Dragon Princess Read Online Free

before it’s repatriated to replenish the Lendowyn treasury.”
    I had to wonder, did I
look
like a rube who would get drawn into any questionable enterprise just on the promise of some treasure?
    To hell with it.
    “Fine,” I told him. “I’m in.”

CHAPTER 3

    I was still recovering from my hangover when Elhared the Unwise threw a bearskin cloak over my shoulders and dragged me in front of King Alfred. I tried to protest. I wasn’t in any state to meet royalty. I still had a month’s worth of back roads to wash off me, I hadn’t shaved in days, and for some reason I expected that I looked like a drunk someone had peeled off the floor of a dockside tavern.
    Elhared told me I looked the part of a barbarian prince.
    The wizard dragged me into the throne room where the king was receiving envoys from some kingdom of even less note than Lendowyn. When the envoys were done, and the herald waved us on, Elhared shoved me forward and presented me as Sir Francis Blackthorne of the Northern Wastes, here to serve the kingdom and rescue the princess.
    The king eyed me with a sigh and muttered something about scraping barrels. He was a very large man, intimidating in a way that made me suspect he had been absolutely terrifying in his prime. He looked at me with steely gray eyes in a way that made me suspect that he wanted to go out and deal with his daughter’s kidnapper himself. “The Northern Wastes, eh?” he asked.
    At this point, I really couldn’t contradict Elhared without causing myself even more problems. “Yes, Sir.”
    “Then why do you have a Delharwyn accent?”
    “I travel a lot.”
    “That is quite a distance.”
    “Well, you see, uh, my parents were traveling merchants from Delharwyn.” I paused, and steeled myself. “Mordain, actually, before the Duke’s war. They had a shop, but they heard rumors of the coming annexation and fled with their goods. Of course, having their shop nationalized in a proxy war left them with no love for the southern nations—”
    I kept going in that vein. While I normally prefer stealth, there have been enough times I’ve had to ply my trade face-to-face that I’ve gotten reasonably good at crafting tales extemporaneously. It’s a useful skill to be able to plausibly explain your presence in places where you otherwise shouldn’t be.
    It helped my case that my story was mostly true—not that it had anything to do with me. The life story I told the king belonged to an angry redheaded barbarian with whom I’d had the misfortune of sharing a cell in the city of Delmark about two years ago. I suspected he had embellished some of his tale—I left out the bear wrestling—but it provided a convenient superstructure on which to hang the story of Blackthorne of the Northern Wastes.
    I measured my success by the king’s eyes glazing over and the envoys and herald staring off into the middle distance, all apparently wishing they were somewhere else.
    That was my cue to wrap up.
    “—and that’s how I ended up in your fine country, Your Highness.”
    “Yes, yes.” I heard what sounded like relief in the king’s voice. “Well, good fortune and gods’ speed, Sir Blackthorne.”
     • • • 
    All in all, that had gone about as well as could be expected.
    The way Elhared had been pushing for “Sir Blackthorne’s” quest, I’d expected him to toss me out the gate to face the dragon as soon as we’d left the throne room. But some glimmer of sanity still shone on the wizard, albeit dimly and occasionally. I got board for the night, a decent meal, and a chance to wash up and get some real sleep before going out at dawn.
    Morning had me walking a wooded path northwest of the city, dressed in a dead squire’s scale mail and carrying
Dracheslayer
.
    Elhared had given distressingly precise directions to find the dragon’s lair, and I probably would have found it rather suspicious if it wasn’t for the fact that
I was being sent to slay a damned dragon!
That tended to