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They came screaming out of the sky as the dragons were occupied dropping fire on stone-throwing machines that they later decided had been built solely to provide them with targets for their fire. The rocs raked two dragonelles across the back, tearing wing and ligament and sending them tumbling through the air into the Ironriders.
If the fall didn’t kill them, they were soon speared by the Ironriders.
Now it was the Ironriders’ turn to jeer.
The roc-riders stole the food they’d kept on ice on a high glacier. One lucky rider plucked a drakka and lifted off with her, carried screaming higher and higher as two dragonelles tried to pursue in vain. The roc dropped her, just to hear her scream as she fell, and Wistala cursed the eggs that had sheltered them.
They managed to avenge themselves on two roc-riders when Wistala suggested a tactic that had very nearly worked on her when a troll plunged out of the sky upon her. They buried two dragonelles in snow so they wouldn’t be seen, and then they fell on the riders as they rode through the pass. The dragons did better than trolls, though—they could use their wings to control their dives. When they struck the riders, rider and mount disappeared in a burst of blood, flesh, and feathers.
Takea returned that night with the top half of a beak, wearing it as a human would a helmet.
Now the sky and the heights belonged to the Ironriders. Wistala and what was left of the Firemaids had to keep clear of swooping roc-riders and their arrows.
“We could sneak away. Why do we hold this pass alone? Where are the men who would fight at our side?”
“They have troubles enough with the riders who are making it across the pass.”
“How long do we stay here?”
Wistala bristled. “Until they stop coming or we breathe our last.”
The Firemaids needed more than that, she decided. Each would lay down her life gladly if they guarded the mouth of a tunnel that had hatchlings at the other end. But the reasons for fighting here—how could she put them into words?
“I believe humans will never trust us unless we prove our loyalty to our word and their law by dying for it.”
“What’s human law to us?” a Firemaid asked, both nostrils and lips caked with blood and the marks of the desperate dagger-strokes of some Ironrider she’d finished off. “I say withdraw!”
A Firemaid muttered that they would be climbing out if they withdrew. There were no longer enough healthy dragonelles to carry the drakka.
“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.
