The dragon bowed its great blind head. Between the singed ears, there stood a red ruff that was the exact match of Bulmammon’s. They had both been born of gold dragon eggs, both born with the coxcomb deformity. They were brothers, kin.
So what? Bulmammon raged, angry at himself for hesitating. The neck of the dragon was within a sword swipe of gushing out its life, dousing the fires and painting the hilltop in blood. But still Bulmammon did not move, could not move.
Sudden motion all around him. A Sivak soldier plunged through the grassfire, his armor limned in burning as he hurled his sword against the scales of the dragon. Another smoldering warrior followed after and cruelly split open the creature’s shoulder.
Bulmammon glanced from his blade to the two Sivaks, slicing away in bloodthirsty glee, and then to the head-bowed dragon and the coxcomb that crowned them both.
One of the Sivaks motioned to the assassin. “The dragon’s defenseless. Have some fun before the kill. You’ve earned it!”
Captain Bulmammon yet paused. Why? What stayed his three-fingered claw now, which could never before be stayed by any force in heaven or hell? A crimson coxcomb? No. The sign of the crimson coxcomb. It meant that there had been one other survivor from his star-crossed and slaughtered brood.
Bulmammon glanced again at his sword and noticed that it was freed. He could move and he did so, swinging his sword to lop the head from one of the Sivaks. The body collapsed, and the head rolled in the soot at his feet. His own face stared up at him in shock. In a daze, Bulmammon lurched past the dragon’s haunch and swung his blade again, decapitating the second soldier. His nictitating membrane closed in reflex over his eyes as blood sprayed across him, searing like fire.
Turning, Bulmammon lifted his blade and brought it down one last time. He cut the ropes that bound the dragon to the tree.
“Live, Brother. Live, if still you can.”
The assassin turned. He walked slowly away, unhurried and insensate, into the fire.
Even dragon blood was thicker than water.
He emerged from the fire, vaguely feeling the flames burning his livery. It was done. He had shied once from the slaughter, and would shy ever again. His life as an assassin was finished.
And so he did not even turn to fight the private, who leapt upon him….
*****
“Someone get him a rag and some water,” Ariakas ordered. He gazed at the blood-soaked young man, standing at attention before his desk.
“I take it your mission was successful, Private Baeron?”
“Bulmammon was a traitor, just as you had suspected. Yes, sir. I killed him with this knife.” The young man tossed the clattering blade onto the Highlord’s desk. “Oh, and his kin is dead, too.”
Ariakas leaned back in his seat and nodded his head. “Good. Of course, Bulmammon’s demise leaves an opening in the ranks. I’ll be needing a replacement for him.” He paused, gesturing the private toward a nearby chair. “You have no family, do you, Karl? Good. It’s time we talked of your future.”
Boom
Jeff Grubb
“This is a gnome story,” Wing Captain Moros exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose with his index and forefinger. “Am I right?”
The lumbering sergeant gave a shrug of his massive shoulders, accenting the motion with a nondescript grunt. Ever since Moros’s dragonarmy entered this accursed valley, everything had been a gnome story.
“One of the little rats wants you to favor him with an audience,” stated the sergeant.
Moros exhaled another sigh. Favor him with an audience. The sergeant must be repeating the gnome’s exact words, because the human subordinate was normally unable to speak more than seven words without an epithet, slur, or curse.
That was one of the more insidious problems with gnomes. After a while, it was far easier to just agree with them than to let them continue talking. Even before Moros entered into the Dark Queen’s service, he had heard the stories of this soldier or that merchant who tried to get the better of gnomes, and whose body was later found in innumerable easy-to-carry pieces. Moros considered the gnomes to be the prime dangers to his army in the valley, and had ordered his men to give them a wide berth.