Free Dragon (Vlad Taltos) by Steven Brust

me. An enemy. He looked at me, and I looked at him. He had lost his shield somewhere, but held most of a spear. I don’t think he’d been coming after me, the force of battle had just placed him there. He probably would just as soon have run away, and I’d just as soon he did, but, of course, neither of us could trust the other to be sensible. He whipped the remains of his spear toward me. I moved in, knocked his weapon aside with the strong of my blade, and cut him in the neck. He went down and I moved on. I don’t know if I killed him. I hope I didn’t.
    I looked around, and I was as alone as I could be, under the circumstances.
    I started down the hill at a trot.
    “Quick-march now, Boss.”
    “Oh, shut up.”
    I thought about how comfortable my office was. I thought about how pleasant it would be to be sitting there. I remember—now, I didn’t think about it then—how Kragar left me alone in the office to think over the idea of working with Morrolan’s army as some sort of spy or saboteur; I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea, but at the time, I was angry enough not to care. I needed to sort all that out so I yelled out that I didn’t want to be bothered for a while.
    “Okay, Boss!” yelled Melestav. “Anyone wants to come in and kill you, I tell them to wait, right?”
    “Yeah,” I yelled back. “Unless they’re Dragons. Any Dragons who want to kill me can come right in.”
    He didn’t say anything. I had gotten in the last word on
    Melestav; that had to be a good sign.
    I closed my eyes and thought about Morrolan. I pictured him, tall, thin, rather dark, a very slight hook in the nose, eyes deep and rather close together, a bit of slant to his forehead, and I imagined his voice, a smooth baritone, mellow, and forming words with an assumed elegance—
    “Who is it?”
    “Vlad.”
    “Yes?”
    “Am I reaching you at a bad time?”
    “Not as bad as ten minutes later would have been. Which reminds me: Do you prefer the blood of a reptile or a mammal when you want to set up a room so you know if it’s been violated?”
    “Your own blood is best for anything of that type, because you want it to come back to you. But you only need a drop; it’s symbolic.”
    “Thank you. What is it you wish of me?”
    “I want to know if I can be useful to you.”
    “You just were.”
    “Other than that.”
    “ Exactly what do you mean? ”
    “ Against Fornia. Could your army use someone able to sneak in and out of the enemy camp, cause annoyance, disruption— ”
    “ You’re taking this rather personally, aren’t you, Vlad? ”
    “Yes.”
    “ Are you certain you want to do this? ”
    “ Well, no. Not entirely. I’m just considering it. ”
    “ I see. We should talk. ”
    “ I suppose so. ”
    “ Are you busy later this afternoon? Say, in a few hours? ”
    “I could get free.”
    “Then meet me … no offense, Vlad, but are you able to receive a teleport position?”
    “Yeah, just barely, if you give me a lot of time to fix it.”
    “Then I’ll give you one. Are you ready?”
    “Yeah, go ahead.”
    “Here.”
    Okay, I knew how to do this; I’d even done it once or twice before. I made an effort to drop those little controls we always keep on our thoughts. I mentally framed a picture—in my head, I always have big elegant gold frames—then thought of the space within as black. I held onto it and moved it around until it was mentally facing out , facing the imaginary direction of my psychic link with Morrolan. It gradually acquired color that I hadn’t put into it, and details formed, until, in only a minute or two, I was seeing a place: the bottom of what appeared to be a cliff, a small stream before it, a few evergreens nearby. I couldn’t tell how high the cliff was from what Morrolan was showing me, but it seemed to be large, and I certainly would have no desire to attempt to scale it: It seemed perfectly sheer, and grey, and, if you’ll permit me, ominous. The ground was