The Dragonskin Chronicles Bk. 01

"Is that what happened? Why he happily gave Princess Myr up instead of paying his tribute?"

"Aye, that appears the way of it. Do you have family left behind, eagerly awaiting your swift and safe return?"

"Only my widowed mother, trying to hold my lands and people together in my long absence. I am an embarrassment to my people, who are woman and old men or young men. All the men up to twenty years older than me and five years younger were cut down at Hawkshart Plain, even the wounded were slaughtered where they lay. I alone survived, thrown into a gully by the impact of my single wound, which kept me in my sickbed for almost a year. My people are impoverished by overtaxation and royal embargoes. This reward of gold will feed our babies, who now die young, and will hopefully save my people. What of your family, do they await the completion of your obligations in six years?"

"Nay, my Lord, there is no one ... no one at home awaits my return. And there is no longer any home for me."

They sat silent for a moment, as sleep would not visit either as swift as each hoped, such was the price of sleeping with strangers you have no reason to trust. As the wind grew stronger, the night on the mountain became much colder.

"Thank you," she said quietly, as she unfolded what looked like a fabric as fine as a spider's web over her scantily dressed body.

"For what?"

"For coming to my aid back there."

"You looked as though you had the situation well in hand," he grinned, "if I'd taken any longer to get to you, there'd have been no sport for me at all!"

"Ha! Ye'll have your fill of sport in the morning, my Lord!"

"Aye, we will, my Lady Zyndyr, no doubt at all, we both will."

Although nothing had been agreed in so many words, Korwyn felt they were an unlikely pair to face the Orc hordes together upon the morrow.

***

Clive knew it was going to be a fraught and exhausting day as soon as he arrived at work. One of his girls had to hole punch and comb bind the monthly sales reports but the machine had stopped working barely halfway into the middle of the job. He was aware that the machine wasn't covered by any service level agreement, most of these had been cancelled by management as they came up for renewal, so he would have to roll up his sleeves and try and fix it himself.

He collected the small and rather basic tool kit he kept in the boot of his car, unscrewed the binding machine's cover and proceeded to clear what looked like a blockage of bits of paper. It still didn't work once he put it together, so he turned it over and undid the electrical plate. He noticed straight away that the internal fuse had blown, the glass tube terminally blackened. He replaced the fuse with a spare, screwed it back up tight and it worked immediately.

He left the grateful girl working on the rest of her reports and sat in his office with a freshly brewed coffee, feeling a rare sense of achievement and musing on the direction his current daydream fantasy was heading.

***

Korwyn stretched the kinks out of his heavy frame just as a crack of light appeared on the eastern horizon. He shook off the brittle layer of frost on the surface of his black dragonskin cloak and immediately regretted the waste of potential water. He took a minute sip of water from his hip flask and swirled it around his dry mouth before allowing it to trickle down his throat. He last filled the flask two days ago and didn't know when he would be able to refill it, the water trickling down this mountain offended his nostrils and he deemed it too foul to drink.

He drew the pair of divining sticks from his pack and held them out in front of him. They waved left and right for a moment to pick up the strongest signal from Princess Myr's amulet, before jerking his hands upward, where they paused, then tugged down and down, marking out a tortuous route until pointing deep into the roots of the mountain, far below them.

Zyndyr had folded and packed away her flimsy blanket while she waited for him to complete his divination.

"The entrance to the cave is above and to the right, then inside, we start to descend," he said.

She nodded. "Yes, I too, feel the way is thus."

Korwyn nodded in acknowledgement that the Elf would have some means of tracking well beyond his mortal abilities with the divining sticks supplied by the Dwarves.

Together they scrambled upward through the mountain scree. The cave entrance, when they found it, was a narrow crack in the rocks, which Korwyn insisted on squeezing his bulk into first, battle axe at the ready, with Zyndyr following immediately behind. Inside it was dark and it took Korwyn a few minutes for his eyes to adjust, while the Elf passed him and descended rapidly through the loose internal scree, barely dislodging a pebble, as if for her it was as bright as daylight. Korwyn did his best to keep up without falling headlong down the rocky cave.

After an hour's steady descent, they started to reach galleries lit by odd torches which smoked and smelled foul of rancid animal fats or worse. Thereon they had to proceed more cautiously and keep watch for Orcs.

Zyndyr held up a hand and Korwyn pulled up short behind her. Ahead he could make out a crowd of Orcs and what looked like one of the Undead giving them instructions. Soon the crowd departed as small groups in different directions and the pair were able to proceed in their intended direction.

"The Undead, I didn't realise they would be involved in this princess guarding," whispered Korwyn, "I thought they were neutral, too bent on eating any living flesh that they can smell, to become an ally of any one form of creature in particular."

"I wasn't even aware they could talk," Zyndyr hissed back, "And you never see them individually, especially like this, giving instructions instead of simply being unleashed to carry out simple orders. They have been used effectively by the Goblins and Trolls before, but only on rare occasions and always employed in large numbers, when they are often unstoppable."

"There's something going on here that is not right, Elf."

"I agree, but... Try your divining sticks again, I sense the Princess is quite near."

As soon as Korwyn drew them from his pouch, they pointed strongly immediately ahead and to the right without waver, down a broad low tunnel.

"She is just ahead, Zyndyr, no more than thirty paces," he whispered.

The Princess had only six Orc guards around her, who didn't even see the hulking human or hear the stealthy Elf approach, before joining the earth from which they were hatched.

The Princess stood transfixed at the sudden slaughter in front of her eyes. She was carrying a small baby bundled so tightly in filthy rags that only the bald head showed. By her side stood a boy child, Korwyn estimated to be about four or five years old, though far too tall for a Dwarf child. The boy had been spared death this moment simply because he was neither Orc nor Undead. The baby, however, bore the unfortunately misshapen skull features of an Orc, registering at least some of the abuse the Princess had had to endure during her long abusive incarceration.

"Come, Princess, we must go!" Zyndyr instructed her in the Dwarf tongue.

The Princess remained unmoved. So Korwyn stepped forward and picked her up. As he did so, the boy drew the short Dwarf sword from Korwyn's scabbard and stabbed him in the thigh with it.

"What the!?" he bellowed.

Zyndyr snatched up the boy as if he were merely a feather, plucking the sword from the child's hand and sliding it back into its scabbard at Korwyn's hip in one simple, graceful, movement.

A group of Orcs, led by an Undead, appeared at the entrance to a tunnel thirty paces away below them. Korwyn set down the Princess and her baby, ready to draw his axe.

"We must go, Korwyn," Zyndyr declared, "if we fight we'll be trapped down here and surely lost to their superior numbers. We must go now!"

She turned back the way they had come. With a grunt, Korwyn bent and picked up the Princess again, who had fallen to her knees at his feet. A glance revealed she merely clutched her baby bundle to her breast. He was relieved it was not a weapon, having suffered the painful flesh wound at the ungrateful hands of her half-Dwarf son. The Princess weighed next to nothing, there was hardly anything of her within her ragged clothing.

Korwyn looked up, the Undead officer, was once a Man, as tall as Korwyn but slighter of build and very thin. It could only shuffle along at best, and had sent a dozen Orcs hot-foot and armed towards him. Korwyn drew the Dwarf sword into his hand, ready for use if needed, while he clenched the barely-responsive Princess to him in the other arm, before he turned to chase after the departing Elf, ignoring as best he could, the pain from his leaking thigh wound.

At each passageway and crossroad there were dead Orcs, the smell of roasted flesh indicating that the Elf had passed this way but moments before, Korwyn had no need to follow the return map stored in his head. Now and then an Orc or two poked a head out at Korwyn's approach and were dispatched by short stabs or slashes from his short but well balanced Dwarf sword. It was the first time he had used it, but the old crone who had pressed it into his hand in the Dwarf City expressed the urgency of his acceptance; now he was glad that he had changed his mind and accepted the gift rather than decline it, as was his initial reaction.

It took a long time before he caught up with Zyndyr. By then, they were so close to the surface that he could catch a hint of fresh air over and above the stench of seared flesh and disembowelled Orcs.

Zyndyr's way to the exit was blocked by dozens of Orcs, but the inhuman creatures stood by watching as the Elf was engaged in a one-on-one battle with an Undead, when Korwyn arrived on scene. Zyndyr's living armour had completely clad her body in silvered metal, including helm, which Korwyn could only surmise grew from a silvered necklace he had seen around her neck.

He weighed into the group of watching Orcs with his little sword. His enemies restrained the full force of their retaliation to his ferocious attack, to avoid stabbing the Princess he held. This proved their undoing and Korwyn made short work of the foul beasts in his path. He turned after sending the last of them to whatever hell they were destined for, to check on Zyndyr.

She stood alone, the headless corpse of the Undead at her feet, the little struggling boy child still gripped in one of her arms. Her helm disappeared, melting into a delicate necklace that glowed with energy in the gloom before dying back to normal reflective silvery metal. She looked thoughtful, before shaking her head and stepping forward, most of her armour melting away as if it had never been there. Only the armour from shoulder to gauntlet on her left arm remained, where the struggling Boy was trying his hardest to bite through the living armour.

"Here, Korwyn, you take The Boy, my armour is protesting at his persistent gnawing. I'll gladly take the Princess and her baby off your hands."

Korwyn set down the Princess, who seemed to be in shock at what events were happening to and around her. He wondered what her father would have to say about his grandchildren, both only half-Dwarf, and the baby as ugly as sin. He plucked the struggling Boy from Zyndyr's grip.

"Come on, Elf, he grinned, "what are waiting for? There is more fun to be had around the next corner rather than wait for them to catch us up!"

Lastly the armour from shoulder to gauntlet on her left arm shrank back to a simple forearm bracelet before she gathered up the Princess and followed Korwyn outside into the bright daylight.

Chapter 2

White Dragon

When he awoke, sitting in his quiet office, Clive's tea was tepid, his original mug of coffee where he left it, stone cold and untouched. His secretary must have come in to place the fresh brew while he dozed. He wondered what he was coming to, did everyone in the office now regard him as a joke? He had put up with everything imposed on him by management because he was powerless to stop it, or was it that he simply did not care what happened here anymore?

He reflected on last night's parents' evening. Carole had been angry with him in the car on the way home from the school, barely disguising her lack of respect for him, pointing out how he'd ignored the second teacher's barely veiled blame for their second eldest's inept educational progress clearly at the parents' door and that they needed to take more interest in their child.

"I tried to tell her that we have sick, aged parents ourselves and need to spend our weekends ... And the bitch just cut me off with more criticism and you did absolutely nothing to back me up. Sometimes, I don't have a clue what's going through your head!"

That's when their number one son, ignoring their conversation as he played on his games console in the back seat, chimed in with, "Mum, when's tea? I'm hungry!"

'Oh oh,' thought Clive, as he clenched the steering wheel with both hands, 'we had our tea before we went out. Carole's been holding it all in but now she's going to explode!'

***

The daylight outside the mountain caves and tunnels exploded on Korwyn's retinas like twin supernovas. He squinted to see the short line of surprised Orcs immediately in front of him, they were bearing slaughtered beasts gathered from the surrounding hills, antelope and rabbit, hare and badger, plus the odd rustled sheep. They hesitated, squared up face to face, when arrows whizzed past Korwyn's ears and took out three of them in a blaze of Elf-arrow fire. Korwyn shook off the ancient memories of the burning deep in his own left shoulder, before charging into the remaining two Orcs and hacking them to the ground with economic but effective thrusts with the Dwarf sword.

"Come on, Korwyn, don't really want to leave you behind, but I have the Princess, and the rewards go with her, remember!" Zyndyr called as she ran past him, nimbly leaping her way down the rocks, her bow in one hand, the Princess with her precious bundle slung over her shoulder and the tiny Elf wings flapping behind helping her glide smoothly over the broken terrain.

Korwyn followed her as rapidly as he could, The Boy still struggling in his arms. When he caught up with the Elf, as he did as soon as they reached level ground, he stopped briefly. Swiftly he bound The Boy's legs and wrists. Looping them together, he put his sword arm through, slung the boy around his neck, and leaving both his hands free to use his battle axe rather than the delicate little sword.

"Behind you Zyn—" was all Korwyn could yell as a ghostly Undead, mounted on an Undead Horse, bore down on them from behind Zyndyr.

She turned to face the menace, her Elf sword drawn, while all around them, ancient graves opened up to emit more Undead, all newly awake but in various states of decay.

Korwyn swung his heavy axe, cutting through necks and arms and torsos of these fresh Undead as if they were dry twigs. The smell of rotting flesh filled the air as Korwyn slashed back and forth, caring little in his frenzy to worry about blood hitting any of his wounds. In fact, for these unfed Undead, armed with nothing more than tooth and nail, little or no blood was in evidence. When he looked up, the newly Undead were either newly redead or rendered immobile, with Zyndyr watching on bemused.

Zyndyr had despatched her mounted Undead, its head neatly severed, while the Undead Horse was savagely nibbling at the intestines of its former rider.

"Don't just stand there, 'Wyn'," she said, mocking the earlier shortening of her name by the Man, "we need to move fast into the shelter of the trees."

As they moved, at a jogging pace both could maintain for hours if necessary, Zyndyr spoke to him again.

"So, you decided to bring The Boy rather than simply leave him behind? The reward of gold was stated for the return of the Princess only. Don't you think that these children of mixed race might prove an embarrassment for the High King as well as her intended princely spouse?"

"They are a family," grunted Korwyn in reply, "let the grandfather decide if he will acknowledge the grandchildren as part of his family or not. It is not something for us to decide and we cannot deprive Princess Myr of her children."

"True, well said, Wyn, most non-human of you." She deflected her pointed barb with a smile.

Korwyn just grunted in reply, but couldn't help registering a small smile himself. Her smile, he noted made her face look more than just pretty, and he realised that he no longer blamed her for the death of his father or his ancient wound. After all, she could not be responsible for the actions of another Elf, as Myr could not be blamed for her children borne during her imprisonment, nor the love she would naturally feel for her offspring, who were equally blameless of the manner of their birth. No, Korwyn accepted the situation, doing the right thing was simply the right thing to do.

Some distance away from the mountain, they lost sight of their Orc and Undead pursuers and reached a thick wooded area. They had made it more or less in one piece deep into the woods, having fought Orcs all the way out of the cave into daylight and down the side of the mountain and the desolate rocky plain beyond. Hordes of screaming Orcs and lumbering Undead now lay broken in their wake. Onward they marched deep into the gathering gloom of the forest with their carried charges and each dripped lifeblood from a number of wounds.

Korwyn marvelled that in battles with Orcs, the Elf's silver armour remained passive, yet when faced with the Undead her armour covered her completely or partially as circumstances dictated. Some of the Undead were mounted on Undead Horses who were easily diverted to feast off dead Orcs, to the frustration of their riders. Even a couple of Undead Wolfhounds had been dispatched by sharp axe decapitation or burned to a crisp with Elf lightning.

They splashed through streams under the sheltering canopy, as the Elf declared, "If they have Undead Horses, they may have Undead Bloodhounds. I have already heard the howling of Orchounds. Although savage, their sense of smell is only useful close up for Dwarves and Goblins, although they can smell an Elf from a mile off."

"I didn't notice you smell too bad," Korwyn suggested with a smile, which she returned with a laugh.

"Well thank you, sir. I don't know if they can smell Human, but I bet they can smell that black Dragonskin. It has a distinctive aroma all its own. Not unpleasant, but uncommon nonetheless and unique garb."

"Well, I spent an idle month trapped on an island during the late winter storms, so I used my time in tanning it, and thereafter I wanted to make good use of it."

"Was this the Black Dragon from Hawkshart Plain?"

"Aye, he was hiding on a perpetually freezing island, surrounded by treacherous rocks and fierce undercurrents, a place notorious for fogs and mists. He thought he was safe hiding away in his lonely lair, but I made it to the island on a rowboat that was smashed to kindling upon the rocks. I woke him with a kick so he could see me as I killed him."

"That Black Dragon killed some of my family and friends too, including my king, so I dare say I would have done much the same."

Korwyn was noticeably struggling from his wounds and they stopped to rest and lick their wounds by a brackish brook.

The Boy and the Princess were still uncommunicative, The Boy uttering untranslatable screams and grunts, the Princess silent. Zyndyr gagged The Boy's mouth with a web drawn from her bag, to prevent him calling out and revealing their position, before tying his ankles loosely together, as Korwyn's overzealous bindings of rough dragonskin leather had left painful weals. She wiped an ointment, squeezed from a hollow tube of several grass stems and rubbed them into the weals which appeared to ease their discomfort. The Princess sat next to The Boy, silently, sullenly, protectively clutching her bundle to her chest. She too, had her ankles bound to prevent her running off, although she showed little inclination to do so, obsessed with the care of her infant child.