The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  To be honest, it wasn’t even about whether she loved him or not. She’d given up trying to figure that out. She still found him equal parts frustrating and fascinating. But any future they might have wasn’t to do with love, or sex, or any of the stuff the bards liked to pretend relationships were about.

  It was to do with compatibility. It was to do with the day-to-day grind that took up most of life between the odd sparks of passion and rage. It was to do with being elbow-to-elbow with each other for hours on end when life was simply … boring.

  They were not compatible. Not as they were. He wanted to raise pigs. She, despite her best efforts, wanted to stab people in the guts. She could not stand still watching the seasons grind past. She could not celebrate the numbing repetition of it all. There was not much middle ground between the pair of them. Not unless Will wanted to bury a lot of farmhands. If it was to work, if love was to matter, then one of them had to change, and right now neither seemed on the verge of doing so.

  Unless it was Will about to turn into a meat pancake leagues below them. Unless she saved him.

  And then it was too late. She was past him. And no matter how or what she felt, it wasn’t suicidal.

  Still, she had to end this absurd chase. She flung herself sideways. Not at the precipice, but at the wall to her right. There had to be a handhold. Something she could pull herself up on.

  She was right. The wall was rough and jagged. Even in the shadows she was able to swarm up, hand over hand. And then she just had time to pull her legs up.

  Kobolds barreled past below her. Some leapt at her, trying to grab at her ankles, pull her down. Most carried on, oblivious. Whatever Balur had done he had done it … No, well didn’t seem like the right word. Excessively, perhaps? Kobolds were still spilling off the side of the path, bouncing, howling down into oblivion.

  It took five minutes for them to pass. Five agonizing minutes. Her arms throbbed. She could just see the trapped foot of the champion, still dangling. But Will had disappeared. Had he been knocked off? Had he jumped? Fallen down? Climbed to freedom? She had no way of knowing. For five gods-hexed minutes she had no way of knowing.

  Finally the outpouring of kobolds slowed to a trickle. A few staggering children and ancients, a couple with broken limbs still struggling on. She dropped to the ground. One kobold growled at her. She stabbed it in the face. The others gave her a wide berth.

  Balur was picking himself up off the road. He was smeared with blood, mud, and kobold footprints. Claws had raked through his scales over every exposed inch of his body. He grunted once, then sat back down.

  “You stupid, stupid, fucking …” But Lette didn’t have the words or the time right now. Why in the name of all the gods she spent time with Balur …

  She choked down a shout of pure frustration and scurried toward the fallen champion and his trapped ankle.

  “Will?” she called, and the anxiety in her voice almost brought her up short. She did not want to sound like that to him. If she could still sound like anything to him, of course. If he was not still falling down into oblivion. If he was not a red smear halfway down the rock face below.

  “Will?” she called again, and this time, if anything her voice sounded even more tremulous.

  “Hey!” came a slurred shout from below, and Lette felt as if her legs had melted. “I …” came Will’s voice. Then, “Whoa!”

  “Will!” And all Lette’s temerity was burned off in the flash heat of her sudden anger. “You fucking moron!”

  She leaned out over the edge of the precipice, lying flat on her belly to get the most balance she could. The champion was dangling upside down beside her, swaying slightly. His free limbs were splayed limply. The back of his helmet had an enormous dent in it, and black blood was bubbling out of a crack in it, dripping down into the abyss below.

  “I think he’s pretty much, you know … dead,” Will said. He was perched halfway down the champion’s massive torso, one foot wedged into a joint in his breastplate, one hand gripping the man’s belt. He was beaming up at her.

  “What in the Hallows are you doing?” she snapped at him.

  “The chalice!” Will was still beaming. He pointed with his free hand. Then the body rocked back and forth with the shifting weight, and Will grabbed for the champion’s belt with both hands. “Whoa!” he cried again. His free foot whipped back and forth wildly.

  “That keeps happening,” Will said when death seemed slightly less imminent.

  Lette would have been slightly more tempted to fling a knife into his throat had the champion’s rocking not revealed a glint of gold still clutched in the loosely curled fingers of his limp right hand. It was hanging down below his head, dangling over an absolutely enormous amount of nothing.

  Will followed her gaze. “I’m going to get that,” he said. He attempted to puff out his chest while maintaining his death grip on the champion’s belt. “Impressive, right?”

  Lette tried to process that. “Impressively stupid,” she told him. “You’re going to kill yourself. Get back up here.”

  “No!” Will pouted. “I am doing this. It is manly, and impressive, and I am going to do it, and you are going to be impressed by my manliness that, is …” He searched for a word. “Impressive,” he said. And let go of the belt.

  “No!” Lette screeched as Will plummeted down the length of the champion’s torso.

  Will crashed into the champion’s helmet, almost flipped himself backward into oblivion, scrabbled desperately for a handhold, and only managed to snag one at the last moment. Lette’s stomach lurched sickeningly as he swung back and forth from his fingertips, feet dangling in space.

  “Whee!” Will cried, swinging back and forth.

  Beside Lette the vine gripping the champion’s massive weight groaned.

  “Stop it!” Lette snapped. “Stop it, you drunken arsehole.”

  Beside her she felt Balur sit down heavily. “What is it that is going on?” he asked with a grunt.

  “This.” Lette couldn’t even bring herself to describe the debacle. Balur leaned over and peered down. Blood dripped off the end of his snout.

  Will had managed to wrap both legs around the champion’s right elbow and was slowly transferring his hands over.

  “Impressive,” rumbled Balur.

  If Lette had been sitting up she would have thrown up her hands. “What?” she snapped. “What is impressive about doing something this fucking stupid?”

  “I am not sure I could be doing that when I am being that drunk,” said Balur.

  “Something that nimble, or that stupid?”

  Will was now fully astride the champion’s upper arm and shimmying down toward his wrist. Lette felt like her heart was in her mouth. The champion’s arm swayed back and forth, pitching Will left, then right. If it pivoted into the rock face, it would crush his grip and send him flying …

  “Hmmm …” said Balur. “I am wondering what he is going to be doing now.”

  “Get up h—” Lette started.

  “Don’t worry,” Will interrupted. “I’ve got it!”

  And he let go with his hands. He flailed backward, arms pinwheeling. Lette screamed. It was a high-pitched, shrill sound. An awful sound. She hated it, but she had no time. Because Will …

  Because Will …

  Will was hanging upside down, gripping the champion’s wrist with his knees. He casually reached into the champion’s slack palm and plucked the goblet out.

  “Got it!” he called up, cheery as a spring fucking lamb.

  “Fuck you!” Lette yelled back. Gods, if he didn’t die on the way back up here, she was going to kill him when he arrived.

  Slowly, Will started trying to work his way back up into a sitting position. Lette stared at him angrily, finding her eyes unexpectedly blurry.

  “Be being a shame if he fell,” said Balur quietly.

  “Of course it’d be a fucking shame!” Lette snapped.

  “Because of the chalice that he’d be droppi
ng, right?” said Balur heavily.

  She turned to look at him. The look he was giving her from behind the scrim of blood oozing out of a hundred cuts could not be entirely described as innocent.

  “Yes,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Because of the motherfucking chalice.”

  She knew what he was implying. And there was no way she was giving the lizard man ammunition like that.

  Slowly, carving years off her life as he came, Will scrambled back up the champion’s body. When he was within arm’s reach, she seized his wrists and heaved him up onto the ledge.

  From his knees he grinned up at her, and held out the goblet. Blood-red wine sloshed back and forth inside it.

  “Impressive, right?” he said, grinning.

  And gods hex him from now until the end of his days, he was right too.

  46

  Unprepared

  Quirk stood on the walls of Vinter and watched the horizon. Clouds of black smoke smudged the sunset. Three days was not enough time. It was just not enough.

  They had barely cleared the corpses out of the High Temple when the first reports of the dragons’ army had started to come in. It was finally on the march, pushing deep into Vinland’s heartlands, roasting and slaughtering as it came.

  “How long?” Quirk had asked. She had thought that the events of the coup had left her too exhausted to care about anything, but she had been wrong. Her heart had hammered against her ribs like a frenzied prisoner behind bars.

  “They’ll be at our walls in three days’ time.”

  And it had not been enough time.

  But she had done her best. At least she could go to her grave knowing that. She had been the best and done the best she could. It was just it didn’t matter.

  In some ways the organization they’d managed had been miraculous. Especially considering this was Vinter. Words of events had spread through the sluggish city like fire through thatch. The military had mobilized like a herd of spooked centaurs leaping to their feet. Within a day they had press-ganged every able-bodied man and woman into a uniform. Combat drills had been run. They had been building defenses. Smithies had forged blades, arrow-and spearheads, bossed shields, and breastplates. Water had been gathered for putting out the inevitable fires. Food had been stockpiled in underground facilities. Farmers had been forced to collect crops as early and as quickly as possible. The fields had been emptied of workers. She had commissioned teams to build her ballistas.

  And of all people, Firkin had been almost single-handedly instrumental in pushing all their plans toward completion. He had marched through the city, bare-chested, bellowing orders and abuse in his thunderous voice. Quirk had followed, dazed in his wake, nursing a headache, and a wineskin she had found herself carrying around almost constantly. Firkin’s boundless rage and enthusiasm were exhausting. She was almost always thirsty in his presence, and she trusted the wine here more than she trusted the water.

  Wherever he went, people had fallen into a frenzy of activity. “More!” he had bellowed at them, and they had done more. She had had to ask him to ease off when reports started coming in of people collapsing from exhaustion as they tried to do everything he asked of them. She could not risk him thinning their numbers further.

  And still, despite all their efforts, it had not been enough time.

  More information about the oncoming army had filtered into the city. Three dragons were at its head: Diffinax, her old foe who had conquered Tamar and destroyed Birchester; Theerax, who had foiled Will, Lette, and Balur in Batarra; and Gorrax, a massive brute who had apparently laid waste to most of Salera’s capital city, Essoa. Quirk wasn’t looking forward to telling Lette about that when she returned. If she remembered correctly, most of Lette’s family were meant to be from that city.

  When Lette returned … That was it now. That was the last hope. She stood on the walls of Vinland, watching the smoke rise, knowing she had not done enough, knowing that their only hope was distant and in someone else’s hands.

  What if Lette failed? What if Barph’s Strength was just a nonexistent myth? What if she, Balur, and Will were all dead? What if they simply came too late? What if the effects of the wine were an exaggerated rumor?

  Then she and everyone else in this city had nothing, and they would die. Vinter and Vinland would fall as one, and take the last outpost of hope in Avarra with them. That was it. That was the simple truth.

  She looked over to the others on the wall—Afrit, pacing back and forth, muttering to herself; a line of recently conscripted soldiers, gripping a mix of old swords and new pitchforks, some with hands gnarled by arthritis, others with palms too young to be worn rough by calluses; and Firkin, standing a little in front of her, pressed against the wall’s makeshift battlements, beard whipping back over his shoulder in the evening’s still-warm breeze.

  “They’re coming,” he said, turning to grin back at Quirk. “They’re stomping their little feet, all eager and excited. Like virgins on their wedding nights. Tender and sweet.” He licked his lips. Quirk suppressed a shudder. As efficient as this new iteration of Firkin was, he was no more pleasant than the last. “They want to throw themselves upon our steel. To hack at us while their guts spill out sweet and slick. An intermingling. A sacrifice.” He grinned. “There’s a sort of beauty in that, I think.”

  Quirk tried hard to remember all the help Firkin had been. She tried to remember that she had done nothing to help heal his encroaching madness. Listening to this drivel was a direct consequence of her decisions.

  “Have another drink, Firkin,” she said, holding out her wineskin for him with what she hoped passed for a smile. He was quieter at least when he was really drunk. As he approached her, her headache spiked. She really had to cut back on her own wine consumption. Cutting back on the stress wasn’t really an option right now.

  Firkin grabbed the wineskin greedily and guzzled it down. Quirk stared back out at the Vinland landscape. The dragons’ army was burning everything before it. No attempt was being made to sway the hearts and minds of the Vinlanders anymore. They had defied the dragons’ bid for worship and love for too long. Clearly, now the only fit fate for them was to be destroyed.

  Two hundred and thirty thousand strong. That was what she had heard. An army unlike any other seen before in Avarra. Something epochal. Two hundred and thirty thousand fanatical troops come to punish the heathens who rejected their new gods. New living gods, who stood at the head of their army, spewing fire and hatred.

  What was left of the academic in her couldn’t help but think of the history books that would be written about this time, about that army. The superlatives that the future’s historians would fall over themselves to use.

  She felt a hand on her arm. She knew without looking that it was Afrit.

  “I’m okay,” she said. She knew what question was forming on Afrit’s lips without looking too.

  “You don’t look okay. You look like you’ve got a hedgehog wedged in your under garments.”

  Quirk gave that a thoughtful nod. “That’s a very specific metaphor,” she said finally.

  “Well,” said Afrit, lowering her voice, “I thought it might be better than just saying it looks like you’re spending a lot of time thinking about how royally fucked we are.”

  Quirk winced.

  “I mean,” Afrit kept on whispering, “I know we are, but I’m not sure looking that way in front of the troops is the best idea.”

  Quirk glanced over again at the line of soldiers standing on the wall. She made sure she looked away before grimacing.

  “Maybe a pep talk?” Afrit suggested.

  “Isn’t that why we have Firkin?” Quirk whispered.

  “He just talked about the glory of intermingling guts,” Afrit pointed out.

  Quirk sighed. “Why do you never make inspiring speeches?” she asked, which was petulant but not necessarily unwarranted.

  “Because I didn’t tame the dragons in Kondorra,” Afrit said. “Because I didn’t lea
d rebellions in Tamar and the Vale. Because if history remembers me at all, it will be as a sidekick. Sidekicks don’t make the speeches. We’ve both studied history enough to know that.”

  “That’s not—” Quirk started.

  “Just make the fucking speech already.”

  Quirk decided another sigh would not necessarily be well received, so she choked it down, turned to the troops, and plastered something approximating a smile on her lips.

  “Try to make it look less like the hedgehog is now trying to nest in your arsehole,” Afrit whispered.

  Quirk chewed back the retort, and readjusted her smile. She took a breath. “They will come tomorrow,” she said, trying to make sure her voice carried to as many people as possible. “They will bring forces beyond counting. They will bring dragons. And they will bring flame to burn us to the ground.”

  “Not where I would have started,” Afrit whispered.

  “They will look fearsome,” Quirk went on. “They will look fucking terrifying actually.” She took another breath. There was a young man, perhaps sixteen summers old, staring at her, face as white as a sheet. He was gripping a pitchfork that was shaking in his white-knuckled grip.

  “They will stand before these walls and they will roar their hatred, and their rage, and their flames at us. And we shall be afraid.” She paused. “I shall be afraid.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” whispered Afrit. “Next time I’ll do the pissing speech.”

  “They shall expect that fear to break us,” Quirk went on. “They shall expect it to rob us of our will to fight. They will expect us to be brittle with fear. So that when they push, we break. And when we break they will spill in here and burn us all.”

  She looked up and down the line of soldiers. Glared at them.

  “I will be afraid,” she said. “But I will not be brittle. I will not break. Because I will also have hope. Because I will have all of you at my back. All of your rage. All of your hate. All of your faith in Barph. All of your history and your skill. All of your guts. Because I know that fear is okay. Fear is just one emotion. Fear is not as strong as the love we bear each other, and that we bear Barph. And our strength will face them down, and our strength will be greater than theirs. And all their rage, their hate, their belief … it will come to be eclipsed by their fear. The fear we shall put in them. Together. As one. Because we are stronger!”