by Matt Forbeck
Cindra tossed Kells one of her pistols and scooped the boy up in her now-free arm without missing a beat. She clutched him to her chest and leaped into the palanquin as it started to rise farther into the air.
Feeling the weight in the back of the palanquin change, Johan pulled out the stops and hauled the slick black flyer into the air as fast as he could. Kells hadn’t quite made it there yet, and he dove for the still-open door catching it with one hand.
With the weight of his duffel bag pulling him down, I knew Kells couldn’t hold on for long. With her son refusing to let go of her, Cindra wouldn’t be able to reach him in time either. It was up to me.
That’s when Kells and Cindra’s home disappeared. The explosions had been getting louder and louder as they worked their way up the mountain. Part of this was because they were getting closer, but another part of it was the fact the tunnels that ran under a Goblintown grew fewer and fewer as you moved farther upslope from the Great Circle. This far up the mountain, the wizards just couldn’t bury the charges all that deep.
When the blast below us went off, it sounded like a bolt of lightning had somehow struck in the building’s basement. The roof leaped about a foot into the air, and then the whole thing came crashing down on top of itself. And the same thing happened to every other damn building on the downslope side of Low Pavement, all the way across the city.
I had already put the carpet into a dive when the borderline of Goblintown joined the rest of it. The force of the blast jostled the palanquin as it rose into the air, and that was just enough for Kells to lose his tentative grip on it. He tumbled backward toward his collapsing home, his bag of guns hauling him down.
The force of the explosion below us jostled the carpet too. It threw me off just enough that I undershot Kells by a few feet. I tried to haul up short to give him a chance, but I could see that if he didn’t manage to get a good grip on the carpet, he’d just tumble right off the back of it.
I’d forgotten about Belle. She reached up for the man with one arm, still clutching the carpet with her other hand. Kells hit the carpet behind her and somersaulted through the open air toward the back of it, just as I’d feared.
Kells grabbed Belle’s outstretched arm and got a solid hold on her. That tore her grip from the carpet, though, and the two of them slid toward its back. I put everything I could into slowing the carpet down, hoping the change in momentum would keep them aboard.
It helped, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Belle and Kells would both fall into the pit that had once been Goblintown and die.
Spark hit the carpet hard then, having turned back around to come at me head on. I’d been too busy watching the troubles behind me to see him until he landed. He dug his claws into the carpet hard enough to puncture it, and then he lunged forward and bit Bell on the belt of her pants.
Belle wore a dress most of the time while she was in the city, but she’d made an exception back in our adventuring days, substituting something more practical for the times we left town. Knowing that the threats from the wilderness were invading the city today, she’d dressed in her old traveling clothes again today, and I’d never been so glad to see her in them. If she’d been wearing a dress, Spark might not have had anything solid to latch on to. As it was, her belt held, and the dragonet managed to stop both her and Kells from sliding off the carpet to their deaths.
I banked hard to the left to put us up over the undestroyed part of town and headed deeper into the Village. I tried to take it as slow as I could, but at the same time the screams of the dying and the eruption a cloud of dust and debris from the remains of Goblintown spurred me forward.
The first chance I had, I headed for an open square and set the carpet down on a bare stretch of ground. We bounced on the cobblestones there harder than I would have liked, but we were all too happy to be alive to complain.
“Are you all right?” I spun around to check on Belle and Kells. Spark still had a grip on Belle’s belt and looked like he might never let go, but both she and Kells were intact and unbloodied, stretched out along the carpet and still too overwhelmed by the experience to do anything more than lie there and try to catch their breath.
I knelt next to Spark and gave him a squeeze. “Great job,” I said.
He pried his jaw apart and pulled back. Belle would need a new belt, but he hadn’t put a scratch on her. I couldn’t let them die.
“Thank you.”
“Yes,” Cindra said as she came racing up, her son still in her arms and her daughter chasing behind. “Thank you so much!”
I spied the palanquin parked behind them, and I gave Johan a sharp salute for a job well done. He grinned back at me in relief.
Cindra and the kids hauled Kells to a sitting position and gathered him into the tightest group hug I’d ever seen. The kids were still terrified, of course — they’d just lost their home and borne witness to the destruction of so much of the city — but their joy at having their father in their arms again helped temper that. Cindra wiped a tear from her eye, something I’d rarely ever seen on her face, then gave Kells a gentle slug when he tried to play it off like it hadn’t been the closest to death he’d ever been.
I gathered Belle into my arms and spoke to her gently. She was trembling, although more from the adrenaline coursing through her than from any fear. “Are you all right?” I asked.
She planted a tender kiss on my lips. I took the time to enjoy it.
When we parted, she answered my question with a nod. “For now.” She looked past my shoulder at the cloud of dust settling out of the downslope sky. “But not, I suspect, for long.”
I kissed her once more, for luck, and then sat back down at the carpet’s controls. We couldn’t stay here in the open. While the destruction of Goblintown must have taken out a massive part of the Ruler of the Dead’s army, I had no illusion that meant all the zombies were gone.
“We need to get out of here,” I said to Cindra and Kells. “Now. You’ll be better off in the palanquin.”
They gathered up their children and Kells’ precious duffel bag, for which he’d almost died, and piled into the dwarven ride. “Where to?” Johan asked, calling over to me.
“Head straight for the Quill. We’ll rally there. Steer north of the Old Market Square though. It’s full of jailers and guards.”
“Where are you going?”
I glanced at Belle, who nodded at me, knowing just what I was thinking. “I need to make a quick stop first.”
Johan shot me a bewildered look. “Where?”
“The Old Market Square, of course.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I brought the carpet up high over the city. The dust had already started to settle over Goblintown, and the sight of it appalled me. The glowglobes around the Great Circle still illuminated the wall, but everything ringed inside of it and south of Low Pavement had gone dark.
A few fires burned here and there, nibbling at some of the fallen buildings. I wondered if they might catch neighboring heaps and start a conflagration that consumed that part of the city, but at that point I didn’t suppose it mattered. Goblintown was already gone.
The moon had risen high enough now that I could see into the pit that sat where Goblintown had been. While nothing moved in the bulk of the place, a few dark figures still shambled over the wall near the Great Gate like ants crawling over a house’s threshold, on the hunt for food. Guards still standing on top of the wall fired at them and brought them down one by one.
The Guard’s gambit may have bought the rest of the city a reprieve, but it hadn’t saved it. The Ruler of the Dead still had far more soldiers left in her army. Eventually, the Guards at the wall would be overwhelmed again. It was only a matter of time.
When we reached the Old Market Square, it was packed with people wailing in fear and despair. The Guard was trying to hustle them upslope into the higher parts of the city, but the enormity of what had just happened to their homes had stunned some of them cold. They just sat or
knelt there and sobbed into their hands or each other’s shoulders.
I spotted one group of orcs engaged in a standoff with a squad of guards on the upslope side of the square. The orcs shouted angry threats at the guards, and the guards pointed their weapons at the orcs, warning them to stay back and follow their orders to evacuate the square. I spotted Yabair among the guards there and decided to let him suffer through that situation on his own. After what the Guard had done here, I wanted to shoot him myself.
Of course, the only person who benefited from that kind of conflict was the Ruler of the Dead. Much as I despised Yabair at that moment, I was much more afraid of her and her army. I didn’t agree with what the Guard had done, but I understood the impulse behind it.
In times as desperate as this, it seemed like you could justify any kinds of atrocities you wanted, though, no matter how extreme they might be. It was up to us to draw our own lines that we would not cross, and the Guard had thrown that responsibility aside.
I brought the carpet in to hover over the square, and I peered down at the people in it. The crowd below was already thinning out as some of the people listened to the Guard’s orders and moved higher into the city, away from the zombies advancing once again. I hoped that a lot of people had headed that way before Belle and I had arrived. Otherwise, it looked like damn few folks had made it out of Goblintown alive.
I couldn’t imagine how many people the Guard had just killed. It had to number in the thousands. The total was too big to mourn over. It made me numb to even think about it.
“See them?” I said to Belle.
She gave me a grim shake of her head. Then her face lit up, and she stabbed a finger down toward a spot in front of a bakery on the north side of the square. “There!”
I banked in that direction and spotted Danto standing in front of the bakery’s locked door. The front window had been smashed out — maybe by the explosions, maybe by a handy brick — and people were climbing in and out of the windows with the loaves the baker hadn’t sold that day. The looters gave Danto a wide berth, though, recognizing his wizard’s robes. As panicked as they were, none of them wanted to tangle with him.
I brought the carpet down to hover next to Danto, and he lifted up Moira and planted her behind me, then scrambled on next to her. He clapped me on the back to signal me to go, but I hesitated.
“What happened to Schaef?” I said. I saw a few orcs eyeing the carpet and weighing their chances in their head, so I raised the carpet up into the air as I spoke. No one answered me.
I turned around in my seat. Moira sat there with her head in her hands, weeping without a sound. Danto gave me a grave shake of his head.
My heart sank. Despite his understandable misgivings about getting involved, Schaef had been a good halfling, a friend brave and true.
“And Kai?”
Danto shrugged, just as grim as before. “He ran into Goblintown right after you left, trying to sound the alarm, broken arm and all.”
“Did he make it back out?” Belle said, her eyes wide with horror.
“Maybe,” Danto said. “There was a rush of people swarming upslope just before the last explosions hit. I didn’t see him there, but it’s dark and crazy. I could have missed him.”
I nodded and brought the carpet in for a low pass over the few people still standing in the square. I spotted an ogre standing on the downslope edge of the square, staring down into the ruins of what had been Goblintown only moments ago. I flew down in front of him and hung the carpet there in the air, well out of his reach.
“Ferd?” The ogre didn’t react. He just stared straight past us with glassy eyes. “Ferd!”
He brought his gaze up and saw my face and Spark hanging around my shoulders. Recognition flared in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word.
“Have you seen Kai?”
He squinted at me. “You,” he said as he stabbed a thick finger at me. “Gibson. This is your fault.”
Belle squeezed my arm to offer me support.
“Have you seen Kai?” I repeated, louder.
“You should have let her kill you,” Ferd said, his voice dead and dull. “This didn’t have to happen.”
Danto zapped the ogre’s feet with his wand. “Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to feed us to her!” he said as Ferd jumped in pain. “For the last time: Have you seen Kai?”
Ferd growled at us all. “Yeah, I seen him. He was heading toward the wall, raising the alarm the entire way, shouting for people to run.” He frowned. “There’s no way he made it out of that. No way.”
I fought the urge to leap off the carpet, to lay into the ogre with my fists and call him a liar. Instead, I spun the carpet about and put her high into the air, heading west.
To my great relief, the Quill was still standing, although the buildings across the street from it were not. No matter how horrible the act of destroying Goblintown might have been, I had to admire its precision.
I had planned to usher everyone into the bar through the hole the Black Hand assassins had blown into my bedroom window, but Thumper had boarded it up. Having seen the way the zombies had scaled the Great Circle, I appreciated his wisdom and his caution. I hauled the carpet up higher and put it down on the bar’s roof instead.
The Quill was one of the oldest places in Dragon City. The back part of it had been cut out of the Mountain itself, and it didn’t have a roof so much as a slanted shelf of rock the bulk of the building sheltered under. Either way, it was wide enough for me to set the carpet down on top of it without blocking the hatch that led into the place’s attic.
I undid the hatch’s enchanted lock with a touch, then opened it wide and ushered the others inside. Once they were safe, I climbed in too, stopping only for a moment to gaze down at the downslope wreckage. I could see dark figures clambering over the rubble, working their way toward us with slow determination. It wouldn’t be too long before they arrived.
I stopped in the attic, shrugged Spark off, and uncapped a glowglobe on the inside of the hatch. The others had already moved downstairs, heading for the bar. By the pale light, I found a section of the wall that Gütmann had helped me alter.
I tapped the wall three times in a particular spot, and a door opened, revealing a closet behind it. Inside, I uncapped another glowglobe, and I set to gathering up the things I needed. That included a new wand, a holster for it and the pistol Kai had given me, and a pint-sized flask that held a gallon of the finest dragonfire around. That might be precious stuff from now on, I realized, without the Dragon around.
Spark wound his way around my knees as I worked, and I reached down to scratch him behind the ears. His egg’s shell had been Belle’s source for dragon essence, which was the key ingredient in dragonfire too. I wondered how many other people in the city might have another such egg and if the things could be hatched too.
While I was at it, I pocketed a few boxes of enchanted bullets for Kai’s gun. I’d gotten used to the shotgun Kells gave me back when Moira had gone missing and I’d had to go hunting for her out beyond the Great Circle, but I’d spent a lot more time with a pistol over the years. It felt good to have one back in my hand, and I meant to make the most of it.
I closed the closet, and the door vanished into the wall again. I hauled Spark back up onto my shoulders and found my way downstairs. Kells and Cindra were already there, along with their kids, and Johan had joined Thumper behind the bar. He was pouring drinks for us all, and Thumper had laid out a spread that looked fit for a feast.
“What’s the occasion?” I said as I came down the stairs.
“End of the world,” Thumper said, not cracking a grin. “Everything must go.”
I sat down next to Belle at the bar, and Johan slid a pint of beer in front of me. I realized at that moment that I hadn’t had anything but a bit of water and gruel since I’d been arrested the day before. I knocked back half of the drink with one belt and then set to filling my growling belly.
As I stuffed the food into my mouth,
Spark slunk off my shoulders and picked out half a chicken left on the far end of the spread. He knocked it to the floor, then tore into it and stripped the flesh from its bones in a flash. After he’d removed every bit of meat, it stared at it for a moment, then breathed flames on it.
That got everyone’s attention, and we all shouted in alarm. I leaped off my barstool and bent over to pluck the little guy up, but the flames still jetting from his snout made me think better of that.
“No!” I shouted at him. “Stop!”
Why?
“You’ll burn the whole place down!”
Oh.
He cut off his flaming breath, leaving nothing but smoke curling from his nostrils and a pile of glowing ash on the floor. Fortunately, the floor in the bar was stone rather than wood. While he’d flamed it enough to raise the temperature in the room and blacken the floor, nothing else had caught fire.
“He always eat like that?” Thumper said.
I shook my head. “I don’t actually know. Seems dragons don’t need to eat all that often. The Guard used to bring him back to the Dragon’s Spire every day or so for meals.”
Moira shuddered. “And what do you think they fed him up there?”
I didn’t want to think about it. I reached down and stroked his neck, which wasn’t any hotter than usual. “From now on, I think chicken’s at the top of the menu.”
Belle sidled up to me. “And for the rest of us? What’s the plan from here?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I grimaced. I’d often been the one with the plan back when we were adventuring together, but I’d long since given that up. After Gütmann died, I hadn’t wanted the responsibility any more. I couldn’t take the thought of watching more of my friends die.
Now death had come hunting for us.
I heard the rattle of gunshots outside again. We still had hours until sun-up. Destroying Goblintown might have slowed down the zombie advance, but it hadn’t stopped it.