“I still have a hard time believing the attack on Fen-Stévock was a dragon,” Fréden said, not bothering to look at Belvengar Long Spear; he knew he stood there, obedient as always, standing slightly behind Fréden’s chair.
“My lord, as hard as it is to believe, there is no denying it,” Long Spear said. “What else could have destroyed the whole of South Gate?”
“Perhaps it was an army of siege weapons,” Fréden said. “The Durathnans are resourceful people.”
“It was not Gol-Durathna,” Belvengar said.
“Black magic, then,” Fréden said.
“Most definitely, my lord,” Belvengar replied. “What else are dragons made of, if not black magic?”
“How is it that for years, centuries, millennia even, dwarves were able to subdue dragons and keep them hidden away in the deepest parts of the earth,” Fréden asked, “and now, when the power of the dwarves wanes, a dragon once again emerges?”
“I do believe the answer is in your question, my lord,” Belvengar said. “And you must remember, my lord, that the elves trained them—kept them as pets.”
“Bah,” Fréden hissed. “The elves. Flighty fools. And supposedly this man … this farm boy, had a piece of paper, a spell that subdued the dragon?” Fréden asked.
“Aye, my lord,” Belvengar replied.
“A man who was in the city of Thorakest,” Fréden asked, “who broke bread with King Skella?”
“Aye, my lord.”
“That fool of a king,” Fréden hissed, slamming his fist on the arm of the chair. “And I hear Lord Balzarak was there when this man found the spell.”
“That is true, my lord.”
“We have truly lost our way, Long Spear,” Fréden said. “And our spies say this man, this Erik Dragon Slayer as he is being called, is now tasked with finding a weapon, a sword, that could slay a dragon?”
“Aye, my lord.” Fréden saw, through a sidelong glance, Belvengar step up closer to him. He added, “An elvish weapon, legend says, crafted by dwarves and enchanted by the sylvan people.”
“Our ancestors would have never conspired with the elves,” Fréden said, looking to Belvengar quickly. “The sword must have been stolen.”
Belvengar shrugged.
“And this man, he is with your friend, Skull Crusher?” Fréden asked.
“He is my friend no more, my lord,” Belvengar replied. “He chose man over his own kind; man over his own battle brother.”
“Where is it they search for this sword?” Fréden asked.
“North of the Gray Mountains, my lord.”
“Ah, yes. That is right. Do we have dwarves that are loyal to us in Thrak Baldüukr?” Fréden asked.
“We do, my lord,” Belvengar replied. “We have more support in the south, but there are those in the north loyal to our cause.”
“Send word,” Fréden said. “They must be stopped … and the sword must be mine.” He saw the raised eyebrow Belvengar gave him and realized what he had said sounded ambitious and power hungry. “So it might rest with the dwarvish people once again, of course.”
Belvengar nodded and bowed, and Fréden caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t acknowledge it.
“The power,” Fréden mused when Belvengar left. His brows furrowed deeply, and he knuckled his chin as warriors continued to train, their commanders barking orders and the soldiers responding with increased intensity. He tried to ignore them.
The power to kill a dragon … to control a dragon.
He almost salivated at the thought. He would unite the dwarves and not just those of Háthgolthane, but those dispersed afar, in Nothgolthane and Wüsten Sahil. They would once again rise to where An intended them … rulers, leaders, the ones helping the rest of this backward world to be better.
As he pondered his role as the true savior of his people, he watched one dwarvish soldier continually lose at sparring. It didn’t matter who he went against, even the dwarves that looked smaller and weaker, they would always best him. Every time he made a mistake, a commander would come over and correct him, but then he would go back to performing the same movements incorrectly. As he screwed up his fists, Fréden was filled with hatred for this weakling and any others like him. He would crush those that didn’t want to better themselves.
8
Bu rode Warrior, his—Patûk Al’Banan’s—old gray warhorse, through the dense forest of the Gray Mountains. His men, easterners and those who had once fought for Patûk, followed him without word. His knights followed him as well, not without complaint, of course, but he had begun to drown them out. They were weak, and he often wondered what made them nobility. Was this the way of the world? He had so little exposure to it. Were nobles in Golgolithul this soft? They couldn’t be. The east was a hard place; at least it was for him.
Supposedly, these were the best knights that each of the dukes and barons of Hámon had to offer, but any one of his normal foot soldiers could run circles around these fools. He began to curse himself for not bringing more than a dozen of his men, on top of which, he had a dozen Hámonian knights. In addition, he had Sargent Andu and his personal guard, Bao Zi. The old, grizzled soldier with one eye and a wound to his shoulder that would have killed anyone else—truly, Bu believed death was too afraid to take Bao Zi—was worth all two dozen men.
Bu had already lost one of his own men when the fool fell from his horse and broke his neck. Then, as they rode along the ledge of a steep slope that ended in a windswept, rocky, barren valley, he lost one of the Hámonian knights. The fool was trying to show off his horsemanship, to whom, Bu couldn’t figure, and prodded his horse into a wrong step, and both beast and man slid down that slope to their deaths. Well, what eventually would be their deaths. They could hear both screaming and the man calling for help, but after a quick look at the situation, Bu would send none.
“Let that be a lesson to all of you idiots,” he said, as the other knights protested his order to keep moving.
“He’s a knight,” one said, refusing to get back on his horse. “He deserves to be rescued.”
“It’ll take a dozen men,” Bao Zi had croaked, “and they could lose their lives in the attempt.”
“A hundred of these peasants,” the knight had said, pointing to Bu’s regular soldiers, “aren’t worth a single knight.”
Bao Zi immediately reached for his sword, and Bu had to step in front of the old warrior.
“If you want to rescue him, go yourself,” Bu said. “We’re not stopping.”
“There are cannibals in these parts of the Gray Mountains,” another knight said.
“Better him than me,” Bao Zi said as he spat at the feet of the knight. “Maybe he’ll do the honorable thing and put a dagger in his throat.”
At that point in their journey, Bu had believed he had a good idea of where they were and where they were going. The map that his seneschal, Li, had copied from the Dragon Scroll before the man named Erik Eleodum stole it was easy enough to follow. Their quest for the Dragon Sword was going well, and Bu tried to contain his excitement, the thought of holding a sword that could kill a dragon was almost arousing. Now, two days later, they were lost. Somewhere they had gotten off track, and Bu cursed himself for it. He was an expert tracker, but the forest in these parts of the mountains was so dense, they could barely see ten paces in front of them. And the weather was so cold it chilled a man to the bone. Bu tried finding a path, but the constant snow, sleet, and rain made that impossible.
“We’re lost,” Bu told Bao Zi in confidence.
“Don’t tell the men,” Bao Zi croaked, and Bu nodded.
Riding made it difficult for both horse and rider, with the hidden roots and undulations and divots in the earth, masked by the thick carpet of snow, and Bu started leading Warrior through the forest. He suggested the others do the same—actually, he commanded it and his men obeyed—but the knights grumbled and complained, so he told them they could do what they wanted. Several of them compli
ed, but most kept on riding as if they knew best, as if they had been the best of all scouts and spies and assassins for the largest resistance movement against Golgolithul.
Bu knew it would happen. He heard a yelp. A screaming neigh from a horse. The sound of something snapping. The thudding of bodies. The thrashing of an animal that had just broken a leg. The cry of a man stuck underneath that animal.
“Gods be damned!” Bu shouted. “I told you to walk your horse.”
“What good is a horse if you can’t ride it?” the knight asked, several of the others helping him up as the horse screamed, its right foreleg bent in an unnatural angle.
Bu backhanded the man, sending him into a tree. The air rushed from the man with an oomph before he bounced off the trunk and then landed on the ground, face first.
“I am getting tired of your insolence,” Bu said, pulling the man up by his collar and looking at him face to face. This Sir Robert was a flippant man and had been a nagging gnat, almost as bad as Count Alger’s man—Sir Garrett—since they left Hámon. His beard was a pathetic thing of wispy, blond hair, so much so that he should have just kept his face clean-shaven, and his straight bangs and bobbed hair that hung just above his shoulders made it hard for Bu to believe that he was one of the best knights and warriors Hámon had to offer.
“I … I …” Sir Robert began to say.
“I am your king, you pile of troll shit,” Bu said, “and unless you want to see what your intestines look like and know what your balls taste like, you’ll remember that.”
He let go of Sir Robert and the man fell on his ass.
“Kill that damn horse,” Bu said as the poor animal continued to whinny pathetically and thrash about, “and skin it, gut it, and portion it out.”
“You mean to eat the horse?” Sir Garrett asked.
Sir Garrett actually looked like a soldier, with a stern jaw and broad shoulders. He kept his light brown hair short, in the fashion of eastern soldiers, even though he was a westerner through and through. And, like many of his kind in the east, he thought his noble blood made him better than everyone else.
“Unless you wish to stick your manhood in it first! There will come a time when you might consider boiling your leather boots, Sir Garrett,” Bu said, his voice hard and flat. He spoke from experience, but the knight turned away with an arrogant shake of his head.
They hiked through the dense forest for another two days before the terrain began to open up. It didn’t make traveling that much easier, for with the wider open space, the snow fell more freely. Most of the knights mounted back up, but Bu, Bao Zi, and the rest of his men continued to lead their horses. There was no point in riding them when they would travel at the same speed either way. And this way, they saved their horses, if only a little.
Of course, Sir Robert continued to complain about not having a horse. His voice was whiny, and he sounded like a petulant little girl. It grated on Bu, and he found himself gripping the handle of the sword he had inherited from Patûk Al’Banan’s death.
“What is that, my lord?” Bao Zi asked.
Bu hadn’t been paying attention, simply concentrating on not removing Sir Robert’s head from his shoulders.
“What is what?” Bu replied, his voice hard and short.
He hadn’t meant to be short with perhaps the most trusted man in his employ, but the old soldier continued as if Bu’s voice was no different than any other time.
“Look, my lord.”
Bu followed Bao Zi’s hand to the trees where the forest began again up ahead. Dusk had started to settle on the mountain, and in the intermittent combination of sun and moonlight, something glimmered between two trees.
“I don’t know,” Bu replied, squinting and straining to try and see what it was.
“It’s over there too,” Bao Zi said, pointing to another tree.
“It looks like a spider’s web,” Bu said.
One tree trunk was all white, and the branches, which were all clumped together, were also white, but not with snow.
“Either, there’s a million spiders up there,” Bao Zi said, “or that’s one, big, damn spider.”
“When are we stopping?” Sir Robert whined. “My feet hurt.”
“Damn the gods,” Bu hissed.
Bu stopped, handed Warrior’s reins to Andu, and walked towards Sir Robert. He was complaining to another knight, Sir Caleb—his red hair kept in the same fashion as Sir Robert and with a thin mustache and small bit of red hair on his chin—when Bu unsheathed his sword and drove it into Sir Robert’s gut. Everyone stopped, several men gasped, and one man even let out a cry that didn’t sound like it came from a hardened soldier. Sir Robert stared at Bu in disbelief. He removed his sword, and the knight collapsed at his feet, dead.
“Shall we skin him, gut him, and portion him out as well?” Sir Garrett asked.
Bu looked at the knight, a smile on his face.
9
Boulders and wooden poles marked the road leading into the Gray Mountains, and slabs of stone marked some of the road, preventing it from washing away during snow and rainstorms. Signs of travel were evident and Erik and his companions even passed a small group of northern dwarves traveling to Eldmanor and northwestern Háthgolthane.
Despite the passable nature of the road, often cutting a wide path between rising peaks and trees, travel was slow. The Gray Mountains didn’t have gently sloping foothills like the Western Tor of the Southern Mountains, and the trek into the range was steep, and even the horses had to tread carefully.
“We will eventually have to let the horses go,” Beldar said as they reached an especially treacherous part of the mountain road, with a steep ascending slope on one side and a sharp drop to the other.
That made Bryon’s heart sink, and he patted his horse’s neck.
“It’s all right,” Bryon, ever the horse lover, whispered to the animal when no one was looking. “You’ll be all right.”
The skeletal remains of a mule lay to one side, and Bryon suspected the animal had been part of a supply chain and had taken a misstep farther up the mountain; that was all the confirmation needed to know they would, eventually, have to let their mounts go, hoping they made it home safely. He now understood why Erik had turned down his Uncle Rikard’s offer to give them his best horses and extra ones to carry their supplies.
Even though it was late summer, a thick fog hung in the air of the early mornings in the Gray Mountains. Whether they were camping in the forest or alongside a mountain path, it was as cold as winter on the Eleodum Farmstead. As the day wore on, the sun would melt the fog away, and by noon, if Bryon stood directly in the sun, it could feel hot. By dusk, the fog would come back, accompanied by light rains, often not much more than a gentle mist, sometimes sleet and soft snow that melted as soon as it touched the ground, and more cold weather. A light frost would form on the ground or grass by midnight, meaning the horses would slip and stall the next day, making travel even slower.
The mountain road cut through forest for four of the first five days of their journey, and when they were in the forest, they hunted every night. Food was abundant, and they could walk but ten paces and at least find a squirrel or rabbit to bop on the head, let alone the small deer, raccoon, berries, nuts, and mushrooms that were readily available.
“The old man in Eldmanor said we already have the key?” Bryon asked as he and Erik took a walk after eating.
“Yeah.”
“Where is it?” Bryon asked. “Better yet, what is it?”
Erik just shrugged.
“Do you trust him?” Bryon asked.
“As much as I trust the Lord of the East,” Erik replied. “He knew things. I don’t know if he was a mage, but I don’t think he was false.”
“If you lead us to our doom …” Bryon began to say.
“Did you embark on this journey thinking it would be a merry, joyous one, full of safety?” Nafer asked, to which the other dwarves laughed.
“Things are always joyous
and merry with dwarves,” Bryon said sarcastically and his comment brought on even more laughter.
“We’ll be dead before you have a chance to kill me,” Erik said, joining in the dwarves’ amusement, and Bryon eventually lost his scowl and chuckled a little bit too.
They were camping along a mountain ledge on the fifth day of travel from Eldmanor, Bryon staring out over the edge just before they set out for the day.
“Does this remind you of anything?” Bryon asked Erik.
“Leaving Thorakest I’d say,” Erik replied. “The Southern Mountains.”
Bryon nodded his head.
“Is it odd that I miss it?” Bryon asked.
“What do you miss?” Erik replied.
“The Southern Mountains. Thorakest. Orvencrest. The journey. The fighting,” Bryon said. “All of it. Do you feel the same?”
“I don’t know,” Erik said. “I suppose I haven’t thought about it much recently.”
“You have Simone,” Bryon said with a smile, “now you have something else to think about.”
“She’s pregnant,” Erik said.
“I didn’t know, cousin,” Bryon said. He actually looked happy. “Congratulations. Your equipment works. That’s good to know.”
Erik elbowed his cousin with a laugh.
“Boy or girl?” Bryon asked.
“Who knows?” Erik replied. “Whichever the baby is, they will call you Uncle Bryon.”
“But I’m no uncle to your child,” Bryon replied. He gave Erik a serious look.
“It doesn’t matter,” Erik said. “You’ve been like a brother to me … and you’ll be an uncle to my child.”
Bryon felt a flutter in his stomach and couldn’t help the small smile that touched his lips.
“I am honored,” Bryon finally said.
Dragon Sword: Demon's Fire Book 1 Page 7
