AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Spirits and snowdrifts, they’d done it! She knew the weather at these heights—it would be full summer before the pass would be warm enough to melt all this down into the Ba-drink.
“It’s alive,” the rider called, in Parl, to a group of Ironriders behind. They wore baskets upon their shoes to allow themselves to walk on the snow.
“You. Hold still,” he ordered in Parl.
She wouldn’t be a prisoner again. She’d rather breathe her last in the clean mountain air than be flung into some new dungeon.
Wistala realized that only a thin layer of snow covered her body. She flexed her body, struck out with all the power in her cold-stiff tail, and a wave of snow flew out toward the bird.
As birds always do when startled, it flapped its wings and jumped back.
That was all Wistala needed. Her body stiffened and she spat flame—a thin stream, more a series of torfs than an actual stream of fire given that she’d been on short rations lately—striking bird and rider.
Both screamed and they flew off, the rider beating at the liquid fire across his saddle.
The Ironriders waddled comically, dropping the lines and chains they’d brought to drag her out of the snow.
Wistala felt too tired and cold to give chase. But shadows crossed the sun, shadows of dragons—
“Wistala, we are coming!” cried the Firemaids.
Drakka came shooting down the snowy slope, heads up, sii and saa tight against their sides, steering with their tails.
Roc-riders, drawn by the motion, dived and whirled, their riders firing arrows.
The drakka shot past her, flying like scaly arrows across the snow.
The Ironriders didn’t have a chance. They couldn’t run with the baskets on their feet, and they couldn’t move through the snow with the baskets off. One after another fell, knocked down by the drakka.
Takea lay behind, an arrow through her throat.
Wistala went to her side.
“Bats! Some bats here!” Wistala called.
“It doesn’t hurt, Wistala,” Takea whispered. Wistala put her head close to the drakka to better hear her words. “I can feel the wound. It is bad, isn’t it? But it doesn’t hurt. Strange.” She still wore the brown beak on her head. Wistala thought the horn-lines in it made it look like an agate.
“We’ll get that shaft out and close you up. You’ll sit the rest of this fight out.”
Takea tapped her tail. Wistala heard her hearts fluttering. “Sister, do not lie to me. I can feel my hearts slowing. We loosed HaVok himself on them, didn’t we?”
“For a while,” Wistala said. She’d failed. She’d failed her sisters in the Firemaids, all for a stupid hatchling’s fancy-dream.
“I would have opened my wings next year. I wonder if some male would have wanted me, with the glory of a fight like this to my name.”
“I expect so,” Wistala said.
She removed something from deep in the pocket of flesh behind her ear. It was the rabbit’s foot. “Tell Zathan—I must break my promise to him. Return . . .” She began to pant.
Wistala, half choking and blinking tears, looped the little ring on her wing-spur.
Takea’s voice grew quiet and clear. “Pity the humans never showed up. It’s a good idea you have, though, Wistala. I mean, why couldn’t we share white cities in the sun. Dragons would even make fine thanes, I expect. We could see brigand camps from miles off and keep the roads safe. Dragons could even—”
Her head lolled and her body seemed to shrink, save for the swelling wing-cases.
The Drakwatch pried Paskinix, with some difficulty, out of his hole. He, of course, had a hidden exit, but the bats had discovered it and an expert blighter thrall-netter waited where the bolt-hole joined river-tunnel.
Paskinix showed admirable dignity as they brought him before the Copper in the empty assembly hall. He was so gaunt the Copper wondered if a soft tail-tap would pass right through him. The horny plates of his self-grown armor looked oversized, some old trophy of a ancestral deman worn in tribute, perhaps.
