Year's Best Fantasy 5
The Dragons of Summer GulchRobert Reed
A hard winter can lift rocks as well as old bones, shoving all
that is loose up through the most stubborn earth. Then
snowmelt and flash floods will sweep across the ground,
wiping away the gravel and clay. And later, when a man
with good vision and exceptional luck rides past, all of the
world might suddenly change.
"Would you look at that," the man said to himself in a
firm, deep voice. "A claw, isn't it? From a mature dragon,
isn't it? Good Lord, Mr. Barrow. And there's two more
claws set beside that treasure!"
Barrow was a giant fellow with a narrow face and a
heavy cap of black hair that grew from his scalp and the
back of his neck and between the blades of his strong shoulders.
Born on one of the Northern Isles, he had left his
homeland as a young man to escape one war, coming to this
new country just in time to be thrown into a massive and
prolonged civil conflict. Ten thousand miseries had abused
him over the next years. But he survived the fighting, and
upon his discharge from the Army of the Center, a grateful
natio ... read full excerpt from Year's Best Fantasy 5 ebook
