The Chronicles of Dragon Collection (Series 1 Omnibus, Books 1-10) (5 page)

CHAPTER 9

No one outside seemed to mind as we pushed our way through the bewildered crowd of the neighborhood, loaded our prisoner onto my horse, and galloped toward a part of town I knew better. The authorities weren’t likely to give much chase, if they even bothered at all. Some parts of the city were void of the common rules of order.

“Here,” I said to Brenwar, turning my steed inside a large barn full of stables.

A stablehand, a sandaled young man with straw colored hair, greeted us with an eerie glance at my wriggling captive.

“No questions,” I said, handing him a few coins.

“No problem,” he said with a smile as broad as an ogre's back.

Stables and barns are good places to do business, or interrogations, for that matter. No echoes, and the smell of manure tends to offend most people, keeps them away. I shoved the cleric from my saddle, and Brenwar dragged him inside the stables over the straw and stood watch outside.

As I said, the Clerics of Barnabus are an evil lot, and we go way back. The fact that one had already come after me was a stroke of luck, both good and bad. Bad because they almost got me killed. Good because this man would lead me to their next nefarious plot. Normally, some desperate person would tell me something or find someone that would when I asked after dragon articles. I’d follow their information, and sometimes that led to a dead end, but ofttimes it led me to where I was going. The Clerics of Barnabus, it seemed, had become privy to my ways. And when it came to dragons, they had eyes and ears everywhere. From then on, I would have to be more careful how I went about gathering information.

Now the hard part: interrogation. Taking information from an unwilling mind by force. It wasn’t a very dragon-like way of doing things, but it didn’t always have to be brutal.

I pinned the man up against the wall by the neck and jerked the rag from his mouth. His impulse to scream was cut short as my fingers squeezed around his throat.

“Urk!”

“That’s a good little evil cleric. Keep quiet, and I’ll let you breathe.” I squeezed a little harder, forcing his eyes open wider. “I talk. You answer, quietly. Understand?”

He blinked.

That was pretty much all he could do, and I took it as a definitive yes. I could tell by the tattoos on his head that this acolyte was only a few notches above a lackey of the cult. He had some magic, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

“See my dwarven friend over there?” I said.

Brenwar peered inside, holding a manure shovel in his hand.

“Look at what he does to people that don’t cooperate.”

He took the shovel, blacksmith hands holding both ends of the wooden handle, and grunted.

Snap!

The skin on the cleric’s already gaunt face paled. His eyes blinked rapidly.

“Now, I’d say that shovel’s thicker than your skinny bones. So I suggest you answer my questions in detail, or you’ll be going home in a wheelbarrow.”

The man’s chin quivered. I couldn’t ask for a better result.

“Y-You’re, you’re N-Nath Dragon. Aren’t you?”

“You didn’t know that already?”

“I was told it was you, but I did not believe until I saw for myself. Someone mentioned you’d come into town. I followed you in. Fully ready to see you dead. There is such a high bounty on your head. But you move so fast. Impossible. Unnatural. I knew I’d lost as soon as it started, but I had no choice but to try,” he said, grinning sheepishly.

I slapped him in the face.

“Please, no flattery if you want to walk again.”

Evil ones always try to beguile and convince a person their distorted intentions are only for the best or out of necessity. It's tough to sell me if you're a man, but an attractive woman is a different story, and I knew right there and then I had best be more careful.

“We hate you, Nath Dragon! We’ll have your head by dawn!”

“My, it seems you’ve forgotten what happened to my dear friend and the shovel. Brenwar!”

“No!” The evil cleric pleaded. “No. I can’t have my arms and legs splintered. I’d rather die. Make a deal with me.”

“No.”

“Hear me out. I know where many dragons are kept, near this city. Small ones.”

He had my attention. The little ones, some as small as hawks, others bigger than dogs, weren’t easy to catch but were easy to keep. The thought of them being caged infuriated me. I pushed harder on his throat.

“You tell me now, and not a single bone of yours will be broken.”

He nodded. I eased the pressure.

“Take the trail to Orcen Hold.”

***

Finnius the Cleric of Barnabus lived, and Nath Dragon and his dwarven companion, Brenwar, were long gone. But still he struggled in his bindings, and his knee throbbed like an angry heart where the dwarf had whacked him with the busted shovel.

“Let me help you with that,” a woman said. Her dark-grey robes matched his, but she had short raven-colored hair and thin lips of a pale purple.

She pulled the gag from his mouth and helped him to his feet.

“Have you done well, acolyte Finnius?” she asked, cutting the bonds from his wrists.

“I did exactly as you ordered, High Priestess.” He rubbed his reddened wrists. “They are halfway to Orcen Hold by now. Your plan, Priestess, I’m certain will be successful. In a few more hours, Nath Dragon will be ours.”

She rubbed her hand over his bald head and smiled.

“You’ll be needing more tattoos after this, Finnius. I had my doubts you would pull this off, but it seems you did quite well. Assuming, of course, they arrive as expected.”

“Oh they will, Priestess. Nath’s eyes were as fierce as a dragon's when I said it. He’ll not be stopped.”

She walked away and said, “That’s what I’m counting on. This day, the Clerics of Barnabus will forever change the life of Nath Dragon.”

Finnius limped along behind her toward the front of the stables, where the stablehand greeted her from a distance. A long serpent’s tail slipped out from underneath her robes. Striking like a snake, it knocked the boy clear from his feet, smacking him hard into the wall. Finnius swallowed hard and hurried along.

High Priestess Selene

CHAPTER 10

Orcen Hold. Not nearly as bad as it sounds but still bad, miles northeast from Narnum toward the orcen city of Thraagramoor. It's a stronghold filled with brigands and mercenaries, all swords and daggers for hire that sometimes form an army, and you never know whose side they are on.

It isn’t just orcs, either, or even mostly orcs for that matter, but men and some of the other races as well. The name most likely kept unwanted do-gooders like me away. I’d never been there before, but the world was vast, and even in my centuries of life, I still couldn’t have been everywhere. That would still take some time.

Brenwar and I rode our mounts up a steep road that wound up a hillside rather than around it, which would have been wholly more adequate. On the crest of the hill, no more than a mile high, I could see there was a massive fort of wood posts and blocks jutting into the darkening sky. Pigeons scattered in the air, wings flapping, before settling back along the edges of the walls. Pigeons are crumb-snatching carrion, never a good sign, rather a bad one, as the black-and-white–speckled birds are drawn to filth. Of course, what would one expect from a place named Orcen Hold?

I pulled my hood over my head as the drizzling rain became a heavy downpour, soaking me to the bone in less than a minute. I hated being wet, drenched, saturated in any kind of water that I hadn’t planned on. You’d think a tough man like me would be used to it by now, but I saw no reason to like it. I like the sun, the heat on my face, the sweat glistening on my skin.

As the horses clopped through the mud, we made our way around the last bend, stopped, and looked up. Orcen Hold was a good bit bigger than it had looked from below. A veritable city that could host thousands, where I assumed at most were just a few hundred. Well fortified. There were watchtowers along the walls with soldiers spread out, crossbows ready to cut down any unwanted intruders. Ahead, the main gate, two twenty-foot-high doors, stood open behind a small moat. I couldn’t shed the foreboding feeling that overcame me any more easily than I could the water soaking my back. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where two men entered and got to leave… alive, anyway.

Still, we trotted over the drawbridge, through the doors, and underneath the portcullis that hung over us like a massive set of iron jaws.

“Yer sure ye want to do this?” Brenwar's beard was dripping with rain.

“I’d do just about anything to get us out of this rain.”

Behind the walls over Orcen Hold lay a small city, not refined but functional. The roads, normally covered with the brick and stone customary to most cities, were dirt now turned to mud. The buildings, ramshackle and ruddy, were tucked neatly behind plank-wood walkways. People were milling about, dashing through puddles and across the streets from one porch to the other. Some shouted back and forth in arguments of some sort. The children, possibly the most mottled ones I’d ever seen, played in the mud, their faces, grimy, poor, and hungry. And the smell. I could only assume it would have been worse without the rain, so for a moment I was thankful for the deluge.

The Troll's Toe. That was the place we were looking for. The Cleric of Barnabus, Finnius was his name, had proven to be a very unwilling participant after he let loose the location called Orcen Hold. His tongue had frozen in his clenched jaws. A well-placed spade to the knee, courtesy of Brenwar, and he'd told me what I was certain I needed to know.

The light was dim as the sinking sun continued to dip behind the clouds and disappear, turning an otherwise hot day cold. The wind began to bang the wooden signs that hung from chains in front of the buildings, making the dreary trek from an unknown city worse.

The firelight that gleamed from behind the dingy windows was a welcoming sight despite the coarse faces that glared at us with more remorse than curiosity. Blasted orcs. If it weren’t for them, I swear that life on Nalzambor would be an excellent party.

“There,” Brenwar said, pointing his stubby finger in the rain. “Seems we’ve found what yer looking for. But Nath, it’s not too late to turn back. I’d say we're outnumbered here, uh, about a thousand to one.”

“I thought you liked those kinds of odds,” I said, trying to wipe the rain from my face.

“Er … well, I do. But, this place reeks. If I’m to die, I’d like it to be somewhere a little closer to my home.”

“Die?”

Brenwar looked a little bit ashamed when he said, “I just want to make sure I get a proper funeral. I’ll not have a bunch of orcs burying me in the sewer. Or you, either, for that matter.”

Brenwar was a bit obsessive about his funeral. It's a special thing for a dwarf. If they had their way, they’d die in battle, but they just wanted to be remembered for it. Brenwar, an older man by dwarven standards, had lived longer than even me and more than likely had a couple hundred years to go. He’d been with me so long, it didn’t seem that he could ever die. But I’d seen other dwarves as great as him perish before.

The wind picked up, banging the sign to the Troll’s Toe hard against the rickety building frame as we hitched our horses and went inside. Warm air and the smell of bread dough and stale ale greeted us as we sat down at a small table away from the firelight. The crowded room was momentarily quiet, more on account of Brenwar’s presence than mine. It wasn’t often you saw a dwarf in Orcen Hold, but Brenwar’s bushy-bearded face wasn’t the only one. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling we were all on our own.

CHAPTER 11

It was a rough bunch, as bad as I’d ever seen: tattooed, scarred, ornery, peg legged, eye patched, and hook handed. It looked like the perfect place to get in trouble. The men were as coarse and rude as the orcs and half-orcs that snorted and blustered around the bar. The women were as crass as the men, singing and dancing on a small stage, their voices as soothing as a glass of boiling water.

“Now what?” Brenwar asked, looking back over his shoulder.

“We wait,” I said, waving over a waitress with hips as big as an ogre's.

“What will it be, weary travelers?” She had a gap-toothed smile.

“Two of whatever tastes best with your ale,” Brenwar spouted. “Human food, not the orcen mishmash that tastes like mud and worms.”

She tried to make a pretty smile, but it was quite frightening when she said, “As you wish, dwarven sire.”

“I think she likes you,” I said.

“I certainly don’t see why she wouldn’t,” he said, watching her prance away.

I sat there, sulking and soaking, damp hood still covering my face. It wasn’t as if anyone would recognize me, but I’d still stick out like a sore thumb. There was something about my eyes and looks that drew stares, and for the most part, I like that kind of attention, but here, it was the kind of attention I didn’t want. I just needed to lie low and wait until the opportunity presented itself. In a pain-filled voice, Finnius had assured us that I would know.

My appetite was barren, but the food wasn’t half bad as I sat there and picked at it. Something about the greasy meat and cheeses they served in the worst of places always made me want to come back for more. It was getting late, though, less than an hour from the middle of the night, and my wet clothes finally began to dry. The rain no longer splattered on the window panes, and I could again see the moon’s hazy glow. I craned my neck at the chatter about dragons that lingered in the air, but it was hard to make anything out over all the singing voices and carousing.

Brenwar nudged me, pointing over toward a mousy man with hunched shoulders whispering among the tables. I watched him, his lips flapping in a feverish and convincing fashion. Some shoved him away, while others minded his words with keen interest. He had my interest as well.
Dragons.
I could see the word on his lips as plain as the nose on his face. I wasn’t a lip reader or mind reader, but when it came to anything about dragons, I could just tell.

Like a busy rodent, he darted from one table to the next, collecting coins and scowls while directing the people toward the back of the room, where I watched them disappear behind the fireplace mantel.
Don’t ask for it. Wait for it.
That’s what the cleric Finnius had said. It made sense, too. Asking would only rouse suspicion.

“You think he’ll make it our way or not?” Brenwar combed some food from his beard.

The little man’s head popped up our way as if he’d heard Brenwar’s question. He scurried toward us, his ferret face nervous, eyes prying into the shadows beneath my hood. Brenwar shoved him back a step.

“Some privacy, man.”

The small man hissed a little then spoke fast.

“Dragon fights. Five gold. Dragon fights. Five gold. Last chance. One. Two. Three …” his fingers were collapsing on his hand. “Four. Fi—”

“Sure,” I said, sliding the coins over the table.

He frowned.

“Five for you!” he said, offended, scowling at Brenwar. “Seven for the dwarf!”

“Why you little—” Brenwar made a fist.

“Six,” I insisted. You have to barter with dealers like these or else they won’t respect you, and that can lead to trouble.

“Fine,” he said, snatching the additional coins I pushed his way. He left two tokens, each wooden with a dragon face carved into it. “Under thirty minutes. Be late and no see.”

I looked over at Brenwar as the little wispy-haired man left and said, “I suppose we should go, then.”

Brenwar finished off the last of his ale and wiped his mouth.

“I suppose,” he said, casting an odd look over at the large stone fireplace. “It’s underground, it is. I feel the draft and the shifting of the stones. We’re over a cave or something carved from the mountain. Bad work. Not dwarven.” He got up and patted his belly. “Probably collapse on us, it will. They probably let the orcs build the tunnel.”

“You’ll dig us out if it does, won’t you?” I followed him behind the mantel. He didn’t say a word.

One thing about Nalzambor, there were always new places to go. It was impossible to ever see what was behind every door in every city, and for the most part it was exciting. The chill from the damp clothes and biting air had worn off now, and the hearth of the stone fireplace was like a warm summer day. I put my hand on the rock, nice and toasty, which made me think of when I used to lie alongside my father’s belly when I was a boy. He’d tell the most excellent stories, and even though they usually lasted more than a week, I never got bored of them.

We followed a man and woman of questionable character down a narrow, winding stairwell.

“Bah. Orcen engineers. There should be no such thing,” Brenwar complained, his heavy feet thundering down the steps.

At the bottom, two half-orcen men waited, armored in chain mail from head to toe, and two more stood behind them, spears at the ready. The tips of my fingers tingled. I realized I still had my sword and Brenwar his war axe, but the pair before us, with steel swinging on their hips, paid their tokens and moved on down a tunnel to where many loud voices were shouting. The half-orcen man snatched my token from my hand and sneered.

“Take down your hood.”

Brenwar stiffened at my side, hands clutching his weapon with white knuckles.

I looked down into the half-orcen eyes and growled, “I paid my share. No one said hoods weren’t allowed. You have something against hoods?”

His lip curled back, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. I wouldn’t let him. I looked deeper into him. I could see his hate and fear. There was little good in him but enough man left for him to step aside.

“Go ahead,” he said, blinking hard and moving on to the next people.

Making our way down the tunnel cut through the rock, I could feel the cool draft nipping at my sweating neck. The sound of voices was getting louder now. A mix of races I could hear. Men mostly, but orcs, too, and a few dwarves as well. We emerged into a cavernous room, part cave, part auditorium, with seats carved from stone that formed a crude arena. The excited voices were shouting at a shimmering black curtain that covered an object in the center about twenty feet high and thirty feet wide. The hair on my neck stiffened as I pushed my way through the crowd that circled and pressed around the wall that surrounded it.

“Kill the dragon!” someone cried, jostling my senses.

An outcry of agreement followed along with a series of cheers. I could feel more bodies pressing against mine, a frenzied and gambling horde. From above, a powerful voice, amplified beyond the powers of nature, shouted out.

“SILENCE!”

I’d never seen so many loud and obnoxious people fall silent at once, yet they did, looking upward at the sound of the voice. A man as tall as he was wide stood in robes laced in arcane symbols, glittering different colors in the light. A dragon's claw, a big one, jostled around his fat neck as he ran his pudgy fingers through a mop of brown hair. He seemed tired, expressionless, and bored. He yawned, his mouth opening three times bigger than it looked.

Brenwar nudged me, saying, “That ain’t no man.”

Whatever he was, he kept on speaking.

“SILENCE!”

He said it once again, long and drawn out. At this rate, I’d never see what was underneath the curtain.

“LET … THE … DRAGON … GAMES … BEEEEEEEE … GIIIIIIN!”

There was a clap of thunder and a flash of light, followed by a series of gasps.

I gawped at what I saw next: a cage. A series of ironworks constructed into a see-through dome of metal. But that wasn’t what got me. I’d seen plenty of cages before. Instead, it was who was perched inside on a swing. It was a dragon no taller than a dwarf, glimmering with orange and yellow scales, clawed wings covering his face and body. He shone like a diamond inside a room full of coal. My nerves turned to sheets of ice when the big fat man said, “SEND … IN … THE … TROLLS!”