Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (2 page)

Then she brought the pommel of her sword straight down on the back of the dog’s neck, knocking it out cold.

‘Naughty boy,’ she chided, extricating her arm from the animal’s mouth. She wiped the slobber off on a tablecloth.

Kal left the kitchen and found some stairs leading up to the ground floor. She found herself in a circular antechamber, the kind built to impress visitors to the mansion. Thick candles burned in sconces around the walls. The floor was tiled red and white, and in the centre was a column topped with a marble bust. Kal took a moment to examine the sculpture; at least now it wouldn’t be too difficult to identify the man who lived here if she found him in the company of others.

She continued deeper into the house, creeping down a corridor laid with a deep-pile carpet that muffled her steps.
Sometimes they just make it too easy
, she thought to herself. Kal stopped outside a door that was slightly ajar, light emanating from the room within. She peeped carefully through the crack. It was a book-lined study. A man with his back to the door was sitting at a large desk piled high with books, maps and documents.

Kal could tell from the shape of his bald head that she had found her target. Slowly, she drew a throwing knife from her boot.

I.iv

Corruption

The man at the desk was holding a document up to read when Kal’s knife passed over his right shoulder, skewered the parchment, and pinned it to a painting on the opposite wall. He did a remarkable job of maintaining his composure as he rose from his leather chair and turned to face her.

‘I have a message for you, Senator,’ Kal said amiably as she entered the room. ‘Your home isn’t secure from assassins.’

The bald man smiled weakly as he tried to control the anger that nevertheless revealed itself clearly in his eyes. He was young, despite his lack of hair, and dressed richly in a red velvet tunic and a black woollen mantle stitched with gold thread. ‘Who are you?’ he hissed, raising his hands cautiously, palms out, in a submissive gesture, ‘and
what
do you want?’

Kal ignored the questions. ‘Do you know what the punishment for corruption in the Senate is?’ she asked him instead. ‘I guess you must. Exile from the city; expulsion into the Wild. How do you think you’d manage spending your nights in a cave in the Endless Forest, instead of in here with your books?’

The senator regarded her warily. ‘If you want to accuse me of something, maybe you should take your complaint to the Senate. Do
you
know what the punishment for breaking and entering a senator’s home is?’

Kal was browsing the senator’s bookshelves, brushing her fingertips along the leather spines. ‘The kitchen door was open,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’ve not done any breaking yet. You have an impressive library, Senator.’ She picked out a heavy tome bound in deep red leather. ‘
Calling the Dragon.
Wasn’t the author of this book beheaded in Satos Square? I think I was there that day.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ the senator shrugged. ‘I’ve not read it.’

‘A bit harsh, beheading, if you ask me,’ Kal went on, thumbing through the pages of the book. ‘But then I suppose the last thing we need right now is someone encouraging a dragon to visit the city again.’

The senator sagged noticeably. ‘I’m just a collector of rare books,’ he sighed. ‘What do you want me to do? Burn my library?’

‘No,’ Kal told him. ‘Words are just words; a book never harmed anyone by itself. In fact, I’ll do you a favour and take this one off your hands; my shelves are a little bare at the moment.’ She gave the senator a serious look. ‘No, Senator, what I want you to do is to stop accepting donations from—and lending your ear to—the people who supplied you with this book. The Dragonites are a dangerous cult, and religion and politics have never mixed that well in this city.’

He looked at her suspiciously. ‘Is that all you want me to do?’

‘Yeah,’ Kal said with a smile. ‘What did you think I was going to do? Carve a permanent warning into that shiny head of yours?’

The senator actually laughed in relief. Then his expression froze.

Kal turned around, following the senator’s stare. A man stood in the doorway of the study. He was tall, bearded and wore a coat of boiled leather scales. His dirty boots and cloak suggested that he had travelled a distance to get here. When he saw the book in Kal’s hands, he drew a wicked-looking two-handed longsword: it was plain and notched, but had a gleaming sharp point.

Kal threw down the book and reached for her own weapon. This was an unwelcome complication, but she fought to stay calm and in control.

‘Another dog to deal with,’ she muttered.

I.v

Swords

Kal and the intruder faced-off across the study.

‘Who is this girl, Raelo?’ the newcomer asked the senator.

The senator reassumed some of his authority. ‘Nobody—a thief; get her!’

The man lunged at Kal with his sword. She hopped back to avoid its deadly point. Kal’s own sword was only two feet long, but it was razor-sharp along both edges. It was no good for deflecting a heavy blade, though, and she would need to get up close to her opponent to do any damage.

Raelo cringed as the intruder swung his sword in a wide arc that swept a whole row of books off a shelf and onto the floor. Kal was forced back again. Her elbow knocked against something hard: a tall iron floor-standing candle holder. She grabbed it and flung it at her opponent. As he struggled to shove it to one side, Kal moved in for the kill. But her blade snagged on the interlocking scales of the man’s armour, and she realised that she had missed her chance.

The big bearded man brought his sword down awkwardly in a close overhead chop. Kal twisted away and the sword ran down her left side, peeling away her leather and scraping over the steel bands that she wore underneath. She panicked slightly and threw herself down onto the carpet, then rolled underneath the senator’s heavy oak desk.

The fallen candle holder had set fire to the study’s thick curtains, and the senator had taken off his mantle and was desperately trying to beat the flames out with it. Kal leaped to her feet on the opposite side of the desk to the big swordsman; this time she had her shortsword in one hand and
Calling the Dragon
in the other. Her opponent kicked at the desk, trying to shove it towards Kal and pin her to the wall, but she jumped up onto it as it moved, hurling the book before her.

The man instinctively batted it away with his sword, but the action left him exposed for a fraction of a second. Kal hadn’t stopped moving; she sprang off the desk and fell upon her opponent, her blade held low and pointing upwards.

This time she didn’t waste her opportunity; her narrow point slid easily beneath the scales of the man’s armour and entered his heart.

He hit the ground dead, with Kal sat astride his chest.

She exhaled in relief and turned to look at the senator, a wild grin on her face. ‘I told you that book was dangerous!’

Raelo was standing in the middle of his ruined study, clutching the smoldering remains of his woollen mantle. ‘You
killed
him,’ he gasped.

‘I saved him from a slow death in the torture chamber,’ Kal said. ‘He was a Dragonite, I take it?’

Raelo nodded.

‘Better run to the Senate and beg for their protection,’ Kal advised him. ‘The next man the Dragonites send here won’t be so eager to help you.’ She searched through the dead man’s belongings and pulled out a money bag. ‘There’s about two hundred gold crowns in here,’ she said, her eyes lighting up.

‘Take it,’ Raelo sighed, ‘and I’ll make an effort to forget your face, let alone the fact that you broke into my home at all. Give me a few days to prepare my excuses and I’ll go and try and explain this mess to the Senate.’

‘That’s so very considerate of you,’ Kal drawled, taking her leave. ‘You’ll make a smart politician yet.’ She went back downstairs and let herself out the front door. The senator’s guard was returning from his illicit night time rendezvous in the park. Kal gave him a friendly smile as she passed by.

* * *

The next morning, the nuns and monks who ran Arcus Hill Orphanage would wake to find that a package had been left on their doorstep. Opening the leather bag (that was stained with what looked like blood) they would find a sizable amount of money. The sisters would be delighted, and would immediately begin writing a list to take to the markets: the children would not go hungry for weeks now.

Twenty gold crowns was a generous donation indeed.

END OF PART ONE

PART TWO

THE QUEST

II.i

Prey

Deros tried to stand, but his muscles failed him. Kalina got to her feet to help him. Another arrow hissed by; she looked around desperately to try and see where the danger was coming from. A hundred yards away, across the meadow of wild grass, four figures had emerged from the trees. Her first thought was,
Hunters
?

Deros had seen them too. ‘Run, Kal,’ he said between gasping breaths.

Two of the figures were wearing helmets; one had a round shield also, and a sword.
Soldiers?

With fading strength, Deros pushed Kalina away. ‘Run, Kal!’

Without him?
‘No,’ she said, and moved to help him up again. Then she saw what the newcomers really were: not hunters, not soldiers—
not even people
. They were about five feet tall, with long, barrel-shaped torsos and short legs. Their skulls were flat and elongated, and thick back hair sprouted from the gaps in their piecemeal armour.

Goblins!

Kalina took one last look at Deros; the light was leaving his eyes as he implored her to go. She turned tail and ran for her life, not looking back.

She crashed through the forest undergrowth, the soles of her bare feet tearing up on the carpet of thorns and brambles. There was only one way she could go, and that was down. The forest hugged the sides of a valley on the lower slopes of the Starfinger Mountains, and the paths and game trails were almost vertical in places. Kalina was aware of movement among the trees all around her; it seemed like there were more than four goblins in the vicinity—an entire raiding party must have crossed over the mountains.

Not only that, but she caught the harsh smell of smoke in the air. Something was burning.

Kalina knew the forest as well as any trapper or woodcutter; she had spent every one of her eighteen years within twenty miles of the village at the bottom of the valley. She charged down a trail that only last week she had quietly stalked along. That day, armed with sticks of charcoal and a roll of paper, she had spent hours trying to get close enough to sketch the red deer she loved so much.

Today
she
was the prey. Kalina took a shortcut through a dense hawthorn thicket, almost taking her eye out on some protruding branches. Every fibre of her body screamed at her to go back for Deros, but what could she possibly do? Even if he was still alive, she could hardly carry him: Kalina was five-foot-eight and slightly built; Deros was six-foot-two and weighed almost half as much again as she did. And it wasn’t as if she could beg for the goblins’ mercy either; they might walk on two legs and scavenge weapons and armour from men, but everyone knew that they were animals really—predators. They lived to kill.

And so she plunged on through the forest in a state of panic and distress. Eventually she came out of the trees and onto the edge of the ridge that overlooked the village …

… what was left of the village.

Every building was burning. The logging sheds were now enormous bonfires; the stables and fish stores pumped out thick black smoke that carried a sickly, deathly smell. The slate roof of the schoolhouse had fallen in, and living, dancing flames engulfed the rest of the timber and thatch homesteads. The Green Beck, the quick stream that cut through the valley, reflected the flames, putting Kalina in mind of molten iron running from the blacksmith’s furnace. Only the wheel of the sawmill, slick with water, still turned, as if oblivious to the fate of the rest of the village. The once-white shrine to Mena was now black.

Kalina dropped to her knees in horror, her thoughts turning to one thing only:
where were the villagers
? Where were her friends and neighbours? Had they already run? Were they already dead? There was no sign of life anywhere in the stricken village.

As the smoke billowed and drifted, she could make out one large, still black shape at the heart of the destruction. The more she stared, the more the shape appeared to suck the light and movement out of the chaos that surrounded it. Whatever it was, it was coiled around the spire of the shrine. Only when it finally moved did Kalina realise what she was looking at.

The creature extended two enormous bat-like wings and raised its sleek, scaly head. It cried out: a harsh, scraping
kyyyrrrrk
like a thousand crows all screaming in unison

Kalina almost fainted.

He had come!

II.ii

Breakfast

The horrible sensation of falling jerked Kal awake. She lay in bed thinking over her dream for a few minutes, then steeled herself to face the morning routine. After five more minutes of putting it off, she flung off her feather-filled blanket and jumped out of bed. Kal’s room was in the attic of a four-storey brick residential building on the corner of Satos Square, in one of the busiest quarters of the city. She went to the window bay, pulled open the drapes and stood there, naked, looking down at the activity below. The bustling market had taken over the square; the sound of voices haggling and the smell of spices and cooked meats filled the air. The clock tower in the centre of the square revealed that it was gone eleven o’clock. Kal smiled to herself; the market would soon be winding down.