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“You’d better move the circus south of the bridge.” She would remain beside Rainfall, now and for eternity. . . .
Swinging, flying again—no, she was being hauled up onto gargant-back by dwarves with ropes all around.
Through a sticky eye she saw a golden summer dawn. Mossbell still flamed at the end of blackened beams. A door-pull glittered in the char-heap, and the wind was carrying off fine white ash—probably the remains of Rainfall’s library.
They passed through the village, better than half the houses were burnt, and the others were emptied, but the inn still stood. The villagers had thrown the few dead barbarians on the burning cart before the inn, and added broken shutters and doors. Some joined the circus column, carrying bundles or pushing household goods in carts, and so passed over the bridge into the next thanedom.
Ragwrist arrayed his house carts to block the bridge, and the last memory Wistala had was of Widow Lessup consoling Mod Lada—Rayg had been at academy outside Quarryness, and none in the despoiled town could say what had become of him.
They buried Rainfall the next day on a cool summer morning of the sort that always saw him long at work in his garden.
Wistala, drinking like a horse fresh from a race, begged Ragwrist to drag a dead horse from the village and a team of dwarves with a gargant went and fetched two so that she might have one the next day. They hung one and she devoured the other despite the flies. With food and water in her, she felt up to a slow, stiff walk up the riverbank to a prominence overlooking Mossbell’s grounds.>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.
Not only did the water feel good, but her underside was now protected by the pool’s thick lip of masonry, as well. She rattled her griff in challenge and waited.
“Well. You heard him,” Hammar said to his bodyguards. “Kill the creature!”
“We need spears for that, Lord Hammar,” the closest said. “Longer spears than our allies carry,” he added hastily, as Hammar pointed to the spears in dirty hands all around.
“You have your swords!”
