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“They’ll be red with more than sunlight, if we’re still there when you come.”
“Every rider that can be kept from crossing is a victory,” Roff said. “We’ll meet again, Wistala.”
“I hope so.”
The thane pointed to his retainers and standard-bearer, and they departed.
The drakka were mounting for the ride to the pass.
“I must send a messenger back to the Lavadome,” Ayafeeia said. She’d been taking more and more charge of matters as the time of battle grew closer. “Angalia, you’ve been ill since those swamps. I will send you back to the Lavadome to let our Tyr know where we will make our stand.”
Angalia, a pale green Firemaid with the wrinkles about the snout and flanks that showed her to be one who suffered from much sickness, nodded.
“May I send a messenger as well?” Wistala asked.
“Angalia may carry more than one message.”
“Not there. To my brother, on the Isle of Ice. A fast flier, and intelligent.”
“Yefkoa would be a good choice. She is young and fast.”
The dragonelle came forward, eager for her chance at distinction.
“Yefkoa, you must find a place strange to all of us. My brother is there. Go to the great river just north of where we camped. You can’t miss it—there’s a long bridge with a repaired patch in the center. Downstream from the bridge on the north side there’s a hole shaped like a dragon-eye. In it you’ll find instructions in Dwarvish notation for finding an island to the north.
“Find my brother AuRon there. Tell him that we have gone into battle. I know he lives with other dragons. Ask their aid, for their good and ours. If we fall, beg him, in my memory, to save those at Mossbell who I love best. Fly them to safety.”
“But—the battle.”
“Oh, from what I’ve seen we’ve a long fight ahead of us,” Ayafeeia said. “There’ll be blood enough for all of us, sisters.”
Chapter 19
The conduct of the battle of the pass surprised Wistala.
Luckily, it surprised the Ironriders even more.
It was a battle of angles and slopes and gravity, fought in mountain fogs and bright sun. The science-minded Anklenes might have called it a war between vertical and horizontal.
They arrived at the pass in the dead of night with the moon down so that they wouldn’t be spotted, circling in well north of the star-charting tower at the Wheel of Fire fortifications, which Wistala knew well from her brief time as an ally of the dwarves.
Wistala, clinging in a deep crevice so long to the mountainside as she waited for the order, finally decided the horses passing up the road were the ones in strange perspective, walking sideways before her.
Ayafeeia kept her forces hidden in the clouds of the mountaintops.
There were deep seams in the vertical mountain-face. The dragons settled themselves into them, latching on with sii, saa, and wing-spurs. One could even rest, hanging in that manner.
The drakka opened the fight in the dusk, creeping down into the pass to slay horses and pack animals following a long, triple file of riders passing through. There were no warriors tending the burdened animals.
Wistala watched it from high on the sheer mountain half of the pass. The drakka dashed and jumped on the animals, which screamed as they died. Their tenders fled, east and west, screaming in their unknown chopping tongue for help.
“We will have meat tonight. I’m sick of cold fish and burned raccoons,” Ayafeeia said.
The drakka jumped back onto the cliff-face and climbed to shelter.
“I think you fight just to fill your stomach, maidmother,” a dragonelle said.
Wistala, her throat tight with fear of battle, hid her anxiety by picking at a crevice.
