Claws of the Dragon Read online

  Blood was in the air.

  They wanted it.

  Nath and company took a seat in a balcony that jutted out ten rows higher than the caged arena below. Nath got his first glimpse at the dragon inside. It was a red rock dragon, a big one too. It was bigger than a horse. He used to see them from time to time swimming in the streams of lava near Dragon Home’s sulfurous springs. They were wingless and deep red with hard fireproof scales that covered their entire bodies.

  “Good luck eating him,” Nath said.

  Lotuus scoffed. “It will be interesting.”

  Though the red rock dragon was a big one, it seemed small in this strange city of Urslay, where everything was bigger than it was supposed to be. The arena itself was a massive cage of steel big enough to hold many giants.

  It was a setup that Nath had seen over and over during his years of rescuing the dragons. For reasons Nath could never comprehend, people had a zeal for tormenting dragons.

  “Ah, I see the champions are arriving.” Lotuus grabbed his chin and turned it. “Look.”

  A parade of four warriors rode down a runway toward the cage. They were heavily armored people—orc, gnoll, bugbear, and ogre—stuffed inside plate armor. They carried spears and halberds that gleamed with a mystic silvery energy. They rode on the backs of four wingless wurmers.

  Nath’s jaws clenched. His brow furrowed.

  “What’s the matter, Nath?” Lotuus said to him. “You seem a tad worried.”

  The warriors entered the cage, and the door was slammed shut behind them. An incredible roar burst forth from the crowd. Inside the cage, the fighters spaced themselves evenly around the red rock dragon and dismounted. The odds seemed to suddenly change from four against one to eight against one.

  The red rock balled up into a heap of scale and muscle that resembled his name.

  The warriors turned toward the crowd and raised their long weapons up in salute. The throng went wild. They stomped their feet and shouted like madmen.

  Nath’s frown deepened. Just when he thought he’d managed to lead his kind to safety by defeating Gorn Grattack, in no time another enemy had taken Gorn’s place. It was one that seemed far deadlier than the first. Subtly, he tried to break his chains. The links had no give in them.

  Still standing, Lotuus leaned on his shoulder. “Oh, you want to go and help your little dragon, don’t you? Well, that is too bad. Instead, you must watch. But I’m sure you will get your chance.”

  “I never should have freed you,” Nath said.

  “I couldn’t agree more.” She stroked his cheek. “But I’m so happy you did.”

  A horn sounded that drowned out all of the shouting in the room. The crowd fell silent. Inside the cage the warriors turned, faced the dragon, and lowered their weapons.

  The horn sounded again. The warriors charged. The excited audience jumped back to their feet and urged them on.

  The deep-red ball of dragon mass burst into motion. Tail lashing out, it spun in a full circle. The warriors, weighted down in heavy armor, couldn’t move out of the way in time. Each and every one fell and crashed in a pile of metal.

  “Hah!” Nath cheered.

  The wurmers, quicker than the men, pounced. Teeth and claws latched onto the red rock’s body, covering it entirely. A burst of flame billowed out from under the pile, catching two of the four wurmers on fire. Rearing its thick neck, the red rock shook the other two off its back. Without hesitation, it plowed into a wurmer, pinned it down, and shot lava-like flames all over it.

  The monster screamed and sizzled.

  Back on its feet, a gnoll wielding a glowing halberd struck the red rock on the back of his scales.

  The dragon let out a roar, spun, and slapped the gnoll with his tail from one side of the cage to the other.

  Nath pumped his fist. “Ah-hah!”

  The battle raged inside. The red rock was quicker and stronger. His speed belied his husky girth. He toppled the warriors. Pounded the wurmers.

  The brood of insect-like dragons spat balls of bright fire at the dragon.

  The red rock shrugged it off and spat scorching flames back.

  The wurmers’ hard scales crackled.

  The dragon crushed their flesh.

  The battle that had started with eight was down to three.

  “Are you sure you want to side with the titans, Lotuus? To your folly, I fear that you underestimate the dragons.”

  Arms crossed over her chest, she said, “It’s not over yet.”

  The ogre chucked a spear deep into the red rock’s side.

  The dragon let out a blast of fire, turning the ogre into burning flesh and melting metal. Spear buried in his side, he attacked the two wurmers. His jaws clamped down on one’s neck, shook the life out of it, and slung it away. The last one he rendered into pieces with his claws.

  All eight of the enemy were dead, and the battered and bloodied red rock dragon resumed his spot and balled up in the middle of the circle. He closed his eyes, paying no mind to the silenced crowd.

  Brimming, Nath said to Lotuus, “Never underestimate a dragon.”

  She replied with, “And never underestimate evil.”

  A stir rose in the crowd. The cage doors were split open, and down the runway at least twenty wingless wurmers surged from the tunnel.

  The red rock’s eyes snapped open. Quickly, he was back on his feet.

  The horde of charging wurmers consumed him.

  Nath’s gaze froze on the horror. The feverish crowd’s cheers shook his very core. They chanted praise as the wondrous hard-fighting dragon was torn apart and devoured in pieces.

  He shook his chains.

  Unable to contain his anger, Nath whirled on Lotuus. ‘You are depraved!”

  “I know.” She nodded to the giant lizard man. “Take him to the dungeon and triple the guards. Oh, and one more thing.” A pair of scissors appeared in her hand. She cut off a lock of Nath’s long red hair.

  Snip!

  “An heirloom for Balzurth.” She started floating away. “Once we’ve conquered Nalzambor, I’ll see you at your execution. Until then, enjoy the misery that is coming. Bind him!”

  CHAPTER 28

  Avoiding the road that led into the Craggy Mountains, Brenwar opted to make the climb with his own hands and feet. As much as he wanted to storm right up the path into the unknown hills and battle every monster he faced, the wisdom within let prudence intervene. Now, he hung by his meaty but strong fingers off the rim of a narrow ledge. Puffing through his beard, he hauled himself up on the ridge, staring up into the dark sky that seemed to seep into the mountainside.

  “One hundred feet up, and only three thousand more to go. Now that’s living. Hah. And that only took a couple of hours.”

  Brenwar sat up, spat on his calloused hands, then took out a pick he’d borrowed from the village and started the climb to the next bench. Though climbing wasn’t his favorite thing, he and his kind weren’t half-bad mountaineers with the right equipment.

  Inside the caves and tunnels they carved out there were plenty of hazards to face. In Nalzambor there were just as many jagged cliffs to face inside the world as out. Some fascinating marvels to behold, too. Waterfalls, underground streams, and lakes. A magnificent world hidden in the darkness.

  He climbed, walked, slipped, and fell a few more hours and managed a couple hundred more feet.

  “The things I do for a dragon,” he muttered.

  Of course, he’d do anything for Nath, and not just because Balzurth had charged him with it either, but because he was his friend. And the truth was, things were always exciting with Nath around, even though Brenwar often bickered at him. Nath was fun to bicker with. It bothered the dragon prince. Bickering among dwarves didn’t matter at all. It was their way. Pushing. Suggesting. Perfecting.

  The aging dwarf took a seat on a narrow tier and mopped the sweat from his brow. He uncapped his canteen and drank.

  Some white night owls bigger than hounds flew through the
night. Wings stretched out like great fans, they glided through the night sky with ease.

  This would be one of the rare times Brenwar would consider riding a dragon.

  But only because time is pressing and I need to find my friend.

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a shadow swooping down the mountainside in pursuit of the owls. Still as the stone, he only moved his ancient eyes enough to make out the sleek dragon forms of the wurmers cutting through the air. Three in all, they gave the agile owls chase until all of the flying parties vanished in the night’s chill air.

  “Morgdon’s Toes,” he said under his breath.

  He reached over his shoulder and patted Mortuun the Crusher, who was secured to his back.

  “As if this climb wasn’t bad enough. This is why dwarves go through mountains, not up and around them. That’s what the other knuckleheaded races do.”

  Frost covering his armor, Brenwar resumed his climb. His cold breath and iron will were his only company. He fought his way up the least likely path a dwarf would ever take, carefully keeping his ears pricked for any signs of wurmers that could be roosted in the rocks.

  The night turned to day, and the day back to night as he clawed his way to the top.

  It wasn’t a straight climb either, but one where he might have to traverse a narrow ledge horizontally for a mile before he could find another way going back up again. The footing was slick, the effort hard and strained.

  He ignored the gnawing in his gut. Finally, almost three days later he found himself on the top. He wanted to scream but held his tongue.

  Bushed, he took a knee. The top of the mountain revealed little about the location that he wanted to find. At best, he was miles away from where the giant road led up into the mountains. With the cold wind biting at his frozen face, he closed his eyes and listened. There wasn’t much to be heard aside from the wind howling through the icy mountains. No life stirred.

  His nostrils widened. “Ah.”

  Something akin to nature drifted into his nose. Somewhere, meat cooked. There was no hiding that from a dwarf hungry enough to eat a boar. He untethered one of the strings on his pouches and pinched out a strip of jerky and chewed on it.

  “Hmmm,” he grunted. “Where there’s meat there’s ale.”

  He knocked the frost from his eyebrows and beard and unhitched Mortuun from his back. He was topside now. If there was life about, it lurked in the direction he was headed. Toward the warmth. Toward the food. Following the scent, he marched through boot-deep snow, between treacherous crevasses and ravines. There were some modest climbs too, and the pace was slow, but at the dawn of the next day he saw firelight in a distant tower.

  “I’ll be.”

  Through the bitter snow he spied a ring of tall stone towers spread out with at least a mile between them. It was clear that wasn’t all of them either.

  “Why in the world would there be towers all the way up here? No one can see them.”

  Brenwar made a climb to a higher elevation to get a better look above the towers. It took a few hours, but when he made it, his eyes filled with wonder. The towers overlooked a canyon, and inside that canyon was a city with giant-sized activity.

  “By my beard.”

  He squeezed Mortuun’s handle.

  “There be too many giants in there.”

  He cocked his head. His eyes narrowed. Soft footsteps crunched down the snow behind him. He turned his shoulder and started to swing.

  “No one sneaks up on a dwarf!”

  Something knocked his feet out from under him.

  As he rose up on his elbows, Brenwar’s eyes widened. “You!”

  CHAPTER 29

  Head down between his legs, Nath sat with his eyes shut and tummy rumbling. He was a dragon, and dragons were patient, but at the moment, days into it, he was unsettled. Not that anyone would be comfortable in prison, but he wasn’t used to misery being his only company. He was alone. Entirely. Forgotten. The giant lizard man had thrown him behind the metal bars and left him there. He hadn’t seen anyone since.

  He lifted his chin up and studied the same grey walls he’d been looking at for days. They were moldy. Ancient. Water and filth from the streets above dripped through the cracks.

  He wondered what this strange city of Urslay really was. If anything, it was a city built on top of another city. And maybe this subterranean part of the city was built on another city. That was entirely believable. After all, the lost City of Borgash was mostly buried in the bowels of the earth, and in all of Nalzambor’s thousands of years, empires of men, orcs, and dwarves must have fallen from time to time. Nath had found evidence of that everywhere.

  His belly groaned so loud it echoed in the chamber. He laughed.

  With my luck I’ll go into a cocoon again. There’s no telling what I’ll be when I wake up next. Ah, those were the days. Sleep, wake up, get more scales. Sleep, wake up, get more scales.

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned, though he wasn’t really tired. There had been quite a few times, when Nath was younger, that he’d been in jail. He’d never really worried about it too much before. But now things were different. The world had ended up much bigger than he thought it was. And the giants, he’d never thought of dealing with more than a few of them at a time, but now it was clear there were hundreds, maybe thousands—and they were united against the dragons.

  “Humph.”

  Keeping his ears open, he got up and put his hands on the steel bars. They were thick. Not moorite, but thick. A solid inch of spring steel.

  “Hello?”

  His voice echoed down the great hall that ran between his cell and all the rest. There weren’t any replies. Not a shuffle. Not even a rat. At first, he had figured there would at least be some tormenters that would pester him. That maybe they’d put him on the rack and stretch his limbs as long as the giants’. But no. Nothing.

  He gazed up and down the row again. Perhaps there was some other type of guard lurking in the cells. A monster or phantom of some sort. It seemed very strange that no one was there to keep an eye on him at all. The giants were often stupid and cocky. But careless? No.

  Nath lowered his shoulder and rammed it into the cell door.

  Wham!

  A solid rock wall would have been softer.

  So what if they hear me? I could use some company.

  He hit it again, and again and again.

  Wham! Wham! Wham!

  Huffing for breath and shoulder aching, he pressed his face to the bars. “Come on now, somebody somewhere has to be listening. Someone? I’ll even take an orc if you have one.”

  The silence was almost as annoying as his stomach aching. He was hungry. Very hungry. And it seemed to sap his strength and will.

  Oh, don’t start flailing like a fitful child, Nath Dragon. You’re a prince. Stick with the plan. Bad as it must be, it’s still a plan.

  It was clear that his captors wanted to wear him down, and if that was the case, then so be it. He wanted to wear them down. Feign being weak and defeated. When he saw an opening, he would strike. The trick was getting out of his moorite chains. He was strong, but perhaps not that strong.

  That led him to another plan. This city, Urslay, if it was built upon another city, perhaps there was another way out. Another place to hide and escape. There always was.

  But after escaping, most important was the retrieval of Fang. Like any friend, he wouldn’t want to abandon his blade. He could feel its presence. And he’d felt something else for a while now. A bond that was growing between them. Fang had a lot of power that Nath didn’t yet understand. Perhaps he had taken it all for granted.

  Instead of making the most of what I have, I’ve been making the most of what I’ve lost. That’s no way to be a leader.

  If anything, Nath’s isolation had some benefits. It gave him time to think about how he dealt with things and how he could handle them better. He had so many advantages over others! But oft times he didn’t plan, just winged it. His ta
lents and skill prevailed in times of need. But now, with the stakes so high, he needed to be less reckless and more careful. A patient planner. One who paid attention to the details.

  Certainly I have it in me to be wise?

  As he tapped his fingernails on the bars, his mind picked away at what Eckubahn and Lotuus had said. Fang had been taken to the Chamber of Contest. There, the giants would try to destroy Fang. And Lotuus had hinted that Nath would battle inside that arena. It would be there, if anywhere, that he would make his escape.

  No doubt they wanted to wear him down as much as they could before they turned him loose in the cage. And the goal wasn’t to kill him. They’d made that clear. Or was it? Lotuus and Eckubahn were both liars. One could never trust a word that evil said.

  Mind games. It’s all mind games.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Are you lost, Dwarf?” Selene stared down at Nath’s pet dwarf. At first she had thought he was drunk, the way he stumbled around in the snow so far away from everything. But no. The little bearded ape was just spying on the giant city. Like she was. Interesting.

  Brenwar kicked at her tail. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any colder, you show up.” He got up. “So, what brings you here?”

  “Wurmers. You?”

  “Nath.”

  Oh no! Does he know where Nath is?

  Keeping her worry off her face, Selene just lifted her brows in what she meant to look like curiosity. “So, he’s lost and so are you, it seems.”

  “No one is lost.” He eyed her as he dusted the snow from his armor. “Let’s hope anyway.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You don’t trust me, do you Dwarf?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I will say this, I don’t like you much.”

  “Perfect, I don’t like you either.”

  “Good.”

  It was an awkward moment. Selene actually was happy to see Brenwar, but sad that Nath wasn’t with him. “Tell me what happened.”