Distopia (Land of Dis)

by Robert Kroese

  Tobalt crept into the room, Wyngalf following with his hand on the goblin’s shoulder. The sound of Orbrecht’s snoring grew louder as they approached. Wyngalf’s foot landed on a creaky board, and for a moment the snoring stopped. Tobalt halted and they stood for a moment, holding their breath in the darkness. Then the snoring started again, and they continued on their way.

  When Tobalt stopped again, Wyngalf could tell from the volume of the snoring that they were very close to Orbrecht’s bed. He felt Tobalt’s hand on his own, and realized after a second that the goblin was guiding his sword towards Orbrecht’s throat. Wyngalf relaxed his arm a bit, trying to determine where the Tobalt wanted the blade. When he felt resistance, he stopped moving, holding the sword outstretched in the darkness. For all he knew, he could be threatening to skewer Orbrecht’s nightstand. Tobalt gave his hand a slight pat, and he felt the goblin slip silently past him. After a moment, he heard the faint sounds of Tobalt sorting through Orbrecht’s possessions to find the egg.

  This was the tricky part. If Orbrecht awoke on his own, he might start hollering for the guards before Wyngalf could even threaten to cut his throat. That meant Wyngalf had to wake him in a way that kept him from crying out. To that end, he pulled a rag that he had pilfered from the bakery out of his pocket and managed to wrap it around his left hand while continuing to hold the sword in his right. He moved his left hand toward what he hoped was the general direction of Orbrecht’s mouth, homing in on the man’s snoring as best he could. He brushed Orbrecht’s nose first, but managed to slip his rag-covered palm over his mouth before Orbrecht could do more than grunt in surprise. Wyngalf put some weight on Orbrecht’s mouth and let the edge of the sword rest against Orbrecht’s throat.

  “Make a peep and I’ll—” Wyngalf started. But before he could finish, Orbrecht jerked his head backwards, slipping his mouth out from under the cloth. Wyngalf tried to put it back, but only succeeded in sliding the edge of his palm into Orbrecht’s mouth. Wyngalf yelped in pain as Orbrecht’s teeth sunk into his flesh. He reflexively jerked his hand away, and pressed down with the sword. But as he pressed, something was pushing the blade back toward him. Orbrecht, he realized, had grabbed the blade with his bare hands and was pushing it away from himself.

  Unable to fight Orbrecht’s strength, Wyngalf pulled the sword sideways, feeling it catch in Orbrecht’s flesh as it went. Orbrecht gave a grunt, and suddenly the resistance was gone. Wyngalf sliced downward, but the sword only stopped when it hit the bed. Orbrecht had somehow slipped off the bed and away from him. This was not going at all as planned.

  “Guards!” howled Orbrecht’s voice, now on the other side of the bed. “Guards!” Behind Wyngalf, he could hear Tobalt furiously tearing open drawers and cabinets.

  Wyngalf leaped onto the bed and scrambled across it, his feet landing with a thud on the other side. He gave a broad sweep with the sword, but the blade didn’t connect with anything. He could only hope that Evena was still at the door; if she were nearby, he was as likely to strike her as Orbrecht. Wyngalf took a step forward, and heard someone moving a few feet in front of him. Running on pure instinct, he dodged to his right, and a moment later felt a fire erupting on his left side. Warm blood poured down his ribs. It figured the old bastard would keep a weapon near his bed. Fortunately, Wyngalf had avoided the brunt of it, the blade had bounced off his ribs, slicing open the skin but hitting nothing vital.

  Ignoring the pain, he jabbed where he thought Orbrecht was, but again found only dead air. In the distance, he heard the sounds of boots thudding up the stairs. It sounded like more than one man—perhaps as many as three. Behind him Tobalt continued his furious search for the egg; all Wyngalf could do was to stay on the offensive and hope he could keep Orbrecht on the far side of the room until Tobalt could find and destroy the egg. He sliced back and forth with the sword, but still failed to connect with anything. The boots were now coming down the hall.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” said Wyngalf, swinging the sword in front of him, “but I can’t let you have that dragon egg. It’s too dangerous.”

  “And who are you to decide that, Wyngalf?” Orbrecht demanded. “What gives you the right?”

  Wyngalf jabbed at the sound of the voice, but again connected with nothing. Orbrecht was toying with him. He backed up and swung again, thinking that Orbrecht would lunge at him while Wyngalf was overextended. But still the blade struck only air.

  “I’ve seen what a dragon can do, Orbrecht,” said Wyngalf. “So have you.”

  “This time will be different!” said Orbrecht. “We can train the dragon. Control it.”

  Wyngalf wondered if it was true. And he wondered whether Orbrecht being in control of the dragon would be an improvement. “Even if you can,” he said, “what happens when you’re gone? You’ll have what, maybe twenty years to run Skaal City, and then the dragon takes over. A dragon can live for a thousand years, Orbrecht. You think you’re going to be able to change its basic nature in twenty?”

  Someone was banging on the door. “Mayor Orbrecht, are you alright?” a muffled voice cried.

  “Intruders!” yelled Orbrecht. Wyngalf heard scuffling at the door.

  “Wyngalf, I can’t hold it!” Evena cried from across the room. There was no lock on the bedroom door, but Evena was trying to hold it shut. She didn’t last long. Wyngalf heard the door burst open, and suddenly the room was bathed in yellowish light. For a moment, Orbrecht stood blinking before him, blinded by the light, holding a dagger in his right hand. His wooden leg lay next to the bed, and he stood balanced on his left. Wyngalf seized on the chance to swing at the man. Orbrecht jumped backward, but Wyngalf’s blade connected with the back of Orbrecht’s hand, and the dagger clattered to the ground. Wyngalf put his foot on the dagger and slid it across the room toward the door. He took a step toward Orbrecht, who was now backed into the corner. Both the man’s hands were dripping with blood.

  “Wyngalf, put down the sword!” a familiar voice yelled from behind him.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Wyngalf saw that three men had entered the room. Standing a few feet behind Wyngalf, his sword raised, was the guard named Javik. His partner, Corbel, was standing just inside the doorway, holding a torch. Garvin, the guard Wyngalf had pushed into the harbor, stood with his sword pointed at Evena, who lay near the foot of the bed, stunned but apparently unhurt. On the other side of the room from Wyngalf and Orbrecht, Tobalt continued to root through drawers looking for the egg.

  Wyngalf turned his gaze back to Orbrecht, who was blinking in the bright torchlight, unarmed and completely helpless. Wyngalf tried to will himself to stab the man through his heart. But it was one thing to swing wildly at a man in the dark and another to attack him when he stood helplessly in front of you.

  “Wyngalf!” Javik growled again. “Put down the sword!”

  “Where is it?” demanded Wyngalf, taking another step toward Orbrecht. Maybe he didn’t have it in him to kill Orbrecht, but he wasn’t about to surrender. There was no chance they were getting out of this alive, so he might as well go down fighting. If only Tobalt could find the damned egg!

  Orbrecht smiled, realizing that Wyngalf wasn’t going to kill him. “Give up, Wyngalf. I’ll make sure your execution is swift and painless.” But as he said it, Orbrecht’s smile faltered slightly, and Wyngalf saw the old warrior’s eyes dart for a moment toward Tobalt. Glancing to his left, Wyngalf saw that Tobalt had torn through Orbrecht’s closet and pulled out all of the drawers of a bureau. Articles of clothing littered the floor. Tobalt stood in front of the bureau, baffled. The only thing on top of the bureau was a flower pot from which a small ornamental plant arose. The plant was convincing enough, but the pot was too far from any of the windows for it to get much light. A fake.

  “Put down the sword! I’m not telling you again!” Javik growled behind Wyngalf. Wyngalf could almost feel the man’s breath on his neck.

  “Tobalt, the flower pot!” cried Wyngalf. As he spoke, he felt a strange sensation
in his lower back. Looking down, he could see the point of a blade protruding from his belly, a few inches left of his navel. Then the blade disappeared and pain tore through his side. He fell to his knees, overcome with shock and pain. Javik had stabbed him.

  Tobalt had grabbed the flower pot from the bureau and was now holding it over his head, as if threatening to smash it on the floor. But Garvin, having no idea that the pot was concealing a dragon egg, misinterpreted Tobalt’s action, thinking he planned on using it as a weapon. He lunged toward Tobalt, his sword swinging through the air in a broad arc. Tobalt gasped as the blade cut clean through his wrist, and his right hand and the pot fell together to the wood floor. The pot shattered, revealing a bundle of dried grass in which was nestled the dragon egg. The egg hit the floor and began to roll.

  Too dazed to move, Wyngalf watched helplessly as the egg rolled under the bed and came out the other side, coming to rest against Orbrecht’s bare foot. At first he thought it was a trick of the torchlight, but Wyngalf soon realized he wasn’t imagining it: cracks were forming on the egg’s surface.

  Tobalt had fallen to the ground, moaning and clutching his wrist. Wyngalf, overcome with shock and nausea, couldn’t seem to make his body move toward the egg. He was vaguely aware of Garvin and Javik, standing with their swords bloodied, waiting for an excuse to maim someone else. And Evena… was she still on the floor behind the bed? He didn’t know. Maybe she had managed to slip out of the room. He hoped she had. If just one of them could escape, it should be her.

  The egg was now rocking slightly back and forth, and Wyngalf watched in horror as a fragment near the top of the shell broke away and a small reptilian head poked through. It was facing Orbrecht.

  Twenty-five

  Orbrecht crouched down next to the hatchling, eyeing in with gleeful anticipation. “That’s right, little fella,” he cooed. “Look at daddy.”

  The shell fell away around the hatchling as it spread its wings, craning its tiny head first left then right. Its scales shone reddish-gold in the dim torchlight. Somehow it registered through Wyngalf’s haze of shock and pain that the creature’s eyes were still closed. It wasn’t too late. The dragon hadn’t yet gazed upon Orbrecht.

  “Hey!” cried Corbel, somewhere behind him. “Give that back!” Wyngalf heard the sound of a door slamming, and suddenly the room was plunged into darkness. Through his mental haze, Wyngalf realized that Evena had made off with the man’s torch.

  “Damn it!” growled Orbrecht. “Will you get a hold of that girl? Leave it to the morons on the city guard to have one torch between them.”

  The door opened again, and Wyngalf heard the thudding of boots and then Evena screaming. The screaming got louder and then the light returned to the room. There was another loud thud behind him as someone hit the floor, and the screaming stopped.

  The dragon seemed perturbed by all the commotion; it had covered its head with its right wing.

  “Give me that torch,” said Orbrecht, and Corbel stepped past Wyngalf and handed it to him. “Now get back.” Corbel complied.

  Wyngalf was growing light-headed; it was all he could do to support his weight with his arms. He shook his head violently, trying to keep his eyes focused on the hatchling. Maybe if he could make some noise, the dragon would instinctively look his direction. Anything would be better than it imprinting on Orbrecht. But Wyngalf couldn’t muster more than a faint groan.

  “Come on, little guy,” Orbrecht was saying, waving the torch rhythmically just over his head. “Look up here. That’s it, come on. Just one little glance.”

  The dragon slowly lowered its wing and lifted its head. Wyngalf couldn’t see the dragon’s eyes from his vantage point, but he imagined the creature focusing on Orbrecht’s wizened face, indelibly imprinting the power-mad old warrior’s visage into its mind. Wyngalf turned away, unable to bear it.

  “Good, good!” Orbrecht cried. “Just open those little eyes and—” But his words were abruptly cut short. A strained, gurgling sound followed.

  “Damn it!” Garvin yelled. “He told you to get a hold of her!”

  Wyngalf managed to look up in time to see Orbrecht clutching at a dagger that protruded from his throat, blood erupting from the wound like a geyser. After trying and failing several times to get his hand to clasp on the dagger’s hilt, Orbrecht swooned, his eyes rolling up in his head, and he fell face-first onto the hatchling. His outstretched left arm, still holding the torch, twitched a few times and then he was still.

  Corbel darted forward and grabbed the torch from Orbrecht’s hand while Javik struggled to turn Obrecht over without driving the dagger even farther into his neck. It was clearly a lost cause, though: judging from the quickly growing pool of blood underneath Orbrecht, the dagger had severed an artery. Garvin stood gaping at the foot of the bed with his sword at Evena’s throat.

  Wyngalf, meanwhile, was preoccupied with locating the baby dragon. Pain shot through his abdomen as he moved, but while the guards were distracted by the dagger protruding from Orbrecht’s neck, Wyngalf managed to climb over Orbrecht’s legs to the shell fragments that lay scattered on the floor next to him. Between his own blurry vision and the long, darting shadows cast by the torch, it was difficult to see, but a sweep of his arm across the floor caught nothing but pieces of shell and Orbrecht’s blood. The dragon was gone. But where?

  Javik and Corbel continued to panic over Orbrecht’s condition, uncertain whether removing the dagger would improve or worsen his plight, and Wyngalf crawled toward the bed, peering underneath it. He caught the sight of something skittering away from him. He groaned. There was no way he was going to catch the dragon in his current condition, and if it escaped, there was no telling who it might imprint on. It might fly out the window and land at the feet of some drunken drifter or jaded whore. It was hard to say whether either would be an improvement over the current regime.

  With a huge expenditure of effort, Wyngalf managed to pull his upper body onto the bed, trying to catch a glimpse of the hatchling. Behind him, Javik and Corbel seemed to have given up on Orbrecht; Corbel, holding the torch, was now standing still, making it easier to see. Across the room, a few paces from the far side of the bed, Tobalt still lay on the ground, moaning. His severed hand lay on the floor just in front of him. He had managed to get one of Orbrecht’s shirts wrapped around his wrist as a tourniquet, staunching the bleeding, but he was clearly in a great deal of pain.

  “Alright, Wyngalf,” said Garvin, his sword still at Evena’s throat. “Stand up. You’re going to pay for your crimes.”

  “Let’s go, Wyngalf,” said Javik, getting up from Orbrecht’s side.

  Wyngalf struggled to get to his feet, but he was too weak. He collapsed back onto the bed as across the room, something skittered toward Tobalt. For a moment, Wyngalf’s vision went black. When he could see again, Corbel had moved closer to Tobalt. The hatchling pecked curiously at the goblin’s severed hand. Corbel, whose training in the city guard clearly hadn’t prepared him for this situation, stood dumbly holding the torch, uncertain what to do.

  “Kill that thing!” Garvin growled.

  Corbel nodded and took two steps forward, lifting his boot to crush the hatchling. But as he brought his foot down, the hatchling skittered away again, coming to a halt a few inches from Tobalt’s nose.

  Tobalt, momentarily forgetting his pain, stared at the tiny dragon. “Hello,” he said.

  The dragon squeaked a response at him, then lifted its wings and fluttered onto his shoulder. It pawed at Tobalt like a kitten for a moment, then turned around to face the guard with the torch.

  “Just kill it, you idiot!” Garvin yelled.

  Corbel nodded and swung at the hatchling with the torch. But the hatchling spread its wings and shot into the air, dodging the torch. It hovered a few feet over Tobalt, its little red eyes affixed on the guard as if daring the man to attack.

  Corbel swung at the dragon again, and the dragon again dodged the attack, fluttering closer to him. Three mo
re times Corbel swung, but each time the hatchling evaded the blow, and each time it fluttered a little closer to him. It now hovered mere inches from Corbel’s face.

  “I’m certainly no expert,” said Tobalt weakly from the floor, “but I would avoid antagonizing the dragon. Even at this age—”

  The dragon opened its mouth and let out a tiny squawk at the guard.

  “Aww,” said Corbel. “Do we really have to kill it? It’s adorable.”

  “It is pretty cute,” said Javik. “And it seems harmless enough.”

  The dragon squawked again, slightly louder.

  “Well,” said Garvin. “I suppose there’s no harm in letting live. Let’s throw these three into one of the cells under Fourth Street and then we’ll—”

  The dragon opened its mouth again, letting out another squawk. This time, though, the squawk was accompanied by a blast of orange flame that engulfed Corbel’s face. Corbel screamed and fell to his knees, dropping the torch and burying his face in his hands. The scent of burnt hair filled the room.