These days Tarkaster Crale is a spent old man who earns a living spinning tales for tavern crowds. Years ago he was a roving thief. Not the greatest in the world, to be sure, but he ran with someone who might have been: Brandgar Never-Throned, King-on-the-Waves, an exiled prince doomed to a life of wandering heroism.
 
At a low point in Crale's fortunes, he fell in with Brandgar's crew for one last legendary mission, an attempt to breach the mountain fortress of Helfalkyn. There, at the farthest end of the known world, the ancient dragon Glimraug had spent thousands of years hoarding the greatest treasure in history and daring humankind to send a worthy champion to take it from him. Crale was not the man to do it himself... but maybe, just maybe, he was fated to be there when it happened.  
 
This rollicking, salty, darkly humorous standalone sword-and-sorcery novelette was written as a sort of love letter to the work of Michael Shea and Fritz Leiber.