The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  Firkin was still falling. The wall was crumbling beneath his enormous weight. He sprawled into buildings, crushing roofs, collapsing walls, bringing bricks pouring down upon his head. Clouds of smoke and dust wreathed his torso, slowly enveloping him. The whole thing played out in silence before her. All she could hear was a faint high-pitched ringing.

  Slowly, dizzily she picked herself up. Her left arm didn’t seem to be working well. She looked around. Half the soldiers were dead, broken rag dolls spilling their stuffing across the street. Others were lying, clutching broken limbs, coughing blood. She reached a hand up to her ears. Her fingers came away bloody. Her chin and nose were dripping more blood. Balur was on his knees. He reached up a hand, wrenched his jaw back sideways. He must have dislocated it in the fall.

  Will. Where was Will?

  Strange thumping pressure from above drew her eye upward. A dragon was soaring over her, its mouth open wide. Flame fell in waves from it, crashing into the houses. She felt the shock waves thud through her.

  Someone grabbed her shoulder. She whirled around, reaching for a sword she’d lost in the explosion. Balur was there. He was trying to say something, but his jaw was fucked and so were her ears.

  She shook him off. She needed to find Will.

  She found him in a bundle of three other figures. Two of them were dead, their spines snapped into a series of irregular angles. Will was curled up on top of the third. A bone was jutting violently out of his shin, but apart from that and what she took to be his screaming, he seemed okay.

  She made hand gestures at Balur until he understood enough to grab a broken spear shaft. She tore strips of cloth from a dead man’s shirt.

  Will passed out as they set the bone. That was good. Balur held the bone and splint in place while she bound everything as best she could.

  Then she sat back on her haunches, looked at Balur. He shrugged at her again.

  She used her finger to scribble a word in the dust that lined the floor.

  Firkin?

  Balur nodded. They should try to find out what was left of their friendly giant at least. Balur heaved Will up onto his shoulder, and together they stumbled toward the slowly dissipating cloud of dust and debris. Lette held her hand over her mouth, peered into swirling shadows. Firkin shouldn’t be too hard to spot; he was larger than most temple spires.

  And yet, as the cloud grew thinner and thinner it became harder and harder to deny: He was not there. Lette turned to Balur, brow knit, trying to telegraph her confusion.

  And then she saw two figures lying in the dirt. One lay in a small circle of flame.

  “Quirk,” she said. She could almost make out her own voice now.

  The academic lay on her back, head lolling back on broken stone. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and her palms looked raw, but aside from a few other scrapes and cuts she appeared whole and hale.

  And beside Quirk … beside her lay Firkin. Not gargantuan, titanic Firkin. Not the Firkin who had fought three dragons to a standstill. But regular old, repugnant Firkin.

  “Looks okay.” Balur’s voice sounded like a faint whisper as he toed Firkin’s body.

  Lette nodded. “I don’t know how,” she said. “I don’t know any of this. I’m pretty fucking sure that Firkin was a giant fighting dragons a minute ago. And now … Now …” She honestly didn’t have words for what was going on. “Weird shit.”

  The street shook beneath her feet. With the crushed city wall at her back, she looked out onto Vinter. The buildings were burning, thatch and wood going up like so much kindling. Dragons were visible in the sky above, launching fireballs like catapult stones. The explosions thudded through the ringing in her ears. The ground shook again, and again.

  “This is over,” Lette said. “We’ve lost.”

  Balur nodded. “Tactical withdrawal?”

  Lette nodded. “Very tactical.”

  Balur bent, hoisted Quirk onto the shoulder that Will wasn’t draped across. Lette knelt, and awkwardly heaved Firkin’s dead weight up.

  “You think that gate they were talking about is still a good way out?”

  Balur shrugged. “I was just going to be walking through the big gap in the wall.”

  Lette looked. She nodded. Then she started picking her way through the rubble. And slowly, carefully, they slunk away as the dragons won their war.

  PART 3:

  DRAGONS DESCENDING

  52

  By Way of an Explanation

  As much as Will still loved Lette, he was also pretty certain that she was shit at making splints. He bit down harder on his belt as she carefully bound the broken spear shaft back against his broken leg.

  “Of course it hurts,” Lette said, catching his reproachful look. “You bust a bone out of your leg. If you can walk properly after this, you’d better pour libations in my fucking honor.”

  “Also,” said Balur from where he was lying at the base of a tree, “you are being a total pussy.”

  Will didn’t even bother looking at him. He was in too much genuine pain.

  They were about five miles from Vinter now, taking refuge in a copse of startled-looking trees standing in the middle of a trampled field. The city was still visible on the horizon, a broken, smoking ruin. A few dazed cows and sheep, escaped from their pillaged farmsteads, wandered about.

  “I was in an explosion,” Will pointed out to Lette instead. “The same one you were. This was hardly my fault.” He couldn’t help but feel that there had been an accusation hidden in her words.

  “I wasn’t the one running around waving a ladle in the air and shouting ‘skull splitter.’” Lette looked at him pointedly.

  “So I took some blows to the head early on in the fight,” said Will. It was hard to act nonchalant with his leg throbbing as if Lawl himself were pissing on the wound.

  “Can we not talk about blows to the head right now?” Quirk was propped up next to Balur with a makeshift bandage wrapped around her skull. It turned out she had taken a decent chunk of flesh out of the back of her scalp in her fall from the city walls.

  Firkin was still unconscious. Will was trying not to fret about that. Unconscious was a lot better than dead, which is what by all rights the old man should have been. In fact he had the fewest obvious injuries of all of them. The scrapes in his skin were shallow and clean. His burns were minor. They had all seen him roasted, impaled, and clawed half to death, and yet he seemed little worse than he would have done after a bad day on the farm.

  None of them were talking about Firkin. They were not talking about a lot of things. They were not talking about the fields of ash they had walked through all day. They were not talking about whatever had happened to Afrit. They were not talking about the future. They were not talking about the fact that they’d lost.

  Lette gave Will’s leg an appraising look. The sun was just below the horizon now. The sky was still a watercolor wash of pinks and yellows staining into midnight blue, turning the copse of trees into a series of stark silhouettes.

  “I’ll go see if I can rustle up some supper,” Lette said. “Bound to be some rabbits around somewhere.” She slipped away.

  Will looked over to Quirk and Balur. “How are you feeling?” he asked neither of them in particular. It was easiest to talk about the immediate now.

  “Like I could use a drink,” said Quirk with feeling.

  “Me too.” Will rubbed his head.

  Quirk shook her head. “I don’t want to drink.”

  “You just said …” Will pointed out.

  “I’ve been drinking for days,” said Quirk. “Normally I’ll have a glass of wine, perhaps two, perhaps none. I water it usually. But in Vinter, the past few days … Gods … I cannot remember the last day I didn’t have a hangover.”

  “I don’t think needing a drink when …” Will hesitated. They were not describing their current situation. “I don’t think needing a drink now,” he amended, “is totally unreasonable.”

  “Well, if someone had
not been wounding his leg and been requiring that we are sterilizing his wound with all my hard liquor …” Balur started.

  “You were in the same explosion as me!” Will pointed out.

  “Hush,” Quirk whispered. “We are supposed to be in hiding. Shouting kind of undermines that.”

  And there she was again, talking about things that everyone else seemed to think were better left unsaid.

  “Oh,” said Lette, reappearing suddenly, “if there were soldiers about, you’d be dead already.” She smiled cheerfully and looked over her shoulder. “Isn’t that right?”

  Will almost had time to look perplexed when Afrit walked out of the lengthening shadows behind Lette. Quirk let out a squeal like a kettle undergoing a major revelation, and was suddenly shooting across the copse toward her. And through all the ash and grime and dirt that covered it, Afrit’s face lit up like the sun.

  Then Quirk screeched to a halt in front of Afrit and stood there awkwardly. She reached out, seemed to abort the hug, and then just held Afrit by her shoulders. Afrit seemed unsure what was going on now.

  “You’re okay,” said Quirk, then released Afrit’s shoulders. “That’s erm …” She turned away. There was a look like panic on her face.

  Afrit blinked. She seemed even more disoriented by Quirk’s quicksilver emotions than Quirk was.

  “Where were you?” asked Will, mostly out of a sense of social decency, trying to cover the awkwardness.

  Afrit turned to him slowly. She blinked again. “The, er … Vinter. It’s fallen, by the way, though I suppose you know that. Most of the soldiers I was with … well, they’re all dead.” She took a shaking breath. “And I’ve just been walking, and … you know …” She sent a plaintive look in Quirk’s direction. “I’d lost you. But then I heard voices. And …” She shook her head. “You’re hiding, aren’t you? I mean, we lost. We’re on the run. Aren’t we? But you were all shouting.” She bit her bottom lip. Will thought she was going to cry. “And then …”

  “I’ve got supper,” Lette cut in loudly. She held up two dead rabbits.

  They risked a fire. Lette had come across no one else wandering in the fields around them. Soon Will’s stomach was rumbling as the smell of rabbit roasting on a spit over a small fire of leaves and twigs started to wind between the trees.

  “That smells fantastic.”

  They all froze. Balur’s hand, turning the spit, clenched so hard that the wood splintered to pulp.

  They all turned and looked.

  Not to the fringe of trees. Not to a group of dragon soldiers. Not to another tired fight to the death. To Firkin.

  He was sitting up. He was grinning at them. He yawned and stretched luxuriantly. Somehow he managed to keep grinning the whole time.

  “That,” he said, ignoring all their stares, “was a brilliant nap. Best one ever.” He still wore that same shit-eating grin.

  There was something different about his voice, Will thought. It sounded … deeper perhaps? More resonant? Richer. That was the word. It was still the same voice, shrill and grating, but it somehow seemed more important, as if Will should listen to it more closely.

  Why in the Hallows should anyone listen to Firkin? Wasn’t that part of how they’d ended up in this mess?

  Balur certainly seemed to be of that opinion. He had crossed the small corpse and had Firkin in the air, holding him by the throat. “Your magic drink was not working,” he said simply. “So you had better be giving me a reason to not be squeezing.”

  “Because,” Firkin said, still managing to keep his grin in place, “that won’t be working either.”

  Balur looked puzzled. “You are knowing what normally happens when someone’s throat is being crushed, right?” he said. “Because this threat is only working if you are knowing about the whole thrashing around, and dying in convulsions while your bowels give way thing.”

  “Yep.” Firkin did his best to nod. “Won’t work.”

  “Don’t try it!” Lette shouted just as Balur’s bicep flexed.

  “But he was saying,” Balur grumbled.

  “He’s a drunk arsehole who blathers stupid shit constantly,” Lette pointed out. “Do not listen to him. Ever.”

  Balur huffed in disappointment.

  “Can we please just put him down,” Will said, “and find out what in the Hallows happened?”

  “He really can squeeze,” said Firkin, feet still dangling in the air.

  “Shut up, Firkin!” Will snapped.

  “Shut up or talk about what happened?” Firkin cackled. “Which is it?”

  “I think I’m just going to squeeze,” said Balur.

  “Don’t!” Lette barked.

  “I need a fucking drink,” Will said. His throat felt parched and his headache was getting stronger.

  “I don’t even think you could do it,” Firkin said to Balur amiably. “I think you’ve got the arm strength of a six-year-old girl.”

  “Now I have to do it,” Balur rumbled, without much malice.

  “Put him the fuck down, Balur!” Lette yelled.

  “Why is this you people’s answer to everything?” Afrit looked utterly bewildered.

  “Yeah,” said Firkin. “I doubt you can hold me up much longer, what with those shrimpy little arms of yours.”

  “Are you actually fucking insane?” Will was almost tempted to let Balur try at this point.

  “Actually,” Quirk cut in, her voice quiet, “I don’t think he’s Firkin at all.”

  “What?” Will, Lette, and Afrit all said at once, turning to look at the former thaumatobiologist.

  And then the sound of clapping drew their gazes back to Firkin. He still dangled from Balur’s fist, and he was still grinning.

  “Clever girl,” he said.

  “I am not being a g—” Balur started.

  “I don’t understand,” Afrit said.

  “I should have worked it out sooner.” Quirk was shaking her head and ignoring the lizard man. “Right when you drained the cup. That was when I should have seen it.”

  “Oh,” said Balur. “You were talking to …”

  “What are you talking about?” Will said, also ignoring Balur.

  “In Vinland,” Quirk said to Will, “Firkin was acting differently. Complaining about a voice in his head.”

  And yes, of course Will remembered that.

  “Look, is this meaning I can throttle him or not?” asked Balur, sounding slightly annoyed at all the delays.

  “Put him down,” said Quirk. She sounded very tired.

  “No,” snapped Lette, who was apparently in full contrarian mode. “If he’s not Firkin, who is he?”

  Firkin just kept on grinning.

  “I think …” Quirk hesitated. She leaned briefly into the diffuse light of the fire glowing up above the screen she had made. Her brows were knit right. “Well, if I’m right, then he was never Firkin.”

  This, Will was fairly sure, was the worst explanation ever.

  “Of course he’s Firkin,” he said. “I grew up with him.”

  At the same time, Lette said, “He’s a shapeshifter? Throttle him.”

  “Thank you!” said Balur.

  “No!” shouted Will. Firkin had metaphorically asked to be throttled several times in their shared past, but Will had managed to run interference. He didn’t want to compound all the day’s failures now.

  But he was too late. Balur’s muscles bunched.

  “Fuck!” Will tried to get to his feet, but his broken leg betrayed him. He staggered, fell, screamed. Lette just sat watching carefully. Quirk didn’t look from the fire. Afrit seemed caught between horror at Balur’s actions and confusion at Quirk’s indifference. Balur had a look of grim satisfaction on his face. Firkin for his part didn’t do much. He just looked vaguely bored.

  Balur’s look slowly changed to one of puzzlement. Then frustration. He squeezed so hard his arm started to shake.

  “Have I proved my point yet?” asked Firkin.

  “Okay,”
said Lette. She was on her feet now. “I am officially full of what the fuck.”

  Will satisfied himself by rolling around on the ground, clutching his leg, and whimpering.

  “Put him down,” said Quirk in a voice as tired as her expression.

  “Oh!” Afrit said suddenly. “Oh no.”

  Balur hesitated, then finally opened his fist. Firkin dropped to the ground. For a wonder he did not trip over himself. He barely even staggered.

  Lette was pointing a dagger back and forth between Quirk and Firkin. “Someone,” she said, “explain what in the Hallows is happening right now.” Her knife settled on Firkin. “If he’s not Firkin, who is he?”

  “He was never Firkin,” said Quirk again.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Lette demanded.

  “That’s not really true,” said Firkin, cricking his neck first to one side and then the other. His voice sounded no worse for the damage Balur had done to his throat. “Firkin was very real for a while.”

  “The same way a mask is real?” asked Quirk. The first hint of something beyond resignation had entered her voice. A touch of academic curiosity, Will thought.

  “Any more cryptic bullshit,” Lette hissed, “and I shall feed you a broad assortment of your own organs. Probably starting with the spleen.”

  “Always be starting with the spleen,” said Balur, who seemed to want to recover some ground after the whole throttling debacle. “That is being pretty much what it is for.”

  “It’s not so much a question of who,” said Quirk, “but what.”

  Lette threw up her hands. “What did I just say?” She looked at Balur. “I just said the spleen, didn’t I?”

  “I was even commenting upon it,” said Balur with a nod.

  “That’s it,” Lette said to Quirk. She shrugged. “It’s your fucking spleen.”

  Quirk held up her hands. “I am desperately trying to get you to see what I see. Because you’re not going to believe me if I just say it.”