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  Balur slammed the sluice gate shut so hard it echoed inside the confines of his skull.

  Incite villagers to riot. With Firkin.

  It was like being given a wet noodle and being told to flog a man to death. Like most things, it would be easier if he just did it with his fists.

  The village, when he finally saw it, was larger than he had expected. Forty houses perhaps, clustered about the main road. A tavern, with a battered sign that read simply, “The Stuck Pig.” Several stores. There was even an undertaker’s with coffins stacked up outside, though Balur was not entirely certain how reassuring that was. There was a temple too, which was well maintained despite the likelihood of a god manifesting there being approximately equal to Balur’s chances of finding a virgin in a whorehouse.

  Everything was built sturdily from timber, with a mixture of thatch and slate crowning the walls. Several buildings were whitewashed, and the tavern even looked as if it had received a coat of real paint at one point in its life.

  Yet despite all its solid bones, there was something despondent about the village. Nothing exactly sagged, and yet the buildings all looked as if they were getting ready to settle into a solid slouch. The road was not well tended, and neither were the houses. The ivy that grew looked less picturesque and more like some rash that had gone too long untended.

  Balur looked over to Firkin, who was still muttering to himself. “So,” he said, “what is it that this place is calling itself?”

  Firkin looked up at him, the coals of some unknown fire dim in his eyes. Whether it was madness dwindling or just beginning to burn, Balur couldn’t tell.

  “The village,” he said nodding.

  “Yes?” Balur asked. Though that had surely been completely obvious. It was unlikely he was asking the name of the copse of trees just off to the left.

  “The village,” Firkin repeated.

  “What’s it called?” Balur repeated the question.

  “The village,” Firkin said for a third time.

  Balur tugged his war hammer free from its restraints on his back. He could be explaining this to Lette. She would not be minding so much.

  Then, from out of nowhere, the thought struck him that the old man might not be gibbering complete and utter nonsense.

  “Wait,” he said. “The name of the village is being The Village?”

  “The village,” Firkin said again, then, recognizing his signature on the death warrant in Balur’s eyes, turned in a complete circle and shrieked, “Yes! I went to say yes. Betrayed by my own tongue. My lips are sleeping with the enemy. Fraternizers the pair of them. I don’t trust them!”

  The trick to this, Balur thought, was going to be making sure that Firkin didn’t say a single gods-hexed word.

  The streets of The Village, Balur noticed as the road brought them closer, seemed uncommonly busy. And as he took a mental head count—and plotted out the best path to batter through the crowd, should the unlikely but possibly pleasant scenario of that becoming necessary arise—he realized that almost everyone from the village must be on the streets. They milled about aimlessly, bumping off walls and each other.

  “What is being the matter with them?” Balur pulled his hammer loose again. The crowd-battering scenario was seeming more likely all of a sudden.

  “Juiced them, she did,” said Firkin, teeth clattering around the words. Yellow, they might be, but Firkin had a surprisingly large number of teeth given his lifestyle. “Put the juju in their minds and their guts. Full of piss and fire. And fiery piss. Though there’s an ointment for that.” He nodded to himself, mop of hair flopping back and forth with the motion. “Good ’un that is.”

  Balur licked the air. It tasted unpleasantly of Firkin. But beyond that the slight waft of humanity was on the air too now. And yes, the flavor of it was skewed a little out of true. Something of Quirk’s potion. That heady, bloody scent that clung to the back of his throat.

  They were past the second house of the village before people noticed them. Even then, as heads began to track them, the gazes seemed half turned inward. Balur looked at one woman, middle-aged, wiry arms and paunchy belly, her graying hair scraped back beneath a bonnet that might just once have been white. Her pupils were too large in her gaunt face, not quite focused on him. Her head was cast back slightly, nostrils flared, mouth just open enough for him to make out her tongue flicking back and forth, licking the back of her teeth. A noise somewhere between a growl and a moan drifted up quietly from the back of her throat.

  They were all like that. Not quite present. The same slightly defeated, underfed look. Beneath the rising flavor of Quirk’s potion, despondency laced the air of the village. These were people who had given up. Quirk’s potion was working in them, brewing and churning in their heads and hearts, but whatever primal rage it was trying to kindle was buried so deep, the fires would not catch.

  Slowly, as they walked deeper into the village, the crowd was pulled to them. Men, women, children. All of them stumbling after Balur and Firkin. By the time they reached the heart of the village they were completely surrounded.

  Balur turned in a complete circle. How did one incite a riot? Balur’s normal technique was to kill a few important-looking people. But no one looked important here. And besides, he wasn’t sure how many villagers he could honestly afford to reduce to meat mush. Who knew how many he would need to tip the scales that opened Mattrax’s portcullis?

  Which left him with words.

  Cois’s curse on all their cocks.

  “Citizens,” Balur started, because that seemed to be the way most speeches started. “Wait… Villagers,” he amended. “You are being oppressed by the dragon Mattrax.” He upped his volume. “You are being robbed of your gods-given right to be tearing flesh from bones with your teeth!”

  Wait… He hesitated. Was it that humans were liking to rip flesh from bones with their teeth? He should be paying more attention to them in general. He pictured Lette with a turkey leg. She was seeming to like that. Yes, he was being on the right path.

  “You are being penned like your animals. You are being robbed of your pride. You are being robbed of tribe. Of the path to war. You are being—”

  He cut off as he felt a slight impact against his belly. He looked down. A man in his forties, a farmer perhaps, with a thick beard covered with bows and braids, stood looking at the large branch he had just used to strike Balur’s stomach. He stared at it in his hands, hit Balur experimentally again. The stick bounced off Balur’s scales. If he hadn’t been looking down, Balur might have missed it.

  The farmer looked up at Balur and dropped his stick.

  Fine then, thought Balur, killing a couple of them it was, then.

  “Balls!” The shrill cry came from beside him. He looked down. Shit. He’d forgotten about Firkin. The deranged little man was stepping in front of him, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “You have balls!” Firkin yelled. “Right there, in the front of your britches. I know they’re there. I’m having a pair right there in front of me. Can’t get away from the damn things. Follow me like a shadow. A shadow that ignores the sun. Like demon’s work.”

  “All right,” Balur rumbled, “it is being time for you to be shutting up.”

  Firkin ignored him. “You remember your balls, you bunch of weasel fucks?” Firkin screamed. “You!” His finger lanced out, bounced off a woman’s skull. “You remember your balls?”

  She stared at his finger confusedly, jaw opening and shutting with a slight clacking sound.

  “You remember when Mattrax told you not to use them?” Firkin shrieked.

  Fine then. Balur cracked his knuckles. Firkin’s blood would be the first libation to bless the earth.

  “Why the piss-balls are you listening to a great big flying lizard?” Firkin asked the crowd.

  Balur cocked his fist.

  And then suddenly the crowd came to life. A sound rising out of them. Something like a groan, and something actually like a word. A great “boo�
� echoing out of every mouth.

  Balur hesitated. Was this… working? Surely…

  “Flying lizards?” Firkin was an animated bundle of stick limbs thrashing around Balur. “That’s fucking mad that is. Mental buggery. Great big lizard. Got wings. Flies around? Fuck that.” He pointed at them. “Fuck it! That’s an atrocity that is. That’s pissing in the eye of the natural order of things. Bigger something is, more on the ground it should be. Stands to reason. They should burrow. I could respect a burrowing dragon. Maybe. But a great big flying one? Balls to him. Your balls. Your ones.”

  Whether he was pointing or flailing, Balur couldn’t tell.

  “But he said you couldn’t use your balls, right? Right?” Firkin screamed. “And you listened because he said it with his big old teeth. Ooooooh.” Firkin pantomimed fear. “His big old noshers and nashers.”

  “Ooooooh,” the crowed echoed, and looks of genuine fear seemed to push up out of the stupor that had claimed them.

  Balur shifted. Firkin had them, there was no doubt about that, but with Firkin at the tiller the direction was never entirely certain. And to Balur the world suddenly seemed full of rocks to crash upon.

  “Fear the noshers!” Firkin yelled. “Fear the nashers! Stands to reason. Not mad are we? Not great big flying dragons? No! Good people is what you are. Stand-on-the-ground people. Where-we-belong people. Except we belong above dragons. Smaller than them. Up nearer the top. But he’s on top. Because of his nashers.

  “Well fuck his noshers, I say.” Firkin grabbed at his shirt and ripped it off over his head. He struck at his pigeon chest. “But who listens to me? I’m just poor old glug-glug Firkin, I am. All booze and madness, you say. You say it because you live with a dragon on top, when he should be below. You live in a world all topsy and turvy. Standing on the birds next, you will be. And why? Because of noshers.”

  Firkin stared around, balefully. A rumble rose in the crowd. A belligerent grumble.

  “Noshers,” Firkin repeated. “Noshers. Noshers. Nashers! And noshers! And nashers! And nosh! And nash! Nosh! Nosh! Nosh!” He slammed the word into them over and over, arms pistoning wide then crashing together, the clap a counterpoint to his words. The word took hold, spread like a rash through the crowd, came back at him.

  “Nosh! Nosh! Nosh!” The crowd chanted.

  Balur gave up. He had no idea what was going on anymore.

  Firkin was a dervish around him, whirling and pirouetting, beard flopping back and forth. Just as the crowd seemed ready to burst with sound, he brought his arms crashing down—a conductor silencing his orchestra. The crowd fell still.

  “We don’t have noshers,” Firkin said. He sounded sad. “Not like that big old lizard. We’ve got little wee ones. Ones that could fly with the birdies. Float away maybe. Can’t bite a dragon with noshers that fly away. Be all gummy, that would.”

  The crowd rumbled assent. Balur wondered if they’d noticed if he walked off and sat down for a bit.

  “But”—Firkin’s voice dropped down to a stage whisper—“what if we had a nosher of our own? What if we had the biggest and sharpest nosher of all? A nosher to nosh on dragons. To bite and dig deep. A nosher to make that big flying lizard up and soil its britches. Enough to make it hand back those balls of yours. What would that be?”

  The crowd, it seemed, was as clueless as Balur.

  “What if it were foretold that the nosher would arrive today? Here and now. Among us. What if there was a great and terrible prophecy that the nosher would nosh among us? That he demanded us? Demanded our balls! That our balls should be there to nosh with him. To nosh back upon the noshers. What if prophecy lived and breathed among us?”

  Balur’s brows knit. A champion. Firkin was promising them a champion.

  Where the hell were they to be getting a champion from?

  Balur had let this go on too long. He had given Firkin too much rope. Not just enough to hang himself, but to hang them all.

  The little man had moved some distance away from Balur. The lizard man started wading through the crowd of humanity. Firkin saw him coming, and danced away farther. “Today is the day our balls say no more! Today is the day our champion liberates them. Today is the day we stand by his side, our britches bulging with life and potency, and we put the dragon Mattrax where he belongs! In the ground!”

  Balur was almost in range. “Now wait—” he started, but then even he could not hear his voice above the cheer that erupted in the heart of the village square. A baying, howling cry of bloodlust finally let free of the leash. Men and women and children threw back their heads and bellowed out Fire Root–induced rage.

  “Mattrax’s cave!” Firkin howled, his nasal shrill somehow cutting through the sound of the crowd. “He waits for us at the entrance to Mattrax’s cave! Waits with our balls!”

  For a moment the crowd stood there, silent, eyes wide, mouths hungry. Then the words sank home, hit deep in their drug-addled minds.

  As one they surged forward, a barking, roaring mass of unhinged humanity. Heading for the hill, for the cave, for Mattrax. And this, Balur realized, was it. The tipping point had been reached and passed. Though what it was they had tipped into, he was not sure.

  Beside him, Firkin reached down and picked up a beetle that had just dragged itself out of a puddle. He dropped it into his mouth, crunched it, and smacked his lips as he watched the retreating crowd.

  “Inciting violence,” he said, “always gives me a powerful hunger.” He grinned at Balur, eyes glittering with the flames of an internal fire. “Let’s go do it some more.”

  12

  The Great Big Flying Lizard

  Perched high above the floor of the Kondorra valley, encased by the protective walls of his mountain, atop a pile of gold so vast that a thief had actually drowned in it once, the dragon Mattrax was possessed of a powerful urge to shit on all he surveyed.

  The arse-end of the Kondorra valley. The field-strewn, forest-clogged, scraggly arse-end of it. That was what they had seen fit to give him. Him. Mattrax. He who had melted the faces of a thousand foes. Who had carved the guts from ten thousand more with his gilded claws. He who sat upon the wealth of ten kings. That was what the Dragon Consortium had given him. The northern tip of the valley. A region so remote, so sparely populated, that the single most important human settlement was known as… The Village.

  It wasn’t even “The Town.” You couldn’t even pretend that it might get round to calling itself The Town sometime soon. To be honest “The Hamlet that Had Rather an Inflated Opinion of Itself” might be a more accurate name. And then there were the farmsteads, scattered like warts on a whore’s arse. And populated with human pus. And what was worse, far, far worse… poor human pus.

  That was what was so galling about it all. If the hills here had been shot through with valuable ore. If gold or diamonds had glittered in deep mines. If perhaps instead of farmsteads there were the mansions of a wealthy elite scattered among the hills, then perhaps that would relieve some of his frustration. But, no. It was peasants, illiterates, and the mentally disturbed. That was who he oversaw. Them and not another soul.

  Mattrax shifted on his pile of gold. A crown and several ruby-studded necklaces tumbled down, clattering against silver platters, tiaras, and loose gemstones. The massive coils of his body twisted, leathery wings stretching slightly as he settled into a new position.

  His thoughts turned with his body, headed toward darker territory.

  Dathrax. The bloated, fat, lazy, son-of-an-iguana Dathrax. Sitting fat and happy one province to the south, lauding his dominion of Athril’s Lake. Fishing towns. Not just one town. But towns. A plurality of towns. All the citizens with pockets stuffed fat from the profit of their stinking hauls.

  The taxes. Mattrax almost groaned at the thought of them. He stroked his own belly with a single gilded claw, imagining the carts coming in, axles creaking under their loads. Great sagging chests, overstuffed, coins positively bursting out of them, begging to be raked by his talon
s.

  And none of it his. All Dathrax’s.

  He could take Dathrax, of course. Would take Athril’s Lake from him in time. But that required an army. And an army required coin. And coin required something fucking more than an arse-load of squelching, stinking peasants to tax.

  But that was all he had.

  And so all that he could truly do was stretch his wings, take to the air, and shit on it all.

  13

  Ethel’s Party Invitation

  Will clutched the leash that was tied to Ethel’s neck in a grip so tight his nails threatened to break the skin of his palm. It was old rope, fraying and rough. He imagined how it felt around her neck. The slow friction of it, working back and forth, the mounting irritation. He thought of the rough pebbles of the road beneath her hooves, so different from the grass meadows she had ambled through all her life.

  He thought of the dragon Mattrax’s jaws settling about her neck.

  “Are you crying?” Quirk, walking beside him, looked as if she was assessing him for some hidden injury.

  Will turned away, allowed his purloined helmet to hide his face. It wasn’t difficult. The guard whose clothes he had taken had been a fat-headed man and the thing hung loose on him. Everything hung loose. Chain mail clanked around his thighs. The sword belt kept slipping. His britches pooled in his oversize boots. It would have been uncomfortable enough even if it were not soaked through with blood from where Balur had slammed a war hammer into the former owner’s chest and punched a large portion of his lungs out between what was left of his ribs.

  The same way Mattrax’s jaws would crush the life out of Ethel.