They reached the top of the ridge and looked down into their former campsite, which looked to be the scene of a recent skirmish. The really fast dwarf that had stabbed Ben was sitting by the cold fire pit.
He smiled at them. “My master would like to negotiate,” he said, picking his teeth with a bird bone.
Ben started to speak but Cyril silenced him with a sharp look. The little man’s smile grew broader.
“Who is your master?” Cyril asked.
“You may call him ‘Master.’”
“Doubtful,” Cyril said. “What’s he want?”
“The egg.”
Cyril locked eyes with the little man.
After a moment, the dwarf’s smile morphed into an expression of pain and fear. He broke eye contact with Cyril and ran away—very quickly.
“We’ll see him again.” Cyril said. Then he sighed and shook his head. “There are always unforeseen consequences with magic.” He took a step toward Ben and faced him squarely. “I put the egg somewhere to keep it safe. One of the results of that decision was to create a rift that allowed a conquering warlock to invade our world.”
“You didn’t know—”
“Irrelevant. The result of an action is the reality you create. Intent is fantasy. Intent is want and dream. Let good intent guide you to be sure, but judge the outcome of your actions by the results that you achieve in the real world. A wizard must measure himself by the most demanding of masters—Reality. And the reality is, I brought a potent enemy into this world.”
“So …” Ben said, waiting for Cyril to give him his full, and somewhat upset, attention, “… let’s use him against our enemy.”
Cyril lost some of his emotion, deflating in the process. “That’s often easier said than done. Truth is, we should be planning to repel an attack.”
“You think he’ll come so quickly?” Imogen asked.
“Perhaps quicker than you think,” the dwarf yelled from behind a tree fifty feet away. Then he chuckled with delight. “Master has your friends. I was supposed to tell you that before.”
“Shit,” Cyril muttered.
“Indeed, Wizard,” the dwarf yelled.
“You hear well,” Cyril said without raising his voice.
“Better than you.”
“Who does your master have?”
“One called Hound and another called Frank.”
Cyril looked to Ben and Imogen. Both nodded support.
“Where?”
“Not far.”
“We’ll meet with him. Lead the way.”
The dwarf raced off thirty feet into the forest, then stopped and looked back at them impatiently. Cyril walked toward him without hurrying in the least. When he got within ten feet, the dwarf raced off another thirty feet and stopped to wait.
“Are you training in a virtual-reality simulation?” the augment asked.
“No. Now be quiet. I’m busy.”
Two hundred paces up the road, they came to the corpse of one of the bounty hunters. He’d been killed by a shotgun blast to the face several days prior and left to rot. Scavengers had already started picking at him.
They traveled up the road for a mile until they reached a steeply sloping embankment rising to a plateau that had been built up to form the foundation of a now-dilapidated house. The Warlock stood behind Frank and Rufus, who were both on their knees facing the top edge of the slope. Both wore gags and blindfolds, and their hands were bound behind their backs. A bounty hunter stood on either side of them.
“Hello!” the Warlock said, holding his open right hand up high.
Chapter 28
Cyril stopped a hundred feet away, unslinging his brush rifle and working the lever to check the round in the chamber. The dwarf raced back to his master.
“You have a charming little world here,” the Warlock said, his voice carrying far better than it should have. “Only one dragon … and a single unhatched egg. I’m new to your language, but I believe the word I’m looking for is Ripe.”
Cyril released his drone, letting it float ten feet overhead.
Ben assessed his surroundings. When the drone feed became available, he pushed it into the background.
Cyril took aim with the brush rifle and fired. It was a clean shot, aimed directly at the center of the Warlock’s chest, but when the bullet got close, within a few yards, it got hot—really hot. Most of it burned away to vapor, leaving only a small pellet of molten lead to penetrate the Warlock’s shoulder.
He shuddered in pain at the burning within his flesh, staring with terrified eyes at Cyril. Then he drew a deep breath, tipped his head back and screamed with complete commitment, every part of his being caught up in the act.
Cyril slung the rifle and dropped his left hand into the shoulder bag containing the egg.
“Leave my people unharmed or die now,” he said. His words seemed to reverberate through Ben.
The Warlock shrieked into the sky again and withdrew, taking his two bounty hunters and the dwarf with him, leaving Frank and Rufus bound and on their knees at the top of the rise.
“Hold still or you’ll fall,” Cyril yelled. “We’ll be a few minutes getting up to you.”
Ben watched the drone’s view shift, rising higher into the sky, searching for the Warlock in the surrounding forest. The view changed, everything becoming shades of red, revealing the Warlock’s outline in the distance through the trees, then the view returned to normal, except that now the Warlock was marked. The point of view shifted again, seeking a break in the trees and then got much closer.
The Warlock stood with one of his men before him, the tip of the dragon’s talon resting against the man’s chest. Streaks of blackness swirled around them both. The bounty hunter screamed as he took on the Warlock’s wound, blood spilling from his shoulder while the hole in the Warlock’s shoulder closed. The man fell to his knees, looking up helplessly at his master. The Warlock smiled as he watched the man whither and age, his life draining away in a matter of moments.
The Warlock tipped his head back and threw his chest out as the life energy of the man flowed into him.
“That’s not good,” Ben said.
“No,” Cyril said, drawing his tech revolver and flipping the cylinder open to replace one of the rounds. A moment after he closed the chamber, Ben saw a bullet indicator light up in the corner of the drone feed.
Cyril aimed his revolver in the general direction of the Warlock and fired. It was louder than a normal bullet. The drone began tracking it immediately. The round rose at a steep angle into the sky until it reached the apex of its arc, where it opened a tiny pair of wings and began targeting the Warlock, tipping into a gentle controlled glide straight for the enemy, over a mile away.
For many seconds, the bullet simply floated through the air, descending toward its target, gaining speed with every passing second. It was quiet as the wind, making no noise at all until the last few hundred feet when it activated a booster rocket that propelled the seeker round into the Warlock’s back with terrible force … except, a light flared when the round got within a few feet, much like it had when Cyril shot him the first time. The round was deflected wide, hitting him in the same shoulder he’d just healed, but this time, the damage was far more severe.
The bullet exploded on impact, blasting his left arm off, sending it flailing through the air, spraying blood across the foliage as it flopped to the ground a dozen feet away. The Warlock was thrown to the ground, stunned by the blast. He rolled to the side, his hand going first to his head, then to his arm. Realizing he’d been dismembered, he screamed anew, struggling to get up, crying out in rage and pain and cursing his enemies. It took a few moments for him to compose himself enough to regain his feet, but he did. Blood dripped from the gore dangling from his shoulder.
He ignored it.
He leaned on his staff and scanned the sky, his eyes locking on the drone after a few moments of searching.
He barked an order at the last bounty hunter. The man
retrieved the severed arm and brought it to him. He smiled at the drone as he laid the dragon’s claw on the man’s chest and drained his life to reattach his own arm. He bound it in a sling and looked very intently at the drone before turning toward Rogue City and moving into the forest.
“He’ll be back,” Cyril said.
“And I bet he’ll be happy to see you,” Ben said.
“I just hope I see him first. Now, let’s go get your brother.”
They headed up the driveway leading to the top of the plateau.
“What weapon was that anyway?” Ben asked.
“A seeker round—long-range, drone-guided—I don’t have many, but he seemed worth the shot.”
“Magic or tech?”
“All tech.”
“If tech is so powerful, how did the dragons take over the world?”
“I already told you … mostly subterfuge.”
Ben looked sidelong at his grandfather, eliciting a wily smile. “Why not just use a gun like that one on them?”
“Tech doesn’t work very well around a dragon. In fact, tech doesn’t work very well around me either, if I make the effort.
“Magic can greatly increase the odds of a malfunction or a chemical-reaction failure or a material break or any of a thousand other things that can make a piece of technology fail. The more complex and delicate the technology is, the more vulnerable it is to magical interference. The highest of technology fails almost completely when in the presence of a wyrm.”
“Why doesn’t the egg kill your drone?”
“Because it’s not a dragon yet, and I’m not making an effort to disrupt tech right now,” Cyril said. “I have to focus on it—the dragon just does it with his presence.”
“What about my augment?” Ben asked, a cold feeling seeping into his bones.
Cyril looked at him and shrugged before continuing the climb.
“Your fear is irrational—dragons don’t exist,” the augment said.
Ben ignored him, following Cyril.
Finally, they reached Frank and Hound and cut their bindings.
“Good to see you,” Rufus said. “We were beginning to worry.”
“What took you so long?” Frank asked.
John had walked the perimeter of the house. “Look at this,” he said, from near the front door.
Ben went with Cyril. The body of a man had been cast aside, completely desiccated, drained of all vestige of life.
“Looks like one of the bounty hunters,” John said.
“This Warlock is going to be a problem,” Cyril said.
“So let’s turn him against the wyrm,” Ben said.
“How?”
Ben started to speak and then stopped, frowning to himself and shaking his head.
“For now, he’s left us alone,” Cyril said. “Let’s use that time to get to Rogue City.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ben agreed.
Both Frank and Hound were relieved to be free of their captors. They were beaten up, bruised and sore, especially where they’d been bound, but neither of them was seriously injured.
“So what happened?” Cyril asked.
“Really? I was just going to ask you the same thing … but all right,” Hound said. “I found Frank and we went to the camp like you said. Not long after, a guy comes out of the house with another little guy following him. We waited. Days pass. We argued about what to do, but decided to wait like you said. Then the guy came back with the bounty hunters and took us. I got one of them, but that albino bastard spelled us or something. Then they tied us up, and the guy said he was going to wait for you to come find us. Then you shot him and he ran away and here we are. Now you.”
Cyril smiled, chuckling to himself for a moment.
“Ben got wounded by that guy’s servant so we holed up in my bunker to let him heal.”
“Boring,” Hound said. “Ours is better.”
“Undoubtedly … we slept a lot.”
“How’s my face look?” Hound asked with a crooked smile. “Am I going to have any new scars?”
“There’s one on your cheek that looks promising,” Cyril said.
“Hot damn! Women love scars.”
Imogen closed her eyes and shook her head.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Frank said. “That guy was terrifying.”
“Shake it off,” Hound said. “If you let shit like that get to you, you’ll never make it in this business.”
“I’m not in this business, I just want to go home,” Frank said.
Cyril pursed his lips and looked down sadly at Frank.
“Home is gone,” he said, holding out the brush rifle. “Take this.”
Frank looked a bit confused, but took the rifle nonetheless.
“I also have a sword for you,” Cyril said, handing Frank the last of the tech swords, complete with belt and scabbard.
“I’ll teach you how to use the blade. Rufus will show you how to use the rifle before we head out … no argument.”
Frank hesitated, looking at the rifle in one hand and the sword in the other.
“All right.”
“Good. Strap on the blade. Rufus, give him a crash course in the rifle.”
“You sure about this?” Ben asked as he and Cyril walked away from Frank and Rufus.
“One of the best ways to conceal is with distraction and half-truth,” Cyril said. “He’s got a piece of my weapons cache, and more importantly, a bigger piece than you, or so he thinks. That ought to keep him occupied for a while. I don’t want him to become aware of the egg.”
Ben went to the house and sat down on the last good step of a broken-down staircase leading up to the porch.
“Much of your sensory input is anomalous,” the augment said.
Ben chuckled. “How so?”
“Your encounter with the individual you call the Warlock couldn’t happen.”
“Seemed like it happened to me,” Ben said.
“The rift in time/space is impossible as well.”
“Yep.”
“This Warlock should not be able to drain the life from other people. Such technology does not exist. I would be aware of it.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
The augment didn’t answer.
Ben cleared his mind and focused on his coin, conjuring a vision of it in his mind’s eye, floating in empty space, slowly revolving on its axis. He held the vision for a long time, losing all sense of self in the process.
Chapter 29
He returned to full awareness when Frank fired a round from the large-bore, lever-action brush rifle that Cyril had given him. Ben didn’t really prefer the weapon … it was large, heavy, and ponderous … though he certainly would have taken it if it had been offered. He was more concerned with Frank being armed with something so powerful.
“That won’t attract attention,” Ben muttered to himself.
“I bet it will,” Homer said.
Ben scratched him on the head and got up, heading for the cluster of people around Frank.
“How am I supposed to know how to shoot a rifle unless I try it out?” he said, both hands out, the rifle in one of them.
“Ammunition is scarce,” Cyril said. “And enemies are searching for us.”
“I just wanted to see how she handles … and I love her. Thank you.”
“Don’t shoot again unless we’re under attack,” Cyril said, taking a few steps closer to Frank, forcing him to retreat by a step.
“I won’t, I won’t. Calm down,” Frank said, backing farther away.
“Sorry,” Hound said quietly.
Cyril looked to him and shook his head tightly.
“We have to be on our way. Everybody, gather your things.”
Cyril used the drone to find a route through the forest that offered the least resistance. It took all of five minutes to evaluate the terrain, roads, traffic, and waterways, then plot a course leading to the outskirts of Rogue City.
; Imogen intercepted Frank before he could interrupt Cyril with questions about the drone, explaining the device to Frank and Rufus as best she could.
Ben watched through his feed in amazement … a simple tech device that could take pictures and relay them back to another position. The strategic power such a thing gave a field commander, let alone a rebel, was staggering.
Cyril recalled the drone, placing it in a position a thousand feet directly overhead, scanning in all directions at once. He navigated through the forest with the aid of the drone-constructed map and the holo-projector in the ring.
By midday the hawk came into view, gliding in a circular orbit around their position.
Frank aimed his rifle at the bird. Hound stopped him from firing, taking hold of the weapon and staring Frank down with a withering glare.
“That bird means there are Dragon Guard nearby,” Hound said. “You can’t hit it, anyway.”
“Maybe I can.”
“Let me rephrase … that rifle won’t send a bullet high enough into the air to reach that damn bird right now.”
“Oh … how am I supposed to know that?”
“You know that, because I just told you.”
“He is right about one thing,” Cyril said. “We do have to deal with the bird.”
John sat down, breathing heavily, still not fully recovered from his ordeal with the Warlock’s darkness.
“Let’s find a place to rest,” Cyril said. “Maybe draw the bird closer in.”
John nodded but made no move to get up until Cyril set out for a thicket of trees.
Ben watched the drone float higher into the air as it tracked the hawk’s movement. When it was many hundreds of feet higher than the bird, it stopped and held position relative to Cyril.
From that altitude, a squad of Dragon Guard could be seen approaching from the east. Ben watched in amazement as the view narrowed in on the threat with breathtaking speed, providing a close-up view of the entire force in an instant. He could see Nash leading a wolf-stalker and a dozen men. Her second in command stopped to view the hawk through a telescope.
Ben schooled his fear. Nash was relentless, motivated by hate, and now she was very well prepared to hunt them down and kill them.
The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Page 28
