A Bard's Story: Here There Be Dragons

Chapter Four

Geri is impressed with the number of townsfolk who turn up for training, but he's even more impressed that none of them give him the evil eye. Everyone is milling around the center of town, or what little of it is cleared of snow. The thing that gets to Geri, as the Commander climbs up on a large crate so that he's taller than everyone, is that there's hardly enough space to practice fighting.

"Good morning, everyone!" the Commander booms. "I'm happy to see all of you here to learn how to defend yourselves against dragon attacks. It's going to be a tough job, but as long as we work together, no one else will lose lives or livestock..."

"I thought we were going to learn how to fight?" Geri says under his breath. Oren nudges him and points to a young man in Holy Order regalia scanning the crowd as if looking for someone. The group of four head over to him.

"You must be the kids the Commander said were looking to learn to fight," he says.

"We're not kids," Leyha says. "You don't look much older than Kehdem."

The man grins. "I'm Tosun. I'm one of the Holy Order mages. I hear some of you are, as well?"

Leyha, Kehdem, and Geri nod. Oren shrugs.

"Well, I'll show you some spells that might help, and I'll show you how to do the main job I do for the Holy Order — that is, spelling weapons so they're effective against these beasts. And how to use the crossbow we'll leave behind." He makes a vague gesture to the large contraption to his right. The rest of the group looks over.

"That's a bow?" Leyha asks, shocked. It certainly doesn't look like any she's seen before, and not just because it's enormous.

"Siege crossbow," Tosun says matter-of-factly. "This one's been heavily spelled, and it uses even more heavily spelled bolts. It's the only thing that we have that will actually hurt a dragon, but it's more trouble than it's worth, usually. They're painful slow to reload, and one hit will just make the beasts angry."

"So why leave it?" Oren asks.

Tosun shrugs. "It makes the townsfolk feel better. Commander's up there telling them how they'll only be safe if they hide. Even the ones who know he's right will sleep better with it here."

"And you have enough of them lying around to leave it here?"

"Not as many as we'd like," Tosun admits. "But we've got enough. We've maintained every one that was still functional at the end of the Sixth War."

"That's from the Sixth Dragon War?" Geri says incredulously. "That was hundreds of years ago!"

Tosun shrugs. "It's more magic than wood, at this point. It'll hold, if you need it to — just hope you don't need it to."

"In that case, maybe we should get to those spells?" Leyha asks.

"Ah, yes. Let's start at the beginning, then — dragons are magical beasts, although their magic doesn't follow the same rule as mages'—"

"We've read the Manual," Oren says.

"I haven't finished it," Kehdem admits sheepishly. Despite knowing how much Kehdem likes unusual magics, Leyha isn't surprised. She knows that dwarven runecraft is a particular area of interest for him, and there's obviously enough in Semben's workshop to keep him distracted. "Sorry."

"I'll keep it short. Dragons have magic that works outside of the seven elements of magery. Spells can injure them, but it takes a lot of power to get past their tough hide. We'll just be trying to drive the dragons away from your town — we want to make sure no one gets hurt before we can really go to war with them. And, really, we're hoping we can find some more dwarven weapons to help us before we launch serious attacks."