The Dragonskin Chronicles Bk. 01

As it stalled in the air, a succession of Elf arrows flew up to explode against its tough glowing white hide, barely damaging it, but causing it to turn its attention towards the new source of irritation.

Out in the open, Korwyn felt completely exposed, and couldn't actually see where Zyndyr and the Princess were, he knew what was about to happen, he could see the Dragon's chest plump up as it drew in a huge breath, readying itself to rain down flame hot enough to melt rock. He couldn't just allow that.

He set The Boy down in a hollow by a solid-looking outcrop of rock. He picked up a couple of stones broken off from the rock and tossed one at the Dragon, yelling all the while at the top of his voice and waving his arms in the air.

The stone bounced off the Dragon's shoulder. It turned to face this impudent human who was stupid enough to dare attack it. The puny human would pay dearly for the affront, but first it would deal with this lone Elf and troublesome Dwarf Princess, her value as a hostage now devalued, in light of the costly attempt to free her rather than pay the overdue account.

Still running towards the beast, Korwyn threw a second rock with as much force as he could muster. This one struck the Dragon on the side of the head by its ear, where its tough skin was at its thinnest and provided less protection for its skull. It lifted its head as the stone struck, at the same time screaming in pain. All its pent up breath was expelled in living flame, which belched out across the valley, melting the rock until it ran liquid down the rocky slope. Its aim was off by a considerable distance, Korwyn hoped.

"Come on, you foul beast, leave the little ladies alone and see how ye fare against a fully growed Man!"

It turned its head to the waving Man and flapped its wings to swoop down on him, drawing in a deep breath once more. Korwyn stood his ground, planted his feet firmly apart and held his fearsome battle axe over his head, gripped in both hands, wheeling it around his head, ready to strike.

The Dragon closed in on him, opening its long jaws ready to envelope the impudent human in enough white hot flames to reduce his bones to wafer thin ash that would blow away in the wind from his wings.

Korwyn wheeled the axe around, spinning his whole body several times to crank up the maximum power into the swing, before letting go of his axe, flying towards the gaping jaws.

The White Dragon dipped a wing late in his flight, in an effort to evade the axe, which ripped along its jawline before spinning away to land thirty feet from Korwyn. The White Dragon continued his dive, screaming with the pain from the unexpected wound and breathing out fire at its target.

As soon as he released the axe, Korwyn dropped to his haunches, drawing his insulating dragonskin cloak close around him, so when the flames reached him he was completely enclosed.

The flames roared over and around him. Korwyn could feel a fraction of the heat, his long dark straight hair was crinkled by it but he did not burn. The noise was deafening as the flames roared about him and melted the rock around him. Some burning lava trickled under the canopy, making it light as day inside his canopy, he held his breath against the fumes and shifted one foot where a stream of liquid rock came close. The roaring stopped and he opened the cloak a crack to see out.

He could see Zyndyr running from the hill loosening arrow after arrow at the beast as it turned. Korwyn marvelled at her bravery and that she still had arrows to draw. Her lips were moving, but Korwyn ears were still deafened by the Dragon's roar. He turned, opening the cloak more, expecting to see the White Dragon turning in the sky, but no, it had landed on the ground immediately behind him.

He couldn't evade the balled fist of its claw, as the beast punched him across his chest. Korwyn went flying, fully eighteen feet, only a short crawl away from where his axe had landed, with one axe blade buried in the grass covered earth.

The White Dragon advanced step by step, shrugging off the Elvish arrows like they were merely an irritation, like cloak pins bouncing off its armour-like skin. Korwyn stood up and stretched out for his battle axe, but a narrow stream of fire reduced the wooden handle to ash.

Korwyn thought the White Dragon's wounded mouth almost turned into a grin as it reached Korwyn with an outstretched claw, ready to crush him, his fireproof cloak no defence against those giant grasping diamond hard-tipped talons. He was close enough to feel the wall of heat from the creature's skin, which was still white hot, crackling with tiny flames upon the surface, as if the very air was combusting in contact with the beast.

But Korwyn was not yet disarmed. He had his Dwarf sword by his side, he drew the short weapon under the cover of his cloak and waited until the claw was almost surrounding him.

Korwyn stepped forward and stabbed the White Dragon in the foot with the cold steel of the Dwarf sword. The flesh yielded surprisingly easily, Korwyn thought, considering he had little room to put a great deal of force behind the blow but it was soon buried up to the hilt. He closed his eyes, expecting to sacrifice his right hand as it burned with contact with the skin. But the flesh he connected with was surprisingly cool, cold even.

He opened his eyes, the clawed foot was not white anymore, but black, coal black, jet black. The sword had severed the big toe of the claw through the knuckle joint. The toe was now hanging off, tenuously held only by a strip of cold dead skin. The Dragon's leg was turning black, the blackness spreading up towards the body. The Dragon screamed with the pain and fell from the sky. Korwyn was bowled over by the claw as the Dragon fell, rolling over the Man in the process. Korwyn was losing consciousness but he was determined to maintain his grip on the Dwarf sword no matter what.

Chapter 3

Consequences

Clive felt stale and unrested. Carole had woken him early before departing for the county education college for a day's inset course. It was the last day of term and the kids' schools had inset days, so Clive's sister in law Laura was coming round to look after them for the day. Laura was a scatty divorcee who hadn't any children and was running late as usual. Clive had to get the kids up and see to their breakfast and make sure they were washed and dressed before Laura arrived, fully armed with her usual lame excuses and half-hearted apologies. Clive was unhappy with her, but at the same time grateful that she had turned up at all.

Now Clive was half an hour late for work and realised when he looked in the rear view mirror that he had bad bed hair which he hadn't combed this morning. At the traffic lights he adjusted the mirror while he unsatisfactorily combed his resisting locks with his fingers. That's when he noticed he'd also forgotten to put on a tie this morning and discovered a greasy milk stain from the kids' cereal breakfast which would have been partially covered by a tie if he had taken the trouble to wear one. Too late to do anything now, he thought.

At work, the staff car park was full, completely full, driving around it twice to make sure. He had to park up the street on a parking meter. He only had enough change for a couple of hours and needed to remember to come back and move the car by mid-morning or face a hefty penalty notice. By the time he walked back to his office, he was now more than forty minutes' late. Then he found the Reception door locked and through the darkened glass could see the desk was empty. He rang and rang the bell, but there was no answer. Odd, he thought, especially as the car park was full of vehicles. Where was everybody?

The door clicked open, accompanied by a buzzing.

"Sorry, Clive," the young Receptionist Donna gushed breathlessly as she let him in, "we've all been crushed into the main conference room for the past half hour. The Official Receivers are in and have taken over the company. They've been trying to sell the place as a going concern for a week but there's been no takers, so looks like they're going to sell off whatever they can unscrew piecemeal and close the place down. They are going to be talking to us all individually during the day. Your boss has already been given his cards."

"Bugger!" Clive exclaimed, "there goes Carole's Caribbean holiday."

***

It was the wind noise first, followed by the feel of the wind that woke Korwyn. He discovered that he was lashed across his chest, waist and thighs flat on his back to some kind of woven bed, his exploring fingertips told him. The sunlight was bright, too bright to open his eyes at first. When he tried it, the sun was directly overhead and he was strapped in so tightly with something soft cushioning both sides of his head, that he couldn't move his head. And it was cold, the noisy wind was so very cold. Then he felt a dropping sensation and it went dark and wet around him. He managed to open his eyes then. The sun was hidden by a cloud, one he had just flown through, and he almost jumped out of his skin!

Flying at his feet was a giant Eagle, its wings outspread and gliding, its talons holding onto the poles at the end of his 'bed', in fact some form of stretcher. He moved his eyes to see what was at his head, but he could only see the tips of spreading tail feathers, which twitched and fluttered on the air currents to keep his stretcher on the level.

"You're awake, Wyn!" he heard Zyndyr call, although he couldn't see her at first.

He heard wing flaps and soon another huge Eagle appeared just above and to the left, gently carrying the Elf in its claws. There was no sign of the Princess or The Boy.

"Hail, my Lady Elf," Korwyn greeted his companion, trying his best to keep his voice calm and even. "I see you are all right, how did I fare?"

"Well, tell me, how do you feel?"

"Numb all over. What does that mean? Am I crippled?"

"No, my noble Lord Korwyn, Slayer of Dragons, the goosegog mead I gave you a sip of relaxes you while you recover from your ordeal. We are dropping down into the hills an hour or so ride from the Dwarf city, so the Eagles do not frighten them. We can rest for another hour before you will be able to walk again."

"You are responsible for the Eagles taking us to the city?"

"I called in a favour, Lord Korwyn. Sometimes, being an Elf who's been around a long time and once made Eagles' eyries safe from predator dragons, can prove useful."

Korwyn found he could laugh at the joy in her voice, but felt he had to ask, "What happened to the White Dragon?"

"Ahh! The Black Dragon, you mean? You killed it. Actually, you didn't just kill it, not just now, no, but you sent it ten years into the past and, after it ravaged your Militia and my Elves in order to wreak revenge upon you and I, you recovered and eventually tracked it down to its island lair and now you wear its heatproof skin."

"How is this even possible?"

"Magic. By sending the Sorcerer into the past, still in the form of a Dragon, this time a cold black one, he was stuck in that form for good. Without a Sorcerer's tongue, or a trusted aide who could recount the original spell, he remained a Dragon."

At this point, the Eagles stopped gliding and flapped their wings rapidly, to slow their flight and alight onto cool grassland. Zyndyr's Eagle dropped her down beside him, as did other Eagles set down The Boy and the Princess next to him. The Boy was onto Korwyn in an instant, smiling and resting his head gratefully on the Man's chest.

"You saved the life of his family, Wyn, from a tyrant who regularly beat him and his mother before sleeping in the lava flow. The Boy will be forever grateful to you, to us," Zyndyr smiled, beautifully, Korwyn thought, as she knelt down and started to untie the bindings that strapped him to the stretcher. Fortunately, Korwyn's head was still cushioned so he couldn't see her lovely knees although the memory of them almost undid his good intentions as his only partial automatic response barely made a noticeable impact on his woollen trousers.

"An' We vill al-soo," the Princess declared in halting Man language before continuing more fluently in Dwarfish, "The Boy, my Baby and we will always have a place in our hearts and tell legends of Lord Korwyn and Lady Zyndyr around our night hearths for ever. I will demand that my father make you both Knights of the Grand Order of Pergammon, our greatest order of Dwarfish Knights."

"That is a great honour, your highness," replied Zyndyr, "and I speak on behalf of us both, as poor Lord Korwyn may still be under the influence of the goosegog mead I administered to ease his pain while his body recovers from his rigours."

"Thank you Princess, the numbness is indeed wearing off," Korwyn said, thinking maybe his modesty was preserved more by Elf honey wine than his own feeble willpower, "you do me and Zyndyr great honour."

Korwyn sat up on the stretcher, now free of his bonds. A few yards away, at a respectable distance was a group of Dwarf Knights, spare ponies and a carriage, no doubt for conveying the Princess and her family for a home welcome at the Royal Court. A pair of larger horses, clearly brought for the pair of taller rescuers, were nibbling grass nearby.

"What actually happened to the Dragon, Zyn?"

The Princess spoke first, her Dwarfish now remembered, "My mother told tales of Witches in the past, who could cast spells. But she told me that spells will not work on Sorcerers, who cannot be killed by magic. So, to protect themselves, Witches made mechanical devices which only work on Sorcerers or can even be targeted to a particular Sorcerer—"

"Each living creature has a unique physical essence," continued Zyndyr, "tied into even the smallest fragment of our bodies. That essence we pass onto our offspring, which is why our children share our likeness like hair and eye colour. The device built into the handle of your Dwarf sword was specifically attuned to the Wizard of Yandor, which is why, when The Boy wielded the weapon on you, it partially activated enough to give you a freezer burn, because The Boy is closely related to Yandor as his son."

"My mother," Princess Myr reduced her voice to a whisper, "was the Sorcerer's daughter, who was abandoned along with my grandmother long ago, I am his granddaughter and The Boy is both his great-grandson and his son. He must have hated us so much."

"How did he travel back ten years, how is that even possible?" Korwyn still trying to comprehend the thought that the attack by the Black Dragon ten years earlier, was a continuation of their skirmish on the hill next to the burning forest.

"A mechanical device, a key if you will, built into the handle of the sword, opened a portal, a doorway, using the Dragon's fire element as the enormous source of energy needed to drive him deep into our yesterdays. The weapon is now safe, Wyn, used only once to displace the Sorcerer, through something we call a dimensional shift, into the past. The Witch must have foreseen that you would not rest until you tracked him down and killed him while he was still a Dragon."

"But why did he not change back into the Sorcerer and use his magic to defend himself against a mere mortal?"

"His displacement, my mother explained to me, would freeze him in his then state, disguised as a Dragon, he could not change back." Princess Myr explained in her Dwarfish tongue. "How could he change back, when he not could not vocalise his spells without a Sorcerer's voice box. It was a death sentence, which you carried out for the Witch."

"I found out from the Last Dragon, Zyndyr added, "who cried out in his death throes that the Black Dragon was unknown to them all. They had never seen him or even heard of him before that fateful day. The Dragons were at Hawkshart Plain simply to negotiate a peace, as were we all. The subsequent Black Dragon attack on the Elves led to hotheaded young Dragons joining in and they attacked the Elves too. The Last Dragon said he tried to stop them but by then all the armies had joined in and the Dragons were assaulted from both sides. It was every Dragon for himself. I confessed this revelation to my Queen and she banished me to serve the Dwarves for wiping the Dragons out of existence."

***

Clive whistled a happy tune on his way home. A healthy discussion with the company and receivers' accountants had explained the recent performance of the company and funds withdrawn by the directors were legally sequestrated and earmarked to pay improved redundancy payments to staff. With fourteen years under his belt, he had a five-figure tax-free sum to come, in addition to three months' salary.

"The Caribbean here we come!" he yelled, smiling like an idiot, to the astonished passing traffic.

***

In the court of Klandrak, High King of the Seven Dwarf Kingdoms, the appearance of his daughter with her young family left him horrified. He spluttered so much, the oversized crown slipped over his eyes, so he took it off and put it in his lap.

"I can't have this, what were you merks even thinking, bringing these bastard children back with you?" he accused Zyndyr and Korwyn.

The short and corpulant Klandrak snarled, "The Princess is needed as bride to the eldest son of the old king of Salzden, to maintain his alliances and retain his position within the High Kingdom. He wanted a virgin princess bride, not the unmarried mother of mixed race grandchildren!"

He summoned a squad of guards, "Take the Princess's aberrations out of my sight to somewhere quiet and arrange for their merciful slaughter!"

Korwyn objected and threw the first of the advancing Dwarf guards to the floor, handing the baby the guards seized back to the weeping Princess. Now The Boy stood side by side with Korwyn, who wished he had his battle axe instead of the Dwarf sword in his fist. He grunted, handing the weapon over to The Boy, noting with interest that the blade instantly misted over with a sheen of ice.

Korwyn grabbed one of the gigantic ceremonial pikestaffs from its wall mounting and brandished it in front of the remaining guards, who were hesitant at the sudden change of advantage that this giant of a Man had gained.

Klandrak, from his throne sneered, "Korwyn, you are denied your share of the reward, and you, Zyndyr, arrest the Human or you will lose any chance of freedom when your full time of servitude to your masters has been served."

By the time Korwyn returned with his pike staff to his position in front of the throne, Zyndyr, with bow at the ready, was standing by The Boy and the Princess, ready to fight all comers.

The Boy turned and yelled in halting Dwarf at the High King, "I'm ashamed to call thee me half-grandfather. Even Human Lord an' Lady Elf are who are would ra-ther declare my Unc and Aunt than you as my re-lation ganper. Draw sword old king an' I fight thee for thou crown."

He stepped forward up the three steps to the dais, by which time the bemused King had drawn his own sword, used only ceremoniously, but should be more than a match for this infant half-Dwarf monstrosity. Before he could react to fend off the blow, The Boy parried the King's weak sword thrust and stabbed his grandfather Klandrak in the chest, the ice-cold sword buried to the hilt.

Klandrak fell back onto the throne, stone cold dead, the icy blade having frozen his evil heart. Then The Boy pulled the sword out as if it was covered in hot butter, turned and returned to the line of his friends and faced the rest of the Dwarf guard, baring his teeth and declaring to the guards how looking forward he was for his next taste of warm Dwarf-flesh.

Korwyn sighed with a smile and stood tall beside him, holding his pikestaff at the ready, prepared to give his life for a child he had known for all but two days. On the other side of the boy, Zyndyr stood with drawn bow at the ready.