WITH HIS BARE HANDS AND NOT EVEN BLINK,
Jastom thought with a shudder.
“Excellent,” Durm said. He reached down and helped
Jastom to his feet – the same hand that had struck him a
moment before. Durm gestured sharply, and the dark-
robed man who had been holding Grimm let the dwarf fall
heavily back to the wagon’s bench, gasping for air.
“If you lie to me again, healer,” Durm went on
smoothly, “I will instruct my servants to deal with you.
And I fear you will not find them so lenient as myself.”
Durm’s dark-robed followers pushed back the heavy
cowls of their robes.
They were not human.
The two looked more akin to lizards than men, but
they were not truly either. The two of them gazed at
Jastom and Grimm with unblinking yellow eyes. Dull,
green-black scales – not skin or fur – covered the monsters’
faces. They had doglike snouts. Short, jagged spikes
sprouted from their low, flat brows, and where each
should have had ears there were only small indentations in
their scaly hides. The monster nearest Jastom grinned
evilly, revealing row upon row of jagged, yellow teeth, as
if it enjoyed the idea of having Jastom to do with as it
wished. A thin forked tongue flickered in and out of the
thing’s mouth.
Draconian. Jastom had never seen such a beast in his
life, but he had heard enough tales of the War of the Lance
to put a name to it. The draconians were the servants of
the Dragon Highlords, and they had marched across the
land to lay scourge to the face of Krynn even as the evil
dragons themselves had descended from the skies.
“You might as well save everyone the trouble and let
the lizards have us now,” Grimm shouted hotly. “We’re
only – ”
Jastom elbowed the dwarf hard in the ribs.
“Apprentice healers. New at this. Very new.” Grimm
mumbled, saying something about “necks,” but fortunately
only Jastom heard him.
Jastom drew upon all his theatrical skills to pull his
facade back together. “Very well, my good lieutenant, we
shall journey with you,” he said, tipping his cap. As if we
had a choice in the matter, he added inwardly.
“That is well,” Durm said simply.
The lieutenant mounted and spurred his horse viciously
into a canter. Jastom realized there was nothing to do but
follow. He climbed back onto the wagon and flicked the
ponies’ reins. The craft lurched into motion. The two
draconians ran along either side, hands on the hilts of their
wicked-looking sabres. Jastom cast a quick look at
Grimm. The dwarf eyed his friend, then shook his head
gloomily.
For the first time he could ever remember, Jastom
found himself wishing his elixirs could truly work the
wonders he claimed.
*****
Dawn was blossoming on the horizon, like a pale rose
unfurling its petals, when the wagon rattled into the
dragonarmy encampment.
They had traveled all through the night, making their
way down treacherous mountain roads guided only by the
dim light of the crimson moon, Lunitari. More than once
Jastom had thought that wagon, ponies, and all were
going to plummet off the side of a precipice into the deep
shadows far below. Yet he had not dared to slow the
wagon’s hurtling pace as they careened down the twisting
passes. Jastom feared tumbling over a cliff a good bit less
than he did facing Durm’s displeasure.
Now, in the pale silvery light of dawn, they had left
the mountains behind them somewhere in the gloom of
night. The dragonarmy encampment sat in a hollow at the
edge of the rolling foothills. Stretching into the distance
eastward was a vast gray-green plain, its flowing lines
broken only here and there by the silhouette of a
cottonwood tree, sinking its roots deep for water.
The encampment was not large – perhaps fifty tents in
all, clustered on the banks of a small river. But Jastom
had not realized that there were still any dragonanny
forces at all so close to Solamnia, or anywhere for that
matter. From the stories, he thought they had all been
driven clean off the face of Krynn. Obviously that was not