by Dante King
We broke apart with a soft squelch, and the three of us snuggled into the disarray of blankets that had only sixty minutes previously been a decent camp bed.
I whispered, “Right, now who’s on lightning cider duty?”
* * *
We were all gathered around the campfire outside of our tent a little while later, when a runner came bearing news from the command tent.
“Ladies,” the orderly said, inclining her head at Elenari, Saya, Tamsin, Penelope, Renji, and Amara, “and gentleman, I have express instructions from General Shiloh.”
“You best spill the beans then,” Saya said, mopping up some beans off her plate with a hunk of black bread.
“The General has decreed that only Dragonmancer Noctis and his two bodyguards, will be heading into the Subterranean Realms at the back of the advance column,” the orderly said, with an admirable lack of preamble for a young woman being eyeballed by seven dragonmancers.
Silence greeted these words.
“What?” Amara said stonily. “Why? What does General Shiloh mean by this?”
The orderly swallowed, stared at a point some four inches over the top of Amara’s head. “It’s not my place to interpret the General’s orders, dragonmancer.”
“Did General Shiloh give a reason why?” I asked, cutting across what was likely to be a serious protest from Saya.
“Only that it was in the best interests of the mission as a whole that the rest of your party stay here at base, in reserve,” the runner said. “She bade me tell you, if you appeared… disgruntled, that Dragonmancer Noctis will be protected by two of his finest warriors.”
“Is that right?” Elenari scoffed. “Who could protect him better than all of us?”
“General Shiloh has put Dragonmancers Jazmyn and Ashrin on Dragonmancer Noctis’ protection detail,” the messenger said.
That stopped Saya in mid-syllable.
Tamsin looked up from the piece of liver she had just been about to stuff into her mouth.
“Is that true, Mike?” she asked.
My mouth was full of bacon so all I could do was nod.
I hadn’t mentioned the fact that I had already met and sparred with the higher ranking dragonmancers. We’d been more concerned with using our last night before the mission began to simply enjoy each other’s company.
“No way,” breathed Tamsin, her eyes wide with admiration.
I swallowed. “What?” I asked.
“Dragonmancers Ashrin and Jazmyn are living legends, Mike!” Elenari told me as the messenger took this lull in attention to scamper away.
“Really?” I asked.
Penelope nodded, leaning forward in the way that meant she was about to start waxing lyrical.
“Oh, indeed,” the Knowledge Sprite said, enthusiasm coming off her like radiation. “Dragonmancers Jazmyn and Ashrin are renowned throughout the Empire! I can hardly believe that you have not heard their names before, Mike! They have assassinated minor kings who challenged the Mystocean Empire, taken out entire armies by landing in the middle of their encampments, slain giant hydras and other monstrous beasts.”
“So what you’re telling me is that my traveling companions are a couple of the biggest and baddest professional ass-kickers the Empire has to offer?” I asked.
Amara snorted. “Yeah,” she said, twizzling a strand of her platinum hair between her fingers, “that about sums it up.”
Saya leaned forward and pointed an accusatory finger at me.
“Listen here, you,” she said, her bright sapphire eyes twinkling knowingly, “promise us all that, if you find whatever ingredients are needed to restore your potency, you don’t squander it all on those two famous hussies.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked around at my six companions.
“Ladies,” I said, aspiring to keep my face serious, “what makes you think I’m going to find a quiet moment down in the Subterranean Realms to fuck two of the most revered badasses in this Empire? I’d say we’re going to be pretty busy. I doubt there’ll be time for fun of that kind. It’s not a fucking hike we’re going on, you know?”
This statement was met with a silent chorus of eye-rolling. Even Renji joined in, and she and I hadn’t even slept together.
“Mike, we’re very fond of you,” Penelope said, “but if ever there was a man who could find time in the middle of an adventure for a little slap and tickle…”
The rest of the women laughed as I got to my feet with my hands raised in mercy.
“All right, all right, I’ll try my best to behave,” I said jokingly. “Now look, I better get out of here and see if I can find these two heroes who are meant to be holding my hands through this expedition. Girls, I hate to love you and leave you,” and my eyes lingered on Tamsin and Penelope, “but I’ve got to go to work.”
As I walked away, Elenari called, “Try and stay out of trouble, Mike!”
“Now, where would be the fun in that?” I said under my breath.
I walked through the strange military town, keeping my eyes peeled for sight of the two black-clad figures of Ashrin and Jazmyn.
The place was a hive of activity, with soldiers and orderlies and dragonmancers going this way and that on myriad business. Whispers followed me, floated in my wake like flotsam behind a ship. I often forgot that, for many of these men and women, this would have been the first time that they had seen a male dragonmancer.
It was not long before I was being guided along by my nose. It had picked up a familiar scent on the air, and my brain had switched to autopilot, guiding me through the teeming streets. I followed the scent until I rounded a corner and ran into none other than Old Sleazy. The gnoll was dressed once more in his trademark ‘Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls’ apron. He was busy sweating over a charcoal grill in the middle of the camp. What was more, he was actually managing a team of some fifteen gnolls all slaving over identical grills.
“Will wonders never cease,” I said, sneaking up behind the squat figure and sticking a finger into the fat that covered his ribs, “what in the name of hygiene are you doing here, Old Sleazy?”
The gnoll jumped so that his pondweed mustache fluttered about his face.
“Shit pumpkin! Who the— Ah, it’s you?”
“In the flesh,” I said. “So, what the hell are you doing here?”
“After your wedding, I was asked by the brass to come down here and get a little discipline going for these cooks of theirs,” Old Sleazy said, wiping his hands on his filthy apron and looking around at the assembly of gnolls. “Speaking of which, would you excuse me for just one tick?”
Old Sleazy stumped over to a gnoll who was having trouble with some sticks of meat and some flatbreads. With no warning, Old Sleazy smacked the gnoll around the back of the head with a wooden spoon so hard that his face cracked forward into the grill top. The unfortunate gnoll’s head rebounded with one of the flatbreads plastered across his countenance.
“You bleedin’ dumbo!” Old Sleazy screamed at him. “What are you playing at, putting that much semolina flour in your flatbread mix? Were you ruddy well raised by hyenas? No, leave it on!”
The unfortunate gnoll had attempted to pull the steaming hot flatbread off his face, but Old Sleazy only wrapped it tighter around his head with the hand that wasn’t holding the wooden spoon. Not caring whether he poked the gnoll cook in the eyes, Old Sleazy pinched a couple of eyeholes out of the sticky flatbread, so that his apprentice could better see him, and yelled, “What are you?”
“A dumbass kebab,” came the cowed reply.
“Too ruddy right you are!” Old Sleazy screamed. “Now start again!”
“Wow,” I said, when the gnoll came back over to me and gave me his usual crafty smile, “you run a tight ship.”
“Love me a tight ship, Mike,” Old Sleazy said, “almost as much as I love me a tight—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s enough,” I said. “I just had my breakfast.”
Old Sleazy grinned at me. “So, it comes to t
hese ears of mine that you’re off down to the Subterranean Realms, are ya?”
“I should have known that you’d know,” I said.
“Ah, you hear a lot manning a grill, dragonmancer,” Old Sleazy said. “You hear a bloody lot of gossip and—Oi! Why the ruddy hell would you be rubbing sun-root onto griffin steaks, you donut?”
That last comment was directed at yet another one of Sleazy’s gnoll disciples and accompanied with a liberal spraying of spit.
“What was I saying?” Old Sleazy said to me. “Oh, yeah. Gossip. Subterranean Realms. Right. You know, my people were originally from down those ways. The gnolls were part of the Shadow Nations, but we formed up with the Mystocean Empire before the wars really got cracking.”
“When the gnolls saw who was going to win, you mean?” I asked casually.
“Well, yeah,” Old Sleazy said, “but—roger me with a rolling pin, what are you doing with that volcano cake, you cretinous shitstain? You have to knead the batter, not fist it like you do your grandma!”
As much as I was enjoying this broken conversation, I got the impression that Old Sleazy had his hands full right now. As he laid into yet another one of his minions, I made to sneak off and carry on my search for Ashrin and Jazmyn.
“Hold on, hold on,” Old Sleazy said, grabbing my sleeve with his three-fingered hand, “there’s someone that I want you to meet, now that the winds of fortune have blown us together once more.”
“Do me a favor,” I said, “and never mention us getting blown together again.”
“Very droll,” said Old Sleazy, casually throwing a pair of tongs at a gnoll who was scratching his ass.
“Who is this person you want me to meet, then?” I asked.
“That,” said a voice from behind me, in an accent that was as close to Australian as I had heard in this world, “would be me, fella.”
Spinning on my heel, I came face to face—well face to crown of the head—with yet another gnoll.
He was in shape and look similar to Old Sleazy and Big Greasy, that is to say he looked like a pale green water balloon that had been overfilled. This gnoll, however, wore a broad-brimmed hat of faded leather, a pair of stout crocodile skin boots, and a matching canvas safari suit. There was an enormous rucksack slung over his brawny shoulders and, on the front brim of his hat, the stub of an unlit candle. On his belt, on either hip, hung a pickaxe and a crowbar. He looked like a Dirty Harry, if he’d become a coal miner rather than a detective.
I looked from this newcomer to Old Sleazy.
“Relation of yours, is he?” I asked.
“No,” both gnolls said at the same time.
I snorted. I didn’t know why Old Sleazy and the rest of his family were so keen on denying they were related to one another. It was just one of those things.
“The name’s Diggens Azee, fella,” the newcomer said, extending a callused three-fingered hand.
I took it, and we shook.
“How goes it, Diggens?” I said. “I’m Mike Noctis.”
Diggens appeared not to be listening. He’d pulled out a small pie from somewhere and was busy tipping a small vial of some red sauce over the top of it.
“What’ve you got there, Diggens?” Old Sleazy asked.
“Pie,” said Diggens.
“I know that! What kind?”
“Mince and cheese,” Diggens said, taking a huge bite. “With a sauce of squashed tomatoes.”
“Squashed tomatoes sauce?” Old Sleazy scoffed. “That’s the ruddy stupidest, most lowbrow thing I ever heard!”
“And why do you think that me and Diggens here should meet?” I asked Sleazy, making sure to cut this potential pie-related argument off at the roots.
“Well, my cous—my friend, Old Sleazy here reckoned that we should make the introductions, seeing as I’ll be coming along on this little jaunt of yours,” Diggens said through a mouthful of pastry and mince.
“What?” I said.
“Look, fella, on the off-chance that whatever you’re looking for is buried under rubble, I’m going to be the bloke to help you out,” Diggens said. “Many of the old tunnels have caved in since those wankers from the Shadow Nations fled into the Subterranean Realms. For that reason, you’re going to want an excavator or a sapper. Diggens Azee is the bloody best of the bunch.”
Diggens stuck a horny thumb into his own chest and let loose a belch that could probably have collapsed a perfectly sound tunnel.
“And what do you get out of this little deal, if I let you come along?” I asked, deciding to bypass incredulity and cut straight to the chase.
“Well,” Diggens said, “if we stumble across anything of more conventional value—not just valuable to you and your magical nadjas, I mean—I might get to pocket it.”
“Ah, so you offer your services as a quality sapper to us,” I said, “and in return for digging out anything that we might need digging out, you get to go on a treasure hunt with the deadliest escort that anyone could ask for?”
Diggens swallowed the last of his pie. “That’s a bloody cynical way to look at it, fella,” he said, “but yeah, that’d be bloody ripper.”
At that moment, while I mulled over what Ashrin and Jazmyn were likely to say when I suggested this ridiculous individual should join our small party, the two dragonmancers appeared.
Ashrin was finishing off some sort of skewer of barbecued meat, while Jazmyn was alternating between licking grease off her fingers and gnawing the last bit of flesh from a drumstick of some kind. Behind them, soldiers nudged each other and pointed at the two dragonmancers. The eyes of the men and women had that starstruck quality to them that reinforced the impression that Ashrin and Jazmyn were celebrities.
“Ash! Jaz! You lovely specimens, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Old Sleazy said, much to my surprise.
Why are you surprised? I asked myself. The old bastard seems to know absolutely everyone.
“Uh, hey ladies, are we good to go?” I asked the two dragonmancers.
“Oh gods, Old Sleazy,” Ashrin said, ignoring me, “this manticore skewer is unbelievable! What did you marinade it in?”
“That secret is worth more than my life, Ash, you know that,” the gnoll chef said.
“Oh, come on…” Ashrin wheedled.
“I shouldn’t tell ya, but seeing as it’s you...” Old Sleazy said, leaning in. “It’s silk mustard. But, shhhh, don’t you tell a soul! You promise me, you take that one to your grave!”
Jazmyn threw the finished bone into the street and smacked her lips. “And that goddamn fig-infused jackalope haunch was incredible!”
“Yeah,” Old Sleazy said, “that’s a fan favorite around these parts. Ladies, may introduce you to someone that I think it’d be in your best interest to meet...”
While I stood dumbly by, Old Sleazy seamlessly made the introductions. Within about fifteen seconds, he had ingratiated Diggens Azee into our company as easily as if it had been planned all along.
The only thing that Jazmyn said was, “Any friend of yours is a friend of ours, Old Sleazy.”
Ashrin’s only comment to this unexpected addition was to ask whether us taking Diggens along would mean that Old Sleazy would supply us with some of his traveling provisions. The rotund gnoll agreed, grudgingly, that it would.
He was a soft touch when it came to the fairer sex.
“So, Mike,” Diggens said, slapping me on the arm in a matey manner, “you ready to rumble?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, Diggens,” I said, trying to pull my attention away from the sight of the two most revered dragonmancers in town getting along with Old Sleazy like he was a figure of great importance.
“Good,” Diggens said, “because when we go down to the Subterranean Realms, you’ll need to make sure that your top paddock is free of fairies.”
I blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean, you’ve got to have your bloody brain switched on, man,” Diggens said. “Do you not speak common, or wha
t?”
“I’ll keep my head in the game, don’t you worry,” I said.
“Fucking oath you will,” Diggens said. “There’s all sorts of shit down there that’ll kill you, and I’m not talking about the Shadow Nations neither. Tremors are known to happen. Cracks in the earth. Quicksand and pitfalls. You gotta stay on your toes.”
“I don’t think I’ve been off my toes since I arrived in this world,” I said.
Diggens fumbled in the top pocket of his safari suit, pulled out a leather pouch, and began to roll what looked like a thin cigarette. He caught me looking and held the pouch up for me to inspect.
“Nice ain’t it?” he said.
“Yeah, very nice,” I said dutifully.
“Made from the ballbag of a centaur I fought in a pub a few years back,” Diggens said casually. “Got pretty wild that fight, I can tell ya. Accidentally cut his clangers off with a broken bottle.”
I didn’t have much to say to that.
Diggens slipped the smoke behind his lips and lit it with a sulfurous match he struck with his thumb nail.
“The way I see it, fella,” he said through a cloud of blue smoke, “ if we don’t return with the crystals and whatever the fuck is going to juice up your man-milk, we might as well not come back at all. That about right?”
“I’m of the same mind, Diggens Azee,” I said. “That about sums it up for the Mystocean Empire. I think it’d be best if we didn’t fail, don’t you?”
Diggens sucked thoughtfully on his smoke.
“Fucking oath,” he said.
Chapter 10
The smells of sweat and armor polish, of trepidation and excitement, of leather and pipe weed hung heavy in the air. Brittle laughs rang out, troops exchanged jokes and jibes with overemphasized bravado. The air itself sizzled. An invisible miasma of unspoken words, of carefully controlled fears and worries, lay over the mass of assembled fighting men and women.
It was an aura I was coming to recognize. One that surrounds groups of soldiers who are not sure what they are about to go out and face, no idea whether any or all of them would come back alive, would ever again see the sun.
