Enslaved: The Odyssey of Nath Dragon - Book 2 (The Lost Dragon Chronicles)

by Craig Halloran

  Enslaved

  The Odyssey of Nath Dragon, Book 2

  By Craig Halloran

  Enslaved

  The Odyssey of Nath Dragon, Book #2

  By Craig Halloran

  Copyright © 2017 by Craig Halloran

  Amazon Edition

  TWO-TEN BOOK PRESS

  P.O. Box 4215, Charleston, WV 25364

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-946218-25-4

  ISBN Paperback: 978-1-981488-30-8

  www.craighalloran.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Publisher's Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  MAP/Click for Zoom-In Version

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES/NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS AND AUTHOR INFO

  MAP/Click for Zoom-In Version

  CHAPTER 1

  A hazy sun hung high in the sky. The glaring light beat down on Nath’s back. Sweat ran down his bare chest and spine. It was one of the hottest days he could remember. Humid, muggy, and steamy air amplified his crowded surroundings. The irons around his wrists and ankles jangled as he swung his sledgehammer, breaking apart the heavy rocks in the quarry. Chips of stone flew away. His lower back burned like fire. It all started days after Prawl, the orc slaver, took him into Slaver Town. That was four hundred and twenty-five days ago. Nath had been suffering ever since.

  With arms as hard as iron and corded in muscle, Nath brought the hammer down again. The rock split in two. He wasn’t the only one hard at it. A handful of men swung heavy hammers on shaky legs. Hope had long ago fled their faces as they tried to pace themselves. One man, standing close to Nath, with arms little bigger than the hammer’s handle, brought down his hammer. It skipped off the rock into the man’s foot.

  “Guh!” The man went down, wincing in pain as he held his foot. Tears swelled in his eyes. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t.”

  “Get up,” Nath said in a harsh whisper. His eyes swept over the quarry. Burly orcs were posted throughout the vast pit of rocks as slave guards. They wore dyed black leather armor, and had scourges in hand and black clubs on their hips. At the moment, their backs were turned toward the ogre pushing a huge wheelbarrow up a ramp to the top level. Nath crouched down by the man. “You have to stand, no matter how much it hurts, or they will whip you.”

  The haggard man looked into Nath’s eyes. “I don’t care. I can’t do this. I’m not meant for it. See these fingers,” he said, holding them up to Nath’s face. “I am a musician. I play the strings and keys. My music brings peace.”

  “The only music you are going to hear today is the crack of a whip on your back if you don’t hustle up,” Nath said, looking around. The other laborers were pounding away, oblivious to anything surrounding them but their own misery. The man on the ground wasn’t very old, maybe thirty. His hands and features were delicate, his eyes as soft as his skin. He was new to Slaver Town, or at least to the rock quarry. Nath hooked him under his arms and lifted him. “Stay up.”

  “I can barely stand,” the man moaned. “I think my foot is broken. Surely, the guards will understand.”

  “No, they won’t,” Nath said. “Stand and swing. You must.” Normally, Nath would ignore someone else’s trouble. The laborers came and went, and most of them were never seen again. Some of them died in the quarry, either by accident or at the hands of the guards. Nath had seen it all. Merciless cruelty. It defied reason. He looked at the man. “What is your name?”

  “Homer,” the man said, offering Nath a shaking hand. “And you?”

  “Nath. Listen, Homer, you have to pick up that hammer, no matter how bad it hurts, and swing. You can deal with your foot tonight. Be strong, Homer, be strong.”

  Homer swallowed and nodded. “Aye, I will.” He picked his sledgehammer up to the waist and landed a solid shot on the boulder. “I can do this.” He half swung again, grimacing as he leaned on his stronger foot. His halfhearted swings were pitiful, but at least Homer was moving.

  Nath lifted his hammer high and brought it down hard. He paced himself, stealing glances at Homer. The man was pitiful. All of the slaves were. They were brought in and broken down with hard labor, and barely enough food and water to sustain them. Many cried in their cells at night. The biggest and most rugged of the men cried the worst. Others, it seemed, became sick with fever, gave up, and died. Scores of men and women had been hauled off dead since Nath had been there. He’d dug the graves of many of them.

  Vengeance burned inside him. He pictured Prawl’s pitted and lumpy orcen face on the rock. He brought the hammer down hard and busted the rock into pieces.

  “You swing with anger,” Homer muttered. “I have no fire in me. I’ll die here, won’t I? I don’t want to die, Nath, but I cannot bear this.”

  “Then don’t die, Homer,” Nath said, taking another swing. “The ones who live are the ones who want to live. The ones who die give up.”

  “I don’t want to be a slave. I can’t do this. I don’t deserve this. I n
eed to use my gift.”

  Nath shook his head. He didn’t want to hear it. He’d heard it all before. A lot of people were brought to Slaver Town to be bought and sold as slaves. Among them were many beautiful women, all of which were well cared for. Among the others were men of different skills and crafts. They were broken down and sold on the auction blocks, desperate for any kind of freedom that would be better than living in Slaver Town.

  But there was another group that came into the fold as well. The undesirables. Men of ill repute. Thieves that had been caught. Family that was betrayed. People that the societies of the world didn’t want so they were turning into slaves. They worked day and night in the prison-like conditions, creating items that the slave lords would sell for profit on the markets. It made Nath sick.

  He drew up a picture of Cullon in his mind. The dwarven member of the Black Hand had been nothing but nasty to Nath. He smote the hammer in the imaginary image of the dwarf’s bearded face. “Hate the Black Hand.”

  “What’s that?” Homer said. He was sitting down now, holding his foot and rubbing it. “The black what?”

  “Homer, get up!” Nath said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a slave guard’s fixed glance on Homer. “Quick, get up, they are coming.”

  “I don’t care,” Homer said. “I’ll just have to make them listen to reason.”

  The slave guard marched right at Homer, brandishing a scourge of many tails in his hand.

  “Homer, listen to me, they don’t know what reason is. Get up now!” Nath whispered.

  “I’ll just have to teach them then.”

  The orc soldier didn’t say a word. He stood over top of Homer, glowered at him, and swung. The lash slapped hard into the flesh of Homer’s back. The fragile man let out a bloodcurdling scream. The orc lashed Homer repeatedly with hard overhand swings.

  “Please stop!” Homer begged in a cracking voice. He clung to a rock as if it would save him. “Please!”

  The orc didn’t let up.

  Fire ignited in Nath’s veins. He cocked back his sledgehammer and swung.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nath’s hammer connected with the orc guard’s chest. A loud crack of bone giving way followed. The orc stumbled backward, snorting and wheezing. His eyes were wide as the scourge fell from his hairy fingers.

  There was a sharp whistle. All at once, the other guards converged on Nath. They came at him all at once, brandishing their scarred-up clubs made from wood as hard as stone. Nath deflected a club on the handle of his hammer. He put his boot in the orc’s gut. Confined by the irons on his legs, he shuffled out of harm’s way as best he could. He blocked a few more shots and ducked his head away from a swing that would have busted him in the ear. He jabbed the hammer hard in a heavy orc’s bulging belly.

  “Get him on the ground!” a husky voice shouted from somewhere. “Quit swinging like fools! He’s too quick for you!”

  Using his irons to his advantage, Nath hopped like a frog out of harm’s way. Moving quickly, he hopped behind one guard, whacked him in the back, hopped away, and hit another.

  “Ha! Ha!” Nath said with glee. It had been a while since he’d taken a shot at the guards. It felt good to bring them down to the ground. An orc rushed him with a snarl on its sweating lips, its little tusk teeth protruding from its mouth. Nath busted it square in the jaw with his hammer. It fell. He hopped over it onto another.

  All around him, the other slaves cheered. They let out raucous cries of encouragement. They made a clamor by beating their hammers on the rocks. Even the ogre, pushing the wheelbarrow up the ramp, started to clap. Then, suddenly, it picked up its full wheelbarrow and threw it down on the guards.

  “Fools!” the same orcen voice of command called out in a now-booming voice. “Do I have to handle everything myself?”

  Nath’s neck hairs stood on end. He spun toward the source of the voice. A jolt of energy blasted through his entire body. His irons turned white hot, burning the flesh on his neck, wrists, and ankles. “Yeee-argh!” Unable to move his wooden limbs, he fell to his knees. He swore his eyebrows simmered. Burnt hair smelled of icky smoke. A guard slipped into view, swinging a club. Stunned, Nath couldn’t move. The club connected with the side of his head. Chok! He fell over on his side and lay there, motionless, in a body that felt like it was filled with sand. “It hurts… bad.”

  The guards got in a few more licks, hammering at his body, before the sharp voice called them off. “Enough! He isn’t to be maimed unless I say he is to be maimed. Did I say he was to be maimed?”

  The orcs backed off, heads down and shaking.

  Nath blinked and with a painful grunt rolled onto his back. Fuzzy, colorful spots obscured his vision. He managed to prop himself up on his elbows. A man appeared behind him. Medium in height and slender in build, the man had an orcen nose with big nostrils and the coarse black hair, tied back in three ponytails. He wore the customary ringmail with a brown tunic over it. In his hand, he carried a black-handled sledgehammer with runes woven in the head. With a thick tongue, Nath said, “Oh, it’s you, Foster. I thought I recognized your rotten voice, but I wasn’t sure until the smell came over, and even then, I had my doubt until I saw your face. Boy, those eyebrows sure do like each other.”

  “Your tongue does you more harm than good, prisoner,” Foster said, pointing the hammer at Nath’s bare chest. “You must learn respect, or die from a lack of it.”

  “I like your hammer. Are you going to help me pound rock too?” Nath said, looking right at the foreboding tool. “Uhn, as for respect, for what? Orcs and slavers? Tell me you are–”

  A charge of energy flared from Foster’s hammer. Ssszap!

  Nath’s teeth clacked together. Pain lanced through his entire body. He flattened out on his back, trembling. All he could smell was the singed stink of his own hairs. Foster looked down on him with a crooked smile on his face. Nath tried to speak, but he had no control over his body.

  “You are a glutton for punishment, prisoner,” Foster said, sneering at Nath. He spit dark juice on the rocks. It dripped down his chin. He wiped it on the sleeves of his robes. “Thanks to your reckless efforts, all the rest of the prisoners in the quarry will suffer as well. Especially that sappy friend you defended. He’ll have the worst of all. In the end, he will feel the whipping would have been worth it. He will hate you for it. They all will. Put him in the hold.”

  Nath tried to speak, but only a sound that was like a creaking door came out. Two guards picked him up by the arms and legs and carried him away like a rolled-up carpet. He caught glimpses of the other slaves being corralled and beaten. The ogre was controlled by a special collar that glowed with blue stones around its neck. The ogre sat against the wall on the ramp, sucking its thumb like a baby. It sniveled and let out a cry.

  Tremors ran through Nath’s body. That hammer Foster carries kicks like a mule. Gads! That hurts! Where did it come from? He didn’t even touch me with it. He was carried beyond the barn-like slave barracks where Prawl had brought him initially to a stone building behind it guarded by more orcs. It was the Pen, the place where prisoners and unruly slaves were taken. Inside, the walls were thick with grime, covered with cobwebs in the corners, and reeking so badly he almost didn’t dare breathe. Carried down one level of steps, Nath was tossed into a small stone cell. The orcs each gave him a stiff kick in the ribs. They hustled out of the pen and slammed the steel door behind them.

  Darkness closed over Nath. Lying on a smelly, sticky bed of hay, he groaned.

  CHAPTER 3

  An outline of gray light framed the cell door that barred Nath’s escape from the small hold. Since he’d been imprisoned, he’d become very familiar with his cramped surroundings. He counted every block and ran his fingers over the lines of cracking mortar. None of the heavy stones budged. He wasn’t going anywhere if the slave lords didn’t let him.

  Nath had pushed up the straw in the dry back corner of the cell. The rest of the floor was wet and slimy. Water seeped thr
ough the walls and ran across the floor of the small cell that didn’t have enough room to stretch out in. He’d managed to get some of the straw to dry, giving himself a place to lay his head down when he slept. His slumbers were restless, however. Moans of misery carried down the halls. Little bugs crawled all over him. His wrists and ankles were swollen inside the iron. The metal collar always bit into his neck. All he did was sigh, every few hours or so, long, lengthy, and heavy.

  Punishment was something Nath had gotten used to. He’d been imprisoned for over a year, and he’d tried to escape several times. His efforts were thwarted each time. Everywhere he went, the slavers watched him, but he managed to slip them a few times. He’d made it as far as the inside of the outer wall before the guards piled on him the last time. Usually, he was put in the stockades, not fed a few meals, and was whipped a few times. But it was him, and him alone. Him and his noisy shackles. This time, his punishment was new. No light, and little food or water.

  He crawled toward the cell door. A plate and cup made from baked clay sat near the door. Water from the ceiling dripped into the cup. Nath flicked off a bug from the cup’s rim. Swishing it around a few times, he discovered he had at least a swallow. He wet his parched lips with it.

  “Ah, that was delicious. Water straight from the moldy rock. It couldn’t be any better,” he said deliriously. He pounded on the door. “I bet it doesn’t get any better out there than it does in here! Your well water stinks! This water is good as gravy! Hah-hah!”

  Nath lined the cup back up underneath the water and crawled into his dry corner. He brushed his bangs away from his eyes. He wondered how Homer was faring. The musician might be dead for all he knew. Perhaps Nath did make it worse for the man by getting involved. One thing he’d learned was that the slaver Foster was a man, or half-orcen man, of his word. He’d dogged Nath almost daily since he’d been there. Every punishment Nath received was a result of Foster’s intervention. He could see the gloating orc’s face in his mind.

  I hate orcs. All of them. Always.