COVER REVEAL + EXCERPT: The Last Dragon Knight (The Dragon and the Crow #1) by Tim Akers

Blurb

Betrayed by his friends. Driven from the land he swore to protect. Hunted by the legions of Hell. Cursed to carry the Dragon’s fury in his soul. Determined to survive.

Corem Holt was once an assassin, before he was a warrior. Before he was a cataclysm in the shape of a man. Blessed by the Crow and cursed by the Dragon, he fled the destruction of his homeland. It was a destruction for which he was responsible.

To his friends, he is a traitor. To his enemies, he is the last real threat in their endless war. Both will hunt him to the ends of the earth. And so he hides. He tries to live a simple life, to survive, to be happy. But mostly, he tries to forget what he has done.

All that comes undone when his past catches up to him. What starts as a chance encounter with an old enemy rapidly devolves into a battle for life and death, not just for Corem, but for the people he’s come to love while in hiding. To save them, he must make one last stand far from home, far from the throne he was sworn to protect, far from the memories that brand him a traitor. For anyone else, it would be impossible. For Corem, it’s inevitable.

Because he’s not just a hero.

He’s the last Dragon Knight.

About the Author

Tim Akers is an epic fantasy author with ten novels to his name, as well as dozens of short stories and novellas. He lives in Chicago, dreams of the Shire, and tries to write the kinds of heroes that draw the gold from our mundane dross.

https://linktr.ee/timakers

Excerpt

A murder of crows descended from the north, fleeing the ruins of an empire. Black wings circled the great battlefield once, then turned sharply for a ruined tower by the river’s edge. As the black birds landed, their squawking forms poured like living ink into the shape of man. Tall enough to be noticed, with black hair, wearing a dark cloak that rippled and danced in a breeze that didn’t exist. When the man turned to survey the battlefield, the sun glinted off his blackened breastplate. Twin swords hung from his belt, one short and wicked, the other long and sheathed in scales. He stared at the dead for a long time before turning back to the tower.

A committee of vultures startled at his sudden appearance, hopping into the air and circling in great wheeling crowds, croaking their displeasure.

“There are plenty of dead,” Corem muttered. “Find another place to feed.”

The smell of putrefying flesh and the iron tang of spilled blood surrounded the tower. He wouldn’t stay here long. Despite his long vow with Kraksus, Dire Crow god of graves and omens, Corem had never grown comfortable with the smell of death. His duties to Old Kraksus had revolved around the distribution of death, rather than the collection of bodies.

Still, he had to rest. His hurried flight south, and the atrocities that had preceded it, had left Corem drained to the soul. The vowsworn powers that let him travel great distances were exhausted. He went inside the tower, hoping that the defenders had had the good sense to flee before they were slaughtered. Thankfully, the Xinth had ravaged this place and then left. He had the cold stone watchtower to himself.

The basement held an artisanal spring of clear, cold water, unspoiled by the Xinth. Even the Profane Horde had to drink something other than blood to live, at least most of them. He lit a torch, then set about washing himself and repairing his armor. Stripping down to nothing, Corem laid the rune-etched breastplate on a table, along with his cloak and belt of two blades. Then, with a sponge, a needle, and his kit of gut and staples, he examined the damage.

His body was a ruin of scars. First, the old runes of the Crow, cut into his flesh by the black-masked priest when Corem had sworn his vows to Old Kraksus so long ago. Those runes gave him the transformative powers of the Crow, an affinity for shadows, and the kind of visions shared by madmen and prophets. Not that Old Kraksus spoke clearly in those dreams. And since the events of the Wyrmkeep… well, his god no longer spoke to him at all. He never thought he’d miss that touch of madness.

Corem came from noble blood, and never thought he would find himself in service to a Dire Crow like Kraksus. In the Cerulean Empire, noble knights like Corem spoke their vows to the Griffin or, if they were lucky, the Dragon. Yet when the selection came, it was the Crow who landed on his shoulder and spoke his true name. It had changed Corem’s life. Gods often do.

Over those older scars was a new pattern. Freshly cut, still red and raw, put there by the furious priestess of the Dragon. Corem still wasn’t sure what she had meant to accomplish; whether he was meant to return to the Empire and exact vengeance for the death of the last Dragon patron to serve Cerulea, or if they simply liked the idea of mocking the king and his plans. That mission was meant to have killed him. Yet here he was, alive and hunted, both by the Ceruleans who had betrayed him and the Xinth whom he had spent his life fighting. It was a precarious life.

The runes themselves were only half the magic. With them he could draw limited powers from his patrons, specified by the patterns cut, and the blessings given. The final key to those powers lay on the table. From the Crow, the cloak and assassin’s blade. Those gave him full access to the forms of murder, both flock and crime. With them, he was more dangerous than a dozen men, and several vowsworn. Old Kraksus had named him champion. So many Crows served only as scouts or spies or messengers. Corem had been so much more. When the god of death wanted to gather new souls, it was Corem’s name he spoke, and Corem’s blade that reaped.

Which brought him to the Dragon’s gift. The rune-etched breastplate was unremarkable to the untrained eye. Unlike the polished silver and ornate helm of the Wyrmguard, the maddened priestess had sworn Corem to the steel a simple warrior might wear. The runes that made it a conduit to a god’s fury were on the inside, hidden from view. With the bonesteel sword, he was now a champion of two gods, neither of whom wanted him. That was all the Dragon priestess had given him. With them, he was a Dragon. Worse. He was the last Dragon Knight. The rest were dead. Some by his hand.

He stitched his wounds and dressed in the simple trousers and tunic of his priesthood. Then he buckled on his armor, laid the cloak across his shoulders, and fit both swords to his belt.

Corem scavenged around the tower until he had supplies enough to last a week, perhaps two. He paused in the main chamber of the abandoned tower and looked around. A blood spattered map showed the lines of the Xinthi army, and the defensive positions of the now destroyed Imperial legions. They had been waiting for reinforcement from the capital. Corem knew firsthand that those reinforcements were never coming. Wyrmkeep was destroyed. The king was dead. And the four champions of the vowsworn of the Cerulean Empire were dead. Corem had killed them, for what they had done to the Dragon, and what they had tried to do to him. Betrayal, his and theirs. It was only a matter of time before the Xinth seized the capital, and destroyed everything Corem had spent his whole life defending.

On the back wall of the tower hung an azure banner woven with the sigil of the Cerulean Empire. The central image was of the Dragon clutching a sword, wings outstretched. Overhead the wise Owl spread its wings. The vowsworn of the Owl were blessed with wisdom, both arcane and mundane, and were responsible for the great weapons of war, the airships, the stormcannon, and who knows what else, that made the Cerulean Empire such a force in battle. On either side of the Dragon stood rampant the Griffin and the Wolf, representing the once wild tribes that the first Dragonking had united, and the mighty noble houses to whom he granted land. Their vowsworn were mighty in battle, and brave on the hunt. It was the Griffin to whom Corem had hoped to ascend, as his father had, and his father before him. He had never trusted the Wolf Knights. Too much like the Xinth, mad in battle, and uncouth in the dining hall. Their women made terrific lovers, though.

There was no place on that banner for the Crow, or the dozen other lesser gods whose vowsworn served the Empire. Not even Caethris, god of spiders got a mention, though his servants had long run the Empire’s network of spies and informants.

It was the banner of a broken land, an Empire that would soon be dead.

Corem gathered the last of his things and went out. There was no place for him here. The story of his betrayal would already be spreading. Soon he would be the most hunted, hated knight in the north. Not even the Xinth would spare him, despite the fact that he might well have won them their decades-long war with Cerulea. He would go south, he decided. Beyond the reach of the Xinth, and the memory of the Cerulean Empire. He would keep flying until he found a place no one would know him, where the legends of dragons were just that. Legends.

A place where he could start again, and be forgotten.

Corem’s black cloak lashed against his body, bending and twisting like a living thing. In a heartbeat the cloak swelled, consuming Corem completely, before it started to fall apart. Small forms emerged from the cloak in an explosion of wings. Black beaks and blacker eyes and feathers as dark as ink rose in a cloud of croaking screams. They scattered to the wind like motes of ash, their cries echoing over the battlefield, mingling with the mists until they were no more.

Only the dead remained.