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The dwarves took up a chant. The Copper heard thwacks and chunks as they employed their axes, and then he heard a strange, high-pitched sound as some blew air through tubes.
Then the singing dwarves marched back out of the cavern, bearing their wounded and trophies wrapped in salty-smelling fabric on litters made of their spears. He smelled dragonblood everywhere.
One of the men pointed and there was some talk, but Gobold broke away from the others and grabbed the Copper by the crest and lifted his head. The Copper shut his eyes at what was coming….
But instead Gobold spoke, and again, strangely, he understood: “No. This feud started over bargains not being kept. Let none say Gobold—”
The dwarves called out at that; others clapped and stamped their feet or rattled their knives in their sheaths. The Copper struggled against his bonds, wanting to sink his claws into the dwarf’s fleshy gut.
“Well, Fangbreaker, then. Let none say Fangbreaker is not true to his word. Or his threats.”
Gobold the Fangbreaker let go of his crest. “Besides, he’s worthless in trade. That foreleg’s useless, and his tail’s shattered. The cavern and its treasures are yours, O prince of dragons!” He laughed and slapped his belly. “The honor and glory of this day is yours.” He bowed. “Enjoy.”
The dwarf hurried off to join the others in their march.
Next the men left, leading their dogs—dried dragonblood made the curs’ hair pointy—with the big man in his black armor carrying his spear across his shoulder, a bloody dragon ear dangling from each end.
The big man paused the march by the bound hatchling. He stared down at him, the gruesome flat face working obscenely as he thought.
The Copper felt his fire bladder pulse. He managed to spew a little yellow stream of sulfurous saliva across the dragonscale-covered boot.
The man chuckled. “That’s more like it,” he said in his rough, uninflected Drakine. “I’m your enemy. You may as well know my name. I’m called the Dragonblade. Know that I did all this—with your help.”
Why didn’t the man end the misery? Strike off his head, obliterate each bloody memory, the horror of what he had done…
“If you’re my enemy, why don’t you kill me as well?”
Perhaps the man sensed his torment, decided to leave him with the pain, alone in a cavern with the stripped bodies of his family. He just adjusted the burden across his broad back and called something out to his companions.
“Will you not kill me?” Some little flicker within him still wanted to live, then, for he waited for an answer.
The man expelled a long breath. “You should be wiped out. Bestial. Craven. Look at you. You sold your birthright for a mouthful of silver. The sooner the last remnants of the tyrant-wings are gone, the better for the world.
“Besides, I slay only dragons.” He set down his spear and drew his long sword. The Copper shut his eyes again, and he felt a sharp tap along his back. Then a throbbing agony flared, worse with each beat of his synchronized hearts.
“Farewell, worm.”
The Copper opened his eyes and saw a jagged rent next to his spine. Exposed meat and bone gleamed among torn scale. It hurt worse than the battering his tail had taken. He took a cautious breath—his lungs were still intact, though it hurt to breathe. The man had crippled his dormant left wing!
Chapter 6
He panted in his binding, pain plaguing both body and spirit. He lay there for a long time, thinking slow, dark, wounded thoughts as his blood thickened across his back.
Mother had told him once to overcome difficulties. How did one overcome oneself? Self-destruction?
Hunger saved him, hunger and the sound of squeaking rats. He heard them moving toward the egg shelf.
He wiggled his head around and began to chew at his bindings. He bent as he reached for the straps on his saa and incautiously brushed his back wound against the cave floor, white-hot agony leaving him quivering for a moment, and when he came out of the hurt his brain took a moment to remember where he was. He forced his head between his sii and tore through the back bindings.
That done, he lay for a moment, too weak to do anything but breathe.
He crawled toward the egg shelf and saw a ghastly heap atop it, the end of a severed neck dangling off the egg shelf, cave moss in a tiny splash of light where the blood had pooled. Rats, fat on dragonflesh, crept along the cave wall, stupid and weakened by gorging.
He tore into them, biting and flinging them hard against the cave wall, and they dove for their cracks. One was too fat to fit back into his shelter, and the Copper solved his problem for him by biting him in half.
He didn’t dare climb the egg shelf. If he got up there and saw what remained of his mother and sister, he’d go mad.
He found a riven helm and nibbled off some chain links. The metal tasted better even than rat. With that he remembered Father’s hoard cave.
