Home > Storm Forged (Death Before Dragons #6)(3)

Storm Forged (Death Before Dragons #6)(3)
Author: Lindsay Buroker

“You would have heard it if I had.” I wasn’t even wearing my weapons. “He came in off the street. I think it’s a he.”

“Yes.” Freysha crept forward warily and crouched beside him. “He is a gnome. An older gnome.”

“He ran back here and collapsed.” Dimitri glanced toward the wooden gate leading into the yard. Left open, it thumped in the breeze.

“I told you that you were burning the hot dogs,” Corporal Clarke told him.

Dimitri frowned and waved his barbecue tongs. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Isn’t it obvious? When he ran back here, he was overcome by the smoke and passed out.”

“Ha ha.”

“Freysha, can you see if he’s, uh, alive?” I waved to the gnome. He had to be alive, right? “I’m guessing he overexerted himself and passed out. I’m going to get my weapons in case there’s trouble.” I glanced at Willard. “Someone was chasing him. At least he thought someone was.”

“My gun is in the car.” Willard raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t think I’d need it to bring you herbs.”

“Might want to get it.”

I ran into the living room and grabbed my sword scabbard and pistol holster, the weapons they held recently cleaned and ready for action. As I turned to go back out, I sensed the enemies I’d expected since I saw the gnome. Two orcs.

At least orcs were something I could handle, assuming there weren’t a lot more of them and they weren’t like those crazy tattooed orcs—Way Rovers—that Sindari and I had battled outside of Weber’s house.

I considered going out front to face them, but I wanted to know more about the gnome, such as if he was still alive. It wouldn’t be worth getting in a fight to defend a dead guy. Also, if I stuck my cloaking charm in his hand, was it possible the orcs would lose his trail and continue past the house?

When I got back outside, Freysha was rolling the gnome onto his back. For the first time, his hood fell away, revealing his wizened face and a bald pate save for wispy white hair around his ears. His face was scratched and bloody, as if he’d fallen several times on the sidewalk, and his eyes were closed.

Nin gasped, her blue pigtails bobbing as she drew back.

“What is it?” I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her yet today—the profit-and-loss statements discussion hadn’t driven me outside with an intense urgency to participate.

She stared down at the gnome, her hand to her mouth. I didn’t know if she’d gasped because of his injuries or for another reason, but she was riveted.

“Nin?” I moved to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder, even as I used my senses to monitor the orcs. There were four within my range now, damn it. At least they were advancing slowly, as if sniffing a trail.

“This is my grandfather,” she whispered.

My ears were more sensitive than average, and I heard her clearly, but that didn’t keep me from issuing a startled, “What?”

“My grandfather.”

“The grandfather you last saw in Thailand twenty years ago?” I’d heard the story before, of how he’d taught her to build and enchant weapons before he mysteriously disappeared, leaving Nin, her mother, her grandmother, and all her siblings to take care of themselves.

She nodded. “He has barely aged. But he is hurt.” She stumbled forward and dropped to her knees opposite Freysha. “What is wrong with him? He ran in here. Why did he pass out?”

Not having an answer to that, I removed my charm thong and unthreaded the cloaking charm. Even though the thought of putting it in the hand of a stranger and potentially losing it unnerved me, I crouched and wrapped the gnome’s calloused fingers around it. Fortunately, they were still warm and pliable enough to move.

“I’m not sure it’ll activate without him willing it to,” I admitted.

“I’ll see if I can get it to work.” Freysha nodded, understanding my intent.

“My sword-fighting lessons aren’t usually this weird,” Amber whispered to Thad.

They stood several steps back from the gathering, his hand protectively on her shoulder.

“I thought you said they were always weird,” he murmured back.

“No, I said Val was always weird.”

“Oh, right.”

I was about to shoot him a dirty look for his lack of defense, but the side gate banged. Cursing, I jumped to my feet, expecting an enemy even though the orcs were still a block away. The orcs I could sense. There could be others with camouflaging magic of their own.

But it was Willard, back with a gun that had a magical signature. It was one Nin had made.

Willard pulled up short and stared at the gnome. “Where’d he go?”

“Camouflaged.” I was relieved Freysha had used her magic to get the cloaking charm to work for him. I was still close enough that I could see through it, regardless, but Willard had stopped several feet away. “There are four orcs coming this way,” I added.

“We should go out front to confront them.” Willard looked at my unarmed group of houseguests, including Thad and Amber. “Clarke, did you bring a weapon?”

“Just my guns, ma’am.” He was in a T-shirt, and his biceps popped when he flexed them.

Judging by the eye roll and mutter of, “Lord save us,” Willard wasn’t impressed. She pointed at the group and raised her voice. “Everyone, stay back here.” She jerked her hand for me to follow her to the front yard.

I held up a hand to Thad and Amber, wanting to emphasize that they should stay. Sindari had been sitting and eyeing the gnome, but he joined me now.

I had feared there would be no battle to engage in today.

I was hoping there wouldn’t be, especially since my daughter is here.

You do not wish her to witness your martial prowess and the way we eviscerate our enemies?

Not when there’s a chance she could be hurt. And I prefer shooting enemies to eviscerating them.

That is not the way of fang and claw.

Just don’t get blood all over your fur. That’ll seriously cut down on the number of people willing to pet you.

Perhaps that would be an ideal way to keep away those with presumptuous hands.

Dimitri isn’t going to pet a bloody tiger either.

Hm.

“I’m hoping they’ll think they lost him now that he’s cloaked,” I whispered.

As I trailed Willard toward the gate, the gnome disappeared from my sight and my other senses. Seeing my charm work on someone else was odd.

“We’ll hide and only attack if they turn this way,” Willard said. “And then only if they refuse to go away. We don’t have any way to know why they’re following him or what the gnome did.”

After we exited through the gate, I shut it firmly behind us. “True, but I think we can assume it’s a good idea to protect Nin’s grandfather.”

We crouched behind some of the bushes in front of the house. It was a tight fit and the foliage wasn’t as dense as I’d hoped. Now I wished Dimitri hadn’t trimmed them when we’d moved in.

“The grandfather she hasn’t seen for twenty years?” Willard asked. “What if he’s a mafia leader who’s been stealing babies from orcs for decades?”

“A gnome mafia leader? They’re tinkerers.”

Sindari lowered into a crouch beside me. Since his magic would camouflage him, he didn’t try to fit behind the bushes.

“I’m just pointing out that we don’t know his story and shouldn’t open fire wantonly,” Willard said. “You still sense four?”

“Yeah.”

“How far?”

I lowered my voice even more. “Only a couple of houses down and still coming this way.”

We fell silent to wait, but I winced when I heard voices from the back yard. Dimitri’s buddies.

“Do you always let the women go out and do the fighting, bro?” one asked.

“Whenever I can, yeah.” Dimitri didn’t sound that worried about slights to his masculinity.

“I offered my guns, but they didn’t want them,” Clarke said.

“I hear you have that problem a lot with women.”

“Can you shut them up?” Willard muttered.

“Not without shouting loudly enough for the orcs to hear,” I whispered.

“I thought you were learning telepathy.”

“Oh. Right.”

I was used to only being able to talk to Sindari and Zav—and dragons who butted into my thoughts without permission. As the orcs crept into view, two on the sidewalk and two in the street, I envisioned Freysha’s face and focused on her aura as I asked her to quiet everyone up.

The seven-foot-tall, broad-shouldered orcs wore cloaks with raised hoods—as far as I could tell, magical beings all shopped out of the same Fashions of Tolkien mail-order catalog—but the tips of their tusked snouts were visible. Unease crept into my gut as I sensed magical charms—or weapons—under their cloaks. Two of the orcs carried crossbows, and I thought I glimpsed the hilt of a sword sheathed at another’s waist.

The orcs on the sidewalk spoke to each other in their native language, and I slowly lifted a hand to tap my translation charm.

“…don’t sense him anymore.”

“He’s here. I smell him.”

“We’re screwed if we don’t find him and bring him back.”

“Shh. I sense elf.”

I grimaced, not sure if that meant me or Freysha—maybe both.

Two orc snouts swiveled in my direction. That answered that question.

I unfastened Fezzik from its holster, the weight of the submachine pistol comforting in my hand. Chopper was a more powerful weapon when it came to battling the magical, but I had to get close to use the sword. When I was outnumbered, I preferred to get a few free shots in from a distance.

As I was about to stand—there was little point in continuing to hide in the bushes when they were staring right at me—Willard gripped my forearm.

   
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