by Deck Davis
Benjen laughed. “Not when they find out what we want to do with it.”
“True. Look, let’s head to town and ask around a little. Maybe the dragon is a local pest and the people here have ways of driving it away, or something.”
~
As the night lamps glowed on the cobbled streets of Dyrewood, Kordrude found that he wasn’t walking toward the Lumberjack’s Axe Inn, but instead was plodding. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go there; the opposite in fact. He could always count on a flash of merry smiles whenever he opened the tavern doors, and it was a lovely way to spend an evening after work.
No, it was something else that slowed his steps today. A kind of restlessness. For the first time in a while he became really aware of the weight of the wings on his back. Not that he didn’t know they were there, but since they were a part of him, he never really paid them any mind. After all, did you constantly take notice of your hands? Your feet? Your beak?
But it wasn’t the weight or them, more rather the lack of weight. They were small, underdeveloped. That happened with all of the crowsie race, of course. If you didn’t fly regularly from hatching, your wings didn’t grow, much in a way that a barbarian’s arms would grow skinny if he never swung his sword.
With crowsies it was a little different, though, because beyond a certain point without use, your wings would never grow at all. Some crowsies flew all the time, and many of them joined the army of the three kings, where they’d swoop down into battle with spears in their hands and the wind rushing against their wings.
Kordrude’s family was land-locked by choice. His mother had been a chef, and his father a bureaucrat, and like most boys, Kordrude had always looked up to his father. His father was his hero all his life, and in that weird way, his vocation had become heroic too, and Kordrude found himself gaining bureaucrat as his primary class choice.
He’d always been happy with his lot. Even happier when he married Justona, the gods rest her soul. He’d never been one to moan or to look at other people’s lives with jealousy.
But the lads. Yes, that was it. Those two lads who’d given off such a sense of purpose, such a warmth. They were good friends to each other, those two, he could sense it. It wasn’t their friendship that made him restless, though, because he had good friends of his own.
No, it was the look in their eyes. The drive in them, the sparkle when they spoke about heading to their guild house in the east. It was the story they’d told, one where they’d gone against the wishes of the family, where they’d decided to go against the odds and had struck out on their own in pursuit of a dream.
Kordrude took pride in his work. Sure, bureaucracy had its boring, meaningless duties, but there was a lot of good, too. Finding houses for the homeless, helping the poor. It was worthy work. But still…
Before long he found himself at the tavern. He pushed open the doors and was greeted by the warm strums of the bard’s lute, along with the baritone voice in which he sang a song about lost love.
Faces looked Kordrude’s way and smiled at him; there was Helena, the half-arachnid seamstress who raised all eight of her arms to wave at him. And Butchy, the innkeeper who had gravy stains on his apron, and when he smiled he showed gaps where he’d lost teeth in his old career as a boxer.
Then there was Janda. Ah, his good friend Janda, sitting at a table in the corner by the hearth, with two flagons of ale surrounding the runto-board he’d set up in preparation for their customary evening game.
Janda was a widower, like Kordrude. He was a dwarf by heritage, but not by nature (if you prescribed to the stereotype). Janda was a senior manager at the Kosgrove Caravan company, whose headquarters were just around the corner from the tavern.
When he wasn’t directing his staff and processing orders, Janda could always be found in the tavern, and at nights he always set up the runto-board so he and Kordrude could continue their on-running battle, in which Kordrude was twelve games ahead. He could have been forty, of course, but he liked the look on Jando’s face when he let him win. That said a lot, really, because Kordrude loved to win.
“Kordrude, my lad, park your bum here!” said Janda, gesturing at the chair facing him, as if Kordrude wouldn’t have known where to sit otherwise.
Janda offered his hand, and Kordrude tipped his head forward and nibbled his ink-stained index finger.
“I got you a beer,” he said.
Kordrude sat down. He reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a bottle. “Funny, I got you one too,” he said.
“Oh? What’s this?”
“A new brew. Try it.”
Janda loved trying new beers, Kordrude knew, but the tavern rarely changed their supplier, and as such the dwarf didn’t get much opportunity.
He greedily took the bottle, uncorked it, and sniffed the rim. “Smells strange,” he said. “You’ve not decided to poison me, have you? This friendship wasn’t all a sham at getting me to write you into my will so you could snuff me out?”
“Try it,” said Kordrude.
Janda took a big gulp of the beer. His eyes lit up, and for a second the creases around them disappeared and he looked younger. “This is the best beer I’ve ever had!” he said.
Kordrude smiled. “I know a lad who’d kiss you for saying that.”
“Where’d you get it?”
Kordrude told his friend about the boys he’d met, and about the goblin, and about the guildhouse they’d bought. When he’d finished speaking, Janda narrowed his eyes.
“This guildhouse is in the east, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“I think I know the place.”
“Really?”
“A few months back, one of our caravan drivers was sick. We had an order we couldn’t delay or we’d lose our best customer, so I drove it myself. I saw that old ruin they told you about.”
“You look worried.”
“Aye, well it sounds like those lads have more on their plate than they realized.”
“How so? They didn’t seem scared of the work.”
“It’s not that. It’s the great bloody dragon that’s taken nest out front! It’s a she-dragon, and she’s pregnant with whelps. She’s not going to take kindly to those boys rocking up on their horses.”
Kordrude found that a sense of worry had taken in his gut. Sure, he knew that the boys were optimistic to the point that many would have thought their plan was ill-made, but their optimism was what had warmed him to them. Now, he saw that their optimism was going to get them into more trouble than they could handle.
They probably didn’t know about dragons, of course. In fact, not many people did. Sure, nobody was ignorant of their existence, but most people saw the scaled-beauties as pests of the skies, creatures to be fearful of, and ones to attack on sight if they hovered too long over the rooftops of a town.
But Kordrude wasn’t just a bureaucrat. He’d amassed a collection of secondary classes in his life, and linguist was one of them. He’d knew many languages, but one that he prized above all others; Kordrude could speak dragon-tongue.
Dragons weren’t just hunters of the sky. They weren’t simple-minded beasts made of scales and fire. In fact, if you took the trouble to learn their tongue, you’d see that some could be quite reasonable.
To those who didn’t know how to talk to them, though, the dragons reacted angrily. They held in contempt the masses and masses of people of Fortuna who didn’t know that they were quite intelligent.
There it was again. With the rush of thoughts came a restlessness in Kordrude’s gut. A yearning to see the world like he’d always promised himself, and to see dragons and to talk to them, and just maybe, to save two optimistic lads from getting their rumps burned to ash.
He stood up, knocking the pieces of the game board out of place.
“Where are you going?” said Janda.
“I’m going to take a little trip,” said Kordrude.
“What? Where?”
“To the
east.”
This could work. He’d labored for years without taking holidays. He’d never been sick, never been late. He was owed a month or two of holidays away from the office at least, and his assistant, Huckley, could keep things running for a little while.
Yes, that was it. He’d leave Dyrewood behind for a little, go and get Furb, and he’d take the little mite and he’d pack a few clothes and then he’d head to the guildhouse.
For the first time in a while he was filled with the fire of life, with a rush of excitement.
He looked at his friend. “I don’t suppose you have any caravans heading east, do you?”
~
Ardglass town was four miles north of the guildhouse, waiting at the end of a well-worn road that bore the marks of travelers and merchant horses and caravans in the mud. From the dozens of different footprints and horse hooves and drags of caravan wheels, it seemed like it was well-travelled, and this made Joshua feel better about adding their own prints to the boggy mix.
It was an age-old saying that in parts of Fortuna, travelling along roads could be more dangerous than going over wild terrain. That was truer for out-of-the-way roads, the ones that connected lonely villages to each other, the ones that people rarely used, and the people who did were often perfect bait for bands of brigands.
Here, though, the road wasn’t lonely, and Joshua didn’t worry about desperate clans of robbers waiting by the sides of the road. He’d be sure to keep an eye out for goblin babies, though.
Halfway between the guildhall and the town there was a sloping hill, and they got off their horses and led them up it, since the going was a little too rocky to be safe on horseback. At the top, they got to see the guildhouse a little closer, but still far enough away that they didn’t have to worry about enraging the dragon.
Roebuck and Firemane stood next to each other and chomped on the luscious grass. The two horses had started the journey from the village as reluctant acquaintances, since old Roebuck didn’t seem too enamored by his younger travelling companion. Over many miles though they’d become inseparable, to the point that they could barely ride more than a foot apart.
Similarly, Joshua and Benjen stood side by side at the top of the hill, and with Joshua holding the wicker basket containing Gobber the goblin baby, they seemed like an odd kind of family.
“Quite a sight, ain’t it,” said Benjen, his breath free from alcohol since he’d drunk all but three of their supply of beers. The only ones left were three of his own brews, and as much as Benjen liked to ride with a buzz, Joshua knew he preferred the tension and thrill of watching other people drink his own special batch to actually consuming it himself.
“It’s bigger than I thought.”
“That means more work.”
“Look at the doors though. The arches…they could be beautiful.”
“It’s gonna take a lot of sanding. Might have to replace a lot of it, especially where it’s water-damaged, see?”
For all the flaws they pointed out, Joshua was sure that Benjen shared his happiness about the building they’d bought. Each of them had left two secondary class slots free so they could earn the classes they’d need to fix up such a place. Builder, glazier, gardener.
It was going to take a whole heap of skills and classes to get this place looking new. Eventually, Joshua would probably have to abandon a couple of his less practical existing classes.
Still, they were here, and the start of their dream was so close. Now, if it wasn’t for the dragon outside…
But he hadn’t suggested they climb the hill to stare at their scaly trespasser. He wanted to get another look at the place; he’d felt an urge to do it, as if now that they’d finally gotten here, spending any time away from their guildhouse would somehow make it disappear.
He smiled as he studied it. At first glance it was one giant structure spread over a plot of land atop a hill. The closer he looked, the more he realized that it was actually several buildings joined together, as if it had been extended over the years.
The middle section was higher than the rest, with a roof that grew thinner as it went up until it looked like a finger pointing up at the gods, and there was a long, thin spike sitting on top of its domed roof.
The sections either side of it were wider but lower, and their roofs were of the more standard kind you’d see in most towns. There was a garden of overgrown grass all around the guild, and this was hemmed-in by a metal fence that looked like it was about to fall over.
A building like this, even in its heyday, wouldn’t have matched the cathedrals of the Serpal Isles, nor the museums and theatres in Oppenrome, the capital of Fortuna. Joshua wanted to fix the place up and make it look proud again, but it wasn’t for the thrill of architecture.
No, it was what was inside that mattered. The guild would eventually be the beating heart of the area, it would be a source for good, a place for those in need to flock when they needed a champion to fight for them.
Standing there with his best friend, he felt his chest stir, and he half-wished his father had travelled with them, and all the village elders and hunters and shopkeepers too, so he could point at the guild and say ‘look! See? It wasn’t just a dream. This is going to happen.’
“We better go,” said Benjen.
Joshua nodded, and they led their horses down the hill and started on the road again, heading to the town of Ardglass, where he could only hope they’d discover the means to get that damn dragon off their land.
Chapter Six
“I say we go for the sheep idea,” said Benjen, as they reached the town.
Joshua shook his head. “Too cruel. Maybe we can find a mage and pay him to cast an illusion of a sheep. Get the dragon to chase that.”
“Mages cost a fortune, and we’re gonna need every penny for food and supplies to fix the guild. Remember, we didn’t buy all the lumber and nails and stuff we’d need yet, since we didn’t want to cart it across Fortuna.”
“True, plus, it’s cheaper out here anyway. You know how they ramp up prices back home,” said Joshua.
“Well, if sheep and mages aren’t the answer, then I’m stuck,” said Benjen.
“That’s your answer to everything. Sheep and mages.”
Joshua had hoped that in the time it took to get to Ardglass town they would have formed a solid plan in their heads. The fact was, it was harder than he’d realized to come up with a scheme for banishing a dragon. Maybe they’d gone into this whole thing too quickly after all. Perhaps they should have waited a little, and planned things more …
No. He knew that wasn’t right; he was just feeling a little down, that’s all. You couldn’t plan for every possible outcome, you couldn’t foresee every single thing that would go wrong. When people delayed their dreams because they needed to be completely sure of success, they often ended never pursuing them at all.
While you procrastinated by thinking about millions and millions of future problems, life passed you by and your dreams died.
Sure, they’d come here a little under-prepared, but that was half the point! To learn as they went, to grow their skills while they grew the guild. That was what pioneers did; they took a chance and then worked with every fiber of their being to make it happen. He’d rather fail at a pursuing dream than succeed in pursuing nothing.
Benjen nudged him. Joshua looked up to see a set of steel gates, twenty-feet tall and with both sides open to admit them. Next to the gates was a sign:
No wraiths
Well-behaved ogres permitted
Praise be to Orogoth
“Orogoth?” said Benjen. “Never heard of him before.”
Joshua shrugged. “A god of some sort?”
“He obviously doesn’t like wraiths or badly-behaved ogres, anyway.”
They trotted through the town gates and then had to dismount, because they soon came to a pathway hemmed in by walls so narrow that they could only walk single-file. They followed this for a few minutes, and then emerged into the
town square.
“They did this during the Goblin wars,” said Benjen. “I read about it. Before the treaty and the migration, they extended all the towns in the east so that when you entered them, you had to move single file for a while. Stopped armies swarming over the walls.”
“We better think about stuff like that for the guild, you know. Walls, fences. When guilds get big enough, they become a target. All those heroes under one roof…”
“I always liked the idea of a moat.”
“That’s more for castles, but let’s not rule it out yet.”
A few paces ahead, Benjen stopped. He pointed ahead. “I think I found Orogoth,” he said.
As town squares went, Ardglass’s was typical in many ways. On market stalls off to the left, dried meats hung from racks and herbs were laid out in rows. Shops surrounded the square, each with a sign that advertised its wares, from Wrekron’s Swords ‘n’ Shields, Arina Shett’s Potions and Botany, to Elden’s Things and Stuff store. Just right of the row of shops was a tavern shaped like a boot lying on its side, and the door was the hole where the foot would go if it were real. Course, only a giant could have owned footwear that big.
Discovering Ardglass town increased his seeker binding knowledge to 31 out of 50, and he already couldn’t wait to see what rewards getting to level 2 would bring. For now, though, he needed to ground himself in the present and take in the scene around him.
All sorts of people and races were busy milling to and fro, from a couple of crowsies with wings much bigger than Kordrude the bureaucrat’s, to wickermen who took painstaking care in stepping out of the way of any passersby who happened to be smoking pipes.
Joshua was fascinated by wickermen and he’d read about them before; about the creatures born of timber from the Shining Woods, from trees whose souls were magically enhanced. He and Benjen had seen one back when they accompanied Joshua’s father to Gossang city, and that meant that he didn’t get a boost on his seeker binding.
Watching the little wooden men walk in their awkward way, he wished he’d learned the artist class, because he would have loved to sketch one of them. He wanted some way to record everything he was seeing, because it was all so new to him. He felt like he could just drink in all these new sights and sounds and smells.
