Draco-Human Dragon-Huma
oparu sac temper me now
Draco-Humah Dragon-Huma
coni parl ai fam Grant me grace and love
Saat mas Solamnis When the heart of the Knighthood
vegri nough wavers in doubt
Coni est Lor Tarikan Grant me this, Warrior Lord
Sularus Humah Honor is Huma
Karram Humah Glory is Huma
Solamnis Humah durvey Solamnic Knight Huma survives
Karamnes Humah durvey Glorified Huma survives
Mithas! Life; hear!
Humah dix karai! Huma’s death calls me!
Ex dix! His death!
Oparu est dix! Temper me with such death!
Solamnis Lor Alan Paladine! Paladine, lord god of knights!
Humah mithas est mithasah! Huma’s life is all our lives!
Draco-Humah durvey! Dragon-Huma survives!
OGRE UNAWARE
DAN PARKINSON
Through most of a day – from when the sun was high overhead until
now, when the sun was gone behind the dagger-spire peaks of the
Khalkist Mountains and night birds heralded the first stars glimpsed
above – through those hours and those miles he had trailed the puny
ones, thinking they might lead him to others of their kind. Now they
had stopped. Now they were settling in on the slope below him, stopping
for the night, and his patience was at an end.
Crouching low, blending his huge silhouette with the
brush of the darkening hillside, he heard their voices
drifting up to him – thin, human voices as frail as the bodies
from which they issued, as fragile as the bones within those
bodies, which he could crush with a squeeze of his hand. He
heard the strike of flint, smelled the wispy smoke of their
tinder, and saw the first flickers of the fire they were
building – a fire to guard them against the night.
His chuckle was a rumble of contempt, deep within his
huge chest. It was a campfire to heat their meager foods and
to protect them from whatever might be out there, watching.
Humans! His chuckle became a deep, rumbling growl. Like
all of the lesser races, the small, frail races, they put their
trust in a handful of fire and thought they were safe.
Safe from me? His wide mouth spread in a sneering grin,
exposing teeth like sharpened chisels. Contempt burned
deep within his eyes. Safe? No human was safe from Krog.
Krog knew how to deal with humans – and with anyone else
who ventured into his territory. He found them, tracked
them down, and killed them. Sometimes they carried
something he could use, sometimes not, but it was always a
pleasure to see their torment as he crushed and mangled
them, a joy to hear their screams.
There were a dozen or more in the party below him.
Four were armed males, the rest a motley, ragged group
bound together by lengths of rope tied around their necks.
Slaves, Krog knew. The remnants of some human village
ransacked by slavers. There were many such groups
roaming the countryside in these days – slavers and their
prey. Small groups like this, usually, though sometimes the
groups came together in large camps, to trade and to export
their prizes to distant markets. Those, the big groups, he
enjoyed most, but now he was tired of waiting.
He studied them; his cunning eyes counted their
shadows in the dusk below. The slaves were grouped just
beyond the little fire, but it was their captors he watched
most closely, marking exactly where each of the armed ones
settled around their fire. Experience had taught him to deal
first with the armed ones. He carried the scars of sword and
axe cuts, from times when armed humans had managed a
slash or two before he finished them. The cuts had been
annoying. Better, he had learned, to deal with the weapon-
bearers quickly. Then he could finish off the others in any
way that amused him.
For a long time now, ever since the beginning of the
strangenesses that some called omens, humans and other
small races had been wandering into the territory that Krog
considered his – the eastern slopes of the Khalkist
Mountains. Chaotic times had fallen upon the plains
beyond, and the people of those plains were in turmoil.
Krog knew little of that, cared less. Every day, humans and