End Times in Dragon City (12 page)

Johan shot me a bewildered look. “Where?” 

“The Old Market Square, of course.” 

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

I brought the carpet up high over the city. The dust had already started to settle over Goblintown, and the sight of it appalled me. The glowglobes around the Great Circle still illuminated the wall, but everything ringed inside of it and south of Low Pavement had gone dark. 

A few fires burned here and there, nibbling at some of the fallen buildings. I wondered if they might catch neighboring heaps and start a conflagration that consumed that part of the city, but at that point I didn’t suppose it mattered. Goblintown was already gone. 

The moon had risen high enough now that I could see into the pit that sat where Goblintown had been. While nothing moved in the bulk of the place, a few dark figures still shambled over the wall near the Great Gate like ants crawling over a house’s threshold, on the hunt for food. Guards still standing on top of the wall fired at them and brought them down one by one. 

The Guard’s gambit may have bought the rest of the city a reprieve, but it hadn’t saved it. The Ruler of the Dead still had far more soldiers left in her army. Eventually, the Guards at the wall would be overwhelmed again. It was only a matter of time. 

When we reached the Old Market Square, it was packed with people wailing in fear and despair. The Guard was trying to hustle them upslope into the higher parts of the city, but the enormity of what had just happened to their homes had stunned some of them cold. They just sat or knelt there and sobbed into their hands or each other’s shoulders. 

I spotted one group of orcs engaged in a standoff with a squad of guards on the upslope side of the square. The orcs shouted angry threats at the guards, and the guards pointed their weapons at the orcs, warning them to stay back and follow their orders to evacuate the square. I spotted Yabair among the guards there and decided to let him suffer through that situation on his own. After what the Guard had done here, I wanted to shoot him myself. 

Of course, the only person who benefited from that kind of conflict was the Ruler of the Dead. Much as I despised Yabair at that moment, I was much more afraid of her and her army. I didn’t agree with what the Guard had done, but I understood the impulse behind it. 

In times as desperate as this, it seemed like you could justify any kinds of atrocities you wanted, though, no matter how extreme they might be. It was up to us to draw our own lines that we would not cross, and the Guard had thrown that responsibility aside.

I brought the carpet in to hover over the square, and I peered down at the people in it. The crowd below was already thinning out as some of the people listened to the Guard’s orders and moved higher into the city, away from the zombies advancing once again. I hoped that a lot of people had headed that way before Belle and I had arrived. Otherwise, it looked like damn few folks had made it out of Goblintown alive. 

I couldn’t imagine how many people the Guard had just killed. It had to number in the thousands. The total was too big to mourn over. It made me numb to even think about it. 

“See them?” I said to Belle. 

She gave me a grim shake of her head. Then her face lit up, and she stabbed a finger down toward a spot in front of a bakery on the north side of the square. “There!” 

I banked in that direction and spotted Danto standing in front of the bakery’s locked door. The front window had been smashed out — maybe by the explosions, maybe by a handy brick — and people were climbing in and out of the windows with the loaves the baker hadn’t sold that day. The looters gave Danto a wide berth, though, recognizing his wizard’s robes. As panicked as they were, none of them wanted to tangle with him. 

I brought the carpet down to hover next to Danto, and he lifted up Moira and planted her behind me, then scrambled on next to her. He clapped me on the back to signal me to go, but I hesitated. 

“What happened to Schaef?” I said. I saw a few orcs eyeing the carpet and weighing their chances in their head, so I raised the carpet up into the air as I spoke. No one answered me. 

I turned around in my seat. Moira sat there with her head in her hands, weeping without a sound. Danto gave me a grave shake of his head. 

My heart sank. Despite his understandable misgivings about getting involved, Schaef had been a good halfling, a friend brave and true. 

“And Kai?”

Danto shrugged, just as grim as before. “He ran into Goblintown right after you left, trying to sound the alarm, broken arm and all.” 

“Did he make it back out?” Belle said, her eyes wide with horror. 

“Maybe,” Danto said. “There was a rush of people swarming upslope just before the last explosions hit. I didn’t see him there, but it’s dark and crazy. I could have missed him.” 

I nodded and brought the carpet in for a low pass over the few people still standing in the square. I spotted an ogre standing on the downslope edge of the square, staring down into the ruins of what had been Goblintown only moments ago. I flew down in front of him and hung the carpet there in the air, well out of his reach. 

“Ferd?” The ogre didn’t react. He just stared straight past us with glassy eyes. “Ferd!” 

He brought his gaze up and saw my face and Spark hanging around my shoulders. Recognition flared in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word. 

“Have you seen Kai?” 

He squinted at me. “You,” he said as he stabbed a thick finger at me. “Gibson. This is your fault.” 

Belle squeezed my arm to offer me support. 

“Have you seen Kai?” I repeated, louder. 

“You should have let her kill you,” Ferd said, his voice dead and dull. “This didn’t have to happen.” 

Danto zapped the ogre’s feet with his wand. “Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to feed us to her!” he said as Ferd jumped in pain. “For the last time: Have you seen Kai?” 

Ferd growled at us all. “Yeah, I seen him. He was heading toward the wall, raising the alarm the entire way, shouting for people to run.” He frowned. “There’s no way he made it out of that. No way.” 

I fought the urge to leap off the carpet, to lay into the ogre with my fists and call him a liar. Instead, I spun the carpet about and put her high into the air, heading west. 

To my great relief, the Quill was still standing, although the buildings across the street from it were not. No matter how horrible the act of destroying Goblintown might have been, I had to admire its precision. 

I had planned to usher everyone into the bar through the hole the Black Hand assassins had blown into my bedroom window, but Thumper had boarded it up. Having seen the way the zombies had scaled the Great Circle, I appreciated his wisdom and his caution. I hauled the carpet up higher and put it down on the bar’s roof instead. 

The Quill was one of the oldest places in Dragon City. The back part of it had been cut out of the Mountain itself, and it didn’t have a roof so much as a slanted shelf of rock the bulk of the building sheltered under. Either way, it was wide enough for me to set the carpet down on top of it without blocking the hatch that led into the place’s attic. 

 I undid the hatch’s enchanted lock with a touch, then opened it wide and ushered the others inside. Once they were safe, I climbed in too, stopping only for a moment to gaze down at the downslope wreckage. I could see dark figures clambering over the rubble, working their way toward us with slow determination. It wouldn’t be too long before they arrived. 

I stopped in the attic, shrugged Spark off, and uncapped a glowglobe on the inside of the hatch. The others had already moved downstairs, heading for the bar. By the pale light, I found a section of the wall that Gütmann had helped me alter. 

I tapped the wall three times in a particular spot, and a door opened, revealing a closet behind it. Inside, I uncapped another glowglobe, and I set to gathering up the things I needed. That included a new wand, a holster for it and the pistol Kai had given me, and a pint-sized flask that held a gallon of the finest dragonfire around. That might be precious stuff from now on, I realized, without the Dragon around. 

Spark wound his way around my knees as I worked, and I reached down to scratch him behind the ears. His egg’s shell had been Belle’s source for dragon essence, which was the key ingredient in dragonfire too. I wondered how many other people in the city might have another such egg and if the things could be hatched too. 

While I was at it, I pocketed a few boxes of enchanted bullets for Kai’s gun. I’d gotten used to the shotgun Kells gave me back when Moira had gone missing and I’d had to go hunting for her out beyond the Great Circle, but I’d spent a lot more time with a pistol over the years. It felt good to have one back in my hand, and I meant to make the most of it. 

I closed the closet, and the door vanished into the wall again. I hauled Spark back up onto my shoulders and found my way downstairs. Kells and Cindra were already there, along with their kids, and Johan had joined Thumper behind the bar. He was pouring drinks for us all, and Thumper had laid out a spread that looked fit for a feast. 

“What’s the occasion?” I said as I came down the stairs. 

“End of the world,” Thumper said, not cracking a grin. “Everything must go.” 

I sat down next to Belle at the bar, and Johan slid a pint of beer in front of me. I realized at that moment that I hadn’t had anything but a bit of water and gruel since I’d been arrested the day before. I knocked back half of the drink with one belt and then set to filling my growling belly. 

As I stuffed the food into my mouth, Spark slunk off my shoulders and picked out half a chicken left on the far end of the spread. He knocked it to the floor, then tore into it and stripped the flesh from its bones in a flash. After he’d removed every bit of meat, it stared at it for a moment, then breathed flames on it. 

That got everyone’s attention, and we all shouted in alarm. I leaped off my barstool and bent over to pluck the little guy up, but the flames still jetting from his snout made me think better of that. 

“No!” I shouted at him. “Stop!” 

Why? 

“You’ll burn the whole place down!”

Oh. 

He cut off his flaming breath, leaving nothing but smoke curling from his nostrils and a pile of glowing ash on the floor. Fortunately, the floor in the bar was stone rather than wood. While he’d flamed it enough to raise the temperature in the room and blacken the floor, nothing else had caught fire. 

“He always eat like that?” Thumper said. 

I shook my head. “I don’t actually know. Seems dragons don’t need to eat all that often. The Guard used to bring him back to the Dragon’s Spire every day or so for meals.”

Moira shuddered. “And what do you think they fed him up there?” 

I didn’t want to think about it. I reached down and stroked his neck, which wasn’t any hotter than usual. “From now on, I think chicken’s at the top of the menu.” 

Belle sidled up to me. “And for the rest of us? What’s the plan from here?” 

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

I grimaced. I’d often been the one with the plan back when we were adventuring together, but I’d long since given that up. After Gütmann died, I hadn’t wanted the responsibility any more. I couldn’t take the thought of watching more of my friends die. 

Now death had come hunting for us. 

I heard the rattle of gunshots outside again. We still had hours until sun-up. Destroying Goblintown might have slowed down the zombie advance, but it hadn’t stopped it. 

I reached out and held Belle’s hand. My friends had broken me out of jail for a reason. They needed me. Whether I wanted the responsibility or not, they’d dropped it in my lap, and I couldn’t find it in myself to refuse it. 

“I’ve been in jail,” I said, glancing at each of the others in turn. “What’s been happening?” 

“The Wizards Council has fallen to arguing among itself,” Danto said. “They’re bickering about whether they should make a stand or try to evacuate. They could be a huge help, but without the Dragon behind them, the Guard hasn’t been able to get them on board.” 

“There’d been a bit of organization starting in Goblintown,” Cindra said, “but they never did have a strong leadership there. The Guard always made sure of that.” 

“We spent most of our time fortifying our place,” Kells said. “Much good as that did us. The people in Goblintown put up as much resistance as they could, but only in pockets. Still, they fought right up until the end.” 

“The halflings have mostly sealed themselves inside the Big Hill,” Moira said. “They’ve been digging tunnels underneath it for centuries. They figure they can hunker down there and ride out the initial battles at least.” 

“The Ruler of the Dead isn’t taking any prisoners,” I said. 

“My father’s been trying to tell them that. I don’t know if he’s been able to get them to listen. There’s a chunk of people who think we can cut a deal, that the Ruler’s always going to need some living servants, and the less threatening they are — like halflings — the better.” 

“Have they checked those tunnels for explosives?” 

Moira shrugged. “I’ll bet they’ve started by now. I don’t think any of us expected the Guard to blast away Goblintown like that.” 

“What about the dwarves?” I turned toward Johan, who hadn’t said much yet. 

He put down the mug of ale he’d been hiding behind. His face flushed with shame. “They’re a bunch of bloody cowards is what. They setting to hunker down inside the Stronghold for the long haul.”

That put me back on my barstool. “They really think they can manage that?” 

“The Brichts have been preparing for this day for centuries. They built the Great Circle. They knew how strong it was and that without the Dragon it would fail. Even the strongest wall can’t hold up forever against a force like that army the Ruler’s been building since before my father was born.” 

“Doesn’t the same hold true for the Stronghold?” Cindra said. She held her son and daughter close to her.