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Oh, infamy! They had Rainfall there, hanging upside down from the statue, ropes looped about his ankles and the neck of the representation of law. The barbarians were hurling books—the one household item they saw no use for—at him.
Hammar and his men observed events from a little farther away.
Too tired to flap, she set her wings and glided in, spreading what was left of her fire right and left and scattering the barbarians.
She felt the arrows strike. She never remembered it as a painful feeling, more astonished that she didn’t hear them whirl through the air or hit her, but hit they did. A lucky couple bounced off her sides but others plunged into her scaleless underside. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, nostrils full of dirt and grass, a neck-length from the fountain.
She heard blood rushing in her ears—no, it was the barbarians hooting and cheering, sharp black shapes against Mossbell aflame.
Her breath came with difficulty, and her vision foreshortened. But Rainfall still breathed. She would die beside him. More arrows and a hand-ax bounced off her scale; she noted the strikes uninterestedly. She made one painful crawl toward him, got her nose on the edge of the fountain, smelled blood and water. One of the goldfish came to the surface and looked at her, mouth opening and shutting as it hoped for a tidbit.
Dully, she saw the column of the Dragonblade’s men ride up. The Dragonblade pulled up, and the black helm waved this way and that as it took in the scene. The man-boy in leather, staggering and with the side of his face crudely bandaged and a medicine vial in his hand, pointed with the unsteady hand of a drunk at the fountain.
Wistala found she had a terrible thirst and drank, causing the goldfish to flee to the other side of the pool. As she sucked water, she watched events in the courtyard with amazing calm. Even Rainfall’s moans as he hung, upside down and red-faced, were just another component of the tableau.
The Dragonblade dismounted. He took off his helm, hung it on the pommel of his horse, and drew a gleaming blade. He strode forward, eyes burning.
This is the end. She wondered what would happen to her head and claws. Would they be sold together, as a set, or separately?
The Dragonblade swung, and she shut her eyes.
Amazingly she felt nothing, heard only a splash—her own head falling into the pool at the base of the statue?
She opened an eye. The Dragonblade had cut down Rainfall, pulled him out of the water and set him down on the ground, propped up so he sat against the fountain pool.
“Thank you,” Rainfall gasped.
The Dragonblade glanced down at her, his broad, flat face frowning, gray wisps in his dark hair and thick at his temples, and he turned and walked toward Hammar, removing his thick gauntlets.
She felt Rainfall’s hand on her snout. So tired. But the water was helping. She sucked a little more.
“The dragon’s finished,” the Dragonblade said.
Dragonelle, Wistala corrected rather absently. I lived to fly and by rights must be called a dragonelle.
“More by her own doing than any arrows,” the Dragonblade continued as he walked up to Hammar.
The Dragonblade moved so fast, Wistala wasn’t sure what she saw, but Hammar fell backwards. Ah, the Dragonblade held his gauntlets aloft; he’d lashed out and struck Hammar across the face. He threw the gloves into Hammar’s face.
“I’m a slayer, and I quit whatever feud you have,” the Dragonblade said.
“I’m takings her earsh,” the man-boy slurred, drawing a blade and moving forward. “My idea to baitsh the creasure with—”
The Dragonblade reached out, caught him by the red shoulder sash and spun him around so hard that he dropped the medicine bottle and fell. The man-boy got to his hands and feet, and the Dragonblade kicked him at the tailvent, so hard that the youth went face-down in the dirt. “Get him on his horse,” the Dragonblade said to the line of archers.
“Mount your horse, and let’s be off,” the Dragonblade said. “Vagt kom trug mid suup-seep,” he said to the barbarians, who growled and fingered their weapons. He waited expectantly.
“I thought not,” the Dragonblade said, turning.
One burst from the others, howling and waving a short ax in each hand. The Dragonblade whirled, lifted his scabbarded blade and used it to catch the pair of axes under the head. He lifted his arms so the squatty barbarian hung gripping the ax-handles with legs kicking, and head-butted him so that the barbarian dropped unconscious.
With the aid of one of his men, he remounted his armored horse. “I leave you the honor of finishing the beast off, brave and lordly men of Galahall—Ha!” He glanced back at the man-boy, who was sagging in the saddle he’d been hoisted into, and touched heels to horse flank. “Keep the rest of my fee, Thane. Gold from you could buy only wormy meat and ill-fitting shoes.”
The thane’s armsmen stirred and looked to their chief for orders.
Hammar held up a hand, and his men remained in their places. “You’ve made an enemy to remember—and regret!” Hammar shouted at the riders filing east. The Dragonblade tilted back his head and laughed. “Drakossozh!” Hammar screamed into the night. “You’ve insulted a king!” Only laughter answered.
Wistala found she had the energy to climb up into the fountain. She settled into the water, rubbing her back and washing out her wounds but also washing out one of the goldfish, poor fellow. Pleasant warmth suffused her, and she curled in the pool about the statue so her head was near Rainfall.
