Dragonhammer: Volume I by Conner McCall

the stealthy brute.
    My hammer hits his head into the wall of the house.  He grunts and lashes out with one of his grotesquely long arms, throwing me a few feet so I clip my shoulder on the corner of the house and hit the street hard.  Slowly I force myself up, but the troll seems as dazed as I am.  He pounds towards me on all fours and makes to tackle me, and I lack the awareness to do anything but duck and throw a knife as hard as I can.
    It enters his right shoulder.  He shrieks and his right arm gives out underneath his weight, veering him to my left and into a building, where he crashes forcefully enough to shake thatch from the roof.  He turns clumsily, but I am stumbling away as quickly as I can muster.
    He scrambles with the knife for a moment, but it buys me just enough time to get into the Keep.  Soldiers are still fighting just outside the doors.
    “Come on, Kadmus!” I hear.  The voice brings strength to my bones and I rush forward to my father, who ushers me in the gate and to temporary safety.
    “Inside!” people yell.  “Get inside!”
    “Shut the gate!” bellows one voice in particular.  Lord Jarl Hralfar stands on the balcony overlooking the main entrance hall.  Voices echo his command and the gate booms shut as stragglers run inside.  “Close the portcullis!”  he booms.
    Though I cannot see the portcullis, I hear it thunder shut and clang as it hits the stone floor just outside the gate.
    “On the walls!” Hralfar commands.  “Archers, take positions!  We must hold the Keep!”
    We must hold the Keep .

 
     
     
     
     
    Battle for Nringnar’s Deep
     
     
    T he first thing I do is take a head count.  We’re all here, miraculously, including Nathaniel.
    My father and Bownan are unhurt, with minor scratches.  Leon is sporting a laceration across his right cheek.  Percival and Darius, his father, are both unscathed.  Jericho’s cut on his arm has reopened and he has a limp.  His father has a few scratches, as does Nathaniel.  James is in bad shape.
    He groans as we roll up his chainmail and remove the shoulder pad.  His left arm is black and blue.  “Fracture,” says Bownan.  “No doubt.  Probably in a few spots by the look of it.”
    “We have to get him to the infirmary,” I voice.  “I’ll take him.”
    “No Kadmus,” says my father.  “We need you here.”
    “Aye,” agrees Bownan.
    “Jericho and I’ll take him,” volunteers Leon.  “We need to go get ourselves cleaned up anyway.”
    “Very well,” I mutter.  Then I pat James on his good shoulder and say, “I’ll see you in a few.”  He only nods.
    “How’d you take that troll?” Percival asks.  Bownan raises his eyebrows like he was thinking the same question.
    “Actually two trolls,” corrects my father with the slightest smile on his face.
    I shake my head saying, “I don’t know.  I just did what needed done, when it needed done.  Everything made sense in my head.  What to do, when to do it.  And I killed them both.”
    “Awesome,” Percival says under his breath.  “Do you think you could teach me to do that?”
    There are a couple of half-hearted chuckles.
    “Here, have this,” says my father.  “You deserve it.”  He hands me a chunk of bread, lightly buttered, as he chomps his own piece.
    I stare at it like it’s heresy.  “We’re eating now?”
    “It will take them a while to get through that portcullis,” says my father.  “If they ever get through at all.  Eat.”
    That’s when I realize that I haven’t eaten anything that day.  The bread is gone in seconds and my father pours me a drink from a pitcher on the table.  My tongue is grateful for the generous serving of water.
    “The people outside-” I realize.
    “-are fine,” Bownan finishes.  “Doesn’t make much sense to take over a city and kill everyone in it.  Then there’s no city to own.  No, they’ll keep the shopkeepers, farmers, and other civilians alive.  The soldiers,