“And what would you offer for a place by our fire?” the merchant-guildsman demanded.

  I let my eyes travel doubtfully over his portly, dust-covered frame, and ignored the knight who’d ridden up behind me.

  “A tale,” I replied.

  The knight snorted, and rode past to make his camp not far from where the caravan had chosen to spend the night. I saw the guildsman look from me to the knight and caught the gleam of interest that sprang to his eye before he could hide it.

  He said nothing of the knight, however.

  “A tale,” he repeated, eyeing me with the same doubt I had shown of him.

  A murmur rose from the men behind him. Roughly-dressed and with faces hardened by weather and privation, it seemed they thought the journey dull enough to warrant a tale.

  At the sound of their voices, the guildsman gave a gusty sigh, as though pressured beyond fairness by his crew.

  “Very well,” he said, pretending to grumble. “A tale it is.”

  He waved me forward to take my place among them.

  I moved to stand before the fire, watching their attention sharpen, even if they weren’t yet sure the tale would be worth their time.

  It was the same with every audience.

  I didn’t let that put me off, but began my tale.

  “Few about this fire would recall a blind bard, even if they’d had once had the fortune to meet her. Few would credit it, or her journeys, as being real.”

  A low murmur of agreement greeted me, and I moved to quell it, knowing that the murmurs would stop soon enough.

  “No one knows how she avoided the perils of the road—”

  A low chuckle agreed with that, but I continued regardless, trying to capture their attention anyway. This wasn’t a tale of wenching and taverns, but adventure, and I needed to tell it.

  “And you all know how perilous the road can be, for men and women like you, who can see, but one robbed of her sight?” I shook my head. “She had luck, and good travelling companions, and journeyed safely…”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I lowered my voice.

  “…until the night she joined a caravan whose destination lay beyond the Dragon’s Peak Range.”

  The teamsters stilled, and the guards edged a little closer to the fire. All knew of the Dragon’s Peak, and how well it suited its name. Few ever accepted commissions to travel beyond it.

  Knowing my audience nibbled at the hook, I set about reeling them in.

  “The route they took was new back then, but is well known now, albeit rarely traveled.”

  Chuckles and knowing nods greeted this, but I went on.

  “The traders followed Dragon’s Way through Drudonelle’s Forest, almost reached the other side of that particular stretch of treachery, before disaster struck.

  “Bandits attacked at the edge of the trees, and hearing the battle grow fierce the bard dropped from the wagon on which she’d been traveling, and scrambled beneath it. As the guards began to fall, and the familiar stench of ogres and trolls grew stronger, she took to the undergrowth.

  The scent of the creatures attacking the caravan fouled her nostrils, and the ungodly sounds they made as they fell on her traveling companions, curdled her blood. While it was clear they weren’t human, but a second, more cloying smell hinted that some were no longer alive.

  “The bard cleared the ambushed caravan and moved swiftly and quietly away, using the trees and the rising slope to guide her. The road followed the bottom of the valley. She thought to find it again by following the slope down in the morning.

  “Gradually, the sound of battle and an unholy feasting grew faint behind her, but the tree trunks drew further and further apart, robbing her of any support when she stumbled, and removing her sense of cover. Behind her, the sounds of battle devolved into sounds of feeding, and horrified, the bard kept moving.

  Up and away, reaching until she found the rough bark of the next trunk, or the insubstantial leaves of the next bush. She stumbled from one piece of cover to the next, moving always upward, until there came a time when she reached out but could find nothing more.

  She kept going until a stone turned beneath her foot, and she fell. Brought to a halt, she took a moment to listen for sounds of pursuit, but only silence greeted her. An evening breeze blew, the air on her skin warning of the coming night, and freezing temperatures.

  She needed shelter, and swiftly. Too terrified to return to the trees, the bard picked herself up and continued moving higher. Perhaps there would be a cliff with a cave, or maybe a stand of thick brush...”

  “And perhaps there’d be a bear,” muttered one of the men in the audience.

  “Or a mountain lion,” quipped another.

  I was losing them, but I ignored the comments, and pressed on.

  “Loose scree rattled under the bard’s feet and she spent more time on her knees…”

  More chuckles, this time with a hint of lechery. I smiled at my gaff, and kept on.

  “…than she did upright. After what seemed an eternity spent in an empty landscape, she began to fear the next cliff she found would be the one that opened up beneath her feet. She almost cried when her hands touched upright stone.

  A cliff. Shelter could not be far away…or so she hoped.

  The sun’s warmth had left her back, and a chill night breeze touched her neck, lifting her hair and creeping past her collar. She lifted her face, wondering if the sky was clear, or cloudy, because she was sure she tasted snow in the air, and she needed somewhere out of it.

  A cleft would do, or a crevice, some hidden nook away from the cold, something to hide her from night and the creatures sure to roam it.

  She only needed shelter for the night. In the morning, she could follow the slope back down to the road. She was sure she’d moved beyond the bandits, and doubly sure they’d still be at the wagons…feasting.