Bad Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  “What do you have in there?” Belle asked.

  “Only the best,” Kells said, his face breaking into a grin. He reached across the bar and gave her a good hug.

  “Hey, Belle,” Cindra said, echoing her husband’s actions with an embrace of her own for the elf. “Been too damn long.”

  I opened Kells’ bag and let out a low whistle. It was stuffed solid with enchanted guns and ammunition of all types. “You have enough to outfit an army in here.”

  “Which means we might have barely enough,” Kells said.

  “This must have cost you a fortune.”

  Kells gave me a too-easy shrug that told me I was spot on. “I’ve been scratching this stash together for years and years. You know, a little bit here, a little bit there. About time it finally saw some use.”

  “What do you recommend?” I asked.

  Kells rubbed his chin. “Mostly you should stick with what you have. This isn’t the time to take up a new weapon you’re not familiar with. In an operation like this, there’s not enough room for error.”

  He set out a few new boxes of shells for me, some of them in colors that I didn’t recognize. “These will work in your sawed-off shotgun. The red ones explode into fire. The blue ones freeze what they hit. The green ones, get this, actually heal what they hit.”

  “So I can blast someone back to health?”

  “I know! The silver ones here, though, they’re something special.”

  “How’s that?”

  Kells picked one out and held it up into the light, where it sparkled like a diamond. “They’re the size of a regular shotgun shell, but each shell actually holds a single slug. Made of dwarven steel, the toughest metal known, they can pierce armor like it’s not even there. They have a high-explosive load inside them that detonates upon impact, but just slowly enough that it happens after the bullet gets through any armor.”

  “Nice.” I took the slug from him and admired it. Although it felt cool, I had the simultaneous sensation that it burned my skin too.

  “That’s not the kicker. You feel that? It’s been suffused with an anti-magic field. Spells don’t do a damn bit of good against these things. Goes through enchanted armor like it was made of paper.”

  Then I spotted something I’d never seen before in the bag, and I hauled it out. It was a bit shorter than a rifle, but it had a pistol grip located forward of the shoulder stock, and metal disk the shape of a small drum — or maybe a tambourine — had been jammed up against the barrel forward of that.

  “What’s this?”

  Kells grinned. “You still have a great eye for mayhem, don’t you? It’s a new type of gun. Built it myself. I call it a submachine-gun.”

  I held it out and admired it. “What’s it ‘sub’ to?”

  Kells waggled his eyebrows at me. “It’s a lighter version of the full-sized machine-gun I’m working on. That’s large enough that it needs to be mounted on a tripod.”

  “How about on a carpet?”

  Kells shook his head. “Too heavy for the fabric. You need a much more solid base to work with.”

  A voice hollered down at us from the top of the stairs. “Hey, what kind of reunion party is this?” Danto said as he emerged from my room, all smiles despite being out of breath. “Next time, I expect a bit more notice.”

  “I thought I told you to come in through the back door,” I said.

  He dismissed my question with a wave as he sauntered down the stairs. “I’m too old to crawl through that damn tunnel of yours. I figured the front door would be barred, but there was this huge hole in the second story just calling my name. I had your friend Schaef drop me off there.”

  “Is he still there?” I asked. “What about Johan?”

  Danto nodded. “Sure, sure, sure. I told him to leave the meter running.”

  I grabbed Kells, who was just finishing up handing out his special ammunition to the rest of the crew. “Come with me,” I said to him. “I think I have just what you need.”

  I raced up the stairs with Kells right behind me, toting a much lighter bag on his shoulder. When I entered my room, I spotted Johan sitting there on Schaef’s carpet and peering in through the widened window. Schaef, meanwhile, kept his eyes peeled for any threats coming from outside the Quill, his eyes darting right, left, up, down, and all around.

  “Good work, you two.” I spoke straight to Johan then. “Do you have a way to get a hold of Ingo?”

  “Sure,” he nodded, unsure of what I was after. “He’s mine to command, or so I’m told”

  “Well, it’s time for the Brichts to make good on their offer to help me out. Take Kells here to that palanquin and borrow it.”

  “A palanquin?” Kells said. “A flying one?”

  Johan nodded.

  Kells grinned. “We’ll need to stop by my place first, but if we’re heading for the Stronghold, then it’s on the way.”

  “Hustle right back here when you’re done, Schaef.”

  The halfling snapped a salute to me as Kells leaped onto the carpet. The weight of his bag caused it to sag a bit in the middle, but the hack tipped the carpet a bit to the left to adjust for that and then took off once more into the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I went back downstairs and loaded myself up with all the shells I could carry. Then I ran over the most useful spells I knew in my head, making sure I wouldn’t blow one in the middle of the fight. It’s not just embarrassing when that happens. There’s a good chance it’s lethal.

  I also left Thumper with instructions about what to do if everything went wrong. He’d heard me go over these with him before, but it had been a while. He rarely gave me more than half his attention when I ran down the list, but after those assassins had blown a hole in the second-story wall, he nodded along with my every word and took notes too.

  Meanwhile, Danto helped himself to a full snifter of the best dragonfire we had in the bar. Cindra gave her weapons one last check. Moira and Belle chatted in the corner like the old friends they’d been, and I even heard them laughing with each other once or twice. That put a smile on my face.

  We were still waiting for Schaef to get back with his carpet when someone pounded on the door.

  “Open up!” Yabair said from the far side of the door. “By the order of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard!”

  “Hold on!” Thumper yelled. “I’m coming!”

  Everyone, including Thumper, looked at me. I pointed toward the hatch behind the bar and motioned for them all to go down it fast. Moira led the way with Belle right behind her. Cindra helped Danto move his rickety bones down the ladder there and then disappeared right behind him.

  That left Thumper in the bar with me and the dragonet. Yabair pounded on the door again. “Open this door now!” he said.

  “We’re closed!” Thumper walked up to the door, keeping well to the side of it. “Can it wait?” He looked at me and stifled a laugh.

  “We are here on the Dragon’s business. You will open this door now, or I will break it down!”

  I vaulted over the bar and made my way through the hatch. As I did, the door blasted inward with a loud explosion. I reached up to pull the hatch closed, but the dragonet leaped from my shoulders and zipped toward the now-open doorway.

  I wanted to follow him, but I knew if I did I’d probably wind up spending the rest of the day in a precinct cell — if I was lucky. Otherwise, I’d land in one of the lowest levels of the Garrett while the Guard interrogated me to death, and I had no desire to become the next meal on the Dragon’s menu.

  Still, I hesitated. I knew the Guard wouldn’t hurt the heir to the empire, but I didn’t feel good about leaving him up there alone.

  I started back up the ladder, but Moira grabbed me by the leg and hauled me down again. “He’ll be fine!” she said in a harsh whisper. “He did that to make sure you got away. Don’t waste that!”

  Much as I hated to admit it, I knew she was right. I pulled the hatch shut and latched it from the insi
de, then said a quick spell over it and tapped it with my wand. It would be impossible to see from above now, and even if Yabair figured out where it was, he wouldn’t be able to open it with anything shy of the kind of blast that might bring the entire bar down on his head.

  I almost wanted to see him try. Instead, I lit the tip of my wand with a spell so I could see where we were going, and I let Moira tug me down the tunnel.

  The tunnel wound around a bit and slipped down a ladder before it twisted around a bit more. It soon came out in the face of a cliff that looked over the top of Wall far below it, which made for a wonderful view of the countryside, if you could ignore all the hungry dead roaming across it.

  An illusion covered the exit, which came out behind a lush tree that seemed too large to be able to cling to the mountain’s rocky face. We slipped out of the tunnel and down the tree, then swung over onto the street below, which put us straight into the upper edge of Goblintown.

  Since I knew where we were going, I moved into the lead. Belle followed right behind me, her wand at the ready. Danto limped after her as fast as he could, with Moira grabbing his hand and tugging him along, cursing at him the entire time for being even slower than her little legs could manage. Cindra brought up the rear, her guns out and ready for action.

  It was early afternoon, which found Goblintown at its most sedate. Those who had legitimate jobs had already found their way to them, and the people who were most active at night were still in their beds, hiding from the sun. A few people gawked at the well-armed group of outsiders — three humans, an elf, and a one-handed halfling — loping through their grimmer part of town, but as long as we weren’t coming for them, they weren’t concerned enough to raise an alarm.

  I led us in the straightest way I knew to our destination, but it still meant cutting through a series of odd-shaped plazas, narrow streets, and surprising turns. Soon enough, we emerged into the square out of which Yabair had flown Kai and me the other night.

  A grubby halfling stood in the middle of the open area, next to a small, dirty fountain, waving us in. His left arm ended in a special pistol Kells had fitted him with a long while back. It attached to the stump he had there, and he could fire it by flexing the ends of the muscles in his arm.

  “Long time, no see, Righty,” I said. “Kai got our guy?”

  The halfling jerked a thumb on his good hand in the direction of the shack I’d been playing cards in the other night. “He’s waiting for you. Better hurry though. No telling how long that’ll last.”

  I thanked him with a nod and hurried on. As we went past, Moira gave Righty’s weaponry an approving nod. “I need to get set up with one of those when this is over,” she said.

  “I’ll have Kells cut you a special survivor’s deal,” Cindra said.

  “What do you have to do to qualify for that?” Danto said.

  Cindra gave him a wry, joyless smile. “Live.”

  I worked my way down that slender alley to the card-game shack, my wand out and ready before me. I ducked into the place and found Kai there waiting for me, standing on Ferd’s neck, the tips of his shotgun’s barrels in the center of the ogre’s broad and flat forehead. An orc I thought looked like Wint laid sprawled on the floor nearby, his head and shoulders frozen into a large and I assumed fatal block of ice.

  There was no one else in the entire place, not even a bartender. Some of the shutters on the windows had been smashed outward. A chair or two had been rendered to splinters. Blood spray coated one wall, but no body lay fallen beneath it.

  “Hey, Ferd,” Kai said as I entered the place, ignoring me. “You know why ogres have flat foreheads?”

  “No,” the ogre said in a small voice, making sure not to shake his head at all.

  “Because they keep slapping them with their palms!” Kai illustrated the move with his free hand and laughed.

  The ogre thought he saw his shot there and reached out to slap Kai’s shotgun away. Kai kicked off his neck and danced away from him, still cackling. Ferd got to his knees and found himself facing the tip of my wand.

  “Don’t go anywhere quite yet,” I said to him. “We have a few things to talk about first.”

  Ferd glared at my wand as if that alone could peel the varnish off it. The others filed in behind me and surrounded him, their weapons all leveled at his chest. The scowl on his face softened a bit with each entry, and by the end he’d sunk to the floor and started to beg for mercy.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” he said to me. “Give you whatever you need, but I can’t talk about her.”

  We might be looking for Fiera, but I knew he meant the Ruler of the Dead. We all did.

  “You afraid of dying?” Kai poked the ogre with his shotgun again.

  Ferd shuddered as he shook his massive head. “I’m afraid of what comes after that.”

  “You don’t think that’s going to happen if she gets her way?” Moira said. “That happens, and the whole city goes down.”

  Cindra grunted. “And Goblintown will feel it first.”

  “You help us now,” Danto said, “and we might be able to keep that from happening.”

  I reached down and found Ferd’s chin, then lifted it until I could see into his eyes. “Otherwise, you’re going to become the biggest, freshest zombie wandering around this part of town, eating your family’s brains.”

  The ogre’s defiance crumbled at that thought, and his massive shoulders sagged in defeat. “She wanted us to deliver Gibson to her, at the base of the Wall, right under the Night Tower. There’s a subbasement under the buildings there.”

  “She might still be there waiting,” Belle said. “There aren’t too many places a creature like that can wander inside Dragon City.”

  I nodded at her and headed for the exit. I didn’t want to think about what we maybe should do with Ferd. If we left him behind, alive, would that come back to haunt us later? The smart thing would be to just kill the fat bastard, but such things were never easy.

  As I left the shack, I decided I needed to turn around and make sure that neither Kai nor anyone else shot Ferd dead on the way out. Right then, the dragonet came flying down out of sky at me and landed on my shoulders.

  He was breathing hard, smoke curling from his nostrils as he dug his claws into my shoulder for support. I reached up to pet him with a comforting hand. It was then that I realized that if the dragonet was here that Yabair and the guards who’d busted into the Quill couldn’t be too far behind.

  “We have to go!” I said to my friends still in the shack. “Now!”

  I glanced back toward the square where we’d landed, and I heard a gunshot crack from that direction, followed by a report that sounded like thunder. An instant later, I spotted Righty sprinting toward the alley’s opening, his gun-hand smoking. Before he reached the alley, though, the ground behind him exploded into a massive ball of fire that silhouetted him against it and sent him flying toward us.

  Moira tried to shove past me and go help him, but I knew he was beyond our aid. Even if he’d survived that, to grab him we’d have to run straight toward the oncoming Guard.

  “Our fight’s not with them,” I said as I picked her up and tucked her under my arm. “Not today.”

  With that, I spun on my heel and sprinted as fast as I could in the other direction, hoping the others would keep up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Halt! By the authority of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard!”

  Yabair’s amplified voice rang out over Goblintown’s roofs as I weaved and dodged through the twisted maze of alleys that ran between its ramshackle shanties and huts. I ignored him, and I hoped the others would follow my example. If we let Yabair stop us, even for questioning, he’d wind up arresting us for sure.

  That would mean, at the least, that I’d be hauled off to live in the Dragon’s Spire — if the Dragon didn’t just decide to eat me for leading his son into danger on a regular basis. Assuming that Belle’s parents hadn’t had a severe and sudden change o
f heart about her fate, she’d join me in the big bastard’s belly soon after that. I’d often dreamed about spending the rest of my life with her, but that hadn’t involved being digested alive.

  Gunfire rang out overhead, and bullets pinging and panging off the roofs and walls around us. I kept my head low and raced on, charging for the wall beneath the Night Tower. I would have tried to shift my route back and forth as I went, but the streets — such as they were — demanded that anyhow. Doubling down on that would just have twisted me back in the wrong direction.

  As we neared the Great Circle, the territory began to seem more and more familiar. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Goblintown — not like Kai, who lived here — but I’d been here just over a week ago, when I’d saved Moira from that Black Hand assassin out in the wild and brought her back home. Up there in a narrow slice of sky I could see between eaves crowded so close they almost touched, I spotted the apartment building I’d half-slid, half-leaped down that night, and I charged toward the base of it.

  I reached the building’s main doors just as a goblin mother emerged from it with a crowd of children arrayed about her. They looked like they were heading somewhere for lunch or maybe just to get out of the stench-ridden place they called home.

  “Run!” I said, hoping they’d listen. Instead, the mother and her kids froze at the sight of an armed human charging straight at them, with a young dragon on his shoulder and an elf, a wizard, a two-gunned woman, a shotgun-toting orc, and a one-handed halfling following in his wake.

  I can’t say I blamed them.

  Then Yabair’s flying chariot appeared in the sky above us. “Halt, or you will be executed!” he shouted over us all.

  That got the goblins to scatter. Unfortunately, they went to the one place their instincts told them might be safest: back into their home.

  The mother grabbed as many of the kids as she could reach and hauled them into the apartment building with her. I swept up a pair of them with my arms as I rushed after her, and I saw Belle and Danto do the same. Cindra and Kai turned around and opened fire on the chariot above us instead, covering Moira as she tugged the last goblin kid along after her with her one good hand, a little girl who’d tripped and skinned her knees while trying to chase after her mother.