Descending Dragon - Prologue and Ch 1

Prologue/Intro

Truth is, I was supposed to be dead now anyway.

When I was fifteen I’d started coughing something fierce, waking up drenched in sweat, and damn near lost my whole appetite. It went on and on until Pa brought round a healer who poked and prodded until he gave me a smile and a pat on the knee. He only talked to Pa when he thought I couldn’t hear.

“Sorry, Mr. Hardin,” he’d said, “but your boy’s a lunger”.

Pa had held himself up with a hand to the door frame, looking about as sober as I’d ever seen him. And that had been that.

You see ‘lungers’ don’t usually last long. Mostly they’re poor, old men without much to their name but whiskey and memories, and if they’re polite they go to die somewhere out of sight.

I was just a boy, but, bad luck never did much care about ‘usual’.

When the news got out, the folk of Tristwood looked at me like I was already dead. I didn’t blame them. You didn’t ask a man to shovel snow about to melt, or clean mud off a dirt trail. Simple folk like them knew when a thing was a waste of time.

“How longs he got?” Pa had asked him, his voice stretched and thin.

“He’s young and strong,” the healer said. “Could be a year, could be two. No more than three.”

That was five years ago now. I kept on eating though I wasn’t hungry, and kept on wheezing like old man Iver. But I kept on living.

To the folk of Tristwood, I was a half-broken horse that could still pull a wagon; a cracked chimney that leaked but still blew smoke, just another problem no one had gotten ‘round to fixing yet.

Every morning I left my father drunk in his inn and cleaned the stables. I helped the baker, the butcher, and the barber—the three b’s as I called ‘em—who didn’t matter much on their own, but without whom I was sure the town of Tristwood would fall to ruin.

“You should take a bag and go, boy,” Pa told me once, waist deep in his cups. He didn’t mean it to be cruel. “They don’t care,” he said after, and left it at that.

What he meant was the townsfolk didn’t give me the respect he thought I deserved, and that hurt him. But I know mostly he just didn’t want to watch me die. I suppose he won’t have to now.

In any case, I stayed.

My place was Tristwood then and those folk needed me whether they knew it or not. I’m not a lucky man. Not in kin or health or love, nor I suppose in friends, though I’ve got a few.

But twenty three days from the king’s birthday, a night after a new batch of rubes came to town, I was given a gift few men ever have: I knew my purpose in this world.

You see there’s an old abandoned iron mine next to Tristwood. At least, that’s what we call it. In truth it’s a hellhole that traps men like rats and eats their lives.

Folk come from hundreds of miles with greed and dreams of glory, thinking they’ll dig down where all the others have failed and reach some old treasure of legend men say is buried in its depths.

‘Delvers’, we call ‘em to their faces. ‘The Walking Dead’ behind their backs.

They all think they’ll go down regular folk—usually prospectors with hardly a penny to their names—and somehow come out legends.

But they’re always wrong. Nobody comes out.

Not the knights and their squires, not the mining veterans or the bounty hunters. They go down, and they don’t come out, and the folk of Tristwood pretend it’s otherwise.

I ain’t lucky, as I’ve said, but I’ve got two friends in this world, and a girl I would have married if I weren’t a lunger. And maybe on account of a dare or some other damn foolery young folk get swept up in, all three went with a few others down into the old Tristwood ‘mine’.

That was yesterday.

The night passed and they didn’t come out, and I know no one will go down for them. Not the strong young men of Tristwood nor their fathers. Because everyone knows you don’t come out, and only rubes and madmen go in.

But I guess there’s a third kind of Delver now, which makes as much sense as anything. An exclusive club of one.

I’m already a walking corpse. I’m a lunger. So when the light comes up I’ll be heading down to find my friends, probably just one more stupid rube.

I’ve stolen some tools and supplies from Mr. Franker, and I’m sorry about that but he’ll be fine.

I’ll die, I expect. I’ll rot down there with all the other fools in the Delve who thought they’d be the exception.

But I’ve got one advantage: I’ve no delusions. All I know is my friends are down there, and there’s no one but me willing to help them. That’s it. That’s all. That’s everything I know.

It’s enough.

-Final page of Samuel Hardin’s journal. Year of the King, 1362.

_______________________________________

Chapter One

It was twenty four hours before I went to hell, and another batch of rubes had come to town. All I wanted was to sleep.

“Get up, get up, boy! These ones got horses. Go see to ‘em.”

Pa liked to tell me to do things I was already doing. Fact was I’d done a whole round of chores before I’d spotted the custom.

As usual I’d woke before dawn to sneak the baker’s wife from the wrong man’s bed and get her home before her husband woke. He knew she was a lying, cheating scoundrel, course, but if she wasn’t there to make him his eggs when he blinked awake, the whole damn town fell apart.

Anyway, Pa was still half drunk and bleary eyed.

He’d mistaken noon for sunrise again when he spotted me, and there wasn’t much point grousing the old man in his state.

“Yes sir,” I said, and finished walking outside, straightening my cap to calm my hands and push off the lump in my gut. The hinges of the inn doors squeaked and I reminded myself to bring grease on the way back.

“Have a good day.” Diana called from upstairs with a wry smile, and I returned the grin. Diana was the town whore. She kept two rooms upstairs permanent, which she had to pay us for but didn’t mind. Old Di could earn more in a night than I did in a month.

In a small town like Tristwood, the whore was as rich as the smithy, and I expect she could have bought a house or two outright if she’d been inclined. I think she just liked having a couple men around who didn’t leave.

“Supplies!” yelled Mr. Franker from his porch just as I came outside. He gestured at the rubes and held up a leather satchel and a coil of rope. “Everything you could need and more down in the Delve! Get it all here!”

He needn’t have bothered yelling. Mr. Franker was the official provisioner in Tristwood—which was to say, the only provisioner.

Once, when I was ten or so, a traveling merchant had come and tried to set up shop. Mr. Franker and a few men slipped on masks, took his property, and beat ‘em bloody right out of town. Such was life on the frontier.

This newest batch of adventurers clopped into town on fancy horses. The man in the lead wore a mail shirt and carried a sword in a stainless scabbard. His beard was dark and trim though he’d been at least a week on the road from the closest town. He damn near jangled as he rode. He nodded his interest, and I did my best not to cringe as I felt the greed from my neighbors.

“Good morrow, friends.” The rube grinned with all his teeth. “Might I inquire as to which of you might stable my animals for the evening?”

“That’d be me, sir.” I doffed my cap and coughed into my hand before clicking for the animal. The rube startled as the beast tried to come my way.

“You’ve the touch, boy. Strider here has a discerning eye for miscreants and rogues.”

I couldn’t fathom what the poor doomed bastard was on about, but I nodded just the same.

“I’ll need two rooms, as well,” he said. “One for myself and another for my man.” He gestured back to his companion, who at least to me seemed like a grifter who’d known the road. His leather was as worn and dirty as his boots, his face scraped with stubble thick as weeds.

“As you like, sir.”

I took ‘Strider’ to the stables as the rube shook Franker’s hand. If ever a more charming devil existed I didn’t know him, so things would go smooth from here. These men were already dead.

The rube would buy what he needed at twice their worth, which is what a man expected in a frontier town. Since there was nothing else worth doing he’d end up in Pa’s inn, drinking and carousing with the locals as he asked questions about the Delve. They’d tell him all the things a man would expect.

“None lately have gone very deep, sir, at least none that we knows about. Should be plenty of things to find.”

“Aye, and the last men through paid us in jewels when they left.”

None of it would be true. Not a word of it. Nobody ever came out of the Delve.

But the rube would be salivating by nightfall, confident his own skills would get him deeper and with a richer harvest than the lesser men who came before.

With promises of wealth and glory he’d buy the townsfolk a round. They’d toast his health and prosperity. Then he’d take Diana upstairs and stuff her, his good, clean boots dangling off the bed.

In the morning he’d gather his man, walk the mile downhill past the cemetery that was far too big for a town like Tristwood, past the crossroads he should have taken anywhere else, and down into the abandoned ‘mine’.

He would not come out. At least not on his own.

Not once in my seventeen years had I seen a man leave those mines—save locals from Tristwood, and only then with the greatest of haste, carrying dead men on their backs, or else in several pails.

That was life here, shameful as it was.

It was the fate of rubes like this one and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. So I scooped a dollop of grease on my way back from the stables, and saw to those hinges before lunch.

*

As usual the girl stopped me in my damn tracks.

“Hi, Sammy.”

She always did know how to smile.

“Afternoon.” I said, awkward and covering my tickling cough. “Seen Willy? Said he’d help me with the inn.”

“Sammy I don’t know why you bother.” Suzie’s smile dropped as she looked off towards the Northern edge of town, probably trying to spot the rubes.

We’d been friends since we were kids, even had a fumbling or two when we were twelve and before the healer said I was a walking corpse. That was all over now, but she was kind enough.

“Someone has to,” I said, and with anyone else I’d have walked on but I always let Suzie say her fill.

“Talked to the new rubes yet?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Pop says they near jangled with silver. Says it’ll be the best haul since last year.”

I shrugged because maybe it was so, but I felt not a bit of pride nor pleasure.

“Why are you so funny, Sammy?” I guess she’d noticed my distaste. “Ain’t nothing good ever please you, nor anything bad ever make you cross.”

That wasn’t true but I didn’t say so. Anyway, I didn’t see much point in getting too high or low when life kept on, with you never knowing what came next.

“Seems foolish.” I shrugged, knowing I should say something clever like Garet Pliney. But since I wasn’t clever I said what I said, impatient I guess to get to my chores. I would have gone already but I didn’t want Suzie to think I was rude, or that I didn’t like her.

“Listen.” She leaned forward, as if we conspired. “Garet says if we’re quick and go down before dawn, we might pick the rubes over before the men fetch the bodies. Get some for ourselves. Maybe get enough to get the hell out of this place. Wanna come with?”

I felt a chill. Like someone pissed on my grave.

“Oh Sammy,” Suzie rolled her eyes. “You never want to take any risks. You want to be in this town forever?”

Forever isn’t too long for some of us, I thought but didn’t say. Suzie just kept on.

“Aren’t you tired of doing half the chores in Tristwood? You know folk ain’t even grateful. They just usin’ you because you always pick up everybody else’s slack.”

Yeah, I knew. Course I did. I wanted to explain that I did it all to make the town better, so that young folk didn’t want to leave. But I never was much for talking. My thoughts always swirled around my damned useless thick skull, and by the time I sorted them out it was usually too late.

“If I didn’t,” I said, “who would?”

“Oh, Sammy.” Suzie was looking through me now, already heading off. When I realized she might really mean to go down into the Delve before sunrise I felt a cold rush of water slosh my spine.

“Suze, you’re not really going, right? You know Garet is just a big talking idiot. He won’t actually do it, he’ll leave the rest of you and later have a laugh. Promise me you won’t.”

She looked back at me like young girls sometimes do—like you’re the stupidest boy in the whole world and you just showed it. I supposed I might be.

Then she ran off and I let her go because I didn’t think she was serious.

Folk and especially young ones are always posturing, seeing where they fit in this world, thinking what others thought of you made it so. So I walked on and did what I did every day. I found the only boys I called friends, and tried to keep them from ruining themselves.

“Oh bugger off Sam. Leave me be.”

For Willy this wasn’t a half bad greeting. Like usual I found him at Elbow creek, fishing rod clutched in both hands like an axe. Afternoon was the worst time of day to fish but Willy didn’t care. In fact I think that’s why he chose it. Willy was the sort who liked to beat the odds, or get angry if he didn’t.

“I’m sorry to say,” added Legs, lying on a nearby patch of grass. “William’s right. It’s too damn hot for chores.”

‘Legs’ real name was Rory but nobody called him that. He was real clever but with him there was always something. Too hot, too cold, too many clouds. He never had enough time, though he spent most of it smoking tobacco, reading one his story books, or staring off into space.

“None of your nonsense,” I said. “There’s rubes and I need help with moving some crates and barrels and getting the drunks out of the inn. You can decide who does what.”

There was really no decisions to make. Willy took a sick kind of pleasure in bouncing drunken idiots. He was a head shorter than me on his tiptoes, but by thirteen his arms had sprouted. By fifteen those arms were lodged in a chest so round and thick it might have been a bin for grain.

Legs, on the other hand, looked like a mantis without claws, more like to hurt himself than a drunk. He could move a crate or two if you kept after him, but wasn’t good for much. He and Willy made odd friends, but that was the way of small towns.

“Just one more fish,” Willy said, but I’d already scooped up Legs and pushed him on. “Shit.” Willy pulled in his line and tossed his rod. “Well wait for me, then, if it’s so damned vital.”

So off we went, just like usual. We cleaned some cups and set out the chairs and tables properly, with only a complaint or two from Legs.

There was more to do than I’d said, of course, but if I’d have said so they’d have never come. Once you get a man moving he always does more than if you ask him straight. As a Lunger I guess I understood.

Some nights wheezing in my bed I thought maybe I’d never rise. It was easier being still and useless—easier just giving in to whatever thing whispers in the dark and says ‘no more’. Once you got moving, though, even a lazy man sometimes figures he might as well keep at it. I suppose that was the difference between me and the others. I just knew how to get started.

*

“If it isn’t the Lunger and his two balls, Lean and Lumpy.”

Garet stopped us outside Harmon Pliney’s smithy. His brothers laughed like it was the first time he’d made the joke, and they all smiled a little too much. I expected they’d been into Pa’s moonshine.

“What do you want, Garet?”

“Nothin’. Just bein’ friendly. Though not as friendly as Suzie.”

Drunken bait, then, aimed right at me.

I put down my pails and took a breath. My back already ached from the day’s chores, and my chest felt a little tight from so much walking. I didn’t care what he had to say but in a small place like Tristwood you couldn’t walk away from fights unless you wanted to run forever.

“Alright, Garet, go ahead and say your piece.”

He smiled, then smelled his fingers.

“Boy that Suzie is as sweet as pie, ‘ain’t she?”

Even drunk, he couldn’t really want to fight me. I did my best not to give him the rise he wanted. His daddy the smith was one of the three ‘Big Men’ in town, but so was mine, and we were equals save for I was twice his size and strength, and I looked more like his daddy than he did.

In a place like Tristwood, that was all folk needed to know about that.

Truth was if I wasn’t a Lunger I’d be running this town when the old men died, and boys my age did their best to keep their distance while I faded. Still, I took a glance around. He and his brothers looked like they’d come from the smithy, not exactly the sort of place a boy took a girl for a tumble. Garet was good with girls so it wasn’t impossible, but I didn’t have the time or stomach for a fight over nothing.

“Fuck off, Garet, I’ve got work to do.”

Still he had that stupid grin. He licked his fingers. “Like fish pie. Want a taste? Might be the closest to cooch you ever get again.”

Well. He’d lost his damn mind, and I’ll be honest, he was pissing me off. On the frontier a boy or a man can only hear so much without a fight, and beside me Willy was already moving.

His eyes had started screwing up in that mindless way he had before he beat a thing to death with his fists.

I’d have held him back and calmed things down, but Garet had gone too far. It wasn’t so much the truth of what he’d said or not, which didn’t much matter to me anymore—it was that it should have been a secret truth shared just between them, and not spoken of so lightly.

“Think maybe we’ll take the time to teach you some manners.”

I rolled up my sleeves and followed Willy, and Garet’s smile dropped in a flash. He must have thought with his brothers there and being just outside the smithy, there wasn’t no chance of a fight. Well, he was wrong.

Like I said, I was rare big, and stronger than I looked. Though I was sick I forced food into my bubbling guts three times a day, and worked from sun up to sun down.

It’d take Garet and maybe two of his boys to hold me down, nevermind Willy. And if it came to a beating, well, I knew I was dead, so what did a few bruises or lost teeth matter? They knew that too.

“I’ll take left,” Willy told our old joke and went right.

“Woah now, listen boys, my Pa is right bloody there and you shouldn’t be so damn sensitive, I was only jawing and…”

I wasn’t much for waiting ‘round when a thing needed doing. I took three good strides and grabbed his fingers in a full grip and pulled down hard.

He yelped and dropped his arms, and I popped him like he deserved. His brothers made their choices and came at my side.

Willy was waiting. I heard them tumbling and so I gave Garet another pop in the side of the head for good measure. He fell back and I let him go down with his hands over his face.

A little fist found my cheek from the other side. I looked and found Stewart, one of Franker’s boys, standing there with widening eyes.

“Aw, shit. Sorry Sam, I…I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to…”

“It’s alright, Stew,” I told him. “I get it. But you just run along now.”

He nodded and went along, and I was grateful. Stew was a good boy who didn’t need a whooping, and for most sensible folk just seeing tough and crazy is enough to knock the piss out of ‘em.

Tough and crazy beats just about anything.

Willy and the smith’s younger boys were still wrestling but I knew who’d win. Tommy, the oldest, jumped over of ‘em and came at me, spitting mad to push me hard with both arms.

I grabbed him up and twisted him ‘round, with a couple pops for good measure. He sat down on the smithy step and groaned.

“That’s enough, Willy,” I said.

He’d already won the tussle. He held the other boys down, knocking one a few times so hard I saw the poor kid’s eyes roll. I waited and hoped this time I didn’t have to help. Willy’s chest shook and his eyes blinked as he tried to pull back and snap back from wherever he went.

I caught his next punch.

“I’ll…I’ll fucking kill you!” he kicked and swung at me and the boy both, and I held him with both arms and buried my face in his chest to hide from the swings. “Get off me! Get off me you sons of bitches, I’ll kill you!” Then, a bit later. “I’m alright. That’s enough. I’m alright now.”

Still I looked in his eyes before I let go. He went right to pacing and kicked a rock across the street as I checked on the boys. I helped them up and dusted one off.

“You go on home to your momma now,” I said, and they blinked and dabbed at the blood running down their faces. I hoped their teeth were alright.

“You take ‘em,” I said to the oldest, “and tell your stupid brother to shut his mouth about Suzie or next time it’ll be worse.”

Garet glared from his sit, his left eye puffy, tonguing his cheek where’d I’d popped him.

“Fucking Lunger,” he said as he rose, then looked at Willy and Leg. “Soon enough he’s gonna die. You hear me? You better remember who really matters in this town.” With that he limped off, brothers in tow, the youngest walking better than I’d feared.

Willy had calmed down and was all smiles now.

“Don’t worry Leg,” he pat the other boy’s back. “We know you’da helped if we needed it.”

Leg smiled and nodded like it was so, and we were all glad for the fiction.

I don’t much know what makes a coward, but Leg was a sweet boy who never wanted to hurt a fly, and that made him alright with me.

It was only after we’d left the little square that I looked back and saw Suzie in the window of the smithy. She was the same as I’d seen her before, pretty as a peach in her yellow dress, and even if she’d had a tumble with Garet I knew she’d look no different.

Suze was lots of things but one was particular. She’d have fussed over her hair and clothes until things were just so, because to her that was dignified no matter what life brought you.

Garet was a real prick to me, but maybe not to Suzie. She’d have him wrapped around her finger in no time and make a nice little life, and that was to the good.

All that mattered to me was that she was strong and healthy and doing as she pleased. I didn’t count anymore, that was the truth. I was a lunger. A walking dead man.

I smiled at her, and she rolled her eyes at us boys before she disappeared inside the window.

“Come on fellas,” I said, flexing bruised fingers. “Let’s get a bite at the inn. We’ve still got those barrels to move.”

This time they came right along, and not even Leg complained.