The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  Two hundred yards. Out of the clearing, in the forest proper. Hurdling branches. Dodging tree trunks. The sound of crashing trees, of massive footsteps no longer advancing. Falling back slightly. Could she still make out the screams?

  Two hundred and twenty yards. Wings again. Her legs weak. She realized she was praying.

  Two hundred and fifty yards. Fire fell like rain. Screams rose. A few people stumbled to a halt, pulled arrows from quivers. Too little. Too late. The dragon swept past. A shadow in the heavens. A vast column of flesh and scale. It blotted out the sky. And then gone. Its wings crashed through treetops, sent flaming branches hurtling down like ballista bolts. She darted left, right, sprinted down the very cliff’s edge of her own mortality.

  Two hundred and seventy yards. All of them stumbling now. Another lance of flame, crisscrossing the forest ahead of them. People looking for a path forward as the dragon boxed them in. Fear clawing at the back of Lette’s throat. Desperately shoving it back down. Begging that little quiet voice to come back and help her.

  Oh no. You’re fucked now.

  Two hundred and eighty yards. Fighting through branches. Trying to keep track of the others. A beast’s instinct for the safety of the herd. Fighting to keep control of herself, to think straight. Heat on all sides. Smoke clotting the world. Women and men on fire. Quirk howling something inaudible.

  Three hundred yards and through the worst of it for a moment. The stitch building in her side. Looking around. Balur was still there, still bleeding, still running. She glanced for Will despite herself, couldn’t see him. Afrit was dragging Quirk along. Lette didn’t have time to figure out if she was injured or not.

  Four hundred yards. Waiting. Waiting for it to come again.

  Five hundred yards and she dared to hope.

  Five hundred and fifty yards. It had known. It had known they would be thinking that maybe, just maybe they were in the clear. That they would be thinking that perhaps they could survive this. And then fire to the left. A quick blast. The sound of sap boiling, trunks cracking.

  Five hundred and seventy yards. Fire to the right.

  Six hundred yards. They were being herded. This was fun for that sick fucker in the air. This was sport. Lette didn’t have the breath for it, but she bellowed out her rage anyway, her sense of desperation, of futility. Fuck this monster. Fuck him to the Hallows.

  Six hundred and thirty yards. The fire came again. The world clenching down, becoming only the space in front of her. All futures shortening to the next few seconds. Leap that way. Hurdle that branch. Duck back here. Drop low. Skid through that puddle. Am I still alive? How about now? How about now?

  Six hundred and fifty yards. Through the smoke. Through the confusion, staring at trees. Endless trees. The whole world a maze. The whole world the same repeating pattern, over and over. And she could not run anymore. She stopped, stared. Balur emerged from the black clouds of ash, skidded to a halt.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “There’s no escaping this.” She stared at the tangled web of forest in front of them.

  Balur grinned. “We fight.”

  “We’ll die.” It was Quirk, emerging, choking. She was supporting Afrit now. There was a gang of elves around them. “We have to run. But not back to Birchester. We can’t lead them that way.”

  “How is us dying while we lead a fucking dragon away from Birchester any different from us dying making a stand here?” Lette was in Quirk’s face, flecking her with spittle.

  Afrit was trying to get between them, saying, “No. Don’t.” Quirk was crying.

  “We make a stand,” Balur bellowed.

  And then the dragon roared.

  Seven hundred yards. Wishing she had not run. Wishing she had stood her ground. And so very glad she had not. Fire chasing after her.

  Eight hundred yards. Where was Will? Trying to push that thought away. But it pursued her as relentlessly as Diffinax.

  A thousand yards. They were a tight knot now. Perhaps sixty survivors. She glanced left, right. Balur was easy to make out, two and a half feet taller than any of the elves. Quirk made herself obvious, screaming directions no one was listening to. But where was—

  And then she saw him. Near the back of the group. And the sense of relief was so large it almost overwhelmed her. She stumbled. An elf grabbed her elbow, pulled her upright. She looked back again. And yes, it was Will. She tripped over a branch, staggered, managed to catch herself. She couldn’t afford to keep looking back. She looked back again. It was him. Smeared with smoke and blood. But him. Him alive.

  Fifteen hundred yards. They could hear roaring. They could hear the rush of flame. They could hear screams. But it was moving away from them. Diffinax was attacking but … not them. The pace of the group faltered.

  “No,” Quirk was saying over and over. “No. No.”

  “What?” Lette asked. “What is it?”

  “Other survivors,” said Afrit.

  “No. No. No.” Quirk’s litany continued.

  “Better them than us.” It was not a kind thing to say, Lette knew, but it was the truth.

  Afrit shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s … They didn’t hear Quirk. They’re running back home. They’re leading Diffinax straight to Birchester. Straight to the capital of the Vale.”

  29

  In the Land of the Drunk …

  Quirk knew that she shouldn’t. She knew that it was self-indulgent, and foolish, and worst of all dangerous, a threat to the lives of all who followed them. But she still dropped to her knees and screamed.

  Birchester was a smoking ruin of ash and rubble.

  She wanted to set fire to something. To someone. To Balur.

  That so many should die and he should live …

  “Hush. Hush.” Afrit rushed to her, wrapped an arm around her.

  Lette was less subtle. “Shut the fuck up,” she snapped.

  Quirk was still not talking to Lette. Lette wouldn’t let her kill Balur.

  It was five days since they had left Elmington. Five days of praying that Balur’s rashness might not have led to total disaster. And now she stood in the ruin of a nation’s capital, with the smell of blood and charred meat still thick on the air. With the vast path that Diffinax himself had bulldozed through the forest and the city still clearly visible. Now she stood in the ruin of all her hopes. In the ruin of lives. In the ruin of a civilization.

  And Lette told her to shut up.

  She stood, and she wore a crown of flames. Afrit backed away fast.

  “Don’t you dare,” Quirk said to Lette. And even her words were fire—tongues of flame darting out from her mouth. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do while you still defend him.”

  Lette had the good sense to keep quiet. And part of Quirk was glad. Part of her recognized that she would have had a hard time living with Lette’s life on her conscience.

  Part of her.

  Will found her, half an hour later, leaning up against one of the few oak trees that were still standing. The tattered remains of a walkway hung halfway down its trunk like some severed limb.

  “What?” she snapped when it became apparent Will wasn’t about to take her turned back as the hint it was, and leave her alone.

  “They haven’t headed back to Tamar,” he said.

  At first she couldn’t parse the words. They were just sounds. “What?” she snapped again, channeling her frustration into this confusion.

  “Diffinax. The Diffinites.” Will looked nervous. “They haven’t turned back. They’re still pushing on through the forest.”

  And that … that didn’t make sense. Because Diffinax had already won. There was no bigger prize in the Vale than Birchester. The dragon had already torn the heart out of the nation.

  And so … So he was after something … Could he and his followers be chasing after survivors? Her heart leapt in her breast. That would mean there were survivors. She could rescue them.

  “Which direction did they go in?
” she asked. She tried not to voice her hope yet.

  Will looked anywhere but at her. “Before I tell you,” he said, “I want you to know I’m not making this up, and I’m not happy about it.”

  Will, Quirk thought, had a shitty way of not getting to the point. She arched an eyebrow and grit her teeth.

  “Toward Vinland,” Will said quickly. “They headed toward Vinland.”

  For a moment the words meant nothing. She was still too mired in now, in this. The future was still obscured by ash, and smoke, and piles of dead bodies.

  And then she saw it. Saw why Will looked almost embarrassed. “You think we should go there,” she said.

  “They deserve to be warned.” Will finally met her eyes.

  Fuck you! she wanted to scream. You and your obstinate insistence on this. And part of her wanted to laugh in his face. Warn them? Save them? Like you saved these people?

  And part of her … part of her had Hethren whispering in her ears.

  But instead she took a breath, and was for a moment just a professor from Tamathia, alone and lost in the woods.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

  Will let out a long breath, turned away, then hesitated. “There aren’t enough bodies,” he said at last.

  “What?”

  “Erm …” Will shifted his weight. “I don’t mean it’s like we’re trying to fill a quota or anything. But the dead bodies here. It’s a lot, but it’s only about a quarter of the people who lived here. A lot got away.”

  Quirk took that in silently. Because Will didn’t deserve her relief, or her tears. She would wait for him to leave, which he did, slowly. Still, just before he left her, she decided she deserved the last word.

  “You should have led with that, you moron.”

  Then he was gone.

  It turned out that Will was right. In the ensuing days they came across more and more groups of bedraggled, exhausted, and terrified survivors. As the days went on, they encountered groups who weren’t even from Birchester, but rather were from other villages in the Vale, had heard the news, and were already fleeing.

  No matter how much their numbers bloated, Quirk kept pushing them harder. She could feel history chasing them, and she began a desperate sprint for the Vinland border.

  On the second day out of Birchester, they got past Diffinax. His army had, in fact, been camped barely a mile outside the ravaged city. And the dragon’s army seemed to have lost a considerable amount of its momentum in the aftermath of their victory. They no longer charged through the forest, but slowly marched—implacable, and irresistible to be sure, but no longer with such awful speed.

  And then Will came to her and said, “I don’t think we should go to Vinland.”

  After cycling through a couple of possible responses, Quirk decided to laugh in his face.

  “Well, where in the Hallows should we go, Will?” Quirk put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “What would finally make you happy?” She wished she could be sure he caught the sarcasm.

  “They’re all people who actively chose to worship Barph,” Will said, which wasn’t exactly answering the question.

  “How is this news to you?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he pressed. “What about the Fanlorn Empire? They’re hidden behind mountains. We could head to the coast right now. Get a boat and take it there. The Fanlornians might not have dragons.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Fine.” Will wasn’t done. “Thresnia,” he said. “In the Arid Bay. Nobody is going to bother conquering there.”

  “Because we’d die after about three days from lack of water. It’s a city of the undead, you dullard.” Quirk shook her head. “And I have been accused of having trouble being happy.” She looked over at Lette. The mercenary was extravagantly drunk. “Getting in the Vinland spirit,” she called it. “How long did you and Lette last again?”

  It was a low, low blow, but she really wanted Will to regret this conversation.

  “Listen,” she said to him, leaning in. “There is, as you already know, as you have even said to me, nowhere else to go but Vinland. And now Diffinax is marching on it. And thanks to new refugees near the Batarran border, we know that Theerax is mobilizing his troops, marching an army south.”

  Will reeled. “Another army? Theerax?”

  “Yes.” Quirk wanted to hit him with the words. “And apparently he has Gorrax from Salera coming down to help him as well. It’s going to be a big push into Vinland. So all we have now is the time it takes them to marshal all their forces. That’s all the time we have to warn Vinland and get them in a state to defend themselves from three invading armies at once.”

  “Oh,” said Will. He chewed his lip. “I mean …” He looked away. “Now part of me really thinks we shouldn’t go to Vinland.”

  Suddenly Quirk wished she was as drunk as Lette.

  It felt strange to leave the trees behind. Quirk stood at the Vinland border, watching the elves hesitate, stare about themselves, blink in the abrupt brightness of the sun. She sympathized. After only two months of forest living, she felt curiously exposed without a tree at her back. And for some of these people, it was their first time out without a canopy above their heads.

  Their numbers had swelled to just over five hundred now. Of King Todger, though, there had been no sign. Quirk suspected that his corpse was far behind them now. And in his absence people again seemed to be looking to her for leadership. She tried not to resent it. Not to worry that she was fulfilling a culturally insensitive and stereotypical “savior” role. Sometimes when she got to brooding she would catch Afrit looking at her. That helped.

  Vinland seemed a simple and pleasant land from this vantage. Sun splashed over gently rolling hills that alternated between meadows, vineyards, and orchards. A few copses of trees stood out sharp against the horizon. A handful of farmsteads were scattered about.

  But what defense did it offer? What natural choke points? What strategic strongholds? In the end, this landscape could hold no reassurance for her.

  It did, however—she discovered after two leagues—hold a surprisingly large number of soldiers.

  There were perhaps sixty of them, heavily armed, with a contingent of twenty aiming crossbows. They appeared from between the rows of a vineyard, rushing forward at a controlled march, surrounding them. It was, Quirk was forced to concede, fairly terrifying, despite the fact that half of them were cross-eyed and slurring.

  The elves, exhausted as they were, reacted as quickly as they could. Bows were pulled from shoulders, strings stretched. But before they could fumble for their arrows from their quills, both she and Will were shouting at them to stop. This was why they were here.

  One of the Vinlanders, possibly a captain, weaved a path toward Will and Lette.

  “Who in the Hallows are you?” he slurred.

  “Political refugees,” Quirk said, trying not to glance at Afrit to make sure she was getting her terms right.

  “What’s that when it’s at home?” asked the Vinlander captain, which did make her glance at Afrit. Which in turn, didn’t help at all.

  “We’re being pursued by the dragon Diffinax,” Will cut in. “We need help or we’ll die.”

  “How’s that my problem?” The guard hiccupped into his clenched fist, but didn’t offer up an apology.

  Which was when Quirk started to lose her patience. “Because he’s coming here.” She tried not to grit her teeth while she spoke.

  “Wait,” said the captain. “You’re running away from him, right?”

  “Yes,” said Quirk.

  “And you know he’s coming here, right?” said the captain.

  “Yes,” said Quirk again. Her fists were clenched.

  “You’re shit at running away.”

  “The dragons are everywhere.” Quirk wanted to beat the words into the guard’s skull.

  “The dragons have taken over all the rest of Avarra,” Will cut in again. Quirk actually fel
t grateful. She wasn’t sure she could maintain a diplomatic tone. “This is the only place they haven’t conquered yet.” He paused. “You do know all this, right?”

  The captain blinked at him. Then he said, “So you’re political prisoners, is it?”

  “I said refugees,” Quirk said firmly. She wanted that distinction to be very clear.

  “Who’s pointing a crossbow at who here?” asked the captain.

  Quirk could resolve this quickly, she knew. She estimated she could put an end to all of these soldiers before they got many shots off.

  That didn’t feel particularly diplomatic.

  “Look,” she said, trying to force herself to relax, to think about who she was talking to. A Vinland soldier. “We are running for our lives here. Utter terror and devastation are behind us. And these dragons are coming looking for a fight. And we just want to sleep it off for a night or two, so we can get up, fresh and invigorated, and kick some dragon arse with you. Now how does that sound?”

  “Like you’re trying to pander to me based on my religious affiliation,” said the captain, which was a lot closer to the mark than Quirk had hoped.

  “Look,” Quirk felt diplomacy slipping away from her again, “we’re not here to pick a fight. We’re here to join with you if you’ll have us. And if you won’t, it’s pointless to keep us here. We’re not a threat to anyone. Either help us get to shelter or don’t.”

  “Strange times it is,” said the captain, rubbing his chin. “Talk of dragons taking over beyond the borders. War in the capital.” He took a swig from his flask, smacked his lips. “And I don’t know where you land in all of this, or where you tip the scales.”

  “War in the where?” Quirk almost squeaked. That was new, and about as reassuring as a rash in her britches.

  “You know what?” said the captain, who smiled. “I know where my loyalties lie, don’t I?” He draped an arm over Quirk’s shoulders.

  “Probably.” Quirk tried to make her response sound more conversational than acerbic as the captain steered her along the road.

  “So I know what to do with you then, don’t I?” said the captain.