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“NO!”
His roar echoed off the gorge walls, louder than the rushing water, louder than the baying dogs.
Frightened, she tucked her head down into her wounded joint.
“Tala, you’re too young for this fight. The best way for you to avenge your brother and sister is to have clutches of your own. Each hatchling of your own who lives to breed avenges them thrice over.”
“The dogs—they’ll bite and hold.”
“I’m not afraid of the dogs or anything else that walks or crawls or swims. Now go.”
The dogs must have caught a fresh scent, perhaps Father’s blood on the wind, for they set up an eager clamor.
She stood there, shaking. She’d led them right to Father! That was why they’d sent a single old dog to nudge her along! “I won’t. I can’t.”
“Promise me, Wistala. Clutches of your own. Lots and lots of hatchlings.”
He nosed her over the edge of the precipice and looked once more down on her. His eyes crinkled, and he no longer looked fearsome and angry.
Love. Wistala’d seen it before when he gazed at Mother as she slept.
“Thank you for the coins, Tala.”
With that, he turned. She saw his tail whip briefly overhead, its bronze catching the last of the setting sun. She heard him growl something to Bartleghaff, but couldn’t catch it over the churn beneath.
No. She’d climbed up and escaped before. She wouldn’t climb down this time. Not even the pain in her dog-bitten sii could stop her.
She slipped over the lip of the cliff and wormed between two pieces of fallen masonry. From the crack, she watched Father advance down the ridge of the narrow peninsula, choosing a rocky outcropping difficult to approach.
Dogs ran toward him in a mass of limbs and white-rimmed eyes and teeth. Behind the dogs, a file of men approached, led by a tall, broad figure in black armor. He was carrying a spear in one hand and a great sword in the other, helm with wings reaching up and almost touching above his crown.
The Dragonblade?
As the dogs approached, Father roared:
Foe and friend ’tween cave and sky
All hear me now before I die
Fire and blood this night will see
When filial vengeance I take of thee!
If any of the assassins understood his death song, they showed no sign of it.
Father ignored the dogs as they swarmed around him, leaping to reach his joints and claws. Barbed shafts flew from the archers and broke against his crest and scales. Father sent a great jet of fire up and across the crest of the peninsula, striking man and pine woods beyond. As the trees exploded into flame, she heard men’s voices cry out. Wistala saw flaming figures fall down the steep sides of the pathway.
The dogs—all alike and bearing the same painted design on their sides as the old one she’d killed by the bank—jumped and bit and hung from Father’s belly and limbs, planting their feet and pulling, arching their backs as they tugged at his flesh. Father was screaming in pain and turned into a whirlwind, biting and lashing at the dogs with his claws. But there were so many, and new slavering beasts jumped up to take the place of each one he killed.
The man in the black armor advanced, raising his spear. It sparked and flashed like distant lightning, lighting his armor and throwing shadows all around.
A hot lump burned in Wistala’s breast. Father couldn’t kill the Dragonblade with dogs pulling at him from every direction. She dragon-dashed forward, squeaking out a roar.
She’d never smelled such a thick blood odor in her life, if anything made sharper by the oily smell of burning dragonflame.
Mad-eyed dogs came at her, and she recoiled, but as her head came up, muscles in her breast took over, and she spat. A thin jet of flame arced out at the dogs, but they jumped aside or over the pathetic puddle of flame.
The dogs, moving so fast they seemed shadow rather than flesh, piled on her.
