“Johnson?” I yelled, getting back to my feet and plucking the bolt from my shoulder. “Fronge, Edible-Reg was a dick. He deserved to get eaten. Don’t shoot me again, or you’re going on the menu as well.”

  Figures emerged from behind the big rock and the trees, forming a barricade across the road that I approached with the respect they were due. A casual stroll with the bolt bouncing up and down in my hand.

  “Why are you walking?” asked Johnson in an annoyed tone of voice. I looked him up and down. He was still neatly dressed, his armour gleaming, making me think of a lobster in its shell for some reason.

  “Why are you shooting random assholes on the road?” I tossed the bolt back to Fronge and gave him a savage grin.

  “That was Corporal Fronge being overly enthusiastic. Perhaps they just missed you so much?” Fronge sidled towards the back of the formation.

  “Not enough to actually miss,” I grumbled. “So what the hell are you doing out here acting like highwaymen?”

  “That’s classified, and you broke with Pratnip,” he said with a shrug. “I guess you can pass, but you might want to just fly. Suddenly, everything is so serious again.”

  “Does it affect the Mill?” I growled.

  “How do you not… Well, this is all public knowledge, so there’s no harm in telling you, I suppose. With Foreverknot gone and Von Kolben’s defection to my baron, the north is a bit of a tinderbox. I sure hope you’ve got more than a few cyber-bunnies and yourself to keep the Mill safe.”

  “Wait, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” I waited for a moment, but none of them understood the joke. Bloody locals. “A civil war?”

  Johnson sighed and swept his helmet off his head and scrubbed at his hair with his other hand. He looked to have aged since I last saw him a few weeks ago. His hairline was making a fighting withdrawal from his forehead, and the grey in his moustache had gained a lot of territory.

  “Let’s have a cup of tea, and we can talk,” he said reluctantly. “Rest of you, get back in position!” he barked at his troops. A short way into the woods, a series of flimsy barricades had been set up and disguised with cut branches. Within the paltry defences lay a small camp, tents neatly set out in rows around half a dozen cooking fires, all bar one of which was cold. We sat down on either side of the solitary small fire, and he pulled a kettle off the tripod hanging over it after removing his gauntlets.

  “Why are you taking the slow road home, Bob? No bullshit.” He fixed me with a glare as he poured out cups, and I waited for him to pass me one before replying.

  “I’ve been a bad dragon. It’s my penance,” I said with a smirk. “This is the closest I could get to sackcloth.” I tugged at the tattered sleeve of my tunic.

  “Fuck off, Bob.”

  “I was only half joking. I need to score some good karma to balance things out, so I’m hoping some naughty boys will attack me on the road or when I make camp. I can take them off the map, get a tasty meal, it’s really a win-win.”

  “Why not just fly and look for camps?” he asked, sipping at his drink.

  “Humans don’t tend to just stop in place when a dragon is zooming towards them, and even the stupidest criminals are smart enough to recognise that I’m a fight they can’t win.” I shrugged and sipped, then poured the tea onto the fire. “Who did you piss off in the logistics corps? That tastes like cat piss.”

  “Colonel-the-Lady Heartflash was not entirely pleased with me after I ceded the Mill to you,” he said ruefully.

  “But that was a fair deal? I didn’t bend the knee to Pratnip, but I had a chat with him and Heartflash, who is fucking insane by the way. It all seemed pretty reasonable?” I poured a shot of Golden Jack into my empty glass and waved the bottle at Johnson, but he shook his head.

  “Reasonable doesn’t matter when aristocrats start talking about face and honour.” Johnson’s voice was thick with bitterness.

  “They’re all fucking loopy. Half of them are perverts, the rest are creepy in other ways.”

  “Been hanging around them a lot, have you? Bob, a word to the wise: sometimes the truth is not worth saying.”

  I glanced around. The soldiers were all arrayed in their ambush positions; it was just me and the good captain within earshot. He not only looked older, but he felt more run-down. This was a man on the ragged edge for some reason.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “I was at the party where Forverknot got turned into a mummy. I’ve seen more of them than I want to. Look, Longfellow, I’m going to deal with some of the local baddies on my way home, then I’m going to curl up on my hoard and watch it grow. I’m not getting involved in politics.”

  “You already are, you buffoon.” I bridled, and he raised a hand to forestall my outburst. Bloody humans, maybe I needed to remind Johnson who was the bigger dick here. “You’ll have to join one side or the other, Bob. Gigglesworth, Pratnip, Nardshire, hell, even the Madson is mobilising his forces. The city is like a beehive. You kick it and the first thing you get is a cloud of bees in your face, but if you keep kicking it, that cloud gets bigger and spreads out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how bees work, dude.” I was fairly confident that wasn’t how bees worked at all. Kicking a beehive seemed like a dumb idea anyway, but why would they spread out when the idiot with the boot was right there?

  “Well, some idiot kicked the beehive when they took out Foreverknot. Hateskale is under house arrest, but will it stick? Who knows. But he’s pissed, and he can still order his troops about while wearing an ankle bracelet.” I carefully maintained a blank expression. What the hell had I set off by following through on the Glaswegian bastard's scheme?

  “You have them here? That’s weird, are they magical or something?” Nice distraction. I’m a very crafty dragon.

  “One of your lot introduced the idea a decade or so back. Commoners just get the chop and yah-boo-sucks, but when a noble gets an anklet, that’s bad times for everyone. Honour and face, Bob. Most of them would rather die than look like an idiot.”

  Shit. I wasn’t about to mention that it was me who kicked the beehive, stupid metaphor, but the Mill was mine, and no one was going to take it away from me without getting a lesson in draconic etiquette. Plans whirled in my head. More adventurers, more cyborgs, more uni-bunnies. Call Geeku back from the east and get him to keep his warband close by. Lots to organise.

  “How long do we have before things go sideways?” I asked, my eyes focusing back on the real world and locking on Johnson.

  “We?”

  “The royal, collective we. Like the queen bee,” I snapped.

  “Gigglesworth’s Fifth has a detachment a few hours north of us. Beyond that, we don’t know. It’s tense but civil at the moment. Shit usually kicks off out in the sticks, though, then ripples in towards the city.”

  “How long until the Mill gets caught up in this bullshit?” I crossed my arms and gave him a level three glare, but he just snorted at me.

  “Oh, weeks, months maybe. At this point, they’re just positioning the pieces on the board. Us soldiers,” he added bitterly. It was probably for the best that he couldn’t handle his booze. If he could, the man would be draining every tavern dry as soon as he reached a town.

  “What about the bandits and slavers? Longbottom forest or something?” I could still score some tasty snacks and some karmic upvotes on the way if I had a couple of months.

  “Garglewood? That’s north of Longbottom. It’s a hunting preserve of Baron Hateskale. What do you know about it?”

  “I ate a few slavers a while back, and they mentioned a pixie slaver ring operating out of the place. Where the hell is it?”

  “A week's hard march to the northeast. But you can probably get there sooner. Pixies? That’s bad business, Bob. No one fucks with the pointy-eared little bastards and gets away with it.”

  “I’m hardly just anyone.” I shrugged. I’d seen what Kat could do, and I didn’t even have balls in dragon form, so I was safe from the standard attack. “I’d have thought elves were the pointy-eared bastards?”

  “They’re just bastards with pointy ears. One thing comes before the other.”

  “Well, I’m going to put a stop to the slavers on my way home. Any tips on how to deal with them?”

  He shrugged and glanced about nervously. He leaned close over the fire before he spoke. “There’s always more of them around than you can see. And if you can see one, it’s only because he wants you to see him.” He leaned back and shook his head. “Bad business.”

  “What if Pratnip or she-who-woofs sends your lot after my lands?” I asked.

  “Then I’ll do as I’m bid.” He straightened his spine and glowered at me. “I’m a good soldier, and sometimes idiots send good soldiers to die.”

  “Who hurt you? You weren’t this fatalistic before.”

  “You did. No, that’s not fair. You could have just burned us out. You bled for us against the Sausage Maker’s cavalry. You saved my life, something I haven’t forgotten. Life isn’t fair, Bob.”

  “Speaking of which, where’s Pratnip's son?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him when the troop had filed out onto the road.

  “Reconnaissance. He’ll be back tonight.”

  “Well, do give him my love.” I grinned, and Johnson smiled faintly in return. “Out of interest, what would be the consequences of, say, a non-specific, large, fire-breathing example of physical perfection accidentally eating a detachment of someone's army if said being of biological genius mistook them for slavers?”

  “It would depend on if there were surviving witnesses, Bob. I’d be careful if I were said perfect being and were stupid enough to go attacking random camps in the night. Some detachments are a lot stronger than others.”

  “Right, of course. I think I’ll leave you to it, Johnson. All the best, don’t come after the Mill or I will reluctantly eat you.” I rose to my feet and stuck out a hand, which the older man shook solemnly.

  “I’d hate to be eaten, reluctantly or otherwise. I’d probably give you indigestion.” I gave him a nod and wandered back to the road.

  “I’m watching you, Fronge,” I called, and the man hiding halfway up a tree shifted the aim of his crossbow ever so slightly away from me.

  With the roads crawling with soldiers and checkpoints, my original plan was no good. I needed to get creative, inspirational, and crafty. How the hell I was going to do that was beyond me. I dumped the bags of holding into my belly pouch, shifted back into my dragon body, finally destroying the tattered tunic and trousers for good, and raised an equine head towards the sky.

  I would hunt. Find some mundane prey to top off my biomass, and then start looking for the real prey at the Garglewood: evil pointy-eared bastards.