Grignr the Ecordian thought he’d found a sure thing. Grignr always thinks she’s found a sure thing..

(Writer’s disclaimer: All typos and errors in the text are intentional. It wouldn’t be an Eye of Argon story if they weren’t.)

The smoking tavern churned with meaty, unwashed bodies, lip-smacking noises, and shouts for more ale. Leaning back on his stool, the russet-haired northern barbarian Grigner pressed the hardy muscles of his bronze-burnished back against the greasy wall and waggled his eyebrows prevarcatively at the licksome dancer weaving among the crowd.

A fat, bearded captain of the Schist city watch grabbed the dancer’s wrist and hauled her into his lap. Eager to win her favors but lacking the gold to buy them, Grignr readied himself to leap to her defense. The wench swatted the watchman’s helm sideways. Roaring with laughter, the captain released her. She bounded to her swaying feet and jiggled the coins sewn to her slitted skirt.

Grignr dropped back onto his stool and morosely took another swig of the house’s thin ale. The coin-bedazzened dancer flitted from one moneyed patron to another without sparing him a single glance. To be skint in the city of Schist was indeed a sorry state of affairs. Even a man as tall, lusty, and well-made as the emerald-eyed Ecordian slept alone—assuming he could find a place to sleep at all.

The young barbarian had hoped to make a name forhimself in Schist. The city was as rich as any along the Soutran Coast but presented few opportunities for a foreign-born thief. All its criminal enterprises—including the fences essential to profiting from one’s pilfering—were controlled by nepotistic local gangs who only employed their relatives. If his luck didn’t change soon, he’d be forced to hire on as a mercenary in the service of some puliing aristocrat.

A slim, cloaked figure slid in front of his table, interrupting his dark musings. “Shall I read your future, noble sir?”

A flash of scentillant sapphirine eyes and pale orchidine flesh peeped from beneath the folds of her hood. Grigner blinked. The voluminous garment shrouding her form was tattered and patched, teasing his eyes with tantalizing glimpses of the shapely limbs and blooming flesh beneath. Stripped of her rags, this maid might prove comelier than the other. Perhaps he need not sleep alone this night. “Are you fortune teller, lass?”

Pearalescent white fingers peeled the hood back from a heart-shaped face with pouting, cherry-pursed lips. “I am more than that. Your hand, sirrah.”

She was a saucy wench for one so small. Grignr extended his hand. It took both of hers to hold it. Cool fingers slivered across his calloused pam. “I see a kingdom in your future.”

He shrugged and casually booted aside a pair of drunks whose flailing fight threatened to upend his table. “The future is a long way off.”

“It may be nearer than you think.” She leaned over the wobbly table. He winy breath tickled his ear. “Have you ever heard of Ounnas Rock?”

He hefted his tankard in one hand and drew her closer with the other. “No.”

She smiled the smile of sirens across the ages who know they have intrigued a man’s interest. “It stands in the heart of a cave within the walls of the royal cemetery, guarded by the prince’s strongest warriors. Held fast in the stone is a jeweled handled sword of the finest watered steel. Only the bravest of men can draw it from the rock’s implacable gripe. But the prize is worth the toil, for whomever wields the sword in battle cannot be defeated and will one day wear a crown.”

“If that be true, why hasn’t someone pulled it free ‘ere now?”

Her ample bosom heaved as she shrugged. “Mayhap they fear the guards, or the terrors rumored to lie beyond the cemetery’s gate. I have heard reports that the princes of Schist perform dark sorceries among the graves. Does that frighten you? Have the times become so decadent that an Ecordian is afraid of a little magic?” she flirted.

His hand slid down her back to the tight globblar swells of her hips. “No more than I fear Schist’s soldiers. These southern folk are feeble swordsmen.”

“Indeed,” she concurred, “not one of them would meet me by the cemetery gates at midnight.”

She slipped like water from his grasp and melted into the crowd. All that was left was the memory of her words and her secret smile…*

Read the complete story in The Eye of Argon and the Further Adventures of Grignr the Barbarian (Fantastic Books, 2022).