so closely, and what he saw only increased his nervousness. The creature’s black eyes seemed to look at him as though he were some choice morsel that it might consume, its teeth superbly designed for ripping flesh. The sivak was easily twice his size.

Part of his warrior training had taught him how to defeat much larger opponents. Nearly everything on Krynn was larger than a dwarf. As dwellers of the deep earth, the Daergar had to learn how to defeat hobgoblins, ogres, trolls, giants, and any number of much larger and more powerful opponents. Ferro was no shabby swordsman. He had beaten opponents larger even than this draconian. Nonetheless Zen’s draconic features, his scaly flesh and batlike wings, would inspire fear in even the doughtiest warrior. It was said that all draconians had hidden abilities, magical powers of a surprising nature, and that they could kill even after they were dead.

Ferro didn’t have to wait for the draconian to begin the dialogue. Straight and to the point, Zen said, “You did not ask me to bring my gang here to kill that fool we met on the road.”

Ferro nodded, appreciative of the draconian’s businesslike manner. There was no guile in this creature, he could see that as plain as the end of his nose. The draconian was used to taking orders, a creature bred to the mercenary life, something Ferro could well understand, having dealt more often that he cared to remember with members of the Daewar clan-dwarves like Ilbars Bleakfell. Ferro wondered what had become of their hapless leader, but he thought it better not to ask. The draconian’s fangs were not made for idle talk or chewing quith-pa (a form of elvish dry rations composed, according to the dwarves who had been forced to eat it, of bark and twigs).

“Indeed, I did not. My agents hired you for a greater purpose. I need you to kill a certain dwarf,” Ferro said.

Zen glanced at the weapons locker lying in the corner. “I do not think you need our help just to kill a certain dwarf,” he said shrewdly.

“Naturally, his death cannot be traced back to me,” the Daergar amended.

Now the draconian nodded his great silver-scaled head. “I understand,” Zen said. “Who is to be killed?”

“The king of Thorbardin, Tarn Bellowgranite,” Ferro answered. He watched the draconian’s face for any betrayal of surprise, but if the creature was taken off guard by the enormity of his task, it did not show. The draconian merely closed his black eyes and nodded again.

“And in return… ?” Zen said, his voice trailing off inquisitively.

Ferro leaned forward and threw back the lid of the leather chest sitting in the middle of the floor, revealing a treasure of steel and gold coins. Zen only looked at the coins for a moment, blinking with boredom.

“Money,” he hissed as though he had swallowed something sour.

“If not money, then what?” Ferro asked sharply.

Without pausing, the draconian stated, “There is an abandoned fortress north of here. We passed it on our way from Newsea.”

“Zhaman?” the Daergar asked in surprise.

“It looks like a human skull,” Zen said.

“The humans call it Skullcap. It was once a Tower of High Sorcery, but it was largely destroyed during the Dwarfgate Wars. No one has lived there for hundreds of years,” Ferro said, “except the ghosts.”

“The spirits of humans and dwarves do not concern us,” Zen scoffed.

Ferro asked, “What do you want with that haunted ruin? My masters will not agree if you plan to use it as a base of operations to raid dwarven lands.”

“I have been wandering the face of Krynn since I left the egg,” Zen explained, “always taking commands from others, fighting someone else’s wars. Now I have a band of stout lads under my own command. I want a base, a place to defend. We will not raid to the south.”

“If you’d rather have some tumbled-down old fortress than a chest full of coins, that’s your business. My masters will see to it that you are not harassed in the fortress by dwarf war parties, so long as you do not raid our lands,” Ferro said.

Nodding, the draconian extended his large clawed hand in a curiously human gesture, betraying the long years he had spent among them. Ferro reluctantly shook it, inwardly cringing at the scaly texture of the creature’s reptilian flesh.

Withdrawing his hand from the draconian’s grasp, Ferro closed the chest and pulled a scroll from his leather vest. He unrolled it and laid it atop the chest. It was a map of The Bog, with all its waterways and twisting paths and deathtraps precisely drawn to scale. Down its middle wandered a dark line that was the road. Pressing his finger against a certain spot, he said, “You will be able to ambush the king’s party here.”

A sudden burst of laughter interrupted his train of thought. Lifting the tent flap, he saw that the larger body of draconians had entered the camp and were now passing around a bottle of dwarf spirits that the Theiwar had produced. The brotherhood of mercenaries is universal, he thought.

Ferro turned back to the map and continued, “The road is narrow here, with shallow bogs on either side where your group can hide.”

General Zen leaned over and examined the map, nodding. “I will approach the king alone,” he said. “After I kill him, the others will attack and destroy their force to the last dwarf.”

Ferro intended to ask how Zen proposed to get close enough to the king to kill him, but he froze, his jaws snapping shut, at what happened next. The huge, silver-scaled draconian suddenly began to shrink before his eyes. At the same time, his scales receded into his skin and his reptilian features transformed into the likeness of a dwarf. In moments, the Daewar captain Ilbars Bleakfell stood before him, identical in every way to the dwarf Ferro knew was dead, from the top of his shaggy brown head to the decorative tooling on his boots.