Hard Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  Hard Times

  in

  Dragon City

  Shotguns & Sorcery Novel #1

  By Matt Forbeck

  Also by Matt Forbeck

  Bad Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #2)

  End Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #3)

  Leverage: The Con Job

  Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution

  Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revelation

  Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Resolution

  Amortals

  Vegas Knights

  Carpathia

  Magic: The Gathering comics

  Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (with Jeff Grubb)

  Mutant Chronicles

  The Marvel Encyclopedia

  Star Wars vs. Star Trek

  Secret of the Spiritkeeper

  Prophecy of the Dragons

  The Dragons Revealed

  Blood Bowl

  Blood Bowl: Dead Ball

  Blood Bowl: Death Match

  Blood Bowl: Rumble in the Jungle

  Eberron: Marked for Death

  Eberron: The Road to Death

  Eberron: The Queen of Death

  Full Moon Enterprises

  Beloit, WI, USA

  www.forbeck.com

  Shotguns & Sorcery, Dragon City, and all prominent fictional characters, locations, and organizations depicted herein are Trademarks of Matt Forbeck.

  © 2012 by Matt Forbeck.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Dedicated to my wife Ann and our kids Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. They always get me through the hard times.

  Thanks to Robin D. Laws, who encouraged me to write the first Shotguns & Sorcery story, and to Marc Tassin for asking for the second. Also to Matthew Sprange and the rest of the crew at Mongoose Publishing for chatting with me about this setting when I thought it might make a decent roleplaying game.

  Extra thanks to Ann Forbeck for serving as my first reader and constant motivator.

  Huge thanks to all the readers who backed this book and the rest in the trilogy on Kickstarter. See the end of the book for a full list of their names. Each and every one of them is fantastic, and I can only hope that this book justifies the faith they showed in me.

  12 for ’12

  This is the standard edition of a book first released as a reward for the backers of my second Kickstarter drive for my 12 for ’12 project, my mad plan to write a novel a month for the entirety of 2012. Together, over 330 people chipped in almost $13,000 to successfully fund an entire trilogy of Shotguns & Sorcery novels.

  Thanks to each and every one of you for daring me to take on this incredible challenge — and for coming along with me on the wild ride it promises to be. And thank you to all my readers, whether you’re backers or not. Stories have no homes without heads to house them.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’d never seen so much blood in my life, and I used to date a vampire. Well, maybe date’s too strong a word, and I didn’t know she was a vampire at the time. Right up until the end, that is.

  I’d been in the Stronghold part of Dragon City before, far as it was from my usual haunts downslope. It wasn’t that humans weren’t allowed in the area, after all. More like we weren’t appreciated.

  Of course, the Gütmanns were different, at least Anders’ branch of the family vein. He and I had been adventuring partners, once upon a time, and even after he got killed, his widow and offspring always treated me with the same kind of respect — affection, even — that Anders had shown me. I’d spent many evenings swilling mead with them, playing tile games, and chatting about the price of cut stone and how well the city’s curtain wall was holding up.

  Most of Anders’ kids were older than me, of course, some by decades, even though they were still considered youths among dwarves. But they never let that come between us. Little Gerte would even crawl up on my lap after dinner sometimes and tell me about her day while her mother beamed over at us from the other side of the table.

  Seeing them all murdered like that tore me up. I felt like someone had taken a knife and gutted me from my belt to my collar, but it was Heidi who’d suffered that fate.

  When Yabair had come to rouse me from my bed, I’d known something was wrong. As a captain in the Imperial Dragon’s Guard, he didn’t bother to pay me social calls. Most times when I ran into him it was trouble. If he sent someone around to my place over the Barrelrider in the Big Burrow part of town, something disastrous had happened.

  He’d never come there on his own. An elf like him wouldn’t be caught slumming around the lower parts of the city, not unless he was on official business. So when I heard someone pounding on my office’s outer door so hard I came out to answer it in my skivvies, I had no idea it would be him waiting for me in the stairwell.

  The look on his face told me almost everything I needed to know.

  “Am I under arrest?” I said.

  He didn’t say a word, just shook his head from side to side.

  “Can I get dressed?”

  He frowned. “I don’t suppose time is of any material essence in this matter.”

  I took that to mean that whatever had happened was already over with, but I still threw on a fresh shirt, pants, jacket, and hat as fast as I could. I skipped shaving and tapped a coffee cup with the tip of my wand to conjure up a hot slug of joe to sip on the way. I figured I’d need it.

  Outside, Yabair had escorted me into one of those flying chariots the Guard favored — garish things painted in their traditional scarlet and gold, with the Imperial Dragon’s seal emblazoned on the front. In the past, I’d only ever gotten to ride in one while I was in handcuffs. I’d like to say it was a treat to be able to ride up front and without any manacles keeping me rooted to one of the seats in the back, but the guard’s manner had me spooked.

  No matter what Yabair had in mind for me, the rest of Dragon City seemed to be going about its business without a hiccup. From high in the chariot, I could see the entirety of the city splayed across the mountain’s southern face, all the way from the golden Dragon’s Spire at the top, down through the Elven Reaches that encircled it and straight through the progressively grimier parts of town to the Great Circle, the thick wall of stones and enchantments that kept out the undead horror that lurked in the wild lands beyond.

  Even at this early hour — just after the lightkeepers had gone through the streets and capped the glowglobes that kept us company through the night — at this height, with the chill wind whipping past my face, the city was filled with familiar sounds and smells. Merchants called from their stalls, hawking their wares: food, services, spells. People shuffled through the cobblestone streets on their way to work, to school, or to their next drink. Fires blazed under meager meals and incinerated trash, their tendrils of smoke blending together into a melange of scents that wafted high into the air to join up high above us all with the never-ending column that streamed from the Imperial Dragon’s lair.

  I’d been born here, lived here, and with luck I’d die here, of old age in a warm bed. Nothing in my past choices of careers pointed toward that kind of end, I’m sad to report, but a man could still hope, even here in Dragon City. They hadn’t figured out a way to take that away from me. Not yet.

  Yabair didn’t say a word all the way over to the Stronghold’s Gate, a towering arch carved out of the side of the mountain and banded with gleaming strips of hammered steel. Even when we set down in the open lot across Siegebreaker Square, he didn’t do more than gesture for me to get out and follow him. The dwarves officially ackno
wledge the Dragon’s authority, but they don’t allow flyers in their halls, so we had to leg it from that point.

  I knew the way to the Gütmanns by heart, of course, and every step that took us closer to their home filled me with just a little more dread. By the time we reached the door to their home, I’d been topped off. Walking into their entrance hall and seeing the bodies there made it overflow.

  I had to sit down on the cut-stone floor, or my legs would have given out for sure. I couldn’t find a spot clear of blood, though, so I went back out into the wide hallway that led up to their home and slid to ground there instead. Yabair, to his credit, gave me a few minutes to compose myself before he came to retrieve me again.

  That was more consideration than the elf had shown me in all the years I’d known him, and that scared me as much as anything. Every moment I sat there, I imagined worse and worse horrors awaited me within. By the time Yabair tapped me on the shoulder, I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Will you be all right?” he said. He didn’t show any concern for me in his voice, just a worry that I might foul up his crime scene. That gave me enough courage that I could help myself to my feet.

  “Did anyone survive?” I asked.

  “I had hoped you could tell us.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “How many?” I said. “Bodies, I mean.”

  “Five, we think. We’re still investigating.”

  That coffee did a backflip in my belly. I felt grateful I’d not taken the time to grab something to eat.

  The elf shrugged as he sized up my condition. “We don’t know exactly who was here at the time. It’s possible someone was out for the evening. Or that they had visitors.”

  “Besides whoever it was that killed them, you mean?”

  Yabair gestured at the open door. I took his hint and preceded him back into the Gütmanns’ home. This time I was braced for the sights and the stench waiting for me, and it was still horrible. I shoved my feelings aside and tried to look at the place like it was any other crime scene. I’d seen enough of them in my life that I wouldn’t argue with someone who might call me jaded, but I found it impossible to see people I loved cut open like that and not react.

  There were two bodies in the foyer, both dwarves. Whoever had killed them had meant it. He’d used a blade of some sort to slash open their throats. They must have bled out in seconds.

  “Do you know them?” Yabair said.

  “This is Carsten.” I pointed at the pale corpse closest to the door. “And that’s Guenter. They’re brothers. The two oldest kids.”

  He grunted at that. These two were kids only in the sense that they were Anders and Heidi’s offspring. Carsten was the younger of the two, and he’d been a hundred and forty-two on his last birthday. Like most dwarves, he still lived with his parents and would until he finally settled down and found himself a wife, something neither he nor Guenter had been in much of a rush to do. Not that they didn’t like dwarf women, but they had a good setup here and were loathe to leave it.

  Now they’d never get the chance.

  “What happened to their beards?” I pointed at both dwarves’ chins. They had beards, long ones normally, but they’d been hacked off just below the chin, right at the point where the cuts appeared in their throats.

  “The murder weapon appears to have been sharp enough to slice through their elaborate facial hair as well as their jugulars,” Yabair said.

  “I get that.” I suppressed a shiver. Anything that was sharp enough to remove a dwarf’s thick beard with a single slash would put my own razor to shame. “But where are the beards? Did you remove them?”

  While the marble floor was sticky with blood, I didn’t see any sign of the beards.

  “The running theory is that they were taken as trophies,” Aleks Drupov said as he sauntered into the room.

  The gnome wore a leather apron, a pair of white rubber gloves, and a set of magnifying goggles that pushed back the wintry shock of hair that topped his high, narrow forehead. I’d met him before, usually when I was trying to ply him with drinks to wheedle information about one case or another out of him. I rarely saw him when he was actually on the job.

  I acknowledged him with a grim nod. “It makes an odd kind of sense. These two put a lot of pride in their beards.”

  “Most dwarves do.”

  I glanced at Yabair. “Where are the others?”

  “One in the kitchen. One in the master bedroom. The little one’s in her room too.”

  Gerte. My heart ached.

  I followed Aleks through the dining room — which seemed as pristine as ever, other than the bloody footprints on the floor — and through a swinging door into the kitchen beyond. There someone had made use of the butcher’s block in the middle of the room, the one around which I’d had more late-night drinks than I could count. Four half-finished pints of stout stood at the table’s cardinal points, one of which had been spilled. The rest of it was covered with blood and Dörthe’s head.

  Someone had sliced right through her neck with a clean cut. The body had fallen to the floor, but the head remained on the table, her eyes still open and staring out at the opposite wall in shock.

  “Her braid’s missing too.” Aleks pointed at the back of Dörthe’s head, and I saw where her golden hair had been shorn away.

  I had to close my eyes for a moment and pinch the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t bear to see any more. I turned and walked back out into the dining room, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “You’re disturbing a crime scene,” Yabair said.

  “He’s fine,” Aleks said in a tone far more comforting than the one his elf boss employed. “I’ve gotten everything I can out of here.”

  “That was Dörthe, the eldest daughter,” I said. “She’s not always here. She got married last year to a guy named Johan Steinmetz. Runs a quarrying business deeper in the mountain.”

  “She must have been visiting with her family,” Aleks said. “Having a late-night drink.”

  I nodded and stood up, bracing myself for the rest of this grisly tour. Aleks put up a hand. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes,” Yabair said. “He does. I need a positive identification for each and every corpse in this abattoir.”

  Aleks glared up at the much-taller elf. “He can do it later, in the morgue.”

  I shook my head. “Better to do it here, right? I might miss something otherwise.”

  I didn’t say it, of course — not to those two, there and then — but I’d already decided that I was going to track down who did this and grind his bones into a bloody paste. If that meant having to steel myself to see every bit of the crimes the bastard had committed, then that’s what I was going to do. I promised myself that I’d take all the hurt that made me feel and use it to drive me toward finding justice for my friends.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Aleks led me and Yabair into the master bedroom. We found Heidi there, sprawled on the stone floor at an unnatural angle, a rune-crusted revolver near her open hand. The killer’s blade had sliced straight through her flannel nightgown, cutting her open from her belly to her chin.

  “What kind of psychotic bastard uses a blade?” I said as I knelt down next to my dead pal’s dead wife.

  “It’s quiet,” Aleks said. “Imagine if you get caught killing someone this deep into the Stronghold. It’s a long way out.”

  “The neighbors didn’t hear a thing.” Yabair sniffed. “Not surprising with all this stone surrounding them, I suppose.”

  “That mean she didn’t get off a shot?” I said.

  Aleks shook his head as he pulled out a wand, slid it through the pistol’s trigger guard, and lifted the weapon into the air to examine it. “Gun still has all six bullets in it. Enchanted ones too. She’d have made a mess of the killer if she’d pulled that trigger.”

  “Fast bastard.”

  I stood up and looked back toward the main part of the home. “So, the grown-ups are having drinks in t
he kitchen when the killer arrives. Maybe he knocks on the door.

  “It’s late, so Carsten and Guenter are suspicious. They go to answer the door, and the killer takes them out. He stride through the dining room and finds Dörthe there. He kills her and goes hunting for the rest.”

  Yabair nodded. “Mrs. Gütmann here must have been as suspicious as her boys. She went to the bedroom to get her gun at the same time they went to the door. That’s why she wasn’t in the kitchen when the killer arrived there. Fast as he was, he never would have let her leave the room.”

  That sounded about right. “He killed her in more of a hurry.” I pointed to Heidi’s head. Her braid was missing too, but her head was still attached. “He sliced her open before he took his trophy.”

  “Then he went looking for the little one.” Aleks frowned hard enough to burnish lines in his face. He turned and beckoned for me to follow.

  He led me into Gerte’s room. It was smaller than her mother’s but painted with vivid, happy colors and lit with glowglobes bright enough to make it seem like daylight inside despite the place’s lack of windows. “Those were capped when I came in,” Aleks said, “except for one nightglobe in the corner.”

  Gerte lay there on the bed, her hair still long and free, just as she’d liked it. She hadn’t been in a rush to get her tresses braided quiet yet — that was for older girls — and her mother had indulged her in that. I suspect Anders would have approved.

  She looked like she’d started to get up to see who had barged into her room. She’d been a hard sleeper, and I would have taken even odds on whether or not she would have awakened if her mother had managed to fire her gun. Either way, she didn’t make it far.