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

by Craig Halloran

  Nath picked his way through the town, making a headcount of the soldiers.

  Fourteen.

  It seemed lean for a town of a few thousand people, but even though the people were superior in number, they weren’t fighters. Their strongest men were probably those who filled the graveyard outside of town. He started to see the inside. Scout. Report.

  He spent the next hour crouched alongside a small cabin on the edge of the town, watching the soldiers patrol back and forth. Lizard men’s tails dragged over the muddy roads. Orcs snorted with harsh laughter. They weren’t worried about anyone or anything. Maybe it was because this village wasn’t that important. Maybe it was because … They’re stupid.

  Backing away along the side of the cabin and around the corner in the back, he turned and found himself face to face with a pair of orcs.

  Sultans of Sulfur!

  CHAPTER 2

  Brenwar’s stubby fingers checked the buckles on his dwarven armor and fingered the chain’s heavy links one at a time.

  “One thousand and one,” he said to himself. “Dwarven … The finest armor and ale.” His fingers started to fidget through the links again. “One, two, three, four …”

  Below the mountain, the fog had become so thick he could barely make out the small town, and the darkness didn’t help. Still, the hamlet nestled on the backside of the mountains didn’t make much of a sound. Evil was a quiet business. A viper ready to strike in the night. That was what worried him.

  Nath was down there, and he liked to make noise when he wanted to. The fact that nothing yet burned nor had any clamor risen left the tiniest of butterflies in Brenwar’s stomach.

  “It’s been twenty-five years. ’Bout time he grew up. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four.”

  He had to admit, Nath’s character changes were a little more than surprising. Given his dragonly powers, he’d shown something new. Responsibility. This reborn young man or dragon listened. Took counsel. Made plans rather than just throwing himself right at it. And there was something else. Guilt behind Nath’s golden eyes. And his shoulders hung heavy.

  One hundred thirty, one hundred thirty-one, one hundred thirty-two.

  Brenwar had been with Nath since he was a boy: always happy, brave, and somewhat unpredictable. Brenwar had guilt of his own. Though Nath was nothing close to a dwarf, he felt like Nath was one of his own. And he felt like he had failed him. Brenwar had reinforced all the rights and wrongs Nath’s father had told him—if a dozen times, then a hundred—and still, they’d almost lost him. He might even yet be lost.

  “Five hundred sixteen, five hundred seventeen … eh?”

  The woodland behind him crackled.

  Hidden deep in the shadows, he grabbed his war hammer and slowly turned his head.

  Slow, soft steps came. He sniffed the air. Nothing. His beady eyes squinted in the dark, gazing left and right. He waited. No more footfalls came. Whatever or whoever it was had sniffed him out. He thought of the satyrs. He’d shaken them a hundred times over the years, and still they came. Poking their little heads where they didn’t belong. Playing music that turned his head inside out. If it was the satyrs, he’d end them right now.

  “Come out of there,” Brenwar growled.

  Two dark figures drifted from behind the tall pines. Small, dark, and horned.

  “Brenwar,” a familiar voice said, coming closer, “you hid quite well for a dwarf. Even a venerable one.”

  “Keep your voice down, Pilpin.”

  The little dwarf looked around. “Why?”

  “I suppose no one can hear us,” the other dwarf said, coming forward. It was Gorlee, still wearing light-grey dwarven robes and sandals. “Where’s Nath?”

  Brenwar looked down the mountain. “Where do you think?”

  “He slipped out on you, didn’t he?” Pilpin said. The tiny dwarf marched forward with his breast plate stuck out. He slapped the head of his war mace in his hand. “I’ll fetch him.”

  “Nay,” Brenwar said, “I gave him my blessing.”

  Pilpin stopped and turned.

  Gorlee’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “You should have waited on me.”

  “I didn’t know when you were coming. Besides, we can’t keep Nath on a leash. At some point we have to trust him … again.”

  “He’s come a long way, then,” Gorlee said, eyeing Brenwar.

  “He’s further than he’s ever been, and he hasn’t let us down so far.”

  “So, you trust him?”

  Brenwar shrugged.

  “I trust him,” Pilpin said. “Nath has never let us down. Not since I’ve known him. He’s a friend. A good one.”

  “Aye.” Brenwar slapped his hand on Pilpin’s armored shoulder. “A good one. But I still think we should shuffle closer.”

  “Why’s that?” Gorlee said.

  “I think there’s a trap down there.”

  “A trap?” Gorlee said, “Then why did you let him go?”

  “I told him what I thought. Might as well let him prove me right or prove me wrong.”

  “I question your judgment on this matter,” Gorlee said, taking the lead.

  Pilpin looked at him and looked away.

  Brenwar felt some guilt, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to bail Nath out. At some point, he had to trust him to do what needed to be done. After all, that’s how dwarves did things. Plan all you want, but sometimes you just have to do. He’d made his decision. Nath had made his own. They were both men and willing to live with them.

  They made it to the bottom of the hill, cut through the fog, and stopped on the edge of the town. All was quiet. Ghostly. The rustle of patrolling soldiers’ armor caught his ears. There should be more soldiers, Brenwar thought. A dozen. A few more maybe and that was it. Other cities this small had three times as many.

  Squawk!

  Silence was shattered.

  Squawk!

  The sound was loud. Abrupt. It wasn’t a bird that made the sound, either. It was something larger, at ground level.

  Shoulda stayed on the mountain, Brenwar thought.

  Gorlee and Pilpin were back alongside him.

  “What do we do?” Pilpin said.

  Brenwar nodded his chin and headed back toward the bottom of the mountain. Pilpin followed, but Gorlee was gone. Drat it! Now, one listens but not the other.

  Squawk!

  Pilpin tugged at Brenwar’s elbow.

  “Do I hear what I think I hear?” Pilpin said, pulling the small shield off his shoulders.

  “Aye,” Brenwar said, readying his war hammer. “It be dragon hounds, and more than one of them, I suspect.”

  “So, it’s a trap then?”

  “And a problem. A big one.”

  CHAPTER 3

  In an instant, Nath’s clawed fingers locked around the throats of the wide-eyed orcs. He lifted them up, choking and feet dangling off the ground.

  “Quiet now,” he said, squeezing a little harder.

  Orcs. He hated them. They were like men, but with hard muscles covered in thick skin and coarse hair. Some of them had a lot of lard in their bellies, too. And they stank. Nath should have caught the scent sooner.

  They kicked at him.

  He rattled their necks.

  “None of that now,” he warned in a whisper. He wasn’t certain they understood him, so he rattled them again, jogging their eyeballs in their sockets. “Aw, drat.”

  Nath was crafty, but completing tasks without inflicting blunt-force trauma wasn’t a skill set he had mastered. His objective was simple: Move into the town. Scout. Go back and report. The conditions couldn’t have been any better. There was fog. Rain. Everything he needed to conceal himself. And he’d blown it.

  This isn’t my fault!

  He glared at the orcs. This pair wasn’t where they were supposed to be. They should have been posted somewhere. Standing guard. Maybe sleeping. A clay jug fell from one’s hand and spilled onto the grass. Nath could smell ale.

  “Well, i
f you thought that ale would give you a hangover,” he said, “wait till you feel this.” He slammed their heads together.

  Clok!

  One orc went out cold. The other’s eyes bounced inside his head.

  Stupid orcs. Even rocks are softer than their heads. He slammed them together again.

  Clok!

  Both orcs were out, and he lowered them to the ground.

  “Great,” he whispered to himself.

  At some point, the orcs would wake up and they’d remember what had happened. Killing them wasn’t an option. Hiding them wasn’t a good one, either. A senior patrol would come looking for them, wondering why they weren’t at their post. That could be any minute now.

  Great move, Dragon. Great move.

  Nath felt eyes on his back. Only the cabin was behind him. He eased himself backward and heard the door start to close. He lashed out, stuffing his hand inside the door jamb. The door slammed on his fingers. Whack! Whack! Whack!

  He pushed the door open, stepped inside, and eased the door shut behind him. A little boy stood looking up at him, gaping. A young woman had her arms around him, sobbing.

  “Please don’t—”

  Nath wrapped his hand around her mouth.

  “Sssssh,” he said. “You don’t want to wake the orcs.” He winked at her and smiled. “Do you?”

  Her posture eased. The little boy reached up and felt the scales on his arms.

  “Feels like a snake, Mommy.”

  “No,” Nath corrected, rubbing the boy’s tawny head, “It feels like a dragon.”

  The boy jerked his hand away.

  “Like the ones in the barns?”

  “Barns?” Nath said. His heart jumped a little. He looked at the young woman. “What barns? What dragons?”

  She drew her son back into her arms and stepped backward.

  Nath felt her fear. Terror. His eyes searched the room. A small lantern glowed dimly on a corner table. There were cupboards, a sofa, and a few wooden chairs. Blankets were spread over a decent-sized bed. He turned his gaze to the woman.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  She didn’t say anything, but the boy did.

  “They killed him.”

  The young woman covered her son’s mouth and shushed him. Nath took a moment to get a better look at both of them. The young woman had a pretty face and long brown hair that hid a dark mark around her eye. Her lips were cracked, either from the heat or from being smacked. The boy she held had lash marks on his bony arms. The clothes they wore, once colorful, were now dirty and tattered.

  Nath kneeled.

  “Who killed them, the Overseers or the dragons?”

  “You should go,” the woman said. “Just leave us alone.”

  Nath shook his head. So many towns. So many cities had fallen to the lash of their oppressors. Armies, battalions, legions invaded. They ravaged, pillaged, and took over. The wells of life ran full of despair in small places such as this. Nath’s blood ran hot.

  “I’ll go,” Nath agreed, “as soon as you tell me what I want to know. Who did this? Who’s in charge? What dragons and where are they?”

  The little boy looked up at his mother and said, “Tell him, Mommy. Tell him.”

  She shook her head. Closed her eyes. “Just go. Please!” she whispered.

  “I can rid you of this menace,” Nath said.

  “You are just one man.”

  “Oh,” he said, shaking his head. He extended his clawed hands. “I’m no man, and I’m not alone, either.”

  “The Overseer, a large sluggard of a man, killed my husband. He threw a spear into his back after my husband had words with him.” Tears streamed down her cheek. “He murdered him right before my eyes. Right before my son. No child should see that. None.” She sobbed. “I’ll never forget that look in my husband’s eyes when he fell.”

  The boy turned around and hugged his mother. “It’s all right, Mommy. Don’t cry anymore.”

  Looking at Nath, she said, “I don’t want to see anyone die anymore. Nor my son either.”

  “Where is this sluggard? This Overseer?”

  “They stay in the main assembly near the middle of town,” the boy said. “If you listen, you’ll hear their coarse songs and laughter.” He slipped from his mother and headed for the window. “They say the strangest and ugliest words. And I’ve heard ravens carry a better tune.” He looked at Nath. “Some people just shouldn’t be singing. Or speaking.”

  “And these dragons? Tell me about them. Are they big like a horse or small like a dog?”

  The Overseers didn’t concern Nath so much as the dragons. It was no wonder there weren’t so many soldiers keeping the city under wraps if they had dragons keeping a terrifying eye on things. Of course, that was assuming that the dragons were indeed dragons and not something else. If they were indeed dragons, then who controlled them? It couldn’t just be a handful of common soldiers.

  “They stay in the barns outside of town facing the mountains. They have six legs and tiny wings. Dark purple and black tailed.” The boy shivered. “They scare me.”

  “Are you certain?” Nath said.

  The boy nodded.

  Nath reached behind his back. No Akron. No Fang. Ben had Akron. Nath and Fang hadn’t been getting along, so he had sheathed his sword and set it aside. It troubled him that Fang didn’t feel comfortable in his clawed hand anymore.

  “How many?” he asked.

  Squawk!

  The boy’s eyes popped open. He dashed into his mother’s arms.

  There was a dragon out there, all right. Not all dragons were quiet. They had to communicate, and many used bird sounds. Others made sounds that would freeze the blood in your veins.

  Squawk!

  The sharp sound cut through the streets. Vibrated the cabin. The dragon out there was terrible. Plain terrible. A six-legged bluu dragon. A real predator. No wonder the people were terrified. Drat!

  There was very little that Nath didn’t know about dragons. Born of dragons in Dragon Home, or the Mountain of Doom, as the commoners called it, he’d learned all there was to know. Their sounds. Their scales. Habits. Weapons. Magic. His father the Dragon King had educated him on all that during Nath’s first hundred years.

  Nath gazed at the boy, nuzzled in his mother’s arms. His father was gone. Their provider. Protector. It made him thankful he still had his own father, even though he couldn’t see him. That made him wish he’d spent more time with him when he’d had the chance. Made him wonder if he’d ever see his father again and made him miss Dragon Home more than ever.

  Squawk!

  The young woman gasped.

  “That sound. That horrible sound.”

  Nath didn’t remember hearing the sound the night before.

  “How often does it come out?”

  “Every few days or so,” she said. “It picks through the streets.”

  “It eats people,” the boy said. “It ate my friend.”

  “Dragons don’t eat people,” Nath said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No, they don’t, at least, not any that I’ve ever known. But they do like orcs. I’m certain of that. Your friend wasn’t an orc, was he?”

  The boy shook his head.

  Did giants and some of the other foul races and creatures eat people on Nalzambor? Yes. But dragons, much like people, did not. They might kill them by the bushel. Or roast them. But they didn’t eat people. At least, that was how it had always been.

  Perhaps things had changed.

  Nath walked over to the boy and woman, saying, “I’ll take care of this.” He patted the boy’s head. “No dragons will be eating any people.”

  “Promise?” the boy said.

  “Indeed,” Nath said. “Now stay with your mother.” Headed for the back door, he turned back one last time, and nodded.

  As Nath headed out the door, he heard the boy speak one more time.

  “I hope you don’t get eaten.”

  Squawk!


  CHAPTER 4

  Squawk!

  “Brenwar,” Pilpin said, “What is that thing, a giant bird?”

  Hunkered down at the edge of the mountain, Brenwar said, “Hush.”

  “But it bothers my ears. Rattles the hairs in my beard.” Pilpin scrunched up his face. “I want to make it stop.”

  Brenwar had as much patience as a stone, but it began to wear. Something strange was in the small town, and Nath was in there. Gorlee had disappeared as well. Can’t take anything that’s not a dwarf anywhere!

  “I think what yer hearing isn’t any bird. That’s a dragon calling.”

  “Sounds like a bird.”

  “Aye, a featherless bird with a hide like iron.”

  “Oh,” Pilpin said, glancing upward. “It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere. Do you think it’s calling more dragons?”

  Brenwar grumbled. Trap! He had a feeling their luck would be running out soon. The Clerics of Barnabus wanted Nath Dragon. They had made that clear. He’d slipped past them for twenty-five years. Now rumors of a black-scaled, red-haired man’s exploits had begun to spread. Now the walls were closing in. And Brenwar was sure what the next step was. Soon enough, they’d have to join the wars that waged all around. Would Nath Dragon be ready? That worried him.

  He pulled Pilpin over by the neck of his armor and looked him in the eye. “Are you ready?”

  “Does my beard have hairs?” Pilpin said, getting excited. “Does a dragon have scales? An orc, a malodourous hide and breath? A giant, hair in his nose? Do roosters crow? Do—mrph?”

  With his had clamped over Pilpin’s mouth, Brenwar said, “All right.” He grabbed a small horn of bone that dangled like a necklace over Pilpin’s chest. “Be ready to use this. Come on.”

  “We’re going in, then?”

  “Were going in for a closer look. Stay close to my side, Pilpin. I’ve a feeling there’s a lot more in there than we’re hearing.”

  ***

  Gorlee changed. He was no longer an ancient dwarf adorned in heavy robes but something the opposite and less distinguished. His hands were ruddy, his hair coarse and black.