Season of Dragons - Prologue

Season of Dragons - Prologue

The time of culling the swine herds was coming to the canyons of the Merciless Wastes now that the winds were coming from the west instead of the north. It could never said to be cold in the Wastes but winter winds were harsh and brought destruction to anyone caught in their onslaught. Of course if you were fool enough to brave the winter winds, no one was going to mourn your passing. Someone might come looking for you but only to get any valuables you had on you. Your corpse would be left for the winter crows or the odd wild hog and no one would take your dried bones back to your village and lay them in the Dead Cave. The people who lived in the Merciless Wastes had little time for fools and none whatsoever for dead fools. They were too busy trying to survive.

Of course as the Proverb of Kirkhol says: there is always a thicker in every herd.

Mukhos was a thicker or so thought most of his tribe. They laughed at his ideas, cast doubt on his mating, and wondered loudly how eat could eat eggs from chickens. A chicken itself, of course anyone could see how tasty that was but to eat its eggs? They laughed and called him Yoker, though never to his face because there were two things about Mukhos that his fellow tribesmen did respect: his skill with a spear and his terrible temper. More than one thicker had lost an eye or had his nose-beard shaved down to stubble after saying the wrong thing in Mukhos' presence. Mukhos seemed to live by his own rules but so good was he in battle and so good were his breakers, that he ate at the Queens table every fall and had for the last five years.

One thing that everyone agreed on, friend and foe alike, was the Mukhos most wild idea was also his most obsessive. Every winter he would travel the flat lands west of the Wastes and look for evidence of dragons. Mostly he looked for dragon dung but he also searched for areas of scorched earth or mounds of dead animals. Every year he brought back a new piece of “evidence” and every year the elders would laugh him off and the children would call him Dunger, mostly because Mukhos would not hit a fellow goblin til he or she was ten. A few of the elder children had learned the hard way though that Mukhos had a good memory. In fact this last year his birthday present to Jijrhos son of Harhos had been the removal of half a pinky and a solid kick to the face. Mukhos had been polite enough to say happy birthday first though.

Everyone knew that dragons were gone and that none had been seen in the Merciless Wastes or the Firespit Mountains for over three hundred years. There had been a rumor, never confirmed by anyone in the nine tribes, that there had been a dragon sighted a hundred years ago. No one had seen this dragon or at least no one had ever told about it. So that made it pure pigspit in the eyes of everyone. Mukhos of course had believed the rumor and had collected every story and every fact on dragons that he could cram into his thick brain. War and dragons were all that interested Murkhos, so much so that he had mated mostly with sixteens, who were a year too old to life-mate or the twenties who were about to do their Fire Dance. Even if some fine girl would have accepted his obsessions and his temper and the jars of 'dragon' dung he collected, Murkhos had never spent enough time with one to wow her. He would stay a night or two, tell them to be their own queen and not do the fire dance, and then be off to war or his vain search.

This year Mukhos himself had turned sixteen and so the slow five year countdown until he would have to do the Fire Dance was coming. Until then he would make himself useful to the tribe in other ways.

This morning though the winds were dying and that meant winter was coming to an end. The end of winter meant the beginning of training and the culling of the swine herds. The old and feeble would be turned into food and oil for the warriors of the tribe to live on through the year while the young and studly swines would rut and mate and make the herds bigger. At least that was the hope. The herds had in fact been getting smaller and no one knew why. Mukhos told them the dragon was feeding on the herds but no one believed him. They never did.

Reluctantly the tall greenskin packed up his tools and bedroll and picked up his spear. Giving the rising western sun a quick salute, he turned around and began to lope back towards his village. It would be high noon before he got there but the Choosing was not until tomorrow. He had plenty of time.

Mukhos was long gone across the flat lands when the flapping of wings turned the dust and brush near his abandoned camp into a mini storm. One moment they were there and the next the air was thick with settling debris. A single long and winged shadow touched the bare earth as it passed momentarily obscuring the tracks of a single goblin.