Mike Wild - The Crucible of the Dragon God

Kali caught Aldrededor waving from behind his wife, desperate to catch her attention. He was shaking his head vigorously and pointing at Dolorosa.

"Changes?" Kali asked, flatly.

"Entertainment!" Dolorosa declared. "Cabaret! Culture! And so I contracted the most popular dancing troupe in the two provinces!"

Kali felt her heart seize. "Contracted? For how long?"

"They havva performed for three nights," Dolorosa said, "and they havva forty one left."

Kali did a quick calculation. "You've contracted them for a month?"

Pete Two-Ties head thudded down onto his table in defeat and shook back and forth slowly.

"The whole of Cantar?" Kali said in disbelief. She signalled to Aldrededor to pour another thwack, which she grabbed and downed in one. "No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Cancel it, Dolorosa, now."

A small moon suddenly orbited in front of Kali's face. Except that it wasn't a moon but another face. It took a second to fold itself into a jowly frown. "Cancel… contract?" it said, and Kali wished that Merrit Moon was there so that the Hells' Belly and the Thrutt side of his personality could communicate on equal terms.

She swallowed and used her words slowly. "Yes. Cancel. Contract."

"Pff," the moon said, throwing up its arms. Hairs the length of mools tails sprang forth from dim and horrible pits. "How can you, wisp of a thing, demand she cancel contract?"

"Because I own the place."

The Hells' Belly guffawed and Kali was blasted with the odours of stale and cheap wine, cigars, and the assorted yellow remains of potato crunchies still providing their money's worth where they were stuck between huge, horse-like teeth. "Missus Dolorosa, she owns the place. She told us this is so."

Kali turned to Dolorosa, but the door to the Flagon's courtyard was already slamming shut behind her.

"Look," she said, wearily. "I'll pay you twice your contracted fee to cancel the remaining performances."

The moon loomed again. A hand snapped a garter on a thigh the thickness of a tree trunk and Kali turned away before she was involuntarily mesmerised by what happened to the flesh around it as a result. "Our fee is nothing compared to the tips we receive from our… gentlemen."

Across the room, Red Deadnettle and Ronin Larson coughed in embarrassment. Kali stared at them and sighed.

"Fine. I'll give you three times your fee. How's that?"

The offer was clearly tempting but a frown still crossed the Hells' Belly's face. It thrust itself at Kali interrogatively. "If we leave now, how will you guarantee our safety?"

"Your safety?"

"These are dangerous times, strip of a thing. What if we are attacked on the road?"

Kali pictured bruised and screaming grabcoins flying through the air. "Are you serious? Who in their right minds would take on you lo — ?"

She stopped as a hand suddenly rested on her shoulder and Aldrededor whispered in her ear.

"I do not think she is talking about grabcoins, Kali Hooper. I believe she refers to the k'nid."

"The k'nid?"

"Those things that have flooded our land and will soon be everywhere. The… Wait, you do not know?"

"There wasn't much news where I've been." Kali frowned. "Tell me."

Aldrededor told her of the reports of strange creatures coming from the west, of the deaths and invasions of towns, and Kali absorbed the information, worried but simply nodding. Again, she sighed. "All right… ladies. For now you can stay. But under one condition. While I'm around I do not, repeat do not, want any danc — "

Her words fell on deaf ears. The Hells' Bellies were already skipping, if that was the word, to the makeshift stage, clapping their hands in glee, and Red and Ronin turned their stools toward them appreciatively. As if from nowhere, a number of small, thin and sallow looking men — their husbands? — appeared and took up the instruments that lay on the stage, stroking, blowing or strumming them respectively to produce a discordant wail that would have repelled a Vossian army. Then, without any tuning up, any rehearsal, it just… began.

Thudding.

Kali grabbed her tankard of thwack before it wobbled off the bar and looked around as others did the same. She stared up at the ceiling as streams of dust began to fall in columns. She gazed at the windows, expecting them to crack at any moment. She bit her lip. There was nothing she could do here. But there was something she could deal with outside. And her name was Dolorosa.

Kali slammed the main door to the Flagons behind her and stood with her back to it for a second, sighing in relief. Then she jumped away as the entire tavern shook. She moved across the relative silence of the courtyard and then frowned darkly as she spotted Dolorosa pottering about near the stables. Kali moved up behind her slowly and quietly, saw that the old woman was hastily wrapping what looked to be a new tavern sign in folds of cloth. It appeared that the Here There Be Flagons had been in the process of being renamed — as The Olde Crow's Nest.

Should be the Old Crone's Nest, Kali thought. By the Gods, I go away for a few weeks and when I get back my pub's been boarded by pirates.

She was about to prod Dolorosa in the back, give her the fright she deserved, when her attention was distracted by a noise from the main stable. A low rumble, in fact. A strangely familiar sounding low rumble.

Horse? Kali thought.

Horse!

Kali slammed open the stable doors, making Dolorosa jump, and there he was, a living, breathing armoured tank desultorily poking his snout into a pile of hay. His big green eyes looked up as she entered and, as Kali said "Horse" once more, his head rose and a serpentine tongue curled out and slobbered itself with abandon all over her face. Kali moved forward and slapped his neck.

You came back, she thought. You didn't return to the Drakengrats, after all. Hells, it's good to see you, boygirl.

There was, however, something wrong. As pleased as Kali was to be reunited with her mount, Horse's whole demeanour seemed off kilter, eyes duller than usual, chitin plating less polished, and his general presence — usually quite comment worthy — less, well, imposing. Kali patted the bamfcat, murmuring a soothing hey, hey…

"Eet ees the worgles," Dolorosa explained from behind her. "They havva all gone away."

"Worgles?"

The small furballs were Horse's favourite snack — almost his staple diet, in fact — and were usually to be found in abundance all over the peninsula. It had taken Kali some time to get used to Horse's habit of scooping the poor little creatures up with his serpentine tongue, but used to it she had got, and the fact that they were apparently not around was even more unsettling than Horse's carnivorousness before their disappearance.

"Worgles, poongs, bladderrips, all of the small creatures they hide a fromma the k'nid. But the worgles, especially, seem to fear them greatly. It ees almost as eef — "

"These k'nid? Where do they come from? What do they look like?"

Dolorosa shrugged. "Where they come from, no one knows. Whatta they looka like is difficult to say. I have hearda many reports. All I know is thatta they are deadly. Butta you need notta worry, Dolorosa doubts they will find their way here to the Cro — erm, to the Flagons."

Kali frowned. "It doesn't strike you that the worgles and the rest have gone into hiding because the k'nid might be somewhere near?"

"Fff. No, the Flagons is special, isolated. Dolorosa feel it inna her plumbing — they will notta come here."

Kali grimaced and forced a certain image from her mind. But the grimace froze as, in the vitreous of Horse's eyes, she caught a glint of something low and dark behind her, moving into the Flagon's courtyard. "Think again," she said.

Working its way around a bush into the courtyard was an almost indescribable shape. It reminded Kali of the brackan she had encountered in the Sardenne Forest, but of many other things also. Somehow that made it seem many times worse. Moving slowly, and crackling strangely, like an open fire, it began to work its way around the edges of the courtyard, probing in a way that made Kali think it was some kind of scout. And where there was a scout, there would be the main party not far behind.