Grunts Read Online Free PDF Page B

tunnel-entrance, slipping between the silver-inlaid oaken doors. Its roof was only halfling-high. He brushed black char from the front of his doublet. A few curls of hair fell, crisped, to the rock floor.
    “All right?”
    “Fine.” Ned Brandiman, following, pulled the door to behind him and sheathed a substance-tipped stiletto. “Gets ’em every time. Right. Let’s see what we’ve got…”
    Zarkingu, a new skull-ornamented standard-pole over her shoulder, sniffed the air with an ecstatic expression on her tusked face.
    “Dragon-magic
dies
,” she announced.
    The biggest orc rumbled something to Imhullu and Shazgurim, who hefted their jagged war-axes in the narrow cavern and flanked the group. Will held up a small hand.
    “Better let us go first, Captain Ashnak. There’ll be booby-traps, or I don’t know dragons. Even dead dragons. Ned, bring out the detection equipment.”
    The older halfling, avoiding Will’s eye, dug into the brass-bound chest and brought out a wire-spring-and-glass contraption. It might even
be
a trap-detector, Will thought, for all I know. He took it with nerve-twitching care between his two hands and studied it with deliberation.
    Ned rattled his fingers absently on the chest.
    —
I’ll do the checking for real traps, brother. You just convince them that we’re indispensable because we can work that thing. Whatever it is
.
    Will took a deep breath and turned back to the carved tunnel-entrance. Ned pushed the doors open. A breeze blew out, heavy with the spice-scents of decaying magic. In the light of Ned’s torch, and with the uncannily silent footsteps of four crouching Agaku behind him, he walked down the short tunnel and out into the great cave.
    “Dark Lord’s prick!” Ashnak swore, straightening up.
    Blue light blazed into Will’s eyes, brighter now as the great dragon died. He heard the other orcs exclaim behind him.
    Dagurashibanipal’s spiky body lay, a glass mountain, in the centre of the cathedral-sized cavern. He stared at the crystal length of her, camouflage-coloured to the vast heap of silver and adamant upon which she sprawled. Even dead,she towered high as fortress walls. The unnatural yellow light died in the slits of her horn-lidded eyes.
    One wing twitched.
    Horn and bone slid together under torchlight. Metal sinews stretched, gears and cogs whirred, and Dagurashibanipal’s one prosthetic wing unfurled in a last mechanical reflex. It reared up into the cavern’s heights; curled, split, ribboned, shredded; then fell like a collapsing ship’s sail.
    “Golem…” Will, eyes wide, stared at flesh and blood, at wire and canvas, and neither moved again. The poisoned dragon’s diamantine corpse stilled. He began a slow circling of the cavern wall beside Ned, paying a deliberate attention to the wire-and-spring device in his hands.
    Ned muttered under his breath, “It’s only another dragon. Dammit. It’s only another dragon…”
    Ashnak of the Agaku marched across to the hoard, kicking silver crowns and diamonds contemptuously aside. “This isn’t what we came to find! Are you sure this is the right dragon?”
    Will, soberly, said, “There is—was—only one Dagurashibanipal, and that is she.
Look out!
”
    Ashnak threw himself flat on the stone floor.
    “Elfshit!” A claw ripped Imhullu’s face and the squat orc swore, ignored the blood streaming from his eye-socket, and swung the great jagged poleaxe in both hands. Something clashed, impacting against the stone wall. “Agaku!
Agaku!
”
    Wings hissed through the blue air. Chittering, their metallic claws outstretched, a flock of tiny dragonet-golem fell from where they roosted in the cavern’s ceiling.
    “Agaku!” Shazgurim yelled cheerfully, bassinet’s hound-visor down, swinging her axe in a figure-eight blur. Gear-cogs and glass eyes sprayed away from her.
    “Last magic! Last magic!” The smaller female orc waved her hands in the air, attempting to snatch one of the dragonet-golem in flight.