The Solution Solution

“Oh, yes, yes. Back again, are we? Never enough practice, I suppose. Here we are, the solution to that pesky frostwyrm problem. Make them scarce. The more you take out now, the less we face when we are again ready to attempt our march on the citadel.” He handed over the vial without looking up. “Best of luck, now. And do bring back whatever you don’t use.”

Do bring back whatever you don’t use. There is a ledger somewhere on that ship with this on it.

I did not have to search for the materials. I knew where the helms were by now, and which stretch of the line had armor still articulated enough to stand up, and where the bones came away clean. Yesterday that knowledge cost me something to acquire. Today it was simply knowledge, the way a man knows a road.

The skytalons come out of the cloud fast and they do not circle first. They see a man down in the snow and they commit, which is the whole of the design: the thing that makes them useful to the Lich King is that they will always come for a body. The first one had mine off the ground and was climbing when the solution caught, and what came down afterward came down across a wide stretch of the field and lay there among the rest of it.

I never drew a weapon. I stood two hundred yards off in the rocks and watched three dragons kill themselves on bait I had made out of our own dead, and then I walked out and picked over what was left to see whether any of it could be used again.

“Good show! Good show indeed. You’re turning into a regular wyrmslayer! Come back when you’re ready to thin their numbers even further.”

Stolen goblin oil had solved the frostwyrms and Boltwrench was already onto the next idea before Vikstone had wiped his hands, something involving voltage and a name only a gnome would think was funny, filed as Killohertz.