DRAGONSGATE: Preludes & Omens (Bitterwood Series Book 6)

by James Maxey

  “He seems cautious,” said Stonewall.

  “I told you he’s smart,” said Thorny. “And since he used to be an assassin, he’s also paranoid. He thinks the valkyries might give up on negotiations and straight up attack him.”

  “These are also rumors you’ve heard?” asked Stonewall.

  “Naw,” said Thorny. “Bigmouth told me himself! He knows who I am. He’s heard I’m on friendly terms with Burke. He’s personally paid for my whiskey and had long talks finding out anything I know about wha’s going on inside Dragon Forge.”

  “What do you tell him?” asked Stonewall.

  “Stuff that keeps him nervous,” said Thorny with a grin. “He thinks we’ve got a lot more armed men inside than we really do.”

  “If he trusts you enough to talk to you, do you think you can get the location of the guns out of him?” asked Stonewall.

  “Naw,” said Thorny. “Since Bitterwood burned the big saloon, Bigmouth hasn’t left his house. Word is Bitterwood’s attack spooked him. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’m told he might settle for less the next time the valkyries show up, just to get rid of the guns.”

  Anza asked, “Last night, when Bitterwood attacked… where did the armed dragons come from?”

  “The big saloon. In all the commotion, I lost track of where the guns went afterward.”

  “Wouldn’t they be up in the rock house with him?” asked Stonewall.

  “Maybe,” said Thorny. “But maybe not. It’s sort of the obvious place to look, and Bigmouth’s no dummy.”

  “But Bigmouth knows where the guns are,” said Anza.

  “I can’t imagine he doesn’t,” said Thorny.

  “Then we should send you up to see him,” said Stonewall. “If the valkyries won’t barter for the guns, maybe we can.”

  Anza gave him a withering glance. “You’re joking.”

  Stonewall crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not joking. Bigmouth has ambitions that winged dragons will do their best to quash. If he doesn’t think the valkyries are going to go along with his plan, we can give him something he wants.”

  “We aren’t giving him Dragon Forge,” said Anza.

  “Of course not. But what do we have to lose by seeing if he’ll haggle? If we just barge in and kill him, we might never find the guns.”

  “I won’t kill him until it’s time to kill him,” said Anza. “You didn’t look happy earlier when we talked about torture. But just because I didn’t need to torture Cain doesn’t mean I lack talent for the work. Bigmouth will tell us where the guns are when I’m done with him.”

  “You can see how well guarded his house is from here,” said Stonewall. “There’s no way we’ll take out that many guards silently. He’ll know we’re coming.”

  “All the better,” said Anza, unfolding her wings. She rose a foot into the air, locked eyes with Stonewall, and said, in a stern tone, “He’ll be even more eager to talk once he sees what I’ve done to his protectors.” Then she turned her eyes toward the stars and WHOOSH, was a quarter mile above the ground, blinking away the tears the wind had brought to her eyes. She wiped her cheeks with her buckskin sleeve, clearing her vision. From her vantage point, she counted fifteen dragons. She’d come well-armed for the assault, but her quiver only held twelve arrows. She pondered trying out the new weapons hanging on her belt, but with the dragons so far apart she wasn’t certain the shrapnel would hit them efficiently. It would work better if they were close together, better still in an enclosed space.

  Her sky-wall bow sang its musical ZING ZING ZING as she took out the three guards nearest the front door. As expected, the guards she’d left alive cried out the alarm. The remaining guards abandoned their posts to swarm to the front of the building to see what was going on.

  Now it was time to use the new weapon. She freed one of the iron globes hanging from her belt. It was a bit larger than an apple and fairly heavy. Her father had called the device a grenade. She’d only had the afternoon to practice with them, but had been impressed by the damage they could do. Using them was simple. There was a ring at the top. She yanked it out swiftly, so that the attached flint would throw sparks. The grenade made a sizzling sound and gave off acrid smoke as the internal fuse burned. She threw it toward the cluster of guards. Unfortunately, a heavy iron ball thrown by hand didn’t travel as swiftly as an arrow, even in a downward trajectory. She grimaced as the grenade exploded fifty feet above the clustered dragons. In the aftermath, a few clutched at injuries, but none had fallen. She frowned as shouts from countless dragons reached her. The bang and flash had to have alerted every dragon in town to the attack.

  She cursed herself for choosing the novelty of the new weapon over the tried and true methods she knew best. Gritting her teeth, she willed herself into a dive. Half a second later, she pulled up inches from the ground ten feet in front of the guards. She willed her wings to fold against her back so they wouldn’t be in her way, tossing aside her sky-wall bow to draw a longsword.

  The dragons clustered in front of the door were so disorganized and distracted by the explosion overhead many were still looking up as she charged into them, conveniently exposing their throats. She killed four before the rest even fully understood there was an attacker right in front of their beaks. Not that the realization they were under attack did them any good. Earth-dragons were all brute force and heavy armor, with a fighting style even less graceful than Stonewall. But these muscle-bound, well-armored brutes had weak spots, and she knew these vulnerabilities well. Like a mother cat teaching its kittens how to hunt mice, at the age of five her father had taken her out to watch him ambush earth-dragons. Together, they would dissect the corpses until she knew earth-dragon anatomy far better than a biologian. Earth-dragon eyes were obvious weak spots, and beneath their boney beaks their windpipes and jugular veins weren’t difficult to sever. Their powerful talons were useless once you cut the bulging tendons in their wrist, and their tree trunk legs mattered not at all once you severed the hamstrings.

  It took her less than a minute to move among them. The attacks aimed at her were telegraphed and easily avoided, their battle-axes moving in slow motion arcs to her combat trained eyes. As the last one fell, she stood, panting, her heart racing, both from exertion and excitement. Though her father wasn’t here, she could imagine him nodding at her in approval, which was usually the closest thing he ever gave her in the way of praise. But, since he wasn’t here, she could at least take satisfaction that Stonewall had to have been impressed.

  “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” grumbled Stonewall, dropping down from the sky beside her. “Charging into the center of them when you could have killed them all from safely above? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  She had no time to respond to questions that were likely rhetorical anyway. There were footsteps on the other side of the door, and a familiar sizzling sound. She unfolded her wings and lunged at Stonewall, wrapping her arms around his chest. They shot straight up a hundred feet as the door flew open and a shotgun blast shook the night.

  “We’ve found another gun,” she said with a smirk, drawing a tomahawk from a sheath on her leg. She left Stonewall dangling in midair as she spun and planted the tomahawk between the eyes of the shotgun wielding dragon. Unfortunately, this proved to be an especially thick-skulled specimen. If the tomahawk jutting from his brow caused him any pain he didn’t indicate it. He also proved adept at reloading, though even his relative speed was no match for Anza as she swooped down and snatched the gun away before he even finished pulling free the ramrod. She drove the butt of the gun into the earth-dragon’s throat, and as the creature stumbled backward she pulled the ramrod free and took aim. She pulled the trigger and the fuse sizzled. Then… nothing. The gun failed to go off. She frowned, tossing the gun aside as she reached for her sword.

  The gun went off as it struck the ground. She sucked in air as the lead balls tore into her left calf. If not for the support of the wings, sh
e would have toppled over. The pain was blinding. Over the years she’d been stabbed, chopped, choked, bludgeoned and burned, but the shotgun blast was a new kind of injury, like being stabbed a dozen times at once while also being pounded on with hammers and burned with hot irons. She was caught so off balance by the pain that she didn’t even see the earth-dragon tear free the tomahawk in its skull and brandish it, charging toward her.

  Fortunately, Stonewall was ready. He slammed into her as he fell from the sky, knocking her aside, landing with his feet braced, mace in hand. The dragon swung the tomahawk but never really stood a chance. Stonewall swung his mace with both hands in a vicious blow dead to the center of the dragon’s chest, knocking the beast back. The dragon landed on his back, crying in pain, the gurgling wetness of his voice signaling that something important in his chest was shattered.

  Anza’s head started to clear. The immediacy of the pain had caught her off guard, but any pain that lingered more than a few seconds she knew how to master. Her father had taught her strategies for dealing with pain, in lessons that to an outside observer would have looked like torture. She was grateful for the training as her mind carefully compartmentalized the pain. But pain wasn’t her biggest problem. No amount of mental discipline was going to change the fact she was losing blood quickly.

  Stonewall seemed to understand the danger as he grabbed her and they rose into the sky. They raced away from the rock house. He guided them to a large barn not far away, landing in the shadows behind it. He sat her on her feet and she immediately toppled, the left leg unable to bear any weight at all. He knelt over her and pulled off his shirt, tearing a long strip from it. In seconds, he had a tourniquet tightly twisted just below her knee. He produced a small canteen and poured water over her wound, frowning as he surveyed the damage. With a knife, he cut away the tattered buckskin of her pants leg, giving him a clear view of her mangled flesh.

  “I’ve lived through worse,” she said through clenched teeth, taking what was left of his shirt from him.

  “You’ve severed an artery,” he said. “All this blood—”

  She started to wrap her leg tightly in long strips torn from his shirt. “You left the gun behind,” she said.

  “Saving your life seemed like a more immediate problem,” he said.

  “Saving my life wasn’t the mission,” she said, grimacing as the balls of lead still inside her calf burned even hotter as she increased the pressure. Her voice sounded very distant as she spoke. The night had a faint rumbling sound all around her, like the roar of a waterfall heard at a distance, but rhythmic, pulsing. She recognized it as the sound of her own blood struggling through her veins.

  Whatever sounds she was hearing inside her, her new concerns were the sounds from the other side of the barn. Earth-dragons were shouting back and forth, accompanied by baying ox-dogs. Whatever element of surprise they’d possessed was lost.

  Already, blood seeped through her bandages. She grabbed the handle of the dagger Stonewall had used to tighten the tourniquet and gave it another turn.

  “If you choke off all the blood you might lose that leg,” said Stonewall.

  “Like father, like daughter,” she said, grimly thinking of the injury that had taken her father’s leg. She braced her hand against the barn and tried to stand, taking shallow, sharp breaths as tiny white stars danced in the air around her. Once she was standing, she willed herself a few inches off the ground, letting her wings take all the weight from her legs. Instantly, she felt the pain and pressure lessen. It helped also that the extra turn of the tourniquet had choked off deep nerves, helping her leg grow numb.

  “Will you be able to fly back to Dragon Forge on your own?” he asked.

  “Once we’ve gotten what we came for.”

  “You can’t keep fighting with an injury like this.”

  She patted the grenades on her belt. “With these I can.” Without further argument, she rose high above the village, though not too high. She’d learned her lesson about the distance the grenades could travel before going off.

  They’d apparently been spotted when they flew behind the barn because a gang of earth-dragons headed toward it, with a trio of leashed ox-dogs baying before them. Of all the things she’d killed over the years, only ox-dogs gave her any twinge of remorse. They were only doing what they’d been trained to do, so she felt a bit of kinship with them. She dropped two sputtering grenades into the thick of the mob. There were stark shadows and thunderous noise and utter chaos followed as dragons fled in all directions, leaving behind a dead ox-dog and half a dozen fallen companions.

  Satisfied with her tactic, she flew toward the rock house, where another cluster of earth-dragons stood around the door, at least thirty of them. This time she dropped three grenades in rapid succession and gave a grim smile at the effectiveness of the tactic.

  “If you’d done this the first time instead of charging into the thick of things you wouldn’t have gotten hurt,” said Stonewall, coming up beside her in the sky.

  “Why do you feel this is an appropriate time for a scolding?” asked Anza.

  “By my count, I’ve saved your life twice already,” said Stonewall. “Let’s try not to test my reflexes again.”

  “I’m only counting once,” said Anza. “Months ago, when Vulpine tore off my wings.”

  “And tonight when—”

  “I would have gotten out of the way,” she said. “Besides, I flew you out of the path of a shotgun blast, so we’re even.”

  Stonewall nodded. “That’s true. How did you know he was about to throw open the door and shoot at us?”

  “I pay attention,” she said. “You should try it some time.”

  Stonewall laughed. She cocked her head, mystified by his reaction.

  He gave a shrug and said, “No one ever talks back to me. Because of my size, people go out of their way to be polite. I find your attitude refreshing.”

  “No one ever talks back to me either,” she said.

  “You do have a reputation as being quick to draw a blade. But I know you well enough to know you only do when someone actually deserves it.”

  “If we’re done with our mutual admiration, perhaps we should go get the guns?” she asked.

  Stonewall grinned. “I don’t think I’m done admiring you by a long shot, but let’s do this.” He pulled his sky-wall bow and quiver from his back and held them toward her. “This time, I take the lead. Stay out of reach and take out as many dragons as you can from up here.”

  “Agreed,” she said, taking the bow, though at the moment there was no one to target. Any dragons inside the rock house were apparently smart enough not to come out after witnessing fire and destruction rain from the sky. Assuming there were any dragons left inside. The front door stood wide open.

  Stonewall flew down beside the door, his wings folding behind him as he pressed his back to the wall, listening for any sounds within. Apparently, he heard something, since he tightened his grip on his mace as his whole body tensed. With a burst of speed, he slipped into the room, out of Anza’s sight. There was a loud CRASH and a hard THUMP, followed by dragons crying out in distress.

  More importantly, it was followed by a rectangle of light as the backdoor of the house flew open. Someone was making his escape. She could see the shadow of an earth-dragon cast out over the overgrown rear lawn. Curiously, she couldn’t see an actual dragon, even though the shadow indicated someone was now charging outside. The high grass and brambles began to be trampled, as if an invisible being were moving across them at a high rate of speed.

  No. Not invisible. Camouflaged. Bigmouth had the chameleon mutation that allowed him to blend into his background. In the dim light this ability would be especially effective, but near the house his shadow betrayed him.

  He obviously wasn’t carrying any guns, or anything at all for that matter, since the chameleon effect couldn’t hide weaponry and armor. Black Silence assassins often fought with slender ebony blades that were easily concealed, b
ut the shadow didn’t reveal such a weapon. Apparently, Bigmouth was only concerned with escape.

  Since he was still the dragon most likely to know the location of any remaining guns, lobbing a grenade at Bigmouth wasn’t an option. She steadied her bow, using the moving shadows to aim for her concealed foe’s legs. Hitting an unseen target in headlong flight would have been less of a challenge if she wasn’t a bit lightheaded from her blood loss, but at least an earth-dragon was a fair-sized target.

  She released her arrow, the sky-wall bow ringing out with its characteristic ZING! This proved to be a wasted arrow, as it punched into the ground mere inches behind the source of the fleeing shadow, failing to connect. The shadow paused, plainly hearing something that hinted at danger, but not yet having figured out where the attack was coming from. She aimed her second shot. Now that Bigmouth had paused, she was certain she could put an arrow into his thigh. Certainty turned to consternation as she released the arrow and the dragon’s shadow head jerked up. The sound of the bow traveled faster than the arrow, and dragons with the chameleon mutation were also gifted with superior reflexes. The dragon leapt backward as her second arrow punched into the ground where he’d stood.

  Bigmouth’s shadow showed him looking at the sky. Despite the darkness and the general poor vision of earth-dragons, her wings must have betrayed her, because his shadow indicated he was now looking right at her.

  Fine. Let him see the next arrow she fired. She aimed it slightly in front of where he stood, certain he would leap backward to avoid it, and a fraction of a second later she released a second arrow, aiming where she expected him to land when he dodged the first. But he defied expectations, diving forward, rolling fluidly back to his feet, and darting into the deep shadows spreading from the corner of the rock house.

  In growing frustration, she fired two more arrows, three, four, five, no longer aiming for his legs, targeting where she thought his center mass would be. None found their target. She growled as she reached back to the quiver and found only a single arrow left. She imagined the stern look in her father’s eyes when he learned how badly she’d botched such a simple task. She put the final arrow against the string, knowing she now had literally one last shot at redemption.