Dragonseed A Novel of Dragon Ag James Maxey

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.He craned his neck heavenward, and beat his wings in a mighty down thrust.He lifted from the ground, his tail swinging around toward Shay.Acting on pure instinct, Shay grabbed the slavecatcher’s long tail.Shay yanked hard, with his full weight.Zernex was thrown back to the gravel bed, landing on his left wing with a sickening snap.Shay rose to his knees and saw a smooth river stone before him nearly as large as a skull.With both hands, he lifted it above his head and hurled it at the slavecatcher, who was struggling to stand.The heavy rock caught the dragon in the side of his jaw.Zernex’s head was knocked back to the gravel.He still wasn’t dead.He lifted his long, serpentine neck, his jaw bleeding and broken, and looked toward Shay with murder in his eyes.In a flash, there was an arrow sprouting between those eyes, the green, leafy fletching shuddering from the sudden halt of its flight.Zernex’s golden eyes crossed as they tried to examine the object between them.Then they fluttered shut, and the slavecatcher’s head dropped.Shay grabbed another good sized rock and lifted it, holding it for a moment above his head, waiting for any sign of life.At last, he dropped the stone before him.Zernex wasn’t breathing.The dragon would never catch another slave.Shay rose on unsteady feet.He was breathing hard, his heart racing.The last five minutes of his life seemed disconnected and unreal.The bodies of three dragon and two men sprawled before him, their dark blood blending with the gathering shadows.He saw the leather satchel and lifted it, slinging it back over his shoulder.He looked up toward the hillside, searching for any signs of movement among the black branches of the pines.The shadow he’d seen earlier was gone.“A-are you really Bitterwood?” he asked.No one answered.“Are you… are you going to Dragon Forge? To join the rebellion? I’ve read about you.You fought at the last rebellion.At Conyers.”Shay listened hard, certain he heard movement.It was, perhaps, only the rustle of trees in the winter night.Shay waited for several minutes, until the cold set his teeth chattering.He knew his only hope of surviving the night was to keep moving.He turned up the collar of his coat against the breeze.He rubbed his windpipe, feeling the indentations on his throat where the slavecatcher’s claws had been.When he lifted his fingers, the tips were red and wet.He turned toward the west, and saw that the clouds above the distant foundries glowing brightly, reflecting the furnaces of the rebellion.Shay took one last glance at the pines, shifted the pack to better balance it on his back, and walked toward the glow on the horizon.The foundries of Dragon Forge burned like an eternal sunrise.This was the hope of the slave.With numb feet he staggered forward, freedom bound.CHAPTER TWO:GOOD BOSSTHE EARLY MORNING light coming into the loft was tinted yellow by the sulfurous plumes that rose from the smokestacks.Jandra had been in Dragon Forge for a week now and still wasn’t used to the stench, the rotten-egg aroma of coal burning continuously.One of the furnaces had been transformed into a crematorium, adding a black, oily soot that coated every exposed surface and smelled disturbingly like charred bacon.The bacon-stink of the crematorium swirling together with the egg-stink of the foundry left Jandra certain she’d never want breakfast for the rest of her life.She leaned against the window, looking out through the wavy glass, her forehead touching the cold pane as she gazed toward the low hills beyond the walls of the fortress.The last of the snow had melted off, leaving the landscape a mucky, reddish brown.She was waiting on the second floor of the central foundry, in a high-roofed loft with exposed ceiling beams and baked brick walls.The floors were thick, oily timbers, worn smooth by centuries of constant use.Half a dozen tables had been lugged into the space and all were covered with sheets of parchment scribbled with Burke’s notes and diagrams.Across the room, coals glowed cherry red in a large open fireplace.The room was chilly despite this.She sank her hands deeper into the pockets of her ridiculously large, ill-fitting coat.It was a dark green coat from an earth-dragon’s formal guard uniform, designed to fit a creature three times as broad across the shoulders as she was.Beneath the coat she wore a man’s cotton shirt and baggy britches.When she’d arrived at Dragon Forge, she’d been wearing a blood-stained blanket and a dress torn down the back from neck to waist [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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