Dragon Breeder 3 by Dante King (e novels to read online .TXT) 📕

“Now, where would be the fun in that?” I said under my breath.

I walked through the strange military town, keeping my eyes peeled for sight of the two black-clad figures of Ashrin and Jazmyn.

The place was a hive of activity, with soldiers and orderlies and dragonmancers going this way and that on myriad business. Whispers followed me, floated in my wake like flotsam behind a ship. I often forgot that, for many of these men and women, this would have been the first time that they had seen a male dragonmancer.

It was not long before I was being guided along by my nose. It had picked up a familiar scent on the air, and my brain had switched to autopilot, guiding me through the teeming streets. I followed the scent until I rounded a corner and ran into none other than Old Sleazy. The gnoll was dressed once more in his trademark ‘Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls’ apron. He was busy sweating over a charcoal grill in the middle of the camp. What was more, he was actually managing a team of some fifteen gnolls all slaving over identical grills.

“Will wonders never cease,” I said, sneaking up behind the squat figure and sticking a finger into the fat that covered his ribs, “what in the name of hygiene are you doing here, Old Sleazy?”

The gnoll jumped so that his pondweed mustache fluttered about his face.

“Shit pumpkin! Who the— Ah, it’s you?”

“In the flesh,” I said. “So, what the hell are you doing here?”

“After your wedding, I was asked by the brass to come down here and get a little discipline going for these cooks of theirs,” Old Sleazy said, wiping his hands on his filthy apron and looking around at the assembly of gnolls. “Speaking of which, would you excuse me for just one tick?”

Old Sleazy stumped over to a gnoll who was having trouble with some sticks of meat and some flatbreads. With no warning, Old Sleazy smacked the gnoll around the back of the head with a wooden spoon so hard that his face cracked forward into the grill top. The unfortunate gnoll’s head rebounded with one of the flatbreads plastered across his countenance.

“You bleedin’ dumbo!” Old Sleazy screamed at him. “What are you playing at, putting that much semolina flour in your flatbread mix? Were you ruddy well raised by hyenas? No, leave it on!”

The unfortunate gnoll had attempted to pull the steaming hot flatbread off his face, but Old Sleazy only wrapped it tighter around his head with the hand that wasn’t holding the wooden spoon. Not caring whether he poked the gnoll cook in the eyes, Old Sleazy pinched a couple of eyeholes out of the sticky flatbread, so that his apprentice could better see him, and yelled, “What are you?”

“A dumbass kebab,” came the cowed reply.

“Too ruddy right you are!” Old Sleazy screamed. “Now start again!”

“Wow,” I said, when the gnoll came back over to me and gave me his usual crafty smile, “you run a tight ship.”

“Love me a tight ship, Mike,” Old Sleazy said, “almost as much as I love me a tight—”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s enough,” I said. “I just had my breakfast.”

Old Sleazy grinned at me. “So, it comes to these ears of mine that you’re off down to the Subterranean Realms, are ya?”

“I should have known that you’d know,” I said.

“Ah, you hear a lot manning a grill, dragonmancer,” Old Sleazy said. “You hear a bloody lot of gossip and—Oi! Why the ruddy hell would you be rubbing sun-root onto griffin steaks, you donut?”

That last comment was directed at yet another one of Sleazy’s gnoll disciples and accompanied with a liberal spraying of spit.

“What was I saying?” Old Sleazy said to me. “Oh, yeah. Gossip. Subterranean Realms. Right. You know, my people were originally from down those ways. The gnolls were part of the Shadow Nations, but we formed up with the Mystocean Empire before the wars really got cracking.”

“When the gnolls saw who was going to win, you mean?” I asked casually.

“Well, yeah,” Old Sleazy said, “but—roger me with a rolling pin, what are you doing with that volcano cake, you cretinous shitstain? You have to knead the batter, not fist it like you do your grandma!”

As much as I was enjoying this broken conversation, I got the impression that Old Sleazy had his hands full right now. As he laid into yet another one of his minions, I made to sneak off and carry on my search for Ashrin and Jazmyn.

“Hold on, hold on,” Old Sleazy said, grabbing my sleeve with his three-fingered hand, “there’s someone that I want you to meet, now that the winds of fortune have blown us together once more.”

“Do me a favor,” I said, “and never mention us getting blown together again.”

“Very droll,” said Old Sleazy, casually throwing a pair of tongs at a gnoll who was scratching his ass.

“Who is this person you want me to meet, then?” I asked.

“That,” said a voice from behind me, in an accent that was as close to Australian as I had heard in this world, “would be me, fella.”

Spinning on my heel, I came face to face—well face to crown of the head—with yet another gnoll.

He was in shape and look similar to Old Sleazy and Big Greasy, that is to say he looked like a pale green water balloon that had been overfilled. This gnoll, however, wore a broad-brimmed hat of faded leather, a pair of stout crocodile skin boots, and a matching canvas safari suit. There was an enormous rucksack slung over his brawny shoulders and, on the front brim of his hat, the stub of an unlit candle. On his belt, on either hip, hung a pickaxe and a crowbar. He looked like a Dirty Harry, if