by Matt Forbeck
The table now between me and Ferd, Wint, and Ollie, I snatched the shotgun and my wand from my shoulder holster with a single sharp move. I leveled the gun at Wint, who was coming around the right side of the table at me, and I let my wand drop from my grasp and land in my off hand.
“Hold it!” I shouted at the orc. Staring straight down the barrel of my sawed-off and watching an eager glow race along the runes engraved in its steel, he skidded to a stop with a frustrated snarl.
“Check your left!” Kai said.
I glanced that way, in the direction where Kai had been sitting a moment ago. He’d flung himself away from the table as soon as I’d shoved on it, and I’d taken that as a good sign. While he’d served me up to these bastards, he wasn’t going to join in the feast.
Instead of Kai standing there beside me, though, I saw Ollie sticking his arm around that side of the table, a small pistol in his fist.
I knew the toothless goblin wasn’t there to chat. I threw myself backward and tried to bring my shotgun around to bear on him at the same time. Instead of cursing my luck, I started to spit out a spell too, sure that I’d never have a chance to finish it.
Ollie’s little gun went off, the crack ringing loud in the tight room. Pain stabbed through my right side as the bullet creased my ribs, tearing a shallow furrow through my flesh.
Out of reflex from the pain more than anything else, I squeezed my shotgun’s trigger as I stumbled backward. The recoil knocked me flat, which I suppose I should have been grateful for, as it put me below the blast from my shotgun shell.
I don’t know what kind of trouble I’d been expecting to run into when I let Kai talk me into coming down to Goblintown with him, but I’d loaded my shotgun with an enchanted shell before I strolled out of the Quill with him. When I pulled the trigger, I knew I was too close to whatever the thing would hit, but if it came down to getting shot down by a toothless goblin or taking myself out along with him and his friends, I had no regrets.
The magic load went off as it smacked into the table next to Ollie’s head. I like to think the little goblin had an instant of relief between the moment he realized I’d missed him and the point at which the spell in the buckshot went off and exploded into a ball of fire that engulfed the table and anyone standing near it.
The flames immolated the goblin as if he’d soaked his clothes in whisky, which maybe he had. He didn’t even have time to scream before they turned him into a blackened crispy shadow of himself.
I felt lucky to have been knocked to the floor. The blast of fire bloomed over me but rose toward the ceiling rather than gouting toward the ground, where it would have barbecued me as fast as it had turned Ollie from a rare goblin to well done. It scorched my skin and singed my clothes and hair, but it didn’t set me ablaze.
I couldn’t say the same about the table, though, which went up like the kindling in a funeral pyre. I blinked my eyes to clear my vision, then realized it was the heat warping the air that made everything look funny.
A howl went up from behind the table, and an instant later a chair smashed into the wall of fire from that same angle. That knocked it aside and into a neighboring table of hard-nosed orcs who growled in protest.
I didn’t worry about them for an instant though. I was too busy staring down the broiled ogre standing where the table had once been and reaching for me with a blistered mitt bigger than my head.
CHAPTER THREE
I dropped the shotgun, which was useless now, its single shell already spent. I didn’t have the time to reload it, so I reached for my wand instead, the words to a nasty little spell already on my lips. They froze there an instant later when I realized I’d dropped the damn thing while trying to shield my face from the explosion.
I could have cast the spell without the wand, sure, but it’s a lot harder trick to pull off. The wand might only be a tool, but it’s a damn handy one. In theory I can pound nails with my forehead too, but forgive me if I’d much rather try it with a hammer.
I decided to give it a shot anyhow, realizing that I didn’t have much of a choice other than rolling over and dying. Ferd backhanded that idea right out of me.
Stunned by the blow, I couldn’t put up much of a fight as the ogre grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me up into the air. Dangling there in his grasp, my feet flailing a full foot off the floor, I glanced around, hunting for some kind of weapon, someone who might lend me a hand — anything. All I saw were dozens of scorched and furious faces glaring and snarling at me.
None of them belonged to Kai, which didn’t surprise me much. I didn’t expect he’d join in the effort to murder me in a messy and satisfying manner, but he wouldn’t want to stick around to watch it either. Knowing him, he was already halfway down the street and making an obnoxious effort to be noticed in a pathetic effort at establishing some kind of flimsy alibi.
“You pale little git,” Ferd said with a growl that would have sent a pack of rabid wolves running off with their tails wedged between their legs. “I’m not cruel. I was going to make this quick — snap your skinny neck and be done with it.”
He leaned in close enough that I could smell what he’d been drinking for the past week, and I had to fight not to gag on the scent. “Now,” he said, “I think I’ll take my time.”
I headbutted him in his nose as hard as I could. Rather than feel the bone there crunch in the satisfying way I’d been hoping for, though, it felt like I’d just smacked my head into a stone wall. I reeled back as far as the ogre’s grip would allow and groaned aloud in agony.
Ferd chuckled at me. “Maybe I’ll kill you quick after all. There’s a bit too much fight in you, isn’t there?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he didn’t care to listen. He lifted me another foot into the air to give himself a bit more room, then slammed me down into the floor.
My back smashed into the floorboards, which would have been enough to knock the air from my lungs, but the ogre’s fist followed through into my chest and made sure to finish that job. It felt awful enough to have my chest squeezed clear like that, but then the ogre flattened his massive hand against my chest and pressed down, doing his best to ensure that the last breath I’d taken would be my final one too.
I reached up and put my hands around Ferd’s arm and tried to shove it away, but it felt as rough and solid as a tree trunk. I tried clawing at it with my fingers, but he just snickered down at me. I gave squirming out from underneath Ferd’s a hand a shot, but it was like trying to haul yourself out from beneath an avalanche. There just wasn’t anywhere to go.
My vision started to tunnel down hard, and I reached out in a desperate attempt to stab my fingers into the ogre’s eyes. He straightened his arm, locking it at the elbow, and leaned into it, adding a cracked rib to the suffocation. It struck me that it might be a race between whether I would die from a lack of air or a crushed heart.
I kicked and thrashed as hard as I could, searching for some last desperate way to grab some sort of edge from which I could pry myself loose from the ogre’s grasp. As my vision faded farther, my arms and legs grew heavier, and I found myself thinking that after all the things I’d been through, all the times I’d faced death and escaped it, this was a damn lousy way to die.
I heard a crash then, and splinters rained down onto my face. The weight on my chest shifted, and I dragged in one more ragged breath. Pain stabbed into my side from my cracked rib, but rather than flinching at it I relished it. Pain meant I was still alive, and the sharpness brought me focus.
Ferd twisted his head about, and I followed his gaze to see Wint standing to one side, the legs of a shattered chair still in his hands.
“What?” Ferd glared at Wint, his face a mask of bloodlust and rage.
“I’ve been shouting your name. You wouldn’t listen!” Wint held the chair legs up before him, then dropped them on the floor as if they’d turned hot enough to burn.
“I’m busy!”
The orc jerked his head tow
ard Kai, his nose ring glinting in the dim light of the shack’s cheap glowglobes. Kai held his double-barreled shotgun in both hands and poked the business end of it at Ferd, whose gaze finally focused on it. The ogre’s eyes grew wide with outrage.
“You want to cut another deal for yourself?” he said, confused and furious. “Now?”
Kai ran his tongue over his teeth. “You said you were going to toss him over the wall.”
Ferd snorted. “I’d be happy to. When I’m done with him.”
“Alive,” said Kai. “You said he’d still be alive.”
No one else in the room said a word. They just stared at the ogre in utter silence. The loudest sound in the place came from me trying to wheeze a bit more air into my lungs, and I wasn’t about to quit.
“Put that damn thing down, or I’ll toss you over with him.”
Kai cocked both barrels of his gun. “Go ahead and try.”
Ferd grunted like a mad bull. “That’s your game, eh? Sell your friend here to us for a little fun, and then play the hero for him instead?”
Kai edged a step forward. “Get off him. Now.”
I could hear the gears grinding in the ogre’s head. If Kai moved just a few inches closer, he might come within range of a vicious sweep of Ferd’s long arm. But could the ogre knock the shotgun aside before Kai pulled the trigger? Kai wasn’t giving him much of a choice but to try.
I felt Ferd tense up. “You want him?” He made a fist out of the hand on my chest, and I gasped in the momentary relief before it pressed back into my sternum.
The cunning bastard wanted it to look like he was going to throw me at Kai, hoping that might make Kai hesitate to pull the trigger. He hadn’t actually grabbed my shirt though. He planned to just swing as hard and fast at Kai as he could instead.
I wanted to warn Kai, but I couldn’t breathe well, much less talk. I grabbed the ogre’s wrist in a vain attempt to slow down his attack. Ferd pressed into my chest one last time as he prepared to unleash, and the pain threatened to blind me. My fingers fell from his arm, and he put his plan into motion.
As Ferd’s fist rose from my sternum, I put every last bit of strength I had into a vicious and well-aimed kick. I couldn’t manage it before when he was trying to crush me, but with his attention now on Kai, I had one last shot.
I planted my boot up and under his crotch as hard as I could, putting every last bit of desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength into it, and I connected with a satisfying thud.
Midway into his swing at Kai, Ferd froze, his eyes bulging out in pain and surprise. His momentum carried him off me, but his fist veered off its path toward Kai and joined his other hand in clutching at his injured groin.
I rolled away from him and pushed myself to my knees. I wanted nothing more than to throw up from the pain in my side, but my need to gasp fresh air into my aching chest overrode that for the moment.
Wint took a step back and glared at Kai and then me. “What good did that do you?” he said. “You think either one of you is going to walk out of here alive?”
Kai pointed his shotgun at Wint. “Who do you think’s going to stop us?”
Every chair in the shack scraped back from its table as the people in them got to their feet. I glanced around and saw a sea of angry green faces snarling at both me and Kai. I don’t know which one of us had them angrier — me, the human intruder, or Kai, who’d betrayed his own kind to keep me alive.
I figured we were about to find out. Kai could take out a handful of them with his shotgun — maybe more if he was clever enough to fire the barrels one at a time — but once he did that, we had nothing left. They’d tear us apart.
Worse yet, I saw that several of the people angry at us had pistols in their hands too. As soon as anyone started firing, the room would get crisscrossed with lead, and the floorboard would be bathed red.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Hey, fellas,” I said as I hauled myself to my feet. “It doesn’t have to go like this.”
None of them said a word. They just glowered at me as Kai surveyed them with the barrels of his rune-crusted weapon. All it would take was one wrong move, and we’d wind up with a bulk delivery for Dragon City’s morgue, with Kai and me piled at the bottom of it.
That’s when the door slammed open, falling half off its hinges, and a half-dozen well-armed members of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard stomped in, dressed in their crisp crimson uniforms piped with gold. Each of the elves held a wand in one hand and a blade in the other. They didn’t usually go for guns when they were on the job. For the most part, they didn’t need them.
The elf captain leading this squad of guards was my old pal — and I use that term loosely, in a way he never would — Yabair. He’d thrown me in jail more times than I could count, sometimes for good reason, but just as often for not. He sneered at me as he strode into the center of the room, his every movement daring someone to speak a cross word to him, much less attack him.
“You will stand down,” Yabair said to no one in particular and yet everyone within earshot. “This human here is under the protection of the Dragon Emperor. Any harm done to him shall be considered an assault upon the Emperor himself.”
The people in that room were some of the hardest and meanest in Dragon City, but none of them were dumb enough to challenge Yabair or his words. One by one, they returned to their seats, keeping their hands above the tables at which they sat. The only exceptions were me, Kai, Wint, and Ferd, who still rolled on the ground, his hands clutching his bruised crotch.
Wint cast furtive glances around, trying to drum up some kind of support among his friends, but none of them would meet his gaze. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he looked for a place to sit down and blend into the crowd himself. Instead all he spotted were the pieces of the chair he’d broken over Ferd’s back to get the ogre’s attention.
He swallowed hard, looked into Yabair’s unforgiving eyes, and then bolted for the door.
Yabair didn’t take a step after Wint. He just gave a sharp nod to the guard standing closest to the exit.
The elf hefted his sword and swung it in a deft and sure move that crossed through Wint’s path as the orc tried to dash past him. With a snap-step, he returned to his original stance to watch his actions bear fruit.
Wint took two more steps and faltered on the third. He stumbled to his knees, clutching a hand to his throat. Bright red blood seeped from between his fingers and coated the floor before him.
He stared in shock at the puddle spreading out before him until he fell over into it.
A few of the shack’s patrons gasped at Wint’s fate. Yabair glared in their direction, and they joined everyone else in turning away.
“Gibson,” Yabair said. “You’re alive. Come with me.”
It wasn’t a request. Most days I might have bristled at that, but considering how welcome I knew I’d be in that shack if I decided to defy him, I went along without a word of complaint.
Kai shouldered his shotgun and fell into step behind me. Yabair reached out and put a hand on his chest to stop him.
“You are not under the Dragon’s protection,” the elf said to Kai.
Kai looked down at Yabair’s hand as if he wanted to bite it, but he’d seen what the other guard had done to Wint. Taking on an elf in close quarters never made for good odds, but if Kai stayed here the rest of the shack’s patrons would rip him to pieces the moment the guards were out of sight.
I turned back and put my hand on Yabair’s arm. I knew I was taking my life in my own hands when I did this, but I was too tired, hurt, and angry to care. “He’s under mine,” I said.
Kai’s breath caught in his chest, and I looked into his eyes. I may not have wanted to call him a friend after the shit he’d pulled with me that night, but I also couldn’t forget that he’d risked his own life to save mine when his deal with them went sideways. I wasn’t about to leave him behind.
Yabair raised an eyebrow to mock me for bothering with Kai at all, but he removed hi
s hand to let the orc join us. Kai lifted the shotgun from his shoulder and slipped it back into the leather scabbard slung across his back, uncocking the weapon as he did. Then he trailed after me as I followed Yabair out into Dragon City’s night-shrouded streets.
The rest of the guards fell into step behind us. No one in the shack moved a muscle until the last one of them followed us out into the open air. Then the room burst into a sea of quiet murmurs and harsh whispers.
“Nice timing,” I said to Yabair. I stretched, testing my ribs, then winced as pain stabbed through my left side. It made a nice match for the burning sensation from the bullet that had creased me on my right. “Couldn’t you have found me a few minutes earlier though?”
Yabair snorted through his long, thin nose and led our little procession up a narrow street, toward the open square beyond. “A few minutes later, and perhaps I would have saved myself the trouble of ever having to find you again.”
After a cut like that, I’d be damned if I was going to thank him.
“What do you want?”
Goblintown wasn’t part of his patrol. The Guard proper mostly kept to the parts of the city higher than the Village. The Auxiliary Guard took care of the human parts of town and good chunks of the Big Hill too. No one watched over Goblintown.
“You left the dragonet.”
As we emerged into the open square — rickety buildings crowded and looming around it on all sides — he guided us toward a pair of flying chariots painted in the Guard’s colors, bright crimson with golden details. If I’d left a ride like that parked there, it would have been gone before I could have turned around to look for it, but even down here in Goblintown everyone knew better than to touch one of the Guard’s sleds.
“I’m a free man.”
Yabair gestured toward one of the chariots. “If it makes you feel better to think that, I won’t bother to disabuse you of your quaint notions.”
I pulled up short before the chariot. The rest of the guards got into the other one, leaving this one to Yabair, Kai, and me.