AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not as kind as our good elf. But that didn’t signify. It wasn’t the treatment; it was the excitement of the hunts. I, a pack mule at column-back, used to have flowers thrown on me as we passed through towns, mouth stuffed with carrots and sugar beets. Cheering. You must know that a dragon can wreck whole lands.”
Wistala tried to keep her tail still. “I’ve heard of dragons being blamed for storms and earthquakes.”
“You may well glare, but that doesn’t signify. Hominids fear your kind.”
“Conceded. So you thought you’d make a try for his hall?”
“Yes, I know the look of the mountains; it’s not far south of here. But I stopped in a field to avail myself of some corn . . . and the next thing I knew I had a rope around my neck and another bad master. Then you appeared again. In the Dragonblade’s mule train, I learned not to fear the dragon-smell, but I’ve never liked it until you.”
“So the Dragonblade lives not far south in the mountains? He must be close to the Wheel of Fire dwarves, then?”
Stog’s ears went up and forward. “Close? Of course. He lives in their city.”
For the second time since entering the barn, Wistala was startled into astonishment. But of course he would live with dwarves, as they helped him kill dragons.
“The Wheel of Fire?” Wistala asked.
“The dwarves build fastnesses like no others, and he must be guarded sky and tunnel. It must signify to you that the Dragonblade’s line has made enemies, very powerful enemies, of your kind.”
He’s made an enemy of me, small, stumpy, and misfortunate. But she’d promised Father nests of hatchlings.
She was making herself miserable and hungry for metals, so much so that the tools hung by the hearth looked tempting. Rainfall had written a letter to the metalsmith’s guild in the coastal town of Sack Harbor asking for a quantity of brass and copper meant for the melting pot but so far only an answer had arrived naming a price. Wait, that Jessup fellow said something about spare shingles. . . .
“Stog, thank you for an honest tale,” she said.
As the night deepened, she wandered the grounds, prowling, really, for the vegetable garden’s fall planting was coming up, and if she was sharp, she might get a raiding rabbit if wind and shadow favored her.
Were she Father, she’d take Stog’s knowledge, every memory, every path, and learn about the Wheel of Fire dwarves and the Dragonblade. There were headless, clawless corpses of her own blood with only her left to mourn. What had those men shouted?
“The Avenger”?
But she was alone and small. Even Father in full fury hadn’t been a match for the dwarves, and she had nothing like his experience in battle.
Then there was her promise.
Even the worst cave has a best spot, Mother would say. She’d found a good spot here at Mossbell. But if the thane claimed Mossbell, there’d be no more clean, quiet cellars and hearth-roasted goats or Widow Lessup’s mutton stew and gravies. Hammar would certainly turn her out—or worse—and if Rainfall sold his estate, would he be able to find a new home with a growing dragon in tow? They’d make a sight on the road: an invalid elf riding muleback, a pregnant girl hardly out of childhood, and a stumpy-legged drakka. Of course, Mother would tell her to improvise.
Curse Hypatia and its laws and courts and judges, robbing a kindly elf of his all. Hammar shaped the law into an ax to cut down a better citizen than he.
Couldn’t the law be used to strike back at Hammar? No. Rainfall understood it better than she; he’d called it hopeless and would sell.
Of course. She hurried back to Mossbell, dragon-dashing when she saw the door and flushing a rabbit.
The household had gone to bed, and she had to draw back his bed curtains and wake him. The room smelled like the hot stones in their grate that warmed the metal plate that supported his bedding.
“Rainfall, I’ve got it,” she said when he left off blinking and rubbing his eyes.
She was disappointed to see the number of leaves left on his pillow as he drew himself up with his new bedrail. “Let’s have a light and hear it, then. For—”
“Never mind.” She spat into the iron plate that caught the wax from his bedcandle. He lit his candle from the flame. “Some great lord would probably give you employ just to do that,” he mused.
“I’ve had an idea about the estate.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
If she had the right muscles for it, she would be smiling. She tried pulling her griff as high as she could, and felt the corners of her mouth go up. “Sell Mossbell to me! I’d let you live here until the end of your days, without asking for anything. My way of repaying the debt I owe you for saving me.”
Rainfall’s face fell. “Ah. An excellent idea, but it wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.”
