Don't Feed the Trolls Read online

  Suddenly, there was a hand on his shoulder, and he let out a squawk, spinning.

  “Gods be good?” a familiar voice grunted. “Well, gotta say I’ve never known ‘em to be, Butcher, but then it’s a crazy world we live in, ain’t it?”

  Dannen frowned, staring at the newcomer. It took him several seconds to realize that it was Fedder, so coated was the man in stone dust that he could have been anyone if not for his massive size. “Fedder,” he said, “thank the gods. You alright?”

  The mage grunted, grinning widely and displaying teeth that seemed brilliantly white among the gray dust coating him. “Or some variation of it anyhow. You found the others yet?”

  Dannen stared at the man. “No, turns out I’ve been a bit busy, you know, taking my small part in Armageddon and all.”

  “And whimpering.”

  “What’s that?”

  Fedder shrugged. “Just thought I heard you whimpering, that’s all.”

  “It was a growl,” Dannen growled.

  “Really?” the mage asked, not seemingly taunting but with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Got to say, I’ve heard a lot of growls in my time, Butcher, and I’ve never—”

  “Best we find the others,” Dannen interrupted. “We can talk about this later.” Or never. Besides, he thought that if a man was ever allowed a whimper—not that he had—then surely it had to be when he was having an undead dragon falling on top of him.

  “Sure, of course,” Fedder agreed, “I’m just saying—”

  “This way,” Dannen interrupted again, choosing a direction largely at random because….well, because screw Fedder.

  And as fate would have it, by luck more than design—inarguable since he’d had no design whatsoever—they soon stumbled on Tesler quite literally as the man was lying on his back, and Dannen’s foot struck his leg. He would have fallen over for what might have been the thousandth time that day had Fedder not reached out a hand, lightning-quick as always, catching him. “There you are, Butcher,” he said, “I’ve got you.”

  Still, Dannen thought angrily as he regained his balance, screw him. Though, maybe a little less. The man, Tesler, was lying on his back, his eyes closed, and Dannen saw that Mariana was knelt beside him, the man’s head cradled in her lap. He also noted that she was sporting, by happenstance or, more likely, skill—screw her too—none of the many cuts and abrasions and bruises that were covering him and Fedder.

  “What happened to him?” Dannen asked, kneeling down.

  “I’m not sure,” the girl said, and he could hear the panic in her voice. “I just got here, I don’t—” She paused, bending her head onto his chest, presumably to listen for his heartbeat.

  As she did, Dannen noted one of the man’s eyes open the slightest amount. Not much, but it was not a flutter as he sometimes saw in the injured; instead it was a slight, covert opening, and the slit of eye which it uncovered did not seemed dazed or unfocused. The man looked at her, her head still on his chest, then glanced up, saw Dannen watching, and quickly shut his eye again.

  Dannen grunted, shaking his head. Well. Let the man have his small bit of pleasure—it wasn’t as if the world had much on offer.

  No sooner had he had the thought than—the gods being the assholes they were—there was a cacophony of sound as stone shifted behind him. He turned, half-expecting the tower he’d so recently vacated to, in its hurt at being abandoned, decide to topple on him in revenge. Unfortunately, he was not so lucky. It was not the tower crumbling which made the sound—for it was already well and truly crumbled, gone, in point of fact, a great gaping hole in the wall where it had been. Instead, the sound came from the skeletal form lying across the shattered remains of tower and castle alike or, more accurately, from the ground and debris beneath it as it began to rise to its feet.

  The dragon did not roar—Dannen wasn’t completely sure that undead dragons could roar—but its massive skull of a head turned to regard him and his companions as if eyes still rested in its hollowed-out sockets. Hard to change your expression, Dannen figured, when your face—and the rest of you, come to that—was no more than bone and tattered flaps of decaying flesh, but the great creature somehow managed to make its anger known anyway, solidifying the fact by darting out with its massive jaws to crush a guard who’d been stumbling blindly nearby.

  “Well. Playtime’s over, lad,” Dannen said, his mouth terribly dry—and he didn’t think just from the stone dust. “Best get up.”

  He looked down to see Tesler staring past Mariana at the beast. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I think you’re quite right.”

  Mariana continued to crouch, stunned, as the man clambered his way to his feet. Then, her shocked expression turned to one of anger as she realized he’d been doing a bit of play acting. “You son of a bitch,” she said, rising, practically leaping to her own feet, “I’ll kill—”

  “Kill him later,” Dannen said, “assuming you get the chance. Somehow, though, I doubt it.”

  Mariana followed his gaze to the undead dragon and hissed, as if she was more annoyed that she wouldn’t be able to give Tesler a piece of her mind—or a piece of her blade, come to it—than she was terrified at the idea of being killed by a beast out of nightmare.

  Women, Dannen thought, his gaze still locked on the dragon. There really is no understanding them. He stared at the beast, his mind racing as it crunched on the hapless guardsmen. He tried to think of some means out of this, some way to defeat it, but how did a man go about killing something that was already dead? An idea struck him then, and he spun to look at Fedder.

  “You’re a mage.”

  The big man winced. “Not so loud, Butcher. Folks might hear.”

  “What?” Dannen asked. “No, listen you damned fool, what I mean is you went to the academy, right? The one for mages.”

  Fedder grunted. “You know I did,” he answered quietly, “you don’t have to rub it in. We all got things we’re ashamed of, don’t we?”

  “Damnit,” Dannen growled, “I’m not trying to embarrass you, you silly bastard. What I’m saying is, they make you read a lot of books, study magic and all.”

  “Well, sure, Butcher,” the big man said, staring at him as if he was daft which, considering the company he kept, Dannen was beginning to agree with. “I mean, it is a magic academy, ain’t it?”

  Dannen spared a quick glance at the dragon—wouldn’t do to forget about something like that—and saw that it was still chewing on the guardsman, or at least what was left of him, then he turned back to the mage. “And did any of that studying,” he said through gritted teeth, “go into necromancy, the undead, that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah, some,” Fedder said slowly, “wasn’t ever my favorite subject, mind. The professor was a real prick, too, you want to know the truth, and weird as you would expect, what dealing with dead things—”

  “How do we kill it?” Dannen yelled, his impatience getting the better of him.

  “Kill what?” Fedder asked, then his eyes went wide as realization dawned. “Oh, you mean the dragon.”

  “Of course I mean the damn dragon—”

  “Doesn’t seem right to curse it,” Tesler offered.

  “What?” Dannen demanded, spinning on him.

  The man fidgeted, refusing to meet his eyes. “I just mean…well, you don’t know it, do you? It might be a nice dragon.”

  Dannen stared at the man, stunned, then turned back to the dragon where it was still chewing on the guardsman.

  “Ah, right,” Tesler said, “I catch your point.”

  He was turning back to Firemaker, meaning to pursue the question—and possibly an assassination attempt—a bit further, when Mariana’s eyes went wide. “Run!” she shouted.

  Dannen glanced back to see that the dragon had risen on its back haunches the way a cat might when its playing with a bit of yarn, only the creature didn’t seem intent on playing. It raised one great skeletal…paw? Dannen wasn’t sure if dragons had paws or not, but whatever it was,
it raised it above its head with the quite obvious intention of squashing them.

  So he decided to heed Mariana’s suggestion—he ran. Or, at least, he tried to. He sprinted away, had taken less than half a dozen steps when the creature’s skeletal paw came down on the battlements. Luckily, his fleeing had gotten him out of the way in time to avoid being crushed. Less luckily, perhaps, the stone buckled beneath his feet, and he stumbled to one knee, catching himself on the wall’s edge just in time to stop him from going over.

  He spun, looking at the creature, and caught sight of something inside its skeletal chest, just a brief flash of something that appeared to be a dark, shadowy gem. A Gloaming Stone. It had to be. Dannen didn’t know much about the undead, knew only that they were brought back to their pseudo—and inevitably hungry—life through the magic of a necromancer. And while many of those undead could not think or speak or do anything really other than kill—at that, it had to be said, they seemed to excel—this dragon would surely not be so easily brought back as a man might have. A creature like this would require some greater source of magic to maintain its pseudo-life. Magic, he suspected, that was carried in the Gloaming Stone he’d glimpsed near its spine, protected by its great ribs.

  Or so he hoped. Alternatively, he supposed what he’d seen could have been no more than the glint of armor from some unfortunate knight—one of the Mackeena brothers, perhaps, certainly a man could hope—or maybe even a polished stone. Still, he had nothing else to go on, and he didn’t think that the undead beast—already rearing onto its haunches once more—would be okay with taking a time out for him to sit and give it a good think.

  Even as he watched, it was turning to stare at the others who had fled in the opposite direction of Dannen and had been, as one, knocked from their feet. Any moment, its great head would snake out, making as quick work of them as it had the guardsmen—except for Fedder. He thought even an undead dragon would have to give that big bastard a good long chew to shut him up.

  No time, then, no time to think it through, to devise some sort of plan. So, with a suicidal shout—when rushing headlong at an undead dragon, there really isn’t any other kind—Dannen leapt onto the wall’s outer crenellations and charged toward the beast.

  The dragon turned to regard him, a slight tilt to its head as if to ask if he were serious—a question he didn’t know the answer to himself—then its mouth reared back, no doubt meaning to snatch him off the wall much like a darting bird would snatch a leaping fish out of the air. Dannen watched it telegraph its movements—he supposed one benefit of being an undead dragon was that you didn’t have to worry much about subtlety—and then, the moment he judged that the creature’s jaws would spring forward with the lightning quick speed it had used to crush the guardsman, he jumped.

  A terribly stupid, terribly foolish decision, but then Dannen’s life was largely made up of such stupid, terrible decisions, and instead of being eaten, he landed on top of the creature’s snout. He grabbed on desperately, terrified of slipping as it brought its head back. His hands grabbed firm onto the inside of what had once been the creature’s nose, slipping on bloody gristle. The smell was incredible, but he did not focus on it long, for the beast gave its head a shake, meaning to dislodge him, and it was all Dannen could do to hold on lest he get thrown to his death.

  But hold on he did, cursing and spitting and snarling, his legs flying out behind him, the only things keeping him from a very crushing, very final fall, his hands, which were even now slipping from where the gristle and blood of what remained of the creature’s snout moved and squirmed like jelly beneath his grip.

  “Hey, you big bastard! Over here!”

  The dragon cut off its efforts to dislodge him, at least for the moment, to turn its attention to where Mariana had screamed from. She stood with Fedder and Tesler, the man’s pet squirrel nowhere in evidence; even the rodent, it seemed, was more intelligent than Dannen and his companions.

  “It has a Gloaming Stone!” Dannen shouted. “In its chest!”

  They all looked at the beast, and even from this distance, perched as he was on its snout, he saw Fedder frown. “You sure, Butcher?” he asked. “Looks like it might be a bit of armor to me!”

  “Or a regular stone!” Mariana offered.

  “Do you have any other damned ideas?” Dannen shouted back.

  None of them answered, remaining silent. The dragon, though, had an answer, one which came in the form of its taloned hand reaching up, meaning to snatch him off its snout. Dannen was forced to plant his feet on the bones of the creature’s snout and leap forward, a leap which carried him onto the top of its head.

  He desperately pawed for purchase, gave a shout of panic as he felt himself beginning to fall, then, at the last moment caught hold of a piece of protruding bone. The skeletal hand reached for him again, and he was forced to roll away onto his back, holding on with one desperate, sweating hand as the nearest talon struck less than a foot away.

  He struggled to turn, trying to get his second hand on something, but he could find nothing and knew that the next time the questing talons came they were bound to find him. That was when he heard a roar from down below him, and instead of reaching for him once more, the dragon turned to the sound, and Dannen managed to scramble for a hold, turning to look below him.

  Fedder was there, holding what could only have been one of the dragon’s rib bones that had broken, likely during the fall. Broken, yet still almost twice as long as the mage was tall, heavy enough to have crushed someone if it had fallen on them. Heavy enough, no doubt, that two men would have struggled to lift it off the ground.

  Fedder, though, was not only lifting it, but currently using it like a makeshift club, bellowing a war cry as he struck the dragon with it again and again with predictable results—which, of course, meant none. Blows that would have no doubt ruined a man’s day, if he had the misfortune to find himself on the other end of them, but ones that a dragon—particularly an undead dragon—shook off easily enough.

  “Fedder!” Dannen yelled.

  The mage continued to swing again and again, raining a flurry of ineffectual blows against the skeletal form, not pausing as he glanced up at Dannen. “Yeah?”

  “What in the name of the gods are you doing?”

  Just then, the dragon apparently grew weary of the mage’s antics and swiped out almost casually with one of its talons in a backhanded blow. Fedder dodged to the side but not enough to avoid the blow completely which clipped him. Barely a touch, but when that touch came from a creature as big as the dragon, it was enough to send Fedder tumbling backward, end over end until he fetched up against the wall of the battlements in a groaning heap.

  “Fedder!” Dannen shouted.

  “Yeah?” the mage shouted back.

  “You’re a mage—cast a fucking spell!”

  Even from his precarious perch on the dragon’s skeletal snout, Dannen could see the embarrassed grimace on the mage’s face as he rose, glancing about as if searching for the appropriated rib bone. Finally, he seemed to give it up as a bad job and turned to the dragon. He held his hands out to the sides and fire blossomed there, seeming to appear out of nowhere, two balls of fire which grew larger and larger, and then with a shout of rage, Fedder thrust his hands forward and an inferno of flame flew from them, hurling toward the dragon.

  Dannen knew that Fedder was a powerful mage, one of the most powerful in the world, and he had seen the man do some incredible things with his magic before. Yet, he still found that he was impressed with the man’s raw talent. He continued to be impressed until he remembered one very important detail: namely that he was clinging to the face of the same dragon which was currently the target of that impressive and, more important, deadly magic.

  The inferno struck the dragon in the side, a great gout of flame, which impacted it with incredible force, rocking the beast where it stood half on and half off the battlements. Its entire body jolted from the force of the magic, and it reared backward and
backward still until it wasn’t rearing at all but falling and taking Dannen along with it.

  Dannen had time enough to shout, and then for what felt like the hundredth time that day he was falling. Falling, falling, and then fallen, slamming into the ground. The air was knocked from him once more, and he was rolling across the ground among the shattered debris which was what remained of the turret tower. He had only just come to an aching, bruised stop when there was a great crash and the dragon landed beside him, sliding across the ground, one of its taloned feet digging a great furrow across the castle’s inner courtyard.

  Dannen saw the talon approaching at incredible speed and managed to clamber to a sitting position, dragging himself back across the ground as the talon continued sliding toward him as if intent on his blood. It stopped only feet away, and he gasped out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he looked at the rest of the skeletal form lying still.

  He blinked disbelievingly as he studied it, shocked to still be alive. He was looking down at himself, feeling around to make sure all his parts were where he was accustomed to them being, when Fedder, Mariana, and Tesler ran up. At least, the younger man and the woman ran. Fedder, on the other hand, followed them in a groaning shuffle, lines of exhaustion and strain etched into his face. Dannen had seen the mage use his magic before, though perhaps never in such a grand display as this, and he knew that it sapped his strength, likely the reason why he had come to hate it so much.

  “Are you okay?” Mariana asked as she and Tesler came to stand in front of him, offering him their hands.

  Dannen allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, groaning as he did. “Never better,” he muttered, glancing at the beast’s massive form.

  The woman shook her head at the skeletal figure, turning to regard Fedder. “Damned impressive, old man.”