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The dwarves ignored him as they charged—later he thought it would have been kinder if one had split his skull with one of the broadaxes they carried across their backs—and he searched for Eye Patch. Where was she? He saw the potbellied dwarf, hanging on to the top of a stalagmite, giving orders and pointing with a gnarled bit of polished wood.
The Copper ran up to him, flung himself down.
“Spare the one on the shelf. My sister! My sister!”
The dwarf stepped on his neck. “Hmpf. You don’t want to see this.”
Ka-thun! Ka-thun!—the metal-and-wood contraptions of the dwarves launched their missiles, exploding into motion and dying a moment later, purpose served.
The dwarves yelled as they stormed toward the egg shelf in a rattle of metal—chain shirts rustling, shields banging, helm flanges rattling on shoulder plates, metal-spiked boots striking the cavern floor, and above all the kuu-kuuu-kuuuu! of the dwavrish war cries.
It sounded like the end of the world.
The big man went forward in a series of leaps, springing from prominence to prominence and jumping over formations the Copper had to climb. A flood of dogs led him, and more warriors of his kind followed behind, aiming thick arrows notched in curved bows like half-folded dragon wings.
The Copper smelled the brassy, hot-oil smell of dragonfire, heard the roar of flame devouring air. The shadows of the cave began to dance.
“In there under it, my lads. That’s the style!” the dwarf-lord grunted. At least, that was what it seemed to the Copper he was saying, though how he caught the meaning without knowing the words he could not say.
The Copper heard his mother roar, and the sound made him tremble.
“Spare my sister!” the Copper squeaked.
The dwarf looked down. “Poor wretch. We’ll not bleed her a drop. She’s worth a lot to us. Now what passes? Dogluk, hold him.”
The potbellied dwarf hurried toward the egg shelf, and the Copper scrambled up a stalagmite.
Mother lay on her side, chest heaving, neck and chest pierced by great shafts that showed feathers at one bleeding hole and gory barbed heads at the other. Her head still moved weakly, one golden eye rolling this way and that, bathed in fire leaking from her breastbone.
“You have won this battle, Gobold,” she said to the dwarf. “But I keep a last trick. The war is not over. My young live. And they are free. Free!”
The potbellied dwarf walked over to her, laughing. “Your young? One of them led us to you. Don’t look to your young. Greedy and selfish, like all dragons.” The one she’d called Gobold struck her across the mouth with first one fist, then the other.
Mother spit out a broken tooth.
“They will avenge this day!”
The potbellied dwarf laughed and, still laughing, swung his ax and struck her in the neck. By the third blow his boots were awash in blood, his stout helm, beard, and arms splotched red.
The Copper’s hearts ceased beating for a moment and he swooned.
A mass of dwarves, men, and dogs crowded on the egg shelf, embracing one another and letting blood from Mother’s wounds run into their helmets, which they then passed around and drank. Dogs, wild with excitement, chased from wound to wound, sniffing, biting her where she still twitched.
Men stood, holding nets over Jizara with heavy boot heels. His sister lay frozen in terror, eye whites bright in the cave’s gloom. The Copper wanted to fling himself down atop her, protect her, but the smell of dragonblood in the air had him clinging tight-bellied to the cave floor.
The big man came forward, his dragon-jaw blade out and ready. He stepped up to Jizara, glanced over his shoulder at the dwarves dancing and stamping about Mother’s corpse.
“Mercy,” Jizara gasped.
The big man laughed. “Nits make lice,” he said in his rough Drakine.
He pushed his blade slowly into her throat, twisting it this way and that, and, whimpering, Jizara died.
Fiends!
A dwarf dragged him back by his battered tail, but the pain was nothing to the insensate anger flooding his hearts. A howl broke from his throat, every agony he’d suffered since the moment of his hatching gathered into a single scream.
Fiends!
