Dragon Breeder 4

by Dante King

  The werewolf woman snarled at me. The atmosphere in the tent, which was already fairly fucking tense, ratcheted up a notch.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” the werewolf asked, her yellow eyes narrowing.

  “One of whom?” I asked back.

  “One of the fucking bastard Mystoceans that the traitor to tradition, Frami, has been welcoming into the Berserker Hall like a bunch of old fucking friends,” the lizardman said, his bright orange eyes bulging from his pointed head.

  The lizardman took a hissing inward breath. His long, green fingers tightened on the bone handle of the pointed rondel dagger that he had clasped in his hand.

  “Easy Ruz,” the werewolf woman growled. “Let’s hear what this meddling fucker wants before we decide to tear him apart, eh?”

  “Yeah, Ruz,” I said affably, “keep it cool and let me lay out your options for you.”

  Ruz ground every one of his many teeth and gave me a look that told me, in no uncertain terms, that he’d very much enjoy scooping my eyes out so that he could eat them.

  “Speak your message then, Mystocean scum,” said the male troll, sounding a little hackneyed.

  I smiled. “All I came here to do was warn you that, if you continue like this, you and all those who follow you are liable to end up being barbecued by dragons.”

  The temperature inside the command tent dropped a few degrees at this proclamation.

  “A warning,” the female dwarf said from where she stood with a throwing axe in her hand. “You came in here to warn us about your dragons. Boy, but you have some fucking stones on you, lad!”

  “How dare you to speak to bearmancers like this, you fuck,” spat the lizardman, Ruz.

  “Well, you’re not, bud,” I said, without even bothering to look at the furious guy. “The three ladies here now, they’re bearmancers almost certainly. But you three strapping dudes, I’d say that you’re just the self-appointed captains of the regular troops, right?”

  Ruz said nothing, but the way he was grinding his teeth made me think that I’d hit the nail right on the head.

  “I’ve got a lot of respect for the Vetruscans, and for the bearmancers who lead their armies,” I said, my eyes falling on the werewolf. “They’re good people; brave, honest and no nonsense. I dig that. That’s why I got leave of Queen Frami to secret my way in here. She wants me to try and persuade you to just give it up. I get that you’re annoyed at her. I get that she’s rubbed a lot of people the wrong way by opening up to the Mystoceans and veering away from tradition.”

  “That she has,” the dwarf woman said. “That she has.”

  “Right,” I said. “But that’s no reason to throw away your lives, and the lives of your followers.”

  “What makes you think that it’ll be us throwing our bloody lives away, you stuck up prick?” Ruz snarled, thrusting his dagger at me in a slight feint that I was sure he hoped would make me flinch.

  Instead, I caught the needle-sharp point of the waggling dagger between thumb and forefinger and twisted it out of the lizardman’s grip.

  It fell to the floor. Stuck there quivering.

  “There are eight dragonmancers waiting for you,” I said, loudly talking over the sudden outburst and tightening of assholes that followed Ruz’s disarming. Jazmyn and Ashrin had left, but I figured they didn’t need to know that. “Eight dragonmancers and gods know how many bearmancers.”

  “That might be so,” the dwarf said nastily, “but if you think that us three lasses are the only bearmancers in our crew, then you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “And if you think that the warriors and true patriots we have assembled here are the only folk we have waiting to spring at the throat of Queen Frami and her bunch, then you are sadly mistaken,” the looming troll dude said with ill-concealed relish.

  “And when Frami realizes that she’s about to be crushed by the rock of our forces,” the werewolf bearmancer said, “and she tries to save herself and flee, she’ll find out that there’s nowhere to go and nothing waiting for her except the fucking proverbial hard place.”

  The werewolf had leaned closer and closer toward me as she had hit me with that little monologue of hers. Her yellow eyes were lit with an inner light, and she was leering in a way that would have sent her minions and lesser enemies scurrying for their mothers.

  “A hard place?” I asked.

  “Oh, we’ve got a hard place waiting for her, if she tries to leg it, don’t we just!” the lizardman sneered. He had a good face for sneering, almost as good for sneering as it was punching.

  I nodded in understanding. Well, it was going to be my very great pleasure to burst their bubble.

  “You had a hard place waiting for her,” I said.

  “Had?” the werewolf said. Her leer faded a little.

  “I’m assuming you’re talking about your little collection of ships that you had strung out along the fjord’s opening?” I asked.

  “Had?” Ruz spat. “What the shit are you on about, human? They’re anchored out there right now! Twenty-four ships! Two dozen longboats ready to sail in and mop up the last of Frami’s followers once we’ve pushed them back to the shore!”

  The realization was settling on me that these six hardasses didn’t mean to let me just stroll out of that tent. Unless Ruz really was as stupid as he looked, people in charge of armies generally didn’t talk tactics in front of the enemy if they meant to let them go free afterward.

  “Had?” the werewolf bearmancer repeated. Her stare had become fixed and frozen.

  I reached into my pocket, and the bearmancers all started.

  “It’s not a weapon,” I said, raising my other hand. “Just something I think you should all see.”

  I had pulled out a sliver of wood. Might have been from the decking. Might have been from a mast. Might have been from a beam. I really couldn’t be sure.

  I flicked it at the sixth person in the tent, the cyclops with the black hair. She snatched it from the air and looked at it through one cold, narrowed eye.

  “Actually, it was more like eighteen ships,” I said to the dumbstruck lizardman.

  A calculating silence settled like snow while the cyclops twirled the splinter of wood between her fingers.

  “Gone?” she asked, and her trilling voice did not match her menacing appearance.

  “All gone,” I affirmed. “Took the dragonmancers less time to do it than it’s taking me to say it. That’s the truth, not a boast.”

  The cyclops scowled and passed the splinter of longship to the werewolf.

  I looked at the werewolf.

  “Final call,” I said.

  The werewolf tried to remove her rigid smirk and imbue it with the threat that it had been filled with only a moment ago. Her lambent yellow eyes roved over me.

  “Was that a threat?” she growled.

  “No,” I said, “it was a chance. Your last one.”

  The werewolf let a little breath out through her nose.

  “You’re not getting out of this tent alive, human,” she said. “You don’t even have a weapon on you. I don’t know how you got in here, but you’re a male, so you definitely can’t be a dragonmancer.”

  I sighed and gave her a rueful smile. “Is that so?”

  The tent exploded outward and upward around me.

  The concentrated concussion wave of my Forcewave spell expanded out from me with the force of a small bomb. The six war captains of the Vetruscans rebels hadn’t been expecting it. Even the three bearmancers were sent rolling and tumbling through the air, crashing through campfires and the neighboring tents, sparks and smoke and debris flying in all directions. They were flung backward, like they’d all be yanked away in different directions by giant elastic bands. The furniture was blown away after them. The heavy central table, either through luck or some unconscious desire of my own, flipped end-over -end and smashed down on top of the lizardman, Ruz, crushing him into the soft mud and grass.

  I wasn’t going to hang aro
und after that. I was no born diplomat, but even I could tell when peace talks had proved about as pointless as smuggling chocolate into Belgium.

  It might have been a shock initially—explosions usually are—but it didn’t take long for the nearby soldiers around the camp to start rushing to arms. They poured into the space I’d created like water into the hull of a breached ship.

  I backed myself in fights—you always have to. However, the weight of numbers could not be ignored in a situation like this. Plus, I had the responsibility of getting back to Queen Frami’s side of the wall and letting her know that the negotiations, such as they had been, had gone kaput. She was about to have a mass of pissed off soldiery heading her way pretty soon.

  Roars, which I recognized as coming from the throats of Vetruscan war-bears, sounded out all around me, encircling me. The bearmancers in the vicinity had obviously summoned their mounts. There was a clamor of trumpets and bugles ringing; the call for women and men alike to gather their arms.

  “Kill that foreign fuck!” the werewolf bearmancer shrieked, standing and fighting her way out of the tangled wreckage of the tent that she had been thrown into by my Forcewave. Her claws had extended, and her hair was standing on end.

  I conjured my Onyx Armor, the black plates piecing together over my body in an instant, then summoned Pan to my Leg Slot and hopped nimbly onto his back. With his pair of curling ram’s horns protruding from his head, glinting dull silver in the moody light, and his two dark blue tusks jutting down from his upper jaw and past his lower one, he looked like a bad time for anyone who came near.

  And so it proved.

  A cluster of soldiers, eager to show off their prowess and nut-size in front of their commanding officers, charged forward.

  Pan engulfed them in a beam of bright-red fire. It was so hot that a heat haze rippled twenty feet past where the actual gout of flame ceased. The rebel soldiers pelting toward us were obliterated and turned to dust. Those behind these unlucky fools were blasted from their feet, as if they were caught in the jetwash of a A-10 Thunderbolt II.

  That gave most of the other soldiers in the immediate area a reason to pause and evaluate their life choices.

  I took advantage to conjure one Entropic Mine, toss it, conjure another, and toss that too. I was yet to see these thaumaturgical weapons that Noctis’ mana produced in action, so I threw them a fair distance from me.

  Then, I gave Pan the mental heels, and the sleek Tempest Dragon shot heavenward.

  Behind us, there were a couple of strange noises, the kinds of sounds that a pair of concussion grenades might make if you threw them down a giant drai; a dull whumpf, followed by a strange gurgling, sucking sound.

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw the Entropic Mines burst in twin clouds of silver-black Chaos Magic. The score of soldiers that had been caught in the blast radiuses were flung away like ragdolls in a hurricane, but then sucked back into a brief swirling black vortex before being crushed into globs of gory paste about as big as my fist.

  I winced. I might have dwelt more on how that arcane weapon worked, but I had to let loose another Forcewave as arrows sprang toward Pan and me, fired from a bearmancer with an enchanted longbow. The spell powered by Garth’s mana stopped the arrows in mid-flight, and they dropped back down toward the bearmancer who had fired them.

  I urged Pan to make haste. As we flew, I couldn’t help but marvel at the difference in combat that the relic in my pocket was making. I had been able to wear my Onyx Armor in my Chest Slot while also placing Noctis in my Left Arm slot to produce the Entropic Mine. To be able to have the same dragon present in multiple slots would completely negate the problem of multitasking during battle.

  I felt power thrumming through me; the power of potential. I felt like a fucking shooting star just then, like a meteor. Unstoppable and inevitable. There would be a battle, certainly. Blood would be spilled. There would be blood on my hands. But it wouldn’t be my blood, or the blood of my friends. Not if I could help it.

  Chapter 17

  I touched back down and went to report to Queen Frami about what had just transpired between me and the rebel Vetruscans. I approached where the Queen, Hana, and the rest of my fellow dragonmancers were waiting for my report.

  “Go well, did it?” Saya asked me, a knowing grin stuck on her pretty face. She was busy tying her sleek ash-blonde hair up into a tail so that it wouldn’t get into her eyes when the swords started swinging.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, “good as gold. They capitulated entirely, threw down their weapons, and are going to go home and think long and hard about what they’ve done.”

  “Really?” said Penelope.

  “No,” I replied.

  Penelope looked a little sad at that.

  “No,” I said. “They’re going to come at the walls, and they’re going to come soon.”

  “What happened, Dragonmancer Noctis?” Queen Frami asked. There was a significant smirk across her broad countenance.

  “Well…” I said, and I related to them what had happened out beyond the gates. When I had finished, the Queen laughed a booming laugh.

  “I told you, lad!” she guffawed. “Diplomacy is well and good—if you can tread on a warrior’s toes without messing up the shine on her boots, then bravo. Here, in this Kingdom, though, if you want to capture the hearts and minds of an enemy, then the preferred method is to grab ‘em by the balls!”

  There was some appreciative murmuring from the gathered military aides at her back.

  Queen Frami gave us a wink and turned to snap a few orders to her advisors and to Hana.

  “All right, ladies, you know the drill,” I said, turning my attention to Tamsin, Renji, Elenari, Penelope, and Saya.

  “Survive and win?” Saya said. She still had a smile on her face, but it had hardened now into grimace. I pitied the poor bastards who came across her first. Gorgeous as she was, she could become possessed of a battle fury that was almost unmatchable.

  “Yep, if everyone could try and survive that would be great,” I said drily.

  There was a murmur of agreement. Elenari loosened the twin emerald-pommeled daggers in their sheaths, Tamsin stretched her arms over her head, and Renji fingered the haft of her warhammer.

  “Also worth remembering that we’re going out there without our coteries to watch our backs,” I said, “so make sure we all watch each other’s.”

  “Agreed,” Penelope said.

  “There are regular troops out there, and plenty of them,” I said, “but there are also bearmancers. They are who we should concentrate our efforts on. They are the heart of the rebels. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t let up. Don’t stop going for the heart of this force, not if you want to feast upon it.”

  All of us exchanged looks. Dark looks. Fighting looks. Filled with excitement. I puffed out my cheeks.

  “Mount up,” I said, “and let’s fly.”

  * * *

  All that stuff that I had read about, and somehow retained, about sieges and walls might have been all very well and good for medieval battles back on Earth, but I quickly realized that applying it to the battle of Hrímdale was going to be a bit tricky for two obvious reasons. The first was that the expert author of that book hadn’t taken bearmancers into his calculations, the second was that he had neglected to think of magic.

  While the regular rebel soldiery applied themselves to filling the ditches and moving a covered battering ram into position, the bearmancers made themselves a nuisance to the men and women defending the walls.

  The loyalist warriors manning the tops of the walls fired a withering hail of arrow fire down into the ranks of the rebel troops, but they couldn’t keep a sustained volley going due to the bearmancers.

  The bears might not have been able to shoot fire from their mouths, but they were diffused with an alternate kind of magic that allowed them to show off different magical skills.

  There was one huge bear who stood on his hind legs, scooped balls of dirt up from the
ground with his spade-like paws, and quickly licked the ball with a bright red tongue. The mancer on his back then touched a flaming brand to the saliva-coated ball, and it burst into crimson flames, as if it had been soaked in paraffin. The bear then lobbed the ball, with unerring accuracy, up onto the walls. The flaming missile exploded on impact, and loyalists soldiers were blasted from their feet. Defenders were shredded, lit up like straw dolls, and fell screaming from the parapets to land in the ditch below.

  Another bear had a scorpion tail and an armored back. With a flick of this tail, it sent spines, dripping in a smoking toxin, whizzing up to meet any dragonmancers that came in close.

  There were a couple of bears, sleek black creatures with otter-like coats, that had churned up a great mass of mud and grass and disappeared into tunnels, followed by their mancers on foot.

  The other dragonmancers and I did our best to quell the rising tide of rebels who were edging closer and closer to breaking into the Hrímdale, but we were sorely hampered by the longbowmen that the enemy had designated to the task of taking down any dragonmancer that strayed within bowshot.

  The word rebel is sometimes seen as being synonymous with disorganized, but this was most definitely not the case with the Vetruscan renegades. They were bred for war, raised on the harsh conditions of their wild country, and they were no fools—except for that lizardman, Ruz, perhaps.

  The longbowmen were able to pepper us with arrows from far enough away to make our dragonfire mostly ineffective, and they guarded the men and women filling in the ditches before the gates.

  For my part, I simply tried to whittle away at the numbers of the enemy attacking the walls.

  “Down there,” I said to Noctis.

  The Onyx Dragon dove toward the base of the wall and hit a cluster of enemy troops with a bust of silver-black fire, turning them into greasy smears of soot laminated across the foot of the fortification. He banked sharply right, over the wall, as a hail of longbow shafts leapt up to meet us and rattled off the face of the wall.