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“What’s dragon tradition to humans?” Wistala replied. “If we keep our word, do our duty, they’ll know they can rely on us in the future.”
“We should keep our word for ourselves, no matter what the humans think,” Takea said.
“A future we won’t live to see,” another replied.
“Maybe,” Wistala said. “No one knows. But every day we create a future. Our fight here creates a better one.”
“I still say they deserve these steppe-demons. Letting us die up here in the cold, alone. It’s their lands. I would not expect a bunch of dwarves to die protecting my tunnel.”
“The rest of you may go, if you wish,” Wistala said. “I’m staying here. I will prove it.” She tore off the brace on her wing, threw it down, and smashed it on an angled rock, breaking it anew.
“There,” she said through the pain. “I can’t fly off.”
Little Takea could take no more. She ran and stood before Wistala. “How do we live, Firemaids?”
“Together!” they responded.
“How do we fight?”
“Together!”
“Then how should we die?”
“Together!”
She organized all her Firemaids into pairs or trios. One would always keep watch for the roc-riders while the other dug sleeping holes in the snowdrifts or stole down into the pass looking for a loose horse or a lost dog to eat.
It was while watching the drakka melt snow for everyone to drink that Wistala had her idea.
A dam of ice and snow had built up on the southern slope. Snow exposed to the sunlight and warming spring winds was melting and running down into the pass, but as it passed into the shadows of ridges and other mountains, it froze again.
The mass created hung heavy in the mountains, an avalanche waiting to happen.
They tried making noise, for noise sometimes triggers an avalanche, they knew, but the loudest dragon roars had no effect on the ice-dam and the glacier of snow behind.Their cries brought satisfying sounds of alarm from the end of the pass.
Wistala studied it, remembering what Rainfall had taught her about bridges, loads, keystones, and so on. It seemed to her that the ice-dam resembled an upside-down bridge, with a line of rocks and boulders blocking it.
She waited for a storm to try her theory. As the blowing snow reduced the horizon to a few dragonlengths and turned the sky a smoky gray, they went to the base of the dam.
“If we can’t block the pass ourselves, maybe ice and snow will do our work for us. Ready?”
“Be sure to take off as it gives way.”
“If it gives way,” a Firemaid said. “But what about you?”
Wistala pointed with her tail-tip to the cliffside just to the left of the dam. “I’ll dash there.”
“Hope you’re a good dasher.”
“Together,” Wistala said.
They vented their flame across the base of the ice dam.
The ice and snow, or possibly rock, groaned. Wistala heard cracks.
Wistala remembered being caught in the tunnel as a hatchling with Auron. They’d battered their way out with their tails, Auron hurling himself against the ice with his body until it broke.
She turned, beat the rock with her tail, beat it until she smelled blood.
