Midwinter, the Year of Rogue Dragons

For worshipers of Lathander, god of the dawn, Midwinter was an important feast, a declaration of faith that in time, warmth and green leaves would return to the frozen north. Accordingly, on that day, Pavel always performed his sunrise rituals with considerable panache. With Kara helping out on the hymns, they were especially evocative. Many of the hard-bitten sailors who’d gathered for the observance watched raptly or even blinked back tears.

For his part, Dorn felt morose and left out. The Morninglord’s message of optimism and fresh beginnings had never seemed relevant to his own bitter trudge from womb to grave. Yet he stood with the rest of the assembly out of respect for his friend, and to give the god his due for granting Pavel the powers he exercised on the band’s behalf.

The ceremony concluded with impeccable timing, the scarlet edge of the sun appearing over the horizon just as Kara reached the climactic notes of the final anthem. Taking it for a good omen, the worshipers cheered. The first mate permitted the crew a final moment of reverence, then started barking orders. The hands scattered to take up their duties, and Dorn wondered how best to pass another cold, tedious day at sea.

Neither he nor any of his comrades was mariner enough to relish the prospect of sailing a small boat all the way down the Dragon Reach and east across the Sea of Fallen Stars, especially in winter. Fortunately, it hadn’t come to that. Two days after their flight from Ylraphon, a merchant galley overtook them, whereupon they hailed it and negotiated passage.

As usual, the others seemed to enjoy shipboard life. Pavel divided his time between ministering to the crew’s spiritual needs and striving to fleece them at cards. Raryn fished over the side with bow and harpoon, and Will, rather to the sailors’ annoyance, displayed a penchant for climbing to the top of the mast, where he’d perch for hours, taking in the view. But Dorn, who rarely felt much inclination to trivial amusements in any case, had never found any comparable pastimes to divert himself. Maybe, he thought, he should just try to find a quiet spot on deck and see how much of the morning he could sleep away. Then Kara resumed singing, and he lingered to listen.

It wasn’t a sacred song, but the rollicking tale of a good-wife, the clever mouse who filched food from her pantry, and her fanatical efforts to catch the thief—increasingly mad, elaborate schemes that always ended badly. Kara milked every drop of humor from the story, and Dorn realized he was grinning. It made him feel strange, self-conscious, and he scowled the expression away.

Next the bard sang about flying and beholding all the rivers, mountains, forests, and cities of Faerûn spread out beneath her. It was a children’s song, devised to teach them their geography, but no less charming for its pedantic intent. Kara’s sweet, throbbing voice truly conveyed the exultation of soaring like an eagle on the wind.

She’d continued singing on the fo’c’sle, where Pavel had performed his observance. Dorn was loitering just below the elevated deck by the first of the rowers’ benches, vacant since a favorable wind was blowing. He didn’t think she knew he was there, but when she finished, she surprised him by peering down and giving him a smile.

“Sorry,” he said, turning to go aft.

She laughed and said, “You don’t have to slink away. Do you think you were eavesdropping on something you weren’t meant to hear? Everyone on board could hear, or at least I hope so. Otherwise my voice has grown puny.”

“Still. …” he said, and started to limp away, the timbers groaning beneath his iron foot.

“It saddens me that you dislike me.”

Dorn thought it would be better simply to ignore her, but for some reason, he turned back around and said, “You’re mistaken.”

Kara descended the steep little companionway.

“You didn’t want to escort me to Lyrabar when I first asked,” she said, “and you’d still rather not. It’s just that after I helped you, you felt an obligation. Even though you saved me first, when the ratmen wanted to kill me.”

“My refusal wasn’t based on dislike. It was just that you smelled like trouble, because you kept things back … things you still haven’t told us. Raryn and Pavel had the same worries.”

“But they also liked the shimmer of my jewels. Ultimately, they looked to you to decide, and you said no. Was it because you dislike all women?”

“Of course not.”

“I suspect,” Kara murmured, “you avoid women because you fear they find you ugly, and that pains you.”

She was exactly right, and pretty ones bothered him the worst. Saying so, however, would only encourage her to keep on chattering, and that was the last thing he wanted. Though he still couldn’t quite muster the rudeness to tramp away.

“I’ve been ugly for a long time,” he said. “I’m used to it.”

“How did it happen?”

None of your business, was what he thought he should have said.

“My parents were the indentured servants of a wizard in Hillsfar,” Dorn replied instead. “When I was nine, he sent them on an errand to Yulash. They took me along. Bad luck for all of us. We wandered right into the path of a dragon flight, reds out of the mountains to the west. One of them spotted our wagon and tore us apart. It ate my mother and father and my severed arm and leg, too, but then it flew away. I guess it wasn’t quite hungry enough to finish me.

“Well, I would have bled out soon enough, except that the mage knew a spell for jumping from place to place in an instant. I guess he also had a way of keeping track of us, maybe to make sure we wouldn’t run away. At any rate, he knew when the drake attacked, though he had better sense than to come immediately and encounter the creature himself. He waited until it cleared off. But then he showed up to salvage as much of his property as possible.”

“Property,” Kara repeated. “Meaning you?”

“Partly. My parents still owed him many years of service. By the laws of Hillsfar, if they couldn’t pay the debt, it became their child’s responsibility. The wizard just had to figure out a way to turn a one-armed, one-legged cripple into something useful.”

“So he made you a pair of enchanted iron limbs.”

“Several pairs before he was done. I was still a child, remember. Whenever I outgrew a set, he had to slice it off and graft on a new one.”

And weeping Ilmater, it had hurt.

“Then he invested a fortune in conjuring time and spell components to make you as you are,” said Kara. The bard’s tone was matter-of-fact. Perhaps she sensed he wouldn’t welcome a show of pity. “Either he loved you, or he saw a way of making a great deal of gold from you. From the way you speak of him, I gather it was the latter.”

“In Hillsfar, they’re mad for the arena. People wager huge sums on the fights. As the mage once told me, he’d already picked me out as a likely gladiator, because I used to get in a lot of fights with other boys, and would take any stupid dare they tossed my way. He figured that with iron claws, I’d fare even better, so he fitted me out and found me a trainer. The teacher decided I’d do best as a bestiarius, a killer of wild animals and abominations, so he steered me in that direction. Before long, he declared me ready for my first match. When the spectators saw I was still a stripling, they gave long odds against me. The mage cleaned up.”

She shook her head and whispered, “To force a child to battle for his life …”

“Well, I liked the fighting,” he said with a crooked smile. “What I didn’t like was doing it on command to enrich somebody else. Unfortunately, it took years before I could make a change. It’s not easy to murder a wizard if he’s cautious. But eventually I found a way, then fled the city.”

“I wouldn’t call it murder.”

Dorn shrugged and said, “You can probably guess the rest of the tale. Once I was free, I had to earn a living, and slaughtering beasts was the only thing I knew. So I set up shop as a hunter for hire. It wasn’t long before I figured out that being able to kill a creature did no good if I couldn’t find it, so I joined forces with a tracker. After one or the other of us got mauled a few times, we decided we needed a healer. A couple years later, we met Will and realized he’d make a useful addition, too. And here the four of us are.”

“Plying a trade that lets you slay dragons.”

“I don’t deny hating them. In my place, wouldn’t you? I hunt for coin, I’ll bring down any brute a client wants dead, but it does please me when the quarry’s a drake.”

“Any drake?” she asked.

Behind her, the sky was brightening. The sun floated round and complete above the hills on the eastern shore.

“You mean, have I ever gone after one of the metal-colored variety? The ones people claim are kindly and wise? No, but only because nobody ever hired me to. A wyrm’s a wyrm to me.”

“You know, hate can be as cruel a master as the one you left behind in Hillsfar.”

He scowled and said, “If I want moral instruction, I have a priest who can dish it up to order. Good morning to you, maid.”

“Please,” she said, “don’t walk away. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to preach. I simply want to be your friend.”

“Why? Because you feel sorry for me? Don’t bother.”

“Because I like you.”

“Don’t bother about that, either,” he said.

“You’re right about me,” she said. “I do have secrets I mustn’t share. But I’ll tell you this: I’m terrified, and I see something in you … I’d just like your companionship is all.”

Spurn her, he told himself. Otherwise, you might grow fond of her and say so. Then you’ll have to endure her replying that yes, she likes you, too, but not in the way a maid fancies aman.

Will shouted from the top of the mast, “Those huts on the beach! Can anybody else make them out?”

“Barely,” said Dorn, squinting. “What about them?”

“I’d like Raryn to climb up here and take a look at them. Captain, maybe you could lend him your spyglass.”

The master of the vessel, a squat man with sigils of good fortune and fair weather tattooed above his eyes, frowned, for the brass instrument was valuable. Still, something in Will’s tone must have persuaded him that important matters were afoot, because he handed it over.

“Be careful with it,” he said.

“I promise.”

The dwarf stowed the telescope in his belt pouch, then clambered upward.

He studied the specks on the shore for half a minute, then said, “Will’s right.”

“Right about what?” demanded Dorn.

“The village is dead, torn apart. Dragons killed it. At least three of them. I see the tracks.”

Dorn tried to wrap his mind around the idea. It was possible the wyrms of the Flooded Forest had laid waste to the tiny hamlet, without the hunters or mariners noticing the creatures making their way south, but it seemed unlikely.

The alternative, however, would appear to be two dragon flights occurring simultaneously, and if that was the case, might there be even more? The flights were rare events, but history told of calamities rarer still, seasons of madness when all the wyrms in Faerûn ran amok at once. Such Rages, as they were called, could result in the slaughter of countless thousands, annihilate entire kingdoms, and scar the world for generations to come.

The prospect was horrifying, yet likewise filled Dorn with a guilty sort of eagerness. Naturally he didn’t want folk to die, but the thought of all the dragons in the world rushing recklessly forth into reach of his arrows and sword. …

He gave his head a shake and told himself to rein in his imagination. Even if the Rages were something more than a myth, it didn’t mean one was happening without so much as a comet or some other portent to herald it. Surely there was another explanation.

He glanced at Kara. As she stared at the ravaged village, tears slid from her lavender eyes. She’d seemed so bold and cool-headed during the fracas in Ylraphon that the open display of sorrow rather surprised him. But evidently she had a tender nature, and no compunction about indulging it when she wasn’t fighting for her life.

Dorn resented her weeping, because somehow it meant he couldn’t rebuff her after all. It condemned him to be her friend. He awkwardly put his human hand on her shoulder.