Bad Times in Dragon City (2 page)

I only had to suffer through one greasy glass of that homemade hooch before Kai wrangled us an invite to the card game. I knew the people there didn’t like me at all — I was the only human around within a crossbow’s range, I was sure — but they put trust in my coins if not in me. Kai vouched for me too, but I’m sure even they knew better than to trust him. 

Maybe that’s what got me into trouble. 

I lost the first few hands on purpose, just to get a sense of the people I was playing with. As long as they were able to take my money, they were happy to have me in the game and have the tubby hobgoblin waitress ply me with drinks even worse than the first. It was when I started winning that they turned against me. 

Besides Kai and me, there were three other people at the table: a twig of a goblin missing all his upper teeth, a young orc thug with a nose ring that would have looked better on a bull, and a fat ogre opposite me, who seemed to take up most of the room.  

The goblin didn’t worry me much. I could throw him through the nearest window with my left pinky. I’d lay good odds on me being able to take out the orc easily too. He was all bluster, but the lack of scars that hadn’t been self-inflicted told me he got by on that far more often than he relied on his knuckles. 

The ogre worried me. A nasty, cunning smarts glittered in his suspicious, beady eyes, and he glared at me over his cards like their presence between us was the only thing that kept him from spitting in my face. 

I decided to fold my next three hands. I barely looked at my cards. I hadn’t come here for a fight, and if I had to lose a few coins to keep that from happening, I considered that a part of the price of the evening’s entertainment. 

Then I glanced down at the hand the ogre had just dealt me, and I saw the best lineup of cards I’d ever had the privilege to hold in my life. I kept my face as stony as heart of the Stronghold, the part of Dragon City the dwarves had carved out for themselves. 

“Well?” The ogre glared at me over his own cards. His voice sounded like millstones grinding diamonds. “You in?” 

I looked down at my cards and considered my options. The orc gave the ogre a knowing chuckle, and the goblin tittered in tandem with him. 

I glanced at Kai. He pursed his lips and gave his head an inquisitive jerk toward the table. 

I threw my cards down in front of me. 

“I fold.” 

C
HAPTER
T
WO

The orc and the goblin froze, caught in the middle of a cackle. Kai found something riveting to pay attention to off to his left, away from me. The ogre slapped his ham-sized hand flat into the middle of the table, his nostrils flaring wide as he sneered across the table at me. 

“Dragon’s balls, you do.” 

I put my shoes flat on the floor and got ready to leap to my feet. With luck, I’d be able to clear my wand from its holster before the ogre could wrap his hand around my head and crush it, but I didn’t think I could manage to recite the spell’s words with his meaty fist squeezing the life out of me. I decided I’d go for the sawed-off shotgun nestled next to my wand instead, if it came to that. 

I only had one shell in the shotgun, of course, but it was a doozy. I wouldn’t have a chance to reload it — not in here — but it might make a big enough statement that I wouldn’t have to. 

“Take the pot,” I said to the ogre in as steady and even a tone as I could manage. “It’s yours.” 

The ogre sneered at me. “You think I just want your ante? Pick up those damned cards and play them, you cave slug.” 

I glanced over at Kai, but he sat there looking away, still pretending to be more interested in signaling the waitress for another round than in the angry ogre across the table from us. 

I shook my head. “You don’t want that.” 

The ogre snickered at that. “You’re some kind of wizard, eh? Reading my mind now, are you?” 

The goblin found his laugh and giggled at me, his eyes glinting with bloodlust. “We don’t much care for wizards around here, do we, Ollie?” 

“I don’t mind them myself, Wint.” The orc licked his upper lip. “Delicious when done proper. Ain’t that right, Ferd?” 

The ogre didn’t answer. He just kept staring at me, waiting for me to make my move. 

I put my hands on the edge of the round table in front of me then, and I pushed myself to my feet with the kind of slow deliberation that seemed prudent when every set of eyes in the room except Kai’s were trained on me. 

“I don’t know what your problem with me is,” I said to the ogre. “I came here to play cards, not kill fat bastards like you, no matter how bad they might have it coming.” 

The collective breath of the entire tavern seemed to catch in its patrons’ chests. I ignored everyone else but Ferd. I might have to deal with the rest of them soon enough, but if I didn’t get the ogre to back down, that would all be moot. 

Ferd’s gaze flickered toward Kai, and right then I knew. I spoke to my old friend without taking my eyes off the ogre for an instant. 

“How much you into these guys for, Kai?” 

Kai turned toward me and coughed. “What are you talking about, Max?” 

“How much?” 

“Enough.” Ferd gave me a wide grin that showed off gaps in his teeth that I could have shoved my fist through. 

I looked at Kai then, and he gave me a helpless shrug. “You know me, Max.” 

I did, and I was sorry about it right then. After Kai had saved me from Fiera destroying my office, I figured he had my back, much like we’d done for each other in our adventuring days. While that might have been true most of the time, it didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to sell my backside to someone for the right price, especially if it meant getting himself off the hook for a large gambling debt. 

It’s a lot easier to stay on the same side, it seems, when everyone else nearby is a zombie that wants to feast on your brains. Just being breathers lumps you all together, and it’s not hard to find some kind of common ground upon which you can build a united front from there. In Dragon City, with the undead hordes well beyond the massive wall that encircles the Dragon Emperor and his grateful subjects, that’s a lot harder to pull off. 

I leaned forward on my edge of the table and braced myself on it, then let out a weary sigh. 

“You going to play that hand?” Ferd said. He scooped up my cards and flipped them over with far more deftness than I would have given him credit for.

The goblin gasped. “Look at that hand!” He pointed at me. “You
cheat
!” 

“I folded.” 

“We don’t much care for wizards around here,” Wint said, repeating himself. “At all.” 

Ferd leered at me over the table, a wet guffaw rumbling between his thick lips. “I don’t know,” the ogre said. “I think we might be able to find some kind of use for him.” 

I shoved down on my side of the round table as hard as I could. The far side of the table’s scarred and stained surface snapped up and caught Ferd square in his massive chin, sending blood and teeth flying. If I hadn’t caught him by surprise, I don’t doubt the wood would have splintered against his granite jaw, but as it was the impact knocked him backward in his chair. He fell sprawling into the table behind him. 

The table now between me and Ferd, Wint, and Ollie, I snatched the shotgun and my wand from my shoulder holster with a single sharp move. I leveled the gun at Wint, who was coming around the right side of the table at me, and I let my wand drop from my grasp and land in my off hand. 

“Hold it!” I shouted at the orc. Staring straight down the barrel of my sawed-off and watching an eager glow race along the runes engraved in its steel, he skidded to a stop with a frustrated snarl. 

“Check your left!” Kai said. 

I glanced that way, in the direction where Kai had been sitting a moment ago. He’d flung himself away from the table as soon as I’d shoved on it, and I’d taken that as a good sign. While he’d served me up to these bastards, he wasn’t going to join in the feast. 

Instead of Kai standing there beside me, though, I saw Ollie sticking his arm around that side of the table, a small pistol in his fist. 

I knew the toothless goblin wasn’t there to chat. I threw myself backward and tried to bring my shotgun around to bear on him at the same time. Instead of cursing my luck, I started to spit out a spell too, sure that I’d never have a chance to finish it. 

Ollie’s little gun went off, the crack ringing loud in the tight room. Pain stabbed through my right side as the bullet creased my ribs, tearing a shallow furrow through my flesh. 

Out of reflex from the pain more than anything else, I squeezed my shotgun’s trigger as I stumbled backward. The recoil knocked me flat, which I suppose I should have been grateful for, as it put me below the blast from my shotgun shell. 

I don’t know what kind of trouble I’d been expecting to run into when I let Kai talk me into coming down to Goblintown with him, but I’d loaded my shotgun with an enchanted shell before I strolled out of the Quill with him. When I pulled the trigger, I knew I was too close to whatever the thing would hit, but if it came down to getting shot down by a toothless goblin or taking myself out along with him and his friends, I had no regrets. 

The magic load went off as it smacked into the table next to Ollie’s head. I like to think the little goblin had an instant of relief between the moment he realized I’d missed him and the point at which the spell in the buckshot went off and exploded into a ball of fire that engulfed the table and anyone standing near it. 

The flames immolated the goblin as if he’d soaked his clothes in whisky, which maybe he had. He didn’t even have time to scream before they turned him into a blackened crispy shadow of himself. 

I felt lucky to have been knocked to the floor. The blast of fire bloomed over me but rose toward the ceiling rather than gouting toward the ground, where it would have barbecued me as fast as it had turned Ollie from a rare goblin to well done. It scorched my skin and singed my clothes and hair, but it didn’t set me ablaze. 

I couldn’t say the same about the table, though, which went up like the kindling in a funeral pyre. I blinked my eyes to clear my vision, then realized it was the heat warping the air that made everything look funny. 

A howl went up from behind the table, and an instant later a chair smashed into the wall of fire from that same angle. That knocked it aside and into a neighboring table of hard-nosed orcs who growled in protest. 

I didn’t worry about them for an instant though. I was too busy staring down the broiled ogre standing where the table had once been and reaching for me with a blistered mitt bigger than my head.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

I dropped the shotgun, which was useless now, its single shell already spent. I didn’t have the time to reload it, so I reached for my wand instead, the words to a nasty little spell already on my lips. They froze there an instant later when I realized I’d dropped the damn thing while trying to shield my face from the explosion. 

I could have cast the spell without the wand, sure, but it’s a lot harder trick to pull off. The wand might only be a tool, but it’s a damn handy one. In theory I can pound nails with my forehead too, but forgive me if I’d much rather try it with a hammer. 

I decided to give it a shot anyhow, realizing that I didn’t have much of a choice other than rolling over and dying. Ferd backhanded that idea right out of me. 

Stunned by the blow, I couldn’t put up much of a fight as the ogre grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me up into the air. Dangling there in his grasp, my feet flailing a full foot off the floor, I glanced around, hunting for some kind of weapon, someone who might lend me a hand — anything. All I saw were dozens of scorched and furious faces glaring and snarling at me. 

None of them belonged to Kai, which didn’t surprise me much. I didn’t expect he’d join in the effort to murder me in a messy and satisfying manner, but he wouldn’t want to stick around to watch it either. Knowing him, he was already halfway down the street and making an obnoxious effort to be noticed in a pathetic effort at establishing some kind of flimsy alibi. 

“You pale little git,” Ferd said with a growl that would have sent a pack of rabid wolves running off with their tails wedged between their legs. “I’m not cruel. I was going to make this quick — snap your skinny neck and be done with it.” 

He leaned in close enough that I could smell what he’d been drinking for the past week, and I had to fight not to gag on the scent. “Now,” he said, “I think I’ll take my time.” 

I headbutted him in his nose as hard as I could. Rather than feel the bone there crunch in the satisfying way I’d been hoping for, though, it felt like I’d just smacked my head into a stone wall. I reeled back as far as the ogre’s grip would allow and groaned aloud in agony. 

Ferd chuckled at me. “Maybe I’ll kill you quick after all. There’s a bit too much fight in you, isn’t there?” 

I opened my mouth to protest, but he didn’t care to listen. He lifted me another foot into the air to give himself a bit more room, then slammed me down into the floor. 

My back smashed into the floorboards, which would have been enough to knock the air from my lungs, but the ogre’s fist followed through into my chest and made sure to finish that job. It felt awful enough to have my chest squeezed clear like that, but then the ogre flattened his massive hand against my chest and pressed down, doing his best to ensure that the last breath I’d taken would be my final one too. 

I reached up and put my hands around Ferd’s arm and tried to shove it away, but it felt as rough and solid as a tree trunk. I tried clawing at it with my fingers, but he just snickered down at me. I gave squirming out from underneath Ferd’s a hand a shot, but it was like trying to haul yourself out from beneath an avalanche. There just wasn’t anywhere to go. 

My vision started to tunnel down hard, and I reached out in a desperate attempt to stab my fingers into the ogre’s eyes. He straightened his arm, locking it at the elbow, and leaned into it, adding a cracked rib to the suffocation. It struck me that it might be a race between whether I would die from a lack of air or a crushed heart.