Hard Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  “How long we going to wait for him?” Moira said.

  “He’s up there asking himself the same thing,” I said in a whisper. “He’s standing there, waiting for us to show ourselves so he can get a clean shot at us.”

  “Maybe he blew himself up?”

  “Maybe he’d like us to think that.”

  We stood there a moment longer. My arms started to get tired. I wasn’t used to holding a scattergun out like that for so long.

  “We’re wasting daylight,” Moira said. “What are we going to do when a zombie sticks his head down here instead?”

  “Same thing we do with an orc,” I said. “Shoot it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s not a complicated plan, Moira. All we need to do is stick to it.”

  I looked around for something to brace my arms on. I settled for getting down on one knee behind the cot I’d been sitting on and resting my elbows on it. It wasn’t ideal, but then there wasn’t anything else about the situation that was either.

  I heard a zombie groan from somewhere overhead then. It made sense. An explosion like that would draw the attention of any predators within earshot.

  “It’s a bad plan,” Moira said.

  “You got a better one?” I knew I shouldn’t have said it. I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth.

  “Damn right.” Moira moved toward the ladder, her gun held before her in two hands. “I’m going to go peek my head out. Cover me.”

  “How am I supposed to do that from down here? You’re going to get your head blown off.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, ginning up a grin laced with false bravado. “I wasn’t using it anyway.”

  “Don’t do it,” I said. “We can wait him out.”

  She edged closer to the ladder. “You heard that zombie out there.”

  “It could have been the killer faking it.”

  “It sounded real.”

  “How hard is it to fake sounding like a zombie?”

  She conceded the point with a shrug, but she kept moving toward the ladder. She reached for the rungs.

  I got up from my position on the cot. “Moira,” I said. “Stop.”

  She glanced back at me. “I got you into this, Max,” she said. “Least I can do is try to get you out.”

  With that, she scrambled up toward the top of the ladder. I dashed forward, hoping to stop her, but she was too damn fast. She disappeared up the ladder before I could even reach it.

  “I don’t see him,” she said as she hesitated near the top of the ladder.

  “Get back down here!” From where I stood, I could see that the killer had blasted away most of the fake stump. The top of the hole now stood open to the forest canopy above, and the door Gütmann had taken such pains to install so well now twisted away from the rest of the stump like the scorched petal of a blackened flower.

  “I’m going up for a look,” she said.

  “I’ll cast a spell,” I said. “We’ll figure out where he is!”

  She ignored me and clambered up over the wreckage of the false stump. As she went, I chanted a few furious words and then flicked my wand at her. I couldn’t see if it took effect or not, but from the way she gasped, I could tell it had.

  The spell, as I cast it, should have enhanced her eyesight, allowing her to see all the way around her at once, much in the way of a bug. That made it almost impossible for the assassin to sneak up on her, not that I didn’t expect him to try anyhow.

  And then he did. Best I could figure, the killer dropped down from a tree branch above, swinging his sword as he fell. On any other day, he’d have cut Moira in half before she knew he was there. Instead, because of my spell, she saw him coming.

  That still wasn’t enough to save her though. As fast as she was, the orc was even faster. Seeing him only meant that she knew the blow was coming.

  She screeched as she fell. I dropped the gun so I could catch her, but held on to my wand. I’d spent so much time with that in my hands over the years, I felt like I could eat dinner, drink a beer, and tie my shoes all at the same time with my wand still in my fingers. With the scattergun, I was afraid it might go off, and if it did, better to do it on the floor than in my fist while I’m trying to hold someone in my arms.

  She tumbled backward and hit her head on the ladder, but that was far from the worst of it. She’d put up her arm to ward off the blow as it rained down at her. She’d managed to keep the orc’s sword from her throat, saving her life, but the blade had sliced right through her wrist instead and removed her left hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Crimson spurted from the clean-cut stump of Moira’s left wrist as I caught her in my arms. She screamed in agony and writhed against me like she wanted to somehow worm her way out of her skin, away from the terrible pain at the loss of her hand. She clung to me in absolute terror as best she could, covering me in warm blood.

  I knew the orc wouldn’t waste any time waiting for us to recover from this. He’d press his advantage the first chance he got, and if I let him do that he’d kill us both in an instant.

  Despite Moira’s cries, I dropped her on the floor and dove for my scattergun. As I came up with it, I rolled over on my back and spotted the orc leaping down the ladder’s shaft toward me.

  I wish I could say I took cold, calculating aim and dispatched the bastard with icy resolve. Honestly, I fired blind. I figured at this range, I couldn’t miss, and if I waited long enough to aim, I’d end up like Moira or worse.

  The killer rewarded me with a grunt and a shower of blood. Then he landed on me hard, knocking the gun aside and crushing the wind from my lungs.

  I waited for the orc’s blade to find my throat and dispatch me before I could say a word to complain about it, but it never came. Instead, panic gave me the strength to shove him off of me and scramble away. It wasn’t until I reached the opposite wall that I realized I was unhurt.

  In the light of the glowglobes, I could see the orc lying in a pool of his own blood. Moira lay curled in a ball right next to him, clutching the remains of her arm to her chest and whimpering in shock and pain. I still had my wand in my hand, and I got to my knees and pointed it at the orc.

  As I watched, he struggled to his knees and then collapsed again, his back pressed against the bottom of the ladder behind him. My shot had torn into his chest, shredding his Black Hand outfit there and leaving him a gory, blood-soaked mess.

  He moaned in pain as he tried to right himself and sit straight up, but failed. I spotted his sword jammed up against the wall behind him. Even if he could have grabbed it, he was too hurt to raise it.

  I hustled over to Moira first, knelt down next to her, and checked her out. She held her stump out toward me as if she wanted me to take her by her missing hand.

  “Hold on,” I said. I said few quick words and then tapped the ruin of her arm with my wand. A tourniquet appeared near the edge of the stump, cutting off all circulation there. At least now, I hoped, she wouldn’t bleed out.

  She squealed in renewed pain as the constricting band of magic worked its way into place. I said another fast spell, trying not to stumble over the words as I went. I tapped her on the forehead then, and she instantly went to sleep. I hope that would provide her with some merciful relief.

  As for the orc, I didn’t care much about mercy for him. Not one bit.

  I glanced back at him and saw that he had his hand on the hilt of his sword. I didn’t know how hurt he was, but I didn’t plan to get anywhere near him if there was any chance he could use that thing on me. I’d seen all too well what he could do with it.

  Instead, I put my wand between my teeth and broke open my scattergun. I popped out the spent cartridge and fished around in my pocket for one of the shrunken-down boxes of shells Kells had given me. I slipped a blue one out and tapped it three times on the side to expand it back to full size. I slapped it into the gun and locked the barrel back into place.

  The orc ha
dn’t moved. I wasn’t sure he if he was unconscious or just playing that way. I wasn’t about to take a chance.

  I could hear moaning from somewhere up above, and the shuffling of feet through the forest’s undergrowth. The sun had set. I didn’t have long.

  Putting the gun in my left hand, I took my wand from my teeth and cast a simple little spell on the stones near the orc’s sword. They grew out from the wall to envelope the blade. No matter how he felt, he wouldn’t be drawing that again.

  That spell, along with what I’d used to keep Moira from bleeding out, had drained a lot of my mojo. I put down my wand and fished into my jacket pocket for my flask. I unscrewed the top with my teeth while I kept my gun trained on the orc. Then I took a long belt.

  The dragonfire scorched its way down my throat and warmed me from head to toe. My head swam from the mixture of alcohol and magical power, always a dangerous cocktail, but doubly so when you were in this sort of fix. The combination of a power boost and impaired judgment had blown up in a lot of faces in the past, but I preferred that risk to the certainty of being torn to pieces by an undead horde.

  I put away the flask, snatched up my wand, and scrambled over on my knees to where the orc sat slumped against the wall. I held my gun back out of his reach and then ripped off his mask with my wand hand. He was ugly, even for an orc, but he had a hard look about him, as if he’d been sculpted from stone.

  I slapped him across the face with his mask. When that didn’t get much of a reaction from him, I jabbed him in the throat with the tip of my wand. He flinched at that but didn’t take a swipe at me. He pried open his yellow eyes instead and glared at me with his slitted pupils.

  “Why?” I said. I found a hole in his chest where the buckshot had hit him, and I jabbed that with my wand for emphasis.

  He groaned in pain and bared his pointed teeth at me. They were covered in blood. He didn’t say a word to me though.

  “Who sent you?”

  He just sniggered at me and shook his head.

  I considered staunching his wounds and hauling him back to the city where I could interrogate him at my leisure, but I’d never had the talent for torture. Even if I could have managed it, I doubted I’d get a thing out of him. Yabair might have been able to, but that would mean turning this whole case over to him and the Guard. As much of a relief as it would be to surrender the orc and wash my hands of this whole disaster, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

  I glanced over at Moira. If I tried to drag the orc out of here, I’d have to leave her behind. That added up to a death sentence for her, and I couldn’t bear that. The moaning overhead grew louder.

  The orc turned his head toward me and gave me a wet, evil laugh. That made up my mind for me.

  I scooted back, aimed the gun at the dying assassin, and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Glowing blue buckshot flared out of the scattergun and smacked into the orc assassin. Rather than blasting through him, it froze every part of him it touched, spreading out from there and tinting his greenish flesh an icy blue. He stopped laughing right there.

  Moving fast, I shoved the orc’s mask into my pants pocket, then hunted around until I found the egg Moira had been brandishing. I stuffed it into back into the soft bedding she’d built for it inside that small chest of hers. When I slammed the chest’s lid shut, and the lock engaged automatically. I picked it up by one handle and made for the ladder.

  At the top of the ladder, I poked my head out of the ruin the orc had made of the false stump and took a quick look around. I heard a moaning coming from behind me, and I craned my neck around to spot a bunch of zombies shuffling toward me, still a short ways off, trying to figure out how to make their way through the stand of birch that surrounded the stump. The noise of the explosion had probably drawn them in this direction, and the pair of blasts from my shotgun must have helped them narrow down our location.

  I hoisted the chest up and tossed it onto the ground opposite the zombies, then I went back down for Moira. I scooped her up into my arms and held her like a sleeping child. She seemed lighter than ever without her hand. I hunted around for the missing appendage and saw that she had been lying on top of it.

  Steeling myself, I picked it up and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. Even liquored up as I was, it was beyond me to reattach a missing part, but I’d heard of wizards who could manage it — if I could get her to them in time.

  I stood up then and pointed my wand at the frozen orc. He blinked at me, still able to feel and control his face if not much of the rest of his body. I didn’t know how long the shotgun shell’s magic would affect him, but I had more immediate concerns.

  I wasn’t much of a mage. I knew how to zap things well, and I had a few other tricks up my sleeve, but I’d never dedicated myself to it the way Danto had, for instance. Still, I knew how to levitate something, especially if it wasn’t fighting me about it.

  I chanted the proper words and then pointed my wand at the orc. His frozen body lifted from the ground, his fingers slipping from where he’d wound them around the hilt of his razor-sharp sword. I gestured upward with my wand, and the orc floated in that direction.

  He banged his head on the side of the shaft as he went up it, and he snarled in protest, to which I didn’t pay any attention. As he rose up the shaft, I followed up after him with Moira’s sleeping form slung over one shoulder. I magically shoved him upward until he hovered high over the ruined stump, and I clambered over the ruined door and set Moira down on the ground next to the chest.

  The zombies had gotten closer, and they’d be on us in a moment. Faced with having to haul both Moira and the chest out of the wood with me and into the undead-infested night beyond, I knew I had only one choice. With a flick of my wrist, I shoved the hovering orc past the ruined stump and into the trunks of the birch just beyond that. I let his half-frozen form slump to the ground there.

  “Wait!” the orc said. His voice was thin and hoarse, but he’d finally found it. “What are you doing?”

  I ignored him. He’d had his chance to talk, to tell me why he’d slaughtered the Gütmanns. Now he was going to serve the only purpose I had left for him: as bait.

  I broke open the shotgun and cleared out the spent cartridge. Then I fished out and resized another shell, a red one this time, and slapped it home.

  “You can’t leave me here like this,” the orc said.

  I circled around the stump and glared down at the bastard. “You’re going to provide some entertainment for the company about to join us.”

  The zombies groaned right on cue at that, and the orc whimpered in fear. I don’t doubt he was as tough as they came, but hearing a group of starving zombies coming to find you paralyzed and dying on the forest floor would be enough to break the Dragon himself.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “Just shoot me when you’re done. I can’t die like this.”

  I hefted my scattergun in my hand. Desperate as he was, I knew I couldn’t believe a word he said. He’d tell any lie at all to stop this now.

  The trouble for him was that I couldn’t let him off that hook, even if I wanted to. I needed him to die here and in as loud and horrible a way as he could. That kind of thing drew zombies into a feeding frenzy — and away from other prey like me.

  Saddled as I’d be with Moira and that chest, I was going to have a terrible time avoiding the zombies. Leaving a screaming victim behind improved my chances a lot.

  I closed my eyes then and remembered what he’d done to the Gütmanns, to little Gerte there lying in her bed. The bastard had it coming.

  “Please!” the orc said. “It was the elf! She made me do it!”

  I knew who he meant. I couldn’t know if it was true or not. At that point, I didn’t care.

  I walked back around to where Moira and the chest lay on the ground. I dragged them both a safe distance back, and I brought up my scattergun and pointed it at the twisted wreckage of the stump. I pulled the trig
ger, and the shell smacked into the stump and exploded into a massive fireball that lit up the night.

  The orc yelped in horror. “Why didn’t you use that on me?”

  I holstered the gun. Then I picked up Moira again and slung her over my shoulder, and snatched up the chest too. With my wand in my free hand, I was ready to go.

  The explosion had knocked in the stump, sealing it off as I’d hoped, and the fireball had caught in the lower boughs of the trees looming above. Soon the entire stand of birch would be in flames.

  The noise and the scent of fresh blood had driven the zombies closing in on the orc into a frenzy. They groaned and hollered and gnashed their teeth, ready for their first fresh feast in far too long.

  “Those zombies will make a meal out of you soon,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure their friends knew where to find you too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Getting back to the city wasn’t any fun, but it beat sitting there next to the fire and waiting for the zombies to find and eat us. Carrying Moira and the chest took a toll on my arms. I wanted to stop and shift my load around to keep my fingers from falling asleep, but I didn’t think I could spare the time.

  The orc assassin screamed for a long time. I had thought he would have stopped soon after the zombies found him and started tearing him apart, but I suppose that being half-frozen kept him from feeling much of the agony that would have otherwise knocked him out. It wasn’t until the monsters tore his throat out that he went quiet in a wet, gurgling way.

  I didn’t feel one damn bit of bad for him.

  The sun had long since vanished by the time I reached the edge of the woods, but the moon had risen into the eastern sky. I picked my way back toward Dragon City by its light, not wanting to use my wand for illumination for fear of drawing any roaming groups of zombies toward me. The bonfire I’d made out of Gütmann’s stump burned like a beacon behind us, and the few times I did see zombies wandering around, they were on their way toward the fire to investigate.