- For the character with the same name, see Raker
"Raker" is the first of the 7 short stories of the Black Company series, and also, the first published piece of media in the series as a whole. It appeared in the August 1982 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was 2 years before the appearance of the first novel, The Black Company. A trimmed and otherwise slightly rewritten variation of it became Chapter 3 of the first novel.
In the magazine, "Raker" is actually classified as a "novelet" in the table of contents. The magazine also contains one other novelet and seven short stories.
The most significant difference between the "Raker" short story and Chapter 3 of The Black Company is the omission of surplus expository background details in the novel. The short story notably contains a large paragraph outlining the backstory of the Dominator, the Lady, and the Taken. Whereas, in the novel, this contextual information is spread out in other chapters.
