Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3) (16 page)

“Do you know how hard it is to find an actor that looks like an elf?” Dianne asked.

I laughed. “An inspired casting choice.”

“Durrrrrr. Heronimo durrrrrr. Swordsmanship durrrrr.”

I was speechless.

Cruix laughed. “Thank you, my friend, for the show that never ends.”

Play!Heronimo looked around as the cart trundled past a row of wooden walls. “
Durrrr
. Look how fair Heorot is. I see nothing out of place at all.”

“Fuck you, I’m a dragon.”

“How very bright and progressive is the city,” Play!Heronimo continued. “So clean! So whitewashed! So utterly fake!”

Play!Cruix crossed his arms. “Fuck you. I’m a dragon,”

The real Cruix frowned. “Do I only get that one line?”

“You say it a lot,” I told him.

All the walls fell forward, exposing a mob of humans. They wore rags and dirt. Some were limping, some were leaning, all were slouching.

“You couldn’t get halflings to play themselves?” Cruix asked. “These are obviously humans pretending to be halflings. They look like a bunch of nobles playing dress-up.”

“Oh, envoys of Brandish!” said one of the pretend-halflings. “Bear witness to us, the invisible masses!”

“Oh. My. Gods.” Cruix said.

“Fuck you, I’m a dragon.” said Play!Cruix.

“Aye, Cruix and Heronimo, we are the unseen, the unfelt, the unsmelled. We are the base of this pyramid of flesh which daily groans beneath the pond’rous weight of callused conquerors.”

Cruix was in tears. “Oh my gods. Oh my
goooods
. Oh ho ho ho. ”

Dianne was bright red. “It’s not that bad.”

“You went to all this effort to put up your little protest piece, but you neglected to make it a good one.”

“We are trying to make a difference!” she said.

“Thordis!” Ardel said. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Don’t call me Thordis,” Dianne said. “That’s my slave-owner name .”

“I remember you!” I said. “You’re that girl who carried books everywhere.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said.

“Thordis... Dianne. It’s time to go,” Ardel said.

The protesters were being eased off the stage. These were the sons and daughters of the nobility, so the guards were gentle.

Ardel reached up. “If you come now, Dianne, there won’t be any problems. You have my word on it.”

“Your word as a prince?”

“My word as your friend.” He looked at me and Cruix. “I’m sorry about all this

“Please don’t,” Cruix said. “It was highly amusing.”

Chapter 15: Angrod

I’d just stepped off the gangplank when Prince Ardel greeted me.

“Prince Angrod,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

We shook hands. Heronimo and Cruix had given detailed reports, which is how I recognized him. It was also how I knew to take pills against seasickness, and how I was able to name the people in the prince’s entourage. The big one was Brynjar, the quick one was Eadric, and the vaguely-foreign one was Rangvald. The skinny guy to one side, that had to be Orvar.

“I’m glad to be here too,” I said. “What can I do for you, Prince Ardel?”

“Please, just Ardel. Walk with me.”

“Call me Angrod,” I said, falling into step . Our people followed. So did Serrato. Two deckhands carried something on a pole.

“What are you doing?” Meerwen asked them.

“Have to make a delivery to the palace,” Serrato said.

Heorot was a city under siege. The citizenry looked like they were a dragon fart away from bouncing off the walls. Everyone was too awake, too alert. Even the children had dark circles under their eyes.

I’d seen this before, in halfling villages terrorized by man-eating wyverns. For an entire human city to be struck by the same fear...

“My father and I are at the end of our wits,” Ardel said. “We post guards, it strikes where there are no guards. We set patrols, it evades the patrols. We send the army, it destroys the army.”

“What?” I said.

“Right now we couldn’t even fight off a bandit raid.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to tell me, when my people always wanted to annex the Northlands.”

Ardel looked at me. “I’ve been following your adventures, Angrod. You wouldn’t do that.”

No one had seen the beast and lived. It was a kind of wyvern, that much was clear from the footprints. It was bigger and stronger than the usual killer lizard. And judging by its behaviour, it was smarter. More savage. It didn’t just hunt, it inflicted carnage, killing far more than it could eat.

“One child, we found most of her half-buried in the mud.”

“The entire army couldn’t harm it?” Heronimo asked. “The
entire
army?”

“It stood its ground a few times. Lots of broken spears and sword blades, but not so much as a drop of the creature’s blood.”

Ardel’s men had other theories. One was that it was a giant wyvern statue, given life by evil dwarven magicians. Another was that it was a mechanical monster, again given life by evil dwarven mechanists.

“The dwarves have to be responsible,” Eadric said, while Mina grit her teeth.

A woman planted herself before us. Two other women took position to either side. One started banging a drum. The other brought a flute to her lips.

“What—” I said, but then the first woman spoke:

“Short is a man’s span of time on this world

His strength a fleeting thing, a season

He starts losing it the moment he finds it

His days speed to the hour of his death

“Oh yes, you have to find your path

No less, walk the earth, found your empire

The people demand from you feats of daring

Boys are meant to be men are meant to be heroes

“So go forth and do great things

Don’t fear what comes anyway, death

The ultimate reward is honour, not awards

No medal can outshine an honest battle scar

“A freelancer

An adventurer, a hero for hire, a mercenary

The gods don’t care what you care to call yourself

They only care that your deeds mark you as a man

“Some day, some night

You too will die

The end will take you by surprise

Some fight, some raid

Sun up or sun down

Somebody will close your eyes

“What?” I said. She’d spoken in Elvish, but still. I’d never been ambushed by poetry before.

Meerwen stepped forward. “Elsa. So you survived Snow Mountain.”

“Yes, I did survive,” Elsa said. She crossed her arms. “A cat always lands on her feet.”

“After they’ve had their heads caved in?” Meerwen asked. “I’m impressed. Whose side have you infiltrated this time?”

“I did that on my lord’s orders. I am between lords at the moment, so I’m here for myself.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I will destroy the monster, take the prize, and start a new nation. A better nation.”

“What was that music all about?” Meerwen asked. “What, busking was your backup career?”

“I am a sorceress, if you couldn’t tell. I was simply dispensing wisdom to these fine young men.”

“Is she talking about us?” I asked.

“Enough!” Serrato said. “You ambushed me with poetry! No one ambushes me with poetry!”

Everyone tensed as he reached behind him, into hammerspace. But instead of swords he pulled out... a pair of maracas.

“That was brutal,” I said.

“I’ve never seen so many grown men weeping,” Ardel said.

“
Make it stop
, they said. One guy promised Serrato his firstborn. Who knew show tunes could be so scary?”

“It is an entirely different thing when you are
singing
said show tunes against your will,” Cruix said.

I suppressed a grin. “We tried to pull you to safety, but you were dancing too fast.”

“Perhaps you would have had better success if you weren’t laughing so hard,” Cruix said.

“It’s not often you see water magic of that scale or complexity,” Meerwen said.

“Captain Nonviolence, that’s me!” Serrato said.

“This is why we let him ashore,” Ardel said. “It’s not worth trying to arrest him. You end up with a dozen guards questioning their life choices.”

“It was wonderful,” Meerwen said. “The look on Elsa’s face when she started singing.”

Serrato smiled. “And before you ask, Heronimo, no, I did not hijack your body when we had our swordfight. I don’t do that to opponents. It was a fair fight, or as fair a fight as you can get, considering our age difference.”

Ardel turned to me. “I’ve been following your adventures. This whole tournament thing was just to get you over here.”

“Because I’m an experienced wyvern hunter?”

“And because you’re a trained combat mage. It’s my hope that elven wizardry will succeed where human strength has failed.”

I looked at the ground. “I’m just a grey mage. If you want real firepower you need a black mage, or better yet a red mage. But I suppose the various treaties get in the way of that.”

Ardel nodded. “If any other elven mage were to set foot on the Northlands, that would be the same as landing a human army in Brandish.”

We looked at Serrato.

“What?” he said. “I’m neutral!”

“Yeah, neutral all over the place,” Cruix said.

“The tournament is a cover,” Ardel said. “However, if one of the other parties manages to bring down the beast, the prize is theirs."

We were walking up to the palace and the fabled bronze gates were in sight. Those were some big doors.

Mina stopped. She breathed sharply.

“Those doors,” she said. “Do you know where the metal came from?”

“Out of the ground?” Heronimo said.

“Genius,” Cruix said.

“In a general sense, he’s right,” Ardel said. “The bronze for those doors was recovered from dwarven strongholds. As was the bronze used to construct the Heimdallr Colossus.”

“I didn’t... I didn’t see... it was dark,” Mina said. She reached out for support and Heronimo caught her.

“That’s a lot of metal,” he said.

“We dwarves mourn every scrap of it,” she said. “We built our first civilization here, in the

Northlands. Ardel’s ancestors drove us out.”

“This happened long ago,” Heronimo said.

He tried to hug her but she shook free. “Not long enough!” she said. “When we fled across the sea, we lost our histories, our laws, our entire written culture. Do you know what you did, Prince Ardel?”

“Er—” Ardel said.

“They were treasures, every one. Worth more their weight in gold. And you melted them down for the bronze.”

She walked ahead.

“It wasn’t me!” Ardel said. “It wasn’t even my grandfather!”

“Who goes there?” called the sentry, or something to that effect.