Chapter 1

Three Weeks Later.

Water sparkled like diamonds in the hazy late morning sunlight. A cold spring rain had left fat water droplets hanging from every leaf and blade, cascading in shimmering rivulets with every puff of breeze. The grazing doe left dark imprints in the wet grass as she fed along the roadside, her fawns frolicking playfully in the concealing undergrowth.

A distant sound caught her attention and she lifted her head, scenting the breeze. Men were on the road, their voices raised in cheerful disagreement. She returned to cropping the tender young vegetation until they were in sight, then surveyed them carefully. They didn't look like the usual hunters from these parts, but she gathered her fawns and melted into the trees, concealing herself and her precious babies until the danger was past.

The two men riding along the primitive track were oblivious to both her presence and her retreat, their attention focused on their conversation.

"Are you *sure* we were supposed to take the right-hand fork?" Michael asked his blond companion as he splashed along the edge of the track.

"That's what the innkeeper said." David's big bay gelding followed the other knight's mount around yet another enormous puddle, and he jerked irritably on the pack mule's tether as it tried to plow straight through instead.

"But it was supposed to be a well-traveled road, and we haven't seen any sign of people in two days," the dark-haired man argued.

"He *said* to take the right-hand fork and we'd cut two days off the journey to Havelford. And this road has to lead somewhere. We might as well go forward as back. Not that way, Stupid!" David jerked on the tether again as the mule slithered into a deep rut, seemingly determined to cover not only itself but all their belongings with the rich dark mud.

"You know, we've been heading almost due west for the last two days and Havelford is more to the north. I'm not even sure we're in Goncaster any more. I think we've crossed the border into Maldoria."

"Well, if we have, maybe someone there will have a need for a pair of knights. If we don't rust before we get there." David gestured ruefully toward the chain mail shirt he wore, glistening with rain under his sodden wool cloak.

"We have enough coin for now, but we're going to need another job soon," Michael offered his assessment of the situation. "Next time we join a war, we really ought to choose the winning side."

"But the losing side paid better," David protested, slicking his rain-wet hair out of his face, "and their cause was just."

"And their general was a fool," Michael retorted. "Better pay isn't worth anything if we get killed earning it."

Stupid took that moment to stumble and fall to his knees, jerking sharply against the tether. He recovered, but immediately started limping heavily, favoring his near front leg. They pulled up and looked at him in disgust for a few moments, then Michael pulled a coin from his belt pouch and raised an eyebrow.

"King," David chose randomly.

Michael flipped the coin. "Castle," he grinned, his brown eyes sparkling with laughter.

David sighed and slid off his horse into the ankle deep muck. "Some day I'll figure out how you do that."

"No, you won't." Michael replied confidently, watching his partner slog through the syrupy mud.

The stalwart young knight leaned a muscular shoulder into the animal's chest, lifting its leg and trying to scrape enough mud off the hoof to take a good look at it. "It looks like he bruised the frog. Must have stepped on a rock."

"That's our Stupid," Michael sighed. "The only rock in the entire mud bog, and he manages to find it. Should we camp here or try to make it to the next village?"

"Let's keep going for now. I really don't want to make another cold camp unless we have to." He shuddered theatrically before remounting and tugging on the lead rope to get the mule moving again.

"What? You don't *like* sleeping in the mud next to a wet, smoldering campfire?" Michael asked in mock surprise.

"With gusts of dank smoke blowing in my face no matter which way I lay? Not particularly."

"Why, David," he tsked tsked, "where's your sense of adventure?"

"Somewhere warm and dry, waiting for the rest of me to catch up."

"If you want warm and dry, we can always go back to Samarcia."

"I said warm and dry, Michael, not camped at the gates of Hell."

"Some people are so particular," Michael observed to his horse. "You give them warm and dry, they want cool and damp. You give them cool and damp and they bitch about that, too."

"I was thinking." David ducked as an overhanging branch threatened to shower icy water down his neck. "In fairy tales, the hero always rescues a princess from some great evil, marries her, and gets half the kingdom as a reward."

"For marrying the princess?"

"No, for rescuing her!" David sighed in aggravation. "Don't you know anything about fairy tales?"

"Not much." Michael shifted his weight in the saddle, silently wishing that the worn leather had a little more padding to it. "Tell you what. I'll take the kingdom and you can have the princess."

"No," David objected, "we share the good *and* the bad. But I don't remember the stories saying that the hero has to live with her afterwards. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't."

He met Michael's skeptical look with a roguish grin. "Well, the stories all say they lived happily ever after, don't they? And how could they live happily ever after with a princess? Now if it was a handsome young prince..."

Michael shook his head at his friend's wild flights of fancy and they continued on in a damp but companionable silence until the woods gave way to plowed fields and the track intersected a well-graveled road.

"Right or left?" Michael asked.

"King we go right, castle we go left," David suggested.

Michael pulled out his coin and flipped it. "Left."

They turned left onto the gravel road and soon came to a small village, hardly more than a huddle of houses lining the road. The inn was easy to find; it was the only two story building in the town. They stopped in front of the weather-beaten building, savoring the aroma of roasting meat and freshly baked bread wafting through the partially open shutters.

"I'll take the horses around to the stable," Michael volunteered. "You go in and get us a room and something to eat."

David dismounted gratefully and handed Michael his reins. "I'll see if they have a bathhouse, too. I think I'm carrying around an extra 10 pounds in mud."

The common room of the inn was deserted but the number of well scrubbed tables and benches indicated that it would be a popular place come evening. A massive stone fireplace took up most of one wall, a cheerful blaze giving the room an air of comfort and hominess. On the opposite wall there was a long bar and as David entered the room, a short, deep-chested man staggered through the door behind it, a weighty cask of beer balanced on one shoulder.

Seeing David, he gave a quick nod of his head and shouted back through the doorway. "Tama! Get your butt out here! We got a customer!"

He slammed the heavy barrel down and departed through the same door, almost mowing down the buxom young woman trying to enter through it and adjust her blouse over her shoulder at the same time.

"What can I do for you, sir?" she asked respectfully, her eyes widening as she surveyed the fair young giant. It had been a long time since she had seen a man that looked this good.

"I'd like a room, a bath, and dinner, in that order," he replied with a charming smile.

Her tongue caressed her lower lip, drawing attention to its full ripeness, before she replied. "We have pallets in the communal room for a copper. A room with a cot is two coppers, a full-sized bed is a silver, but well worth the extra if you have a companion," she said, smiling coquettishly. "The bath is a copper extra and dinner is paid for separately."

"A private room, please, with an extra large bed if you have it." He smiled again and she simpered in delighted anticipation.

"Yes, sir. Is that just for one night? Or will you be staying with us longer?"

"Just one night for now, and two baths, please." He handed her a silver and two coppers from the pouch on his belt.

"You must like to be clean," she observed coyly. "Or is the second bath for your companion?" She leaned forward over the bar to give him a better view of the voluptuous breasts revealed by her low cut blouse.

His answer was cut off as the door opened and Michael strode in and dropped two packs on the floor by the bar.

Another big one, the serving wench marveled. She looked from dark-haired giant to fair-haired giant indecisively.

"Let me just show this gentleman to his room, and then I'll be back to take care of you," she murmured seductively to Michael, unwilling to risk losing either of these handsome young men.

"I'm with him," Michael sized up the situation at a glance. "Did you ask for a large bed? I don't want you kicking me all night the way you do in a small one."

The serving wench looked from one to the other in unconcealed disgust. "You two will be sharing the room?" she asked flatly.

David nodded a resigned confirmation.

"Top of the stairs, second door on the right. The bath house is through the door under the stairs. Give the man your chits and he'll give you the towels." She slapped the key and two chits on the bar and disappeared with a petulant swish of her skirts.

"What did you do that for?" David asked indignantly.

"What?" Michael feigned innocence.

"Don't say what! You made it sound like we're together!"

"We are together," Michael pointed out.

"Not that way!" his companion glowered.

"We could be if you weren't such a domineering bastard."

"I'm domineering?" David looked at him incredulously.

"There's no point in getting her hopes up," Michael adroitly changed the subject.

"I wasn't getting her hopes up. I was being pleasant."

"She all but had you in her bed! Any more pleasant and she would have been calling the priest."

"It doesn't hurt to be nice to people." David shouldered his pack and picked up the key and bath chits. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, you know."

"I'll remember that next time I want to catch a fly," Michael replied dryly. "Meantime, stop flirting with the barmaids."

The room they'd been given was small, most of the space taken up by the sturdy wooden bedstead. A coarse linen sheet was stretched over the straw tick and two heavy wool blankets were folded across the end of the bed. Thick wooden pegs hammered into the whitewashed walls and a rickety wooden chair completed the furnishings. Michael hung his damp cloak on one of the pegs and threw back the shutters, letting the fresh breeze sweep the mustiness out of the room.

"Bathe first or eat first?" he asked, taking David's wet cloak and hanging it next to his.

"King we eat, castle we take a bath," David suggested.

Michael flipped his coin. "Bath."

The bathhouse, a one-story annex to the inn, was simply designed. There was a row of iron tubs big enough for a man to sit in comfortably, and a grizzled attendant to fill the tubs with a mix of hot and cold water and hand over a miserly piece of soap and a thin frazzled scrap of cloth to each customer as he entered.

"What's this?" David raised his eyebrows at the sliver of soap the servant handed him.

"The soap, sir," the man replied in surprise.

"I want to wash more than my face."

The old man looked at him in puzzlement.

"He wants a bigger piece," Michael explained. "And a bigger towel as well."

"We don't got no bigger pieces," was the obstinate reply.

David picked him up by the collar and held him over the tub, waiting patiently until he miraculously remembered that he not only had bigger pieces of soap, but bigger towels, as well.

Soon the big knight was leaning back in the steaming tub with a sigh of relaxation.

Michael gazed over from his own tub in amusement. "I notice you weren't quite as nice to him as you were to the bar maid."

"Flirting with him wouldn't have gotten me more soap." David explained amiably. "I use the method most likely to succeed."

All too soon their water cooled and, as the attendant had mysteriously vanished, they dried off, dressed and went in search of their dinner.

Back in the common room, they chose a table not far from the fire and ordered stew, bread and ale from the serving wench, who was still inclined to be a little short with them. From where they sat, they had a good view of the room, which was starting to fill with local residents and neighboring farmers. The growing crowd was a mixture of men and women and the conversation was lively. Most of it seemed to center around a ferocious ebony dragon that had been terrorizing the countryside, his demands for tribute, and the wisdom of meeting his demands.

"Five lambs a week is too much!" a corpulent wool merchant whined plaintively. "It will drive the price of wool so high that I'll never manage a profit!"

"You make too much profit anyway," a weather-beaten old farmer jeered.

"What I want to know is where they're going to find the two young heifers a week he's demanding," another farmer complained. "If he takes all our heifers, how are we going to build our herds? We'll be ruined."

"It's the thought of the young princes that breaks my heart," a stout matronly woman proclaimed.

There was silence for a long moment, and when the conversation resumed, it was subdued, people murmuring quietly to each other rather than shouting across the room as they had before.

"What's that all about?" David asked the wool merchant idly.

"The Dragon Rohannon has been ravaging the local villages." The rotund merchant was happy to show off his knowledge. "The king's wizard had a grand scheme to rid the kingdom of him, but it failed. In retaliation for the attack, Rohannon..." he lowered his voice theatrically, "the dragon demanded that the king give over the young princes as part of the tribute to him. In return for them and a weekly tithe of livestock and gold, he would cease his attacks on the countryside."

"Princes? He's demanding more than one?" Michael asked with interest.

"Aye, Prince Ty'lin and Prince Ky'lin. They're twins." A withered old man joined in the conversation. "Sons of the first queen, not the second. They must be about seventeen now, and the spitting image of their mother, Queen Calisandra. She was a beauty, she was. Long black hair, they say it reached the floor when she let it down, and the prettiest blue eyes you ever did see. And friendly? Always had a thought for the common people, she did. She was a lady, that one, not like that flaxen-haired upstart the king got for a second wife. All high and mighty she is, and thinking she's too good to worry about what happens to commoners like us. And now it looks like the poor young princes are going to be carried off and eaten by a dragon as like as not. I don't know what the world's coming to. I truly don't."

"Unless someone can solve the riddle," a brash young farmer interrupted. "And that's not likely. The smartest men in the kingdom have been working for almost a moon, and nobody has a clue what it means."

The volume of noise rose again as everyone offered their opinion of what the riddle meant.

"Whoa, whoa!" David shouted over the din. "What riddle?"

"The king talked the dragon into giving him a chance to save the princes," the innkeeper assumed the role of narrator. "The dragon offered a bargain."

"There is but one thing that will keep me from enjoying every morsel of their tender, succulent, young flesh," the innkeeper quoted, "the loss of a particular treasure. You may choose a champion. If, in three moons, he can name the treasure and show that he has claimed it for his own, I will withdraw my demand for them."

There was a whimper from one of the more sensitive members of his audience at the mention of morsels of tender young flesh and the innkeeper glared at her before continuing. "He went on to say that not only would he give up all claim on the princes, but he would forego the rest of the tribute and leave this kingdom. The king has offered a double chest of gold and jewels to the man who can answer the riddle and become their champions."

"Did he give any clue what the treasure might be?" David asked in fascination.

"That was all he said."

"Well, I don't think there is such a thing," the matronly woman claimed indignantly. "I think he just made it up to torture the king, making him think there's a way to save the princes when there isn't."

"No, it's a magical weapon that can kill a dragon," another suggested loudly.

"Why would he tell of a magical weapon that could kill him?" a third one scoffed.

"Well, I don't understand what 'taking it' means. How could a person taking something stop a dragon from eating?"

The conversation degenerated into a series of arguments and the knights listened quietly to the many ideas, ranging from barely feasible to clearly preposterous.

"They have the same arguments every night," Tama commented as she cleared their empty plates. "Nobody ever comes up with an answer and nobody ever will."

The two knights sat and nursed their tankards of ale, not entering the conversation or venturing an opinion until the inn settled down for the night and they were in the privacy of their room.

"Michael," David asked as he stripped off his clothes and hung his shirt on one of the pegs, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" He dropped his leather breeches next to the bed and slid under the covers.

Michael sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. "David, this isn't a fairy tale and we don't know the first thing about dragons."

He stood and his voice was somewhat muffled as he drew his shirt over his head. "The reward won't mean much if we get killed earning it. Move over, will you?" He dropped his breeches next to David's and crawled into bed as his friend slid over to the other side.

"But we could at least take a look at it. We don't have another job lined up anyway. What could it hurt to look?" David asked persuasively as he blew out the candle.

"I don't know. How much does getting slain by a dragon hurt?"

"Don't worry, Michael. I'll protect you from the big bad dragon," he teased.

"Like you protected me from the big bad master-at-arms when we were squires?"

"That was different," David quickly replied.

"Right. He only wanted to paddle my butt. The dragon will want to kill me."

There was a long silence, then David spoke again. "You're right, Michael. It was a stupid idea. We'll talk to the innkeeper in the morning. Maybe he knows of someone looking for a pair of hired swords."

Michael reached out in the darkness to put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "It isn't a stupid idea, and we can go look things over if you want to. Just don't get your hopes up, all right? Life isn't a fairy tale."

David placed his hand over his companion's. "What if we flip for it?"

"All right," Michael agreed. "King, we ask the landlord if he knows of anyone hiring swordsmen. Castle, we go take a look at your princes."

They settled under the covers and were soon asleep, dreaming of handsome young men sitting on piles of gold and guarded by a fierce black dragon.