Free Kavin's World by David Mason

delicately with his curious stubby fingers, smiling to himself.
    “Yes… yes,” he said, playing with the carved block. “All this… will be very useful. Very useful indeed. Tell me, Prince, know you the use of these small blocks of wood?”
    “No,” I said.
    “They are made so that ink may be smeared on them, and pressed against paper. Thus, a picture… or a word… may be written over and over, many times.”
    “Now, what would be the use of that?”
    “It may have a use, some day,” he said. “Not now, not here. But in the place where these came from, they had use. The tools of magic, now… these were the tools of one whom I knew well, the man called Dragon, because he kept one near him always. He lived in an island, far from here, where dragons breed.”
    I had never seen a dragon, except a great skin and skull, kept among my late uncle’s curiosities. From that evidence, I had no special wish to see one, either. Thuramon went on.
    “Such tools work best for him who made them, but another may use them too. And we shall… we shall.”
    At that moment, a seaman knocked on the cabin door, to say that the prisoners we had taken were being brought aboard; I had given such orders earlier. The elder and the boy had been kept in one of the lower dungeons of the castle while I slept, but I had given orders to feed them. When I went out on the deck, both of them looked well enough, though sullen as caged ferrets.
    They stood between armed men, chained at hand and foot, as I had ordered. I did not wish to lose either one just yet. I had some hopes of use for them.
    “Thuramon,” I said, calling him to me. “I know you have wide knowledge of strange languages. Do you, perhaps…”
    “I do,” he said, grinning at them. “Oh, but I do know their tongue, Prince. Many years ago I rode with their fathers for a while.”
    He stepped forward and spoke in harsh gutturals. There was an exchange between Thuramon and the elder prisoner, words whose sound was unpleasant. Thuramon turned to me, smiling more broadly than ever.
    “You have a prize, truly. This is the High Chief, Kakk Marag, and his son, Marag Mik. He is the greatest one among all those who ride your land, out there. Incidentally, he says you are a brave man, and he will personally eat your liver one day.”
    “I can spare such compliments,” I said. “Ask him if his life is enough payment to take his swarm home wherever they came from.”
    Thuramon shook his head. “He will not. These people care nothing for their own lives, and they came here partly out of necessity. Anyway, they would not obey him if he did order them home. Their grasslands are dry, and their cattle dying.”
    “He cannot take them back, then?” I said, fury rising in me. “Does he value his son’s life, if not his own?”
    “He might,” Thuramon said.
    “Or even better,” I looked evilly upon those two, whose tribes had eaten Dorada, “tell him, if he does not go out on the wall and send his tribes back to the north, that I’ll have the boy castrated, and keep him as a slave, to clean latrines for the rest of his life. Try that tale on him.”
    Thuramon delivered my words, with a grin as vile as my own. Of course, the horrible details were a lie: our laws forbid such filth. But I hoped this barbarian would believe the story, and surrender.
    He did, apparently. He spat sentences back at Thuramon, and looked gray about the gills.
    “He says he will speak, but he says they will not listen,” Thuramon said. “He asks for your word that if he fails, you will not harm the boy.”
    “His brat’s safe, as long as he does as I ask,” I said. “ Come, bring them along to the walls.”
    As we went, Thuramon spoke to me, quietly, out of hearing of the guards who brought the pair along behind.
    “He speaks truth, I think,” Thuramon said. “We must go on with our other plans. The tribesmen will not go. Not while there’s hope of loot here, and nothing but hunger