Yeark was two feet, two and one half inches tall, but, if asked, he always claimed to be two foot three. By extending his double jointed legs, he could increase his height by another 11 inches, but it was painful to do so for more than a few seconds. He would help with work in the mine when needed, but his primary function in the tribe was border security.

A kobold’s day starts at sundown. This day started for Yeark the same as any other. His first job was to check all of the traps outside the north entrance to the mine. He was to clear and re-set them if necessary. He would make sure they were all in good order before returning to the mine. Of course if any intruders were caught or killed he was to return right away. Security would be tightened and the mine put on alert until any potential danger had been dealt with.

He weighed 43 lbs. and his scaly skin was light brown, except for a lighter streak across his left jaw and half-way down his neck. The result of an old sword wound. He was wearing a suit of reddish-brown studded leather armor and a utility belt. He carried a longbow (sized for kobolds) hooked for quick release on his back along with a quiver of arrows. He carried a javelin which he used as a walking stick and to clear brush aside.

There was a full moon this night. Yeark preferred moonless nights. Kobolds can see just fine in total darkness. He always thought that a bright night could only favor an intruder. His job was to see to it that intruders were kept away. As he approached one of the pits, he could see that it had been disturbed. The cover had fallen. This usually meant some creature had fallen in. He was hoping that it was another wild pig. He liked eating pig.

He learned long ago that you don’t check a pit trap by looking over the side. There could be an armed enemy inside just waiting for someone to provide them with an easy target. First he quietly approached and just listened for a while to see if he could hear any movement inside. At first he thought he heard some leaves rustle but them he heard nothing at all for several minutes. Perhaps it was just the wind. He then carefully climbed a nearby tree and looked around a limb down into the pit. He was surprised to see a human lying on the debris that had been covering the pit. He was obviously dead, impelled through the heart on one of the spikes in the bottom of the pit.

Yeark quickly scampered down and to the edge of the open pit. He took his bow and fired three arrows into the dead body. He was making sure it was really dead, and besides, it was good target practice. He was eager to search the body for valuables before he reported the intruder. Humans often carried coins or wore jewelry.

He put his bow and quiver down next to his javelin before he got the rope ladder he had hidden near by. Just before reaching the bottom of the pit, he heard movement behind. For an instant he thought that the dead human had jumped up, but before he could turn to see what had made the sound he felt a heavy blow to the back of his head. He must have lost consciousness for a couple of seconds. Before he opened his eyes he felt himself painfully pinned to the ground. He opened his eyes to find an angry human holding him down. Both of Yeark’s legs were under the human’s knees, which was causing him much pain. One of the human’s massive hands was holding both of his arms across his chest, and the other one was holding a large knife. He raised the knife and was about to slash it across Yeark’s throat. Speaking in the common language, Yeark pleaded, “Please don’t kill me!”

This seamed to surprise this giant of a creature (compared to the small kobold) that was holding him down. Yeark was completely unable to move. The young human just froze, still holding the knife in the air, staring into the kobold’s large amber colored eyes.

When Trevan and his brother Kaylan fell into the pit, Kaylan had landed directly on a spike in the bottom and had died instantly. Trevan landed on top of him and suffered only minor injuries. He had been saved by his brother, whose body had cushioned his fall. Trevan tried to revive his brother but soon realized that he was beyond any help he could give him.

The sun was going down and he realized that he didn’t have much time before the kobolds would come and find them here. As he looked around he got mad at himself for falling for such a simple trap. It was just a hole dug into the ground and covered with sticks and leaves. It was about ten feet across and ten feet deep. The bottom, which was now littered with the sticks and leaves that had been covering it, had several large spikes. These were just big sticks which had been pounded into the bottom of the pit and then sharpened. He tried to climb out, but the sides were hard packed earth and had been smoothed somehow to prevent climbing. He couldn’t help thinking how stupid he had been. He realized now that the other trap was just a decoy, meant to be found. This was the real trap, set here for dummies like him to fall into while avoiding the obvious trap. Digging through the debris he could only find one of the crossbows and it was broken. He could only assume the other one had been dropped when they fell and must be outside the pit.

He didn’t have time to grieve for his brother. He laid up against the edge of the pit and covered himself with leaves and sticks. He thought that his only chance would be if only one or two kobolds came to check the trap. Perhaps they would see his brother lying there and not realize he was there too. When they climbed down to check on his brother’s body he would try to surprise them. He could use the broken crossbow handle as a club, and he had his brothers hunting knife.

The sun went down. The stars came out. The moon rose. It was a clear night and the moon shining down through the trees was casting strange and scary looking shadows on the sides and then on the bottom of the pit. Trevan moved to the darkest side of the pit and re-covered himself. The waiting was the hardest part. Several times he thought he heard someone coming, but then nothing would happen. He started to wonder if he was wrong. Maybe nobody was going to check the pit.  Maybe he would just be left down here until he died of starvation. He decided that if no one came during the night, he would have to find a way to get out of the pit in the morning. Then he heard a sound he wasn’t expecting. It was the familiar twang of an arrow being fired followed immediately by the thud of it penetrating a target. But no, not a target, Kaylan! Someone shot an arrow into his brother’s body! Trevan had to stop himself from jumping up and screaming. How could anyone do such a thing? Then a second arrow and then another. He was obviously dead. These must be kobolds, he thought, and this just proves that they are far more evil than he had ever thought.

He then saw a kobold. It was the first kobold he had ever seen. It was a small reptilian humanoid. Its short tail struck Trevan as comical, wigging back and forth from under its leather armor as it climbed down into the pit on a small rope ladder. He jumped up and hit the kobold as hard as he could with the handle from the broken crossbow. He jumped on top of it and held it down while he pulled his knife. He quickly glanced around to see if there were any more kobolds. Then, just as he was about to kill this one, it opened its eyes and said, “Please don’t kill me!”

Trevan knew that some kobolds could speak common, but this came as a shock. He had killed animals before, but never one that was looking him in the eyes and talking to him. The kobold saw that he was hesitating and said, “I can be much more valuable to you alive than dead.”

Trevan shook his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?” he said.

Yeark was thinking fast, “If you don’t kill me, I can be your servant. I am a hard worker and can be of great benefit to you.” He had no idea what use a human would have for a kobold servant, but it was the only thing he could think of. “And I promise not to run away or try to kill you for . . . for a year,” he said.

Trevan thought this crazy idea, even if it was all a lie, might buy him enough time to escape, without having to kill this thing. Then he remembered something his brother said about learning as much as he could about kobolds to help in fighting dragons. He said, “Could you teach me to speak draconian? And, why for just a year? I could keep you forever if I wanted to.” He waved the knife in front of his face.

“If you intend to keep me forever, you may as well kill me now. I’ll be of no use to my tribe either way. If you try to keep me by force, I will be of no use to you as a servant. I will be spending all of my time trying to kill you and escape. I thought a year would be long enough.”

Trevan thought that this kobold was pretty smart. He asked, “What about teaching me draconian?”

Yeark said, “Yes, yes, anything you want. As long as it doesn’t pose a threat to my tribe or our mine, I’ll teach you how to speak draconian. I’ll teach you how to make traps. I’ll teach you . . . anything you want. Just don’t kill me.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” Trevan said.

Yeark got very upset by this and started to thrash about. He said, “Maybe humans don’t honor promises, but kobolds do! If you don’t believe me then go ahead and kill me now!”

“Okay, okay . . . ,” Trevan said. “I’m going to let you up now. Don’t try anything.” He slowly released the kobold, stood up and backed away. Still holding the knife out, he said, “First I need you to help me get my brother out of the pit. We are going to take him home. Father will know what to do with you.”

To Trevan’s surprise, the kobold was very energetic and helpful. He quickly made a harness out of a length of rope from Kaylan’s backpack and helped Trevan haul him up out of the pit. Then he lashed together a couple of branches to make a litter and tied the body to it. It was designed to make it easy to drag the dead body over the forest floor. Yeark wasn’t sure why the human wanted to take his dead brother with them. Right now he was just glad that it wasn’t him left lying dead in the pit.

The moon was high in the sky and shining down through the trees, lighting their path. The earth was soft under foot. Trevan thought that if they went quickly, they may be able to reach the cabin by sunrise. The kobold helped drag the litter and showed no sign of trying to run away or alerting other kobolds. After about half an hour Trevan asked, “Do you have a name?”

“Of course I have a name, it’s Yeark. Do humans have names?”

“My name is Trevan. My brother’s name was Kaylan.” He looked back at the body. It was securely tied to the litter and bounced up and down as they dragged it over the uneven forest floor.

Yeark looked at the body and said, “Why are we taking this body with us? We could travel much faster if we left it here.”

Trevan was horrified at the thought. “I couldn’t possibly just leave him to be eaten by wolves. I have to take him home and give him a proper burial. I guess kobolds don’t bury their dead? What do you do with them then, eat them?”

“No, we don’t bury them,” he said. “But we don’t eat them unless we are very hungry, or they are very young.”

They traveled the rest of the way without talking.

They followed the trail as it went deeper and deeper into the forest. By noon Trevan had gone farther into the forest than he had ever gone before. They would loose the trail from time to time and find it again some distance away. The kobold was going in a fairly straight line towards the northeast. Trevan got better at recognizing the kobold tracks. They were about two inches wide and five inches long with three wide spread claws on the front. On a really good print he could make out a distinct lizard-like scale pattern. He learned to recognize the difference in the look of the tracks when the kobold was walking, running or standing still. He learned that when the kobold stopped to look around, he stood up on his toes and that was also the only time he left a tail track. He used his tail for balance when standing on tiptoe. He also learned to tell where the kobold had disturbed the plants as he pushed past them. There was one place where he stopped to eat berries. Trevan and Kaylan ate some too.
They came upon a place where he had stopped, and then ran off a few yards to the south. There he stopped and then continued back to the northeast. Near this point they found a small broken arrow, some bird tracks and a couple of fresh quail feathers. He must have shot a quail and took it with him. Trevan hadn’t considered that the kobold might be armed.
They crossed several other animal tracks as well. There were even some dear tracks in a couple of places.
As the day continued into evening, they eventually came to a small clearing by a creek where the kobold obviously stayed for a while. There was a small fire pit with cold ashes. Next to the fire he had set on a log and ate his quail. There were a few feathers and a couple of bones. He must have eaten all of the rest. They found the sharpened stick he had cooked it on. It took them a few minutes to examine the area around the camp before they found the trail again. He had crossed the creek and headed southeast, toward the Black Mountains.
This part of the forest was much denser, with taller, older trees and thicker undergrowth. Following the tracks became harder and they had to slow down to keep from losing the trail. As the sun was getting low in the evening they were about to follow the trail where it passed between two large trees when Kaylan shouted, “Freeze!”  Trevan stopped in his tracks, and looked back at Kaylan. “Don’t go any farther,” Kaylan said. “You are about to set off a trap. Look closely at that vine ahead.”
Trevan saw that there was a small vine between the trees about chest high that the kobold had easily passed under. He stood there looking around and then he saw that the limb of one of the trees had been pulled down and tied with a rope stretched down to the ground. There was another rope tied to the same limb that had its other end buried beneath the leaves that were covering the ground between the trees. The ropes had been rubbed down with dirt and tree sap and lightly covered with leaves and thin vines so they were hard to notice.  He couldn’t make out exactly how it worked, but it was now obvious that if he had broken, or pushed aside the vine it would have set off the trap and he would now be hanging by his foot, or perhaps by his neck.
“Yes, I see it now,” Trevan said. “Can I set it off so no one will be caught in it?” He very much would like to set it off to see exactly how it worked.
“No. I don’t want them to know that we were here. This is good. It means we are close to their lair. Or at least on one of the main paths to it’s entrance. Let’s just go around it. I am hoping we can find the entrance to the lair before nightfall.”
“Then what?” said Trevan.
“Then we will go home and tell Father what we have found. He will know what to do. At the very least we can warn people to avoid this area.”
They passed around to the right. Trevan was looking up into the tree, still trying to see how the trap worked when he heard a “snap!”  and the ground fell away beneath his feet.

I am writing a novel, just for fun. I will post it here in installments. Please leave comments. Criticism, critiques and corrections are welcome! I have never done this before. I am loosely basing all of the characters on Third Edition D&D. Perhaps we can all have some fun and learn a little about dragons along the way.

Trevan was only 14 years old when Kaylan, his older brother, took him on his first deer hunt. They were only going to be gone for two days so he put what he thought he might need into his backpack, grabbed his crossbow, a box of quivers and some hard bread and dried meat. It was mid summer so he wouldn’t need a heavy coat or blanket. They left at first light.
Their family’s cabin was located in a clearing in the Dark Woods forest. Contrary to its name, this part of the forest was only lightly wooded and was penetrated by many small streams.  Trevan lived here with his brother and his father. He never knew his mother. His father told him that she died of a fever shortly after he was born. His father had been a ranger when he was younger, but now he was too old to get around much and spent most of his time sitting in their one room log cabin making and repairing crossbows.
At the far east side of the clearing they came to the edge of a dirt road. This was the only road in this part of the forest. It clung to the edge of the clearing. To the north it disappeared into a dense patch of pine trees. To the south it crossed a small dry creek bed before curving southeast. Across the road there were trees with light undergrowth, easy enough to walk through if you watched for thorn bushes. Trevan had played in these woods all of his life, and knew them well.
Kaylan stopped at the edge of the road, bent down onto one knee and looked closely at the tracks in the dirt. “What do you see?” he asked.
Trevan hated it when he did that. Kaylan was 5 years older than him. His father had taught him to track, and now he was teaching Trevan. He knew that his brother saw some kind of tracks in the dusty road but he could hardly see any tracks at all. The road was seldom used. Once or twice a week they would see someone on it. Usually in groups of two or three on horseback, or riding in a cart or buggy of some kind. The low morning sun angle showed up some horseshoe prints and wagon wheel tracks, but these were not recent. He knew that these were the tracks that Kaylan expected him to see. There had to be something else. There were definitely no deer tracks. He was anxious to shoot his first deer. Then he saw it. “Rabbit tracks!” he said. “They are right here next to the edge of the road.”
Then Kaylan asked, “And what was he doing?”
Trevan looked closer. After studying them for a minute he shook his head and said, “There is no way to tell. I see a couple of hops and then it gets all jumbled up. I guess he was just standing around.”
“Don’t just look at the track,” Kaylan said. “Look at everything else around them and try to think like a rabbit.”
Trevan laughed. “How am I supposed to know what a rabbit is thinking?” He looked more closely at the side of the road. There was some young grass and, “He was munching on the grass!”
“Yes, and then something frightened him. See here? He stood up on his hind legs to get a better view and then he ran off in that direction.”
“Let’s see where he went,” Trevan said as he started walking in that direction.
Kaylan said, “No, let’s see if we can find out what frightened him.” He crossed to the other side of the road and started looking around, being careful not to disturb any tracks that he might find there. It wasn’t long before he called to Trevan, who was looking several feet away. “Here it is. I think it may have been a fox. No! Look at those three claws. This was no fox. This was a kobold!”
Trevan jumped up and drew his crossbow. He had it cocked and a bolt loaded and readied before his brother could say, “Don’t worry; they only come out at night. I think the sunlight hurts their eyes or something. And, besides, it looks like there was only one of them. They would never attack anything bigger than they are unless they outnumber them by at least two to one.”
“How big are they?”
“The biggest ones are not much over three feet tall. From these tracks, it looks like this one is only a little over two feet.”
That calmed Trevan down a bit. But still. He had heard tales of kobold raids, and of their evil ways. He wasn’t sure how much of it was true, but he had no desire to meet up with one face to face. “Let’s go find a deer,” he said.
“Trevan …” Kaylan started to say something else but stopped.
“What?”
“Trevan, I’m going to follow these tracks back to his lair. Why don’t you go back to the cabin? Tell Father what I am doing. He will understand. I’ll be back in a day or two.  We’ll go deer hinting when I return, I promise.”
Trevan said, “Well I don’t understand. Kobolds should be avoided, not chased! And what if you do find their lair? They say that kobolds put traps all around the entrances to their lairs. That would just be too dangerous. Don’t do it!”
Kaylan thought for a minute, then said, “Have you ever seen a dragon?”
“I think I saw one fly over the cabin a couple of years ago. You know that. Anyway, what has that got to do with anything?”
“They say that kobolds are distant cousins of dragons. If I can learn more about kobolds, it might help me kill a dragon.”
“Kill a dragon? Are you nuts? First you are chasing kobolds, and now you are killing dragons! You don’t know what you are talking about!”
Kaylan said, “Our mother wasn’t killed by a fever.”
Trevan stopped fuming and stared at his brother.
Kaylan continued, “Shortly after you were born, a red dragon landed beside our cabin. We had a couple of cows then and Mother was milking one of them. Father and I were standing right over there.” He pointed to a spot in the clearing several hundred yards from the cabin. “I guess the dragon was hungry. The horse ran off, the dragon pushed mother aside and casually ate both cows. I don’t think it saw you. Mother had laid you on some hay beside a large log. While he was eating the second cow he started to step on the log. Mother screamed at him. Father and I were running to her as fast as we could. I couldn’t hear what she said, but the dragon simply turned and stepped on her. Then he flew away while he finished eating the cow. Father said he wanted to wait until you were older to tell you the truth. He didn’t want you to be afraid. I guess you are old enough now. Anyway, that is what happened and that is the day I swore to kill that dragon. I am planning on leaving next spring. If I don’t find that one, I’ll kill as many as I can.”
“I want to kill dragons too. I’m going with you when you leave.”
“You are too young, and Father will need you if I am not here.”
Trevan thought for a second. Then he said, “Okay, but I am going with you to track this kobold.”
“All right,” he said, “but keep your eyes open. You are right about kobolds setting traps.”