DRAGONSGATE: Preludes & Omens (Bitterwood Series Book 6)

by James Maxey

  But, there was Nadala to consider, and their unborn son or daughter.

  He would do what needed to be done. He opened his wings and once more glided to a pile of stones. He selected the heaviest one yet, and climbed with effort into the air. When he wheeled around to where he’d hit the beast the last time, he saw the eye was already swollen shut, and the hard round disc that he supposed to be the dinosaur’s ear was bleeding. With all his might, he bashed the heavy stone against the injured ear without letting go. The beast let out a moan and stumbled, its legs buckling. Graxen flapped hard, panting for breath, and circled back once more. The beast was struggling to rise as he smashed the stone into the orbit of the already injured eye. The creature crashed onto its side, thrashing its tail, its feeble, tiny fore-claws opening and closing helplessly.

  Its chest heaved. It no longer tried to rise. Graxen landed in a tree directly above. He let go of the stone. This time, it made a wet sound as it crashed into the dinosaur’s skull, and when it bounced away it left a visible indentation.

  The creature voided its bladder. Graxen now knew for certain the source of the scent that had haunted the valley earlier. He took a long, deep breath of the foul air. Was the creature dying? Its breaths were ragged, irregular. Wearily, Graxen dropped down for another stone. As long as he could hear it breathing, his work wasn’t done.

  THE SUN WAS SETTING as Graxen dragged the buck up the steep slope leading to the cave. He’d been gone all day. It had taken thirteen stones to finally silence the beast, and in the aftermath he’d been too weary to fly. He’d also lost his way in the shadows of the forest, and had taken hours to find his way back to the field. His search for the stag had been facilitated by the buzzards circling overhead.

  “Graxen,” said Nadala, perched on a boulder near the mouth of the cave. “I take it you killed the dinosaur?”

  He looked up at her. “How did—”

  “The thing was hardly silent when it came roaring into the field. It woke me. I saw you lead it into the forest. I heard much of the fight that followed.”

  “Were you worried?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  Graxen thought this was a bit callous, but held his tongue. She disappeared from the rock. A cascade of loosed gravel came down the path as she slid down the slope to join him. She eyed the stag with cool eyes. “Pity the hindquarter got so mangled.” She grabbed a leg and said, “Hurry. You can’t believe how famished I am.”

  Curiously, though he’d been absolutely starved this morning, he’d forgotten his hunger while killing the dinosaur. He’d felt his hunger rise while searching for the stag, but had lost it again at the sight of all the flies covering the bloodied carcass.

  Nadala grunted as she strained to pull the deer higher up the slope. Graxen pushed as best he could, but he had little strength left. It was dark by the time they reached the cave. Graxen collapsed to the floor, panting. Nadala had built a fire in his absence. It had already warmed the cave and chased away much of the dampness. She’d also gathered leaves and grass and covered them with buckskin to make crude beds. He appreciated the gesture, but felt too tired to crawl onto one.

  “Was it a tyrannosaurus?” asked Nadala.

  “It may have been,” said Graxen. “Once the buzzards pick the flesh off the skull I may recognize it better.”

  Nadala had taken the whetstone from the pack and started sharpening the spearhead. Even broken, the blade would remove the hide from the deer far more effectively than their claws, and keep more of it intact for future use.

  “Not even a little?” he asked.

  “Worried?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “A little,” she admitted. “But… you’re Graxen the Gray. The first time we met, I chased you and you eluded me. The dinosaur had no hope of catching you.”

  “I could have escaped it easily,” he said. “But how did you know I’d kill it?”

  “Because,” she said, sliding the spearhead against the stone. “I told you to. Yesterday. I thought it was a bear then, of course. But, I had faith in you.”

  “More faith than I have in myself, perhaps,” said Graxen. “I still haven’t technically successfully hunted a deer.”

  “Do you think dinosaur is edible?” she asked.

  “We’ll find out, I imagine.”

  “Graxen,” she said, putting down the stone and spear. She came to his side and curled up next to him on the ground, her body hot against his. “I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t be hard if I didn’t believe in you. I wouldn’t be pregnant if I didn’t believe you were a worthy mate. Always remember that. If I’m sometimes terse, or harsh—”

  “You are the whetstone,” said Graxen. “I am the blade.”

  “We are the whetstone,” she said. “We are the blade. Together, we shall be sharp enough to carve a home from this wilderness. Do you believe in me?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Then you believe in yourself,” she said, nuzzling her cheek to his. “Welcome to our home, Graxen.”

  “Welcome to our home, Nadala,” he said, as the stars grew crisp in the cooling night.

  Haunted

  THERE’S A DRAGON in the henhouse,” said Zeeky, looking up from the candlelit page before her.

  Bitterwood gazed at her wearily from the bed, half asleep, wondering if she’d actually spoken or if he’d dreamt the words.

  Zeeky tilted her head to the side, a look of concentration on her face. “Three of them, sounds like.” The two dogs by her feet lifted their heads, sniffing the air.

  Bitterwood rose with a groan, fumbling in the shadows next to his bed for his boots. His body ached from the day’s labor. He and Jeremiah had spent most of the afternoon repairing the stone fence that ran along the eastern boundary of his farm. The boy slumbered soundly, snoring, oblivious to Zeeky’s words. Jeremiah didn’t even stir when the dogs rose, barking as they ran to the door.

  “You don’t have to go out,” said Zeeky, rising from her chair. “They’ll run when they hear Nut and Catfish coming.” She pulled the wooden peg that held the door shut. The door cracked open and the two dogs shot through, baying loudly, sounding joyous as they bolted into the moonless dark of the summer night.

  “It’s not enough that they run,” Bitterwood said, pulling on his boots, his weariness leaving him with each heartbeat. Dragons! He’d heard about raids on neighboring farms, but so far they’d stayed clear of his land. “They’ll try again another night, or go down the road to the widow’s farm and kill her chickens, or worse.”

  “It’s just some old tatterwings,” said Zeeky, stepping out into the yard. She had his dark brown cloak draped over her shoulders, so that in the dim starlight it looked as if her head with its bright blond hair was floating, disembodied.

  “You see them?” Bitterwood asked, taking his bow down from the wall. He could see in the dark better than most men, but was no match for Zeeky. The girl’s senses bordered on the supernatural. She could read the body language of animals with such eerie precision it was like she could converse with them, and, as had just been proven, not even the dogs could match her in filtering out odd noises from the normal background symphony of bugs and frogs and the breeze rustling through the corn.

  Zeeky shook her head “I didn’t see them, just heard them, and I’ve lost track now that the dogs are making such a racket. They hightailed it for the creek, but I’m not sure if they crossed it.”

  “How do you know it’s tatterwings?” he asked.

  “The way their claws sounded on the ground. Tatterwings don’t hop as much as other sky-dragons.”

  Bitterwood had spent twenty years hunting dragons and thought he knew all there was to know about them, but he’d never noticed this detail. Not that he’d spent much time hunting tatterwings. These were outcast sky-dragons, their wings slashed by brother dragons as punishment for crimes. They were so pathetic
it was almost more cruel to let them live, but he couldn’t turn a blind eye to their theft.

  “They only got a couple of chickens,” said Zeeky, as Bitterwood stepped through the door. “Betsy and Tabby, I think, and maybe Luck? It’s probably too late to save them. You really don’t need to go out there.” She looked worried, and he heard the fear underlying her words.

  “I swear they won’t hurt me,” he said.

  “I’m not worried they’ll hurt you,” she said. “I’m worried…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothin’,” she said.

  He moved past her. The dogs were barking on the other side of the creek now, heading for the river near where his property met up with the widow’s land.

  He gave chase, relying more on his familiarity with the land than his eyes. What stars were visible glowed softly through haze. The night air hung thick and stifling as ran along the edge of the cornfield. It had been a hot, wet summer, with storms almost daily. The creek, a bare trickle along a gravel bed when he’d settled the land, was now brown and roiling and several yards wide. Even in the dark, he knew where the rocks were just beneath the surface and with two jumps was across. He passed by the chicken coop, the door still open, feathers drifting in the air. He didn’t stop to see if Zeeky was right about which hens were missing, but ran straight on into the forest, following the howls of the dogs.

  He frowned as he realized how quickly he was catching up to the baying dogs. They were no longer giving chase. With luck, they’d treed the dragons. But, there was a second possibility. He pushed through the brambles that ran along the river bank until he reached the open spot where he and Jeremiah went fishing. He finally spotted the dogs, racing back and forth along the bank, barking with frustration at the river. The water churned too violently for the dogs to risk jumping in. Would the dragons have taken the risk?

  “Damn it,” Bitterwood said with a sigh, realizing how the tatterwings had gotten away. He moved up the bank to the old oak tree. The dugout canoe he kept there was gone.

  He ran back to the water and splashed into it, the swift current nearly knocking him off his feet. Shin deep, he stared downriver, trying to make sense of the shadows. The tatterwings couldn’t have gotten far even with the swiftness of the current. He thought perhaps he saw a faint movement in the darkness near the river bend a hundred yards away. He plucked an arrow from his quiver, took aim at a target that might have existed only in his imagination, and let the shot fly. In the dark, he could track the swift arrow only a few dozen feet before it vanished. He thought he heard a yelp, but he couldn’t be sure over the roar of the water and the noise of the dogs.

  He lowered his bow, feeling the stiffness of his body. Once, he’d lived for nights such as this, pursuing dragons through the darkness. In those years, he’d lived off the land, sleeping by day, often going weeks without cooked meals. He’d been lean and hungry, fueled by hatred, and certainly hadn’t needed an excuse to hunt a dragon other than that it was a dragon.

  But that was a different life. He slept in a bed now, and, though he worked hard all day, his once angular form was softening as he daily ate his fill of food grown from his own land. Though he had no help other than Zeeky and Jeremiah, and despite his lack of practice in working the land, his farm had been far more productive than any other in the area. Part of this was the richness of the soil by the river, and part of this was due to the rather unusual speed and strength of the creature to which he yoked his plow. Bitterwood had work to do in the morning. He couldn’t be out all night chasing chicken thieves, and he might have been tempted to go back to bed if it wasn’t for the canoe. It wasn’t his; he’d borrowed it from the widow in the spring, before the garden was producing and fishing had been an important part of their diet. She hadn’t had it in the water since her husband and eldest son died during the battle of Dragon Forge, and she’d told him he could use it as long as he wanted, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of telling her that he’d let a couple of dragons get away with it. The more he thought of admitting any defeat by a dragon, however small, the more his guts felt full of broken glass, and with no further thought he knew he would chase these dragons to hell if needed.

  His weariness left him as he dashed back through the woods toward the house, the dogs at his heels. He stopped when he spotted a small pale form wobbling through the underbrush a little ways off to his left. It was a hen, probably one the dragons had stolen then dropped in their haste to flee the dogs. He snatched it up and tucked it under his arm, carrying across the swollen creek to deposit it in the chicken coop once more. His eyes flickered quickly over the forms within.

  “If you’re counting,” said Zeeky, emerging from the darkness beside him. “There’s three missing, Bitsy, Tabby, and Luck, like I thought.”

  “I’ve got Tabby here,” Bitterwood said, closing the door to the coop. “You shouldn’t be out alone. Where’s Jeremiah?”

  “Still sleeping,” she said. “And I’m not alone.” She nodded toward the barn door, which was flung open. She made a chirping noise, and Skitter emerged from the barn, his copper scales glinting in the pale starlight.

  Skitter was a long-wyrm, fifty feet long from snout to tail tip, sporting fourteen pairs of legs along his serpentine body. The long-wyrm could move twice as fast as any horse and if his stamina had limits, Bitterwood had yet to discover them. The beast was gentle and obedient as any of the dogs and the expense of keeping such a creature fed was more than offset by Skitter’s unnatural speed at drawing a plow through even the rockiest of soil.

  Bitterwood leapt bareback onto the beast.

  “There’s no reason to go after them,” said Zeeky, grabbing his boot. “The other hens are probably dead already.”

  “They stole the widow’s canoe,” said Bitterwood.

  Zeeky frowned, looking even more worried.

  “Why don’t you want me to chase them?” said Bitterwood. “I thought you liked the chickens.”

  “I love all our animals,” Zeeky said. “Just not enough to avenge their deaths.”

  “There’s no chance I’ll get hurt.”

  She shook her head. “You haven’t killed a dragon in months.”

  “You’re worried I’m out of practice?”

  “I’m worried… it’s just that…” Her voice trailed off. She let go of his boot. “It’s nothing. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.”

  “I always say the same thing about you,” he said, digging his heels into Skitter’s sides.

  The beast shot off, tearing along the muddy path toward the river. The long-wyrm’s claws made a slurpy, sucking sound as it raced through the muck. Fortunately, the dragons in the canoe wouldn’t hear him over the sound of the churning water.

  He doubted the dragons had gotten far in the canoe. The dugout was heavy, and while the weight lent it stability on the water, it also made it tricky to steer. He suspected they could be no more than a few hundred yards downstream by now.

  Fortunately, as fast as Skitter was on land, he was equally swift in the water. The great beast plunged into the river, obeying Bitterwood’s chirping commands. It swam along the surface, easily navigating through the churn. Bitterwood shivered. Compared to the warmth of the sultry summer night, the rain-fed river felt almost icy.

  He was only in the water for a few minutes before he spotted the abandoned canoe on the far bank. Skitter climbed the bank beside the vessel.

  Bitterwood jumped down into the mud and looked at the dugout. It was half full of water and he quickly saw why. His arrow had hit its unseen mark after all. The bow and quiver had been given to him by the woman who called herself the Goddess. Through some magic he didn’t understand, the arrows grew in the living quiver as perfectly straight twigs with leaves for fletching, and fresh arrows replaced the old ones almost as swiftly as he plucked them. The tips were tiny black dots that could punch a clean hole through anything, even a cast iron skillet. His arrow had left a small hole below the waterli
ne on the left side of the canoe.

  But it hadn’t been only the canoe he’d hit. He sniffed, catching a familiar scent. The water in the canoe carried the faintest trace of blood. Running his hand along the bottom, he found the reason for the blood as he picked up a single hind-claw of a sky-dragon, cleanly severed at the first knuckle. His arrow had passed through the dragon’s talon on its way through the bottom of the boat.

  Bitterwood studied the ground surrounding the canoe. There were a hundred clues telling him which way the dragons had fled. Talon marks in the mud, bent branches, stray chicken feathers. Following them wouldn’t be difficult. Of course, he probably didn’t need his skills as a tracker to find the tatterwings. He knew exactly where they were going. Ten miles outside of Dragon Forge, along the road to Richmond, a sizable band of earth-dragons had taken up residence in the village of Multon, once the closest human town to the foundries, though every last resident had been slaughtered not long after Ragnar and Burke had captured Dragon Forge.

  Why Burke hadn’t driven the dragons out of Multon was a mystery to Bitterwood. Perhaps he didn’t see the danger the dragons posed, since they were leaderless. The new dragon-king, Hex, claimed he had no use for an army. He even denied being king, despite his fondness for issuing proclamations. The earth-dragons, no longer employed as soldiers, also had little success as raiders. Burke’s guns had made the local militia more than equal to the roughest earth-dragon, so they generally stayed well clear of Dragon Forge. Burke had also trained a hundred or so men to serve as rangers, patrolling the farmlands on the south side of the river, or at least patrolling those farms willing to pay for security. Bitterwood had never agreed to the ranger’s protection. He viewed men who needed to fight with guns with almost the same level of disdain he had toward dragons. Burke’s guns were loud, smelly, and slow to reload. He could kill a dozen dragons with his bow, silently, swiftly, before an encampment of dragons would even know of his presence. It disgusted him to see Burke’s rangers acting brave because of their weapons. To Bitterwood, the guns were all noise and flash, and the men who carried them would likely break and run if ever faced with a foe with even a small measure of courage.