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

who had never been on an expedition of this nature, instantly banked upward and flew up into the shadows.

The roof of the mammoth space was so far above us that it would have taken a minute of solid flapping to reach it, so Pan simply settled onto a craggy outcrop and lost himself in the deep gloom.

A few seconds later, the rest of the dragonmancers shot out into space below us and Pan let out a low hiss. It must have been a shriek or call that was only just discernible to my ears, but it turned the six dragons in mid-air, as quickly as if they had been hooked on invisible fishing lines. In an instant, my companions had located Pan and me, and came to roost on the same wide ledge on which we were settled.

Dragonmancers sat astride dragons and looked out, agog, at the sight that spread itself before our eyes.

From where the seven of us were perched, the vast cavern spread out below us, almost as if we were sitting at the lip of some giant gully or bowl. The tunnel entrance through which we had come turned into a wide road that led down, through a series of severe switchback turns, to the floor of the cavern. This well-engineered and well-tended road struck out as straight as an arrow from our side of the cavern to the opposite side—some two or three miles distant from us.

“Well string me up and bugger me with a poleaxe,” Jazmyn breathed in a hoarse whisper. “Me and Ashrin have seen a bit of shit in our time, but I don’t think we have seen anything as fuckin’ insane as that.”

The rest of us did not say a word. It seemed pointless.

Across the underground tableland, which was bereft of any feature bigger than a car-sized boulder, on the further side, was a fortress. It was a great, crumbling, cinematic ruin of a stronghold. Disintegrating towers had half fallen down and now stared out at the surrounding plains with empty windows. Stone walls leaned outward ever so slightly so that scaling them was an impossible task. Mammoth gates looked like they had fused into one giant block of iron-bound wood.

If I had clapped eyes on the sight on Earth, I would have thought it a movie set. Here, in the Subterranean Realms, the abandoned bastion could not have looked more real or solid if it had been carved out of the bones of Galipolas Mountain itself. The fortress was walled on three sides, but the rearward wall was just the wall of the cavern itself.

The black, stone burg would have been captivating enough, but it was what was happening outside the broken-topped walls that really riveted the attention.

Kobolds.

Thousands of kobolds.

They milled around the base of the breastwork like ants around the bottom of a picnic basket. Thankfully, unlike ants, it did not look like the kobolds were much good at climbing.

Great bonfires lit the plain and the activity taking place on it. Overhead, across a ceiling that was lost in murk and mountain shadows, the great weird bioluminescent worms crawled and cast their otherworldly light down on combatants.

For combatants they most certainly were.

At the top of the walls, just discernible from this distance, was the glint of metal; a pencil-thin line of glittering steel that might have signified the positioning of a few hundred helmeted, spear-wielding Imperial troops.

“There they are,” I said.

I swallowed.

I imagined I could hear the withering flurry of arrows being exchanged. The screaming of dying men. The bellowed orders of Elenari and Antou. The clash and ring of metal on metal. The thud of swords on shields.

“That’s where Elenari is,” I said. “Right there. In the damn thick of it.”

Even with our dragon-enhanced sight, we were too far away to make out individual details, but I could easily imagine the lizard-men throwing themselves at the impregnable walls, heedless of the casualties that they racked up, as they desperately tried to get their clawed hands on the Imperial troops that had been so neatly lured in and trapped.

“How the hell do you think this happened? How the hell did our warriors get suckered into this, against a bunch of kobolds?” Tamsin asked, spitting off the edge of our lofty perch, in the manner of one who did not relish the even sound of the word ‘kobold.’

“I can hazard a guess, I reckon,” I said. “Looks like they marched down here, met no opposition in the ratfolk township, and carried on through the tunnel. They probably made it all the way down the road. Probably found some token opposition at the ruined castle there. They would have fought the kobolds or ratfolk or whatever, of course, and they would have won.”

Ashrin had been nodding away at my explanation as I talked. When I got to this point of my guessing, she let out a little laugh. “Yeah, they would have won that fight, and the doors of this trap would have snapped shut behind them.”

“But why the fuck would the kobolds want to let them take the ruins before they closed the ambush?” Saya said heatedly. “Makes no tactical sense that I can see.”

Penelope cleared her throat politely. Despite being on a level with every other Rank One dragonmancer at the Drako Academy, I always got the impression that Penelope thought of herself, for some reason, to be less worthy to speak than some of the more forthright dragonmancers. This annoyed me, because she was in possession of one of the more brilliant intellects in the whole damned place, and could fight like a hellcat when required.

“I think that it was, in fact, tactically sound,” the Knowledge Sprite said.

“How so?” Saya asked. I could see that the Amazonian blonde was getting fired up and was eager to get down there and start canceling