by Jon Hollins
“No.” Will shook his head. Blood flew from his injured nose. “Lette, please. Just a little more time. You’ll see.”
“You’re fucking mad,” she told him. And she turned away. It hurt. It hurt more than she expected it to, and she could see in her mind’s eye the wounded, pleading expression he would be wearing at this exact moment. But she did not turn back to him. She just took a step away. And the step hurt too, but she kept on moving.
The roar, though—that stopped her dead in her tracks.
At first she thought it was the dragons, finally roused from their nest in Hallows’ Mouth, coming down to see to them personally. She could see them clearly in her mind’s eye as well, rising from the crater, the greatest force of destruction that volcano could ever spew, arcing down, wings spread, lungs full of fire…
But then it came again, and it was a sound she knew, a sound she was intimate with, that could lull her to sleep in times of trouble. It was the sound of men mobilizing for war.
Men yelled, trumpets blared, feet drummed against the ground, armor shook, weapons rattled, dogs barked, griffins cawed, trolls roared, captains called for order, and none came.
Someone put a hand on her shoulder and she spun, knife already in her hand, pressing it to the jugular.
Step back to avoid the spray. Don’t be blinded.
But it was Will. Just Will.
“Balur,” he said.
But she looked at the chaos, and the way the whole of the camp pulsed with sudden energy, the way it surged, like a hound that has finally torn through its leash. “No,” she said. “This isn’t a feint. This is more.”
She fought the knowledge for a moment, but in the end she knew Balur. He wouldn’t… simply couldn’t just feint.
Will saw it on her face, and before she could stop him he was taking off through the camp, running toward the front line.
“No!” she tried to call, but her shout was lost in all the other shouts of soldiers readying for war.
“The pay wagons,” she muttered to herself. “The fucking pay wagons.” For now was the time to strike, to steal, and to run, and to hide, and to maybe have a celebratory quickie in a copse of trees for at least getting that far before the inevitable capture, torture, and death.
She could run at that moment, she thought. She could just turn tail and run for herself, try to save her skin.
But was that who she was anymore? That was certainly the woman she had been when she entered the Kondorra valley. A survivor. Self-interested, perhaps. Uncaring, perhaps. Vicious, definitely. But a survivor.
Hadn’t she wanted to leave that woman behind, though? Hadn’t she wanted to be a better person? Someone who didn’t just survive, but lived?
She hesitated. Then, suddenly she was running after Will, pushing through bustling men and women. A sergeant yelled at her to stop. She almost forgot herself and planted a dagger in his skull. The blade was in her palm, then she remembered how she hadn’t been killing people here, because that was the definition of suicide. So she ran on, ignoring his increasingly angry yells. Will had a good fifty yards on her. Had his head down, was barreling forward.
“The prophet!” people yelled all around her. “The prophet is coming! The mad bastard is attacking.”
Mad bastard? Yes, that seemed appropriate.
I could probably catch Will with a dagger in his calf, even at this distance, at this pace. Probably. Bring him down, drag him away. People would think the kicking and screaming was the injury.
Griffins were taking to the air, screaming. Their riders yelled to each other, bronze spears gripped tight. The trolls were bellowing, beating on their war drums, a solid bass line of anger and rage starting to build under the chaos of the camp. Starting to give it direction. More and more soldiers were running to the front. She was losing Will in the crowd.
She pressed closer, faster, closed the distance. She could outrun some gods-hexed farm boy. The blade still in her hand called out to her to be thrown. Just enough to spin him around, slow him down. A flesh wound.
Just a little closer. Just to be sure.
And then suddenly Will ground to a halt. Her hand was cocked but she never threw. She stumbled up to him, panting hard. And there was no more crowd. She and Will stood at the front of the camp. Squares of women and men were forming to their left and right, but the plain ahead of them was utterly empty.
And across the field, they saw Balur and his army march to war.
78
Conflict
The sound of war filled Balur’s vision. The sound of his army. His to command. Their adoration had grown with each pass of the fake dragon skull. Their ardor for his words. He was their prophet now.
A feint. To stall and to feint. That was what Will had asked him in that tent, that night. And he had stalled. He had burned with frustration. Until Will was nothing but a distant memory to these people.
And now he unleashed his rage.
79
Good, Honest Thievery
Lette pulled desperately at Will’s shoulder.
“We have to go,” she implored him. “Now.”
He pulled away from her, stared. “They’re really marching,” he said. “All of them. Against the dragons. They really believe they can win.”
“Yes,” Lette agreed. “And they’re fucking idiots. Can we go now?”
He turned to her. Finally. And his eyes were shining.
“We made that,” he said. “We made that belief. We made all of that hope.”
“Yes,” she said again. “We deceived a whole shitload of people and now their deaths will be on our consciences for the next seven or eight minutes before we die ourselves. Now let’s get the fuck out of here so we can let that reality sink in for a bit. Oh, and yes, steal the fucking gold, as that’s the one tattered remnant of this plan that is still standing.”
She seized his wrist, pulled him. He came stumbling, a man in a daze. And yes, she supposed, there was some glory to it all. A crushed people, rising up, rediscovering their will, refusing to take the oppression anymore. Even if it was a futile gesture, there was a certain grace to it. But honestly, she would much rather wait until the threat of death was just a little less imminent before she sat back and appreciated it.
The going was harder this time. They were fighting the tide of the crowd. Soldiers yelled at them to get out of the way. Someone called out, “Deserter!” She threw her dagger that time, and he ate the blade. There was no time to retrieve it. She would miss that dagger. She had won it in a knife-throwing contest in Batarra against a drunken minotaur. Oh well.
The troll’s war drums picked up tempo. The lighter snare of human drummer boys picked up the beat, sent battalions out into flanking maneuvers. The griffins formed up in the sky, wings beating the air hard. The numbers were absurd. The Consortium’s army would swallow the prophet’s. It was going to be a massacre. The sergeants and lieutenants were shouting out the orders to form up with relish.
Above them, Hallows’ Mouth boomed and roared. Black smoke obliterated the burgeoning night. No stars would shine down on this slaughter.
Then they were at the rear of the camp. She pitched left, course-correcting toward Quirk’s colorful wagons. Beyond those, the guards had pulled the pay wagons farther back, the black-painted walls receding into the darkness. The soldiers who had been guarding them were gone, called away to war.
Because all concerns about gold, about lead, about bankrupt dragons… all that was gone now. All this army cared about was the slaughter to come. Will’s plan had been a nice dream, a good last-ditch attempt, but they had failed.
She crossed the final fifty yards to the pay wagons at a flat sprint. Her legs ached, lungs burned. There was nothing left to do now. Just run, and run until they could run no more, and pray that was enough.
Quirk had been right, they should have left the lead on the temple roofs. They needed all the divine luck they could get.
That thought almost made her laugh, as she leapt
into the seat, flicked the reins at the still-tethered horses. Behind her, she heard Will scrambling up into the second wagon. This at least, she thought, is some good honest thievery. No deception. No deceit. Simply taking what I want and then fleeing into the night.
80
Sellout
Quirk just wished the trembling would subside. She was alive, wasn’t she? She was not stuck between any creature’s teeth. They were listening.
“Will,” she said, the quaver evident in just that single syllable. “That’s his name. The prophet’s Willett Fallows. From the north of the valley.” She looked from massive leering head to massive leering head. “That’s what you want to know about, right? Who he is? How he did this?”
The black dragon—sinuous, beautiful, deadly—lowered its enormous head until she was eye-to-eye with it. She could drown in those eyes, she knew. Their gold was the only wealth she desired.
“You will tell us everything, little spy,” it said. The force of the words blew her back. She staggered under their impact. “You will give up everyone and everything. And then as we devour you, you will thank us.”
She dropped to her knees. She felt bruised from the impact of his breath.
And yet there was so much majesty in him. So much she wanted to study. If only she could measure, observe, so much more.
But they were not creatures of patience, she knew.
“He’s not a prophet,” she said. “That’s just bullshit. Some lie that was told, and took hold, and became… well, not useful, really. But the people wanted it to be true. I don’t think he ever did. Will that is. But others did. There’s this man, Firkin, you see.”
She was gabbling, she realized, but she could hardly think straight. Not here and now. There was too much fear. Too much excitement. To be this close to them. It was madness. It was divine.
“But it’s a lie he used in the end. Will did. To come here. To try to kill you. That’s what he really wants. He hates you, you see. He thinks you’re just… well, he calls you fat, lazy lizards. That’s what he tells people. That you just lie around getting fat on the backs of other people’s work, that you’re like a plague. He has nothing but hatred for you. I think, if you peel back everything else that he is, that’s what remains. That hatred.”
Her words, she could see, were having a poor effect on the dragons. The black’s lips were peeling back from its teeth.
A completely different jaw structure from the other two, one part of her mind said. Though the teeth look the same. Could it be some subspecies? The result of interbreeding? Or just a natural variation?
A different part of her mind just said, Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
The red dragon leaned down, snuffed at her. Even kneeling she was almost bowled over.
“Pathetic,” it said.
“Yes.” Quirk nodded. “That’s exactly what he says about you.”
The dragon roared.
And roared.
And roared.
The world around Quirk became a liquid oozing thing, running out of focus into a messy slop in the back of her quivering mind. It took a while for it to stop. Her nose was bleeding, she realized. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears.
“He insults us,” said the black. Every word made Quirk’s skull ring with pain.
“Yes.” She nodded, wished she hadn’t. “The whole fat, lazy, ugly, diseased, diminutive genitalia thing—”
“Enough!” bellowed the dragon.
Quirk clutched her head and fought the urge to vomit.
“We do not need to know his history,” hissed the squat brown dragon. Mercifully, its voice was quieter than the other’s. “We do not need to hear his crimes. We do not need to know his plans. We need nothing but one thing. So you will tell us where he is if you have any desire to see the sun again.”
Quirk nodded desperately. Fear held her as strongly as their claws. It was ice, stifling her fire. She looked up, toward the distant crater, the distant sky, toward the false promise of escape. She would love to see the stars one last time. But there was only smoke, leaving everything gray and obscure.
And then, drifting down from that distant window on the world, filtering in between the ringing in her ears, and the hot huffing of the dragon’s breath, and the clinking of their claws on the coins at her feet, she heard the sound of drums, and the call of trumpets, as an army mobilized for war.
And despite herself, she smiled.
“Where is the prophet?” she said. “Well, right now, I think he’s stealing your army’s gold.”
81
The Midnight Ride of Lettera Therren
Lette rode. She rode like she had never ridden before. Like the gates to the Hallows had opened up and spewed forth the spawn of her nightmares, setting them upon her tail, screaming for her life, and baying to bury their jaws in her guts.
And then they truly did.
Her horses streaked across the plains, over the rolling hills. The pay wagon smashed up and down, thrashing over the grasslands behind it. How she had not broken an axle, she had no idea, but she praised whichever misanthropic deity had decided to spit in the eye of all the others and keep her whole and hale this far.
Then the roar rose up behind her, and killed all her hope dead.
She glanced back. She shouldn’t. She knew that. All she would see back there would be all her possible futures narrowing down to the one that led to the Hallows and an eternity as Lawl’s puppet in that bleak underworld. But she still glanced back. She wanted to see that future rushing toward her on a dragon’s wings. She probably did it, she thought, because she was stupid. She had been, after all, stupid enough to get herself into this situation.
One by one, the dragons emerged from the cloud of smoke that wreathed Hallows’ Mouth. Five of them, wings spread, necks stretched out, spouting geysers of fire into the night air. Then, one by one, they dropped down, and plunged toward her.
At least, she thought, her death would be pretty fucking epic. Five dragons to take her down. They might sing a song about that.
Fire filled the world behind her. She heard it, a rushing, roaring crackle that turned grass to ash and split stones in half. She felt its heat licking at her even through the thickness of the wagon at her back. She felt it closing in.
She glanced over to where Will leaned forward in the seat of his wagon, desperately thrashing the reins, urging more speed from his panicking horses. But they had nothing left to give.
Then the heat was gone. A black shape roared over them. She felt the downdraft from its wings buffet her. It streaked up into the sky. Two more dragons raced past on either side. A sinuous yellow monster on the left, a red behemoth on the right.
All three wheeled in the air before her. They were going to come back round. She and Will were sitting ducks.
Will responded first, hauling on his reins. His wagon began to turn. She heaved the leather strips in her own hands to avoid crashing. He was turning them both away from the attack.
And then a vast green beast landed directly in their path. Her horses screamed, tried to run in different directions. The strain on the reins almost flung her from her seat. She yelled, heaved, forced the horses under control, tightened her turn. The wagon rose up on two wheels. She felt the heavy mass of gold in the wagon shift behind her.
“Fuck all the gods!” she screamed. “Fuck all of you!”
The cart crashed down, straightened. The roaring, snapping mouth of the dragon rushed past in her peripheral vision. She heard the clash of its teeth closing behind her.
She risked a look at Will. He was still there, still hanging desperately on.
Flame. Flame lighting up the world. It raced past to her left. Then to her right. And then a fresh stream, crossing directly in front of her, filling the world. Unavoidable.
She closed her eyes, felt the horses leap. The wheels smashed into a rise in the field, the wagon bucked into the air. Unbearable heat embraced her.
Then the moment
was over. And she was still alive, still moving. She could smell her own smoldering hair. Dark shapes raced in the air above her.
She was pointed back at the Consortium army now. Back into the bulk of their enemies. She sought for a way to turn, hauled left.
A dragon—brown, broad, and ugly as a whore’s arsehole—tore through the night toward her. She pulled the horses up as short as she could. They reared. The wagon bucked again. Steel-gray claws raked the air in front of the horses’ noses. A frustrated roar filled the world around her.
Then the horses were running again, out of control now, dragging her along behind her. Smashing back the way she had tried to turn away from.
She could hear crackling from behind her, could smell burning wood. She risked another glance back.
The roof of her wagon was on fire.
“Oh fuck Lawl right in the arse.”
Another glimpse at Will. He was directly ahead of her, almost upon the Consortium camp now.
She saw the dragon the moment before it opened its jaws. She opened her own mouth to call out wordlessly, pointlessly as it dropped out of the sky, as fire filled its mouth.
She saw Will lost in flame.
And then, miraculously, incomprehensibly, he emerged from the jet of fire. He tore off his flaming jacket, and rode on, crashing through tents and smoldering fire pits, his wagon flaming along with hers, twin beacons in the night.
“Gods,” she breathed. And then she too was plunging into the chaos.
82
What the Lizard Man Saw
Balur watched in horror as the dragons emerged from Hallows’ Mouth. That had most definitely not been meant to happen yet. The massively superior army baying for their blood. Yes. That he remembered. He was prepared for that. Tooth and claw, blood and steel, man versus man. But the dragons…
