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Mikki awoke to the sounds of soldiers readying their gear for a march. Renault stood over her, telling her something she couldn’t quite make out over the buzzing in her ears.

“We’ve decided to look into your report, Amazon,” His voice betrayed nothing of what had passed the previous night, but there was a twinkle in his dark eyes that let Mikki know just what had finally turned his decision in her favor. He raised his voice for all to hear, “We leave to investigate a report of dragons ravaging the countryside. Be ready in twenty minutes.” He strode through the door and into the yard.

Twenty minutes. Okay… Mikki sat up and shook her head before remembering she had crawled into the sleeping fur naked. Two of the three recruits were still booting up near the hearth. They stared, transfixed. Mikki’s vision swam and she rocked slightly before recovering her equilibrium and willing her stomach to settle. She half-turned her head toward the other end of the cabin.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” she growled “Never seen a girl b’fore?” The two sheepishly dropped their eyes to their boots and continued lacing them up. Mikki grinned ruefully and rose, wrapping the fur about her. She picked the one-piece doeskin undergarment off the saddle where it had spent the night (well, the last bit of the night) airing out and ducked beneath the fur to emerge fully – or at least more modestly – clothed, in less than a minute. In even less time, she was dressed for travel, mail and baldric in place, boots pulled to her calves.

One youth finally found his tongue, “Mornin’, miss. You’re lookin’ ‘specially fine this mornin’.” He reddened at his own slightly inappropriate comment, eliciting a warm chuckle from the warrior-maid who crossed the room in two strides and stuck out her hand.

“Mikki Finn, soldier.”

“Karl Ethelredson, miss. My pleasure.” He still couldn’t break his habitual use of the diminutive gender honorific, but Mikki let it go. He’d forget all about how maiden-like she needed to be treated soon enough. The handclasp was firm and properly brief for comradely introductions.

“And Ahred Fechtler,” spoke up the other. “Renault’s nephew.” They too, grasped hands. Mikki set herself to rigging the saddle for sumpter work and lugged it into the yard where she was surprised to see Renault seated bareback on a bridled Flint.

“I believe the horse was part of the bargain,” he explained, unnecessarily.

Mikki’s eyes narrowed; then she accepted the fait accompli. “Well then,” she answered resigned, “You may’s well take th’ saddle. Flint’s got more use for it th’n yers truly.” The first consequences of just how bad a bargain she had made were already making themselves apparent. This looked to be a long day. “How ‘bout the bags?” she asked, holding the saddlebags above her shoulder.

Renault dismounted and paused to stroke his chin, squinting into the early morning sun and taking altogether too much time thinking this over. “I suppose the mare’s capable of the load,” he opined. “But, strictly speaking, I only bought the horse.”

Mikki could see she was being teased and her rapport with the troop might very well hinge on her response. Well, she’d experienced hazing before. This was only an initiation like any other.

“Right you are, sir,” She confirmed. “And speakin’ o’ th’ terms o’ our agreement, since y’ now work fer my wage, I’m afraid I’ll have to order y’ t’ carry a few o’ my things.” Before handing the saddle and leather satchels over, she removed a book.

Renault decided not to press the jest further and grinned as he accepted the saddle and bags. He turned to saddle the mare and laying the saddlebags across the horse’s rump, secured them to the thongs at the cantle.

Mikki, book in hand, crossed the distance to the west edge of the clearing and turned to face the early morning sun. She raised the panpipe above her head with both hands, lowered it, kissed it and, shifting the baldric around, secured it in a large pocket concealed in the lining. She then pressed her palms together at eye level and addressed the day.

The squad of soldiers stood in silent respect of her brief devotions. As a fighting man, one learned to respect one’s mates’ religions – you never knew when he might be the only one left to pray over you and having those gods angry with you – well, it just wasn’t good business.

“Sergeant Renault, “ Mikki began, “ Before we start. I’ve need to perform certain devotions at a pilgrimage site not far from here. Can you tell me where I might find the Triangle Caverns?”

The big guardsman paused, paging through his memory for a local phenomenon that might fit the description. Trimount? Could that be what she meant?

A brief discussion ensued as the two attempted to confirm that the unfamiliar place names indicated the same location. At length, they were interrupted by Ahred, “Excuse me, sir, but are you meaning Tristar? A place with three peaks and three caves? It’s just southeast of here – that way.” He pointed down a road leading into the shadowy woods.

The pair exchanged a look and Mikki replied by issuing orders for the day, “Ahred, since you seem t’ know yer way ‘round th’ local area, you c’n lead th’ march.”

The group headed southeast, Ahred in the lead, until they reached a cave entrance. “This is the place, Lady?’ Ahred turned to address his employer, waving his hand towards the hole in the bluff.

Mikki studied the entrance for a short while, readying a strategy for exploring the caves in the shortest time, at the smallest risk. She had lied about the pilgrimage, knowing that the soldiers could hardly object to abandoning the strict performance of their assigned task in the face of a religious rationalization.

She turned to Renault, who was adjusting Flint’s pack. “And since I need t’ have some scoutin’ done, you take one o’ th’ pike ’n’ head out that way.” She indicated the southerly passage. Renault’s smile vanished, but since he knew that any display of mistrust in his commander’s judgment would only undermine the troops’ confidence, he ordered the three troopers to begin cutting pine for torches, buying time and diverting their attention before approaching Mikki and asking, “A word?” Mikki assented with a nod.

Turning their backs to the trio, Renault began, “Captain, do you think it wise to divide the command? I’m a’verse to leaving members of my troop behind,” he objected. If ill befell them in someone else’s charge, it was still his responsibility, and he knew not how good a field leader this woman was.

She fixed him with a basilisk stare, radiating the expectation that even her merest suggestion would be obeyed. “We’ve need t’ insure no foul creatures dwell within t’ threaten th’ local citizenry. We’ve also need t’ remove th’ dragon we know of from Teewinot Spire. We’re ill-served by spending too much time at th’ one t’ th’ neglect ‘f th’ other.”

He studied her eyes for a few moments. “She seems,” he reflected, “Rather accustomed to command for one so young.” Perhaps she had command experience, perhaps it was her Amazon training, but she exuded a self-confidence that overcame his misgivings. “Yes, m’lady,” he raised one hand before his face and turned south, calling to Karl, who trotted up, brands in hand. A fire was quickly struck, three brands lit and the pair vanished into the gloom of the southern tunnel, Flint in tow.

“Ahred, Nathan” Mikki began, “We go this way. Take up a torch.” And with that terse directive, she lit one of the pine knots, unsheathed her sword and strode to the east, followed by Nathan, bow in hand, arrow nocked and Ahred, pike in right hand, torch in left.

Renault in the lead, Karl guiding Flint by her halter through the dim, shadowy depths, their steps echoed hollowly as the roof opened into a vast hall, sucking the torchlight into inky nonexistence. Renault signaled a halt and slipped forward alone. Karl and Flint waited stolidly at the edge of the cavern as Renault’s light disappeared into the subterranean gloom.

Mikki and her pair of guards moved as speedily along the narrow tunnel as footing allowed on the wet floor. Mikki’s recollection of her recent terrifying flight from the trolls was still fresh enough to cause her apprehension. Irregularly, but often, she signaled her troop to a halt and stood listening for anything out of the ordinary – footfalls, rustlings, animal vocals – anything that might betray a stalker. Each time she was reassured by silence.

A chirping, squealing cacophony abruptly started up from somewhere in front of them. Nathan recognized it immediately, “Just bats, M’lady,” he offered when Mikki started, snapping her head in the direction of the sounds.

“Hhhmm,” she replied, relaxing her grip on the swordhilt; the adrenaline charge kept her alertness keyed to a fine pitch. She felt tense – too jumpy to be at ease with this meander through the interconnecting maze of tunnels and chambers. The rush passed; she breathed a slow sigh of relief and forced her heart to decelerate. Half a dozen deep breaths later, she had regained control of her nerves and started up a short rise in the trail towards a thin column.

At the top of the rise, she looked out across an oval room some forty feet across its short dimension and rather three times that length. The trail swept to the right about halfway across the space, exiting via a hole at floor level. The far end was lower than her present perch and in the torch’s faint glimmer, she could make out a low rectangular slab set in an alcove at its furthest recess. The cavern seemed rather like a theater with a small stage – or a chapel for executing sacrifices.

“Well,” she mused, “If I’m going to live up to the fairy tale about religious observance, this looks like a better place than most.” She turned to the pair following. “Gentlemen, y’may wait here or pass t’ th’ crawl yonder, but y’re f’r bidden t’ witness th’ rites I’m t’ perform here.” She waited for a response.

Ahred spoke, “Ma’am, we’ve no wish to intrude on your prayers. Come, Brother, we’ll pass through to the crawl and see what lies beyond.” No sooner said than he led Nathan across the room to east wall, knelt and peered into the low passage, pushing the torch before himself. Mikki watched as they vanished, one after the other, into the wall. She strode the length of the room, glancing to the right as she passed the tunnel opening, and having assured herself that she was unobserved, sheathed her sword and removed the pipes from the baldric.

“Let’s make this look good,” she commanded herself, silently. “I just know th’ boys are watchin’.” She lifted the baldric over her head and laid it to one side. Cradling the instrument in her left hand, she turned it over as if looking for some particular passage in the spidery glyphs, ran her right forefinger down the script. Halfway down, she stopped, scanned the lines and raised her head.

“En-lithiel, domor, en-lithiel,” she intoned. Then, in the native Amazonian tongue, “This is a bunch of gibberish to anyone who doesn’t understand Lesbane. And I am certain my two soldiers do not. I am sorry for having to perpetrate a falsehood in order to attain my goal of searching out the secrets of these caves. I would that it were otherwise. I doubt I could have convinced their chieftain of the worth of this exploration had I told the truth. Pray, forgive me and help to conceal my greed from these trusting men.” She continued in this manner for a brief time then lowered herself to her knees upon the slab.

Karl and Ahred had slid only a short way down the tunnel when it widened enough for them to sit facing one another, backs to the wall, to take a brief rest. The sounds of Mikki’s voice echoed sing-song along the passage. It was an entrancing language, not one word of which could they understand. They tones of the prayer rose and fell as a paean, lasting only a few minutes. Then silence.

Mikki lowered her head and remained silent, hands clasped around the pipes at her waist, for several minutes. She occupied herself with breathing and hearing exercises until she deemed enough time had passed to appear that she had performed a proper devotion to the local deities. Then she slid back off the altar, rose to her full height, donned her baldric, replaced the treasure in its pocket and, carrying her torch, turned to follow her small command.

They moved from room to room, keeping to the widest passageways for the better part of an hour until Ahred, in the lead, raised his hand. The party halted, listening in unison for whatever had attracted Ahred’s attention. A slithering came from almost directly ahead, causing the trio to exchange glances, lowering their torches. Mikki moved to the fore, then continued forward alone into the darkness.

“Not another dragon,” Mikki hoped, silently, “I’ve had about all I can stand for one day.” She lay the torch on the stone floor, letting it gutter to a faint glow. In this abyssal darkness, any light was a dead giveaway, she knew. She abandoned the glowing brand and moved forward, feeling with alert senses beyond the limits of her vision.

There it was – a flicker of motion a few feet ahead. Scales moved in a smooth pattern across an opening. Mikki waited for them to pass and moved forward to listen at the aperture. Nothing beyond. She poked her head through, glancing first in the direction the creature had gone, then the opposite way. Nothing. She pulled her head back and straightened. Well, whatever it was, it had passed without noticing their presence. The Amazon turned back the way she had come to intercept her men before they came to search for her. Feeling her way along, she reached the point where she had last separated from Nathan and Ahred.

No one. “There should be some one - or at least some sign - here,” she thought. “Where did they go? Or where did I go wrong?” Mikki paused, gathering her wits and trying to imagine what could have caused her command to disappear. She leaned against the passage wall, chin in one hand, elbow supported on the other.

She was still thusly posed when a low whistle came from above. Her eyes raised, tilting her head back. A glow shone from a hollow above. Mikki stepped across the narrow passage and, pressing her back against the opposite wall, stared upward. The silhouette of a head and shoulders appeared against the dim backlight.

“Nathan?”

“Here, Captain,” came the stage whispered reply. “We’ve found a side pass.”

Bracing her feet against one wall and her back against the other, Mikki made her way up the narrow pass to the cave opening some twenty five feet off the ground. A hand reached out. Nathan grasped her wrist as she grasped his and she hopped lithely to the more-or-less level surface, finding barely enough space for one person to stand, let alone three.

“Thanks,” she whispered. The trio ducked into the side tunnel, Ahred in the lead.

Renault, Karl and Flint slipped through the passages of the cavern network, Renault moving quickly out to scout, the burdened horse, led by the pikeman, following. At each blind turn or entrance, the sergeant motioned them to wait while he reconnoitered. Upon confirming that the way ahead was clear, he let forth a low whistle and waited until Karl came into sight before moving forward to the next landmark. The pikeman left soot marks on the cave ceilings to mark their passage for the return trip.

Renault froze, holding his breath. His scouting had taken him along a ledge above the more well-established trail, giving a vantage point from which his vision extended to the remote dim edges beyond which light from the torch failed. There had been something. He lowered the torch and waited, controlling his breathing so as to be as silent as the surrounding rock.

And there it was – a coiled loop of scaly skin resting just to the opposite side of the trail. Renault froze and retraced his steps silently, backing until he felt the cave wall behind, then turned to locate the passage that had brought him here. The tunnel led downward to merge with the main passage and a short distance later, he cam upon Karl and Flint. A finger raised to his lips, then pointed along the corridor. The hand then executed a weaving motion. Karl nodded and placed a hand over the horse’s muzzle.

Renault, Flint and Karl stood frozen on the ledge above the snake – for snake it was, Renault could see. The visible coil was of constant diameter through its visible length; a dragon’s tail would taper visibly. He turned his head toward his younger companion and motioned again for silence. Renault slipped carefully out of the shoulder straps holding the scabbard between his shoulder blades, drew the longsword soundlessly from its sheath and took a firm grip on the two-handed hilt. Karl busied himself wrapping his scarf around the horse’s muzzle and knotting it in place before readying his stance, lance grasped defensively in both hands. He turned to protect Renault’s unguarded back, leaving Renault to return the courtesy.

They stood unspeaking in this pose for some time before Renault’s whisper reached his ear, “It’s asleep.” Renault had been watching the regular rise and fall of the beast’s breathing. Slow, somewhat less pronounced than would be normal for a warm-blooded creature, but unmistakably regular breathing.

“This one isn’t,” Karl replied.

Renault stiffened, straightening slightly. “This one?” His head pivoted slowly to the limit of his neck’s flexibility, led by his eyes straining to reach the edges of their sockets. His peripheral vision acquired the tip of Karl’s spear, raised toward a point above. He followed the indicated direction.

Another one! Extended from a ledge above them, a triangular reptilian head swayed hypnotically back and forth, tongue flickering in and out in lightning flashes. “Tasting the air, it is,” thought the older man, “And we’re soon to be found.” Well, the two men working together could likely best the serpents, taken one at a time. Renault hoped they could dispatch the first before the second woke to what was going on. Time stretched into infinity. Beads of sweat broke on the brows of both men, both regretted having led the horse in with them. Each knew that while the predatory reptiles might show discretion enough to avoid men, they would find the smell of the horse irresistibly attractive.

Karl turned this over in his mind, “I hope they’ve eaten recently.” The searching continued, the snake’s olfactory senses alerted to the scent of potential food and the fear that accompanied it. But something else here held the predator in abeyance. The man-scent carried overtones of determined resistance – a decision to remain and contest for the prize. The serpent waited for an opening to spring its attack, continuing to sway monotonously from side-to-side. Renault swiveled his head back and forth, studying the action of the waking reptile, while maintaining watch on its sleeping twin.

Ahred all but ran through the narrow passage, Nathan in his wake, Mikki bringing up the rear. The passage was narrow enough to force them to move single file and Mikki instinctively planted her steps directly into the imaginary footprints of the man immediately in front of her. This was an old tactic for moving through enemy territory; it denied enemy scouts the ability to number your forces. They were headed upward now; Mikki figured they had passed the deepest part of the caverns.

Ahred’s left hand went up, hoisting the pike head into the air. The trio halted suddenly. Ahred’s face came around, finger to lips and he slunk forward, closely followed by the other two. They reached the end of the tunnel, a small porch wide enough for the three of them to stand abreast and survey the dimly-lit panorama just below.

Karl stepped the butt end of the staff and, without releasing his gaze on the serpent’s oscillating head, reached behind himself to tug at Renault’s sleeve. Renault’s head and upper body came around, bringing the sword with them. A smile creased his features, for there, about twelve feet above and behind the snake’s head, stood a grim tableau – Mikki, sword out, crouched and feet spread for balance, Ahred, left foot forward, pike aimed downward toward the snake’s head and between them, bowstring drawn to his cheek, knelt Nathan, tracking the snake’s head’s movement with the point of his arrow.

Renault experienced the strong sensation that his bladder was overfull.

Mikki’s lip curled in a wolfish grin, her eyes narrowing to slits. She gave her pair of troopers a sidelong glance and bobbed her head in the snake’s direction. Nathan’s fingers relaxed and a feathered appendage sprouted from behind the reptile’s head. The snake’s upper third whipped around to find Mikki and Ahred already in mid-flight, her short sword raised, his iron-headed pike extending from beneath his arm.

Renault saw his opportunity and dashed up the steep incline to the viper’s roost, Karl close on his heels. The longsword whistled into the air over Renault’s head as the tall guardsman moved to gain an angle on the back of the serpent’s head.

Mikki’s short sword hammered into the snake’s coils as the serpent threw its head back – already dead before it collapsed limply to the stone floor. Nathan’s shaft had done its work, severing the vital chord between the brain and the musculature.

Ahred pointed down into the space below the ledge, “Karl!” The other pikeman whirled, pike lowered to the lance position, clutched in a two-handed grip and extended defensively. The second serpent was slithering up the slope at an impossible speed. Renault spun and leapt forward, bringing the force of both blacksmith’s arms to bear on the weight of his longsword. The snake jerked to one side, the blade whistling past its head and glancing off its scaled coils. The miss combined with the downward slope sent Renault stumbling. Karl braced for the impact, keeping the iron point of the pike centered on the snake’s jaws. Suddenly, there was a second spear ranked alongside his own; Ahred had come from the encounter on the upper shelf to add himself to the fray. The rangy pikeman skidded to a belated stop slightly in front of Karl, landing ingloriously on his rump, his pike lowering as his hand dropped. The snake adjusted its forward motion, taking advantage of this new foe’s unprotected posture. The head rose above the seated Ahred, who raised his spear, feeling desperately behind for a nub of rock on which to brace the butt.

A second goose-quilled shaft tore over his head just as the snake’s head rose to deliver the killing blow; this missile found the serpent immediately below the head, in the loose folds beneath the jaw, and buried itself to the fletch. The serpent halted, frozen, then writhed its coils as it tried to shed the pain in its throat. Karl ran it through, applying all his weight in a futile attempt to anchor the carcass to the ground. Shortly, the twitching stopped and a gasping rattle sounded from the snake’s open maw.

Mikki turned to Nathan, rising wordlessly from his kneeling stance above the gory scene. Calmly as if he were on the practice range, he readied another arrow, nocking it to the string, all the while maintaining his attention on the scene below, anticipating the arrival of enemy reinforcements. Renault rose from his knees on the floor below; the pikemen moving down the ramp to flank him.

Mikki surveyed the bleeding wreckage from the intermediate ledge as she wiped her blade on the scaly hide of the nearest corpse, “Nii-iice shooting,” she breathed, loudly enough for Nathan to hear from his perch. Among soldiers, such an understatement was high compliment, indeed. Nathan grunted, still scanning the cave to the limits of visibility. It was his job. That he was the four-time district champion in his home province wasn’t worthy of mention - he had just saved his friends; that was what counted.

Following Renault, Mikki walked Flint out of the cave and into the sunlit clearing beyond. She unburdened the horse, loosened the halter a bit and set the animal to grazing in the lea. Renault returned to assemble the troop and set them to work butchering steaks from the snakes. Mikki took advantage of the temporary solitude to brave a quick dip into the stream flowing across the clearing below the cavern entrance and was just finished donning her doeskin mail liner when the four emerged, obviously enjoying some great jest. Ahred suffered as the butt of the humor as Karl’s caricature of his ungraceful landing brought a round of hearty guffaws.

Nathan started a fire, smothered it in freshly cut herb leaves and sorrel gathered by his companions, and spitted the steaks to hang in the smoke. They would be cooked enough to eat in less than an hour and the aromatic herbs would lend a welcome tang.

There was plenty of time before sundown, and Mikki thought it shameful to waste good travel time, but any successful battle deserved a victory celebration, and, like the rest, she was feeling pretty full of herself.

Karl emerged from rummaging through the sumpter pack with a bottle. “And a toast is in order to our bowman, without whose steady arm and good eye, we’d ‘ve had to spit the damn things to death.” He uncorked the bottle, tilted it to his lips and offered it to a seated Nathan.

The smaller man sipped and passed the libation along; each in his turn hoisting the bottle in Nathan’s direction before swigging a mouthful. Last in line was Renault.

“Good day’s work, lads,” he congratulated them, “And you’re the prize of the day.” He gave the bowman a grin. “We’ll make certain to keep you in practice.” He passed the bottle to Mikki.

And the afternoon wore on, the sunlight waning to dusk, stories exchanged, nicks and bruises cleansed and massaged. The fivesome sat ‘round the fire and finished the wine as they dined on the steaks.

Dawn rose on Nathan, the last of the nightwatch, seated in his place on the circle of blankets bivouacked around the remains of the campfire. Mikki arose before the others, murmured a greeting and thanks for the previous day’s successful effort, and, warm breath fogging in the frosty early Easter air, found a spot with an unobstructed view of the rising sun, stretched her arms to the sky, lowered them so her palms came together and addressed the day.

“What do you suppose she wants us for?” Ahred asked Karl idly, as the two spent a last few moments warming beneath their blankets.

“Can’t say,” Karl replied, “Remember, the Sergeant said som’n’ ‘bout ‘dragons ravishing maidens,’ or such. Maybe she’s the ravaged maiden.”

“Ravaged? That hellion?” Ahred turned in his blankets to face his friend, “Dja’ see how she went after those snakes? I have trouble seeing her being anyone’s victim – leastways, not while she’s still alive.”

Karl didn’t answer, but drew himself from between his blankets and began the series of stretching exercises that warmed him for his more strenuous training regimen. He moved fluidly in the invigorating cold air from stance to pose, all the while maintaining his weight centered above his feet. Even his lunges spared enough of his stride to allow for a sideways thrust without risk of stumbling.

Mikki admired the man at his exercises. His frame was lean and well-muscled without being bulky. His motions, clipped and efficient. She guessed that he could handle a staff with near the same lethality as his pike.

Karl was joined shortly by Ahred and, once both were loosened up, the pair squared off for sparring. Mikki watched as the two traded strokes and jabs, counterstrokes and parries for the better part of thirty minutes.

“Breakfast!” Nathan called from the fireside. The archer and Renault had prepared a meal of meat and herbs while the other three readied themselves. The duelists returned their equipment to their packs and joined the cook, the Sergeant and their new mistress by the fire.

“Captain Finn, here reports that a dragon has been bothering the villagers of this region,” Renault began. “It’s our duty to keep the King’s peace and salve the wounds of the local pocketbooks by dispatching the monster. Pack up right after eating; we’re heading North.”

Mikki marched at the head of the single file troop, the archer between the two pikemen and Renault bringing up the rear. The three in the middle took turns leading Flint along the trail that took them back through the woods Mikki had traversed two days previously. The last days of a cold winter were short, but the terrain and the weather lent themselves to good speed. There was an aura of power in these glades, something exquisitely mysterious and consequently deserving of respect.

“This isn’t the same,” she fretted, “There was a trail here, leading toward the spire yonder. She stopped to survey her surroundings, bringing the troop to a halt. Renault strode up from the end of the line.

“Calling a rest, Captain?” Renault suggested. Mikki nodded. “Ten minutes.” He called to the others. They gratefully sat or reclined on the cold, dry rocks beside the path, as opportunity and inclination presented. The three were uniformly glad for the break, as the Amazon’s determined resilience and ground-eating pace left even the horse’s legs complaining.

Mikki and Renault discussed the question of her memory of the trail for some minutes, agreeing finally that some natural event must have erased every trace of the trail, as no trace was evident. Either that, or one of the local wizards had hidden this end to prevent intruders from approaching his blind side.

The spectral glow of the wood faded as they exited onto the rocky shelf on the east side of Archimede’s Fault. “It looks healthier here th’n last time I was this way,” mused the Amazon. “’Haps the wood-magic helps heal it – there’s grass that was’nt here ‘fore.” The trail zig-zagged upward to the eastern bridge anchorage, where it forked. Mikki remembered seeing evidence of a dragon in these mountains some days ago and wondered, “Would it be worthwhile t’ try a new trail, maybe th’ branch heading south along this side of th’ Fault, before heading into the mountains after the dragon?”

She would have overnight to consider her options; daylight was waning and the wind was picking up with the increasing altitude. It was time to put up for the night – and eat more of Nathan’s spicy snake surprise.

“Ahred, you go and scout the trail to the south,” these had been Renault’s orders. Well, the trail had been scouted and Ahred reckoned he could bring back worse news, but he couldn’t imagine what that might be.

A demon inhabited the clearing just south of the bridge.

Renault had frowned grimly upon hearing the report. It would be his option as troop commander to decide the next move. He called Mikki aside for a conference, out of earshot of the other three.

“Renault, I’m against it,” Mikki’s initial response plucked the chord of caution over duty; Renault could see the wisdom in avoiding the creature. Demons were dangerous entities to deal with, what with their black magical spells – not to mention their physical attributes. Strength and endurance would elevate such an adversary to a respectable level, all by themselves.

“My duty as His Majesty’s Guardsman requires that I do all to maintain peace and tranquility within the realm, both in the present and the foreseeable future,” the soldier rationalized, “You would have me renege on my sacred oath?”

“Sacred oaths aren’t intended t’ bring y’ t’ suicide,” Mikki observed in dry frustration, “Where did y’ promise t’ be stupid ‘n’ lay down yer life?”

“It’s in the Oath.”

Mikki paused; it would be in the oath of fealty as standard words – but it was only words, no one ever actually expected sane men to die for King and Country in this remote place at the hands of a creature of the underworld.

“Renault-,” she began, a finger lifted into his face.

Renault cut her objection short, “We go.”

Mikki was stupefied by his stubborn insistence on ‘duty’. “This is insane!” she spouted in an angry whisper, “Renault, I’ll have no part of y’ killin’ yerself ‘n’ yer men because o’ yer gods-cursed duty.”

“Very well, please be good enough to guard the camp until our return,” Renault straightened and turned on his heel to pass the news on to his men that their employer would not be accompanying them on this leg of their travels. Mikki fumed silently at the insult and stood, fists belligerently on hips, glaring at his back as he walked away.

The trio of soldiers accepted the report with equanimity – none of them would have volunteered for such a task sober. Under orders was another matter. They gathered their weapons and, leaving unnecessary travel supplies and the horse behind, strode off as a group towards the south.

Mikki dropped morosely to a seat on the pack, next to the waning remains of the fire. Chin resting on one hand, she turned her options over until the quartet of guardsmen was out of sight along the trail. “Stupid,” she muttered, “Stupid and stubborn. Bloody cases of testosterone poisoning, each an’ ev’ry last one of ‘em.”

She remained in this pose for several more minutes, scratching abstract designs in the earth with a twig. Then her hand dropped away from her chin, trailing towards the earth, followed by a resigned gaze. She sighed deeply. “Renault, y’ fool, there’s that about y’ which is admirable, even if it is stupid.” And, that thought complete, she adjusted her baldric and set out down the trail after her men. Flint, uncomfortable at being left alone, trailed in her wake.

The four men left the trail and, crouching low, trotted single file on a diagonal line up the slight rise hiding the clearing from view on the north. Renault silently signaled a halt, lowered himself to the ground and crept forward to reconnoiter, motioning Nathan to move up beside him.

The scene below was something from a nightmare. The creature stood, fur-covered goat legs spread amidst a small cloud of dust that hid his cloven hooves. Blood dripped onto its bald head and hairy shoulders from the human leg he held aloft, recently ripped from a still-living body. Shreds of vein and sinew dangled from the mangled end and a ragged shard of yellowish bone protruded from where the hip joint had made connection to its socket. The creature’s razor-point teeth sank into the flesh of the grisly prize and a huge chunk tore loose, to be chewed, swallowed and followed by another. Nathan swallowed the mouthful of vomit rising in his throat.

“Choose a vantage point for a good shot,” Renault’s low voice brought him out of his horrified fascination, “That tree looks good.” He indicated a cottonwood about a quarter of the way around the bowl-shaped clearing. Nathan nodded. The pair crept down to where their companions lay in the grass, waiting.

“Good news,” Renault began, “There’s only one of ‘em. We split up and come at him from all sides. Nathan, may Artemis guide your shafts. Do us all a favor and get him on the first shot. Give us three minutes to get in position, then start.” Nathan nodded, noting with grim silence that initiating the attack would probably make him the demon’s first target. With Ahred, he moved off to the left to approach the tree from the side opposite the monster. Renault trotted off in the opposite direction, leaving Karl awaiting the signal.

As they moved to place the tree between themselves and their target, Ahred said, “Nathan, I’m staying with you. When your shot goes, I’ll charge and provide cover.” Then, unnecessarily he added, “Don’t miss.”

“Stay out of the line of fire,” Nathan grinned at his comrade.

The pair slipped into position behind the tree and peered out, keeping low to the ground. Renault raised one hand from the opposite side of the clearing indicating his readiness. Nathan removed four arrows from his quiver and planted them heads down into the ground before himself, selected another from the store, nocked it and raised to one knee, bowstring pulled to his eye.

Renault broke from cover, battle cry erupting from his throat, at the sight of the arrow beginning its arc from Nathan’s place of hiding. The two pikemen leapt from concealment and charged forward an instant after. The demon spun to face the sound of Renault’s charge; a feathered shaft sprouted from between his shoulders. The demon’s agonized roar filled the bowl-shaped clearing with an impenetrable wall of unholy sound – the sound of a thousand damned souls, screaming in unison.

The unearthly shriek froze Mikki in her tracks. She stood, still as a marble statue while the echoes faded into the grassy plain behind her. Then, as if suddenly awakened from a trance, her mind shook off the stupefying effect and she catapulted into a sprint – up the hill, toward the source of the feral, demonic howling.

She cleared the rim of the grassy depression and skidded to a stop, mouth agape, eyes wide in unbelieving horror. Her heart stopped, an icy stone in her chest.

Ahred’s foot found a hole and he went down, one arm straightening to slow his impact with the ground. The gap beneath his foot lengthened even as he fell, leaving no purchase for his hand. He disappeared into the earth, trailing a terrified scream, suddenly cut off, to mark his passing.

Renault raised the two-handed sword high as he raced forward, readying the killing stroke he saw as his chance. The ground fell away beneath his feet and he pitched forward, one hand losing its grip on the pommel. The ground slammed into his chest, knocking the breath from him and as he pushed both hands against it to raise himself, he found his head dropping lower; then there was nothing beneath him and he dropped into a chilling void, falling without end.

Karl’s last steps brought him to the monster’s side; he brought his full weight and speed to bear on the shaft of the pike, driving the iron head deep into the leathery flesh of the creature’s side. The demon’s wail raised in pitch and increased in volume momentarily as the creature’s final surge of strength attempted to draw breath, only to find the effort of expanding its lungs against the iron edge of the spearhead to great for even its unearthly strength.

The demon wrapped one hand around the shaft, instantly freezing Karl’s hands to the weapon. Karl attempted to pull back for another thrust, but found the spearhead wedged too tightly between ribs to remove. He tried to release his grip – the pike refused to let his fingers uncurl. His eyes widened with fear.

Nathan stood, resolutely, mechanically plucking arrows from the armory before him and loosing them at the hellish were-beast. Shafts were launched while the preceding was still airborne. Two of four found a mark in the target’s hide, but the demon was no longer able to draw the breath to voice its pain and dismay. Its eyes turned to bore into its tormentor and it stretched one hand towards Nathan in an arcane gesture.

Nathan’s hands dropped to his sides, mesmerized; he stepped from behind the tree. Mikki watched, unmoving, as he levitated through the knee-high grass, moving smoothly, silently towards the struggling pair in the center of the clearing. The two rapidly widening cracks in the earth met under the demon’s feat and the trio vanished into the gap, which instantly closed over them as finally as if it had never been.

Mikki stared at the open clearing before her, stunned. He breath came in shallow, ragged gasps and her heart thudded in her ears, driving out all other sound. Her knees shook and she dropped shakily to kneel on the packed dirt of the trail. Her vision swam dizzily and she caught herself from falling on her face only by instinct. She drooped on all fours, head lowered loosely between her arms for an eternity.

Flint whickered a soft expression of pain, breathing her last, lying on her side some yards along the trail from where Mikki had collapsed on all fours, the Amazon’s heaving shoulders betraying the stifled sobs that accompanied the tears cutting tracks through the fine layer of dust on her cheeks. She should have been there! No, she was thankful she lived. Stubborn! Stupid! No, bound by duty. Damn duty to the furthest corner of Hell, anyway! She felt anger; she was awash in guilt. She could have helped; there was nothing she could have done.

She wrestled with her emotions for what seemed like eternity before the tumult and accompanying tears subsided. Her wretchedly aching stomach slowly untwisted its knot and equally slowly, her vision cleared. She raised her head to gaze across the battlefield, tears still streaming down her face, dripping from her chin into the dust.

After a time, she began to accept her suddenly new reality. She raised herself to rest her haunches on her heels and placed her hands on her thighs. She noticed the doeskin mail liner stinking wetly between her legs, but didn’t immediately care. She would offer the prayer for the fallen – yes, yes, that she needed to do, as much for herself as the four guardsmen.

She took several deep breaths, composing herself to complete the coming ritual without pausing partway through. She rose slowly to her feet and stripped herself of the mail and the soiled underclothing. She badly needed to wash. She walked to the side of the dead horse and untied the waterskin from the pack, emptying its contents over herself, scrubbing away the filth the morning had left behind. A cold early spring breeze tinted her skin blue – she didn’t care.

Tears sprang unbidden again as she faced the sun to begin the Remembrance at the End of Life. Her lips trembled as she spoke the words, mumbling haltingly at first, as the recitation sounded hollowly in her breast, growing progressively stronger and steadier as emotion gave way to ritual, allowing the words to attain meaning.

“…And on that day when each of us comes to join you in the celestial host, to feast and bask in glory for eternity, we shall meet again,” Mikki finished, voiced raised to strong certainty. She stretched both arms to touch the final rays of the sun’s bloody arch as it dropped below the horizon and stared unblinking into it as sundown turned to dusk and a new wave of tears rushed forward, this time quietly controlled.

Clad only in her mail while she waited for the doeskin to dry, Mikki sat on Flint’s packsaddle, facing a small campfire through the sleepless night, busying herself feeding the fire with a succession of twigs and small branches. The evidence of the day’s devastation had been erased as completely as if it had never occurred. It was as if the evening’s sturm und drang had been only a bad dream – one from which she desperately, hopelessly wished to awaken.

But neither sleep nor waking would come, and the hours of the night passed in the torturous fashion of water dripping from a small leak in a well-pail. It would never end.

Flint lay nearby, appearing at rest now that her pack was removed. Mikki’s memory of the horse seemed blissfully short – or was it an automatic fatalistic acceptance of the situation as it exists rather than as one wished it to be?

“Flint, y’ were smart’r’n most people I know,” Mikki congratulated the horse. “Yer right, there’s nothin’ c’n be done ‘bout th’ past. But I do wish Renault was around for one more night.” She shivered involuntarily at the memory and the omen it represented, then raised her face to the stars fading in the first grey streaks of pre-dawn light. A sigh escaped her.

Some time later, having completed her morning obeisance with more than customary devotion, Mikki busied herself with preparing a hot breakfast from the soldiers’ rations. She would be well-fed for the foreseeable future.

After scouring the cooking utensils with sand and repacking, She began searching the clearing for equipment. She circulated in an orderly pattern, guessing that the soldiers’ possessions might have been left behind as they were dragged into – well, wherever they had been dragged to. Despite regretting their loss, her pragmatic nature prompted her not to waste the opportunity for acquiring useful stuff – weapons, tools, food – whatever.

She focused her attention on the ground within twenty feet of her steps and ten feet either side of her path, so it wasn’t until the fifth turn around the decreasing spiral she had begun at the edge of the bowl when the stone caught her eye.

A roughly finished slab of grey granite, out of place in the loam grasslands. Its rectangular shape advertised it as unnatural, too. She moved closer. Blood-red script of a type she had never seen before adorned the rough exposed surface. The lettering didn’t seem painted on as much as dyed into the stone – as if it were the rock’s natural color. But no natural pattern was ever so regular; this was the work of men – or gods, or demons, but someone – or something – had written something here.

Why?

Was it a warning? A curse? Perhaps an announcement of ownership in the fashion of a lord’s marker. Perhaps… but this could go on all day.

Maybe it was a gravestone. The idea struck her as the most likely possibility. Maybe some long-forgotten warrior lay buried in this clearing, this small stone his only marker. Laid here by his mates after succumbing to battle wounds – maybe inflicted by the same demon that took her friends yesterday.

She started, realizing suddenly that Death seemed to follow her like a plague – Renault, Karl, Nathan, Ahred, Jafar, the Rogues, The Crimson Company and nearly Willie. And each brush left her unscathed. It was a heady feeling of invulnerability, brought crashingly to earth by the poignant realization that all her companions wound up dead.

“So it wasn’t my time,” she mused, “And if it’s not yer time, nothin’ c’n take y’.”

She stood over the stone, studying its position relative to the compass, the paths of the sun and stars and the surrounding terrain. Nothing extraordinary, even noteworthy. She dropped to one knee and scooped away a handful of earth along one edge. Another. She applied the blade of her short sword as a digging tool as curiosity took hold – how deep was it set into the ground? What lay beneath?

Half an hour later, the stone stood exposed to a depth of a foot on all four sides, surrounded by a shallow trench. Mikki stood and walked around the marker again. What could the unfamiliar characters mean?

The question bothered her all day. The stone was significant, mysterious. Her concentration was diverted from her methodical search of the clearing, but she maintained enough alertness to refocus on finding useful articles. Her search spiraled inward to the center of the clearing, just where the demon had disappeared into the ground, dragging Karl and Nathan in its wake.

A sudden chill swept over Mikki, bringing gooseflesh and an involuntary shiver. Her hand moved reflexively to her sword-hilt, then relaxed as a scan of her surroundings turned up nothing. She still felt cold, as if standing in the clammy wind at the mouth of a cave. Her eyes rose again to scan the artificially close horizon. Still nothing to see; then a shrill keening sounded, so faint at first that she thought it might be only a ringing in her ears, growing stronger until it separated itself from the evening breeze whispering in the grass and drew her attention across the clearing towards the partially excavated grey stone.

The stone called to her, whining plaintively for her attention, like a child whimpering with hunger. Her steps carried her toward the marker, almost unconsciously. It was a siren call, pulling her, guiding her feet, demanding her presence. She reached the granite slab and looked down.

The garden of Surtur, a place where only the foolish wander. Need you to go there? What will you pay? The daemon feeds on more than the flesh. Few escape to spread the alarum. Dread follows those who visit, Death those who stay.

The crimson characters in the stone screamed at her, decipherable now as if they were Mothertongue. Mikki’s knees shook, refusing to hold her on her feet. She willed them to straighten.

Mikki searched the clearing and its surroundings for the remainder of the day, absently staring at the ground before her while she turned the cryptic prose of the marker over again and again. It would be wise to accept the final line as a warning, but the demon was gone, perhaps mortally wounded by Karl’s spear. Some legends said creatures of the netherworld died by iron, some said by silver, still others by fire. Well this one apparently wasn’t proof against iron. Karl had proved that – at the cost of his life. Despite misgivings about the immortality of demons, the longer she stayed around, the more she began to believe it wouldn’t be back.

At last, failing to find anything of value, she returned to the stone, circling it while trying to decipher what it was doing - or who had brought it – here. The lettering was still there, growing visibly fainter in the decaying moonlight. It couldn’t be a gravestone, there was no evidence of a burial beneath. Perhaps a warning about the demon inhabiting this glen. She sat, her attention remaining riveted on the rough-hewn granite. The setting sun tinted the meadow red-gold. A breeze brought the stench of the dead horse to her nostrils. She must do something about that before it drew wolves – or worse scavengers.

Within a few minutes, her ever-present flint and the edge of her short sword had combined to ignite a fire, but there was precious little fuel here, and certainly not enough to build a pyre for Flint, deserving though she might be. Ah, well a small blaze would be enough to keep nocturnal scavengers away. She piled up a mat of sleeping furs and blankets to lie upon, removed the mail, slid the sword-blade under the top layer of her mattress, and slipped comfortably between the top two layers of fur.

She dreamt she was standing at the boxed-in end of a muddy city street, looking back the way she had come. She waited for someone; she couldn’t remember whom.

“Jafar!” she cried, “Where have you been?” But it wasn’t Jafar; it was Renault, clad in the leathern apron of his father’s trade, the knotted muscles of his bare arms spotted and crossed with the myriad of burn scars typical of a smith. Sword resting on one shoulder, hilt in hand, he strode down the street toward her. He drew up and stood, relaxed before her, as if to say something, then closed his lips and stared into her face, an unreadable expression in his eyes reflecting her image.

“Renault! I see you’ve come back.” Still, the figure before her declined to speak, merely raising the blade from his shoulder and, rotating it by strength of wrist, pointed over her shoulder to a point behind her. Mikki’s eyes followed the pointing blade toward the blind end of the alley.

It wasn’t there. The plaster-walled structure that had occupied the space only seconds ago was gone. Mikki noted this without surprise, in the fashion of one who has failed to be surprised at the seemingly impossible occurrences of a dream. A vast green steppe opened at the end of the alley, rolling into purple mountains at the horizon. Renault seemed to be directing her forward. Her steps moved toward the gap in the buildings, along the alley and onto the edge of the great grassland. She turned to see if Renault followed.

He was gone. Sword and all, simply vanished. The buildings, which she should now be looking at the postern facades of, were likewise gone and the grass-covered plain rolled on endlessly in all directions. She turned toward the distant mountains and began walking. Not at the leisurely pace of a casual traveler, but purposefully, as if she had a destination in mind.

The stone appeared just before her, floating in the air, angled so she could read the script. It began to rotate slowly away from her around its long axis, until the letters were elongated towards its far edge. In the foreshortened view the letters now took on new meaning. The writing was a poem, three lines long:

Beneath this altar, Beyond dreams of avarice, The Fates await all.

Mikki mumbled in her sleep, stirring restlessly, her fingers tightening their grip on the sword hilt. She rolled onto her back and blinked her eyes open, squinting into the moonlight. Beneath the stone?

Had her one-time lover sent her a message from beyond the grave? A shiver wriggled icily up her spine, conflicting with the warmth of the furs against her skin. If message it was, it was promise mixed with warning. Fate and riches await? Mikki sat up, the cold night air sharp on the exposed skin of her back. Another shiver. She stood, wrapping the fur around herself and holding it with her free hand, the other bearing the hilt of the sword.

Once again the stone drew her. The characters on its surface were blazing fire-red now, glowing like lava exuding from a volcanic vent. The message of her dream appeared and solidified on the rocky surface.

She stood studying the stone for hours, pacing back and forth in front of it. A chilly, pink dawn crept over the horizon.

At first, Mikki thought she had finally taken leave of her senses.

“I must be hallucinating,” she cautioned herself.

The stress of the preceding days had driven her ‘round the bend. A voice nudged her consciousness. “Amazon.” Then, “Warrior-woman.” Not naming, not pleading, simply calling for her attention.

What did she have to lose by answering? No one was around to ridicule her for talking to the air – even the horse was dead. Could it be someone or something from the underworld summoning her – perhaps offering to decipher the cryptic messages on the stone.

“I answer. Come spirit, that we may talk.” “A nice, neutral tone,” she advised herself silently, “Don’t irritate ‘em, but don’t be obsequeious, either.”

A soft chuckle sounded. “No spirit, I,” it responded. “Only a magician who casts his voice.”

“Unfortunately, the distance is great enough that my time is limited. I request only freedom of passage through your desmenes over the next two days.”

Mikki’s desperation overcame her caution and showed itself in a hearty welcome to her new erstwhile ally; she’d never experienced the oath-breakings that wizards were reputedly famous for. Her cousin Aldy’d had some to-do with a spell-caster some years ago and didn’t have much to good to say about them, but Mikki viewed that as Aldy’s problem, brought on by what she had been doing her thinking with.

“Cousin,” she’d said, “Yer one ‘o th’ best swordswomen in th’ house, but when it comes to affairs of the heart, yer an emotional disaster just ‘waitin’ the chance t’ turn yerself into a catastrophe.”

She grinned silently at the memory of her chagrined cousin lamenting the cruelties of true love and then marching off to earn her spurs at that legendary stand at Priztger’s Palisade. Wizards indeed! Aldy’d taken the fingers of his right hand with one sweep of her blade and his head with the backstroke.

And so, lost in reverie and anticipating the arrival of some more lettered help (and perhaps a pleasant evening or two spent beside the fire), Mikki spent the next two days studying the plinth, looking for clues, collecting water and firewood and increasing the width and depth of the trench surrounding the granite marker. She alternated between digging and collecting a sizable stock of sticks, just keeping her body busy so as to free her mind and dull the vexation of time lost waiting for the Mage to show up.

The third day of frustrating digging around and around the monolith did nothing to improve her disposition. Mikki spent hours digging, sweating and swearing – as long as her breath held out.

Mikki knew – she knew – that there was something here. This granite plinth hadn’t just grown in the ground; it had been planted for a purpose. Three days of digging had only revealed that the stone was like the ice mountains in the seas near her home – the hidden part was much larger than the exposed part. The pit – for pit it had become – surrounding the stone was now deeper than Mikki was tall, and still no sign of a bottom edge to the stone.

Her sword struck stone on a downward stroke, blunting the tip. Mikki increased both the volume and the vehemence of the varied and several damnations she was calling down upon the rock and its ancestors and its ancestors’ ancestors. The cursing trailed off abruptly in mid-sentence to silence as she slowly turned fully around, surveying her immediate surroundings for the ninety-ninth time. She had found whatever it was that the stone marker was there for.

She began scraping away the surrounding sandy clay and found herself standing on a broad flat slab – unnaturally flat.

“Well, well and well, again. If someone isn’t trying t’ hide something,” she reasoned. Her mining continued horizontally until she found the edge some three feet away. Two hours later, working with the energy born of anticipated results, she had traced the edges of a continuous slab as broad as she was tall and twice as long, whose eastern end bore the rectangular column, that had broken the earth’s surface and initially claimed her attention four days earlier. She scraped away the last foot of soil covering the area.

“Is this, I wonder, where the demon lives?” Mikki pondered the idea, weighing the benefits and risks of continuing.

She still had not discovered what was hidden here. In the end, her predatory curiosity pushed her to begin digging again, near the base of the stone column.

Her excavation moved off the edge of the slab.

Three feet further down, she found the lintel. She was standing on the roof of a stone building.

However tall it was, she presumed the buried building had once been sitting at grade level. Some time in the dim past, something – or someone - had buried the valley in the dirt that now featurelessly filled the ring of low knolls and hills.

Four hours, two hundredweight of dirt and considerable perspiration later (and numberless colorful imprecations to the gods whose provenance is to divine the fortunes of the slightly obsessed), Mikki knelt before the upper portion of a cave-like opening. Her last few probings with the sword told her there was a void beyond – a subterranean chamber. She climbed back to the surface, retrieved a bundle of wrist-thick sticks from her campsite and, starting a fire, ignited one to use a torch. She returned to the entrance.

“Caves, why does it always have to be caves?” she muttered. She thrust the torch through the opening, followed by her head.

It was like being inside a jewel-box; the walls reflected the flickering flame back from a million multi-colored facets; Mikki’s breath caught and her heart leapt to her throat in astonished admiration. Slowly, she slithered forward over the mound of dirt remaining in the doorway and stood in the confined space. Small characters had been chiseled into the facets of the colored stones lining the chamber walls, floor and ceiling. Some were apparently pictographs – simplified representations of demons, gods, kings, nobles, chariots, horses and a thousand other things.

Mikki’s eyes were round with wonder. What could this place have to do with the demon who haunted the area? A sudden wave of panic rippled through her – Would the demon return? She reassured herself that, having taken her troop of guardsmen, the creature’s appetite was sated, at least temporarily.

The room plan was circular, with eight-foot high walls supporting the monolithic stone ceiling. A glint of red reflection tugged at her peripheral vision and her head turned to focus on a pair of ruby-red stones forming a joint between floor and wall. They were larger than their neighbors, perhaps two feet by one and one-half feet and joined along their longer edges. Raising the torch over her head to create depth in the chiseled characters, she inspected the glyphs, unable to take any meaning from them.

“All this ‘n’ I’m no better off than when I started,” she carped. Another string of curses. “Stick a fork in me; I’m done.”

Disgusted with her luck, and disappointed at the failure of the mystery magician to arrive, she slithered back out of the hole and climbed to the surface.

Three hours and several miles of walking brought her to the banks of a stream where she treated herself to a chilly bath and a good meal, returning her perspective to its customary optimistic if slightly cynical outlook.

Mikki sighed as she dressed in her newly rinsed doeskin and mail, slung her helmet and shield over her shoulder and strode resolutely off toward the woods to her east.

Her steps carried her to a clearng from which she could glimpse a cave entrance to the southeast, and a mountain to the northeast. A wooded knoll lay to the east.

“Caves, caves, and more damn holes in the ground. I am so tired of caves.” She turned toward the trail rising into the mountain and there, beside the trail, stood a road sign, chiseled in stone in the style of the ancient kingdom whose domains these had once been.

“Finally, something I can read,” she exulted. “Let’s see what we have here.” There were arrows leading out of the clearing in four directions although only three obvious pathways exited.

“Caves, I’ve seen enough of,” she reflected, “And mountains – probably more stinkin’ dragons, as my luck’s been lately.” She began moving east, zigzagging north and south as she went so as not to miss the trail advertised by the road marker that intimated the ancient civilization had once built a city near here.

Darkness came suddenly, accompanied by a whoosh of leathery wings. Mikki’s head whipped around and her sword came up as one movement. The shield slipped from her shoulder down her arm and the leather grip found her hand even as she clapped the helmet to her head. Dragons!

And sure as Hell was hot, they came, two of them. Mikki’s flight instinct took control and she turned for the cover of the trees. Something caught her foot and she stumbled, lurching forward to catch her balance after three strides and spin into a defensive stance, sword horizontal and even with her chest, shield high, covering her left side. It was a pointless gesture.

A troll stood before her; her heart sank. “Good day, sir,” she spoke, sounding much more calm than she felt. “I c’n see yer scaly, gods-forsaken self means me no good, so I’ll be takin’ m’ leave o’ y’ now.”

Mikki spun and bolted up the slightly rising ground, the troll lumbering in ungainly pursuit.

“The situation looks not too good fer yer fav’rite Amazon.” These words ran through her mind, even as her legs carried her tearing headlong for the base of a large nearby oak.

“Shelter from above, ‘n’ shelter fer my back.” She desperately needed both to hold the airborne lizards at bay while she ducked and dodged the troll’s grasping talons. She reached the spot at the oak’s feet where she would make her stand and turned.

“Come on, come on y’ slow bastard,” she howled at the onrushing mountain-sized hobgoblin. Then, almost under her breath, “Get close enough so’s I c’n tear yer livin’ guts out ‘n’ strangle y’ with ’em.” She set both feet firmly, thrust the shield forward and raised the sword to deliver a beheading stroke. There would only be one chance.

A fluttering of featherless wings from behind brought Mikki’s head whipping around. The pair of dragons settled to the ground behind the tree from her and began closing the intervening space. Mikki risked a glance over her right shoulder, checking the gigantic troll’s progress up the knoll.

“When yer outnumbered, keep movin’ ‘n stickin’. Fight like yer immortal,” Mikki’s combat lessons were engrained habits by now; still the familiar voices of Aunt Cecilia and Cousin Gertie came calmly to her as she turned to face the twin scaled menaces, keeping the bole of the tree at her back.

One dragon struck, extending its head with open jaws and lowering itself to rest on its foreclaws. Mikki leapt sideways, crossing the path of its second, slower cousin. The short sword flickered through the air and the second lizard withdrew its head from the path of the arcing steel. The beast’s right talon swept a backhand arc outward from its chest. Mikki moved the shield to cover her right torso.

Thump! Through the shield the blow drove the breath from Mikki’s lungs even as she dropped into a roll intended to absorb the impact. Stars drifted in her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut for an instant to clear her vision and rolled to her feet, blade held low, point upward, crouched.

It was the attempt to inhale, abruptly arrested by a stabbing pain beneath her right arm that announced the seriousness of the wound. She doubled over, involuntarily lowering her head for an instant and saw a jagged shard of bone exposed, marking the damaged lung beneath. Her vision clouded again as a crimson trickle started from the corner of her mouth. Still, Mikki kept her feet. The sword point dipped, her right side refusing to support the weight.

“Damn dragons,” she whimpered. She dropped the shield and transferred the sword to her left hand, raising her head. “C’mere y’ slimy lizard,” she gasped, her face contorting, “Come get what’s comin’ to’ y’.” The right elbow clamped itself tightly against the searing pain in her side; she swayed, slightly unsteady and caught herself, widening her stance.

A metallic crunch sounded from behind her. The oncoming troll had stepped on the discarded shield, crumpling it like so much paper-maiche’. She pivoted to deflect the oncoming threat, but never completed the turn. A massive scaled hand wrapped itself around her right thigh, another clenched her right shoulder, and she rose bodily into the air.

An agonized shriek, cut suddenly to a weak grunt by the lack of breath, erupted as her broken ribs protested the strain. Tears sprang from her compressed eyelids. Mikki took one last, ineffectual swipe with the sword and hit something she could no longer see, then felt herself arcing downward as the troll slammed her to the earth.

The impact was fatal; still, Mikki’s spirit would not permit her the mercy of complete unconsciousness. She felt herself being lifted once again – she was beyond feeling pain – as the troll’s simian arms wrapped around her torso, enfolding her in a crushing embrace. Her warrior instincts compelled her to fight back and her arms raised to spread her palms – but the right arm wouldn’t come up, pinioned by the troll’s grip; the elbow being pressed mercilessly into the fractured ribs. Mikki’s head flung back to draw air, but the troll’s bear hug tightened, expelling what little remained in a bloody froth. She felt warmth rising into her throat, dripping from slack lips down her chin, cascading across her breast. Tighter, tighter… her left arm moved to swat ineffectually at the creature’s ear, raised again to hammer weakly against the monster’s shoulder and then dropped limply across the monster’s back as the last shreds of life fled.

Mikki awoke, lying on her back, vision blurred and mortally pained in every joint. It was a sickness the like of which she had never experienced before – her eyes so bloodshot that her vision was tinged in pink; her head an enveloping world of pain; her lungs on fire; her guts a roiling, viscid sea, pressing to erupt.

“Th’ troll slaughterin’ business just ain’t all it’s cracked up t’be, “ she muttered through bruised and swollen lips. The events of the previous evening came rushing back, recalling a world of pain. She groaned, rolled to her side and levered herself up onto one elbow, head whirling.

“Def’nitely NOT going t’ do that again,” her thoughts reverberated about her head like doomsday thunder. Her stomach heaved, empty, knocking her flat, face down on the mattress again. She hung one arm and her head, slack-jawed, over the edge of the mattress, vainly attempting to focus on a knot in the planking. A weak drool of pink-tinged gastric acid dripped from her lower lip to the floor.

“Gods, this is one o’ those mornings after when yer hair hurts,” she dared not speak again for fear of being sick again. After several shaking breaths, she slowly raised her head and blinked slowly, her eyelids grating like sandpaper on the raw abrasions of her eyes. She attempted to draw a deep breath only to have her rib cage vehemently protest.

“NNNGH!” a sharp grunt escaped her as a stabbing pain tore up her right side, exploding in her temple. She reflexively lurched forward, found nothing beneath her and crashed to the floor, coming to rest on both elbows and her forehead, her legs still above her on the bed. The impact caused galaxies to whirl across her tightly pressed eyelids. Her damaged ribs speared her again, curling her into a fetal ball, pulling her legs from the bed to slam bruisingly into the floor. She rolled onto her side, hugging herself to protect her tender right side. “Ooohh,” she groaned. Then gasping, “I can’t be dead – bein’ dead would feel better.” She felt the bruise where her head had hit the floor begin to well up to the size of a hen’s egg. She lay motionless, failing in her trial to will the pain down to less than overwhelming intensity.

“Pathetic, that’s what y’ are, pathetic. What would cousin Theda say about this? Get up, ye damn trull, get up.” She rolled to her knees, willed her head up off the floor and sat slowly back on her heels, right arm wrapped around her ribcage, left palm pressed against her temple, willing her eyeballs not to explode out of her skull. She tried to straighten, found it impossible and toppled sideways to sprawl unconscious in the mess pooled on the wood floor, shallow breathing giving the only hint that she was still alive.

Unknown time later, her eyelids fluttered slowly open. A glaring light assaulted her nerves and she squeezed them shut again. Several minutes passed as her mind inventoried her body. No missing parts, good. Plenty of damaged ones, all calling painfully for attention.

“Auntie Griselda always said our fam’ly healed fast. I hope she’s right, cause I got business t’ tend t’…” Mikki pressed up to all fours, sat back, straightening her shoulders, winced away a wave of dizziness, and swallowed the gorge rising again in her throat. She was still unable even to kneel without swaying, but she rose to her feet nonetheless – or partway to her feet, as her legs buckled and she slumped to rest on one knee, crouched over, eyes closed. The swirling ether inside her consciousness forced her eyes open again. She tilted forward involuntarily until her hands supported her, resting on the rough wooden planks of the floor.

“Nnnngh; oooohh, ooh,” her moans escaped unpresaged and unwanted. “I think I’d prefer bein’ dead.”

But death would not come for Mikki this day. She had kept an earlier appointment at the hands of a troll.

“Well,” she thought, grinning wryly, “Maybe I didn’t give as well as I got, but that’s one troll won’t soon ferget Mikki Finn.” She collapsed slowly to the floor again and went serenely to sleep.

“She appears stout enough,” observed the Acolyte. “For her to have come this far is remarkable. How did you manage it?”

“Indeed, her resilience is admirable,” agreed her older companion.

“How many times can she undergo this?”

“Unknown. And unknowable. Mostly the dead remain dead; only those who love life and are truly strong in spirit are candidates for The Sharing of Life. The race of Amazons possesses both qualities in admirable measure.”

The two women remained beside the wood frame bed carefully ministering to their charge. The lacerated lung healed rapidly, but the harder tissues – the fractured bones – would take longer. Still, Mikki’s robust physiology repaired itself faster than most and her inbred stamina, enhanced by her warrior training, would shepherd her through any pain she experienced.

“She should not have woken until the healing spell was complete.” It was a question from the Acolyte rather than a statement. “I failed to keep watch.” An admission of negligence contritely expressed as statement of fact.

The teacher nodded. “Correct. Regrettably, I underestimated the Amazon in that regard. An error that we should both learn from – but falling out of bed should not significantly effect her recovery.” The admission of error was atypical for healers in general, but not so for Diana, First among the Caducees. She felt honor-bound to be completely truthful in all aspects of her art, despite the humiliating light surprises sometimes cast her in – how else could Acolytes be brought to the realization that one could never know everything, but by the instructress’ example? Indeed, there had been things known by the Ancients that were now lost because someone once felt obliged to ‘save face’. A pity, that. But aught could be done about the immutable past.

“I feel she will be suitably fit to travel when she again awakes,” Diana predicted. Allison, her foremost acolyte, nodded and turned to the armoire standing in a corner of the sparsely furnished room. From its drawers, she removed a set of silken undergarments – light, but closely woven for warmth – and spread them on the night stand beside the bed. The platelet mail that had been found wrapped around the still-warm body the younger girls had recovered had been cleansed of the gore borne on its arrival and now hung over the back of the chair against the wall. Leaning against the chair leg was a minimal armory - weapon, helm and shield. The Sisterhood did not wield arms themselves, it being a violation of oath; such weaponry as they collected was recovered from the few warriors who passed to the world of shades despite the Healers’ best efforts.

“And so,” the acolyte recited to her matron, “I observe that by the use of spells and strong herbs, even one so damaged as this can be brought the Gift of Life, if she but be found in time.”

Diana lowered her head and inhaled deeply, recovering her reserves before she answered. It had been a long night with the Amazon and the return of Life to the battered young woman had cost her much.

“One requires practice with the Spell that Shares Life,” she spoke quietly, “Recalling the spirit is easier while it remains near and more difficult as the shade moves toward the Divide-that-Cannot-be-Crossed.” Diana shuddered inwardly recalling how precariously near that Divide her ministrations to the downed Amazon had carried her. She betrayed none of this to her student, remaining sublimely serene. Only the deepened crows feet at the corners of eyes betrayed the strain from which she was recovering.

Still, the First’s drawn appearance did not escape Allison’s notice, “Come, Older Sister, you need refreshment and the patient’s crisis has passed. Go and rest yourself while I minister my simple duties as your apprentice.”

Diana warmed to the concern expressed in Allison’s offer. “Thank you, Younger Sister,” she murmured, “I trust that you will call should need arise.” Then the First Healer of the Caducees turned and exited the door.

Sunlight filtered through the oiled paper of the window, diffusing a yellow glow through the room. Mikki’s eyes remained closed while she listened to her surroundings. Then, assured that only the sounds of birds outside had awakened her, her eyes took in the sleeping quarters in which she found herself.

A sparely furnished room, plain but clean. A low nightstand bearing a candleholder with a fresh taper, a dressing chair, an armoire and chest of drawers crowned by ewer and basin. A linen towel lay neatly folded next to the basin.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that it had been – how long? – since her last meal. Mikki rose gingerly, a tenderness in her ribcage reminding her that she was, in the end, not immortal. “Came pretty close, tho’,” she quipped to herself. Trolls joined dragons on the list of creatures whose extinction she would not regret.

She washed, moistening the towel and rubbing until her skin brightened with increased circulation, then hung the towel over the chair back and looked about for her doeskin. Not here – but a two-piece ensemble of silken drawers and halter had been left neatly folded on the nightstand, and her platelet mail was hanging over the dressing-chair. Mikki whispered a toneless thank-you to whomever, unknown, had been so thoughtful, dressed, collected the armory resting against the chair and headed out the door, down the stair to the great room of the Rusty Sword Inn.

She studied the brace of horses outside the window as she ate, wondering who had retrieved her from the field and kept her alive while transporting her all this way. Maybe the owners of the two steeds?

“Innkeeper,” she called, “Who do I owe thanks t’? And who owns those horses yonder?”

“Yer pardon, Miss; one question at a time. As to yer benefactors, you can thank the Sisterhood of Caducee for your good health, and your humble host owns the pair of miserable animals without.”

“Thankee,” Mikki grinned at the deprecating remark about the workhorses; they were obviously well-cared for – a mark of their value to their master. But who were the Caducee sisters? She prodded her new acquaintance regarding the sisters’ whereabouts and origin.

“Ah, Miss, about their business and left before dawn, this morning, they did,” her garrulous host began, “They’re a mysterious lot, The Sisters, rumored to use magic to bend men’s will to their own ends.”

“But they do have the reputation for bein’ the best healers in the realm for both men and beasts, they do. There’s even some say they can bring back the dead, but for my farthing, that’s just legend.

“Long ago, they say, the order was started by a queen who lost her man and her kingdom in a war. When the conquerors captured her, she was taken by their lord, as was the custom in those days, and within the year, gave birth to a daughter. She took to the study of herbal charms at the hand of one o’ the local crones, to prevent bearing him any male offspring, and thus giving him a legitimate heir. In time, she became foremost in the medicinal arts.

“All the while, Caduceal - that’s her name, the Queen - plotted both her revenge and her kingdom’s rebirth, and took the opportunity, during the celebration feast of the usurper’s fiftieth year, of poisoning him and all his guests.

“The empire dissolved in a struggle among the few remaining nobles, leaving Caduceal able to resurrect her former domain from the ashes. This she did in a series of wars which left the former nobility all dead but for one who had proven loyal to herself. She had taken Duke Alden for her lover – even offered him half the throne, which he declined, saying he had only head enough for strategy, and none left for politics. He stayed on as her general, though, carrying her banner to the end of the struggle.

“He was carried home after the final victory on his shield, they say, and bitter were Caduceal’s tears. They tale goes that she took the body, short one leg – the wound that had killed him – and sequestered herself with it in the sanctum of the convent for days, taking neither food, nor drink, nor company.

“At the end of that time, she emerged, bloody and haggard, leading Alden by the hand. No one knows to this day what magics she practiced, nor what deals she made with the underworld, but she had her man back – or most of him, anyway. He remained lame in the restored leg.

“Her new-found happiness was not to last, however.

“The daughter, learning of her mother’s betrayal of her father and subsequent rescue of Alden from the dead, condemned her as a witch and Alden as a traitor to the king, took both before the courts and after a brief trial, took the throne for herself, banished Alden and confined Caduceal to a convent for the remainder of her days, where her herbal skills made her most welcome.

“Despite her incarceration, Queen Caduceal’s abilities became widely known; people brought sick relatives, women in difficult childbirth, deformed children, diseased livestock, anything in need of healing found its way to the Convent of Mother Caduceal. Most walked out better than they were carried in, I hear.

“Now, Caduceal never lost the habit of acquiring new lore – from crones, from travelers, by trial and error. In time she gained a following of youngsters also studying the healing arts. Much of her herbal lore is recorded for posterity and kept at the monastery.

“But she also learned unnatural things, they say. Things only gods and demons should know. Some say she studied under a demon, but no matter, that. One night, there was a great tumult at the sanctum of the convent – a place where she prayed and studied nightly, and she simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.

“Some folk say she was taken to the underworld by her demon lover. Others that she simply created a diversion to cover her disappearance and left the convent by a secret passage the only she knew of. Still another story is that she concocted a spell or potion that restored her youth and simply walked out into the world, unrecognized by any of her acolytes.

“But nobody really knows.”

“Hell of a good story,” Mikki thought. Then aloud to her host, “Quite a woman, that Caduceal. And I take it the good sisters delivered me here?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, miss. And you looked more dead than alive, I’d say. Got into a nasty piece of business with some robbers? - if you don’t mind my askin’ o’ course.”

Mikki winced inwardly, recalling her nemesis and the huge scaled arms squeezing the breath from her body, “Yeah. Nasty bunch, they were, too,” she confirmed, “Took my purse, my horse, my virtue and near my life.”

The hosteller raised both eyebrows at this overtly open description. After a second’s hesitation, he offered, “Anything else, miss?”

Mikki felt the urge to be on her way. “No, m’ good man. What do I owe?”

“Why, not a thing, miss,” the answer surprised her, “I’m merely passin’ on a favor the Sisters’ did me once, long ago.

“And I’ll give you some advice, if you don’t mind.” Mikki looked up, expression open to hear the next words.

“Steer clear of dragons and trolls.” And he smiled, turned, and limped towards the kitchen.

Caduceal's Bargain

Mikki strolled out towards the south. There was an eerily familiar scent in the air about this valley, but she couldn’t place it. Her memories felt clouded and in places, gaps appeared. She stopped to perform her ritual greeting to the rising sun and spent the next hour excercising with her weapons.

“Nice form.” A voice came from behind her and she froze. She had been inattentive, something very unlike her. Her head came slowly around to peer over her left shoulder.

A man-at-arms sat there on a rock, a mischievous leer creasing his youthful features. His clothes were of heavy leather decorated with metal studs and from beneath the jerkin a vest of mail showed itself. The man’s leggings were likewise of supple leather, as were his shoes. His leather cap was decorated – functionally - with crossed steel bands.

Mikki grinned sheepishly for allowing herself to be sneaked up on and turned to face her admirer. “Thankee, good fellow,” her sweetest come-hither voice stopped just short of honey and silk, “Whither bound?”

“Me? Why I’ve left the Rusted Sword only this past hour - having o’erslept mightily. The innkeeper said I might find some company on the road if I hurried, and here I have. But as to where I might be going, why that, my girl, depends.”

“Depends?” Mikki chuckled inwardly at the pikeman’s use of the term girl. The guardsman could hardly know what a doughty warrior the Amazon was.

“I’m a simple soldier, now parted from my company and seeking new employment.” Whether he was a deserter, a mercenary who’d completed his contract or the sole survivor of his troop mattered not to Mikki; none of the three possibilities boded well for taking him on as a companion.

Still, she had enough experience with wandering about alone to know there would be no profit in continuing. “Sword-for-hire, eh? Well, I’ve not much to offer but companionship and good cheer, but I would appreciate the company.”

And so the haggling began.

The pair eyed one another with amused respect leaning on their staffs. Both were breathing heavily and perspiration coursed through the dust on their skin. The soldier, William by name, spoke first.

“Amazon, you are? Handy with a quarter staff,” he applauded Mikki’s deftness with the ancient weapon.

“And y’self,” Mikki returned the compliment and adjusted a twisted halter strap. “As y’ ev’dently ha’ seen a shillelagh ‘fore now. Enough excercies f’r yer worship?”

“Aye, enough.” The guardsman straightened and relaxed. He had been sparring with the woman warrior for the best part of an hour and showed some skinned knuckles accompanied by a selection of bruises on his lower limbs and two on his ribs. Mikki, for her part, had similarly bruised knuckles and knees, but her recoil from the first blow in the rib cage had prompted her opponent to show a measure of compassion, and she finished little the worse for wear.

“Ribs aren’t quite over the troll’s attentions, yet,” Mikki reflected silently, grimacing.

She opened her traveling pack, extracted a small wheel of golden cheese and a flask of spring wine.

“There be nothin’ to spur the appetite quite like workin’ up a good sweat,” she carved a wedge from the wheel with her dirk and offered the rest to William, who, in turn, removed a slice of equal size and reaching into his own kit, produced a round loaf and a small drawstring bag.

“Bread and mustard?” It was only polite that he contribute, having been the recipient of such largess. Mikki nodded and accepted a thick slice of the brown-crusted rye.

“What’s must’rd?”

William’s pouch was carefully opened and an interior flap folded back and unfolded again to reveal a brown paste. He dipped the end of his dagger in and spread a small amount across the surface of the cheese. Mikki followed suit, sniffed at the spicy aroma and took a bite.

“Mmmm. Where d’ y’ get this spice?” She started conversationally, “It’d go with meats, too, I rec’n.”

“It does – when meat’s to be had,” returned her companion. “But lately, Dame Fortune’s not been kind as she might.”

“Sounds ‘s if y’ could use a job.”

The conversation continued in this desultory fashion until they had finished lunch, by which time, Mikki had established 1) William was just her age, 2) had been training with the King’s Own for the past four years, and 3) had recently left their tutelage and employ over a disagreement concerning his readiness for combat duty.

“Pay’s less for marchin’ than fightin’. And I mean to fight,” he concluded.

“Well, I like y’r spirit,” the Amazon commiserated. “Too bad f’r me I can’t afford yer wage.”

“Well, considerin’ I’m needin’ the job, and you need the help, I might be willing to trade against some future consideration.”

Mikki considered this, her gaze fixed on the woods at the edge of the clearing. A percentage of anything they found; this boy wanted a partnership, not a job. She cleared her throat and took a last swallow of the wine, recorking he bottle.

“I might just consider that,” she conceded. Then, rising to her full six-foot height and stretching her fingertips toward the sky, “How about a bath?”

“A what?” William’s brain fumbled at the suggestion.

“Bath – you know, soak i’ the pool, scrub th’ dirt off.”

William recovered. “Very funny. I know what a bath is.” But Mikki was already sauntering her way across the clearing and into the glade. William ogled her retreating back as her stride carried her out of sight, then rose to his feet and followed.

She was standing hip-deep in a wide spot in the creek, her back to him as he rounded the final bend in the narrow trail leading to the bank, her finely muscled shoulders and back moving rhythmically as she rinsed the sweat out of her silken undergarments. Mikki’s mail lay upon a sun-splashed rock, dripping rivulets back into the slow motion of the water.

William draped his leather jerkin over a low shrub near the trail, followed by the mail-shirt and the linen shirt beneath. He sat on the bank to remove his shoes and, having untied them, looked up again to find Mikki looking his way, studying him. He looped the shoelaces loosely together and drooped the assemblage over a low tree limb.

Mikki stood hip-deep, twisting the clothing to wring the water out, watching the young soldier complete his preparations. He kept his back to her as his trousers slid down and she grinned, chuckling inwardly at this display of modesty. William stepped out of the mound of clothing and carefully hung the pants over the same limb his shoes adorned. He looked over his shoulder; Mikki shook the halter and underpants out to straighten the fabric, and stretched both out on the sunny rock next to the mail, calling out over one shoulder as she did so.

“C’mon in, soldier,” she teased, “No one’s yet died o’ bathin’.”

And with that, she turned and dived smoothly for the opposite shore.

“Damndest stubborn kid I ever knew!” Mikki’s frustration with her newly hired companion knew no bounds. “I c’n see why the King’s Own didn’t want t’ keep him around.” She had finally reached agreement with William over the value of his services, having nearly beaten the living daylights out of him with his own quarterstaff.

Then when they had finally gotten on the road, he remembered he had forgotten something back at the hostelry.

“Don’t make me go back there,” she warned. But William had gotten it into his head that the locket his mother had given him was of such value that it could not be left behind. He turned and headed back towards the inn.

Mikki sat on a rock beside the trail for some time, fuming at the delay. “No brains, that’s what it comes to. That boy’s mother must be damn fond o’ children to ‘ve let ‘im live.” Her muttered monologue droned on as she rose, took up her gear and moved out in his wake.

She came to a farmhouse nestled close to the road. In the yard, tending her chickens, the wife looked up as the Amazon walked by. Mikki stopped to ask after her errant employee. After inquiring as to her health and offering beer, which Mikki gratefully accepted, Doclea informed her that the young lad was “off in the woods, diverting himself with a deer hunt.”

Mikki’s head snapped up from the edge of the tall leather mug. “He what?!”

“Yes, the lad asked after food and drink, and ‘pologizin’ f’r havin’ no money, he went off to bring in some venison by way of repayment for the vittles.”

Mikki’s scowl softened a bit. “Well, I suppose if he’s t’ pay what he owes, an’ hasn’t enough coin from his wage, I’d best let him bargain as best he can. Otherwise, I’ll wind up payin’ th’ bill.

“When he gets back, tell him t’ wait here ‘til I return.”

The walk back to the Rusty Sword hadn’t been a long enough for Mikki’s anger with her hireling to subside. She had been passing the time of day with Doclea, waiting for him to return when the idea struck her that, if he wasn’t coming back until sundown, she might be able to do some good with an otherwise wasted day.

“Doclea, any idea where a girl c’n find a good horse, cheap?”

“Well, now, miss, if you promise to bring him back unharmed, I might loan you one o’ mine.”

Mikki turned this idea over for a moment, appraising the animal’s relative importance to her acquaintance’s livelihood. The farm was well-tended – a two-story house with plastered exterior, barn on the lower floor, attached shed, all recently whitewashed. The bare, muddy fields awaiting the start of spring plowing stretched from the stone fence lining the road, up a rise, toward a copse of trees left behind by the original landowner as an invitation for hawks.

“No, really, I couldn’t.” Mikki’s response reflected her appreciation for the hardship such a loss would place on the farmstead. Moreover, she couldn’t be certain she’d even bring the beast back at all, let alone unharmed. No, if she couldn’t pay for the potential damages, she couldn’t accept the proffered loan.

Doclea wasn’t sure if perhaps the young warrioress had mistook her meaning – the offer of a loan between the farm folk was usually met with a polite demurral, which began a sort of negative negotiation with the borrower eventually giving in and insisting that the loan be repaid with some bartered item or service. Just last market day, Doclea’s neighbor Annabelle had remarked that “Having to watch that brood of children while tending the stall at the fair distracts me so – I can’t keep my wits about to bargain.” “Oh, I’ll gladly watch them for you,” Doclea opened the negotiations.

“No, Doc, I couldn’t impose.” The unspoken implication that payment for the favor would be forthcoming.

“Really, Belle, I insist; they’ll be no trouble at all, what with the four of mine I’m already looking after.” (Make me an offer.)

“Well, alright, but only if you bring them back here for midday meal – and bring yours while you’re at it, cooking for the many’s no more work than for the few.”

And so on…

“But the young woman with her strange, clipped accent probably isn’t familiar with our ways,” she thought. “She says ‘no,’ and I think she means it.” Aloud, she offered, “There’s an inn just down the road – The Rusty Sword…”

“I know the place,” Mikki understated the case. “The innkeeper’s a tall gent, game in one leg?”

“Aye, that’s the one. Well anyway, he’s been known to run a livery, when there’s silver to be had.”

“Why, thank you, sister,” Mikki’s smile underscored her real appreciation at the offered advice. “Though my purse be lean, I’ve bells on my toes, and a red sash and a short skirt when the need arises.”

Doclea breath came with an audible catch and her hand rose to her breast. Whore! Was this how Amazon’s were raised?! Ah, but what else could be expected of a woman who was probably raised in an army camp?

“Well,” she recovered, “Meanin’ no offense, and you’ll excuse me, but I’ve a garden to tend.”

Mikki smiled, amused by Doclea’s shocked discomfiture, “Sure, of course. And I must be on my way. Thanks again for th’ beer. And don’t forget t’ have William wait f’r me, if y’ please.”

And she swing off up the road, toward the inn.

Eight hours later, the dust of the road advertised Mikki’s return. William lounged against a fence post, feet supported on a large stone. And he judged correctly that by the pace she was setting, she would be in no mood for pleasantries when she arrived.

So, forewarned that his employer was in an ugly frame of mind, and having little desire to bear for himself the brunt of her anger, the lad rose to his feet, brushed himself off and made ready his kit for travel.

“Greedy and worthless, that’s what these farm folk are,” Mikki breathed fire - accompanied by a detailed listing of the family trees of each of the three farmers with whom she had failed to strike a deal. “Whoever would make somebody waste a whole day tryin’ t’ buy som’thin’ they never were gonna sell i’ th’ first place?” The roll of farmers’ unmarried relatives and misbegotten forebears lengthened.

She broke over the last rise in the road to spy William standing at its edge, leaning on his pike. She slowed her pace, surprised to see him ready and waiting.

 “C’mon, kid,” Mikki ordered, brusquely, “We’ve got places t’ go.”

William had been awakened (rather rudely, he thought) by his new employer in the graying pre-dawn light. His attention first fixed on the constellations winking out over his head, but this reverie was soon broken by her growled insistence that he “Get up and get movin’ afore I kick y’ into next Saint Swithin’s Day.” William understood well enough that the threat would be followed by action. Accordingly, Mikki found him standing, packed and ready to travel as she finished her morning devotions.

“Good t’ see yer up ‘n’ about.” Mikki headed off without further conversation – or breakfast, William noted – northward, towards the aspen forest. Locals claimed the place was enchanted, but Mikki opted for a more natural explanation, believing that the legend of gold was only a folk tale, an embellishment of the annual turning of the leaves.

The pair moved without pausing along a well-beaten trail that led them out of the moist farmlands and up to higher elevations, populated by aspens and lodgepole pines. William wondered idly where they were going, but his silent, brooding mistress did not appear of a mind to be either conversational or instructive.

Mikki, for her part, wasn’t exactly pleased with William’s attitude or performance thus far. “Cost me a day because he had t’ go huntin’ – and then brings nothin’ back f’ the journey.

“It’s so hard t’ get good help these days.” Mikki grinned inwardly at her own wry jest, but declined to share it. “He prob’ly wouldn’t appreciate it, anyway – him bein’ th’ butt o’ th’ joke.”

There was good reason for her not to share the intended destination with her hired help; the odds against success – and even survival – were astronomically high. Mikki’s recent encounter with Death brought with it unintended consequences. She had died, back there; she realized that now. The realization brought a flood of deep, unfamiliar emotions. She was immensely, eternally grateful to the Sisters for her revival. She thanked the pantheon of gods and goddesses for the stroke of fortune that had directed the healers her way. She felt invulnerable - immune to discomfort, hunger, thirst, fatigue, injury, pain, even death. She could run all day and then immerse herself in a desperate life-or-death fight with creatures twice her size. Rashly fearless, she no longer considered whether she might perish in pursuit of the quest, only whether or not she might finish. As if there were only so much time in the universe and she must live a full life in the limited available span.

She had acquired a second sight. She knew things she could never have known before the troll had squeezed the life from her. Her senses felt more acute, alive. Her skin tingled at the touch of the breeze as it wafted down from the surrounding hills and filtered through the trees. Squinting seemed no longer necessary to make out detail in the wings of distant hawks as the raptors glided on the updrafts rising from the valley floor. Her hearing picked up rustlings beneath the decaying leaf cover now being bared by the first thaw of approaching spring. Babbling freshets miles away sounded like cataracts to her ears.

And far off, in the mountains, she sensed evil creatures at work. Whether in the caves or on the mountain peaks, she could not yet be certain, but they were there, and vengeance drove her towards them.

Someone had killed her; she took that very personally.

William’s calves ached from the unrelenting punishment of ascending mountain slopes. His lungs burned from the altitude, unable to inhale enough of the rarified air to give his tortured muscles any relief. He labored over each breath, jaw hanging slackly, ribs heaving. He forced his head up and tried to focus his vision on Mikki’s retreating back as she took a turn on the rocky trail, disappearing behind a rock outcropping. Damn! The swordswoman didn’t even seem winded by the grueling pace. Would she ever even slow down?

He reached the turn in the trail and found Mikki some twenty yards ahead, standing stock still to one side of the path on a flat ledge cantilevered over a precipitous drop. He stopped and leaned against the cliff wall, chest heaving, grateful for the chance to catch his breath. Mikki faced across a deep saddle connecting the peak they were descending with the next in the range. Her head was cocked to one side, as if she were listening intently to some far-off voice that only she could hear.

Time enough passed for William’s breathing to slow to a point where he could speak and he moved forward, approaching Mikki’s back. While he was still three paces behind her, and without taking her gaze from the mountainside opposite, she spoke.

“Trolls,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken in hours. Her hand raised and pointed across the chasm below. “Th’ motherless bastards ‘r’ over there.”

William peered at the forested mountainside some two miles distant. “How can you see them that far off,” he protested. “Anything there is hidden in the trees.”

Mikki’s head half-turned while her eyes remained riveted on the wall rising from the valley floor. “Don’t have t’ see ‘em,” was all she offered. Then she turned back and trotted down the trail.

William took several deep breaths, preparing himself for more of this marathon trek through the mountains. Then he followed dutifully after the already disappearing Amazon.

The downhill route toward the saddle was only slightly easier – make that less difficult - than the previous uphill had been. Not easier, only different. Now his calves could rest from the continual strain, but after a short while, his thighs began to burn and his legs threatened not to support his weight. Mikki sprinted down the trail, letting gravity draw her on, applying her strength only to guide her steady loping descent.

It occurred to William that trolls might not be a good thing to find.

Mikki marveled at her own tirelessness. She felt she could run forever, never wearying. On this downhill portion of the journey, she let the slope of the trail govern her speed, conserving her energies for the anticipated battle, Her long legs skipped rhythmically from rock to boulder to fallen, lightning-riven tree, all the while maintaining a grim focus on the approaching mountain.

She reached the bottom of the col and started up, glancing over her shoulder to verify William’s progress. “The lad seems game enough,” she thought turning her face so William could not see the grim smile that flickered across her features. William was only twenty yards behind, and although red in the face and winded, looked to be more than able to continue without resting.

The duo had been moving through the mountains since sunup, trotting along the meandering trail that crossed from one mountainside to the next, snaking its sinuous way along the path of least resistance – which was not the most direct route through the forested hills.

Mikki’s attention turned dourly to the scent – if it could be called that – drawing her onward. It was trolls, or at least creatures very like trolls. The air held a cloying quality that interfered with breathing. The resulting slower pace gave Mikki time to consider how best to make the attack – it had never been a question of if she should. A troll had crushed the life from her and now he and all his kind would pay.

Her last confrontation with one of the hellish, armored creatures had occurred accidentally; the troll and his brace of dragon pets had pounced before she was aware of their presence. Not so this time – She knew they were up ahead somewhere, and uncharacteristically cautious, she left the trail and moved into the forest, motioning William to follow.

Mikki paused for William to catch up.

“You move through the woods like an elephant,” the Amazon whispered through clenched teeth. “Learn how to walk before you get us killed.” The young soldier looked at his leader in surprise, then removed his shoes and stuffed them into his belt, behind his back.

“There’s trolls ahead. How many and how far, I’m not sure.” Mikki studied the boy’s face for signs of fear. Fear was there, but not uncontrolled terror. She saw the edgy emotion that would keep a warrior alive, not the unrestrained panic that lead to undisciplined flight and death. Here was a boy, she thought, who might not abandon her when the odds against her were long.

Gliding silently through the dense but bare trees on the mountain, barefooted William in her wake, she continued to follow the indefinable sense that drew her toward her target. Troll, demon, goblin, werewolf or orc, it mattered little. She owed them all.

Her thoughts drifted to the men she had known, some kind, some cruel, some just cold. Renault had been one of the warmer ones, but all too soon, before they even got to know each other, he was gone, taking his loyal troop with him – along with a cannibal demon.

Mikki sighed, almost audibly and motioned a rest. Twelve unbroken hours of hiking and running across these mountains was taking a toll on William’s reserves, and she needed him fresh when the time came. The lad sat beside her on a fallen log, breathing deeply, but quietly, eyes and ears alert.

Mikki, too, remained watchful, but spent the time readying her short sword. Removing the blade from the scabbard, she produced a small leather sack from her waist-pouch and dusted the edge of the sword with a small bit of the white, powdered contents.

“Talc,” she murmured, in answer to William’s unspoken query. She took a hand-sized swatch of silk and proceeded to massage the blade’s edges with it, spreading the talc dust up and down the length of the weapon. After several minutes, she pulled a hair from her head and set it drifting in the air before her.

“Whick,” the blade tip moved from her knee to her chin faster than the eye could follow. Two hairs now settled lazily toward the ground. Mikki shifted the blade to her left hand.

“Whishshwhissh” Four short hairs continued to slide to the forest floor, separated from each other by the blur that Mikki wielded in her left hand. She grasped the haft with a relaxed hand, almost loosely. When the blade was asked to move, it did so without accelerating into motion, moving from where it had been to where it was now faster than the eye could follow.

William stared admiringly. He had seen speed with a blade demonstrated before, but this girl was faster by far than his instructors. “She’d be handing you your privates before you felt the cut,” the old saw learned at school took on real meaning, now. The tall, muscular girl with the dour mein and the stony-cold personality took on a new dimension.

The hilt of the spinning sword changed hands again and in a single unbroken motion, her left thumb and forefinger guided the blade-tip into the leather sheath without Mikki’s having to glance. Her attention remained on the rising slope before them, seeking the straightest line through the steadily shortening trees and still moving upward.

Twenty minutes later, the pair broke through the treeline and onto the rocky slope leading to the peak. A snow flurry had recently passed, and William noted no tracks disturbing the scanty white cover on the rocks.

“Wh-,” his question was abruptly off by an upraised palm and Mikki slipped quickly forward, as silent as though wading through foot-deep drifts. She was a great cat, stalking her prey, gathering herself for the fateful, predatory pounce.

Mikki had grown maturely cautious since her encounter with the dragons and the troll, “I’ve been treated t’ a large taste o’ my mortality,” she reasoned, “And might not be s’ lucky a second time. Let’s try t’ stay alive, as th’ chances o’ my hauntin’ anythin’ t’ death ‘r’ not promisin’.” She raised herself slowly up to the lip of a rock ledge and peered into the hollow below.

The sight that greeted her was both more and less than she expected. Less, in that she had been mistaken about trolls being nearby; more in terms of numbers.

“Baal and Derketa,” she fumed beneath her breath, “Not what I would call a great find. Now what in the seven hells are they doing here?” The squad of armed goblins populating the rocky vale was gathered around something, most standing, two squatted, pawing through a pile of items. Mikki could see little through the midst of the crowd, but the count of creatures totaled six.

“There’s six of ‘em,” William’s voice whispered from off her right shoulder. “What do we do now?”

Mikki raised one finger to her lips, then patted the ground softly with her right palm and mouthed, “Wait.” And wait they did, through the remainder of the afternoon and swift mountain sunset and into the dark hours of night.

Mikki took stock of her new senses and their obvious flaws. It was similar to a smell, but it didn’t come via her nose. Her guide had simply pointed consistently in a given direction, like a lodestone on a freely floating raft in the middle of a still pond. She had sensed troll, but found only their distant cousins, the goblins. There had been no warning about how many, and she’d discovered half a dozen. Still and all, her instinct had led her in the right direction – maybe experience would train her to better identify what she smelled in the future.

The goblins settled in for the night, posting a guard at either end of the narrow defile. The half moon, which had been visible in the eastern sky at twilight, dropped below the western horizon, leaving only starlight. “Bout two hours ‘til sunrise,” Mikki estimated, “Now’s th’ time.” She looked to her right; William was sleeping, stretched out face down, head cradled on one forearm. “Thanks the gods, he doesn’t snore,” she thought. She slid closer to the slumbering youth and reached out, scratching his head, gently waking him.

“Hhhmm?” William’s head lifted slightly, eyes still closed. “Hhngg.” Mikki put her lips next to his ear.

“William, time to get up,” she whispered. Her charge blinked himself soundlessly into consciousness and focused on her face. A smile crossed his features, followed by a frown as dream vaporized into reality. Mikki slid backward, away from the edge, motioning for him to follow.

They crouched out of sight of the sentries, plotting their next tactics in whispers. Shortly, they moved off together, heading for the east end of the canyon.

The goblin sentry stood atop a natural rock platform, resting both hands on the hilts of his longsword, point resting on a stone at his feet. His bald head rotated slowly and randomly from side to side, scanning the darkness before him, beady eyes piercing the night. He needed only starlight to see, being a creature of the underground and long accustomed to lightless places. He could see as well on this moonless night as most men could at high noon.

Mikki’s instinct about waiting until dark worked so far as getting most of the goblins to sleep. Still, somehow she knew that the darkness would not hide her from those remaining awake. So, although the advantage of numbers had been temporarily erased, the creature still had the benefit of night vision. That did not help him hear her stealthy, soundless approach. Nor would he be, despite his low-light vision, able to see behind himself.

Mikki arranged the baldric around her shoulders so that the sword hung between her shoulder blades and she and William helped each other noiselessly down the canyon wall, between the sentinel and the camp. “It may be able to see i’ th’ dark, but I doubt it has eyes in th’ back ‘f its head,” she thought. William’s seemed fascinated by the goblin until Mikki’s tug at his sleeve guided him around a shoulder of rock and out of the creature’s sight.

A sandy path led through a narrow cleft – two swordsmen could block the passage – and the pair slipped quickly along until the path widened into the sleeping camp. A small pile of goods lay to one side of the burned-out campfire. Mikki again motioned William to silence and indicated the pile. She signaled him to stay, leaving him in the relative safety of the clearing’s edge as she crept into the center of the troop.

She could make out starlight reflecting off glittering metal links in the disorganized store before her. A pair of leather gloves rested on the mail shirt and a short sword lay atop the rest. As Mikki drew closer, jewels appeared at the collar and sleeve-ends of the mail. This would be a rich prize, indeed – if she could carry it off without being discovered.

William’s head ached from the effort of keeping Mikki and, by turns, the sentinel goblin in sight in the dim starlight. His attention, however, never flagged, since both his life and Mikki’s would be threatened by the creature’s return. The remainder of the group remained asleep. William held his breath as Mikki sheathed her short sword across her back, freeing her arms for carrying.

She looked beautiful in the faint starlight – even at this distance. Tall and lean muscled, with a warrior’s athletic carriage and the grace of a dancer or an accomplished swordsman. Raven curls drifted halfway down her back, stirred by a breath of air in the canyon. The mail shirt hugged her like a second skin, and she wore it as if it were, completely at home in the twenty or so pounds of steel links. Her sheepskin baldric was presently woven about her neck and shoulders to form a back-harness for the short sword she bore – and wielded with inhuman speed – the leather scabbard holding the hilt just at the back of her neck, within instant reach, but out of the way of her present effort, its thongs around her waist, fastening the free end.

She moved like a wraith in the shadows of the sleeping camp, careful to avoid disturbing her unwitting hosts. In due course, she stood over the small pile of goods near the remains of the fire and sank to one knee to inspect them. Her hunched-over frame was visible only as a shadow among others for some seconds. Then she rose and William glimpsed a handful of glittering starlight in Mikki’s hands.

The warrioress stood and let the mail shirt droop from her outstretched hands, hanging its shoulders between her fingers and admiring the collar of gems fixed to the glittering armor. “Well, I am a girl,” she reasoned. She soundlessly removed the baldric from around her shoulders and set her weapon aside, then, gathering the lightweight fabric up to the garment’s armpits, she slipped it over her head and slid it down until its lower hem hung just above her knees. It fit as if it had been molded on her.

“But then ‘t would,” she opined, “It havin’ been made by dwarven smiths.” And indeed, the bejeweled vestment was the product of those enchanted craftsmen. The collar, hem, and cuffs were encrusted with gems of every color – sapphire, ruby, amethyst, emerald, and diamond. Each sleeve’s end was encircled by a dragon, sapphire blue on the left, emerald green on the right. The high throat was embedded with mosaic figures of dragons, contesting with horsed knights; the red dragon curling across her left collarbone to face an onyx knight riding an amethyst destrier, back-to-back with the diamond knight on his garnet steed jousting against a jade monster whose tail entwined the first at the nape of Mikki’s neck. The hem was a mosaic mural of forested landscapes featuring all manner of beast, real and mythical, hidden among the emerald greenery. And surmounting all, encircling each hem like the border of a picture frame, was woven in gold and pointed in precious stones, a crown-like trim. It was a thing of rare beauty and even rarer value. Even as she stood admiring the workmanship, she could feel the almost weightless metallic links adjusting themselves to her form. The magical mail even made the steel mail shirt she wore beneath it feel like so much silk against her skin.

Mikki’s features broke into a gleeful grin. “Seem ‘s m’ luck’s tak’n a change. Wonder what else’s in there?” She wove the sword’s sheath across her shoulders again and returned to rifling through the trove of goods at her feet.

William lay atop a boulder a the edge of the clearing, watching, waiting for any sign of movement from the camp’s sleeping inhabitants, all the while keeping an ear cocked for any sound from behind which would betray the return of the sentry from his post near the arroyo’s mouth. It occurred to him that greed was oft’ th’ downfall o‘ many. But any audible warning could in itself prove their undoing, so he waited, silently fretting.

It was the clashing of swordplay that woke him. He started, jerking his head off the stone and blinking once to clear his vision. Not completely awake, he leapt from his perch to the ground below and raced into the scene before him.

Mikki whirled like a dervish, short sword flicking up and down, before, behind, catching blows from the goblins’ longer weapons on the blade as she fended others off with her shield.

“Stick ‘n’ move, stick ‘n’ move,” she murmured, hopping lightly over a blade swept at her knees. The move carried her sideways to within arm’s reach of another attacker whose longsword jabbed forward like a serpent’s tongue. Mikki arched slightly to one side and slammed the hilt against her adversary’s blade, sweeping her shield up to cover her blind side. Her wrist twisted and the longsword sailed into the air, but before she could take advantage of her now disarmed foe, a heavy thud on her shield jolted her left arm, drawing her attention.

Her head whipped around to glimpse a second blade swinging at about waist level; her shield dropped to catch it and again she stepped toward the goblin she had just disarmed, sword swinging without looking. The creature gave ground, backpedaling, and Mikki stepped into the gap in the circle, taking a second swipe at the retreating figure, then spun, whipping the sword and shield in unison from right to left.

William saw the crowd of squat, leathery-skinned hobgoblins swarming around her, blades rising and falling in apparent slow motion compared to the wildly curvetting Amazon. He rushed at the back of the nearest, sword raised, and chopped heavily at the creature’s back.

The goblin’s acute hearing betrayed William’s onrushing approach and he turned to catch the stroke, deflecting it with his own longsword. William’s momentum carried him stumbling past and one step further on, another of the half-dozen misshapen gnomes hammered its fist into the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.

Mikki saw him fall out of the corner of her eye. “Useless brat,” she thought, but quick as the thought came, it was displaced by the more immediate needs of defending herself against the seeming forest of steel waving about her.

She moved toward the back of the sword-wielding goblin still recovering from William’s fruitless assault, only to find her way blocked by a pair of others, each with swordpoint leveled at her belly. Her blade swept up, beating the two apart and she leapt through the opening as her original target turned to bring his weapon up. Mikki, unable to stop her own momentum, nearly impaled herself on its point, falling sideways only at the last instant, but not quite fast enough.

“Nngghh,” a grunt of pain through gritted teeth as a crimson line started from her left thigh. But instinct told her she could not stop and she continued her roll to rise back to her feet, finally outside the ring of attackers. She slid to her left, trying to isolate one at the end of the line.

Her sword jabbed forward at the nearest foe, but the pain in her left thigh slowed the thrust of her legs. The goblin parried the stroke, swinging his blade in a circle, catching Mikki’s and momentarily throwing her off balance.

Pain exploded in her left calf and her right arm swung around at an unseen foe, followed by her head. The goblin had landed a second blow, this time without Mikki’s help, and barely missed taking her shield arm off at the shoulder. The arc of his stroke carried downward, short of Mikki’s back as she lunged forward, thrusting from her left foot. The longsword’s tip slammed into the earth, but not before the edge found the inside of her calf.

Mikki still refused to slow down. Battle-crazed, she ignored pain the way flying geese disregard a light rainfall. Blood ran from the pair of cuts on her wounded leg, but no important cables had been cut and she rebounded from her missed blow. Raising the shield to cover her retreat, she drove the creature off, swinging her sword.

She found herself, at last, backed against the steep wall of the arroyo, the sextet of armed monsters spread into a semicircle before her. Her chest heaved, taking in gasps of air. Sweat from every pore glistened on her exposed skin and mixed, stinging, into the bloody gashes on her leg. Her sweat-soaked hair hung about her face. Her eyes narrowed, brows knitting, concentrating on her next move.

The goblin to her right jumped forward, a feint intended to bring her guard to that side. Mikki swept her blade up and left, following her target’s backward flinch by moving left into the opening. There was space to run and she ran, moving toward the narrow defile that exited the steep-walled canyon.

Not quickly enough. Ignore the pain though she might, the wounds to her left leg were deeper than she admitted, slowing her, and a swordcut aimed at her retreating back missed cutting her through the ribs, but managed to find purchase just below the flapping hem of the dwarf-mail, gouging a deep incision in the right side of her ass.

“Aaagghh!” Another cry, and now, wounded in both legs, running would be even harder. Mikki stumbled from the blow, caught herself, and ran, limping, toward her goal.

Even hobbled by her injuries, she outsped her short-legged pursuers for a short distance. The crack in the wall loomed nearer, offering a defensible haven – her enemies would have to advance at her frontally, where she could use her shield and sword to best advantage. The defile was narrow enough to force her attackers to come not more than two abreast, allowing her preternatural speed to come into play.

But the distance to the entrance of her refuge was not as short as she needed it to be. The pack closed on her battered, tiring legs just as she slipped into safety and turned to make her stand. She had only half turned, swinging the shield blindly around to cover when she felt it slam into something solid. The creature clasped the shield and her arm against his chest as the force of the blow toppled him sideways. Mikki felt herself pulled off–balance to her left and stuck out her left leg to brace herself, turning to resist the tugging.

A battering ram slammed into her rib cage. The blow from the longsword would have cut her in half, but the enchanted mail did its work, dulling the edged weapon. The sheer force of the stroke rattled through her frame, driving breath from her lungs and bringing stars to her eyes. A familiar sharp, stabbing gout of agony erupted under her right arm and she let herself follow the pull on her shield arm, allowing her captor to pull her out of further harm.

She took two stumbling strides toward him and recovered her balance, changing from stumbling recovery to charge in a single step, driving the goblin into the wall with her shield and knocking the wind from him with a grunt.

Her sword swung behind her, bringing protest from her right side, but momentarily clearing her back, giving her time for a single forward stroke; it was enough. The waist-high upward thrust of her blade took the creature just below the ribs and drove upward, deep into the lung. The steel glided out just as quickly, crimsoned with gore, followed by a scarlet fountain. The goblin sagged, gurgling, to its knees.

“Die RIGHT, you motherless sum’bitch,” she hissed, and whirling around, blade spraying a bloody shower, to face the goblin whose blow had nearly proven fatal, she announced grimly, “Yer next!”

Then the remaining four were upon her. True to her plan, the narrowing canyon crowded their efforts so that their numbers served only to interfere with one another. Even so, those numbers taxed even her speed and agility as she backed slowly down the canyon, parrying thrusts and overhand blows.

Step, Parry, Thrust, Block. Step. Slowly, Mikki progressed backwards along her escape route. She reached the mouth of the defile and realized that she had lost the advantage she held in the confined space. They could spread out and surround her, now.

Her right foot stepped over the edge of a drop and she crouched, seeking purchase. Her aching left thigh declined to hold and she toppled backward, plummeting some twenty feet into a crevice in a jumbled pile of rocks. The near-vertical face of a granite slab reached out and slammed into her helmet, driving her beneath another boulder; the sudden impact with this new obstruction brought a wave of blinding pain from her reinjured rib cage. She shook dizzy cobwebs from her consciousness and slid deeper into the crawlway until she came to a dead end. There was just room to turn, kneeling, and place her shield across the space. She peered out over the edge into the gloom, sword held at her waist, tip raised and hidden just behind the shield.

Minutes passed while Mikki took deep, controlled, silent breaths. She could hear the grunting, gasping language of the goblins above her in the rockpile as they searched noisily through for her. Time passed and the noises receded gradually into the distance, eventually disappearing. Dawn came. Mikki, leg wounds having stopped oozing, but smeared in gore – some hers, some theirs – breath catching on a incompletely healed rib, head aching with concussion and unable to find a comfortable position, fell asleep kneeling, leaning against the dented shield that formed the hatchway to her sanctuary.

Mickey’s uneasy slumber was broken by a rattling crash from above. She started and instantly regretted the sudden straightening of her back as the raw nerves in her right side reacted to ragged bone shards grating against each other. A wave of dizziness engulfed her and tears squeezed from her tightly compressed eyelids.

“Oooohhnngh.” Her head swam and she reopened her eyes, wiping tears from her cheeks and trying to focus through the hammer-and-anvil throbbing in her head. Her hands went to her ears in an attempt to hold her skull together and she felt the knobby unevenness above and behind her left ear. “Oohh, wow,” she moaned softly, then abruptly remembering her predicament, pressed her lips together.

The rattle from overhead started up again after a few minutes delay. Mikki recognized the clatter of metal on stone and ventured a peek over the top of her shield. The low, narrow passage she had traversed on the way in was empty, gloomily shadowed in the midmorning light. She could see the end of the tunnel some twenty feet away - the bottom of a sunlit shaft. A shadow fell into the patch of light. A voice reverberated down, mumbling a country tune in no particular key.

“I’ll kill ‘im,” She thought, “That worthless pile o’ road apples.” It could only be William, her erstwhile companion and hired help. She drew breath to call out, thought better of the idea, and silently slid the shield from its barricade position. She noted the trail of dried, brown gore smeared along the floor as she crawled forward to the edge of the vertical exit shaft. Just as she reached it, she turned onto her back and craned her neck cautiously upward.

And there he sat, twenty feet above her, one leg hanging over the edge of the slab. At least, there his leg was. Mikki judged by its rhythmic swinging that it remained attached to its still-unseen owner. An irritated scowl creased her features and she eased herself to standing.

“Hey, up there, y’ useless collection o’ hyena dung.”

Surprise at the sound nearly cost William his balance and his perch. Retracting his dangling foot from the ledge and lying down, he peered down into the shadowed crevice.

“Mikki? That you?”

“O’ course, Lead-fer-brains, who else would it be?” Her mood was not improving. “Now let down a rope and help me outta here.”

“Don’t have a rope.”

Mikki’s foul mood deepened. “Do NOT make me climb up there and beat the livin’ shit out o’ y’,” she warned. “I’m tired, hungry ‘n’ hurt, an’ yer not makin’ me feel better.”

William ducked back from the edge as if recoiling from a blow. “She is mad,” he observed inwardly, “I’d better do something.” And having so admonished himself, spurred by a string of demands punctuated by an impressively varied sequence of oaths issuing from the shaft beneath him, he searched about for a means to assist his mistress.

At length, he came upon a fallen pine tree, some thirty feet tall, he estimated, before it had come to grief at the receiving end of a random lightning strike. By main force, sweating to the point that after fifteen minutes of labor, he had removed his shirt and redonned the leather jerkin, he dragged the weighty trunk to the edge of the precipice.

“I’m coming,” he called, responding to Mikki’s proffered abuse. He pushed the larger end of the log over the edge, hanging on to a pair of the lower branches. Gravity took hold. He tightened his grip, only to find that the bark under his hands had separated from the underlying wood as the first stages of rot had settled in. Abruptly, he found himself staring at a few scraps of pine-tarred bark and splinters in his palms.

A fresh string of curses, at higher volume and completely unique from anything he had previously heard that morning, assailed him. He got the distinct impression that if murder were his intent, he wasn’t considered intelligent enough to perform the deed, nor were any of his immediate relatives, living or dead, taken singly or as a group.

Shortly, Mikki’s hands’ appeared in the higher boughs, pulling the sweating, swearing Amazon into view.

“Well,” she demanded, “D’y’ mean t’ stand there starin’ at me all day? Lend me one o’ yer hands – the one with th’ opposin’ thumb, ‘f it’s not too much t’ ask.” William hastened to offer his hand, took a firm grip on Mikki’s right wrist and pulled.

She rewarded this effort with yet another blistering condemnation of his intelligence (less than a mollusk in heat), his forebears’ regression down the evolutionary chain (precipitous), his parentage (of dubious repute, distinction and species) and his general character (compared unfavorably to a disease-spreading temple prostitute).

“…and if y’ ever do that again, I’ll flay y’ alive ‘n’ then blister yer worthless carcass in boilin’ oil before servin’ it t’ th’ crows,” she finished. William presented her his most contrite expression.

She glared at him, left hand on hip, right arm unable to rise, for several seconds. Her ire subsided and despite the ache in her right side every time she inhaled, she found herself unable to suppress a growing grin. In deference to her tender ribs, she resisted allowing it to progress into laughter.

“I am such a sucker for small boys,” she muttered.

Shortly, the pair lay side-by-side on the rock, recovering from the morning’s exertions. Mikki’s right rib cage sported a hen’s egg-sized lump surrounded by a bruise as big as her two palms side-by-side, purple in the middle, blending vividly to green and yellow at the periphery. She had removed the silvery mail-coat – or what remained of it – and the underlying steel and lay clad only in her sweat-stained silk underclothing. The thrashing of the day before had inflicted irreparable damage on the dwarven mail – much of its decoration was lost - and much as she regretted losing it, she offered up a grateful prayer to the smiths who had fashioned it.

“What?” It was William; she had evidently whispered her gratitude a bit louder than intended.

“Nothin’, nothin’,” she replied, “Jus’ talkin’ to th’ gods.” She levered herself gingerly up to a sitting position. Her head jerked sideways to see what had briefly glittered in her peripheral vision.

A ruby. Not overly large, but a cut and polished stone. She reached over and picked it up, inspecting the gem with fascinated curiosity. “Where did this come from?” she wondered.

“Look,” she displayed the stone to William.

“Oh, yeah, “ he said, angling his head to look more closely, “I’ve been finding those all morning.”

Mikki stopped, momentarily dumbfounded by this revelation; then, infinitely slowly, the dawn rose on what had happened.

“Been finding them all morning’, eh?”

“Yep, someone’s got a hole in their pocket or something.”

“Indeed,” she crooned, “Now, just who might that be, d’y’ think?”

William’s eyes widened as her direction became clear to him. He swiveled his head to face her. Words weren’t necessary, her face said it plain as day. He sat up and dug his left hand into the small bag suspended from his belt, turning it inside out to display the contents.

A myriad of precious stones fell into his right hand, glittering in the midmorning sun.

“Yours?” he asked, meekly.

Mikki’s lip curled into an ironic smile, belying the effect delivered by her arched eyebrow. Her right hand extended, palm upward.

“Hand ‘em over.”

They had spent yesterday afternoon making their way along the ridge to the southernmost peak of the North Range. William remained his clumsy self, so Mikki found herself forced to lead, while both kept watch, seeking to avoid a renewal of the previous evening’s acquaintance. Careful scouting and a number of detours around likely ambush sites combined with the early spring thaw’s effect on the mountain trail, turning dry stone into treacherously slippery footing, rendered progress slow and by nightfall they had just reached the peak. It would be a night spent in the open. William hoped it wouldn’t rain.

Mikki was tired – exhausted, in fact. She had led, limping, the entire day, ignoring the deep gash which the day’s effort had reopened, oozing into the right hip of her silk underwear and hobbling her leg and the pair of lesser cuts painfully announcing their presence with every stride of her left. Added to the constant stabbing pain in her right side that prevented her from breathing comfortably, they drained even her remarkable stamina. She had worn the heavy steel mail all day, prepared for an attack that never materialized. The constant tension of readiness exacted a further toll on her resources and by the time the sun dropped below the horizon to the west, she was looking forward gratefully to the chance to stop and rest.

“No fire,” she ordered, tersely. William nodded. The light of even a small campfire would advertise their location for miles. They had made no contact with the goblins, but caution remained the safest policy. Mikki was uncertain about her ability to survive a second encounter with the remaining five goblins – and who knew that they didn’t have relatives living hereabouts in these mountains, to boot?

And so they rested, seated on the cold ground. William had recovered most of their traveling gear during his meanderings of yesterday morning. He related how he had awakened to find himself abandoned in a sandy-floored rock-encircled clearing, head aching and hungry. Pragmatically, he had looked first for evidence of the outcome of the evening’s fighting and found the jumbled crowd of tracks leading, out of the box canyon.

He had returned to collect his belongings before heading out to track down any surviving goblins and find Mikki’s body.

“Yer confidence’s is overwhelming,” she commented acidly.

“Sorry,” he conceded, “How did you get away?”

“It was an accident,” she retorted, “I stepped in somethin’.”

The farmboy-turned-soldier-turned-mercenary adventurer laughed. “I saw what you stepped in,” he retorted, “You looked pretty dumb, down there.”

“Just full o’ compliments, aren’t we?” Miki had had enough for one night “Keep watch. And stay awake this time,” she admonished him. “If I have t’ wake you up, yer mother’s goin’ t’ be a very unhappy woman.” And with that, she curled into a woolen blanket and in three breaths, was asleep.

The Demise of Hrolf

The Bashkar leader smiles, but does not reach for his weapon. Hrolf is bringing his axe Bergthora to hand when suddenly a green-fletched arrow flies from the bushes and strikes him unerringly in the back of the neck. Bergthora falls from his limp fingers as he topples, making the ground shake. The Bashkar leader laughs.

The Realm falls silent as Hrolf's regular nightly Rrraaa AAAA Aaaaagghhh ?!!!! fails to ring across the mountains and valleys.

Mikki woke to find herself alone and sat up, wondering at William’s absence. Memory eased slowly into focus and she recalled parting with one of the diamonds to pay William off for his services and bidding him farewell the preceding afternoon. A thought came to her and she immediately reached for her purse. Still there. Opening the drawstring bag, she peered inside. The glittering stones were still within. She poured them into her palm and admired the multi-colored glitter.

Several minutes passed while Mikki returned the jewels to her purse, readied herself for the day and crawled weakly from the sleeping furs. Her head ached and the cuts in her legs - especially the right one – burned; sweat glistened from every pore, but still she shivered with chills.

“Need t’ find a leech,” she mumbled. Illness was something she was unaccustomed to, but she recognized the signs as serious. She gathered her few belongings and began plodding downhill, towards the valleys where, hopefully, civilization waited.

Mikki was thankful the final few miles from the southern end of the range to the Chapel were relatively easy going. She remained hobbled by her wounds, but they bothered her less than the fever that had drained her for five days and at least William was no longer around to complain about the wind-whipped cold. She entered the comparative shelter of the forested lower slopes. Exhaustion, coupled with the pain in her legs soured the Amazon’s mood.

She cleared the edge of the golden wood and wound her way up the gently rising path leading to the dell inhabited by The Friar of Fountain Abbey, called by some The Curtal Friar. He was known for his generosity to travelers and the readiness of his board, or so William had claimed. Mikki considered the source and held out hope that a good meal might be in the offing, and having no better idea of her own, followed the meandering path along the streambed.

As she crossed a rise in the trail through the woods, a voice came to her – someone singing at the top of his lungs, a chanty, similar to what seamen might sing to converge their individual efforts into a single brutish force. Mikki stopped at the crest of the road, placed arms akimbo and chuckled, shaking her head at the scene before her.

Mikki struggled mightily to contain her mirth on seeing the fat little man splashing about in the shallows of the creek, naked as a jaybird. His hands were submerged to above the elbows, vigorously rolling a dark mass back and forth across the surface of a flat stone submerged in the water. Soaproot suds stood on the rock and drifted downstream in minute trails.

Mikki gasped as a pang from her ribs interrupted the start of a giggle. Then seated herself in the middle of the trail, stifling laughter, thoroughly amused by the sight of a short, fat man of the cloth laundering while naked.

It was several minutes before her glee reached the point where she was unable to remain unnoticed.

“What? Who goes?” The chubby cleric called, standing and facing up the trail into the shadows of the wood. Mikki could no longer contain herself and rolled over, arms clutched about midsection alternately coughing and choking, her face distorted in agony and hooting in undisciplined merriment. The friar, for his part, abruptly realized the ridiculousness of his plight; his eyebrows knitted.

“Varlets! Blasphemers!” he bellowed. He turned to retrieve his one-piece, all-purpose robe – the only garment his vows of poverty allowed him – and struggled into the sodden, sagging, woolen mass. The struggle only elicited further howls of glee from the now helplessly prostrate and gasping Amazon

In time, the dripping wet priest waddled over to where Mikki wrestled gamely to recover her composure.

“Well, have ye aught t’ say f’ y’sel’?” He demanded. This prompted another gale of hilarity. It was some seconds until Mikki composed herself to where she was able to talk.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Friar…” she began, then spluttered into giggles and collapsed again. Another minute passed as Friar Alvin waited impatiently, apparently annoyed.

Mikki started again, “I…I..was onl…” another paroxysm seized her and she caved in yet again.

The holy man’s face twitched into a smile, then a grin, “Oh, a’ right,” he surrendered. “Whither bound? If y’ c’n gather enow breath t’ speak, that is.”

Some minutes of conversation followed. Mikki, called upon to explain her cuts and bruises, told as much of the truth as she deemed Alvin needed to know and gratefully accepted the offered medicines and bandages. The duo stopped in the middle of the ford to seat Mikki on a dry, if chilly, rock and bathe her cuts before continuing on to the cottage that Friar Alvin called home.

It was one of those quaint two-room cottages common to the lesser folk – thatched roof, plaster on wood lath walls supported by great round posts roughly hewn from tree trunks – or at least sizable limbs. Mikki was ushered to a seat at the hearth, which she dutifully took, and stretched her limbs toward the fire glowing cheerily within.

She looked around as she warmed herself; the place was crowded with arcane bric-a-brac and books strewn about, seemingly at random, some open to marked pages. There were tools of the astrologer’s art – an astrolabe, divining compass, circular charts decorated with unrecognizable symbols.

“You see the stars?” she asked.

“Obviously,” the cleric replied, crushing some dried leaves between mortar and pestle. “They say the future’s there t’ be seen, but f’r me, I’m nae a b’liever o’ any o’ that.”

“Then why…”

“Because they’re there. And no one really knows how they got there, or why they’re put there.” The sage peered briefly into the stone beaker in his left hand, and judged the result sufficient for his purpose. He looked up. “Curiosity, I suppose.” He ladled some water from an iron-bound oaken bucket into the mug crossed the room and placed the crucible near the fire.

Mikki slipped off her mail, wincing almost invisibly as she did so. Alvin puttered about collecting his leech’s tools while the decoction warmed. Presently, he pulled a stool to the hearth and sat facing his patient.

“How is it you’ve suffered all this damage?”

“Luck o’ th’ draw. Fortunes of war,” came the answer.

Alvin shrugged inwardly. It was none of his business, he only served the gods by maintaining this way station along the forest path, seeing to the needs of chance passersby and surviving by their generosity. It gave him time to indulge his two great passions – science and eating – for which he remained eternally thankful.

Mikki’s breath hissed inward between clenched teeth as the bandage, moistened with the solution, wiped through the lacerations on her left thigh. The cuts were deep and the surgeon spent several minutes cleansing them, explaining all the while the importance of removing all dirt from such, so to prevent suppuration. He leaned close to inspect his efforts, pronounced his ministrations adequate and prepared a poultice of newly wetted linen to bind the leg.

“And the other leg?” Alvin asked. Any fool could see the Amazon was in pain, stoically though she bore it. She raised one eyebrow, stood turned and slid her silk undergarment down, baring her haunches to him.

“Hhhmm...,” the friar’s voice rumbled in his throat as he assessed the condition. “Not so good, this one, I’m afraid. You’ve got corruption in th’ wound. Not a good sign.” Indeed the surrounding tissue was reddened and swollen; a gentle prod of the cleric’s fingers brought a defensive twitch from Mikki.

Alvin rose and crossed the tiny space to a cabinet against the wall. Opening it, he withdrew a brown clay jug stopped with a cork, dipped in melted wax. He returned to his stool.

“We’ll move this stool out o’ the way and bring that bench over here.” Mikki watched, curious as to the contents of the jug, but not venturing to ask.

“Now, dear girl, lie down here before me, so I can tend to your injury.” Mikki stretched out prone in the bench.

“Prepare yourself, this will burn, somewhat.” And with that, he peeled away the layer of sealing wax, removed the cork from the bottle and poured a coin-sized puddle into a fold of cloth held in his hand. Mikki evened her breathing, readying herself for a sudden influx of pain.

She hardly imagined the intensity of the sensation that assaulted her. A searing fire lanced across her inflamed buttock, racing up her spine to jerk her head up, eyes bulging. “Aahhh…,” as soon as it had started, the rush of pain subsided to a warm throbbing, suffusing through her, bringing with it strength and relaxing ease. She lowered her head to the bench, resting her cheek on her hands as her elbows drooped over the sides. It felt so much better…

“She’ll sleep for a while, now,” Alvin predicted to himself, some minutes later. The agent had done its work, the suppuration in the wound was all but gone and would be only a memory by morning. The inflammation surrounding the cut would be a day or two subsiding, and she would bear a livid scar, but she was no longer in danger. Alvin gave silent thanks and blessed the ancient crone who had taught him the properties of that particular fungus. Remarkable stuff! He saved it for only the most severe cases, and it boasted a creditable success rate, considering that the majority of patients presenting inflammations of this sort were at death’s door when he met them.

Sounds from the glen outside filtered through the closed door. Alvin pulled a linen cover over the sleeping Amazon and turned his attention to the window, query glittering briefly in his eyes, then recognition, and he flung the door wide.

“Brethren! Ah! God’s peace to my Brethren who serve to guard travelers hereabouts against highwaymen,” he offered benediction to the quartet of armored men that trooped in.

“’Evenin’, Brother Alvin,” the first replied. The other three exchanged hugs with Alvin and the last asked, “Who’s the little bundle, yonder?,” tipping his chin in the general direction of the hearth.

“Ah!,” their host plied, “Another of my patients. Poor dear suffered some wounds in a fight of some sort or other. Nothing serious, but she could use some rest, now. Would you be s’ good as t’ assist me?”

The pair who had up to this point said nothing both looked at Alvin. “Put her in the bed?,” asked one, and at Friar Alvin’s nodded assent, grasped the unconscious Mikki about the shoulders while his partner looped arms around her legs; The pair carried Mikki unceremoniously to the down-stuffed mattress stretched across the net of knotted rope suspended in one corner of the room and deposited her gently. Kellen spread a similarly down-filled quilt over her. Mikki stirred briefly; a smile crossed her features in her sleep.

The squad seated before the fire bore the look of professional soldiery – which, indeed they were. The finest fighters money could buy. The youngest had thirty battles to his credit – and he not yet five-and twenty. The senior member was nearing forty – a hard muscled and much-scarred forty, and survivor of more fighting than he cared to remember.

But on this day, the sunset found them marching into the dismal wood inhabited by Good Brother Alvin. Alvin – friend to all. The evening’s chores were efficiently disposed of accompanied by a steady stream of conversation - mostly speculation on the young woman they had discovered in Alvin’s keeping, accompanied by the occasional ribald jest – but Alvin would tell all in his own good time and at the moment, the goodly churchman was seeing to his flock’s temporal needs, preparing dinner.

Well, look at this,” Kellen indicated Mikki’s silk shorts. Then, with a sidelong look at a Alvin, “I see our good friar’s not been hurtin’ for companionship, eh?” The party, Alvin included, chortled heartily. Alvin’s vows did not include celibacy, and his valley hosted the spring celebrations every year – a week-long revelry whose annual approach Alvin himself announced. And there were those persistent rumors concerning the effectiveness of his treatments on barren women.

The star-gazer, for his part, satisfied their curiosity as best he could, detailing his meeting with the sickened girl that afternoon and the extent of his treatment.

“I could see she was in trouble as soon as she pulled her pants down,” he interjected.

His foursome of guests laughed aloud. “I call that an understatement, Brother, “ Roland grinned over the rim of his ale-horn. “The King’s seraglio’d be in trouble - eunuch guards and all - and you within fifty mile.” Another hearty round of laughter.

“Eunuchs, indeed,” rejoined the priest. “I rather fancy Her Majesty, the Empress.” He raised his nose into the air and flipped his hand through imaginary curls above his left shoulder, an effeminate gesture that he pulled of despite his girth and masculine presence.

“You mean you fancy you are the Empress,” jibed Logan. The conversation rambled on in the fashion of men’s conversations, trading tales of travels and fights and deeds salted with coarse language and bawdy remarks. Eventually, each man but one settled into his sleeping roll, all gathered about the hearth.

“Wake me for my watch, Logan,” reminded Kellen.

Mikki woke just after dawn and looked around at the four sleeping forms on the floor of the cabin. Friar Alvin, asleep seated in a fur-layered armchair, she recognized, but the others were strangers. She couldn’t remember them from the previous day, but the carefully tended array of weapons showed them to be soldiers of some sort – and not highwaymen. She spotted her clothes hung neatly on the back of a chair next to the bed and only then noticed the coarseness of homespun sheets against her bare skin. She giggled. It felt good to be alive.

Her health had returned, the fever broken. The relative comfort compared to the past few days energized her, even in her tired state, tired, but no longer terminally exhausted. A peek beneath the sheets told her that the cuts she could see were healing well; she would have to take the friar’s word about the one she couldn’t see. The thought tickled her and she giggled again.

She sighed, retrieved her clothes and dressed quickly, checking to confirm her purse hadn’t been rifled. She had things to do, and she wanted to be ready when this group of warriors awakened. She had money – or could barter the jewels salvaged from the dwarf-mail - to hire them, if they were willing. And that gang of goblins was still out there in the mountains.

And then there was still that damned troll.

Mikki turned a grim face towards the cabin door and strode into the yard to salute the sun.

THE END