by Logan Jacobs
Instead, he found himself face to face with the Draco Rex.
He tried to bring his weapons back around, but I was on him in an instant.
I stabbed the dagger into his left temple, and it made a wet squishing sound as it pierced whatever pea of a brain he had in there.
Meurk froze for a second in shock, but then his eyes rolled back in his head. He dropped both of the weapons in his hands and fell back onto the ground. Then the orc’s whole body twitched intensively, but he was as good as dead.
“The good guys always win.” I sheathed my dagger, grabbed my sword, and turned to help my friends.
Lezan was locked in a battle of speed with her assailant, and the Coonag woman ducked, dodged, and parried the iron sword of the orc, who seemed to be just as fast on his feet as she was.
Meanwhile, Jemma and Tirian seemed to have things under control on their end. When I looked over at the two bondmates, Tirian had an orc pinned down to the ground with his two clawed feet.
The orc shrieked as the silver dragon ripped off chunks of his flesh with its teeth, and I grew slightly concerned Tirian was enjoying this just a little too much.
I couldn’t worry about that now, though, so I ran over to Lezan and her attacker. The poor bastard didn’t even see me coming, and I was able to get the jump on him. I twirled my sword around, hauled it back, and then took aim at his thick neck.
I swung, and the blade sliced through his hide like it was made of cardboard. He let out a grunt of surprise before his head flew up into the air, followed by a small eruption of dark-red blood.
“I would have had him,” Lezan mused as we watched his lifeless body fall to the ground.
“I know.” I winked. “But I wanted to speed up the process.”
We both turned to Tirian and Jemma, who were still tormenting their orc.
“I’m liking this dragon more and more by the minute.” The Coonag woman whistled. “Go, Tirian! Go for the jugular!”
Then it dawned on me.
“Wait!” I called out as I ran toward my friends. “Don’t kill him yet.”
What are you talking about? Jemma asked via our dragon bond. Why would we let him live?
“We need him to talk,” I explained telepathically. “Then we can kill him.”
You’d better hurry up, then, Jemma chuckled, because I don’t know how much longer he’s going to last.
Awww, man, Tirian sighed as he spat a hunk of orc flesh out onto the ground. I wanted to teach him a lesson. For threatening my momma.
“You still can,” I said aloud as I walked up. “Just let me talk to this guy first. You want to talk, right?”
The orc looked like he was about to say something nasty, but I slammed my boot into one of his open wounds, and that changed his tune almost immediately.
“What the fuck do you wanna know?” he cried out. “Just fucking kill me and get it over with.”
“Why are you here?” I demanded. “I mean, it’s obvious you want to steal some dragons, but I want to know the details. The real nitty gritty of the situation.”
“There ain’t nothin’ more to tell you,” the orc spat. “We were sent here to steal some dragon eggs and bring ‘em back to the boss man. Simple as that. But when we saw there weren’t no eggs or babies, Meurk there wanted to just whack ‘em all. That’s all that happened. Now, fucking get it over with.”
My blood went cold at two particular words he said. “Boss man.”
Was this the strange figure Jonas saw in his vision? The one with the deep, gravely voice? The one who threatened to destroy all of my women?
“We’re not done yet.” I growled and pushed my foot down harder against his wound. “Who is your ‘boss man?’ And why is he in charge of this mission?”
“Why the fuck does that matter?” the orc laughed through his agonized winces.
“Oh, it matters a lot,” I retorted. “Now, fucking tell me.”
The orc seemed tight-lipped, so I looked over at Lezan. She must have gotten the gist, because she sauntered over and placed a hand on each side of the orc’s head.
“What the fuck are you--” he began, but he was cut off instantaneously.
Lezan opened her mouth and slammed her teeth into the orc’s forehead. She shook like a dog on a rope toy and then yanked off a bloody hunk of flesh with a growl.
The orc screamed as blood oozed from the freshly-exposed muscles on his head, and his eyes went wide as he pleaded with me for mercy.
“Well?” I demanded.
“Warifly!” he said in a panic. “Warifly is our captain!”
“And?” I raised my eyebrows. “Is he your king? Or just one of the cronies? What did he want with the dragons?”
“What the bloody fuck do you think?” the orc snarled. “The same thing you assholes want. He wants the fucking little ones for his army. And he’s not our king. He fuckin’ wishes he was our king.”
“What else does he want?” I demanded. “Does Warifly have any other objectives on this mission?”
“Notta one,” the orc promised. “That’s it, I swear.”
I looked over at Lezan and Jemma, who wore skepticism on their faces.
“I don’t think he’s lying,” I told Jemma through our mindlink. “He’s in way too much pain to do that.”
He just wants us to finish him off, the auburn-haired woman sighed. He could be lying so you end his suffering. There’s no reason to think--Ben, look out!
At first I was confused, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the orc’s hand dart down into his boot. A moment later, he stabbed at me with an iron knife, but I was just an inkling faster.
I caught his wrist with my foot, pinned it down against the ground, and then kicked the small knife out of his hand. Without another moment’s hesitation, I stabbed the point of my sword into his brain and watched him go limp.
“Well,” I grumbled as I sheathed my sword, “he got his wish.”
“So, this Warifly,” Lezan began, “you don’t think he’s come to conquer our island?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “If he did, then why would he just have his fleet sitting there in the middle of the ocean? If Warifly was here to kill us all, he would have definitely tried to by now.”
“Then we have an advantage over him,” Jemma announced. “He might not even know we exist.”
“Oh, I’m sure they know we exist,” I chuckled. “I trained the helpless women they usually attack and enslave to fight back against them, and we’ve defeated them in numerous battles. I’m sure they have plenty of horror stories revolving around the Draco Rex by now. But you’re onto something there… If this orc was telling the truth, then they might not know our island is so close. Or, at least, they don’t care that it’s so close.”
“Why would they?” Jemma agreed. “If this mission had been successful, they would have had a small army of fire-breathing dragons at their disposal.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Lezan chuckled. “There weren’t any babies here for them to steal, so they would have come up empty handed.”
“There aren’t any here at the moment,” I explained, “but I’m almost positive this isn’t the first time they’ve been here. They knew the way to the volcano like the back or their hand. If I had to guess, I’d say they keep sending out search parties and finding the nests empty. And, if we don’t do something, they’re going to keep trying until they eventually do snag an egg or a baby dragon. Or, they’re going to get fed up and kill all these poor creatures while they’re sleeping, just like that fucker over there attempted to today.”
“How do we do something about it?” Jemma queried with a frown. “It’s not like we can just pick up all these beasts and move them to a new location.”
Why not? Tirian questioned. My mom is down there. I could wake her up and ask her why there are so many of these other dragons here, and why they’re all hibernating and why I was born on a different island and--
“Tirian.” I frowned and
placed my hand on his head. “I know you want to talk to your mother, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”
Why not? The silver, scaly creature tilted his head.
“Because,” I explained, “the last time we woke your mom up from a deep slumber, she tried to roast us alive. And, if she wakes up, I’m sure she’ll wake up the rest of these creatures, too. They won’t know if we’re friend or foe, either, so they’d probably try to attack us. Even though we just beat pretty bad odds, I’m not gonna push my luck with a whole horde of dragons…”
But what if they come back for my mom while we’re gone? Tirian blubbered, and tears formed in the eyes of the small, fire-breathing dragon. I could wake them up and tell them it’s all okay…
“Maybe they’d listen to you,” I admitted, “but there’s also a major chance they won’t. They might think we’re forcing you to do that against your will like you’re our slave. And if they think that, there’s no way we walk off this island alive.”
Two streams of tears trickled down the majestic dragon’s face, and my heart felt heavy just looking at him. Even though he was one of the deadliest allies we had, Tirian was still just an infant who missed his mother.
Jemma held the dragon’s head in her hands as she turned it to look her in the eye.
“Nobody’s going to hurt your mom,” the deer-woman promised. “But we can’t take that big of a risk. Not without having some sort of back-up plan in place. The orcs don’t even know their search party is dead yet, so that should give us plenty of time to regroup and come up with something.”
Promise? the dragon asked pathetically.
“I promise,” I cut in. “We won’t let those ugly green bastards hurt your mom or any of your kin. We just need some preparation time.”
Tirian’s lip was quivering, but he finally nodded in agreement. Then he looked over the edge of the platform, sighed, and stared down at his kinsmen for a solid minute before he turned back around and waddled back to our position.
We’ll come back for you, Mom, he promised his mother, though we didn’t know if she could hear him.
With that settled, Tirian stood in front of Jemma, who mounted the silver beast like she was about to ride a moped. Then the dragon beat his wings and lifted up off the rocky ground.
Meanwhile, Lezan and I headed back over to the rope. I climbed up a few feet and then looked back down at Lezan, who was holding on to the bottom.
“George?” I called up telepathically. “We’re good to go.”
Suddenly, the rope lurched upward, and I had to hold on for dear life to keep myself from falling. Slowly but surely, Lezan and I were hoisted up the side of the volcanic wall and out into the sunlight, and the second we were out in the fresh air, George ran over to me and rubbed his neck against my shoulder lovingly.
I was worried about you, dear ones, the blue dragon confessed. Especially since I wasn’t able to help.
“What are you talking about?” I chuckled as I rubbed George’s rough, scaly neck. “If it wasn’t for you, Tirian would have been snatched up in a net. And who knows how the battle would have gone if we didn’t have him at our side? You are our clutch hitter that saved the day.”
Tirian held his head proudly and, for the first time since before the battle, he seemed to smile.
That’s right. The silver dragon grinned. If it wasn’t for me, you all would have fought in the dark!
“And we would have had to kill those other three orcs on our own,” Jemma added. “You saved us a lot of hassle on this one, my friend.”
Now that we were on the other side of the volcano, we could look out over the island in the direction we’d originally come from. We could still see the four orc ships off on the horizon, as well as the one the orcs we’d just dispatched had arrived in.
From this vantage point, I saw the ship they’d arrived in was way different than the one we’d commandeered way back when I’d first arrived.
It had a long, slender hull that didn’t stick out far from the water, with a long bowspirit attached to two diamond-shaped sails. There were three tall masts sticking up out of the ship’s body, and the deck seemed to be fairly empty.
A schooner. It was a schooner ship.
“That makes way too much sense,” I observed. “These guys were just a search party, so they brought a schooner.”
“Yeah…” Lezan mused as she narrowed her dark eyes at me, “you’re gonna have to explain.”
“Schooners aren’t really warships,” I tried to elaborate. “They are mostly used for fishing and transporting cargo to and from larger vessels or short distances. They don’t even have any built-in weapons like cannons.”
“That seems foolish,” the multicolored-haired Coonag noted. “Why would they even have a ship like that?”
“Because it’s faster than the larger ones,” I continued. “If they accidentally woke up one of those dragons, a sleek, quick ship like that would be their best chance at escaping. But, unlike other little tiny vessels built purely for speed, these things can haul shit, too.”
“That sounds really useful,” Jemma gasped as she stared off at the ships on the horizon.
“That’s not even the best part,” I admitted. “A schooner only needs a small crew to run, probably only six to eight people.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Lezan asked, and the Coonag woman’s eyes suddenly lit up with glee. “Let’s go steal it.”
My heart hammered in my chest, and my pants tightened as I listened to the assertive, wild woman. Lezan certainly knew what she wanted, both in life and in bed, and both categories usually revolved around my actions. It was fucking hot, and I couldn’t help but grin like a fool at the beautiful woman.
“You want to steal the ship?” Jemma spoke up. “I thought Ben said there were more orcs on it.”
“There probably are.” Lezan shrugged. “But we just beat those guys into the next moon cycle, so what’s a few more uglies? A good fight really gets the blood pumping, anyways.”
There was definitely blood pumping in my body, and it was all concentrated in my groin.
“She’s right.” I nodded. “Now that I see how small the vessel is, it can’t have very many orcs still aboard. If it did, there would be no room for them to take back the dragons they captured. If we wanted to, we could probably overwhelm them on sheer numbers alone.”
Do you really think so? George pondered. There were quite a few in that volcano, dear one…
“Exactly.” I shook my head. “That just tells me the majority of the crew was on this island, and are now worm food. Like I said before, a schooner only needs a crew of six to eight, and there were fourteen of those things in the search party? If there are any more on the ship, their numbers are few. We might even outnumber them.”
“Then we can sneak aboard and rip their spines from their bodies,” Lezan chuckled and bounced up and down.
“Always so quick to violence,” Jemma laughed.
“Well, yeah,” I laughed. “Have you met her people? Gratuitous violence is kind of their whole thing.”
“Sometimes the best and most clever solution is just killing the things you don’t like,” Lezan proclaimed with a wide smile.
How are we gonna do this? Tirian interjected into our mindlink. Do you want me to swoop down and burn them all alive?
“As awesome as that would look, I say no,” I chuckled. “We don’t want to risk setting the sails on fire with your breath. Or the boat in general. I want to add that ship to our inventory. We can get a little fleet going.”
I rubbed my hand along my jawline as I began to formulate a plan. There were two main obstacles to overcome in this situation. The first was the fact that we needed to clear the ship of any and all remaining orcs. The absolute last thing we wanted was to sail all the way back to our home and then let those ugly fuckers walk right in through the back door.
The second problem was a bit trickier. If we did manage to take over the schooner, we would have to f
igure out how to get back to our home without the rest of the fleet noticing.
There were really only two options, neither of which were great.
We could either commandeer the ship and then attempt to sail around to the other side of the island, where we would be out of sight. Then, once we were out on the open sea, we could make a break for our home island. That would be a much larger distance to sail, but it would be far and away the safer option.
The other choice we had would be if we simply wanted to try and out-sail the rest of the orc fleet. This ship would be way faster than the other ships at their disposal, but it was also pretty defenseless if we somehow did get caught.
Then again, we had two dragons at our disposal, one of which could breathe fire. We would probably be able to fight back, even if it wasn’t optimal.
Go with your first option, dear one, George’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Hey!” I placed my hands on my hips and shot my dragon a glare. “I don’t read your thoughts when you’re deep in thought.”
I wouldn’t mind if you did, he snorted. You’d mostly just see thoughts of my children and Nixie. And the occasional dream of eating those strange, rubbery creatures I found in the ocean not too long ago. They taste like the fish we catch on the shore, but a bit oilier and less pungent.
“I agree with George,” Jemma spoke up. “Trying to outrun a whole fleet of ships is way too risky.”
Lezan looked back and forth between George, Jemma, and me before she rolled her eyes.
“You guys gotta start talking out loud,” the ring-tailed woman chuckled. “I don’t have a dragon that lets me speak without talking like you both do.”
“It looks like we’re going to steal that schooner,” I explained, “and then we’ll sail around the island until we’re out of sight from the rest of the fleet.”
“That sounds like a great plan.” Lezan grinned. “Especially the part where we steal the ship.”
I figured that’d be what got her going.
So, the three of us sheathed our weapons, hopped on our respective dragons, and then made our way down the side of the volcano. Much to my surprise, George didn’t stop when we got to the bottom, nor did Tirian.