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“I’d simply switch allegiances. The strongest faction is always willing to buy more strength. They pay a little less than the desperate, but it’s more enjoyable to win.” He looked at his tattered wing. “Less hazardous too, but that doesn’t seem to enter your reckoning. I shall have a long job with hemp and dart here tonight.”
“Some victory. Leaving those awful horsemen to skewer screaming children.”
“You’ve not seen much of the world if you’re surprised by such behavior. You can’t expect better from blighters or men.” He lowered himself, set his wings at an angle to deflect blows, wing-spurs up and ready to close on neck or tail, and advanced, bent a little to his right side so his tail could be brought into action as well. “I give you one more chance to show the sense I credited you with those years ago when you quit the Sadda-Vale.”
Wistala felt her fringe rise. “Don’t speak of last chances to a dragonelle with jaw and limbs intact.”
He dragon-dashed forward.
She washed the wall in flame as she retreated. He broke through the wall of fire as though it were nothing but a winter mist.
“You think pain will deter me?” he asked. “I am a dragon. Pain only makes me more resolved.”
“I never doubted your dragonhood. But it’s well-singed.”
She edged back. She could make one last stand at the mouth of the tunnel to the library-cave. She would have good tunnel to defend and he would be contending with verticals. He’d be fighting her and his own weight.
Wistala wondered why he didn’t roar. Male dragons, in her limited experience, made a good deal of noise when they fought, especially when in pain. DharSii conserved his breath, struck, struck again. She’d never felt such power in a blow before. It reminded her of a mountain-troll, toughened by climbing. He struck, not biting, but stabbing forward with nose-tip and tail-point, and with each strike she heard her own scale breaking.
He battered her. He never closed, never came to grips in a manner that might allow her to claw or bite. She managed to latch on to his crest, but came away with a bloody sii and a torn-out claw when he recoiled.
“Yield!” he said, his voice oddly calm. “Cry settled! Cry, curse it all, cry!”
“Never!” she managed, wondering what in the six skies “cry settled” was supposed to mean.
His nose guard was cracked and sat askew, giving his snout the appearance of being bent a little. If she weren’t so battered and bruised, she might have laughed.
Her tail felt emptiness behind. She’d been driven right to the brink of the pit—
She batted one of the cauldrons filled with hot oil with her tail. It broke loose from its chains and sent a shower of oil toward him. The oil hissed as it struck on his flank and he scrambled to get out of the way.
Seeing a chance, she rushed forward, slipping as she passed over the spilled oil, hardly hot anymore after expending its burn in the first instant of striking the cool stone.
They reared up, grappling, biting and snapping. Wistala had always counted herself strong, and for a moment she bent him back—
But then her saa slid.
The oil might have cooled, but the footing was treacherous. DharSii lunged. She heard his hot panting in her ear, felt his breath beating at her neck as they strained, his griff locked in hers. Her tail sought purchase but found only empty air—
Then she was over.
She fell with a shriek. Just as she heard DharSii gasp something—it may have been “no”—her own frightened wail overwhelmed his word.
She tried to open her wings, a natural instinct, but while the chasm was wide it was not wide enough for that. She heard something snap, felt a shock, heard a flapping and realized one wing was broken, whipping wildly as she spun down—but the other was open, turning her fall into a crazy spin, like those spinning one-winged seeds those tall trees dropped in Hypatia’s northern forests.
She bounced off the wall, or a projection, and continued her fall, some instinct keeping that one wing open.
It was the most terrifying moment of her life.
Later she wondered how long she fell. It felt like an eternity, a day, but it couldn’t have been more than a few moments, for when she finally struck she could still see a circle of light above, not quite a star but far smaller than the moon.
Her eyes perceived a bump in the circle. Natural irregularity, one of the oil-pots, or DharSii?
She’d landed on something spongy. The soggy slap shocked her; she felt wet, clinging wet, all around.
Stunned for a moment, she could only lie there, looking up at that far-off circle of light, a wet, rotting smell like a barrel-full of last year’s swampwater, alternately revolting and comforting—the latter because a dying dragon would have more important things on her mind, one would think, than mouldering water.
Of all the dragons in the world to appear here—she couldn’t have been more distressed if she’d just fought AuRon. Of course, there weren’t many dragons left; she’d looked hard enough when she first uncased her wings. Would the hot oil scar him?
