Hawkridge

By Julian Kindred

Colt Hawkridge thought he was content with his life on the frontier, wrangling drakes and working the ranch. Good, honest work, even if a body risks getting mauled. But when he tracks down a runaway drake calf to the edge of the Hawkridge Mountains, he discovers a danger that threatens everyone he knows, and makes an ally who seems intent on throwing him into dangerous situations for the fun of it.

With the help of a half-goblin slave girl and a sickly mage, and armed with an orewood sword housing the spirit of a dryad, Colt must escape an underground labyrinth, rescue a bunch of slaves, and save Drake Iron ranch from a horde of goblin raiders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julian Kindred
• Release date: Jan 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310420016

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Hawkridge

The Hawkridge Chronicles: Book One

Julian Kindred

Copyright 20014 Julian Kindred

Published on Smashwords

Formatted by eBooksMade4You

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

About the Author

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Acknowledgements

I’m terrible at group thank yous, mostly because there are so many names that should be mentioned. I want to give a very special thank you to my parents, who first inspired me and then nurtured my creativity and did not try to bring me back to my senses when I changed my major in college to pursue a career as an author. Another thank you is owed to the Houston Writers Guild and all of its wonderful, creative, and supportive members who brought me into Houston’s creative writing community and helped me refine my talents. My third thank you goes to Nanowrimo for helping to break the isolation of writing and forcing the inspiration for this madness upon me. Finally, I want to thank the reader of this book for picking it up and partaking of the adventure within the pages. Safe travels and happy reading.

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Dedicated to my father, Mike Kindred.

Thank you for the story telling tree and falling up with Puff the magic dragon into the Land of the Jabberwocky.

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Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

—Mark Twain

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Chapter One

Colt Hawkridge raced across the plains, the thunder of hooves swallowing his heartbeat as he whipped his lasso overhead in great arcing loops as he bore down on the fleeing drake calf. With a Whoop! he let fly the rope and reigned his steed to a halt. Barnaby wasn’t a young gelding, but he was well versed in drake wrangling, and pulled back to anchor the rope fell upon the drake and yanked taught.

Colt hurled himself from Barnaby and hit the ground sprinting as the young drake jerked to a halt. The enormous lizard-like creature’s low center of gravity made it difficult throw off balance, but Barnaby wasn’t the only one with years of practice. Colt crashed into the drake, dodging its lashing tail and raking claws.

The toothy head jerked round to snap at him as Colt leapt upon its back and bore it to the ground. With enthusiastic efficiency Colt bound his second lasso ‘round the calf’s jaws, binding them shut. The tail struck him across the back but Colt held on and swung his legs over the drake’s side. He planted his feet, adjusted his grip, and flipped the drake over onto its back, flattening the waist high yellow grass.

Colt hobbled the stunned drake’s forelimbs before it could recover and leapt to his feet with a victory cry. See that, Barnaby? That’s how you rope a calf!

Barnaby twitched an ear and looked unimpressed.

The drake struggled to its feet and tossed him a red glare. With its mouth and forelegs tied it wasn’t exactly harmless, but it couldn’t get away neither. It snorted its frustration as Colt brushed a hand through his close cropped brown hair.

Back to the pack for you, scales, he said, making his way back to Barnaby.

He was a tall youth, eighteen winters old and just as many hands tall. His trousers and workman’s tunic were worn with age and the leather of his boots and drake handler gloves were scuffed from frequent use. His belt cinched tight over narrow hips that tapered up to broad shoulders on a frame lean and muscled from hard work. Colt’s face was tan from years under the sun working the field, and the dark of his face and hair made the blue hue of his eyes almost crystalline in contrast.

He went to Barnaby’s side and made to mount up when an arrow buried itself in the saddle a finger’s breadth from his hand. The gelding reared, throwing him free, narrowly avoiding another arrow that flew from the nearby woods. Colt let himself fall to the ground and rolled over onto his belly, letting the tall yellowed grass of the plains conceal him. He hadn’t realized how close his pursuit of the rogue calf had taken him to the woods surrounding Old Man Alder’s land.

The woods were a natural barrier, closing in the plains drakes the old rancher bred and traded, but they were home to a number of unwelcome varmints. Such as the pair of goblin runts charging from the cover of the trees like a pair of wild green children, dropping their bows for wickedly jagged knives, porcine faces twisted into malevolent glee as they came.

Colt had only moments before they’d be upon him. Goblin runts were cowards, kicked out of their Hordes for being small and weak, forming into smaller bands with their fellow exiled runts. The must’ve reckoned they’d downed him, or they’d never have risked charging. Otherwise they’d have stayed at the edge of the forest where the trees offered them cover and turned him into a pincushion with their shoddy arrows. With the drake calf hobbled and Barnaby tied to it, there was nothing to pose a challenge to the savage cowards.

So Colt did the only thing he could think of. He pulled his woodman’s knife from its small scabbard at the back of his wide belt and leapt to his feet, screaming as he charged the attackers. The sudden appearance of a raging, crazy human nearly twice their size brought the goblins to a crashing halt. They tumbled ear over foot into the grass, screeching curses before righting themselves and rushing back to the woods.

No way Colt could overtake them before they reached their fallen bows. Even if he did, their knives were bigger than his, and there were two of them. Instead he raced for the hobbled calf. Each drake on Old Man Alder’s property was an enormous investment of years and gold. If not purchased by knights or nobles to serve as mounts, their hides made excellent leatherworks, tougher than cowhide and just as supple. The meat might’ve left something to be desired, but it could still be sold on the market and if drake meat didn’t bring in as much money as beef weight for weight, a full grown drake had a lot of meat to offer.

A young drake like this one wouldn’t be worth much for some time yet, but that wouldn’t matter to the goblins. They got the chance, they’d slit its throat and bring it back to their camp for a feast. Barnaby too for that matter. So instead of chasing after the goblins, Colt sprinted to the panicked drake and cut through the rope tying its forelimbs and jaws, only to be bowled over as the panicked calf thrashed about and clawed its way over him as he fell. Claws bit into his flesh, ripping holes in his tunic and skin, and then the drake was running.

Another arrow flew through the air, striking Barnaby’s saddle again and the horse took off with the drake. Leaving Colt behind with the two armed runts.

Bogies, Colt cursed under his breath. That weren’t part of the plan. Not that he’d had much of one, but getting out alive featured pretty heavy.

An arrow dropped from the sky between his legs, narrowly missing his groin, and he scrambled to his feet, taking off for the woods. Might be there were other goblins lurking about further in, but the tree cover would keep them from getting off a clean shot with their arrows. Probably.

Another arrow rushed by and suddenly he was in the trees, sprinting fast as he could further in. The sound of pursuit kept him from taking stock of his surroundings and he pushed on, faster and faster. Branches whipped at him, striking across his face and upraised arms. Sweat trickled into the cuts inflicted by the calf with irritating stings, but he ran on.

He’d lost track of how long he’d been running, but the sound of the goblins slowly fell away. Colt slowed to a stop under a beech tree and leaned against it to catch his breath. Riding he’d been doing since near long as he could walk, but running like that wasn’t something he was used to. It was going to take him all day circling back ‘round. If he was lucky, Barnaby’s instincts would lead the horse, and the drake still tied to him, back to the stable. The other hands were like to have a good laugh at him when he got back. Letting the drake lure him so close to the woods, what the Grish had he been thinking?

Old Man Alder would have more than a few stern words to share with him about taking care of his property. Anything happened to that drake…but nothing would. Even tied up to Barnaby, nothing ‘round these parts would go after a drake, not even a calf. He tried to put aside thoughts of all the possible accidents the pair could run into on their way back in an effort to focus on how exactly he’d do the same.

The stables and manner were the better part of a day’s ride west on the open plains. Circling back through the woods on foot would more than double his return time, and there were things in the woods other than goblins to be worried about. Could he afford to double back? It was still a long walk if he made it back to the open fields, and the goblins might be lying in wait for him. Barnaby and the calf would have to take care of themselves. He’d done what he could for them and as unpleasant a thought of Alder’s chewing out would be, he wanted to be alive to get it.

The trickle of nearby water broke his thoughts. Water, that meant a stream, probably fed by runoff from the Hawkridge mountains. Everyone knew it was easy to get lost in the woods, but if he could figure out which way the mountain was, he’d be able to roughly orient himself. Sure there was the sun, but he wasn’t a hunter or woodsman, any landmark he could use was a tool he’d gladly take.

The stream turned out to be both closer and wider than he’d expected, shallow and clear. He dropped to his knees and scooped up several icy mouthfuls before even considering which direction it was flowing. The water flowed right to left, meaning that to his right were the Hawkridge Mountains and the un-colonized east. A grin pulled the corners of his mouth upwards. This stream probably fed into the Viper River. If he could follow it there, the Viper ran right past the manor.

Something glinted in the water a few paces upstream. Colt moved closer, slipped off his glove, and reached in. The freezing water numbed his fingers as they searched for the object. A moment later, his hand came up holding a gold coin. Colt’s eyes went wide. He made pennies working for Old Man Alder, fare wages, but an actual gold coin? His savings were worth more, but not by much. Who was unlucky enough to have lost this kind of wealth?

He quickly tucked the coin away in his pocket, as if he too might lose it, wondering if maybe his fortune was taking a turn for the better. No sooner had the question entered his mind than the sounds of splashing and cursing downstream disillusioned him. The goblins hadn’t gone back to lie in wait, they’d followed him all the way to the stream and were now blocking off his best route home.

He pulled back behind a tree and tried to keep his breathing calm so they wouldn’t hear him. They were making enough noise, chattering away in their indecipherable goblin language, punctuated with bastardized trader’s tongue that it seemed unlikely, but he wasn’t going home that way.

Another gleam caught his eye, further upstream. Another gold coin? In spite of the tension the goblin voices strung through his limbs, his heart leapt. The splashing and chattering of the goblins wasn’t growing any fainter, but they weren’t getting closer either. Colt had never thought himself greedy, but if there were gold in this stream, seemed to him a body ought to be taking it up. And with the goblins cutting off his best way home, seemed to him like a sign he was just the body to do it.

He crept away from his hiding spot, taking careful strides to make sure his boots didn’t touch down hard enough to make a sound, and reached into the water. One of the goblins sneezed and he froze, ignoring the bite of the cold at his fingertips. The conversation died, then the pair burst into laughter. Colt grabbed the gleaming object and pulled it from the water without looking at it, pulling back to the shelter of the tree line and following the river east towards Hawkridge.

Over the next several miles, Colt came across ten more of the coins, each emblazoned with the sun of the Ethiliscent Empire from across the Golden Sea. His pockets pulled down with the unfamiliar weight, jangling as the coins clinked against each other. Twelve gold coins. Twelve Ethiliscent gold coins. He’d more than tripled his wealth with a walk upriver. Might not do much for his immediate problems but when he got home, he’d be the richest hand on Old Man Alder’s ranch. Might even be able to open his own general store or tavern.

Or travel.

He loved his job. Working with the drakes, every day was almost like a new adventure with the creatures. But he loved the stories of the feral east and the twin empires of west. Only reason to open up either of those businesses, apart from the making of more money of course, was for the stories the travelers would undoubtedly bring. Be they delivering goods or customers. The tavern seemed the better of the two options, but why not see the world?

Because he couldn’t be sure there was money to be made doing it. Running