Dragon God (The First Dragon Rider Book 1) Read online

  Thock! The man with the hatchet drove his blade deep into the trunk where my head would have been had I not put the tree between me and it.

  I have no money—nothing to offer them, I thought desperately. All of my money had disappeared with Stamper, safely secured in his saddlebags. No time for complicated heroics, or trying to remember the martial lessons that my father and older brothers were always trying to beat into me. I turned and jumped further up the wooded bank of boulders, ferns, and tree trunks.

  “Come ‘ere!” One of the men growled, as the first was wrenching at his buried hatchet below. This man was larger, with a thick red beard and furs strapped to his calves and forearms. A lot like one of the clan warriors, I thought in panic, as fingers caught hold of my ankle and pulled with fierce strength. But which clan? The Fenns? Igris? If one of the other clans captured me then they could ransom me back to my father for more land or gold, or…. My mind slid away from the other possibility: that I was a bastard son, not even with full Middle Kingdom blood. Some clans wouldn’t even think twice in killing me.

  I couldn’t stop from screaming as my body thudded against the boulders, but I thrashed and kicked out despite the pain, feeling my blows connect with some soft part of my attacker, and his grip loosen with an agonized grunt.

  “Get off me!” Frustration mingled with anger in my heart. I wouldn’t let my father down by being another casualty of war, or having to be rescued. What would he think of me then? My fingers tore at the roots between the boulders, before finding a stone that was almost head shaped, and I turned and swung it at the nearest bandit’s leg. Thunk. It connected with a dull cracking noise, causing the man to scream and tumble backwards.

  “Olof!” One of the bandits shouted, spittle dropping from his mouth as he abandoned his weapon and instead drew a cruel skinning knife from his belt. “Hold ‘im down! I’ll gut the little worm!” Hatchet-man sneered, as I felt someone’s knees land on my side, sending pain rippling across my chest as the two other men wrestled me to the floor.

  “Who are you! Get off! What do you want?” I was desperate. I had never been in battle before. I didn’t know that it could all be over this quickly, and this soon. I had seen battle before, of course – you don’t grow up being the son of Malos Torvald, one of the most famous and feared warlords of the Middle Kingdom without seeing the distant smokes and pyres of battle from your camp bed. But I was not my father, nor was I my older brothers Rik and Rubin. I was just Neill of Torvald, youngest son of a greater man…

  “We got a message, little worm,” the knife-wielding man said, ignoring his colleague Olof’s pained cries behind him.

  “A message for whom?” I managed to scrape out past the lump in my throat—the lump I strongly suspected was my entire stomach.

  “For Warlord Malos and the rest of you Torvald upstarts. Stay away from the Dragon Mountain. The Middle Kingdom doesn’t need you sniffing around here, and it doesn’t want you here, got it?”

  They recognize me! But surely these men were from another clan? I thought in panic. But I still didn’t know which one. They must be jealous that the Torvalds were being summoned to train at the Order (that I was going to train at the Order).

  “We can talk!” I tried desperately. My father was a fearsome warrior, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew how to parley, to make treaties with other clans…

  “Talk? With you Torvalds? You still don’t get it, do you?” The man was growling and panting from the recent chase. “Things have changed. There’s a new power. The power of the dragons up there. And you Torvalds ain’t having any of it—and you know what?” My attacker suddenly went very, very still. “I don’t need you alive for your dad to get the message. This is gonna be written in your blood!” The man bellowed as if he hadn’t heard me and lunged. At the exact same moment, there was a sizzling crack of thunder, or at least that’s what it sounded like. I think I screamed, or shouted, I don’t know because for some reason the whole world had gone suddenly incredibly quiet, and my eyes were filled with a searing white light.

  All I knew was that the weight was gone from my body, arms and legs. I rolled to one side, blinking, willing my eyesight to return. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and with them my vision cleared. First it came back in dull greys and whites, and then more dark tones before finally color returned. It was like I had spent too long staring into the hottest part of a fire. My ears were still ringing as I turned to see what had happened.

  Hatchet-man was lying slumped at the bottom of the nearest tree, a burn mark barely bigger than my fist discoloring the center of his leather jerkin. The other two men (three, if you count broken-footed Olof) had their own troubles. They were being attacked– by a man no bigger than me, I thought as he moved and whirled.

  The man had short-cropped dark hair and a pale face. He wore the heavy canvas robes I recognized from the drawings my father had shown me of the monks of the Draconis Order, and yet he moved and spun like a fighter. I had no idea a monk could fight like this – he looked as though he could give Rik and Rubin a run for their money!

  I watched as the monk who had apparently saved me turned on one heel once more, jabbing out with the staff that all of Draconis Order monks seemed to carry, striking at one of the men’s face, before pulling it around to trip the other up. There was a brief, shocked shout as the man fell forward and disappeared into the gulley below, landing with a heavy thump and a splash.

  The last remaining bandit tried to swing a short-sword past the monk’s guard, but using his staff two-handed, like I had seen my father’s spearmen do in training bouts, the monk rained blows upon the bandit until he fell into the gulley too.

  “The other!” I pointed at the form of the man they called Olof crawling his way down to the edge of the rocks, and anger surged through me. How dare these bandits attack me! I stood up, hefting my rock.

  “No, leave him,” the monk panted. “He’s only one man, and revenge is for the wicked.” Even though his voice was raspy with excitement and exhaustion, he spoke in a cultured way, tinged with something of the north about him. I saw that his had a scrape across his knuckles that was running blood down his forearm, and I felt ashamed at not having helped him, ashamed that I had wanted revenge.

  “Friend, please sit down. You have done me a great service,” I said, ignoring the ache in every part of my body and trying to remember how the son of a chief should talk. Gratefully, the young man accepted my hand as I led him to a patch of moss and ferns that was slightly more comfortable and less blood spattered than the boulders around it. “Here,” I said as I laid my cloak on the ground. “Sit.”

  “I’m fine, really. It’s you who should be sitting down…” the monk said, and I realized then that the man was no older than me, sixteen or seventeen at most, perhaps. He still accepted my admonitions for him to sit down and at least catch his breath.

  “Sir, you have surely saved my life from those brigands--” I kept my eyes averted from the spot where the men had been thrown from the cliff, but was suddenly struck by the image of the man falling, his arms flailing—arms wrapped in fur secured with leather straps, just as the clan warriors wore. But each of the Clans of the Middle Kingdom had their own habits. The Lessers didn’t often wear furs. The Fenns didn’t often venture this far from their marshes and rivers. The Igris were fierce all right, but didn’t they usually use packs of hunting dogs in battle? And they were on the far side of Mount Hammal. We Torvalds wore the traditional fur and leather clan dress of course, but there was no way that those men had been Torvald men, had they? Surely I was mistaken. Probably they had just donned our costume to obscure their true identities. But still, the thought made my words falter until I gathered my wits. Could the men who had just tried to gut me have been defectors from my own father’s army? Or some new bandit group I had never heard of? “And, uh—oh, right. Such a deed should not go unrewarded. I’m afraid I’ve lost my horse and have nothing to share with you, but…” my voice trailed off. I felt ridiculous a
nd small. What sort of son of a chief was I?

  “You don’t need to thank me,” the monk replied. As we talked, he stooped to take some moss from a rock and used it to stopper the bleeding on his knuckles. That done, he pulled a roll of bandages from his pack and began applying a bandage. “Stamper? That’s a good name for him,” the monk said with a half-smile on his face, and I wondered how he knew. “You’ll find him not a little way up the path, where I tied him to a tree beside the road. I heard the horse first, and then the shouts.” The monk laughed. “It looks like it’s just not your day today, friend, was it?”

  “It’s not my year,” I muttered. “But never mind my misfortunes, it seems that I have to thank you doubly now – once for saving my life from those bandits, and again for saving my horse and my pride!” The monk’s easy-going laugh was infectious, as I found myself starting to smile, despite my apparent stupidity, and despite the terror that I had just gone through. “Come, I have a little coin in my saddlebags, and I will be able to offer you much more when we get to somewhere civilized!”

  “You won’t find anything civilized around here, I promise you that,” the monk said darkly, “And I really don’t need any payment. It is the job of a true monk of the Draconis Order to protect the mountain, the dragons, and its guests.” The monk sounded serious, in what I could tell was a deeply-held conviction.

  “Well, it seems that I know very little of the ways of monks.” I nodded to the body of hatchet-man, who was still seated and clearly dead under the tree, and felt suddenly uncertain next to the young man. “I am Neill Torvald, of the Clan Torvald. I am in your debt,” I said formally, bowing. There. That is what my father would expect of me.

  “Hey, Neill Torvald, son of Chosen Warden Malos Torvald – try not to worry yourself too much. Whomever your father is, you are your own man and you seem to have a good heart.” The monk accepted my hand as we both stood up. I took my sodden cloak from the floor, and he led the way through the trees to the nearby path.

  “My name is Jodreth, lately Jodreth Draconis,” the monk said with a shrug.

  “Of the Draconis Order above?” I said, before instantly feeling stupid. Of course he is.

  “How many other sacred orders of Dragons are there on this bleeding mountain?” Jodreth said with a laugh, slapping me on the back. “Lately of the Order anyway. I’m uh… I’m not really living up there anymore,” Jodreth said, his eyes going far as it seemed to me that he was looking on other times.

  I wanted to ask the monk about the Order, about what he meant that he wasn’t living up there. Had he graduated? Was he an official Draconis Monk now? Sworn to keep the secrets of the ancient dragons and mediate between their species and ours? Is this what they did – just wandered around, bumping into teenagers and saving them from bandits? More than that, I wanted to ask him if he could help me find an easier path up to the mountain, but just then we came upon Stamper, who whinnied and stamped a foot impatiently from where Jodreth had tied him up to a tree. The horse eyed me imperiously, for all of the world as if he had been waiting for me to get that business with the murdering all over and done with, and come and feed him. “There now, Stamp’s. Easy now.” I reached out to rub the broad flat space between his eyes all the same. He might be a difficult beast, but Stamper was my difficult beast.

  “You see? A good heart, Neill Torvald. Many chieftain’s sons would have scolded or beaten their horse for running away,” Jodreth said, turning to look at me with narrowed, speculative eyes.

  “Well,” I shrugged, “I’m quite sure Stamper was happier at home in his stable.”

  Just like I would be, I thought to myself as the image of the bandits with fur hides and leather wrappings flashed through my brain. My brain tugged again. I had only ever seen the clan warriors dress like that, to protect their arms and legs against the long marching and the cold and the rain when they were on tour. But surely no clan warrior would resort to attacking a lone traveler like me. And it wasn’t as though clan warriors were the only ones who might think to wear such protection.

  “Jodreth, can I ask you something?” I said. “Is Mount Hammal crawling with bandits? Is it a very dangerous place?”

  “It is far more dangerous than you might think,” Jodreth said and then seemed to shake himself. He gave that same laugh from before and went on. “The Mount Hammal, home to the dragons of the Middle Kingdom is dangerous. There are boar and bear and wildcat and, yes, bandits every now and again – and let us not forget our largest creature here.”

  “Dragons.” I said, unable to keep the wistfulness from my voice.

  Dragons. Ever since I had been young, I couldn’t stop myself from looking up into the sky whenever the call of dragon-sign went up. They had always been far away and very small, little more than black specks on the rising winds, but I had craned my neck and peered at them all the same. Maybe not so unusual, as my father had ordered that there should be a constant alert for dragons should they ever cross into the Eastern Marches. Like most of the other warlords, he viewed them skeptically and, I think, with fear (not that the big bear of my father would have ever admitted to being scared of anything)—and yet he had sent me here. To learn the ways of the dragon-tamers. To learn their secrets. Supposedly.

  “Ha, yeah. So, you have it too,” Jodreth said. “Dragon fever. My family used to say the same about me, before I came here.” The monk leaned on his staff and winced, and I wondered if he was more hurt than he was letting on.

  “Are you all right? Was it those bandits?” I asked in concern.

  “No, an old wound,” he said, although I wondered how ‘old’ it could even be, given that he was only a couple of years older than me! “Dragon fever was the reason I was sent here myself, and I’d wager that it was the reason why Neill of Torvald was sent here too, huh?”

  “Well…” I wasn’t sure how to answer. In truth, it was complicated. Despite the fact that this Jodreth had saved my life, he was still a Draconis Monk, and that meant that there were still some things that I couldn’t quite tell him. Like the fact that my father didn’t trust the prince of the realm, that he had sent me here to dig out the secrets of the Order’s connection to dragons, to find out what its plans were.

  “In part, I think it’s because my father thinks I’m a runt. My older brothers certainly do. They convinced him to send me here to answer the call of the Draconis Order, as someone had to from Torvald,” I lied. In truth, I rather suspected that my father and my brothers wouldn’t hesitate in going to war to take the secrets from the Order if they thought they had to.

  “Did they now?” Jodreth’s eyes narrowed, and I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. How could I lie to this man who had just risked his own life to save mine? I felt awful, but knew that my father would make me feel even worse if he learned that I ended up blabbing Torvald secrets to the first Draconis Monk I met on Mount Hammal, despite the circumstances of our meeting!

  “Well… Your Order, they…” I started to stammer.

  “I know. The Draconis Order have called for all of the younger sons and daughters and prominent peoples across the Three Kingdoms to come together to learn under them,” Jodreth said. “As if knowledge will be enough to prevent the Three Kingdoms from falling into war and ruin.” Jodreth frowned, seeming to consider his own words for a moment. “It is, indeed, a noble cause.”

  “But you don’t believe it will work?” I asked, as we walked up the wooded path that led steeply up the mountain, over a small bridge and back towards the monastery itself. It was easy to talk to Jodreth, and I wondered if that was true of all of the monks. If that was the case, then I really had nothing to worry about after all, except who those bandits might have been and whether they were the sort who attacked indiscriminately, or if they had targeted me. I thought again of their fur hide wrappings with leather straps. Surely their attire was a coincidence.

  “I believe that the Draconis Order can do anything they set their mind to,” Jodreth said with a chuckle. “And if that is t
o unify the Three Kingdoms again, then all the better!”

  “And yet you seem to think there’s something wrong with that?” I said, feeling like I had missed a step somewhere here.

  “Nothing,” Jodreth said brightly. “Nothing at all. I only question whether it will work, that is all. Have you met the other princes? Or the other warlords yet? Or a dragon?” He added the last with a scandalized look of alarm.

  “Well, no, I have older brothers, Rik and Rubin – they have gone to all of the council meetings and been a part of the delegations and what have you…” I murmured, feeling all of my young fifteen years old painfully. I had done none of those things. Only legitimate sons were allowed to take part in official business.

  “Well, to say a dragon can be stubborn is like saying a bird likes to fly,” Jodreth explained as the air grew a little colder. “Birds don’t just like flying, they are flight itself. It is everything that they are. And princes?” Jodreth winked. “They seem worse. How will anyone be able to unite their wills?”

  “Ha!” I laughed. That is what my father said about the three princes when he was deep in his cups. ‘All they care about is what is looking out at them from a looking glass. No thought to the everyday people underneath the – and they hate each other. If Prince Griffith said he liked oysters, then Prince Lander would say he didn’t just to spite him! If Prince Vincent won a riding contest, then Prince Griffith would buy every horse this side of the Western Isles, just so that he couldn’t do it again!’

  It made me smile to remember my father. He might be big and oafish and sometimes, yes, cruel (like sending his youngest child off to the middle of the Middle Kingdom with nothing but a horse and a sword) – but he could also be kind and funny when he wanted to be. If only he wasn’t always at war. And if only he could actually settle down and run that brewery that he wanted to. I tried not to let myself think the very next thought that always followed on from that: if only I actually had a father who cared about me, and not just a warlord and two angry older brothers.