DRAGONSGATE: Preludes & Omens (Bitterwood Series Book 6)

by James Maxey

  Of course, courage was in short supply among the dragons after their route at Dragon Forge. They survived only because Hex had inherited the vast wealth of his family and provided the earth-dragons with stores of corn and wheat while encouraging them to try their hand at farming. Instead of planting the grain, the dragons used it to make cheap, eye-watering whisky, which they sold to humans at the foundry despite Burke’s efforts to put an end to the trade. Bitterwood would likely find the tatterwings among the drinking houses in Multon. No winged dragon would keep company with a tatterwing, but earth-dragons didn’t care who or what drank their whisky.

  The hairs rose on Bitterwood’s neck as he heard a rustling in the reeds behind him. He placed an arrow against his bowstring, preparing to aim toward the noise, then stayed his hand as a breeze carried the familiar scent of a hog.

  “I see you found the canoe,” said Zeeky, as she pushed through the tall reeds beside him. Bitterwood smirked as he saw her mount. She was riding Poocher, the hog that he was forbidden to eat. She’d rescued the pig when he was only a runt, and under her tender care the swine had grown to monstrous size. Unlike Skitter, the hog wouldn’t pull a plow. Bitterwood was tired of people at the market asking how much he wanted for the pig. He spoke as little as possible with his fellow men. Explaining the pig’s heroic backstory required more words than he normally chose to share.

  “Pigs make better meats than they do mounts,” Bitterwood said, giving her a sideways glance. “You’re lucky you didn’t drown crossing the river.”

  “Poocher’s too fat to ever go under the water,” said Zeeky. “He might not be as fast as Skitter, but he’s got a better nose. Following y’all wasn’t a problem.”

  “You didn’t need to follow at all,” said Bitterwood. Zeeky’s fearlessness was both a quality he greatly admired and a trait he found exhausting.

  “It’s not like I could sleep with you out here,” she said.

  “Then you could have kept practicing your reading,” he said. Not that he she needed the practice. When he’d met Zeeky, she couldn’t read or write a single letter. But, early in the spring he’d carved a sign that read “no trespassing” to put up at the road. Once Zeeky realized he knew how to read and write, she pestered him to teach her. He’d given her a few basic lessons in ABC’s and a few weeks later she’d gone into town and borrowed books from Burke. Now that it was summer, she was already racing through books filled with words he couldn’t begin to puzzle out.

  Zeeky smiled softly as she said, “Somebody had to come out here to make sure you didn’t do nothing foolish.”

  Bitterwood frowned. Zeeky often spoke to him like she was the adult and he the child. She’d been headstrong and self-assured when he first met her as a runaway, already blessed with her talent for communicating with animals via the postures and eye motions and soft grunts that other people could never quite perceive. But ever since their trip to the underground realm of the Goddess, Zeeky had been getting smarter and acting older with each day. She’d told him that she’d learned the Goddess had changed her in the womb to give her special abilities. He was grateful for her gifts; she’d tamed the long-wyrm, and under her care the chickens laid more eggs and the cows produced more milk. If it weren’t for her rather stubborn views about whether or not pigs should be eaten, she’d have been the perfect adopted daughter for any farmer.

  Her eyes were fixed on his face. Suddenly, the truth struck him. She was reading him like she read her animals. She saw something inside him that worried her, something he might not even be aware of.

  “What’s the real reason you’re here?” he asked.

  “We’ve got the canoe,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Ain’t no point in chasing those dragons,” said Zeeky. “It’s too late for those chickens.”

  “But we have more chickens,” said Bitterwood. “So do our neighbors. A successful thief is a bold thief. Maybe you don’t want to avenge a chicken. What would you be saying now if they’d killed your pig?”

  “Poocher can take care of himself. And if you’re worried about him, you could always let him sleep inside with me and the dogs.”

  Bitterwood sighed. This again.

  “Let’s go back,” said Zeeky.

  “You go back,” said Bitterwood, feeling something inside him harden. It wasn’t only the chickens at risk. Allowing the dragons to think that there would be no consequences put Zeeky and Jeremiah in danger as well. It was more than just the fact that a successful thief was a bold thief. It would be bad enough if the thieves were human. But dragons? Dragons had stolen the world from mankind. Only now had men finally taken some of it back. To let even one think he could steal from humans was unthinkable.

  “Go home,” said Bitterwood.

  “Please don’t go,” she said.

  “I’m telling you, I won’t be in any danger!”

  “You’re already in danger,” she said, sounding on the verge of tears. “It’s just like the first time!”

  “The first time?”

  “In the barn. The night I found you.”

  He said nothing.

  “You were kind to me,” she said. “You were instantly a friend. And then you heard that the dragons were near and you changed.”

  “I—”

  “You turned me over to the first person you could find and went off to kill dragons. You never did come back for me. It was pure luck we met again.”

  This was concise and accurate summary of events, he had to admit.

  “And now we’re a family,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Bitterwood. “And, long ago, I lost one family to dragons. I won’t do so again.”

  “You’ll risk everything if you chase them,” she said.

  “It’s just two thieves,” he said.

  “That’s not what I’m scared of,” she said. “I’m scared of you! You can’t see it, but I can. There’s two people inside your skin. There’s the farmer and then there’s… someone else. Someone cruel. Someone who knows nothing but hate and blood and death.”

  He looked down at the claw marks in the mud. He took a deep breath of the rich, wet air. He found the faint scent of the dragons, a musky, snaky odor. He closed his eyes, imagining them before him, imagining their fear as they realized who was chasing them this night. He wanted to hear them whimper in terror. He needed to see them dead.

  Zeeky was right. This wasn’t about the canoe or the chickens, about his neighbors or even his adopted children. It was about his hunger. His hatred of dragons hadn’t disappeared when he became a farmer. It had just gone deeper into the shadows inside him, waiting patiently until it could feed once more. For now, the dragons and the humans in this little corner of the world lived in uneasy peace. In the day to day distractions of toiling on the land and providing food for his adoptive son and daughter, there were moments, hours even, when it felt as if his battle was over. He’d fought against dragons all alone, and now Burke and the rebels at the fort had taken up the cause, and he was doing the world no great harm by putting down his bow and taking up a plow and allowing others to fight his fight.

  All these thoughts were quick to leap to the front of his mind, eager to rationalize why he deserved happiness and peace and family. But occasionally, usually in the evenings, in the deep shadows of the forests, or a dark corner of the barn, he could see the gray ghost of his hatred standing silently, watching coolly, and building strength. That ghost was out there now, somewhere along the trail, patiently waiting to command his body once more.

  “Please,” said Zeeky. “We got so much to do in the morning. Let’s go get some sleep.”

  Bitterwood looked down at the bow in his hand, the best bow he’d ever used, and felt the quiver of ever-refreshed arrows upon his back, and wanted more than anything to make use of these priceless tools against his enemies. No. Not more than anything. As he looked at Zeeky’s forlorn eyes, he knew there was something he wanted more. His own happiness me
ant little to him, but every smile he put on Zeeky’s face was precious to him.

  “Very well,” he said. “Burke is always saying how he’s the law in these parts now. I’ll go talk to him tomorrow. See what he’ll do about this.”

  “Good,” said Zeeky, though there was still a note of worry in her voice. As Poocher waded back into the river, Bitterwood wanted to say something to comfort her, to assure her his days of chasing dragons in the darkness were behind him, but he couldn’t find the words.

  THE NEXT MORNING, once his chores were done, Bitterwood saddled up his horse and headed to town. He chose not to ride Skitter into Dragon Forge, partly because Skitter tended to spook other animals and partly because Bitterwood worried the gunmen at the fort might use Skitter for target practice. They tended to shoot at anything with scales, a policy he mostly agreed with.

  The road along the river was bustling this morning. When Burke had taken over Dragon Forge, he’d been worried about how he was going to feed his army. He was drawing his rebels from farms, leaving few people to work the land. Fortunately, nature had smiled upon the rebellion. A wet winter had been followed by a sunny spring, the type of weather when even a walking stick leaning against a door might sprout roots. The old men, women, and children left upon the farms had more than enough food in their gardens, with abundance left to feed the soldiers. The land Bitterwood farmed had belonged to a man whose wife and children had died from yellow-mouth a few years back. Though still a young man, the bereaved farmer neglected his land, and when the rebellion came, he was eager to leave his fields behind.

  Bitterwood had paid him well for the farm. During his years as a dragon slayer, he’d killed more than a few dragons carrying purses of gold. At the time, money meant little to him. He’d taken most of the coins he’d gained and left them quietly on doorsteps of small farms, but had also put aside modest caches of treasure here and there to purchase supplies he needed, such as the occasional horse. As fate would have it, he’d hidden quite a few stashes of coins near Dragon Forge, and had started his new life as a farmer in modest comfort.

  He smelled the town long before he say the fortress walls. The foundries hadn’t grown cold once since Burke took over, and the fog of coal smoke that hung over the town gave the surrounding land a somber gloom. Even the men along the walls were painted in this solemn pallet, their faces gray with soot, staring as he approached, reminiscent of the ghost of his former life that sometimes stared at him from the shadows.

  Bitterwood rode through the wide open gates without being stopped by the guards, which irked him. Not even half a year since the rebellion and already the guards seemed more bored than vigilant. Few people truly feared another attempt by the dragons to reclaim the fort. Hex no longer funded an army, and none of the numerous factions of the sun-dragons had yet gained enough power to organize a fresh campaign to crush the rebellion.

  Bitterwood had imagined that a world without dragons would be paradise, but Dragon Forge looked, smelled, and sounded like hell. The ever-present smoke stank of rotten eggs and the streets reeked of piss. The walls constrained the city so that over the centuries buildings had been built atop buildings, giving the place a cramped, claustrophobic air, and made navigating the narrow alleys akin to finding one’s way through a maze. It was nearly noon and people still slept in the alleys next to ramshackle saloons, sleeping off the previous night’s drunkenness. Or, perhaps, the morning’s drunkenness, given the number of men he saw stumbling woozily along the plank sidewalks.

  He arrived at the center of the town square, one of the few open spaces with a view of the sky, but the openness provided no relief from the oppression of the city. Seven men hung from gallows in the center of the square, their bodies twisting slowly in the breeze. The age of dragons killing men drew towards its end, so now mankind would have to step in to fill their own graves.

  Bitterwood dismounted in front of the foundry office that Burke had turned into a makeshift town hall. As he approached, the two guards by the door stepped into his path.

  “I’m here to see Burke,” said Bitterwood.

  “Burke’s busy,” said one of the guards, a runty kid with bad skin.

  “He may pass,” said a voice from above. Bitterwood looked up and saw Anza, Burke’s daughter, at the window above the door.

  The guards nodded and stepped aside.

  Bitterwood went into the foundry office, then up the stairs into the huge attic where Burke did most of his tinkering. In contrast with the squalor outside, the attic was meticulous, the floors gleaming with polish. The scent of pine soap alleviated the foul coal stench of the foundry.

  Burke was seated at a desk, bent over jagged shards of black iron, studying them with a magnifying glass. Anza stood beside him, her arms crossed, her eyes locked on Bitterwood.

  Without looking up, Burke said, “What brings you to town, Bant?”

  “Dragons,” said Bitterwood. “A trio of tatterwings stole some of my chickens last night.”

  Burke looked up from the magnifying glass. “All the more reason you should let my rangers guard your farm.”

  “What good does it do me to have a band of men trampling through my crops once or twice a night as part of their patrol?” asked Bitterwood. “You think dragons don’t have eyes? They’ll just sneak in once your rangers have moved on.”

  “Then what do you want me to do about it?” asked Burke.

  “You’ve got men hanging from gallows. Why not thieving dragons?”

  “Because dragons aren’t dumb enough to come into the fort to steal, rape, and kill.”

  “Then go out of the fort. You know they’ve taken over Multon. You’ve got an army. Use it.”

  Burke leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. “For now, Multon is outside the defensible perimeter. We could take the town, but I don’t know that we could hold it. There’s too much ground between here and there for us to defend supply lines to any size force that would make a difference. Mankind once ruled this world, Bant. I intend that we do so again. But, we need to be realistic. We have constraints on our manpower and resources. The surest way to see that our rebellion fails is to push too far, too fast.”

  “With Ragnar gone, you’ve gotten timid,” said Bitterwood.

  “With Ragnar gone, I can finally make rational choices,” said Burke. “Ragnar would have already sent out armies to try to liberate other towns.”

  “And what’s stopping you? There are men throughout the kingdom who’d turn into soldiers willingly enough if you put one of your guns in their hands. You can make all the guns you need now that you control Dragon Forge,” said Bitterwood.

  Burke motioned to the pile of metal shards. “Guns that still have a bad habit of exploding.” He shook his head. “Guns in the hands of men who are even more explosive. Those men I hung this morning? All murderers. I built these weapons to kill dragons, but should have known they’d be turned against fellow men quickly enough.”

  “It doesn’t help that your men are drunk all the time,” said Bitterwood.

  “I can’t argue with that,” said Burke, with a heavy sigh. “But there’s a fine balance here. A lot of the rebels view whiskey as a vital part of compensation. If I were to ban alcohol outright, a quarter of my army would abandon me. Maybe more. Don’t forget I used to run a tavern. There’s nothing inherently wrong with men having a few drinks. It’s a minority of men who abuse the privilege.”

  “Your men are drinking because they’re bored,” said Bitterwood. “Sending them out to kill every last dragon in Multon would sober them up.”

  “That seems like an overreaction to the theft of a few chickens,” said Anza, sounding amused.

  “Worse, I’m sure it’s exactly what the dragons want,” said Burke.

  “They want to be wiped out?”

  Burke shook his head. “The sky-dragons at the College of Spires are still trying desperately to get their hands on one of our guns to find out how it works. Our spies have seen sky-dragons flying in a
nd out of Multon. If we were to attack in force, a dragon escaping with a single captured shotgun could destroy our advantage in arms. It nearly happened once already. Anza was almost killed breaking into the College of Spires to recover the weapon.”

  “Almost killed is the same as saying I wasn’t killed,” said Anza. “I could do it again.”

  Burke shook his head. “Bant, since you won’t pay to have my rangers protect your land, I’ll do it for free. They’re already patrolling your neighbors, so it’s not difficult to add you to the patrol. That’s really all I can do.”

  “That’s all you’re willing to do,” said Bitterwood.

  “My father tells me you were once a fearsome dragon-slayer,” said Anza. “Why should you even need our help dealing with a few tatterwings?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that all morning,” said Bitterwood.

  BITTERWOOD RODE HOME in a sour mood. What had he expected from Burke? Long ago, the two of them had fought shoulder to shoulder against the dragons in an earlier rebellion in Conyers. After that rebellion had been crushed by the sun-dragons, Burke had gone into hiding while Bitterwood alone of all the rebels had continued to fight, living in the darkness, hunting dragons while his fellow men slept soundly, their dreams seemingly untroubled by the dragons’ oppression. Burke’s cautious, cool-headed approach to this war against the dragons would never bring him victory. Bitterwood wasn’t even certain Burke was still fighting a war. He seemed content ruling this tiny patch of earth and leaving the rest of the world to the dragons.