Steel and Fangs

by Sami Dougish

  Raskorian had flat-out ignored me for the first half, but seemingly became bored, and began reading the book alongside me and we began having discussions about different passages of the book. Though my vocabulary had improved; my reading abilities were still at best sketchy. So, the reading was slow going, and I had to ask Raskorian to explain certain words, phrases and concepts. Once again, despite his ability to be as aggravating and frustrating as an ingrown toenail, the dragon was certainly knowledgeable, and was able to easily explain almost anything in the book. Though he had been encased in a reliquary for much of the books contents, he was still able to understand it all far better than I could.

  Eventually though I had drifted back off to sleep, and this time when I awoke, the cool air of a predawn morning washed over my face. Raskorian was curled up in a ball in some corner of my mind still, so I yawned, and stood up to stretch. Once I felt loosened up, I went and used the washroom. Once I was done with that, I strapped on my armor, and picked up all my weapons this time, and made my way out of the room. I wanted to go and see if I could purchase some new weapons anywhere. This was a mix between an underground fortress and a smugglers depot after all.

  Still, I assumed I would need gold for that, and I was running low on that at the moment. Orizmad had promised me a bonus for staying at the dinner table yesterday, so I might as well go and collect my mount, and coin first. Unfortunately, most of the large mansion was empty. I guessed that everyone was still asleep. Well, I could train for a bit until the place starts to wake up then. I made my way down to the main hall of the mansion, and moved oof to where the feast had been held. If it had been cleaned up afterwards, the wide-open space should provide enough room easily.

  Sure enough, the room had been cleaned, and most of the tables had been removed. The ones that weren’t, I quickly pushed aside, and made sure I had ample room to swing the naginata around. After a few warmup maneuvers, I started to train. A couple hours and some intense training later, I started to hear movements from the other side of the door. Looked like the servants had begun their duties for the day. I looked around, and saw several cloth napkins on the tables, and I grabbed several and wiped the sweat as best as I could of my body. I glanced around, and saw that the room was still empty, and shoved the handkerchiefs inside my leather armor. The dwarf could afford the loss of a few handkerchiefs.

  I pushed my way through the large doors to the room, and walked back out into the main hall way. Apparently one of the servants, a small woman who barely came up to my chest had been sweeping the floor near the door. The sudden opening the door made her yelp, and leap back in surprise. She looked up angrily, probably thinking I was one of her fellows. When she caught sight of me though, her expression immediately morphed into fear. She pointed at me, with a trembling finger, and said, “You! You’re the drayzraac!”

  In response, I bared my fangs, and hissed at her. She promptly screamed, and ran away from me. I chuckled at her response. I was really starting to enjoy scaring other races now that I was free, especially humans. I turned my attention back to where I was going, before I realized that I had no clue where the dwarf’s room was. I groaned, looks like I would have to ask one of the servants.

  That task actually turned out to be just as irritating as I thought. Most of the servants either took one look at me, and sped off, or they huddled up in a group, and pointed and whispered at me. And when I walked over to them to ask about Orizmad, I would make it two steps before they bolted. Finally, I got tired of it, and when one man tried to bolt, I snatched the back of his shirt, and flung him back over to the wall. He smacked into the stone with a satisfying thunk, and groaned as he slid to the floor. Maybe I overdid that a bit.

  Still, I bent down, and pulled his face up so he was looking directly at me. His still looked dazed, but as his eyes began to clear, and he was able to focus on me. His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth as if to shout for help, but I cut him, off, and said, “Not in the mood! Yell, or scream, and I will ensure you lose that ability permanently!”

  He immediately clammed up, and instead looked at me with fear plain on his face. That suited me just fine. He would be much more compliant this way.

  “Your boss owes me, and I mean to collect. Show me where his room is.”

  The man tried to stutter something out, but he kept tripping over his words. Finally, he managed to say, “B-b-b-but he will s-s-still be sleeping after the f-f-feast!”

  “Look at my face,” he did so, and I growled out, “Do I look like I care?!”

  “This w-w-way!” The man tried to leap to his feet, but I still had him pinned against the wall. I roughly pulled him to his feet, and he darted off towards the main stairway at the back of the main hall. I didn’t bother chasing him, as I already had his scent, and it would be easy enough to follow him by that alone.

  Sure enough, the man’s scent ended up taking me all the way up to the top floor of the mansion, and to my surprise there were no other hallways up here, the stair case ended at a large decorative door. Did this entire floor encompass Orizmad’s room? Deciding I didn’t give a rat’s ass either way, I raised one fist, and banged on the door hard enough to make it tremble slightly. I waited all of two seconds, before I repeated the loud knocking.

  I continued to do that a few more times, before I heard a sleepy voice call out, “Who the hell is making that racket at this ungodly hour?! I told you all not to wake me up for at least four more hour! Unless we are under attack, or some gods damned elf is fucking my wife, I am going to put my boot so far up yer ass that you taste this high-quality leather for breakfast!”

  A second later, and angry Orizmad wrenched the door open, with a hand ax in one hand, and the other balled into a fist. He was also completely naked. We just stared at each other for several seconds, me in expectant irritation, him in shocked confusion.

  I was the first to break the silence, and I said, “I’m here for my mount, and bonus you promised me,” not being able to help myself, I also said, “And your legs aren’t long enough to reach that far up my ass.”

  I said this all with a straight face, and Orizmad gaped at me for a second more, and looked like he had half a mind to slash at me with the axe. Then he grumbled something under his breath before letting the axe fall to his side. Then clearly irritated voice he asked, “This couldn’t have waited until later? I’m damn tired!”

  “I’m not,” was all I said in reply.

  “Well obviously you big bastard!”

  Before he could say anything else, I heard a yawn from behind him, and when I looked, I saw a woman wearing only a towel wrapped around her waist stumble out of a room behind Orizmad.

  “Orz? What is it? Who-“ she cut off whatever she was about to say when she saw me standing in the door way.

  I raised an eyebrow and looked down at Orizmad, who hastily turned around, and made a hasty shooing motion to the woman. She quickly retreated back where she had walked out of, and Orizmad turned back to me. He looked far more nervous than angry now, and said, “Uh, well, tell you what Vakarrian, I will double that bonus, and be down in a hurry if ya promise not to tell me wife about uh Larisa.”

  More coin for keeping my mouth shut, I wasn’t going to complain, besides I didn’t care how much he slept around as long as he paid me my money. I grunted in affirmation, and said, “Fine, I’ll wait.”

  “Er Thanks,” he said looking nervous but relived as well now. He hastily backed into his room, and shut the door. I turned around, and moved to the stairway, and leaned against the railing to wait.

  It turned out I didn’t have to wait too long. As he had said, Orizmad emerged fully dressed in a fine tunic and pair of pants, as well as a fancy coat that covered the rest of his body. He had the same hand axe strapped to his waist attached to a gold inlayed belt. He jumped back slightly when he saw how close I was to the door.

  “You were waiting there the whole time?” He asked incredulous as he stared at me.

  “Obviously.”


  Orizmad shook his head, threw up his hands and said, “I probably didn’t even need to offer you a bonus to keep this quiet, you talk so damn little anyways!”

  I didn’t answer, and instead said, “I’m ready for my mount first.”

  Orizmad eyes lit up at that, and all his irritation seemed to vanish after I said that. He clapped his hands together, and said, “That is perfect. I am anxious to see if you can handle the beast, No one here has been able to ride him yet, or even put bags on him. He is worth quite a bit of gold though, so I was still going to get a great price on him. Come, I’ll take ya there now.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, I hadn’t planned on having to contend with some crazy monster of a mount. I would have been fine with a placid horse, even a mule. Orizmad however had said it was unique and capable mount, and perhaps if I was able to tame it, and maybe even learn to ride it, it would pay off.

  I followed Orizmad back down the main stairs, and back to the main hall. I saw Orizmad gaze longingly at the feast hall, but he eventually walked past it, and led me out of the mansion. Now that we were back inside the main compound of the hideout, people passing by called out enthusiastically to Orizmad, but when they saw me, most of them froze, or would point and whisper. It seems that as I had suspected, the knowledge of what I was had spread quickly.

  Orizmad gestured for me to follow him, and we marched off. He pulled me through the bustle of people, and while we walked, I once again took in the architecture of the hideout. I came to the conclusion that hideout wasn’t really the right word. This was basically a fortified underground town. I saw several vendors selling goods, along with the smell of freshly cooked food wafting from a number of the stands. It was insane to think that this district had remained secret for so long right under the watchful eye of the Thuum lords. I could only imagine the interest that they would have taken in a place filled with so many potential slaves. I assumed that Orizmad paid a handsome amount of coins to certain officials to encourage them to turn a blind eye to this place’s existence. That and the place itself was under ground and all.

  As we continued walking, Orizmad led me down one of the many adjoining tunnels that branched off from the main cavern. Like all the other tunnels, the passage way had been smoothed down to feel like marble. It must have taken a hell of a lot of time and effort to achieve this desired effect. I wondered what this place had looked like originally before the dwarf had claimed it as one of his smuggling outposts.

  After several more minutes of walking, the familiar scents of penned animals filled my senses. As I smelled and tasted the air, I could tell we were heading for a stable of sorts. The classic smells of animal feed, and waste was wafting strongly from the path ahead of us, and sure enough a few minutes later, we walked out into another cavern. This one was nowhere near as large as the main cavern was, but it was still spacious enough to hold several buildings which looked to be for housing animals, paired with a large corral, where I saw a number of horses and what seemed like giant goats being led around for exercise. The coral was unique in that its walls were wood, but a spiderweb collection of chains formed into a half dome rose at least double the height of the walls of the corral completely enclosing the corral. The cavern was lit up by a number of the large lanterns that had been in the main cavern, and they gave off the impression of currently being early morning. I assumed they would have to provide ample light down here to keep the animals from panicking from the constant lack of light.

  I frowned at what I saw in front of me. Back in Ravens grove, Orizmad had made it seem as if he only had one mount in particular for me, and then up at his room he had said I was going to get some sort of insane mount. In front of me now though were a number of what looked to be perfectly tamed horses, and whatever the hell the giant goat like creatures were. Why didn’t he just give me one of those.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a man’s voice calling out eagerly to Orizmad.

  “Oy boss, didn’t expect you so early today, from what I heard, you threw a hell of a party last night, and knowing you, I would have expected you to be passed out for several more hours at the very least!”

  Orizmad shot me an accusatory look, and grumbled, “Well you see certain impatient bastards were wanting their payment for a job as soon as possible, and thought it was a good idea to bang on my door to get me up at this damn time!”

  The man’s whose name I didn’t know laughed uproariously, and turned to me, his laughter died immediately when he saw me. His brows pulled together in a frown, and he sneered at me.

  “So, this is the Lizard I’ve heard so much about?!”

  I pulled my lips back over my teeth and snarled in response. The man took a step back in surprise, and then spit to the side.

  “So, it’s true, the beasts can understand intelligent speech! Why is he here boss? You don’t intend to give him one of me horses do ya?”

  Orizmad became serious, as he said, “I have given this man my oath of hospitality, and you will show respect in front of him at risk of offending me Torn!”

  Torn immediately steeled his features, and nodded at Orizmad, “Sorry boss, I’ve no love for his kind, but I will respect your oath, my question stands though boss, you mean to give him a horse?”

  “No,” Orizmad said with a slight gleam in his eye. Torn looked relived, but the color quickly drained from his face at Orizmad’s next words, “I’m giving him the spiteclaw.”

  I had no idea what a spiteclaw was, but apparently it was extremely rare, and expensive, as Torn eyes nearly bulged out of his face at Orizmad’s statement.

  “But boss! You know how hard it was to catch the beast?! Gods, I know we have been having trouble finding a buyer in these parts, but I guarantee you, we can get hundreds of gold pieces for him, and over triple that if we can catch a female to sell with it, any kingdom, empire, confederation, or whatever on this entire world would pay for a breeding pair of spiteclaws! You can’t just give it away to this, this thing!”

  Orizmad held up his hand for silence, and with a supreme effort, Torn managed to rein in his tirade.

  “This is true what you say, but I promised Vakarrian a rare and powerful mount to aid him. He has earned it, and many times over for saving all my boys. I will hear no more of this Torn, go and get the beast.” His words had the whip of command, and on what looked like pure instinct, Torn snapped straight, and whirled around to do as he had been bid. He stomped in the direction of the enclosed corral. Walked into the enclosure, and moved to a gated off area to the rear.

  Orizmad sighed, and said, “He is right though, I will be losing a huge profit by giving you the spiteclaw, but I spent basically no money capturing it anyways, so all in all, it’s not really a loss.”

  My curiosity had been piqued by the way Torn had spoken of the spiteclaw, “What exactly is a spiteclaw? Never heard of one.”

  Orizmad turned to me with surprised look on his face, but he shrugged, and explained, “Well Spiteclaw’s are a cross between several different kinds of species. Imagine a giant wolf mixed with a reptile, and you get a Spiteclaw. They earned their names due to their extremely bad temperament. To the best of my knowledge only the Varg have managed to capture, breed and train a significant number, and they live on an entirely different continent across the opal sea. Even then however, it isn’t in large quantities, and apparently, more riders are killed by their mounts then successfully tame them. Spiteclaw’s seem to roam all sorts of environments, but despite that, finding one is extremely rare, capturing one even less so. The only reason my boys were able to catch this one in particular was because it is barely half a year old and is still small for one of its kind.”

  Interesting, I was excited to see what the beast looked like but wasn’t as excited about the prospect of having to try and work with the beast. If it had such an aversion to riders, then I assumed it wouldn’t be very pleased to be used as a pack animal either.

  “What makes them so special though?”

&nbs
p; “Ah, you see they be incredibly agile. That paired with their durability and strength make them fearsome mounts. From the stories, many times those riding the beasts don’t even have to fight, they can just let their mounts do the work. They are faster than just about any horse and can run longer in several hours then most animals can it a day. They are also extremely tough, their fur, flesh, and scales can turn blades, arrows when fully grown, and its rumored they are resistant to magic as well. All in all, if the stories are to be believed they are a fearsome opponent to be sure. From the little we have seen so far; it lives up to its reputation of being spiteful. So far it he has bitten of several fingers, and even tore one of my boys arms off when he was trying to feed the beast. We have him muzzled, but even then his claws are dangerous enough to kill someone with a well-aimed strike. It has been sitting down here for several weeks now, and we have just resorted to taking his muzzle off, and throwing food into his pen to keep him fed. No one wants to get near the thing. This is part of the reason I’m giving it to you. He is too dangerous to sell for now. We have potential buyers lined up, but they want the beast trained prior to the deal being made, and so far we’ve had no luck doing that. I am happy to let the beast be your problem now.”

  “Hmm I know of these spiteclaws, we referred to them as Moroklau in our language. They are as ancient as my kind are and are as vicious as the dwarf claims. We used to have hatchings hunt them as a rite of passage, and it wasn’t uncommon for a fully grown one to take down a young dragon, I approve of this mount, we must make it our own.”

  Raskorian had woken up in my head, and was now paying attention eagerly as he waited for Torn to get the spiteclaw. As if on cue with Raskorian waking up, we heard a powerful roar come from across the way, and I looked over to see a team of eight men, a mix of humans and dwarves, all holding ropes, dragging an angry spiteclaw out of its paddock. I was immediately hooked on acquiring this beast the moment I laid eyes on it. It was big, that was my first impression, easily twelve feet long, and five feet tall. Its torso was a made of pitch-black fur, and I could easily see the muscles rippling under the fur as it strained against the ropes. Its head was double the size of my own, and just as Orizmad had said, it had a face that was a strange mix of reptile and wolf. It had a long snout like a wolf, and when It lashed out, trying to bite its handlers, I could see the rows upon rows of wicked looking fangs. It lacked the nose of a wolf though, and instead had two slits for nostrils at the end of its snout. Its eyes were a piecing violet color, that glowed despite the bright lights in the area. It had a small row of what looked like spikes that ran along its snout ending at the nostrils. Its ears swept back were triangular like a wolf, but instead of the soft flesh that a wolf had, its ears were made of leathery looking scales.