Chapter 314: Hunting the Cold-drake
"What was that?"
Inside Roadside Keep, Levi flicked his hand as if brushing something away.
Just now, it felt as though a distant gaze had fallen upon him from far away.
As a mystic well versed in the arcane, "intuition" was indispensable.
After so many years immersed in the craft, Levi's intuition had grown keen.
Perhaps because many taboos in occult studies twisted things related to the eye, Levi was especially sensitive to being watched.
A glance had indeed swept across him moments ago. It was not a mistake.
It did not seem hostile.
Even so, it needed dispelling. Friendly or not, who wished to be stared at forever.
When the discomfort of being observed faded, Levi returned to work.
"Exploration of the northern range."
He studied the report handed over by people from Carl Town and fell into thought.
The so-called northern range was the Grey Mountains. There lay an abandoned, fallen dwarven hall: the hall of Dáin I.
What he read gave him pause.
Frontline scouts reported the ruins were strewn with signs of Orc activity.
And not only Orcs. On the floor and the pillars that held the hall, they found broad claw marks no Warg or Troll could make.
Only one answer remained.
A dragon.
A dragon still laired within Dáin I's hall.
Records said such dragons came from the Northern Waste, that snowy expanse steeped in Morgoth's lingering power.
Drawn by dwarven hoards, they flew south to the Grey Mountains and seized the halls.
Thus Dáin I's hall fell. The Dwarves withdrew to the Lonely Mountain. Afterwards, they developed arms to fight dragons. Against ordinary cold-drakes without fire, two or three might be resisted.
But the attacker that came to Erebor was a fire-drake.
Old matters aside, whether imagined or real, a dragon in the Grey Mountains boded ill for Carl Town and especially for newly rebuilt Framsburg.
The latter stood right against the Grey Mountains.
Levi set out again, riding for Carl Town and then for Framsburg.
While he reviewed the reports and decided on action, Framsburg had not been idle. Scout teams led by elite rangers pushed ever deeper into the range, even into the abandoned halls, to pinpoint the dragon's lair.
Engineer crews went to the Lonely Mountain to seek dwarven aid and returned with a row of semi-automatic armor-piercing arbalests, mounting them along Framsburg's north wall, aimed at the mountains.
When Levi arrived and saw the neat ranks of heavy arbalests, he felt they might be enough to kill the cold-drake even without him.
As he thought this, ranger teams returned in succession with news from deep within the hall.
"Many dragon bones," one reported. "The marks on them look like those left by their own kind. They seem to have fought among themselves over something."
"How did you reach that conclusion?" Levi asked.
The ranger stepped forward. "I borrowed books in a dwarven archive. One recorded this."
He recalled and spoke like a historian:
"The dragons seized the Grey Mountains. But with most of the treasure-mining Dwarves gone, hoards became scarce for the multiplying dragons. They turned on each other. The fighting caused havoc and reduced their number."
"In the end, no longer content with the Grey Mountains' wealth, the dragon Smaug went south in the year 2770 of the Third Age. That led to the fall of Erebor."
"I see," Levi nodded.
"So the Grey Mountains' dragons once fought a civil war over treasure."
"Who knows how many remain?"
"Did you learn where they are?"
The rangers exchanged looks and shook their heads.
They had not found a dragon, but they had sketched a general map of the hall.
Rangers had asked the Dwarves before. The Dwarves had no detailed records left for that old colony. The interior map was lost.
One ranger handed Levi the map with some marks.
He explained, "These marks show where Orcs move. We did not attack, so we would not spill blood and alert any dragon to a scent."
Levi studied the map and nodded.
"Fine, that is enough."
"No matter where it lairs, when I plow through the whole hall, it will not hide."
"Go to full alert and wait for my word."
Leaving that, Levi hopped down the wall and went alone with the map into the Grey Mountains' depths.
That day, he followed a faint, ancient earthen road said to have been laid by the ancestors of the Rohirrim and reached the foot of a great mountain, where the ruined hall stood.
A new area unlocked. The mist cleared.
The Hall of Dáin I.
Levi lifted his head and used the sunlight slanting through the gate to examine within.
Just as the rangers said, almost no structure remained intact. Even the pillars were gouged and broken, as if struck by something immense.
Not a patch of floor lay whole. The hall showed signs of massive collapse, as though meteors had fallen here. Sand and shattered stone lay everywhere.
One glance down showed only pits and holes, no place to set a foot.
The rangers had been clever. They marked routes that could be used, though they were winding.
Levi pulled out cobblestone and block-placed it underfoot as he went.
He did not care for detours.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
In the great hall, he rapped on a door that seemed fairly intact and showed signs of recent use.
The sound echoed.
A voice came from within:
"Which miserable—"
Creak.
An Orc yanked the door open, cursing, and met a blackened, red-glowing greatsword.
A boom shook the doorway, making the Orcs gathered in the chamber look up involuntarily.
The sentry at the door, armor and all, had been cleaved clean in two. He fell silent in an instant.
"Tell me, where is the dragon?"