I wrote the first three books in my new Death Before Dragons urban fantasy series before publishing the first, so the second novel (Battle Bond) is already ready to go. If you haven’t yet read the first book (Sinister Magic), you can try the first few chapters here.
If you want to check out the opening chapters of Battle Bond, scroll down. If you already know you want to grab a copy, here are the links for Amazon:
As always, thank you very much for reading and for your support!
Chapter 1
“It’s a trap.”
The slender wire was barely visible under the mulch and fallen apple-blossom petals, but even if I hadn’t seen it, my half-elven blood would have allowed me to sense the faint hint of magic.
I’d taken three laps around the sprawling orchard, rows of trees stretching across dozens of acres, and it was my only proof that someone magical was in the area. Or had been in the area. Whoever it was hadn’t been considerate enough to leave footprints.
I stood up, flicked my long blonde braid over my shoulder, and contemplated my options. Then impulsively chose one that wasn’t that wise. I stepped into the trap.
Wire tightened around my ankle, then pulled at my leg hard enough to yank me off my feet. A second later, I dangled upside down, hands stretched toward the ground, like a cartoon hunter outsmarted by a clever rabbit.
My car keys, inhaler, and the stupid lavender-scented nose spray my doctor had recommended to calm my nerves tumbled out of my pocket. I hadn’t needed so many silly things along on missions before my previously excellent health had gone off the rails. I still wasn’t entirely sure what inflammatory markers did, but I was supposed to be de-stressing my life to improve them. Hard to do while dangling upside down from a tree.
Fortunately, Fezzik, my custom-made magical submachine pistol, stayed secure in its thigh holster, and Chopper, my even more magical longsword, remained in the scabbard strapped across my back. The hilt did clunk me in the back of the head as it shifted, but I deserved that. My leather thong strung with magical charms remained around my neck, but I had to tuck my chin to keep it there.
Val? Sindari’s voice spoke into my mind—Sindari’s amused voice.
I’d thought he was on the other side of the orchard, but when I twisted, I saw the great silver tiger padding toward me, his large paws barely stirring the grass between the rows of trees.
“Yes?” I answered aloud instead of in my mind.
With four of the neighborhood children missing, and dozens of local pigs devoured in the last week, the owners weren’t wandering the property right now, so I wasn’t worried about being overheard talking to a magical tiger.
Do you need me to rescue you?
“No. Actually, I need you to scoot off over the hill so whoever set this trap won’t sense you when they come to check on what they caught.”
Sindari sat on his haunches and looked up at me. You intentionally stepped into that situation?
“Yes. Now, scoot.” I made a shooing motion. “You can come back and rescue me if more than four enemies show up.”
You should be able to handle four kobolds by yourself. They’re only two or three feet tall.
“That’s why I said I’d only need rescuing if there were more than four.”
Sindari’s gaze shifted toward the next row of trees. One approaches now.
Good. I switched to thinking my responses, trusting the telepathic tiger would hear them. Shoo.
I am Sindari Dargoth Chaser the Third, Son of the Chieftain Raul, Feared Stalker and Hunter of the Tangled Tundra Nation on Del’noth. I do not shoo. He did, fortunately, engage his ability to fade from sight—and from the magical senses of anyone except the person holding his figurine.
Since that was me, I still felt him there. A few seconds later, I sensed more magical beings out there. Six of them, and they were spreading out around us. I resisted the urge to draw my weapons, instead letting my arms dangle over my head. I was just a helpless visitor foolishly caught in their trap.
Something pelted me in the butt, and I jerked, gasping at the pain.
“What was that?” I clasped a hand over the smarting spot. It felt like someone had cracked a whip.
A faint twang sounded, and something stung my opposite shoulder.
Are they shooting me? I twisted, trying to pinpoint the location of my assailants.
With slingshots. Do you wish me to rescue you now? Sindari sounded more amused than concerned for my welfare.
If these were the beings responsible for kidnapping—and possibly killing—children, this wasn’t a laughing matter.
Another projectile—a rock?—buzzed past my head, stirring my hair. The leaves rustled in a nearby tree.
Just capture one. We need to question someone.
As Sindari sprang away, I yanked Chopper from its scabbard, pulled myself up, and sliced through the wire above me. The blade cut through the enchanted wire without trouble, and I had just enough room to flip a somersault and land on my feet. I still had to cut away the binding around my ankles, and I grimaced at the lost time. The kobolds had scattered as soon as Sindari leaped after them.
But I heard the one that had been in the tree jumping down. As soon as I was free, I sprinted after him.
The white-haired, two-foot-tall, gray-skinned creature darted into the next row of trees, a slingshot clenched in his small fist. I ducked branches and darted around trunks to follow.
My father’s blood gave me better-than-human agility, but thanks to my mom, I also carried the blood of ancient Norse warriors in my veins, and they’d conspired to make me six feet tall. Branches clawed at my hair and smacked me in the face as I raced after the kobold. I lost sight of him, but my senses kept me on his trail.
As I surged out of the trees at the edge of the orchard, he came into sight again, sprinting for the native evergreens on the property’s border. And the non-native, invasive blackberry brambles growing between those trees.
My long legs let me gain ground, and I urged them to even faster speeds as I saw his destination. A rabbit-sized hole in the dense wall of thorny vines.
I unstrapped Fezzik from my holster but hesitated to shoot him in the back. I wasn’t yet sure these kobolds were responsible for the trouble, and my mother’s words rang in my mind, that maybe the magical community would hate me less—would stop sending representatives to try to kill me—if they didn’t fear me, if I helped them.
A split second before I would have caught up to him, the kobold dove through the hole. It looked too small even for him, but he slithered into it like a greased snake. It was all I could do to halt in time to keep from face-planting in the thorns.
Vines and leaves rattled, marking the kobold’s passage as he found a route deeper and deeper into the brambles. Even my height wasn’t enough to allow me to see over them and guess how far back into the trees the patch extended. Probably all the way to Puget Sound. There was a reason the Himalayan blackberry topped the lists of the most noxious invasive weeds in the Pacific Northwest.
As I was eyeing Chopper, debating how effective my treasured blade would be at clearing a path through the thorny tangle, I spotted the property owners heading my way.
I groaned. Had they seen me failing to capture a single toddler-sized kobold? They better have not seen me getting pelted in the butt by him.
Embarrassment heated my cheeks as I imagined snarky comments about how they thought they’d brought in the legendary Ruin Bringer, not some self-proclaimed bounty hunter hired off the internet.
Sindari? I asked silently as the middle-aged man and woman approached. Any chance you’ve captured the rest of them and tied them up with a bow for me?
Surprisingly, Sindari didn’t answer. The cat-shaped charm on my necklace that could call him into this world warmed through the fabric of my shirt. Then it went ice cold, sending a chill through me that had nothing to do with physical sensation.
Sindari? I touched the charm.
Nothing.
Chapter 2
“It got away?” the man asked as he and his wife stopped, glancing at the blackberry brambles.
Worried about Sindari, I struggled to focus on him. “Yeah. Sorry.”
The middle-aged couple didn’t look much like my mental image of farmers—or orchard owners. He wore a Microsoft T-shirt and glasses, and she was in yoga pants and a hoodie displaying a stick figure doing the splits under instructions to Stay flexible.
Ayush and Laura were their names, I reminded myself. Colonel Willard had given me information on them and their lavender farm/apple orchard/cider house/winery when she’d given me the job.
“I told you we should have cleared all this.” The woman pointed to the brambles and frowned at her husband.
“And I told you we’d need a hundred goats and a skidsteer with a brush-saw attachment to make any headway. It’s been an epic battle just to keep them from encroaching on the orchard.”
“I didn’t object to the idea of goats,” she murmured.
“Just the forty-thousand-dollar machine?”
“Yes. That’s not in the budget.”
“But goats are?”
“Goats are cute.”
I was barely listening, my gaze scanning the orchard for signs of Sindari, even though I suspected he’d been dismissed from this world. Usually, that was something only the holder of the figurine could do. But I’d once seen a powerful dark-elf mage force him away.
“Is this how they’ve been getting in and out?” Ayush pointed at the hole. The brambles had stopped rattling, and the kobold was far away now. “What are they?”
“Kobolds. I was trying to capture one to question. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were the ones that stole and ate your pigs. I’m not sure about the children. They are known for playing pranks—” I resisted the urge to rub the incipient bruise on my left butt cheek, “—but they’re usually smart enough not to pick fights with humans.”
“Kobolds,” the woman mouthed, looking at her husband.
From her face, it was clear she hadn’t encountered magical beings before and wasn’t sure she believed in them. Lucky her.
Her husband’s expression was more grim and accepting. “You can find them, right? And find the children?”
I hesitated, aware that the missing children could be as eaten as the pigs, but I didn’t want to steal their hope. “I can find the kobolds, and I’ll question them about what’s been going on.”
I just had to figure out a way around the thorny brambles. I could sense more kobolds in that direction, but they were at least a half mile back. Unless Zav—the dragon who was determined to use me as bait to find the criminals he’d been sent to Earth to collect—showed up and breathed fire all over the place, I wasn’t going that way. Besides, I hadn’t seen Zav in two weeks. It was possible he’d completed his mission and left Earth forever. Dare I hope?
“I’ll find a way around.” I waved at the blackberry brambles and started to turn away, but Ayush lifted his hand.
“I know the government pays you, but if you can find the children, we’ll give you some of our cider and wine and lavender chocolates. As much as you want.”
Lavender chocolate? What strange thing was that? I wouldn’t say no to hard cider, but I wasn’t here for goodies.
“You don’t have to give me anything.” I waved and jogged off to collect my belongings from under the trap and to look for a break in the brush—and Sindari.
As soon as I was out of their sight, I would try summoning him again. And hope that whatever had driven him out of this world wasn’t permanent.
Before I could reach for the charm, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Thorvald,” came Colonel Willard’s dry Southern accent. “Did you not learn proper phone etiquette when you were in the army?”
“No. I was a pilot, not a secretary, and then they made me an assassin.”
“Assassins don’t answer phones?” Her connection was spotty, with voices in the background making it worse.
“Not politely. You’re supposed to be fierce and vague in case an enemy is calling. Do you have something new for me? I’m hunting kobolds.” Since the property owners were out of sight, I wrapped my fingers around the cat figurine and mouthed, “Sindari,” to summon him back. I hoped.
“I do have new intel. I’ve lost touch with the forest ranger who was trying to find the kobolds’ den, but the snitch in Port Townsend who first told me about the trouble has updated me. She says they may be taking orders from a leader and not necessarily acting of their own free will.”
“Yeah, I guessed that.”
The silver mist that always formed and coalesced into Sindari was slow to appear, as if it were fighting against some invisible force determined to quash the magic.
“You’ve encountered him or her?” Willard asked.
“Not yet, but someone knocked Sindari back to his realm.”
“Try to find that person instead. Have you killed any kobolds yet?”
“No.” This time, I did rub my butt cheek. “I just spotted them for the first time.”
The mist thickened, and I exhaled in relief as Sindari’s familiar features formed. It was taking longer than usual, but he was coming.
“Avoid killing them unless you can confirm that they’re responsible. We’re trying to create less animosity among the magical community for both our sakes.” There was a grimace in her voice.
“I know. I will.”
Willard’s reply of, “Good,” was almost drowned out by metal clanking in the background.
“Colonel, are you at the gym or are you recycling aluminum cans?”
“I don’t drink anything that comes in a can.”
“That’s what I thought.” I frowned my disapproval at the phone. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m doing some walking and light stretching.”
“In the weight room?”
“I’ve been cleared for exercise, Thorvald.” She’d called me Val when she’d been in the hospital dying, but it seemed we were back to formalities now. “It’s fine. I want to get my health back.”
“You had cancer two weeks ago. The best way to get your health back is to rest.”
Finally, Sindari fully formed, once again a solid silver tiger at my side. I’d ask for details as soon as I got off the call but leaned against him and wrapped an arm over his back.
“It was a magically induced unnatural cancer,” Willard said.
“So that means doing squats and bench presses right after is fine? You better not have signed up for a new triathlon.”
“I’m not doing squats. Just light leg presses. And you do know that you’re my lowly civilian contractor, not my boss, right?”
“Lowly? I tower over you.”
“Two inches isn’t towering. If I grew my hair out, I’d be taller than you.”
“I’m positive that you with a six-inch afro isn’t regulation,” I said, though I suspected Willard could wear her hair and her clothes however she wanted at the office in Seattle. The soldiers stationed there were supposed to blend in to more easily monitor and control criminal activity from magical beings hiding out and traveling through the city.
“The regs just say it has to be off your neck and fit in your hat,” Willard said.
“If I had more money, I’d bribe you to grow it out just so I could see that.”
“You’ll get your usual combat bonus if you bring in whoever is leading the kobolds. There’s a school less than a mile from there. We can’t let them keep kidnapping children.”
“I know. I’m on it.” I hung up.
I’d resumed walking as I spoke and reached a stream that flowed through the corner of the property. The blackberry brambles lay thick on one side but hadn’t yet taken over the other.
“Looks like we can get through here, Sindari. What happened to…” I trailed off, realizing he wasn’t at my side.
I whirled, afraid he’d been kicked out of our world again. But I spotted him rolling like a dog on his back under some apple trees.
“Sindari?” I called. “What are you doing?”
He stopped rolling, his legs splayed, his forepaws in the air, but he kept rubbing his head on the grass under the tree. Rolling, he replied.
“I see you’re not overly traumatized by whatever punted you away from Earth. That was someone else’s doing, wasn’t it? You didn’t simply get tired and want to take a nap?”
Of course not, Val. My stamina is amazing. And I’ve only spent an hour in your world today. Sindari kept rubbing his head in the grass.
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, we still need to find a kobold to question. And can you close your legs? I can see your junk.”
My what?
“Never mind. I’m going this way. Please join me at your earliest convenience.”
My boots squished in mud as I walked along a well-used trail on the clear side of the stream. It grew dim quickly under the forest of firs and hemlocks, the trunks rising a hundred feet and more. Dew dripped from the branches, occasionally landing on my head.
Every few steps, I knelt down to study fresh prints in the mud. They were smaller than mine but not as small as kobold prints. Maybe the local children used this path to cut through from property to property. That was another reason to find whoever was threatening them.
You’re going the right direction, Sindari told me as he caught up. Forgive my distraction. I could not resist.
“Resist what? Did someone sprinkle catnip under those trees?”
Fertilizer, I believe.
“Isn’t that stuff poisonous to animals?”
This was bone meal and fish meal fertilizer. Quite aromatic and delightful.
Maybe I would get some catnip later and see if my mighty silver tiger would roll around like that on my living room floor.
“Where did you go when you disappeared? Did you catch the kobold?”
No. I was close and then… ah, I found a trap of my own.
“You didn’t step in a snare and fly up in a tree, did you?”
No, I’m not so foolish.
“Ha ha.”
Follow me. Sindari sprang across the creek and onto another path. Here, the brambles had been burned back, as if by someone with a flamethrower. It was hard to imagine that being effective, since the forest was still very damp this early in the season. The trap was expertly laid and camouflaged. I didn’t sense the magic until it sprang, knocking me back into my realm with a blast of pain.
I’m sorry you were hurt. Do kobolds have mages powerful enough to create such things? I eyed the burned-back vines, wondering if magic had been used rather than a flamethrower.
It wasn’t created by a kobold.
Do you know what did create it?
Sindari didn’t answer right away, instead leading me around bends in the trail, then on toward an opening in the trees ahead. Maybe he didn’t know who had created it.
A faint tingle poked at my senses, like electricity under a high-voltage line. Magic.
Eventually, the trail led us into a large meadow of waist-high grass leading to an old windmill beside a creek. Sindari sat on his haunches and faced it. It was the source of the magic.
That is who created it, Sindari told me.
The windmill? I drew even with him, my instincts itching. The windmill represented a threat, but I also had the feeling that someone was watching us.
No, the being using it for its lair. He isn’t there now, but I can smell dragon.
I gave him a sharp look. Zav?
I didn’t sense his aura, and it was powerful enough that I usually did from a mile away. All I sensed, other than the windmill itself was…
Oh, damn. There were the kobolds again. I’d almost missed their auras since the windmill radiated magic. They were out in the tall grass. All six of them. Had they spotted us yet?
No. I recognize the scent of Lord Zavryd. This is another dragon.
“Another dragon?” I blurted out loud before I caught myself and switched to silent speech. How can we have gone from no dragons on Earth for a thousand years to two in the same month?
I don’t know, but brace yourself. We’re about to be—
All six kobolds rushed toward us, the grasses wavering madly with their passage. As I drew Chopper, the first one came into view. He’d traded his slingshot for a gun.
Chapter 3
I dove to the side, rolling into the grass, a split second before the kobold fired at me.
Sindari pounced as the bullet whizzed past my head. He tackled the kobold with the gun, but the five others burst out of the grass, armed with guns, daggers, and bows and arrows. The weapons were small enough to fit in their diminutive hands—but dangerous enough to be deadly.
I leaped up from my roll in time to greet two rushing kobolds, one male and one female, with Chopper.
The male had a dagger and the female a pistol. Faster than she could take aim, I whipped the blade across to strike the weapon. I’d only intended to knock it from her grip, but Chopper’s magical blade cut through it like butter, leaving a glowing blue streak in the air.
Even though I could have finished her off, Willard’s words came to mind. I spun on my heel and launched a low side kick. My boot slammed into her small chest, and she flew backward into the grass.
Her companion lunged at me with his dagger. His black eyes were glazed, and he didn’t react to his comrade being kicked away. As I skittered back to avoid the sharp blade, he stabbed at me with a combination of robotic movements.
Like many magical beings, he was faster than the typical human, but my elven blood also gave me extra speed, and I was accustomed to quick and agile opponents. When he committed himself to a lunge, stabbing straight ahead with the dagger, I glided to the side and toward him, close enough to bend down and catch his wrist. I twisted it, but to my surprise he didn’t yelp in pain or drop the weapon. He didn’t make a noise at all as he tried to pull his arm away.
I hefted him into the air, knocked his hand against a nearby tree trunk, and finally his dagger fell to the dirt.
A roar came from the grass, and a disarmed and bleeding kobold sailed over my head and into the woods.
“Don’t kill them,” I yelled as I struggled to keep my prisoner subdued, so we could question him later.
They are not yielding to my superior power, Sindari told me, sounding exasperated. Another kobold flew into the woods. It is impossible to stop them without harming them greatly.
The one I held struggled and managed to get a fist past my guard. It clipped me in the chin enough to hurt, and I had to resist the urge to fling him away—or bash him in the head with Chopper.
Even as he battled me, his expression never changed and his eyes remained glazed. Someone was definitely controlling these guys.
I twisted the kobold so that his back was to me and pinned his arms, pulling him against my hip so he couldn’t move.
To my left, the tall grasses parted to reveal the tip of an arrow pointing at me. The bowman hesitated, maybe afraid to hit his buddy, but he was too far away for me to reach with my sword. I plunged Chopper into the ground and yanked out Fezzik and fired.
My shot cracked through the top of the bowstave as I jumped back in case the kobold got the shot off. But I’d been fast enough. The arrow fell limply to the ground.
Sindari plowed into my would-be sniper from behind and batted him into a bramble patch with a swipe of his paw. The kobold’s bow fell from his grip as he tumbled into the thorny vines. Like the male I’d captured, he did not cry out. Robotically, he tried to extricate himself.
They’re going to keep coming if we don’t do something to stop them, Sindari pointed out.
The two he’d first sent sailing had regained their feet and were stalking back toward us, even though they’d lost their weapons. The one I held kept squirming and trying to escape.
“Chopper,” I blurted, a realization smacking me.
You wish to behead them? Sindari paused to knock another of the returning kobolds back into the woods. They only weighed about forty pounds, which meant his blows could send them far.
I winced as that one clipped a trunk with bone-crunching force. But it still had a dagger, and we couldn’t let them continue to attack us without defending ourselves.
“No.” I shifted my burden around and tried to put my sword’s hilt in the kobold’s hand without losing control of the blade. “Chopper’s magic has protected me many times from mental attacks. Maybe it could break whatever hold is on him.”
The kobold’s small fingers wrapped around the hilt, and he tried to lift it, to use it to brain me. I was stronger than he was, but he made a valiant effort, and I started to think I had made a mistake.
Until he blinked in surprise and stopped struggling. He gaped at me, glanced around, and screamed.
It was right in my ear, and I almost dropped him just to get him away from me—or make it stop—but I needed to question someone.
“Stop,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you, and if you answer some questions, I’ll let you go.”
I hoped he understood English. Most of the magical refugees that had been on Earth and in America for years knew enough to get by, with some being experts at blending in, but newer arrivals often didn’t know the language.
He screamed again. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t understand me or he didn’t believe me.
Sindari sprang close and roared at the kobold.
“That’s not going to help anything,” I said.
But the kobold, eyes widening even further, stopped screaming… and wet himself.
I groaned and held him out at arm’s length. “Gross, Sindari.”
My apologies. I didn’t anticipate that result.
“What usually happens when you roar at people?”
Stupefied acquiescence.
“This probably qualifies. He got my hip.”
Perhaps you can roll in the fertilizer on the way out.
I don’t see how that would help.
It would mask the odor.
So I’d smell like blood and fish instead?
Yes. Those are far more appealing scents.
If you say so. I pulled my sword out of the kobold’s grip before realizing that might allow the mind-control to reassert itself.
But the glaze didn’t return to the kobold’s eyes. He struggled weakly—nothing like he had before—and stared at Sindari.
Two more kobolds, still under the mind-control influence, rushed at us. Once again, Sindari knocked them back into the brush. Though bruised and bleeding, they rose and came at us again.
I will keep that one from escaping, Sindari said. You’re going to have to let them all hold your sword to break the spell.
I didn’t hesitate to thrust my unwelcome and damp burden at him. As I trotted forward to catch the closest returning attacker, Sindari flattened our prisoner to the ground with a paw. He was kind enough to retract his claws.
It took several long moments to go through the process with the other five kobolds, and I grimaced at one holding a broken arm and limping, but Chopper successfully shattered the mind-control compulsion on all of them. As soon as they realized where they were and who they faced—one of them whispered my most common moniker, Ruin Bringer—they fled.
Since we had a prisoner already, I didn’t try to detain them. I had rope back in the Jeep, but I assumed the kobolds would cease to be a problem once we took care of whoever was controlling them. Or whatever. I glanced at the windmill, an ominous, dilapidated gray structure that looked to be a hundred years old, worried about Sindari’s warning about a dragon.
“I hope we kept one who understands English.” I walked up to Sindari, the prisoner still pinned on his back under a paw, after the others disappeared into the trees. I hadn’t missed that they had all run away from the windmill rather than toward it.
“I understand,” the kobold whispered, staring up at me. He had a split lip that was bleeding. “You are the Ruin Bringer. We didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t kill the pigs?”
He hesitated. “We didn’t take the children. I mean, we didn’t want to take the children.”
“But you took the pigs of your own free will?”
Another hesitation. “No. We were forced.”
“Why do I think you’re lying?”
He probed his bloody, puffy lip with his tongue. “Pigs are delicious?”
He’s not wrong, Sindari said. On Del’noth, we have wild boars that are succulent.
“Your kind would have an easier time hiding out in this world if you went vegan,” I said.
You don’t think the locals would also object to carrots being stolen from their gardens? Sindari asked.
“They might blame rabbits.”
The kobold looked confused.
“Kobold—uh, what’s your name?” Again, I thought of my mother’s advice to make friends with the magical, with those who weren’t criminals. I supposed I could at least be more polite. Maybe if fewer people loathed me, that would help with the issues I was reluctantly working on with the therapist.
“Bob.”
I raised my eyebrows, suspecting another lie, but this one didn’t matter. “Where are the children, Bob? Are they still alive?”
His eyes rolled toward the windmill. He couldn’t have seen it through the tall grass, but he was looking in precisely the right direction. As a full-blooded magical being, he would sense its magic even more easily than I.
“We took them there,” he said. “I do not know if they still live. He may have eaten them.”
“He who? Who’s been controlling you?” I should have asked that question first, but I dreaded the answer.
“The dragon,” Bob whispered. “If you go there, he’ll control you too. Or he’ll kill you like the other human who went there.”
Uh oh, was that the forest-ranger contact Willard had mentioned?
“Was it a black dragon?” I asked.
It didn’t make sense that Zav would be killing people, when he’d pointed out more than once that he wasn’t a criminal and that he was only here to take criminals back to his own realm for punishment and rehabilitation. But I would prefer to deal with the dragon I knew rather than some mysterious new dragon.
The kobold shook his head. “He’s silver and as big as that windmill.” Bob lowered his voice. “And meaner than a tragothor.”
Is that as mean as it sounds, Sindari?
Yes.
“He’ll kill you.” Bob grabbed Sindari’s leg. “Please let me go. He’ll kill me if he finds out I talked.”
I waved a hand for Sindari to release him. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the kobold was lying anymore.
I wished I had a way to contact Zav, not that he would deign to give me information about his fellow dragons. Or about anything. But he had given me a sample of his blood after I’d recovered his artifact for him. We hadn’t parted on antagonistic grounds, never mind that he wanted to cart me around the world as his slave-bait to lure magical criminals to him.
What’s the plan? Sindari asked as the kobold scurried away.
We check the windmill and hope the dragon doesn’t come home before we’re done.
And if he does? Neither of us is strong enough to kill a dragon.
I know. We’re going to optimistically hope for the best. I marched resolutely through the grass.
Sindari glided past me to take the lead. An interesting stance from someone with pee on her hip.
I’m not sure I believe that you didn’t anticipate that result.
His look back was not convincingly innocent.
~
Pick up Battle Bond to finish the adventure (and get to the part where the mighty dragon lord Zavryd returns!).
Thanks for reading!
Love this series! You have a great talent and gift of story telling. But it’s driving me nuts, what does “Aryoshanti sharyo” mean?