Drasmyr (Prequel: From the Ashes of Ruin) Read online

Chapter Two

  Coragan watched the gold coin spin in the air. It turned over and over several times, glinting in the light as it reached its apex, then began to descend. At last, his blue-cloaked comrade, Galladrin, reached out, snatched the coin from its course, and slammed it on the table.

  “What do you know, it’s the dragon’s head,” Galladrin said to their other companion, Borak, a muscle-bound giant of a man. “Come on, let’s play.”

  Galladrin moved toward the knife board at the far wall, nimbly side stepping several of the inn’s other patrons. Borak lumbered behind, less agile but far more intimidating; the patrons moved quickly out of the behemoth’s path.

  Coragan sighed. They played knives a lot these days. There seemed little else to do in the quiet town of Drisdak. They hadn’t had a job in over a week, and Coragan was loathe to go back to his former employer. Needless to say, they were running out of money. He figured three, maybe four, more days and they’d be broke.

  There was a thunk as Galladrin’s knife stuck in the board just a few inches to the left of the bullseye. He could have hit it if he’d wanted to; the rogue’s skill at throwing knives was only exceeded by his skill with the rapier at his side. A fair shot himself, Coragan was no match for Galladrin. He had learned weeks ago not to play knives for real money when Galladrin was around. Of course, he and Borak weren’t really playing for keeps. They were just getting the game started, hoping to lure some unsuspecting victim in to earn a little extra coin.

  One of Borak’s throws went wide and sank deep in the post to the right of the board, loosening a large splinter of wood. Coragan winced. The innkeeper would not be happy about that. It was hard work keeping any inn in a hospitable condition, and The Maiden’s Blush was no exception. Of course, Galladrin was not one to give up coin without need. With a quick but casual step he maneuvered to block the blade from the innkeeper’s view and deftly removed it from the wall. He then turned and handed the knife back to Borak, frowning sourly. A quick glance and his eyes met Coragan’s. The rogue krinkled his mouth into an unsatisfied twist and slowly shook his head in annoyance. Coragan returned the look with an irritated frown of his own, then slid three more coins toward the money they were leaving for the innkeeper’s tip.

  That should cover it, he thought. It was a pain cleaning up after Galladrin and Borak, but he’d rather do that than live with that uncomfortable nagging twist in the pit of his stomach that he’d encountered so often of late. Some doubts were inevitable in his profession, but lately he was having a difficult time with his chosen career. So much so, he had called it quits on his former employer and taken up to find work elsewhere. He was a bounty hunter by trade, and a good one. Lately, however, he had begun to feel more and more like a hired assassin.

  It had started when he was young on a simple farm in a small town in northern Esperia. His parents had been hard working, loving, and kind. One night, a wounded man staggered onto their farm. His father, Mortugan, a deeply religious man, had known his duty to the stranger. Without a word he opened up his house and offered a bed and food to the wounded man. Sharine, Coragan’s mother, cleaned and bandaged the man’s wounds, gently removing the arrows from his thigh and shoulder. As it turned out, the stranger was a bounty hunter, hired by a local baron to hunt down and bring to justice several well-known thieves. A skilled hunter, the man had captured one of the thieves and was closing in on the others when they picked up his scent and laid a trap for him. He walked right into an ambush and barely escaped with his life. The story amazed the young Coragan. Through the rest of the week, while the man recovered from his injuries, Coragan sought him out to hear tales of his exploits. Every spare minute he had he spent listening to those stories, savoring them. Of course, given the life of a farmer’s son those minutes numbered few indeed, but that just made them all the more precious. Ultimately, the stranger recovered from his injuries and took his leave from the farm, but all through the rest of that summer Coragan continually found himself daydreaming as he tilled the fields and milked the cows. Who else was there to bring down the fabled Draknar the Black, or Urthar One-Eye but Coragan the Brave, Coragan the Mighty, the fiercest bounty hunter of all? From that point on, he set his heart on becoming a bounty hunter.

  As the seasons passed, he made every effort he could to make his dream a reality. In what little spare time he had he joined the small town militia, hoping to learn the weapons of the trade. It was hard work, trying to become a bounty hunter while still managing to help on the farm. More than once he found himself wishing he could be rid of the farm forever and be on his way to fame and glory. However, he remained loyal to his parents, working diligently to bring in each season’s harvest. In his seventeenth year, though, things changed forever.

  He returned home from the militia one day to an empty field. He searched about the farm and through the house, looking for his parents, yet they were nowhere to be found. He called out for them, but they did not answer, and the rapidly descending darkness was making the search more difficult by the minute. Finally, just as Neerie, the miner’s moon, began to peak over the horizon, he found them in the shed. His father had been bound, beaten and gagged. His face was scratched and smeared with blood, his eye blackened, and several teeth were knocked out. His mother, however, did not fare so well. She was quite dead. The raiders had raped and killed her while his bound father was forced to watch, helpless.

  In the few months that followed, Coragan gave up on becoming a bounty hunter. His father needed all the help he could get to run the farm and even that wasn’t enough. With the death of his wife, something had died in his father as well. He stopped eating, he barely slept, and he moved without focus, mindlessly working the fields without conviction. He spoke to no one save Coragan, and then only briefly. Coragan could do nothing but watch over the following weeks as his father withered away. It was three months to the day of his mother’s death when her husband went to join her.

  Coragan had wept bitterly that night. The next day he swore vengeance over both his parents’ graves. Within a week he sold the farm and began the life that was his childhood dream. The three men who had destroyed his family were the first of many to fall before Coragan of Esperia. They were the most difficult too, although not in a physical sense. It had been nearly all he could do not to kill the men himself. However, the self-control was well rewarded; he took great pleasure in watching the men hang.

  That was nearly nine years ago, now, and since that time he had remained true to his childhood aspiration. Many a long night he had spent in run-down inns eavesdropping and asking the occasional shrewd question, always in search of some wanted criminal. Many a hardened killer had met his match in Coragan—Coragan’s skill with both sword and crossbow made him deadly in a confrontation.

  In the beginning, he found the bounty hunter’s life nothing short of glorious. His fame spread quickly and the offered quests seemed noble, just, and ripe with opportunities for heroism. He developed a formidable reputation as a man of both honor and determination with a knack for capturing even the cleverest of foes.

  But the glory did not last.

  Somewhere along the way—Coragan could not remember where or how— something changed. More and more often he found himself on the more dubious side of justice. Slowly, the seedier side of nobility seemed to infiltrate his many contracts. Again and again he found himself on the hunt of some poor soul whose worst crime may have been an insult to some noble’s petty honor. All the same he hunted the men down and brought them before the courts of nobility naively thinking that justice would prevail if the men were truly innocent. One by one he watched the men hang, his stomach twisting with revulsion at what he had become. The last man he had dragged in had been a humble porter accused of seducing the Count of Torine’s wife and plotting the count’s murder. Since the start Coragan had had serious doubts of the man’s guilt and never encountered anything to convince him otherwise. Even if he had, given the countess’ whispered reputation, he hardly though
t the porter alone deserved to bear the brunt of the punishment. That man’s death had been the last in a series of disappointing revelations about the nature of noble law; a law without mercy, without compassion, and very often, without even a trace of justice. He remembered watching the porter before he died, a pitiful sight, standing alone on the scaffolding of the gallows, his tattered clothes whipping in the early morning as the sun rose at his back, his last look borne not by the eyes of a cold and hardened killer, but by the desperate eyes of an unjustly punished man whose gaze simply asked why. Coragan had seen those eyes looking at him and felt his stomach flip over in his belly. The next day he collected his coin from the Count of Torine and left swearing never to be on the wrong side of justice ever again. That was two months ago.

  The question of evil—that was the problem. Nothing he hunted seemed evil anymore, just another victim of the maelstrom of life whose only fault lay in finding himself on the opposite end of a tug-a-rope against a noble with all the power. There was nothing evil in the men he hunted; nothing twisted beyond the limits of human compassion. What he needed was someone as dark as darkness itself, someone he could hunt and not feel guilty about killing. Until then, he had no intention of being a bounty hunter ever again. As poor as he was now he felt much better, still burdened by guilt, but not the emissary of unrighteous doom. No amount of money was worth that feeling. He’d rather starve in the gutter.

  He looked over at Galladrin and Borak engrossed in their knife game, his recently acquired companions. He’d met them about a month and a half ago, at a run-down inn in Sestak. Galladrin was a little too roguish at times, but not altogether bad. A ribald and a scoundrel, the man sometimes surprised Coragan with a touch of softness in his heart. Borak, on the other hand, was strange. Coragan had known the man a week and thought him mute before he first used his tongue. Of his skill and strength in combat, there was no question—Coragan had once seen him cleave a man nearly in two with that great axe of his—but the man just never spoke.

  A blast of cold air drew Coragan’s attention to the tavern door. A man dressed in chain armor with the bearing of a guardsman struggled to close the door against the howling wind outside. The man completed his task, then turned to scan the room. He took several steps toward the bar and almost immediately a large group of men deliberately scattered out of his way. Only then did Coragan notice the yellow sash tied around his forearm: an expensive sash, made of fine silk. Hanging down from his arm a lone square bore an easily recognizable symbol traced in black lace—an upright staff thrust into the earth, around which two serpents coiled and above which two ravens circled—the mages guild. Coragan snorted in disgust and turned his attention back to Galladrin’s knife game.

  They had found a few takers after all: a man and a woman. The man had long blond hair tied back in a strange knot at the base of his head. He wore a travel-stained cloak and had a short sword at his side. The woman had short cropped hair and a cloak of fine black fur. She had no visible weapons, but she walked with a fluid grace that hinted of deadly strength. May prove to be an interesting bout after all, Coragan thought.

  Borak went first. Apparently warmed up, his aim had improved; he succeeded in hitting the board with every throw. Only one landed relatively close to the bullseye and Coragan suspected that had been more a matter of luck. The golden-haired man went next. His was an even spread: one complete miss, one shot to the midboard, and one bullseye. Now, it was Galladrin’s turn. Always the showman the rogue turned up one bullseye and two shots to the midboard just edging past the blond man’s total. The woman followed. With gentle ease she extricated the knives from the board and stepped back, weighing each blade carefully in her hand. She made a brief survey of the room and passed a warm smile to Galladrin. Then she whipped off three shots to the bullseye in rapid succession. Coragan started in both surprise and worry; they could not afford a loss.

  The next round passed in a similar manner with Galladrin scoring three bullseyes, the woman scoring two with one shot the midboard, and both Borak and the golden-haired man performing much like they did before. The following round saw Borak and the golden-haired man eliminated leaving Galladrin—set back again by a single awkward throw—trailing the woman by two points.

  “Coragan of Esperia?”

  Coragan turned at the sound of his name, his eyes catching a flash of yellow. Looking up, he saw a man in the garb of a soldier, his right arm adorned with staff, serpents and ravens. Coragan’s face dropped into a deeper frown. “Yes. Do I know you?”

  “No, you do not—but I was wondering if I could have a word with you. Do you mind?” The man motioned to the vacant chair on Coragan’s left.

  Coragan thought a moment, looking the man over as he did so. The patch on his arm marked him as a mage’s guard; that alone meant trouble. However, at least he didn’t bear the mark of the Count of Torine; that man had set a price on Coragan’s head. “You may sit there if you wish, but if you intend to share my table, you will also share your name.”

  The man sat down as he spoke. “Fair enough. My name is Mathagarr and I work for the mages guild—”

  “I can see that.” Coragan nodded toward the yellow sash then turned his gaze back toward the knife game. Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the struggle. Galladrin had cut the woman’s lead, but still lagged. He stood, poised for the drama, two blades in his left hand, the other ready to be thrown in his right. The blades flew effortlessly from his hands. Three bullseyes. The crowd gasped. If nothing else, Galladrin was enjoying himself. The woman stepped up, blades at the ready. With as much poise and grace as Galladrin, the woman sent the knives into the center of the board.

  Mathagarr stared at the bounty hunter, who in turn seemed engrossed in a nearby knife game. The man was of average height, but of a well-muscled build. His dark cloak and grey clothing gave him a forbidding air, one that agreed well with his reputation. Mathagarr cleared his throat and spoke, trying to set a casual tone. “Looks like quite a game.”

  “That it is.” The bounty hunter barely glanced at him.

  Mathagarr looked around in the uncomfortable silence, not knowing what to say. In truth, he didn’t like this part of his job and he really wished Regecon had chosen someone else to find this man. The council had met and decided they would hire outside help to investigate the fire and the two deaths. Someone had mentioned the bounty hunter’s name, saying he was in town at The Maiden’s Blush Inn and after a quick vote the council had dispatched Mathagarr to find him. Now here he was, trying to strike up a friendly conversation with the man only to find each attempt answered with a sharply curt reply—not necessarily rude, just abrupt enough to stem the flow of conversation. The whole effect left Mathagarr feeling very uncomfortable and somewhat unwelcome.

  “If you intend to use your tongue for anything other than drooling over barmaids, sir, I suggest you do so soon.” The bounty hunter spoke without taking his eyes from the knife game. “I do not intend to stay here long.”

  “Well, since you brought it up ...” Mathagarr began. The knife game seemed to be drawing to a close. Mathagarr had not been paying attention enough to gather any more than that the dark-haired man and woman were skilled competitors and had drawn quite a crowd. However, the slight frown on Coragan’s face suggested it was not going quite the way he would prefer. Realizing he had trailed off, Mathagarr quickly turned his attention back to the bounty hunter and began speaking. “As you have noticed, I work for the mages guild and have done so for many years now. The guild has stood in this town for quite some time and has earned a respectable reputation. Well, to get right to the heart of the matter, they have run into some rather peculiar difficulties of late. They sent me here to find out if you would be capable of offering them some discreet assistance.”

  The bounty hunter turned toward the guardsman, his eyes sharpening into suspicious points. “I stopped working for nobles because they were arrogant, power-hungry scoundrels who didn’t care a whit about the common people. Do yo
u now expect me to work for a mage? They are twice as bad as any noble. I have yet to meet the wizard who wasn’t convinced I should be licking his boots clean while we spoke.”

  Mathagarr did his best to ignore the comment and continued on in a patient tone. “I have only been asked to bring you to them for an audience. The guild master Regecon—” for a moment, the watchman forgot all about the bounty hunter’s belligerent tone; he stumbled over his own words as he tried to grapple with the notion that his friend of many years was now the guild master in Arcalian’s absence. “The guild master Regecon has authorized me to pay you twenty gold dragons if you would just come and speak with him about the matter.”

  Coragan arched his eyebrows in obvious surprise. Mathagarr understood. Twenty gold dragons was a considerable sum for a mere audience. Nevertheless, the bounty hunter was in no mood to deal with a wizard, guild master or not. “Come to meet him? Why? So he can ensorcel me and coerce me to go along with his plans? I don’t think so.”

  That went too far.

  Mathagarr erupted in a rage, surprising both himself and the bounty hunter. He leapt up from his chair, and slammed both his fists on the table. “Regecon is a good man! How dare you suggest that he would even be capable of such a thing!”

  “Easy, friend.” Coragan said as several stares were drawn from across the room. The bounty hunter raised his hands in a placating manner, his tone softening. “Perhaps I was too quick to judge. I’ve had a couple bad experiences with wizards, that’s all. Just relax a bit. Tell you what, even though I’m not going to take you up on your offer, I’ll buy you a drink so there’s no hard feelings. What do you say?”

  Mathagarr relaxed, sinking slowly into his chair. He let the anger subside and unclenched his fists. He hadn’t been expecting the man’s words; commoner’s were often distrustful of magic, but no one was ever so insulting. Not like that. Never. He raised his head to look at the bounty hunter, his voice taking on an inhospitable tone. “Then that’s it. You won’t even hear Regecon out? You won’t even listen to what he has to say?”

  “Like I said, the less I have to do with wizards, the bet ...” Coragan trailed off as the pair of knife-throwers approached the table. The man, lithe, nimble and sporting a blue cloak, wore a face twisted in an unusual perplexed frown. The short-haired woman followed closely on his heels, a smile resting lightly on her features. The man nodded once toward Mathagarr in greeting.

  “Uh, Coragan. I don’t mean to interrupt, but ... uh, how much of that gold do you still have left?” The man offered a weak grin, first to Coragan, then to the woman who moved up on his left.

  “You lost?”

  “Yes, he did, but he put up quite a fight.” The woman appeared amused. “He’s a fine knife-thrower.”

  “Apparently not fine enough. How much do we owe you?”

  “Twelve dragons.”

  “Twelve dragons!”

  “Yes.”

  Glaring at the man standing before him, the bounty hunter reached into his money pouch and counted out the remaining coins—nine gold dragons, seven silver griffons, and a smattering of copper ravens.

  Coragan turned. “Uh, Mathagarr?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did the guild master authorize you to give us a small advance?”

  Mathagarr smiled, contemplating the ironies of fate. “You’ll meet him then?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “One gold and three silver will suffice.”

  Mathagarr counted out the coinage into a small pile and pushed it toward Coragan. Coragan in turn collected it with the gold and silver from his own pouch and counted it out to the woman a coin at a time. When he finished, the woman smiled yet again. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure. Now, good night.” She bowed, then turned and strode back into the crowd.

  Mathagarr stood, pushing his chair back from the table. “If you would follow me, Coragan, I will take you to Regecon. Although not required, your friends may follow if they so desire.”

  Coragan looked toward the blue-cloaked man. The man shrugged his shoulders. “Count me in, unless you want me to go play knives some more. Maybe I can lose our weapons.”

  “Well, grab Borak.” Coragan turned once more to face the guardsman. “Lead on, Mathagarr.”