DW02 Dragon War by Mark Acres Page A

a concave semicircle, ready to watch the sport. Bagsby doubted now if even his opponent could hack a path through that bloodthirsty throng. He was sure that he couldn’t. Therefore, Bagsby thought, he himself would seize the initiative.
    Bagsby darted forward suddenly, shouting a loud “Heeeeyaah!” as he attacked. His opponent, as Bagsby had expected, drew back the great sword. Bagsby leapt up and forward, landing on the man’s chest with his legs wrapped around the man’s waist. He stabbed with his dagger as the man lunged ahead and swung. The momentum of the soldier’s own empty blow, suddenly added to by the weight of Bagsby’s body, toppled him forward. Bagsby’s dagger bit deep into his neck as the two of them hit the earth, Bagsby on his back with the mysterious figure on top of him. Even with his elbow driven into the ground, Bagsby could still control his dagger, and with a jerky motion, he sliced away at the neck of the thing. The monstrous man tried to pin Bagsby down by shoving his stump into the little man’s stomach, but Bagsby kept hacking at the neck. Strange, Bagsby thought, as the head finally severed and rolled off to the side; no spurts of bright red blood.
    The crowd cheered as the soldier’s head plopped off and rolled in the street. Bagsby turned his own head in the dirt to acknowledge the cheers, then he noticed that the body atop him had not collapsed. It remained rigid, the knees and the bloody stump still pinning him to the ground! Bagsby drew up his arms, hands in the dirt, pushed upward with all his strength and rolled to the right at the same time. The headless corpse tumbled over on its side. Another cheer went up from the crowd, and Bagsby jumped to his feet, smiled, and bowed to his audience.
    “All idiots who desire death will be pleasantly served,” Bagsby crowed. There was laughter from the colorful crowd, laughter that suddenly died out. Then a moment of silence, then muttering, and the front ranks of the crowd began pressing backward, seeking escape from the narrow alleyway.
    “No, friends, I mean you no harm,” Bagsby called. “I am a Lagan myself, born here, returned here....” Why were they so afraid of him?
    Bagsby spun around in time to see the decapitated body, now standing, bend over and fumble with its one hand to grasp its severed head by the hair, lift the half-rotted trophy up, and set it back atop its neck.
    “Bagsby,” the thing wheezed, “you will die.”
    The crowd screamed and panicked. It was like the rout on a battlefield—larger men running over smaller men, trampling them; everyone was screaming, the stench of fear in the air.
    “That’s it,” Bagsby said aloud. “That’s it for me.” He ran headlong toward the crowd and jumped upward. One foot struck a back; he pushed down, hard. The other foot found purchase on a head; he looked, stepped up lightly, and sprang upward with the force of that one leg. This sent the hapless woman whose head served as his platform sprawling to the ground. His upstretched hands grabbed the bottom section of a balcony rail. Bagsby drew himself upward swiftly, folded his legs up between his arms, lapped them over the balcony top, and landed on his feet. Without pause he dove into the open window.
    “Ouch!”
    He landed belly-down on the backside of a scrawny merchant, who was himself lying atop a buxom harlot.
    “Sorry,” Bagsby said.
    The large four-poster bed collapsed with a crash.
    “Love to stay, but got to go,” Bagsby explained, grinning, and slapped the startled woman on her exposed bare thigh before crawling over the couple. He sprang to his feet, and bolted out of the chamber into the narrow hallway beyond.
    “Who was that?” he heard a female voice ask behind him.
    No time to stay and play, Bagsby thought. Suddenly, an image of Shulana flashed in his mind’s eye. No time to feel guilty either, he thought, charging down the dimly lit hall past narrow, wooden doors. There were the stairs!
    Bagsby