by Lucinda Hare
He paid no attention to the water that steadily dripped down from the stone chamber's vaulted roof. Nor did he notice the recently slain bodies of dwarfs still manacled to the prison walls. Instead, he eagerly watched the surface of the cauldron. The substance moved as sluggishly as pitch, yellow smoke curling thickly as sea haar.
Almost! Just one more ingredient.
The figure stepped away from the toxic brew, lifting the burning brand from its wall bracket. He picked his way across the slippery floor of the prison and into one of the endless caverns. The bone-cold air was sharp with salt; heavy chains rattled and clinked in the dark, and large shadows shifted grey against the black. He lifted the brand. Light danced and flickered and caught the reflection of dozens of eyes. Bright dragon eyes.
He studied the panicking dragons thoughtfully, ignoring the pitiful screams that rose up around him. His experiments were promising, although the cost in wasted dragons was very high. He had begun with these wild moor dragons long ago, a small hardy breed used to the cold winters of the far north. But they were herbivores and placid in temperament, so his experiments had only taken him so far. Soon he had needed fresh breeding stock. He needed carnivores.
Few still existed in the wild and they were well protected. Only in the deepest darkest dragoncombs and on the highest mountain eyries did some still survive beyond the reach of bounty hunters.
And so across the highlands and islands pedigree beasts began to disappear from roosts and paddocks, but given the remote locations – and the relatively small numbers – so far no one had raised the alarm. With the Third Hobgoblin War about to enter its three hundredth year, the Sorcerers Guild had other things to think about than missing dragons.
He was very selective, choosing only those with specific characteristics and temperaments. He always knew exactly which dragons he wanted and where to find them. The smaller dragons, Adders, Vipers and Wasps – he had experimented with them all, using Dark Maelstrom Magic to change and warp them to his needs, creating something new; something dark and violent; a dragon that might bear hobgoblins – and he called them Razorbacks. Soon, soon they would be tested in battle against the SDS. But there was one dragon which he could not touch, dare not touch – at least not yet: Imperial Blacks, the last of the noble dragons from the Elder Days.
Huge and immensely strong, Imperial Blacks had one characteristic that no other living dragon now possessed: they had strong magic of their own. Alone of all living dragons they could create a cloak of invisibility, and as yet he had failed to penetrate that.
In the meantime he had another dragon, a cross between a Dale and an Adder, the only one to survive his experiments. It had the appearance and build of a herbivore, but the mind and heart of a carnivore. He had a special task in mind for it: to kill the Earl Rufus DeWinter, Commander of the SDS.
The dragons' hoarse screams brought him back to his immediate task. These specimens would not live much longer. Already sores encrusted their hides and their teeth had rotted; the corrosive brew he fed them was eating away at their flesh so that their scales had moulted and the dried skin beneath flaked away almost to the bone. Selecting one at random, he raised his short staff, both the symbol and the weapon of an Arch Mage. A blue bolt flashed brightly in the dark and the dragon fell senseless to the floor, provoking unearthly screams from its companions, who frantically tried to break their bonds.
Ignoring them, he drew a weapon from beneath his robes that gleamed with a cold light of its own. A hobgoblin blade made of whalebone. With a single stab he punctured an artery. Blood pumped weakly out into a dragonbone bowl, purple in the dark. Returning to his cauldron, he poured in the sluggish blood.
Hand trembling, eager now for the brew to feed his addiction, he lifted his staff, which began to tingle warmly in his hand. Dark runes and glyphs crawled along its length. Small flashes of silver and blue spiked out from the roiling cloud of black that hung around its carved head, then faded.
He spoke: harsh, strange words that warped the freezing air like molten glass. The brew seethed and turned a sickly bruised yellow. He dipped in a flask and drank hungrily. For a moment nothing happened. Then the power filled him, feeding him, and still he drank the black brew like a drug until its power pounded through his veins.
The price was high. His body, like a once magnificent oak, was rotten to the core, consumed by the corrosive magic and his relentless ambition. Ultimate payment lay in the future, but in the meantime the prize – in the shape of a crown – would surely soon be his.
It was time to fly. Royal couriers had reported that the SDS and their famous commander were due home before the moons waned. And he had to be at the Sorcerers Guild to formally welcome them, a traitor in their midst.
CHAPTER THREE
The Stealth Dragon Services
The Earl Rufus DeWinter, Commander of the SDS, frowned as he studied a sheaf of reports through red-rimmed eyes. His throbbing forehead was bruised and swollen purple where a hobgoblin mallet had landed a blow, almost cracking his helmet in two. He hadn't slept in days and the wound to his leg was a gnawing pain. His esquires stood ready to strip off the rest of his rusting, dented armour, and he longed for the bath house and rest, but first ... first he wanted to study incoming dispatches from the east, where three regiments of the SDS were about to engage upwards of six trapped hobgoblin banners.
Accepting a mug of hot spiced wine from an esquire, the Earl moved restlessly towards the great map pegged to the wall and considered his strategy for the hundredth time, searching for a weakness in his plans, a flaw that he felt certain was there.
Like the points of a star, six great fortresses ringed and protected the Seven Sea Kingdoms, each home to a full SDS regiment. And at the kingdom's heart in the Sorcerers Glen lay Dragon Isle, the fortress island that had birthed the SDS so many thousands of years ago, and home to his First Born regiment. And there, drifting north-west of the kingdom on the cold ocean deeps, were the hundreds of islands that made up the Westering Isles, the hobgoblin breeding grounds.
The Earl Rufus ran his hand tiredly through tawny hair dirty with the grime and blood of two weeks' campaigning. A storm was gathering, he could feel it, and in more ways than one. These were unsettling times. Something had changed; he could sense it like the first scent of snow in the wind that heralded the early onset of winter.
In recent months the thirteen hobgoblin tribes had simultaneously struck dozens of coastal settlements, while venturing further inland than they ever had before to attack walled cities. Dozens of island communities had also been overrun, their inhabitants slaughtered. Unconfirmed rumours and sightings spoke of ravenous, twisted creatures that emerged from underground caverns at night to hunt. But most worrying of all, scouts had identified warriors from more than one hobgoblin tribe amongst the dead after recent clashes. Since they first rose from the seas millennia ago, the hobgoblin tribes had fought each other as viciously as they fought the Dragon Lords. It was their ultimate weakness. So why were they now uniting?
Many believed that the hobgoblins were simply desperate after one of the most cold and brutal years in living memory. But the Earl Rufus had his doubts. Instinct told him that a pattern was emerging from seeming chaos. But what did it mean?
Where once the elusive hobgoblins had slipped in and out of the sea under cover of darkness, now they laid a trail of devastation that a blind man could follow. Fishing settlements had been fired and crops burned, the choking black smoke betraying their presence from fifty leagues, almost an invitation to the SDS to catch them. The SDS found themselves fighting across the length and breadth of the highlands and islands, with supply trains stretched to the limit and bogged down in mud. Soon, if the weather worsened, the dragons would be unable to take to the air at all and the hobgoblins would have the upper hand.
The Earl Rufus frowned and rubbed his aching head. Individually each report was bad enough. Taken together, they suggested an emerging intelligence, the bare bones of a strategy. But w
ho guided the hobgoblin tribes, and to what purpose? The Earl was suspicious of what he saw. From the onset he had been reluctant to draw in his two remaining regiments from the east, no matter how great and urgent the need. The co-ordinated attacks were all too ... obvious, somehow. He feared treachery, so he sent his dragons north-east beyond the mountains, far from the most intense fighting.
It was just as well. Imperials on reconnaissance, scrambled under a cloak of invisibility, had reported vast numbers of hobgoblins moving by night and under cover of bad weather from loch to loch towards the unprotected eastern plains. Others were pushing upriver from the sea.
The attacks to the west were a ruse, an attempt to draw out the SDS far from their northern fortresses, leaving the densely populated eastern plains exposed and unguarded. Dragons and food enough to satisfy even the ravening hobgoblin hordes before they went into hibernation.
From his command headquarters on Dragon Isle the Earl Rufus had ordered the entire IV Nightstalker regiment forward from their base in the north in pursuit, with orders to drive the hobgoblins from their tunnels and combs using all available Sabretooths and Vipers. The XIII Stormbreakers diverted half their strength eastwards from their fortress in the Howling Glen to cut off the hobgoblins' retreat to the sea, leaving only one mountain pass open to them. And beyond, on the open plains, the XX Shadowwraiths and IV Firestorm regiments were waiting. The trap would soon be sprung. At least sixty thousand hobgoblins would be forced to face the SDS in open battle and would die, leaving fewer of the creatures to breed and swarm the following spring. Why then was he still feeling so uneasy?
Perhaps because a mine in the Brimstone Mountains had been attacked barely two weeks before, swiftly followed by a second nearby and then a third. Their destruction left three fortresses, including Dragon Isle, critically short of brimstone for the coming winter. It was vital to secure supplies before winter closed in and made the journey impossible. Without brimstone their battledragons could not flame, and ultimately would die.
With his best commanders already in the field, preparing to engage the hobgoblins, the Earl had personally led the pursuit with five wings of Imperials from Dragon Isle, supported by Vampires from the Howling Glen regiment, leaving behind the heavier ground assault Sabretooths, Vipers and Adders. He had need of stealth and speed more than brute force. He had planned to catch them out in the open, confident he knew which mine they would attack next. But what was set to be a routine exercise nearly turned into a disaster.
A skirmish with a marauding war band of mercenaries unexpectedly delayed them. They were barely ten leagues distant when a blinding flash followed by a deafening explosion turned night into day and spewed fountains of rock and earth high into the air. The blast killed all his forward skirmishers instantly, and flattened surrounding woodland for fifty leagues. If he had not been delayed, his entire battlegroup would have died. Good fortune, the men said, that they had not been caught in the explosion. Good fortune that the hobgoblins were ignorant of how unstable and volatile brimstone was and had blown themselves to pieces.
And yet ... the SDS Commander did not believe in coincidences. Without precious brimstone, battledragons would sicken and die. And although there was no proof, he believed it had been a trap, carefully planned and ruthlessly executed. If it had succeeded, it would have left the SDS demoralized, without their commander and with insufficient brimstone to see them through the winter. That a banner of ten thousand hobgoblins had also died meant nothing. The tribes could afford such a loss ten times over and not even notice it. And if it were indeed an ambush laid for him, might not the forthcoming engagement to the east be a similar trap?
Flying further north through appalling weather, the Earl had seen for himself the trails of destruction over five hundred leagues distant, all heading south and eastwards towards the densely populated farming plains. He had skimmed over glens and valleys where the hobgoblins had passed not a week since. They had been stripped of life, littered with the pale skeletons of elk and bear and wolf – of any creature not fast enough to flee the swarm. Why then had he turned Stormcracker and his Household Guard round to head south-west, back towards the fortress that straddled the high pass of the Howling Glen, the gateway to the south, and Dragon Isle, where the tribes had never before ventured?
Earl Rufus had ordered out patrols in every direction, but winter weather had closed in early. Thunder struck and torrential rain turned the roads and passes into dangerous quagmires, bogging down soldier and flightless dragon alike. Then the temperature dropped like a stone and water froze overnight. Howling blizzards made flying impossible. If the moons rose, they were hidden, and hobgoblin slime could only be seen by its pale light. One by one his patrols returned. They had reported little or no enemy activity in the high glens, moors and islands of the west. It was as if the hobgoblins had disappeared back into the sea. But dragons and men could only see so much. They could not penetrate the vast subterranean caves and combs in the mountains and marshes that harboured and hid the hobgoblins. That was why the Earl needed his scouts. They had one of the most dangerous tasks of all, tracking the hobgoblins far beneath the ground. They too had departed three weeks since and had all returned but one: Bark Oakley.
The sun died in a blaze of red. A shifting ground mist drank up the last of the light in the Howling Glen as cold shadows and darkness pooled into one. High on the mountain peaks a bitter wind blew. As the first stars appeared, a small white dragon took off and floated slowly down the mountainside, a shifting shadow against the snow. A small figure sat easily astride the saddle. Mount and master landed below the snow line in a boulder-strewn ravine, close to where a torrential underground river poured out of the mountainside. Almost immediately the dragon took on the shades and hues of the boulder outcrop and faded from sight.
Bark Oakley, chief scout to the Earl Rufus, dismounted lightly and pushed back his heavy hood. He was dressed in a motley collection of furs, leather and rough cloth that made him hard to see even in the full light of noon. Countless pouches and strange pieces of equipment were attached to his bandolier and flying belt. The gnome's face, dark-skinned and weather-beaten was hidden behind a mask, glinting eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he studied the long glen laid out below him.
To the distant east the lights of the fortress twinkled in the dark. Somewhere to the west, snaking columns of infantry guarded a caravan of vital brimstone ore. They were strung out for over ten leagues along the military road that led from the moors through the glen towards the great fortress that straddled the high pass. Bark had passed above them two days since, close enough to see the huge wagons bogged down to the axles in the marshes, and their military escort of Vipers and Adders struggling to make headway in the waterlogged ground. It would take them at least another week to reach the safety of the fortress.
Overhead, a patrol of Vampires passed within hailing distance, but did not see him or his dragon. Like all scouting mounts, his beloved Moonshine Shadow was a Lesser Chameleon, a small, swift dragon who could blend into any background. Bark turned his attention back to the lower mountain slopes about him, studying the steep gorge intently for any sign of hobgoblins. He had been patiently searching the long glen for a week now and had found no trace of their elusive enemy, but the Earl's warning echoed in his head.
Find them, he had commanded. They have gone to ground. Something changes. Trust to your instinct, for I fear we are being misled as to their true intentions.
None had found combs here in the Howling Glen, but that did not mean they did not exist. Time and time again the hobgoblins had disappeared below ground, confounding their pursuers. Bark's instinct told him they were here somewhere. For days now he had searched but found nothing. He touched a wooden talisman at his throat, a rough carving given to him last Yule by his son, Root. A smile touched his eyes. How he was longing to return to Dragonsdome to see how his young son was faring.
Far below, a giant elk and his herd started suddenly; steam rose from the sta
g's flared nostrils as he pawed uneasily at the cold ground. A young hind, barely into her third month, trembled with fear, her warning cry carrying in the still air. Motionless, Bark scanned the rocky outcrops and rubble below. He was downwind of the herd, so what had spooked them?
Then the first full moon rose from behind the mountain ridges and silver moonlight flooded the glen. He lifted his spyglass, letting it travel slowly across rocky outcrops and fields of shale and scree. There! Just a glint crisscrossing the jutting rocks of the gully below him, although already the water was washing them clean. Soon there would be no trace.
Skirting around huge boulders and wary of treacherous shifting shale, Bark moved stealthily and silently deeper into the ravine. He stooped to touch the gleaming slime, his fingers coming away sticky. Hobgoblins had been here very recently!
With a thumping heart Bark searched the gulley for a fissure or cave that would lead into the belly of the mountain. Casting about, he moved slowly down beside the thundering waterfall, closely examining the river bed.
'Ah!' He bent to scoop up a length of pale bone out of the hurtling snow-melt. It was hollowed out in the centre and carved with tribal whorls and dots; a broken hobgoblin blowpipe. He searched the ground and came across several spilled darts, careful not to touch their poison tips. The hobgoblins were here in the Howling Glen ... somewhere.
Cautiously he edged further upwards into the dark mouth of the ravine, keeping the river to his left. Freezing mist hung in the air, coating him with icy pearls. The tip of the second moon rose slowly above the mountain peaks, constellations emerged overhead, yet still he could find no entrance into the mountain. The disappointment was bitter in his mouth. He did not want to let the Earl Rufus down.
Then realization hit him. There was one place he hadn't searched. Why had he not thought of it before? Bracing himself, he clambered over some boulders and into the waterfall.
