The Tooth in the Spar

Driven clean through a shattered spar in the wreckage is a skywyrm's fang as long as a forearm. Tied around its root is a lupine hunter's tally cord of gray wool knotted seven times.

Hunt-Mistress Ylva Greymantle turns the fang over in a scarred hand missing two fingers. "That's Whitejaw's tooth. Seven times I've put iron bolts into her hide, and seven times she's torn free and flown off. She dens high on the Frost Ledge and only sleeps when the deep freeze settles in. I have seven hunting bolts forged for her, but my ship was wrecked."

On your first night out, Ylva lays seven heavy ballista bolts across your mess table: six forged of plain hunting iron, and a seventh barbed spike as thick as a crowbar. "One bolt for each hunt she survived. We're two days out from the Frost Ledge—your crew can spend the flight listening to an old hunter's stories, or letting me drill them on the guns."

By evening, Ylva has hired another vessel to take her to the ledge: a pirate skiff captained by a lean poacher named Dace Harrow. In the dockside tavern, however, your crew overhears Harrow's true plan: he has a buyer lined up for an intact skywyrm carcass and intends to maroon the old hunt-mistress on the frozen rock as soon as his harpoon gun brings Whitejaw down.

Bitter frost coats every rope on your deck as you approach the Frost Ledge. Coiled on the ice shelf below lies the ancient skywyrm Whitejaw, her breath steaming in the cold and six rusted bolt shafts still jutting from her scarred hide. She is gaunt with age, and one eye has gone milky blind. Beside your rail, Ylva strings her greatbow in silence.

At the Frost Ledge, the gaunt, half-blind skywyrm Whitejaw lies coiled and asleep on the rock. Harrow's pirate skiff hovers a cable's length off with its heavy harpoon gun aimed at the sleeping beast—except Ylva has planted herself on the ice directly in front of the wyrm, her greatbow drawn and aimed straight at Harrow's chest!

The ancient skywyrm lies dead across the ice ledge, steaming in the bitter frost. Ylva wrenches her six old iron shafts out of the hide one by one and returns them to her quiver. "By clan law, the jaw belongs to the ship that made the kill. I can use her sinew and fangs to build you a long-range ballista that outshoots anything in the sky—or we can sell the carcass to a clan trader."

Ylva walks out across the ice alone, grips the oldest rusted bolt shaft in the sleeping wyrm's hide, and pulls it free without waking her. Returning with the iron shaft across her shoulders, she says, "Eight hunts, and the feud is over. I'm too old to start tracking a new wyrm—but I could learn to serve on a ship."

Stirred by the commotion, Whitejaw lifts her scarred head, six old bolt shafts jutting from her scales, and fixes Ylva with her one good eye. Ylva lowers her bow, and the ancient wyrm rests her head back on the ice. "She spared me under her claw once, and now we are even," Ylva says quietly. "My hunting days are done. Ask what you will of an old hunt-mistress."