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The greatest summer priestly festivals in Hypatia didn’t draw a third as many people. Yet these were warriors, with feathers and furs trimming shield and scabbard, under the painted bones tingling wind chimes of a hundred nomadic princedoms.
No wonder DharSii had brought a warning. Had he told of another army such as this to the south? She’d heard talk of it.
She wondered what the Red Queen had promised the princes of the Ironriders to gain their cooperation. Loot? Would each warrior be allowed to carry off one woman and one child as slaves, bound across the leather and sheepskin of their saddles?
What did Mother say about fighting? Hit them where they’re thin. A deer is vulnerable at the leg or neck. A man at the knee, elbow, and throat. Of course, dwarves present a problem—they’re thick everywhere to look at. Thin only in flexibility, dwarves, and she’d improvised her way into breaking a king who would not bend.
The Ironriders ran thin in this pass.
“Excellent ground, Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, when she took her up after dusk that night to view the pass. “I have never seen a finer place for dragons to do battle.”>“We will make do somehow. We came to fight, not to eat. Your lands and flocks will remain undisturbed. If there is fighting, we will find sustenance.”
Roff laughed. “A dragon-army at war. To think I lived to see such things.”
“I will ride as quickly as I can to see to the muster. We meet again at Hesturr!”
She brought her dragons north into familiar lands in easy stages, flying at dawn and dusk. Under Ayafeeia’s direction they flew north in four groups, with the lead turning south every few horizons and flying south until they were the back group. By such crossing patterns, watchers on the ground might be confused.
They landed in the ancient Hypatian ruins of Hesturr, piles of overgrown rubble that some would call picturesque. To Wistala they brought back mostly bad memories—the trip that ended in the loss of her father and Rainfall’s wounding that night of the brush with the old thane, Vog.
Now the ruins of a great city held only sheep. The shepherds ran as the dragons landed and began to explore.
“Thick forests around here,” Ayafeeia said. “Bad ground for fighting, especially against horsemen. They can use the trees as cover. We can’t go after them without breaking wings.”
Wistala suspected that the shepherds of Hesturr would be missing a few sheep when next they counted. Drakka kept flitting off to hunt and returning with bits of wool stuck in their snouts.
The lack of discipline rankled. “We came here to make friends, not impoverish the locals. The thane will give us sheep enough once he catches up to us.”
Ayafeeia sent out dawn and dusk patrols to make sure the Ironriders weren’t already on their way. They reported nothing of interest except game and livestock. Wistala warned them away from the livestock again.
Her maidmother granted her permission to visit the inn near Mossbell.
Either the village had shrunk, despite the new buildings, or she’d grown.
She could only pay a brief visit to the Green Dragon Inn, sticking her head in through the half-door in the back as in the old days, after receiving many embraces upon her landing.
The cats seemed most disturbed by her presence. Old Yari-Tab had long since died, but one of her kittens was now an aged, scrawny black cat named Aroo.
“Does the rainy season end soon, you think?” he asked Wistala.
“Wistala! Your brother has been here,” Hazeleye said.
In response to that, she had to tell the story. And then tell it again, with fewer digressions into what the Lavadome was, who the Firemaids were, and why demen would bind and starve a dragon.
Widow Lessup still lived, though she had difficulty getting about.
They were still talking when Ragwrist and his mate, or rather, wife, Dsossa, rode in on lathered mounts.
“Can we expect a visit at Mossbell as well?”
“I must return to my comrades at Tumbledown.”
They talked of war and trade on the bridge. Ragwrist had a plan for taking apart the repaired center span of the great bridge that his estate was responsible for keeping in order and hiding the pieces in Wistala’s old troll-cave.
“AuRon left some kind of message for you there, if you wish to read it.”
She did, that night. It was detailed instructions on how to fly to the Isle of Ice and which dragon to ask for and some talk of wolves.
She came to regret the trip. It reminded her of how happy she’d been at Mossbell. Perhaps, once she’d helped the Firemaids of the Lavadome and paid off, in part, the debt she could never pay in full, she would be able to return. This troll-cave was a splendid spot, though it needed a good cleaning thanks to the rooks and pelicans.
