Very, very short prequel snippet of the not-yet Lord Crane's time with "the barbarian" mentioned briefly in the full-length novels.
Lucien started an affair with a Chinese (Mongolian?) warlord that went from a bit of fun to him being an enslaved sex toy and Merrick breaks in to rescue him. We don't really get any of the details here other than Lucien now has a lot more scars than before.
Not really seeing the point of publishing this as it was basically something you'd write as an exercise as it doesn't give any insight to the characters or plots of the main series. It just makes the reader want more about Lucien and Merrick's adventures in China which we don't get. ( )

It's weird to complain about a short story being short. But that is what I'm doing. Some short stories are great! This one was just too short for the story that was told... ( )