Isle of Dragons

by J H G Foss

  ‘Who dares?’ it asked, but anything else it was going to say was cut off as Roztov drove Gronmorder through the back of its neck.

  Floran cautiously stepped back into the street as the dragon breathed its last. Roztov stepped down from the dragon’s head. ‘The sword may lose its magic when near that icon, but it was still forged by dwarves. Sharp enough to pierce dragon hide.’

  The dragon was stone dead now, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, three foot long and forked. Roztov drew his dagger and cut it out of the dragon’s mouth.

  ‘When we tell this tale to his brothers in the Holy Order of Aerekrig, it was Broddor that slew this dragon. A dragon that was protected from all magic, and he did it with only one arm.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They then went to gather up the remains of their fallen friend.

  Chapter 18

  The Tower of Stovologard

  Tears fell down Roztov’s blood and soot covered face as he gathered up Broddor’s bones and armour. Floran tied up a gendarme’s abandoned cloak into a makeshift bag and they placed all the remains into it.

  ‘We cannot tarry, Roz,’ said the wizard. The druid was still on his knees, having gathered up the last of the remains.

  ‘This is my fault, Tup, from the beginning. He didn’t need to come, he didn’t need to be here. I just wanted him to come on this stupid adventure because I thought it would be fun.’

  ‘I know, but the dust is settling now, soon the dragons will come again.’

  ‘What will I tell his father?’

  ‘That he died slaying a dragon. What better way for his son to die?’

  ‘What will I tell his wife?’

  Floran placed his hand on Roztov’s shoulder, but made no answer.

  Roztov sniffed and wiped his eyes, smearing soot across his already dirty face. Smoke billowed down the narrow street, blown by dragon wings further back where the street met a larger thoroughfare.

  Floran stepped up onto a pile of rubble and held out his arm to shoot more fireflies into the clouds of smoke and dust. Unseen, there was the clattering sounds of men falling over in armour and crying out in pain.

  ‘What is the plan?’ asked the wizard calmly.

  ‘I... I...’ stuttered Roztov as he came to himself. He stood holding the top of the bag that Broddor’s remains were in. ‘I’m not sure about flying out. Shape-shifting into anything large is hard here and once we were above the rooftops I think the dragons would have us.’

  ‘More rats?’

  Roztov was watching down the street behind them while Floran looked over the ruined roof that blocked the street ahead. He could see gendarmes and dragonriders gathering, a group of shadows in the smoke that were looming closer.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the druid. ‘Maybe if I did some rats and you did some bees.’

  ‘Worth a try I suppose. You know what direction to go in?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure going back through all our mouse holes is a good idea. Wait...’

  Roztov threw his arms in the air as a volley of arrows was fired at them. A wall of air pushed them all upwards to clatter harmlessly on the walls of the buildings on either side.

  ‘The dragons are watching us,’ said Floran with a gesture upwards.

  ‘Save your fireflies for the men on the ground, I don’t think another dragon will come down here.’

  Floran nodded and fired off a volley of his own, five fireflies, whizzing through the air, each finding a target and knocking them to the ground. The others scattered.

  Another shape came flying towards them, and Roztov raised his arms again, but it was a seagull, gliding in fast. It landed clumsily on its feet and fell over. It then turned into Meggelaine.

  ‘For the sake of Etruna, what’s the hold up? Ghene said to wait for you, but I was worried sick. Come on will you, we’ve found a good place to hide, where is Broddor?’ she said all in one breath.

  ‘Dead,’ said Roztov dully.

  Meggelaine looked at the dirty bag in Roztov’s hand and let out a sob. ‘No.’

  She took a few steps backwards, as if trying to retreat from the reality of their friend’s death. ‘No, Roztov, no. Not Broddor, not after all these years. How did... how can it happen? Broddor is indestructible.’

  ‘It was the spurn-magic sweetie. The dragon got him,’ he gestured at Neith’s corpse, ‘but he got it.’

  Meggelaine was crying and sobbing. ‘But they can come back, Roztov? Didn’t a Holy Knight of Aerekrig come back one time?’

  ‘I don’t know, Meg. I think that was just stories.’

  Floran was the only one watching the street. ‘They are getting closer.’

  Roztov looked up and Meggelaine looked around. Gendarme’s, holding tall shields, were slowly advancing down the street. There were men behind the shield-bearers, carrying spears.

  ‘I don’t want to kill any more of these men,’ said Roztov. With a grunt he held out his hands then with his palms down, pushed down on the air. Twenty steps in front of them the street buckled and the cobblestones bounced up. The gendarme’s held up their shields, but they were in no great danger as the cobbles only jumped from the ground a few feet. The earth ahead of them flowed and shifted until there was a deep trench ten feet wide. As they stood, wondering what to do, five more fireflies whizzed towards them, but exploded harmlessly against their shields in showers of sparks.

  Floran looked back over the rubble. ‘There are more down this way too.’

  Roztov and Meggelaine clambered up over the dead dragon’s neck and onto the collapsed roof.

  There was a large group of men milling around at the end of the street, getting organised for an advance.

  ‘I can see Honni at the back. He’s still with them,’ said Roztov. ’I don’t want to, but I wonder if we should kill him. How much has he told them about us I wonder? It would be better to still his tongue.’

  ‘No!’ cried Meggelaine, even as the tears for Broddor still fell from her cheeks.‘He’s just a man, what about his family? We don’t know why he betrayed us.’

  ‘The wretch bears a lot of responsibility for Broddor’s death, Meg.’

  ‘That’s not who we are Roz!’ chided the fressle. ‘Maybe we can grab him and take him prisoner. We can take him with us, then he can’t tell anyone anything.’

  ‘I’m not sure...’ Roztov said as he looked down at the scimitar in his right hand, then the bag in his left.

  ‘Listen, we can’t just...’

  Floran stepped ahead of them and shot off a magical arrow, a bolt of yellow magic, that lanced towards the group of men. It hit Honni squarely in the chest and exited out of his back before evaporating.

  ‘Tuppence!’ cried Meggelaine.

  ‘No longer an issue,’ said Floran with finality.

  Roztov looked out across the fallen roof, then looked back at the street where he had created the chasm. The gendarme’s were laying beams to cross it.

  ‘Roztov, we need a plan,’ said Floran.

  ‘Right, right,’ said the druid as he looked around. ‘Well, it looks like seagulls are a possibility in this place. Me and Meg can get out like that, at least.’

  Roztov, rubbing his chin, walked over to where a slain gendarme was lying.

  ‘The smoke is clearing, but if I raised another fog...’

  Floran, understanding straight away, joined Roztov.

  ‘He’s about my size. I like this plan. Make a fog, then you two fly off. I’ll get lost in the crowd.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Meggelaine as she joined them.

  ‘Don’t worry Meg,’ said Floran. ‘If I get into trouble I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve.’

  ‘Och, fine,’ sighed Meggelaine. ‘Head to the harbour when you get away then, but go three streets back, right? The street with all the carts in it. I’ll etch a druidic rune on the door of the tenement we are in. We are on the top floor, but come quietly as there are people living on the lower floors.’

  Roztov was alrea
dy summoning a druidic fog, his arms raised as a thick mist swirled about them.

  ‘See you soon, Tup.’

  He then held the bag of Broddor’s remains close to his body and changed shape. Man, bag, bones and all, turned into a seagull and took off into the air.

  Meggelaine held up her arms for a hug. When Floran bent down she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘See you soon, Tup.’

  Once she too had flown off, Floran sighed and scratched the back of his head. He then dragged the body of the gendarme into the open doorway of the nearest tenement building to find a place to hide while he changed into the armour.

  Fish were caught in the seas north of Stovologard, by skinny men and women in long narrow boats. At this time of year they only went out when the water was calm and the skies clear, which was rarely.

  The wharfs of the fishermen and the docks used by the colliers were part of Stovologard's shadow district, in that the shadow of the tower passed over it each day. During this time, the dragonthralls would pull their cloaks and hoods closer and try and stay out of sight of the tower, as to gaze at it while in its shadow was considered bad luck.

  The fisher’s wharfs were one of the few places where birds flew on the island, a large and aggressive type of herring gull with distinctive black hoods and yellow beaks. They picked through the piles of fish bones and shells or robbed bread from the dole carts, not even the dragon stench of smoke and sulphur kept them away.

  Two of them landed clumsily on a street three rows back from the quayside. They then hopped through a broken window and into an abandoned room. Here they turned into Meggelaine and Roztov.

  ‘There are families on the second, third and fourth floors. I’ve met some of them already, they are all lovely people. We’ve got the whole of the sixth floor to ourselves, the windows are all broken and boarded up, which is perfect for us,’ explained Meggelaine as they walked up the central stairwell.

  Roztov, with the bag of armour and bones over his back ran his right hand over the plaster as they climbed.

  ‘Look at the brickwork here Meg,’ he said quietly. ‘At least a hundred years old. And see the remains of the plaster? It was once painted. More than one colour too, these would have been…’

  He trailed off as he thought of what Broddor would have said about his observations. Meggelaine, realising this, hurried him along.

  ‘Time for all that later, Roz. We’ve got more important matters to attend to right now.’

  At the top of the stairs were three boarded up doors and one that stood slightly open. Within the apartment, in the room that offered the only view of the docks, Ghene, Tankle and Arrin sat warming themselves at a small fireplace.

  ‘Roztov, your face is covered in soot and blood. Where are Broddor and Tuppence?’ asked Ghene as he stood up.

  ‘Tuppence is on his way,’ said Roztov. He then went to the corner of the room and gently laid down the sack he was carrying. ‘Broddor is dead.’

  Ghene listened in dismay, and then in quiet contemplation as Roztov told the story of Broddor’s death. Roztov changed the ending so that it was Broddor that killed the dragon. Not that it mattered, he thought, but the dragon may well have died from the injury it had received in the chest anyway (rather than the final blow Roztov had struck) thus making his version of the story true.

  Ghene let out a deep sigh at the end of the tale and said, ‘well, there is no better way for a dwarven warrior to go I suppose.’

  ‘But so far away from home!’ blurted out Meggelaine. ‘This is all my stupid fault. He survived goblin wars, necromancers, hordes of undead, two-headed giants, you name it. And now here, he dies… Oh Roztov.’

  Roztov sat down by the fire and hugged Meggelaine to him like a child.

  ‘They can come back though Roz? I heard that, or read it, or Broddor told me, or something, about the Holy Knights. Sometimes the come back?’

  ‘I don’t know Meg. I always thought that was just legends, but maybe.’

  ‘There are tales of ancient Dynar, that they could bring back the dead,’ put in Ghene. ‘But those are sad stories and they never turn out well.’

  ‘That’s no use Ghene,’ said Meggelaine, her voice muffled from her face being buried into Roztov’s chest. ‘Bloody stories of people coming back as goats that could talk. Honestly.’

  ‘I merely mention it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ sighed Roztov. ‘We need to return his remains to his family and the armour to the temple. It’s all we can do.’

  Two hours later Floran returned, dressed in gendarme armour he caused a stir on the stairwell when he was spotted by some of the other residents, but they relaxed when he kept on going up. As he got to the top floor he removed his helmet.

  ‘Only me,’ he greeted them as he entered.

  ‘I warned you about the people that lived here, Tup you idiot,’ said Meggelaine as he entered. ‘You will have given them all a scare.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said Floran. ‘It didn’t occur to me. Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘Here on the table, this is all that is left. Hard to believe it’s only just lunchtime,’ she observed.

  Meggelaine did her best to supply them with a meal from the bags they had managed to take with them that morning. They talked of the battle.

  ‘That was a disaster from start to finish,’ said Roztov as he chewed on some dried and spicy vegetain meat, ‘A total mess, we can’t go through all that again.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Ghene. ‘We need to stay hidden from now on, like mice under the floorboards.’

  Meggelaine busied about the table, but there was little for her to do since they were eating the food cold and with no plates or cutlery, so she found a broom and started sweeping the floor.

  ‘Mice under the floorboards,’ she muttered. ‘There is mice here alright, their droppings are everywhere. This place needs a good scrub.’

  Roztov finished his food and went to sit back by the fire, trying to keep away from the fressle’s cleaning frenzy.

  After he too had finished eating, Ghene turned into a rock lizard and scurried off down the stairs to take a look at the docks. He blended in well, rock lizards were everywhere, either scampering around in the shadowy parts of the streets or climbing up and down on the sides of buildings. Sometimes the smarter ones were kept as pets or companions for children. The even more intelligent ones were given messages to deliver or other small errands.

  The others either sat by the fire or quietly went about the top floors of the building looking for furniture that was still functional and anything else of interest.

  Floran and Arrin found a good bed on the fifth floor that still had a clean enough mattress underneath its dust cover.

  ‘It looks a bit heavy to drag upstairs, my lord,’ said Arrin.

  ‘Yes, maybe if Roztov turned into a bear he could carry it, but then, we are trying to keep our presence low key. A bear carrying a bed upstairs would probably draw attention.’

  ‘The people in this building have already seen us, can we trust them?’

  ‘I don’t know. From what I gather though, people moving from one building to another is not uncommon. Many people in the population are outcasts. That means they are not servants of the dragons. Not free men exactly, more like outlaws, but most folks turn a blind eye to them, even the gendarmes. I should imagine the people in this building assume we are outcasts.’

  The walked together to a window and peered out through the dirty and broken glass.

  ‘Fog moving in again,’ said Arrin. Then after a long pause he said, ‘I can’t believe Broddor is dead.’

  Floran sighed. ‘His death sits heavily on me, indeed. I will miss him greatly.’

  ‘Can he be resurrected, truly?’

  Floran thought for a moment or two and then said, ‘We will return his remains, and the armour to his people. The armour is sacred and will be passed onto the next Holy Knight. There must always be twelve, apparently. As to bringing him back. No. My people, have tried
for a thousand years to cheat death. They who practice necromancy are a blight on my nation and the nations around it. Even Roztov’s first wife took this dark and evil path after the death of… Well, those who seek to defeat these forces of darkness believe that the dead must stay dead. I am one of them, the Vizards of Heshmatiye, we destroy the undead wherever we find them. My friends forget themselves. They talk of the danger to the world of Garumuda, the dragon known as “Old Bones” on the one hand, but then talk of taking our friend back from the land of the dead on the other. It was double-thinking like that, which led to the mess Nillamandor is in now. The mistakes made in Al-Hamdalla should not be repeated… I find I am delivering a lecture, I apologise.’

  Floran smiled and bowed then finally said, ‘they will come to their senses after a few days. Sadly, we are much practised at burying our friends.’

  Ghene returned in the evening, bringing food and drink he had acquired from a dole cart down at the docks.

  ‘Free beer,’ he explained. ‘Free bread as well. Once a week, or some time period anyway, the carts come around to feed the populace. They can take as much as they want.’

  With the beer they toasted the memory of Broddor, standing in the tenement apartment, by the light of the small fire in the hearth. Ghene eased himself into a dusty armchair and nibbled on a crust of the rock hard bread.

  ‘You need the beer to soak the bread in,’ he muttered. ‘The docks are teaming with gendarmes and busy with fishermen and other workers. I am not a nautical person, but ships arrive with coal and other rocks, perhaps from another island? The city is somewhat agitated, it could be because of us. We get a good view of the docks from here though, I think we will be safe for a while.’

  ‘You say that,’ said Roztov as he paced around the room, ‘but can we trust the other people in this building? We thought we could trust Honni.’