“Blasted reptile! Ye spilled my drink,” Brenwar bellowed, clubbing another on its head with his tankard.
Slowed but not stunned, the lizard sprang on top of me, driving me hard to the floor. I locked my fingers on its wrists as it tried to drive its dagger into my throat. Its red lizard tongue licked out as it hissed, angry and fateful. The lizard men weren’t many in the world, usually pawns to greater evil but effective pawns nonetheless. I drove my knee up into its stomach with little effect as its blade strained inches above my neck.
“Dieeeesss, dragonssss!” it said with a heave.
It felt like the veins were going to burst in my arms when I shoved back with all my strength. Over the sound of the blood rushing behind my ears, I could hear a rising clamor and more hissing voices. Not good. Yet Brenwar’s bellows were clear.
“NO!” I yelled back. In a blink, I freed one hand and punched its long nose, rocking back its head.
Whap! Whap! Whap!
The lizard man jerked away from my stinging blows, but my hands felt like they were punching a wall. Still, lizard men hate getting hit in the nose; so do most lizards, for that matter. My blood was running hot now, the warrior in me suddenly alive as I jumped on its back and smashed its face into the floor. The dagger clattered from its grasp, and I snatched it up and rolled back to my feet.
Brenwar had the other one on the ground in a choke hold.
Crack!
And now it was dead, but the first two weren’t the last. Three more were charging my way, not with daggers but with heavy broadswords this time. I can’t imagine what I had said to draw so much attention.
Shing!
There was an audible gasp in the room as I whipped Fang’s glowing blade through the air. Every eye was wide and wary, and I had to remember I had no friends here except Brenwar. The lizard men stopped for a moment, but they were well-trained soldiers ordered to move forward.
The first lizard man charged past Brenwar, sword arcing downward and clashing hard into mine, juttering my arms.
Bap!
I punched its nose, rammed my knee in its gut, and jammed my sword into the thigh of the one behind it, drawing a pain-filled hiss from its lizard lips. Two more were down, and the third had an angry dwarven man latched on its back. I raised my sword to deliver a lethal blow. I know, I know. My father warned me that killing is only a last resort, but I don’t care what anyone says: lizard men and orcs don’t count.
“Stop!” The barkeep screamed. “STOP!”
No one moved, not even the lizard men.
Crack!
Well, that was one lizard man that wasn’t going to move again for sure as Brenwar rode its dead body down to the floor.
“YOU, with the magic sword, get out of my TAVERN!”
“Me? But they attacked me!"
My longsword Fang hummed in my hand, its blade glimmering with a radiant light like the first crack of dawn. I brought the tip of its edge toward the barkeep's nose. I wasn’t in any mood to be accused of something I didn’t do.
He held his hands up but tipped his chin up toward the folks behind me. I had a bad feeling as I turned to look. The two arm wrestlers stood now, each with a short sword in hand, eyes narrowed and ready to jump. The orcs, once three and now six, had drifted closer. The adventurers at the long table now stood. A staff glowed in one's hand, and a sword glimmered in another. One warrior, grim faced and wearing chain mail, had a crossbow pointed at my chest. One woman, small and slender, stood poised on a chair, a handful of throwing knives bared. There were more, too, each focused on me, ready to fight or kill if need be.
“You can all try to take me if you want, but you won’t all survive. Is your life worth the risk or not?” I glared back at the barkeep. “Your patrons can’t pay if they’re dead.”
It was a bluff. I wouldn’t have killed any of them except the orcs. I swear they don’t count. Neither do the lizard men, three of which had begun crawling back out the way they came. Lizard men didn’t get along with me. We went way back. Well, I didn’t mention it before, but I’ve been around awhile, and when you live a long time and do what I do, you tend to make enemies. I had plenty to go around. Chances were that one of my enemies knew I was here and had sent in a squadron of goons to kill me.
“Just go,” the bartender pleaded, his eyes nervous now.
I looked at the two dead lizard men on the floor and asked, “What about them?”
“I’ll take care of them. The lizards don’t hold any worth with the authorities.”
Brenwar had resumed his eating, his blocky, mailed shoulder hunched back over his pheasant. I was still itching for a fight. The tension in the air had not slackened. My legs were still ready to spring. That’s when the man in the corner stood up and walked toward the center of the room. Long and gaunt, hooded in a dark cloak, he seemed more of a ghost than a man. All eyes now fell on the man that held a hefty sack in one hand and dropped it on the table to the sound of clinking coins.
Slowly, he pulled his hood back, revealing a shaven head that was tattooed with symbols and signs I knew all too well. He was a Cleric of Barnabus, a cult of men obsessed with the dragons. Meddlers in a dark and ancient magic. I hadn't expected to come across one so soon. His voice was loud and raspy as he pointed at me and said:
“This bag of gold to the one that brings me his head!”
Clatch-Zip!
A crossbow bolt darted toward my ducking head and caught the barkeep full in the shoulder.
“What!” Brenwar roared, readying his dwarven war hammer, sharp at one end, like an anvil on the other.
“Don’t let that cleric escape, Brenwar!” I said, smacking the muscled goons' blades with Fang. I clipped one in the leg and took a rock-hard shot in the jaw from the other. He gloated. I retaliated, cracking him upside his skull with the flat of my blade.
“Agh!” I cried out in pain. A row of small knives was imbedded in my arm, courtesy of the little rogue woman. I’d have to deal with her later. I had to get the cleric, who was scurrying away toward the door. Brenwar was a barricade at the door, a host of orcs swarming at him.
“Let’s dance, you smelly beasts!” he yelled, hitting one so hard it toppled the others.
He could handle himself, and I had bigger problems: the party of adventurers had surrounded me. Well, mercenaries seemed to be more likely the term for them. I leapt back as the lanky fighter with the brilliant sword tried to cut me in half. He was a young man, confident in his skills.
Clang! Clang! Clatter!
He lacked my power or speed as I tore his sword free from his grasp.
Slice!
I clipped muscle from his sword arm and sent him spinning to the floor.
Then everything went wrong.
The little woman jammed a dagger in my back. The wizard fired a handful of missiles into my chest, and the crossbowman, now wielding a hammer, slung it into my chest. That’s why I wear armor, forged by the dwarves at that. My breastplate had saved me from dying more than a dozen times, but I’d gotten careless. I should have negotiated with this hardy brood, but I wanted to fight instead. I was mad. I was Nath Dragon, the greatest hero in the land, as far as I was concerned. It was time they saw that.
I banged the tip of my sword on the hard oaken floor. The metal hummed and vibrated with power.
THAAAAROOOOONG!!!
Glass shattered. Men and women fell to the floor, covering their ears, all except me and Brenwar, who stood on top of a pile of what looked to be dead orcs. I could see him yelling at me, but I could not hear. His lips mouthed the words, “Shut that sword off!”
I sheathed my singing blade, and the sound stopped immediately. The entire tavern looked like it had been turned upside down. Everyone living was moaning or wailing. The loudest among them? The Cleric of Barnabus. Huddled up in a fetal position, shivering like a leaf.
Fang’s power was pretty helpful when it came to ending a fight with no one dying, but it didn’t work on every race, or most of the time
, for that matter. Fang only did what it wanted to do. My father said the sword had a mind of its own, and I was pretty sure that was true. I grabbed the cleric by the collar of his robe and dragged him over the bar. Brenwar had the cleric's bag of gold in his hand when he came off and plopped it on the bar. The barkeep, grimacing in pain from the crossbow bolt in his shoulder that had been meant for me, smiled as the dwarf filled his hands with the gold and spilled coins on the bar. “Fer the damages. The rest I’ll be keeping.”
“So long,” I said, tying and gagging the cleric and hoisting him over my shoulder. “And thanks. This man will have just what I’m looking for.”
The remaining patrons, still dazed and confused, holding their heads and stomachs, paid no mind at all as I left. They should have learned a lesson today: never pick a fight with an opponent you don’t know anything about; it just might be a dragon.
CHAPTER 9
No one outside seemed to mind as we pushed our way through the bewildered crowd of the neighborhood, loaded our prisoner onto my horse, and galloped toward a part of town I knew better. The authorities weren’t likely to give much chase, if they even bothered at all. Some parts of the city were void of the common rules of order.
“Here,” I said to Brenwar, turning my steed inside a large barn full of stables.
A stablehand, a sandaled young man with straw colored hair, greeted us with an eerie glance at my wriggling captive.
“No questions,” I said, handing him a few coins.
“No problem,” he said with a smile as broad as an ogre's back.
Stables and barns are good places to do business, or interrogations, for that matter. No echoes, and the smell of manure tends to offend most people, keeps them away. I shoved the cleric from my saddle, and Brenwar dragged him inside the stables over the straw and stood watch outside.
As I said, the Clerics of Barnabus are an evil lot, and we go way back. The fact that one had already come after me was a stroke of luck, both good and bad. Bad because they almost got me killed. Good because this man would lead me to their next nefarious plot. Normally, some desperate person would tell me something or find someone that would when I asked after dragon articles. I’d follow their information, and sometimes that led to a dead end, but ofttimes it led me to where I was going. The Clerics of Barnabus, it seemed, had become privy to my ways. And when it came to dragons, they had eyes and ears everywhere. From then on, I would have to be more careful how I went about gathering information.
Now the hard part: interrogation. Taking information from an unwilling mind by force. It wasn’t a very dragon-like way of doing things, but it didn’t always have to be brutal.
I pinned the man up against the wall by the neck and jerked the rag from his mouth. His impulse to scream was cut short as my fingers squeezed around his throat.
“Urk!”
“That’s a good little evil cleric. Keep quiet, and I’ll let you breathe.” I squeezed a little harder, forcing his eyes open wider. “I talk. You answer, quietly. Understand?”
He blinked.
That was pretty much all he could do, and I took it as a definitive yes. I could tell by the tattoos on his head that this acolyte was only a few notches above a lackey of the cult. He had some magic, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
“See my dwarven friend over there?” I said.
Brenwar peered inside, holding a manure shovel in his hand.
“Look at what he does to people that don’t cooperate.”
He took the shovel, blacksmith hands holding both ends of the wooden handle, and grunted.
Snap!
The skin on the cleric’s already gaunt face paled. His eyes blinked rapidly.
“Now, I’d say that shovel’s thicker than your skinny bones. So I suggest you answer my questions in detail, or you’ll be going home in a wheelbarrow.”
The man’s chin quivered. I couldn’t ask for a better result.
“Y-You’re, you’re N-Nath Dragon. Aren’t you?”
“You didn’t know that already?”
“I was told it was you, but I did not believe until I saw for myself. Someone mentioned you’d come into town. I followed you in. Fully ready to see you dead. There is such a high bounty on your head. But you move so fast. Impossible. Unnatural. I knew I’d lost as soon as it started, but I had no choice but to try,” he said, grinning sheepishly.
I slapped him in the face.
“Please, no flattery if you want to walk again.”
Evil ones always try to beguile and convince a person their distorted intentions are only for the best or out of necessity. It's tough to sell me if you're a man, but an attractive woman is a different story, and I knew right there and then I had best be more careful.
“We hate you, Nath Dragon! We’ll have your head by dawn!”
“My, it seems you’ve forgotten what happened to my dear friend and the shovel. Brenwar!”
“No!” The evil cleric pleaded. “No. I can’t have my arms and legs splintered. I’d rather die. Make a deal with me.”
“No.”
“Hear me out. I know where many dragons are kept, near this city. Small ones.”
He had my attention. The little ones, some as small as hawks, others bigger than dogs, weren’t easy to catch but were easy to keep. The thought of them being caged infuriated me. I pushed harder on his throat.
“You tell me now, and not a single bone of yours will be broken.”
He nodded. I eased the pressure.
“Take the trail to Orcen Hold.”
***
Finnius the Cleric of Barnabus lived, and Nath Dragon and his dwarven companion, Brenwar, were long gone. But still he struggled in his bindings, and his knee throbbed like an angry heart where the dwarf had whacked him with the busted shovel.
“Let me help you with that,” a woman said. Her dark-grey robes matched his, but she had short raven-colored hair and thin lips of a pale purple.
She pulled the gag from his mouth and helped him to his feet.
“Have you done well, acolyte Finnius?” she asked, cutting the bonds from his wrists.
“I did exactly as you ordered, High Priestess.” He rubbed his reddened wrists. “They are halfway to Orcen Hold by now. Your plan, Priestess, I’m certain will be successful. In a few more hours, Nath Dragon will be ours.”
She rubbed her hand over his bald head and smiled.
“You’ll be needing more tattoos after this, Finnius. I had my doubts you would pull this off, but it seems you did quite well. Assuming, of course, they arrive as expected.”
“Oh they will, Priestess. Nath’s eyes were as fierce as a dragon's when I said it. He’ll not be stopped.”
She walked away and said, “That’s what I’m counting on. This day, the Clerics of Barnabus will forever change the life of Nath Dragon.”
Finnius limped along behind her toward the front of the stables, where the stablehand greeted her from a distance. A long serpent’s tail slipped out from underneath her robes. Striking like a snake, it knocked the boy clear from his feet, smacking him hard into the wall. Finnius swallowed hard and hurried along.
High Priestess Selene
CHAPTER 10
Orcen Hold. Not nearly as bad as it sounds but still bad, miles northeast from Narnum toward the orcen city of Thraagramoor. It's a stronghold filled with brigands and mercenaries, all swords and daggers for hire that sometimes form an army, and you never know whose side they are on.
It isn’t just orcs, either, or even mostly orcs for that matter, but men and some of the other races as well. The name most likely kept unwanted do-gooders like me away. I’d never been there before, but the world was vast, and even in my centuries of life, I still couldn’t have been everywhere. That would still take some time.
Brenwar and I rode our mounts up a steep road that wound up a hillside rather than around it, which would have been wholly more adequate. On the crest of the hill, no more than a mile high, I could see there was a massive fort of
wood posts and blocks jutting into the darkening sky. Pigeons scattered in the air, wings flapping, before settling back along the edges of the walls. Pigeons are crumb-snatching carrion, never a good sign, rather a bad one, as the black-and-white–speckled birds are drawn to filth. Of course, what would one expect from a place named Orcen Hold?
I pulled my hood over my head as the drizzling rain became a heavy downpour, soaking me to the bone in less than a minute. I hated being wet, drenched, saturated in any kind of water that I hadn’t planned on. You’d think a tough man like me would be used to it by now, but I saw no reason to like it. I like the sun, the heat on my face, the sweat glistening on my skin.
As the horses clopped through the mud, we made our way around the last bend, stopped, and looked up. Orcen Hold was a good bit bigger than it had looked from below. A veritable city that could host thousands, where I assumed at most were just a few hundred. Well fortified. There were watchtowers along the walls with soldiers spread out, crossbows ready to cut down any unwanted intruders. Ahead, the main gate, two twenty-foot-high doors, stood open behind a small moat. I couldn’t shed the foreboding feeling that overcame me any more easily than I could the water soaking my back. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where two men entered and got to leave… alive, anyway.
Still, we trotted over the drawbridge, through the doors, and underneath the portcullis that hung over us like a massive set of iron jaws.
“Yer sure ye want to do this?” Brenwar's beard was dripping with rain.
“I’d do just about anything to get us out of this rain.”
Behind the walls over Orcen Hold lay a small city, not refined but functional. The roads, normally covered with the brick and stone customary to most cities, were dirt now turned to mud. The buildings, ramshackle and ruddy, were tucked neatly behind plank-wood walkways. People were milling about, dashing through puddles and across the streets from one porch to the other. Some shouted back and forth in arguments of some sort. The children, possibly the most mottled ones I’d ever seen, played in the mud, their faces, grimy, poor, and hungry. And the smell. I could only assume it would have been worse without the rain, so for a moment I was thankful for the deluge.
The Chronicles of Dragon Collection (Series 1 Omnibus, Books 1-10) Page 4
