Order Of The Dragon (Omnibus 1-4)

by Jason Halstead

  He nodded and swallowed loudly. "The king's rooms are in the central tower. It's late enough, I'm sure he's there."

  "Is he guarded?" Alto asked. Garrick carried a massive maul between his hands and let it rest on the floor so he could lean on it like a cane. He glared at the guard.

  "Yes, the king's royal guardsman are his champions. They're feared and respected through Peltarch for their deeds."

  Alto grunted. "How do I get there?"

  "You can't be—" The guard's words turned to a shouted curse as Garrick picked up the steel head of his hammer and let it drop on the man's ankle. It wasn't enough to break the bone, but the pain wasn't lessened any when Garrick leaned on the maul's shaft.

  "Through that door," he hissed and jerked his hand towards the only other exit from the room that didn't lead into the dungeons. "Walk until you find stairs up, then through a set of doors to the main hall. Turn right and go to the double doors at the end. They'll be guarded. Through there is the royal chambers."

  Alto nodded. "Close your eyes."

  "Are you going to kill me?" the guard gasped. He glanced at the dead guards lying in their own pools of cooling blood and then back up at Alto. "I told you what you asked and I didn't hurt you!"

  Alto raised and lowered the axe. He sighed in disgust and said, "Close your eyes and keep them closed. If you open them and we're still here, I'll split your head like a melon."

  The guard squeezed his eyes shut tightly enough to make wrinkles appear at the corners. "How will I know?"

  "You won't," Alto said. "But if you guess wrong and we're still here, you'll die."

  "Wait, I—"

  Garrick dropped the maul on his injured knee and made the man spasm on the floor. He cried out a few moments later when he'd caught his breath again, and then moaned with each gasp as his hands went to his knee and tried to provide some measure of relief for it.

  Alto leaned the axe against the wall and motioned with his head towards the door. They slipped out of the guard room while the wounded guard moaned in agony. Once they'd walked a few dozen steps away, Garrick chuckled. "Was beginning to think the farm boy was gone once and for all."

  "What's that mean?" Alto snapped.

  "Means you been getting darker and more serious for a while now. Torturing people for answers and fighting before talking. Makes life a lot easier that way and I was beginning to think you finally got your big boy pants on."

  Alto started to glare at the man when he remembered the things he'd done in Mira to find out where his sister had been taken. He'd done things he wouldn't have thought possible a few years ago, and his attitude hadn't changed since then. He frowned. "I did what needed to be done," he muttered for his own benefit as much as for Garrick.

  "So why leave that guard alive back there?" Garrick asked. "They must have some way he can send out an alarm from there. That's the entrance to the dungeons."

  Why had he let the man live? The guard begged for mercy, sure, but the world was full of weak men who would do anything when their life was on the line. It was a foolish move, but one he hadn't given much thought to. "Sorry, I'll be a little more merciless in the future."

  Garrick chuckled. "I think the world's got enough men in it like that. But if that man turns out to be the one to bring the castle down around us, I'll be sure to say I told you so."

  Alto paused at the sound of a door opening ahead of them. He and Garrick glanced at each other and then looked around for a place to hide in the open hallway. When they found nothing, they saw the door swinging back shut and revealing a serving girl carrying a basket filled with linens away from them. As one, they breathed a sigh of relief.

  "You look like a madman," Garrick said with his gruff whisper.

  Alto looked down at himself and saw the man's point. He wore stolen boots and a stolen shield and his loincloth. Garrick was even worse off without a shield. Alto motioned back down the hallway. "Come on, to the guard room."

  "Going to give yourself a chance to kill that man yet?" Garrick asked.

  Alto scowled. "Not unless he opens his eyes."

  They hurried back down the hall to the guard room and paused at the entrance. Alto pushed the door open without stepping through it and gave the man the benefit of the doubt by scuffing his boot across the floor before stepping into the room. The smell of blood and death swept over him and made him tighten his grip on his sword.

  The guard still sat against the wall and held his injured knee in both hands. He tilted his head towards the door but his eyes remained closed.

  "You've earned a few more minutes," Alto said, earning a hiss of breath from the man and a surge of greenish radiance from the Soulsword. "We could return at any time. You'd do well to remember that."

  "Where's my sword?" Garrick growled at him. "This club's fine for smashing skulls and legs, but it's not the fine weapon I had when they brought me in here."

  "You, uh, broke it in Trevor's, um, chest."

  Garrick looked at the guard he'd nearly cut in half with that stolen sword and chuckled. "No, I meant a real sword. A proper great sword, something the men of Peltarch couldn't lift with a team of horses."

  The guard's lips pressed together in a frown but he erased the expression quickly. "The armory," he said. "Unless it's got obvious value, then whoever got their hands on it first probably kept it."

  "Some captain brought us in," Alto remembered. "He was at the inn."

  Garrick nodded. "He brought us in. I bet he's got it. Where is he?"

  "This late? In his quarters. Three levels above us."

  Alto frowned and moved and began opening crates and chests. He found spare armor and pulled it out and laid it on a table. He frowned when he saw the size of it. "Seems the men of Peltarch stop growing when they hit thirteen," he muttered.

  Garrick snorted. "Explains why they've got no hair on their chests and can't keep their women happy."

  The captured guard kept his eyes shut through the insults but the muscles in his jaw clenched with each one.

  Alto struggled into one of the leather jacks and did his best to make it comfortable. It was a tight fit that barely loosened when he swung his arms a few times. He buckled greaves about his legs and winced as the hair on his legs was pulled by the buckles. Garrick watched him and shook his head. "You look fit to burst."

  "Fit to burst?"

  He nodded. "I'll be fine like this."

  "Your skin won't turn away a sword's edge."

  "No, but it won't need to if I don't let any close enough to shave me."

  Alto shrugged and turned back to the guard turned prisoner. "We'll be back," Alto promised him. "I suggest you be here when we are or it won't go well."

  Alto turned to Garrick and saw the other man was already at the door, waiting for him. They set off down the passage again and hurried past the door where the serving girl had come from earlier. This late at night, or early in the morning, there were few people awake to roam the halls. None save for sleepy guards or overworked servants.

  At the base of the stairs, they paused again at the sound of footsteps. They waited in silence on either side of the doorway that led to the stairs but the footsteps receded in the distance, rather than coming down the stairs towards them.

  "Ready?" Garrick asked.

  Alto hesitated. "What did you mean, the world has enough merciless men?"

  Garrick glanced down the hallway and up the stairs before he replied, "You think Trina's with you because of your good looks?"

  Alto stiffened. "What's that supposed to mean? Not every man has to be tall as an oak to be handsome."

  "Beats being short as a dwarf," Garrick said with a grin. His grin faded when he realized Mordrim wasn't around to benefit from the insult. "I mean, she can't sit still around you because of how you been to people. That's what keeps her warm at night, the thought that she's going to end up with a caring and strong man who people look up to and want to be like. A man like her father."

  Alto tilted his head as he l
istened to his friend's words. He nodded at the simple wisdom of the barbarian. "My parents raised us to be that way."

  A cloud passed over Garrick's face but he looked away before Alto could read into it. "Times and people change, though," the northerner said. He shrugged. "Things can happen to a person. Saints know enough has happened to you."

  "You're not talking about me, are you?"

  Garrick sighed. "Won't be long and the servants will be waking up. Might be guard changes, too. We should go."

  "Caitlyn's been scarred by all this, I know," Alto said.

  Garrick turned back to face him. "You really want to have this talk now?"

  "Depends. Are you going to try to tell me what tricks my sister learned to do with her mouth again?"

  "Will it shut you up and get us out of here faster?" Garrick asked. Alto glared at him until he relented. "Fine, I said you had a darkness. She does too. Don't blame either of you; you earned it, by my reckoning. When I met her, she had hope and an easy smile to her. There's a lot less of that smile, or at least it's not the same smile she used to have."

  "What are you saying?"

  Garrick shook his head. "I don't know. She's changed. You want to know why I wouldn't stay with her? It's because your sister's been fighting the bad things that been done to her so hard she's starting to act like the people who done them to her."

  Alto's fingers squeezed his sword tighter. "Are you saying my sister's acting like the Order?"

  Garrick shook his head. "No, not that. Just that she's found a way to survive and it's making her a different person than the girl I met in Holgasford."

  Alto forced his fingers to relax. He nodded.

  "So when I wouldn't be her consort, I left. That's not the life for me," Garrick said. He shrugged. "Simple as that."

  "Nothing's simple," Alto muttered.

  Garrick smirked. "Everything's simple. No reason making things trickier than they really are unless you're looking for excuses."

  Alto opened his mouth and realized he didn't have a response. Or at least not one that sounded like an excuse to him. He closed it and looked up at the stairs. "That hammer okay or do you need your sword?"

  "Sure would like getting it back," Garrick admitted. "Might help us if this King Banadis really is a dragon."

  Alto nodded. Garrick had gotten the sword from Thork. It was magical too, and seemed particularly effective against dragons and their kin. It made killing Myskakroth, the dragon that made its lair in the Havara Mountains and led that chapter of the Order of the Dragon, possible.

  "All right, let's go. Leave that hammer here and walk with your hands behind your back as though they've been tied together."

  Garrick's eyes narrowed and then dropped to the guard armor that Alto wore. He let out a sharp laugh. "You've got no pants under your greaves!"

  Alto looked down at himself and shrugged. "If it gives us a few seconds of surprise, it might be enough. Now stop gossiping and let's get on with it."

  Garrick scowled and leaned the hammer against the wall. He regarded it a moment longer and then shrugged and tucked his hands in the small of his back and held them together. "I'll lead, so they have a hard time seeing your chicken legs."

  Alto sighed and then nodded for the man to take the lead on the stairs. They had a few flights to climb and no proper idea where they were headed. It would only take one scream in the wrong place at the wrong time to wake the castle.

  Chapter 16

  "I'm going to kill him," Patrina hissed as she paced back and forth between the two beds in the room they'd rented at an inn near the docks. "If he doesn't get killed by the guards first."

  "That boy doesn't know how to get killed," Kar said. "Now stop pacing. You're making it hard to think."

  Patrina turned on the wizard and put her hands on her hips. The pose would have been intimidating had it not been for her revealing armor. She opened her mouth, oblivious of her unusual appearance, but Karthor spared her making a fool of herself.

  "We know where they are; we can petition the court in the morning for their release. I'm sure a fine will be suitable penance, above and beyond what disappeared into the pockets of the city watch already," the priest reasoned.

  Patrina turned on him, the move causing her to thrust one hip out and lift that side of her short metal plate skirt. "We know where they are? Where? I must have missed the part where the guards explained where they'd be taking them."

  "The castle," Karthor explained. "That's where the dungeons are."

  "Aye," Mordrim agreed. He turned and looked at the others and found Carson staring at Patrina's backside with his mouth hanging open. The dwarf smacked the woodsman in the chest. "Isn't that right, Carson?"

  "What?" Carson sputtered. "I mean, yes. Sure, of course we do."

  Patrina turned to face them. "How do you know that?"

  "Alto asked one of the guards before he threw the first punch," Mordrim said.

  Patrina's eyes narrowed even as Kar started to chuckle behind her. She spun back around and glared at him. "He did this on purpose, didn't he?"

  "You've got to hand it to the boy," Kar admitted. "He found a way to get in the castle after all!"

  "In prison!" she protested before turning to see the stone-faced expressions of her companions. Getting no rise out of them, she demanded, "What can he do there?"

  "He could pick the lock on the door of his cell," Namitus offered. Then he chuckled. "Oh wait, I'm here. He doesn't know a lock from a saddle."

  Mordrim snorted. "What do a lock and a saddle have to do with each other?"

  "Nothing!" Namitus said with a grin. When the furrows on the dwarf's brow deepened, he explained, "That's the point, you see. He wouldn't know what to do with one because he doesn't—"

  "I get it," Mordrim grunted. "It's just a daft way of saying it."

  The rogue harrumphed and looked back to Patrina, but she was already pacing back and forth again.

  "He's got Garrick with him, but he told you goblin lovers to get me out of the tavern," she mused aloud. "He must have figured we'd be separated if we were all captured. Then he'd fear for my safety in prison and assume the worst. As if I couldn't take care of myself!"

  Carson grunted and said, "We all know you're a warrior worth your weight in gold. I'd wager he was more worried that we'd defeat the guards and have a death mark on our heads. What I remember of this place is that drunkards are fined and turned out the next day. Injuring, killing, or just embarrassing the city watch is a much higher fine. He'd asked me about that."

  Patrina snorted and turned back. "So we head up in the morning then? Is that the plan?"

  "Is that wise?" Namitus asked. "If there's any communication with Mira, they'll know of what happened and then King Banadis, if he's truly the son of Shazamir, will be looking for us."

  "You have another idea?" Kar asked.

  Namitus looked around and saw everyone looking at him. He sighed through his nose and glanced at the ground and then around. An idea came to him, but the scowl on his face showed he wasn't fond of the idea.

  "Out with it," Patrina growled. "I've seen that look before, usually when you're about to come up with some crazy idea even the saints take pity on."

  "As long as it works, does it matter?" Carson asked.

  Namitus shook his head and said, "A disguise."

  "A disguise?" Patrina said. She looked down at herself and back up at him. "Good idea. I've already made a stir in this armor here. The people aren't as ready for a woman being so empowered as to dress like a man."

  Carson coughed and Karthor looked away from her. Only Kar offered up his venerable advice. "I dare say few men would dress like that, Princess."

  Patrina scowled at him. "No, I doubt they would! I meant have the freedom to show some skin and not be stifled by heavy clothing."

  "Yes, well, anyhow," Namitus said to change the topic before the men found themselves outnumbered by the sole woman in the room, "it wasn't you I was thinking of wearing a disguise."


  Patrina frowned and turned on the slender man she considered a brother in all ways, save for blood. "What are you up to?"

  "Me," he said while looking at her and only her. "In Mira, I wore a dress and was able to convince men and women that I was a shy girl. I can do it again and seek to pay the graft to release our friends."

  Carson was the only man to burst out laughing at the suggestion. "A dress? But you're no woman!"

  Namitus dropped his eyes to the floor and shrugged. His cheeks shone a bright red in the lantern light the room was lit by at the late hour. "My elven blood keeps my frame slim," he said. "It's a matter of learning to walk and talk different."

  Carson's laugh died on his lips as he saw the rogue's embarrassment. He turned and saw the others were nodding their heads or watching silently. He shook his own head and tossed his hands in the air. "I don't see it, but we've got no other ideas."

  "You'll be Garrick's wife and I'll be Alto's," Patrina stated. "I'll go with you."

  Namitus's eyes widened. "No! I mean, um, it's known that you and Alto are a couple. It would be obvious."

  "What then?" Patrina asked.

  "Your people and Garrick's share some blood, don't you? You're both tall and broad shouldered. You can be his sister and, uh, I'll be after Alto."

  Patrina's scowl faded as she considered the rogue's words. She nodded at the last. "All right, we'll find some fitting clothes at dawn and head to the castle."

  "Alto's plan is to kill the king," Mordrim reminded them. "If you do get him, then it will be the four of you against the entire castle, and you'll be in dresses with no weapons."

  "You could bat your eyes at the guards and convince them to lay down their weapons," Carson teased.

  Namitus clamped his mouth shut and blushed again. He shook his head but couldn't speak.

  "You'll have to stand ready. Apart, but also in disguise and in line to see someone at the castle. A magistrate, the king, or anything else they might allow visitors through the gate for," Patrina said.

  "This is a fool's plan," Kar muttered as he looked to the ceiling and shook his head. "Seems that's what works best for a group of fools, though."