Rurik's Arc

Chapter 1 of 22

Rurik stood four feet three inches tall, and he had come to hire an army with nothing to pay it. His mountain hold sat under siege three valleys north. Every fighting man he called kin was trapped inside those walls. He had ridden out to raise a warband, and so far his warband was one dwarf and the iron-scaled wyrm coiled in the snow behind him. The beast was the size of a longboat. It did not count as a fighter. It could not hold a wall or swing a blade. The trading post crouched between the pines, its stone frontage lit by two iron lanterns. Rurik pushed through the studded door and stamped snow from his boots. Warmth hit him. The hearth hall glowed. Counters ran the length of the room, stacked with axes, gems, and coiled maps. Behind the largest counter sat the proprietor, a broad dwarf with a forked beard and a war-axe laid across his knees. He did not rise. He weighed Rurik with one flat glance and went back to polishing a blade. "You're the one whose hold is ringed," the proprietor said. "Word travels. So does the smart money. Nobody's buying that fight." "I'm not asking to buy," Rurik said. "I'm asking who'll stand with me." "Standing with you is a fast way to die poor." The proprietor set down his rag. "You've no coin, no men, and a hold that's already half a tomb. What have you got?" Rurik walked to the door and hauled it open. Cold poured in. The wyrm lifted its head from the snow. Its molten eye found the doorway. It hissed, low and long, and every lantern flame bent toward it. The proprietor stood. His axe came up an inch, then stopped. "That thing follows my word," Rurik said. "It clears trenches. It breaks gates. But it's one beast, and I'm one man. A siege needs bodies on the wall after the gate falls. You know these hills. Who's out here with nothing left to lose?" The proprietor stared at the wyrm a long moment. Then he laughed, short and rough. "With that," he said, "the mad ones might listen." He jerked his chin toward the trees. "Deeper in the woods there's a glade nobody sane enters. Wild folk live there. Elves, fae, beast-kin. They owe the valley lords nothing. And there's a stone-backed troll that lairs near them. It hates the men laying siege to you more than it hates the cold. Bring the wyrm. Bring your nerve. They'll hear you out." Rurik shut the door on the snow. He had walked in with one dwarf and a beast. He walked out with a name for his enemies and a place to find allies. But the glade did not answer to gold or to threats. And the troll that guarded its edge had killed the last three men who came asking for its help.