Posted October 28, 2024
This is *probably* close to the final version. The book will *probably* be titled Small Town Dragon. The release is planned for early 2025.

I know, it’s slipped. I hang my head in shame. Someday I may disclose the intersection of events that has slowed me down, but me complaining won’t make words appear and be edited faster.

Chapter 1

Sitting in the back of the worst smelling alehouse in town, my inhuman captor grinned at me from across the table. With my good hand I flung him a foul gesture that a consumptive sailor taught me when I was nine. I added, “You grin like some maniac about to spit in my mother’s face.”

His unsettling grin dropped. “Your mother’s dead. Like mine.” He pushed back his fine blond hair wide, brown eyes and leaned forward. “You know who to blame for that.”

“Your pretend wisdom doesn’t impress me a bit,” I said. “I’ve seen you chase your tail and then chew your foot when your tail was too hard to catch.”

“Bib, stay out of the way when I start testing.” Before I could move, he snatched my bad hand and squeezed. He wasn’t especially strong, but pain shot up through my wrist. “You can’t murder the God of Death with this hand, so you’d better not lose the other one.”

He winked at me, but I didn’t know what he intended by that. Maybe it meant he was joking. Maybe he was threatening to poke out my eye if I didn’t behave. I had been his prisoner for months and had gradually realized that I couldn’t predict worth a damn what he’d say or do.  

I figured to hell with it and just said what I was thinking. “Chexis, we can’t kill the God of Death.”

The young dragon in human form laughed.

I raised my voice. “You laugh like a lunatic decorating a baby’s crib with his mother’s guts.” If anybody heard me, they didn’t look my direction, because that’s the kind of alehouse it was.

“Really?” Chexis grabbed his two mugs of beer off the table and flipped his hair back. “Maybe that’s why people are unfriendly.” He slipped away through the crowd of drunks and harlots, seeming to move without touching anybody. He was currently a slight young man of seventeen or so, which was far older than his actual age.

I called after him, “Watch behind you for knives!” Then I muttered, “Shit!” Warning him was not in my interest. When Chexis was in a human form, a blade would kill him as neatly as it would kill me. I should be chasing him right then to put a dagger in a soft, deadly spot.

Instead, I stared into my mug for a second before taking a few swallows. I couldn’t help imagining Chexis broken and dead on this nasty floor. For a moment I felt sick. Then I felt relieved. If he died, I’d be free.

I remembered Chexis as a baby, curled up with his brother against me to sleep. I cursed myself a little, drank some more, and looked around the room to see where he’d gone.

This alehouse full of sweat, candle smoke, and bad gasses was the right establishment for blood and broken bones. The fireplace wasn’t much more than a stiff pile of scorched stones, and something was rotting in the back room. The sagging main room was uncommonly large for a structure that lacked ambition in every other way.

Thugs and throat-cutters drank at the Flapping Ass. I had thought the alehouse name was a joke. Then I saw the winged donkey on the wall behind the serving table, carved into the wood with all the skill of a child holding a sharpened spoon.

Chexis carried his two beers back towards me, strutting like a king who owns unicorns. He stopped and stood at an empty seat several places down the long table from me. He poured beer on top of the fellow next to the empty seat, a squat, bald man who had arms like an ape’s. While the man sputtered, Chexis pointed at the empty seat as if vermin had been voiding themselves on it. “I’m not sitting there! Your ass was on it!” His high-pitched voice was like a slap. “I’m sorry, your nasty, chapped, blood-dripping ass was on it.”

The boy took a pull from his other mug and spat beer into the bald man’s face. He tossed the mug to splash in the man’s lap and grinned. “I wouldn’t sit where you sat if it was made of diamonds!”

Bald-Ape looked like he might have come out of his mother scowling, and now he scowled harder. He jumped up and yelled, “You runny turd! I’ll break your legs and make you drag yourself home!” His hand snaked out to snatch Chexis’ arm. The boy stepped aside with ease and snickered.

A vast hillside of a man sprouting wild black hair leaned over me from behind. He waved away some smoke and pointed at Chexis. “Ain’t that little smartass your friend?”

I hesitated but shrugged and waved a hand. “Never seen the son of a bitch before in my life.”

“You ain’t planning to help him then?”

I shook my head and idly flexed my left hand against the ache. “No more than I’d stop on the road to help a snake, or a money lender.”

Five seats down the table, Chexis slipped away from Bald-Ape again. He snickered. “Old man, your arms are too long and clumsy. Hold still, and I’ll cut off your hands.”

The threat lacked potency, since Chexis held no weapons. Bald-Ape hurled himself at the boy anyway, then bounced off a table when Chexis ducked away. The man roared a curse that involved Chexis’ windpipe, a thorn tree, and his sister’s future children. I had to admire the inventiveness.

People were backing away, shouting, and starting to place bets. Chexis leaned and snatched a long knife that a passed-out drunk had left lying on the table. He yelled at Bald-Ape, “I should cut off your feet, too, since they hardly seem to work.” He stepped close and reached around to pat Bald-Ape’s shoulder as if it was a good dog. Then he jumped away before he could be grabbed. “I’ll cut off your willy while I’m cutting.” He slipped like grease past a skinny, gap-toothed fellow laughing so hard I thought he’d strangle. Pointing the knife at Bald-Ape’s crotch, Chexis grinned. “Your wife won’t mind if I slice it off. She can’t miss what she’s never had!” Then he giggled like a girl.

The hill-sized man who had asked my permission to kill Chexis was racing around the table, knocking a drunk under a bench and a serving girl to the floor where he almost stomped her. He caught Chexis looking the wrong way and seized him around the chest from behind, pinning his arms. “Hit him now, Amon! Hit him!”

Chexis smiled around at the crowd.

As Bald-Ape Amon wound up his punch, a tall, weapon-draped woman vaulted the table, aiming a knife at Chexis’ ribs, just below Hillside’s arm.

I currently had no excess of magical power, but Chexis would be stabbed before I could run and stop the woman. I told myself to let him die. While I was telling myself that, I pulled magic from my reserve and spun it out to cover the knife. I twitched, and the knife disappeared.

Possibly it went to wherever it had been before it became a knife. Or maybe it went to an unknown realm, dropping onto a phenomenal pile of things disintegrated throughout history. Sorcerers liked to drink and argue about that and similar questions.

As Amon slammed his fist into Chexis’ belly, the tall woman stared at her hand. She bellowed, “There’s a damned sorcerer in here! Where is she? Look around!”

The alehouse owner, a graying woman as thick and bent as a warped barrel, brayed, “Shut up! Sorcerers are thick as rats around here, so choke it off! Either drink or get the hell out!”

Amon had paused, probably to appreciate the shouting and the tall woman’s striking face. Chexis was wiggling, maybe to look back at me, but Hillside’s arm was in the way. Amon threw another punch, and I looked away so I wouldn’t have to watch the boy bleed.

Chexis grunted, spat, and shouted, “My dead sister hits harder than you! I bet you fling open your legs when the army passes through town!”

I heard a fist hit his face again. The boy called out in a strangled voice, “Hah! You have ducklings in your ass! Hot, sharp ones!”

I sighed. His grasp of human insults was still tenuous.

A tankard sailed from the direction of the fireplace, missed Chexis by five feet, and hit a short woman’s shoulder with a wet smack. That apparently gave somebody an idea. A heavy, pale man edged past Amon, ran up, and banged his wooden mug against Chexis’ forehead. The sound was almost musical.

Hillside still held Chexis in place. A second man pushed forward and smashed Chexis square in the face with his mug.

I spun two bands and made the mugs not exist. At the same time, I stood and drew my sword, careful not to step on my puppy sleeping under the table. I jumped up onto the table and ran down it, kicking mugs and plates to the floor.

Amon punched Chexis again, and another man joined in to wale on Chexis’ cheek with his mug. Despite that, Chexis must have seen me coming. He yelled, “Bib, stop!” through what sounded like broken teeth.

I didn’t bother answering. By then drunks were drawing their swords, always a bad circumstance. At the end of the table I kicked a man in the head, jumped down, and transfixed a swordsman’s shoulder before he reached Chexis.

Against all logic, Chexis wriggled out of Hillside’s grip and yelled something about his mother’s pulverizing loins. He kicked Amon in the crotch and scooted under the man on his hands and knees.

While I was glancing aside to see about Chexis, I almost let two men stab me at the same time. I parried one and thrust into his face. I was keeping my weak hand back and away from the fighting. My second attacker sliced me hard across the ribs. I cringed but thrust into the second man’s throat.

Chexis ran across my eyeline with blood streaming down his face, neck, and chest. “Bib, don’t kill them! I might want them!” He kicked a man’s knee, and it popped like ice breaking on a lake. The man fell shouting profanity, and Chexis ran off to my right, followed by a half dozen furious drunks.

I spotted a man with a bow near the front door. I assumed he was trying to aim at me. He must have been drinking for a while, because as he swayed, he aimed at a third of the people in the room. A wizened drunk stopped in the middle of the room, pointed at me, and screamed. That focused the bowman, who shot the old drunk in the back.

As the drunk fell, I heard the sound of a crossbow but couldn’t see it. The bolt came into view as it passed over the drunk’s head, and I didn’t react fast enough. It slammed into my right shoulder. I spun and fell, while my sword clattered away across the wooden floor.

The first man to reach me got a boot to the crotch, and I swept the second man off his feet. I made it upright and brought down the next three men man using my left elbow, my feet, and my knees.

As I dodged another man, some friend of his rushed me from behind and reached around to drive his knife into my throat. I caught his wrist with my left hand and managed to drag his knife downwards away from my neck before my hand gave way. The knife plunged all the way into me above the belly button. When I fell, the man held onto his knife so it could cut me some more on the way out.

The knife-wielding asshole raised his weapon to finish me. I disintegrated the knife as he knelt, so he smacked my chest instead of piercing my heart. Then Chexis staggered over to shove the man aside. His leg was covered with blood.

He mumbled, “Bib,” right before ten inches of sword blade plunged out of his chest. The little, mottled man who thrust it through Chexis’ back was laughing. The boy’s face went slack as he collapsed to his knees.

I would never be able to save him with magic unless I removed the sword first. That seemed unlikely since I didn’t like my chances of even sitting up.

The drunks who could still walk roared and laughed all around us.

Chexis’ body seemed to curl forward on itself. Then it unfolded and grew until within a few seconds he became an entirely uninjured ten-foot tall, forty-foot-long brown dragon. He yawned to show all his knife-length white teeth before slamming out his glowing, translucent wings. Each wing stretched more than twenty feet, and they erupted through the roof, flinging wreckage in all directions. In an instant it turned the alehouse into a ruin.

I tried to say something but couldn’t catch my breath.

In a great voice like barrels of gravel and scrap iron, Chexis yelled, “You five men! How brave are you? Show me!”

None of them were brave by Chexis’ standards. I suspect that all the people who could still stand screamed, jumped, gibbered, scrambled, limped, shit themselves, ran, or staggered away from the dragon. Maybe not every single one of them did all those things, but in my wounded imagination they did.

Chexis slithered and leaped, and over the next few seconds I heard five people killed with fang-snapping, bone-splintering efficiency.

“Just those?” I whispered.

“I promised you. Only the cowards!” Chexis sniffed. “I even enraged them to make them braver! If they can’t face me, how could they face the God of Death?”

I shook my head a little.

Chexis pulled in his wings. “I’ve been assembling my army for months. Do you know how many people are in it?”

I held up one trembling, blood slick finger.

“That’s right, you!” Chexis sat back on his haunches, or what passed for haunches on a great, magical reptile.

A pile of boards in the corner shifted, and the old woman who owned the alehouse pushed her way out. She stared at Chexis for two full breaths.

“Do you want to join my army?” Chexis asked her.

The woman screamed and ran, tripping over a board but bouncing back up. She hardly missed a stride.

“See?” Chexis shouted at me. “Maybe I should assemble an army of bear heroes. Or elephant heroes. Men are so disappointing. How can you stand being one?”

I tried to answer but just managed to clear my throat, which was slowly filling with blood.

Chexis surged to his feet. “You’re hurt! Why did you let yourself get hurt? If you’re too hurt to fight, my army will be gone. I told you not to get involved! This is inconvenient.”

I tried to shrug, but only one shoulder was working.

The dragon froze for a second, then lowered his head to sniff at me. He had to nudge away my puppy, who had survived to come lick my face. The dragon’s voice dropped and softened. “Oh. You’re dying. Bib, don’t die! You’ll die sometime, but not yet. I don’t want you to die!”

I tried to say, Sorry I inconvenienced you, asshole, but it came out as a mumble. I focused my mind to begin pulling green bands to heal myself. I might have only one chance to do it. It felt as if I might black out.

In the past I had healed myself while in worse shape than this. Maybe I wasn’t as hearty as I’d once been.

Chexis’s head hovered over me. “I can see you’re having trouble. This should help.”

Something rough and wet slid up the side of my face. I opened one eye in time to see Chexis lick me again with his long, black tongue.

“Now heal yourself!” Chexis snapped between licks.

I jerked but managed not to lose the bands. “I am healing myself!” I muttered.

“Good!” Chexis said. “I knew this would help.” The young dragon licked me again.

“No!” I growled.

“Yes, you know that I’m saving your life!”

He dragged his rough, damp tongue up the side of my face again.

I was just starting to mend the knife wound, but I almost fumbled away the power when Chexis licked me again. “Please stop.” That may have sounded more like a whimper than I’d have liked to admit.

Lick. “I can’t stop. I’m the only thing keeping you alive.” Lick.

I breathed as deeply as I could stand in order to fight panic. I reminded myself of the one thing I truly understood about Chexis. He was a dragon and knew that he was the center of all existence. He loved being successful and superior.

I gasped, “You’ve saved me! Thank you, Chexis!”

The dragon pulled back and lifted his head to stare at me. “Now you’re not going to die?”

“No, I’ll live. I just need to rest here undisturbed for a little bit. I’d be dead without you!”

I expected Chexis to roar and maybe preen a little. Instead, he held still until I finished healing my wounds. The pain lessened a little but wouldn’t go away for at least several hours. I felt my body telling me I would be sleeping through all that.

Chexis asked, “What about the arrow?”

“Ugh. I can’t pull it out.”

Without a sound, Chexis bent his head, grabbed the arrow in his teeth, and pulled out the arrow. I expected to scream or pass out,  but the dragon took enough care that it was merely agonizing and not unbearable.

“Now that you’re going to live, where should we go next?”

I panted as I drew enough magic to begin healing my shoulder. “Let’s go far enough that nobody’s heard about what happened here tonight.”

“I want to see where you were born. If you grew up there, maybe a few of the people living there aren’t cowards.” He slammed his tail against the ground.

“No, my home’s gone.”

“Of course. You lived there. Have you ever lived in a place you didn’t destroy?”

I looked away and didn’t answer him.

“You’re lying by omission! You did live someplace else! I want to know.” Chexis sat back. “Did it have cows? It was lucky for them that you weren’t in the mood to destroy everything.” He wagged his head and hissed a dragon laugh.

My jaw hurt from clenching against the pain. “Just wait until I’m done, you wiggly piece of shit!”

Chexis lay down, and smoke puffed from his nostrils making lazy streams. A few weeks earlier, I had realized that meant he was pouting.

At last I said, “Done.” I was slurring my words.

“Just go to sleep, then,” Chexis said. “I’ll find out all about your home without you.”

That was the last thing I heard him say before I fell asleep.