Knight of the Dragon

By John W Partington

Drake Goodman is a soldier fighting a war in South-East Asia. When he steps through a magic portal, he finds himself in a realm populated by creatures from antiquity, monsters, and wizards. He is mistaken as a legendary warrior, sent to free The Lands from the clutches of the evil wizard, Bal-Moral. He takes up the fight armed with: his trusty rifle, a keen sense of survival, and a longing to go home. This story contains profanity, graphic violence, and sexual situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John W Partington
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989973103

John W Partington

I have been writing for most of my life: as a child, as a soldier, and now as an independent author. My favourite colour is purple. I have two cats, who choose to annoy me most when I am trying to write. I'm a middle aged white dude suffering from psychosis, but with medication am perfectly stable (except for singing to my cats).

Book preview

Knight of the Dragon

John W Partington

Copyright © 2020 John W Partington

ISBN: 9781989973103

Cover Art Copyright © https://www.123rf.com/photo_44656996_silhouette-of-a-soldier-on-a-red-background.html

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter One – Drake Goodman

Chapter Two – Graven

Chapter Three – Sing for their lives

Chapter Four – Fever

Chapter Five – Dragon

Chapter Six – Morris

Chapter Seven – Siege

Chapter Eight – Revelations

More About the Author

Also by John W Partington

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editing team: Esther Jager, Gerry Kroll, and Lori Holloway. They saved me from some wondrous blunders. That means they did a great job.

Preface

I wrote this story almost thirty years ago. My writing club is lucky enough to have a partnership with Algonquin College’s Professional Writing Program, where they supply us with co-operative education students. It is a good relationship, except when there is a lag in content for the student editors to work on. I was looking for anything to give our editors. I literally dusted off an old CD-ROM, which is a type of round, flat thumb drive that holds less than a gigabyte of info, and found this story.

This story was written when I was twenty years old, on a crappy assignment as a soldier, and thought the whole world was against me. I was a very angry, young corporal with too much time on his hands and too little knowledge of the English language and its conventions. I didn’t know the difference between than and then, or that and which.

Also, it would not be inaccurate to say my view of the world was a little skewed. I took out most of the F-bombs in this story and the word count dropped by a thousand. I took out the more derogatory references and the story reads very differently. It is improved.

Thirty years ago, the world was a different place. We didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have internet, though the first primitive bulletin boards (chat rooms) were starting. There was not the free flow of information or instant gratification we are capable of today.

Judge me harshly, or not. It is up to you. Please keep in mind, however, I have evolved as a writer and as a person. This first primitive scrawling is not what I am producing today, but I own up to what I wrote in the past. Try to remember what you were like at twenty years old, if you are currently fifty. If you happen to only be twenty, remember this day thirty years from now (if you can) and reflect back.

Enjoy the story. Suspend disbelief – have an adventure.

Chapter One – Drake Goodman

How did I end up here? I hate the jungle, I hate swamps, I hate fighting mosquitoes the size of Bengal tigers.

It seemed so easy at the time. Canada was involved in a peace-keeping operation in south-east Asia. I was sent over as a radio operator to work at a station base: air-conditioned office, half-hour coffee breaks, and trips into town. I was supposed to come out of this with a nice big pay cheque and an ugly orange ribbon. Somehow that peace-keeping operation turned into a second Vietnam War, only Canada decides it's in the best image of national prestige not to withdraw its troops. That finds me, Drake Goodman, a year later, stuck in a jungle fighting an enemy that I can't see for some country that can't even produce a good fucking pizza.

I think that's the reason why I didn't care when the thing appeared.

I was on a combat patrol, me and five other guys; three others had already been waxed. We divided up their ammo, and then threw the bodies under some logs. We radioed in the location on the off chance that somebody at Command wanted to collect the remains before they were devoured by bugs. I doubted anybody would.

I was holding my trusty rifle and eight mags, fully loaded. I also had five fragmentation grenades and one white phosphorus incendiary grenade. I managed to round out my complement with three para-flares, a light armour rocket I got off an American in trade for five dirty magazines, and a service pistol. The ammo weighed a lot, but it did not slow me down. You don't become Airborne if you can't haul ass and fortunately, I was built like an ox.

6'6" is a stupid height for a radio operator, and even stupider height for somebody trying to hide in the jungle. I weighed two hundred and fifty-six pounds of solid muscle, and I needed all that muscle just to keep upright.

I must have looked quite the sight with all that ammo and grenades strapped across my webbing. Under the web was my flak jacket. Under that I was resplendent in my stained, torn and dirty combat uniform. The only comfort items I had were my ranger blanket and ground sheet that were slipped through the D rings of my butt pack. I had all the other shit a soldier is supposed to have, but I rarely used rain gear, bug juice, or my right-angle flashlight. The only other things I had that I considered useful were the loads of green paint, and the machete I had through the back plate of my web.

My helmet had the traditional Victory or death, better dead than red, Airborne # 1 and other sayings on it. I only started wearing my helmet recently. I had always thought that they were useless because nobody aims for the head. They go for the centre of mass.

That is what I used to think until some shrapnel took off the right side of my face. I am not hampered by the damage but did receive a really ugly scar. The mark itself looks like some sort of long-necked bird in flight. A real imaginative person can make out wings, a long neck, a head, and a long tail. The cut is a series of deep gashes that start behind my right temple and work downward, covering my cheek with the tail looping around under my chin. One of the bird’s legs was a deep crack across my lips that left my mouth in a perpetual snarl.

Regardless of the many job perks, such as free funeral and live combat, I had to say with all honesty, I really hated my job. The problem was that I was damn good at it. I was a killing machine. In unarmed combat I was a god. In close-quarters fighting I could maim, kill, or destroy at leisure. I was a very good shot, not the best, but that is the reason we had automatic fire. I was thinking to myself about how much I hated my job, a decision between a lot and a great deal, when the thing appeared in front of me.

It looked sort of like a hole but it was not a hole. I would have been able to see the edges of a hole, or the bottom, or punji sticks or something but this thing was a four-foot circle of flat blackness just lying on the ground.

I then thought it might have been black paint on the ground but discounted that because I still would have been able to see the ground and twigs and leaves. A manhole cover? No. It was a big circle of nothing, black nothing, but still nothing. I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out if it was some new sort of trap. I was going to throw a rock on it but then decided fuck it! I placed my right foot over the dark blotch and stepped down.

Big mistake.

It seemed as if the disk came alive and grabbed my leg. Then there was a strange sensation of falling. I might have walked into a pit after all, but I doubted it. I looked in the direction I thought was up, but couldn’t see the opening. In fact, I couldn’t see anything. There was no light at all. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, even when I pushed it right up against my nose. I floundered around for my flashlight. The eerie red light it cast showed me a splendid view of – nothing. No matter where I cast the beam there was nothing to see.

This is one wide pit, I thought.

Something startled me by flying past my head. I dropped the flashlight, but instead of falling it just hovered in the air beside me. I am not certain what the thing I saw was, but it looked kind of like a big lizard. I retrieved my floating flashlight and turned it off after deciding that if I was surrounded by big lizards, I did not want to know.

The queasiness in my stomach didn’t subside. I felt that way every time I jump out of a plane, but this was worse. This was falling without going anywhere and not knowing where I was going to land. I turned on the backlight of my wrist watch to see what time it was. Holy crap, I had been falling for almost forty minutes! I didn't know when I was going to land, but I was sure going to make one hell of an impact.

I’m not sure if it was the gentle sensation of movement or the comfort of pitch blackness, but despite the sensation of falling I managed to take a nap.

I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke I felt full of energy. I woke hearing a loud scream, almost like an animal but not quite. Big lizards was my first thought, but then I shook the sleep out of my eyes and looked around.

Where was I? I was prone in tall grass beside a stream. I sat up and saw that I was in a large clearing surrounded by forest. I recognized most of the trees: maple, birch and such, but a few I had never seen before. One thing was certain: I was not in a jungle anymore, probably not even in south-east Asia. All my possessions were with me. I heard the animal scream again. I thought it was a dream the first time I heard it, but the second scream from behind me prompted me to investigate.

I walked a little way to see what was making the noise. What I saw would have made me shit my pants, if I had any crap in me. Instead, my eyes got really big, and I made blubbering noises with my mouth. I should have run and hidden. I just stood there and watched. In the centre of the clearing two, things, were fighting.

The first one was a man or what looked like one for the most part, except he must have been thirteen or fourteen feet tall. He had woolly hair all over his body. The face had a thick scraggly beard and – what a face! The mouth was huge and lined with dozens of sharp pointed teeth. I could imagine that the giant would easily be able to bite through any of my appendages. He was a two-legged shark. The lips curled into a mocking smile. I think the giant was enjoyed what he was doing. The nose was a huge bobbled mound of flesh. It was bleeding a lot, the thick red blood running down the titan’s face. Occasionally the man's tongue would dart out and lick the blood off his face. I was shocked when I looked at his forehead. He had a single eye that was pushed to the centre of his face. Not quite the middle, but a little to the left. The eye was bright yellow. The cyclops was dressed in a vest and a loin cloth, both looked like they were made out of sheepskin or some other animal hide. The cyclops had a huge club in his massive hands. The end of the club was bristling with rusty metal spikes. The club came down toward what seemed to be a rider, but