by Logan Jacobs
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, a beast like that is dangerous.” The warrior shrugged. “Perhaps one day she decides she no longer wants to be peaceful. And then--Boom! We are all dead, and our islands are burned to the ground.”
“Do you really think that will happen?” Jemma gasped, and she clutched her spear tightly to her chest, as if she could fight off the dragon on her own.
“No way,” I told her. “The thing has gone this long without trying to attack anyone unprovoked. She only went after the orc ship, and Nadir’s people, because they had her egg. So, as long as we don’t try to take her child, I doubt she’ll make much of a fuss about us.”
“So, it is decided.” Mira nodded her head firmly. “We will leave the beast alone.”
“For now,” I said. “I’ll think of what we could do if it did decide to attack us randomly, but leaving it unprovoked is best.”
“Even though it has our treasure,” Nadir sighed, but I could tell the woman had finally given up on the idea of chasing after her treasure.
“We’ll find you a new treasure.” I grinned at her. “Something that doesn’t come with a fire breathing mama attached to it.”
“That would be very nice,” the woman laughed and showed off her pearly white, razor sharp teeth.
Her smile faltered suddenly, though, and her gray eyes suddenly focused on something off in the distance, out on the ocean.
“What is that?” she queried.
I turned to follow her gaze, and an angry fire of my own immediately lit up in my belly when I saw what she pointed toward.
Fucking orcs.
It was one of their massive ships, the same size as the one I’d commandeered back on Jemma’s island. It was still far off in the distance, but it grew closer with every passing second. I couldn’t tell just how many orcs were on it, but I was sure it was at least at capacity, since the orcs seemed to have a stupidly indispensable number of soldiers on their side.
“Should we run?” Jemma asked as she pressed close to me. “We do not have enough people to fight them off.”
She was right. There was no way the five of us, six if I counted George, could stand up to an entire ship full of orcs, which would put their numbers somewhere between fifty to a hundred men.
And that was a conservative guess.
But I wanted to see what the hell they planned to do. If they landed on our island, I wanted to know about it.
“Get behind those rocks,” I told the women, and I pointed to some large, craggy gray boulders that jutted out just on the ocean’s edge.
The dragonkin warriors nodded, and we quickly hopped back into the water, much to Jemma and Nadir’s dismay. This time, though, we kept our heads firmly above the surface and peered just over the tips of the rocks. The ocean water was cold against my skin, but the gentle lapping of the waves was almost therapeutic as we waited with bated breath while the orc ship approached.
It sailed fast across the water, aided by a strong breeze that propelled it forward at high speeds. The multiple white sails were open wide, and the ship itself looked nearly identical to ours. As it got closer, I could also see the noses of four canons, two on each side, that poked out as if they were already prepared to fire.
A whole platoon full of orcs was on the decks, and I could see their shiny, disgusting figures from where we hid. Their skin was covered in sweat as they rushed about, but they worked the sails and steered the ship in a way far less graceful than myself and my women ever were.
They’d built the ship, and they were still fucking imbeciles with it.
The dragon, it appeared, had seen their ship, too. Or sensed it, maybe. She stuck her massive snout over the edge of her nest, and we could see the hot smoke as it blew from her nostrils. For the moment, though, she seemed relatively calm, since the orcs hadn’t invaded her space or attempted to take her baby.
I took note of that, and I found a little bit of comfort in her reluctance to attack unprovoked. That boded well for me and my people, since none of us planned to make another wrong move after today.
“Drop anchor!”
My dragon hearing allowed me to hear the nasally, deep voice screech at the orc crew when they were about four hundred feet off the shore, just before the sea floor became shallow and they would beach their ship. This crew didn’t seem to be quite as stupid as the ones who’d attacked us on Jemma’s island. Those dumb bastards just rammed their ship right onto the shore without a second thought, which created damage I’d had to deal with.
Idiots.
As the women and I watched, the orcs all scrambled around and heeded their captain’s orders. When the ship was secured, they rushed into rowboats and furiously rowed themselves ashore, as if they were prepared for an attack.
“Oh, shit!” I breathed when I realized that was, in fact, exactly what they were doing.
“What is it, my king?” Mira murmured as we continued to tread water.
“The dragon,” I explained. “They’re after it. They must want to get the egg back, since she burned down their other ship.”
“They are going to take the treasure?” Nadir growled, and her gray eyes narrowed in anger.
“We can’t let them do that.” I shook my head. “We have to stop them. Orcs with a dragon… that’s a world I do not want to live in.”
I was just about to spring from the water and go on an angry rampage, which probably would have ended in my death, when George swam around in front of me and put a stop to my progress.
You cannot, Ben, he said. The orcs’ numbers are far too great. You will never win.
I glanced from George to the plethora of orcs as they beached their rowboats and climbed ashore. He was absolutely right, and I already knew it.
“Fuck,” I growled.
My fingers gripped the craggy rock face much tighter than they needed to as I watched the orcs stumble ashore and then assemble themselves into a little squadron, prepared for battle.
Their placement seemed smartly planned, since they were just far enough away that the dragon hadn’t decided they were a threat yet.
I nervously glanced back to the ship, where I could still see orcs on board, and the women huddled close around me as we tried to stay out of their sights.
And then we waited while the fuckers got ready to attack a rare, magnificent creature in an attempt to create a weapon from a baby dragon.
Chapter Eleven
The orcs paused on what seemed to be the border to the dragon’s territory, as if they already knew how close they could get without being in the line of fire.
Clearly, they had attempted this before.
As they lined up, I heard yells come from the ship, and I turned to see them start to load the cannons so they were ready to fire if and when the orcs needed to.
“They’re going to provoke that thing,” I murmured, and as we watched, two of the orcs broke rank and sprinted toward the dragon’s nest.
Although, where the orcs were concerned, I couldn’t really call it sprinting. It was more like waddling extremely fast, and probably with a lot of heavy panting. Like a penguin.
The two sacrificial orcs started to climb up the nest, hand over hand, but they only made it about four feet before the dragon peeked her head over the side and glared down at them. Her nostrils smoked, and she let loose a mighty shriek that sent little shockwaves across the water all around us.
One of the orcs faltered in fear, and he lost his hold on the clunky nest. He swung from only one arm and screeched for his partner to help him get back up, even though we all knew they were both about to die anyway. If they thought there was any way they could escape a dragon and live to tell the tale, they were far stupider than even I thought the orcs could possibly be.
The orc’s partner, who I doubted would have helped him, didn’t even get a chance. One of the dragon’s massive claws swiped out over the edge of the nest and speared the orc right through his fat midsection, like he was nothing more t
han a piece of cooked chicken on a shish kabob.
“Gods,” Mira murmured as a spray of blood sprang from the now deceased orc and coated his partner in its gooey warmth.
The partner, to his credit, didn’t shriek, but he sure as hell didn’t make a move to continue his climb. Instead, he flattened himself against the side of the nest in a desperate attempt to stay out of the way of the dragon and to disappear from her line of sight.
It didn’t quite work the way he wanted it to, but it provided a hell of a lot of entertainment for us.
The dragon examined her kill, who was still skewered on her long, sharp talon, for half of a second, and then she flung his body far away from her. It plunked down into the ocean with a giant splash, and I heard some yells from the orc ship as they watched their comrade sink down to the cold, dark bottom of the ocean, to serve as food for some giant squid or other sea creature.
Now, the single orc left on the nest was the dragon’s next target, and she looked down at him with what almost seemed like a smile before she conjured up a hot stream of fire.
The dragon never got the chance to spray it, though. As soon as she opened her giant mouth, an arrow flew out from the ranks of the orc soldiers on the beach and landed in her tongue. I watched as the metal tip buried itself in her soft, fleshy muscle, and I almost felt sorry for her. The screech of pain she let out was unlike any sound she’d made before, and I winced deep down inside.
That arrow, though, was the only thing needed to make the dragon positively vibrate with anger. She tossed her head back and threw herself up into the sky, which meant she had abandoned the egg for a moment.
Tension rose around me as the women, George, and I watched what we knew was about to unfold. Those orcs would be nothing more than burnt toast by the time she was done with them.
I couldn’t fucking wait to watch that happen.
The dragon called up her fire, and the spot in the center of her chest started to glow a bright, hot red. A giant smile crept across my face in anticipation for the glorious bonfire about to take down at least seventy of our enemies in one fell swoop, and it was too bad the dragon couldn’t communicate with us, because I would have given her one hell of a thank you.
“Fire!” I suddenly heard an orc bellow from the ship, and just that one word was enough to send a chill straight down to my bones.
“No!” Jemma gasped.
“What is it?” Nadir demanded.
But the woman got her answer soon enough.
A split second later, a cannonball shot from the ship with a million tons of force and knocked right into the dragon’s left wing. The cannonball was so strong it blew a hole straight through the thin skin, and the dragon shrieked in pain as a flap of her skin tore off and left behind a gaping hole.
Her position high up in the air faltered, and the pit in my stomach grew as she started to lose altitude.
“We have to help her,” Jemma sobbed as she gripped my arm tightly.
“We can’t,” I argued even though my heart wanted to agree with her. “There’s nothing we can do against this army. And the cannonballs don’t exactly make things any easier.”
Jemma’s chartreuse eyes were wide and shiny with tears, but she nodded in understanding. We all knew I was right. There was nothing we could do. If we tried, we’d just end up like the poor dragon.
She didn’t give up, though. The creature flapped her golden wings hard, and she even managed to regain a tiny bit of the height she’d lost.
And then, she turned blazing purple eyes on the orc ship and its canons.
“Here we go,” I whispered.
This wasn’t about to be the easy, one sided fight I’d hoped for, though. Even as the dragon summoned her fire from deep within her belly, the orcs called for a second cannonball to be launched into the air.
At least, this time, the dragon managed to send out a little puff of raging fire before the canon struck her right in the chest. A massive, metallic clang sounded through the open air as the metal ball hit her hard scales, and the projectile seemed to almost bounce off before it fell back down into the ocean.
But with it came at least three of her beautiful golden scales.
The dragon fire had hit the mast, though, and one of the orcs’ sails was now alight with orange flames. Half of the skeleton crew, about ten men, had to rush to put it out before the blaze took down their entire ship, which left two of their cannons open.
For a moment, the dragon hovered in the air and stared down at the orc ship, like she was unsure of what to do. Then she spun and turned to look back at the beach, where seventy orc soldiers had their arrows ready to fly.
I could tell a debate raged in her mind, but I just wasn’t sure what it was about.
A split second later, though, it didn’t matter as another cry of “fire” rang out from the orc ship. This time, the dragon barely managed to dodge the attack, but the cannonball thankfully whistled right over her right wing and crash landed on the beach in an explosion of sand and rock.
The dragon turned her head and looked back toward her nest, where the shiny silver egg still laid, and she let out a weak, forlorn cry that tore through the air and banged against our eardrums. It was so heavy with pain, Jemma started to weep openly. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she pressed a fist to her mouth to make sure she didn’t make a sound that would accidentally alert the orcs to our presence.
Then the dragon looked toward us for a brief second. Her brilliant purple eyes made contact with mine, and I could have sworn there was something she wanted to tell me. What it was, I couldn’t be too sure, but I was overcome with this sudden, intense need to save her baby.
Maybe that was the dragon’s way of communicating with us after all.
I could have imagined the look and feeling, though, because just as quickly, it was gone. Then the dragon turned away, flapped her damaged wings, and soared unsteadily off into the sky.
A cry of victory rose up from the orcs on the beach and on the ship.
“They just wanted to send her away,” Sela growled. “But why?”
I watched as the dragon soared over the horizon and disappeared from view. Where she was headed, I had no idea, since she’d gone in a direction I hadn’t even begun to explore yet. I could only hope she’d maybe gone to some island filled with other dragons, where she’d be mostly safe.
I wondered if she’d come back for her baby in the shiny silver egg. I really hoped she would. Maybe after this battle, we’d be able to gain her trust somehow, and show her we wanted to kill the orcs just as much as I suspected she would after today.
“Look!” Nadir gasped. “They wanted the treasure, too.”
Sure enough, the orcs had rushed the nest and climbed up into it in a mad dash to be the first one to snatch up an egg. After what looked like a rather intense brawl, one of the orcs emerged victorious. He lifted his fat body up onto the edge of the nest and held the beautiful silver egg up high so his commander on the ship could see.
The egg glimmered in the sunlight like the most amazing trophy, but I knew it was nothing of the sort. There was a real, fire breathing, baby dragon in there, and we needed to figure out how the fuck we could take it back from the orcs. If someone was going to raise the baby animal and teach it to fight with them, I’d make damn sure it was me.
“I suppose they will leave, now,” Mira whispered. “Back to their horrid island where they can torture that poor creature the way they did the wargs.”
“Worse, probably,” Jemma murmured, and she sniffled as she angrily wiped the tears off her cheeks. “The wargs already had evil within them. I do not think the dragons do.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked and turned to her curiously.
Jemma cocked her head and thought about it for a long moment before she finally shrugged.
“I do not know,” she replied. “But I have a strange feeling I am right.”
“I’m sure you are.” I nodded. I didn’t know why I felt that way, ei
ther, but I just knew in my gut it was true.
“We should go,” Nadir announced as she started to stand upright. “My people will want to know of this horrid development.”
“Wait!” I hissed, and I lunged forward in the water to grab her arm before she could haul off and give away our position. “The orcs will know we’re here. We can’t leave yet.”
Nadir narrowed her gray eyes and pursed her lips in the expression I’d come to recognize as the one she wore when she knew I was right. I’d already figured out it didn’t seem like many people had used logic in Nadir’s tribe. They were smart, but they moved purely on instinct.
“Fine,” she sighed. “You are right, Ben. You have the most annoying habit of always doing that.”
“Oh, really?” I cocked my eyebrows playfully. “And do you still find it annoying when it saves your life?”
Nadir rolled her eyes, but I could see the truth in her expression as she tried to hide her smile.
“It is possible,” she replied.
“We’ll just wait until their ship leaves, and then we’ll go, alright?” I told her. “I don’t want to give them any reason to come back here.”
“So, we are just going to leave them with a dragon?” Mira asked with a frown.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Sela demanded. “Perhaps you, as one mighty warrior, should go storm their ship and take the egg back yourself.”
“Sela, you know that would be a terrible idea,” Mira scoffed and pushed Sela’s shoulder playfully.
“True.” Sela shrugged. “Which is why I suggested you be the one to do it, and not me. I was being logical.”
“Thank you.” Mira snickered. “Still, Ben, is that what we must do? Retreat?”
“For now,” I replied. “Let’s figure out how we can chase them down when we have equal fighting numbers. Their sail is damaged, and as long as we can get back to our ship quickly, I have no doubt we could catch up to them. Besides, our crew is twice as good as they are.”
“Three times, I believe,” Jemma laughed.
We waited as the orcs on the beach all jumped back into their rowboats, and the bastard with the egg carried it proudly above his head to rub in the fact he was the orc who had been victorious.