Chapter 3
Dain
“Uuuh…”
The world was dark and painful, which was fairly typical.
Trying to evade the city watch, stop ourselves from freezing to death, all to the sound of Lorien’s incessant yammering, was a fairly dire existence.
Most of the time I had use of my eyes, though.
As I blinked, blinked, trying to open my lids, the pain came rushing in.
“Hold still.”
My eyes flicked open to see Kael standing above me, holding his cloak to my nose, swaying back and forth in time with the coach.
Coach?
The Executioner. Him capturing Kael. Lorien and I rushed to save our brother.
Me getting a fist to the face… Yep, my nose ached abominably, only getting worse each time Kael swayed my way.
I waved him off, then held my shirt up to my nose to staunch the blood flow.
That’s when I heard Lorien groan. He pushed himself up from the floor of the coach and then flopped back down again.
“Look alive,” I barked. There was no softness in me, not when we’d failed utterly. “Unless you want to be the Executioner’s latest victim, you need to get the hell up.”
“Whaa…?”
I ignored Lorien’s attempts to sit up, focussing on Kael. That was the only way I could ignore that sharp throb of my face.
“What’s the plan?”
“Force the doors,” Kael said, staggering over to the back of the coach. The windows were barred with thick steel. Well maintained too, I noted as I checked them for rust.
“Seems like the same thing everyone else would’ve tried.” My brows drew down, forcing the pain to spike higher, but that was no matter. “What makes you think we’ll succeed where others failed?”
“It's because others have tried that I think we should.” Kael turned around to face the two of us as we crept closer.
“Hinges have warped.” He ran a finger along one, and sure enough, you could see where the metal had started to fail.
“Others bigger than us weakened the metal trying to kick their way free.”
“And we need to be the ones to succeed.”
Our hands slapped up onto the roof to try to steady us.
“Ready?” Kael said. We both nodded. “Go!”
We each had feet hardened from running from one end of the Blackreach to the other without a shoe between us, so slamming into the ironbound wood was no great feat. For a second, I dared to hope as the door bowed outwards slightly, but the metal lock held.
“Again!” Kael barked and we slammed our feet against the doors, with no sound of shearing metal to reward us. “Again!”
Did the door bow out a fraction more? I couldn’t tell if my eyes were tricking me. We were rocked forward and then thrown back as the coach went over a lump. With that, we all collapsed onto the floor.
“I could use my knife to work the lock,” Lorien suggested, then frowned as he patted his legs.
“You lost that the minute you got within reach of the Executioner,” I growled.
“And you went down like a poleaxed sheep.” Lorien’s eyes crossed as he fell back dramatically. “Funniest thing I ever seen.”
“And he’ll slit our throats like sheep if we don’t get out of here,” Kael said. “Feet are one thing, but whole bodies are another.” He looked the two of us up and down. “We need to put our shoulders into it.”
Do or die, that was a choice we made daily, and the answer was always do, so we scrambled to our feet.
“Maybe that hard head of yours will come in useful for once,” Lorien said with a grin my way.
I couldn’t waste energy jousting with him, when the real enemy was the door. We all squared our shoulders, widening our stances before sucking in a breath and then, slam!
We bounced back onto the floor.
“Again,” I growled.
“There’s no point.” Lorien lay flat, shaking his head from side to side. “Just when we had enough coin to buy one of Mother Jenny’s cream cakes.”
“We would not be wasting gold on bloody cream cakes,” I snapped.
The two of us would bicker right up until the very end, arguing even as the Executioner lay his blade on our shoulders. Going to my grave listening to Lorien’s annoying whine was an injustice I just couldn’t accept.
“Again,” I insisted.
“Just wait.”
Kael rolled up, sitting perched on the balls of his feet, swaying in time with the coach.
“We don’t have time to wait!”
My shout was muffled by the coach as it hit a bump at speed, the three of us lifting up into the air. A moment of weightlessness and then our entire weight was flung at the doors, forcing the lock to pop.
“Gods above…” Lorien groaned, but it was when he slapped his hands down on the muddy road he realised what had happened.
So did the Executioner. The coach came to a rattling stop, but we were up and running before he could even turn around.
My foot burned, not able to take my entire weight, but I wouldn’t let that stop me.
We scrambled down a nearby alley and then we were in our element.
“In here,” Kael hissed, jerking open a door to a warehouse.
We could run up the steps to the mezzanine level, then escape onto the roof through the cracked roof tiles in the corner.
We scurried like the rats we were. Right as the door was jerked open, we froze, spying the duke’s assassin before leaping onto the roof.
Running along a pipe that joined this warehouse to another was that much harder with a bung ankle, but I refused to stop.
“Dain?” Kael asked, pausing for a second.
“Coming!” I shot back. “Don’t wait for me, brother.”
“Like you did for me?”
There was a moment when his blue eyes stared into mine, the inky blackness of his hair meshing with the sky, then he turned and held out his hand. I clasped it tightly and the two of us scampered after Lorien, landing on the next warehouse.
That was when the Executioner’s head popped out of the hole in the roof.
“Oh ho…” Lorien sauntered forward with a smirk. “Not sure if you want to come this way, Mr. Executioner.” He nudged the pipe with his foot, the ceramic scraping against the roof tiles. “Not sure if it can take your weight.”
“You stupid children. I—”
“Will stay here while we leave.”
Kael spun around, skipping across the roof of the next warehouse and the next, dodging the tiles we knew were unsecured or broken.
The toffs reckoned they knew every blade of grass in their country estates.
Well, the slums of Coalbottom were ours.
With every building we put between us and the assassin, my heart lightened until we entered the big warehouse at the edge of the city walls.
“We’ll hole up here for a bit.” Kael was sucking in breaths just like the rest of us. “Wait him out. He’d have to have bigger fish to fry than a couple of street kids.”
“Seems to focus a lot on street kids, does the Executioner.”
Once the thrill of the escape was gone, Lorien’s eyes became huge, staring into the darkness. His hand stroked a bulge in his pocket.
“Still got the gold?” I asked. He nodded. “Then it’ll be good eating for us into spring, maybe even summer if we’re careful.”
“Buy sacks of lentils and rice,” Kael said with a nod. “Squirrel it away in a hidey hole. Maybe near the cat colony. They’ll keep the vermin away.”
“My ma made a brilliant lentil stew,” Lorien said with a groan, tucking his legs against his chest. “Carrots and onions, a couple of sprigs of thyme.”
“Lentil stew every night,” Kael agreed, wrapping his arm around Lorien’s shoulders.
That stopped me cold. There was a reason Kael was the leader, and it was this.
Touching another person, it was something I did if I had no other choice, but never voluntarily.
I stared at my brothers, watching Lorien let out a sigh, and I was utterly confused by it all.
What was happening here? What instinct prompted them to do this?
I didn’t get an answer, because the distinctive sound of a horse drawing a coach behind it had us all going to the dirt-smeared windows.
“How did he…?” Lorien gasped. “Why..?”
“Doesn’t matter why.” My eyes dropped down, staring at the dusty old tea chests everywhere. Few people ever came into this warehouse, because it wasn’t used to store goods, but rather the escape route you only used if you were truly desperate. “We have to go into Drathnor’s cavern.”
Drathnor the Dire. Drathnor the Terrible. She was an ancient dragon who’d died, but even in death, she had the ability to strike fear in a man’s heart. You passed through her caves when there was no other option.
“No!” Kael smothered Lorien’s shout, removing his hand when our brother settled. “No. You promised me we would never go into those caves again.” His finger stabbed in my direction. “You promised!”
Because I was the one who took us down there last time.
Daring each other to go into the grave of Drathnor was a rite of passage for Coalbottom children.
Most just stuck their heads in the trapdoor or took one step, maybe two, into the cave below.
Coming out screaming seconds later was all part of the fun.
But I hadn’t.
Something I didn’t quite understand overtook me the last time I was there.
Whispers started up in my head, ones I could usually keep at bay.
This time, they lured me deeper and deeper into the cave, and Lorien and Kael with me.
Right then, I could see the glowing purple mushrooms that grew on the cave walls, illuminating the graceful bones of the massive dragon.
My hand had reached out, ready to touch what remained of her muzzle, when Lorien’s nerve broke.
He pissed himself and ran all the way back to the warehouse, only for everyone to see him.
Nightmares for weeks after that, Lorien mumbled Drathnor’s name over and over.
“You’re not a child anymore,” Kael said. The sound of boots crunching over the gravel had me moving. “We can do this.”
“No, no, no…”
Lorien mumbled that to himself as we all scrambled back down again. Past the boxes, dust puffing up in clouds as we went. The boxes on top of the trapdoor were found and then were dragged aside.
Right as the door to the warehouse was jerked open.
It’d started raining, I’d missed that, and right now the man dead set on killing us was limned by lightning as he stood in the doorway.
“You don’t need to do this.” His voice sounded like gravel being ground together. “Boys, you—”
“Will face the wrath of Drathnor before we’ll see the end of your axe,” Kael shouted, right before he dropped down into the hatch. Lorien hesitated, so I picked him up and then leapt into the darkness myself, pulling the hatch down with my spare hand.