The Tiger and the Wolf by [email protected]

such tricks. More than that,
there was no part of him that was easy to attack. Asmander
winced as one would-be ambusher was lashed across the muzzle
by the sharp whip of Venater’s tail, while one of the others got
too close and was hooked about the foreleg by the monstrous
lizard’s claws. Instantly Venater was a man again, lifting the startled hyena up and flipping the animal over his shoulder. The
Laughing Man Stepped in mid-air and managed a creditable
landing on hands and knees, whereupon Venater kicked him in
the stomach and sent him rolling away. The third hyena leapt for
him, aiming to connect with his chest, but Venater had Stepped
again, dropping down to his lizard shape so that his enemy
sailed overhead.
With calculated indolence, Venater turned to face them, blueblack tongue lashing at the air. Then he was a man once more,
trying to lure them closer, and Asmander met the stone force of
his gaze, recognizing the challenge there and waving it aside. Another time, perhaps.
Seeing him there, Asmander was swept up in the memory of
when he had first set eyes on the pirate; remembering when the
two of them had fought.
Back then, Asmander’s father had taken a warband of the
clan’s warriors out with the specific intention of ridding the
Tsotec estuary of its most troublesome pirate. The Dragon were
ever troublesome vassals of the Sun River Nation, and more
than one had turned outlaw and raider in the past, but Venater
had been the boldest in living memory, striking even within
sight of the prince’s own palace at Tsokawan.
The warband had tracked the pirate Venat – as he was known
when his name was still his own – to one of the innumerable
estuary islands. There, they approached under cover of the
murky water, Stepped into the long, ridge-backed shapes of
crocodiles. There were two score of them, and the pirates were
less than a dozen, and mostly drunk. The fight as a whole was no
great victory to carve on the walls of the mighty, but Venat . . .
Asmander remembered him leaping up, roaring his defiance,
the stone blade of his meret cleaving spears in two and splitting
shields. He had been as drunk as the rest, but that had not
stopped or even slowed him. And Asmander, who had newly
found his role as Champion of the River Lords, knew that the
moment had come to test the shape of his soul against this foe.
He had Stepped into that fleeter form, the obsidian of his maccan becoming his teeth, the jade of his spurs his claws, and
he had rushed from the midst of his father’s warriors to do
battle. They had wanted to stop him, but he was a Champion.
They dared not lay hands on him, not even Asman his father.
And the fight – so fierce a contest! Venat had struck at him
with his bone-breaking tail and claws strong enough to tear
open bronze. He had snapped his teeth against the scaly quills
of Asmander’s hide, that were reinforced with the cotton and
stone of the armour he wore. A shallow bite would have been
debilitating, a deep one fatal, for the dragons of the estuary were
venomous as well as merely savage. Legend said that dark spirits
of the early world had created them to be as inimical to all other
beasts as it was possible to be.
Asmander had let speed become his ally, leaping to drive his
claws into the great lizard’s back, always a step aside, a step
ahead. He had known exactly the risks he ran, and he ran them
gladly. He had never lived , as when he had lived next to the
death that dwelled in Venat’s jaws.
And at last the man was beaten, sprawled bleeding and cursing, shifting from writhing lizard back to man, and eventually
just staring up at Asmander with hate-filled eyes, expecting
nothing but death. And death was what he deserved: no noble
robber of the stories, he, but a villain, a murderer, a rebel against
prince and nation.
Asmander had placed one clawed foot on his defeated enemy’s neck and waited for his father’s command.
It had not come, and