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

the top pocket of his safari suit, pulled out a leather pouch, and began to roll what looked like a thin cigarette. He caught me looking and held the pouch up for me to inspect.

“Nice ain’t it?” he said.

“Yeah, very nice,” I said dutifully.

“Made from the ballbag of a centaur I fought in a pub a few years back,” Diggens said casually. “Got pretty wild that fight, I can tell ya. Accidentally cut his clangers off with a broken bottle.”

I didn’t have much to say to that.

Diggens slipped the smoke behind his lips and lit it with a sulfurous match he struck with his thumb nail.

“The way I see it, fella,” he said through a cloud of blue smoke, “ if we don’t return with the crystals and whatever the fuck is going to juice up your man-milk, we might as well not come back at all. That about right?”

“I’m of the same mind, Diggens Azee,” I said. “That about sums it up for the Mystocean Empire. I think it’d be best if we didn’t fail, don’t you?”

Diggens sucked thoughtfully on his smoke.

“Fucking oath,” he said.

Chapter 10

The smells of sweat and armor polish, of trepidation and excitement, of leather and pipe weed hung heavy in the air. Brittle laughs rang out, troops exchanged jokes and jibes with overemphasized bravado. The air itself sizzled. An invisible miasma of unspoken words, of carefully controlled fears and worries, lay over the mass of assembled fighting men and women.

It was an aura I was coming to recognize. One that surrounds groups of soldiers who are not sure what they are about to go out and face, no idea whether any or all of them would come back alive, would ever again see the sun.

I stood with Bjorn, Rupert, and Gabby off to one side of the enormous entrance to the mines that wound down into the bowels of Galipolas Mountain. My squad and I were quiet, each man lost in his own thoughts.

Bjorn fastidiously patted himself down to make sure he had everything, testing the edges of knives, hefting his battle-axe to ensure that the balance was just so. Rupert fussed through his large and seemingly bottomless bag of medicaments. There came the clink and rattle of glass as he pushed jars of lotions and potions aside, muttering to himself all the while, as his eyes twitched and his fingers ran like spiders over the numerous pouches and pockets.

Gabby leaned against a rock nearby. He was wrapped in his traveling cloak, his quiver of arrows and his bow slung over his shoulder. As usual, the enigmatic mute wasn’t saying much. He held an arrow in his hand and stroked the fletching in an absent sort of way, as if his mind was miles away. Every now and again, his hawk-like yellow-irised eyes would flick over to some noise and then return to the arrow.

For my part, I was simply trying not to let my impatience get the better of me. Here we were, at the very entrance to the Subterranean Realms, and still I found myself waiting around.

The gateway to the mines that led down into the Subterranean Realms was a huge affair. Massive tree trunks, which had been shorn of their limbs, stood as support beams, with another tree trunk laid across the top of them to hold up the ceiling. These trunks were carved with glyphs and crude runes, the meanings of which had been lost eons before. There were fantastical beasts etched into them in places: manticores and hydras, minotaurs and dragons.

I snorted a laugh. Dragons were no more fanciful to me now than lions had been when I had lived on Earth.

“Hey boss?” Bjorn rumbled as he tucked a mean-looking hatchet into his belt and gave it a loving pat.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Do you have any idea what we can expect in there?” the huge, musclebound warrior asked, nodding his head with its tattooed sides at the entrance to the mines.

“Why’s that?” I teased the half-Jotunn. “Are you getting scared? Starting to shake a little in those size thirty-nine boots you’re wearing?”

Bjorn gave me a look that said there were some things that you joked about, but him being a pussy was not one of them. “I just got to thinkin’ just now—”

“Uh-oh!” Rupert quipped.

Bjorn made a swipe at the medic with a hand the size of a shovel, but Rupert slipped aside.

“I was just wondering,” said the big, scarred warrior, “whether we might come across something that’d look more impressive above the fireplace than a giant’s schlong?”

I laughed. I cast an eye at the looming entrance. Men and women hustled to and fro. Companies of soldiers marched in and out. From where I stood, I could see the tunnel, lit by massive braziers filled with crackling pine boughs, stretching away into a smoky distance.

“Well, I heard a few things, a few bits of gossip when I was walking through town to find Jazmyn and Ashrin,” I said. “Soldier’s chat, you know.”

“And?” Bjorn said.

I looked at Rupert and Gabby who were both listening now.

“And,” I said, “from what I’ve been able to gather, the main force of the Empire’s troops have encountered a tribe of kobolds. The brass don’t know for sure obviously, because the kobolds slip away before they can be engaged or captured, but it’s thought that they’re aligned with the Shadow Nations.”

“Kobolds…” Bjorn rumbled thoughtfully. “They’re the little lizardy folk, are they?”

“Th-that’s right,” Rupert said. “Reptilian humanoids that keep mainly to themselves. It’s rumored that they venerated wild d-d-dragons back in the day. When such creatures still roamed the world.”

Gabby made a soft sound of surprise and made a couple of simple signs.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Rupert, nodding at our tracker and marksman. “They worshipped them l-l-like demigods, I suppose.”

“And they’ve