Free The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) by Matthew Beard Page B

the trees. Not the kenku again, not exactly, but something like them, maybe.
    As if to confirm her fears, a sound grew through the trees, and then the sky was filling, all above her, with black shapes, flapping their wings, blocking out the moonlight, the stars. Luzhon shivered, thinking them a roost of bats, but as she stood out of her bedroll she saw that they were not bats, but ravens, hundreds of ravens, and all at once they opened their throats and began to caw, to call out to each other, and, Luzhon thought, to her, so many voices all speaking at once,and all of them warnings, warnings or else threats, and even after the birds had flown away and left the night to return to its quieter hours, even after that she knew that whatever bravery she had been summoning was undone, and there would be no more sleep that night, no matter how badly she needed it.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A t the bottom of the mountain, the plains awaited. From the back of the cart, the councilman told them of his previous visits to the city, of what they might expect to find as they approached, but the youths were all exhausted, and none responded as they might have before. Together they led their nag and their cart out of the foothills, and even that land was more rolling than steep, more grassy than forested. The same wide pavestones led them forward across prairie and farmlands, past villages smaller than Haven, some too small to name even, and all sparsely populated. It was not hard for Kohel to see why. “Who would want to live in such a hole?” he asked. Not he, not down in the mud and muck, the flatlands covered in nothing but grass and grain. He preferred the mountain, preferred Haven’s station at the top ofthe world, and that was where he always believed he would make his life, taking his father’s place as chief, as keeper of the Crook.
    Then came the city, rising out of the horizon at the end of the road, or rather, the Imperial Highway, as the flatlanders called it, even though the days of empire were long gone. Once the city had been a seat of some power, a far-reaching outpost of the last empire, but its glory days were past, and Kohel had seen little between Haven and its walls to account for the need for such a place, at least until they reached the city itself.
    The city was large, larger than anything Kohel or the others had seen, and they were in it even before Kohel realized it. He had thought the city was merely the walled and spired area he had seen from the distance, but as they got closer they realized that those walls signaled only the old Imperial Keep, and that around it was a sprawling mess of low-slung buildings made of ruddy clay or rough bricks, some with light roofs and others with no roofs at all. Kohel didn’t know what to call the area they were in, didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t a village, and it wasn’t what he thought of when he thought of a city. What then?
    “A slum,” said Pyla. It wasn’t a concept Kohel had heard of, and having it explained did little to enhance his understanding, for there was no corresponding area of Haven, no place so rundown, so full of people whohad nowhere else to go, no way to fully feed or clothe or house themselves. Even the least able in Haven found a way to get by, often through the help of the others, but in the city slums there were
beggars
, people underfed and asking for help, and probably others worse off. The narrowing streets and filthy buildings smelled of sweat and dung, and Kohel soon found an expression of distaste upon his face that he could not wipe away.
    Despite his disgust, there was also much to wonder at, for while everyone in Haven was human, that was not true of the city’s slums. Dwarves pulled dispirited-looking donkeys through the streets, gathering trash, and horned tieflings glowered from the doorways to shady-looking taverns, their scarred doors a far cry from the welcoming entrance to Haven’s own. Twice Kohel made the error of mistaking