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She heard a faint whoosh of flame being loosed and thought she saw shadows dance far off down the tunnel.
The blade poked into her side, just above her mainheart.
“Hold! My fellow shes are coming,” Wistala said in their tongue, wishing she knew the deman word for surrender. “A fresh-killed dragon, and I expect I’ll spurt a bit as you ram that thing home. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple of demen reeking of dragonblood. I wonder what they’ll do?”
Their big frog eyes widened still further. “Oh, bury it,” the biggest of the guards said. “We kill a prisoner and they’ll hunt us to the bottom hole.”
“Aye—Firemaids avenge their own,” his friend agreed.
This time Wistala was happy to be taken as a Firemaid and she made no effort to dissuade them.
“No, kill her,” one of the demen at the contraption said. “One less dragon, and we can hide and then come back and eat up for once on her body.”
“Liver as big as a boat,” one said, saliva dripping.
She saw Paskinix himself leaping up the tunnel, rapping the wall each time he landed.
“Rally, rally, all rally,” he called. “Don’t kill the prisoner. We need her to negotiate. But for your mother teat’s sake, rally!”
“Rally? With what?” a guard asked.
“Our bluff’s been called,” the one at the lightning-fork agreed. “Escape!”
Paskinix began to stagger, exhausted. Fire behind silhouetted his spines.
“Save the machine!” the one at the sparking two-tipped spear called.
“Save your lives, you breedslime,” the big guard said. “Find a hole tight and dark!”
They rushed off, pushing and pulling their wheeled contraption, dragging the great spear.
“Cowards,” Paskinix called.
Wistala knocked him off his feet with a painful sweep of her wing.
He folded himself into a squat, facing the wall as before.
“Always figured I’d be finished in my sleep from one of my sons, not some stinking dragon.”
Wistala saw green scale reflecting firelight. Two wingless drakka raced forward and began sniffing around at trails, and a third leaped on Paskinix, who made no move to resist. His spines hardly twitched as she settled her saa-claws against his gut.
A fledged female, not much older than Wistala but with a much smaller fringe, surveyed the scene. She saw other heads behind and heard faint, frantic taps here and there in the distance.
“Flame and fame, you’re in wretched shape,” the dragonelle said in oddly accented Drakine. The grotesque bat rode her head, hanging about her griff like some kind of leathery, hairy collar. Wistala noticed her wings were striped with purple, yellow, and white. “Half starved and broke-winged. Best have a meal right away, so you’ve the strength to get out of these damp holes.”
“He did not kill me when he had the chance,” Wistala said. “I will not kill him.”
Paskinix turned wide eyes at her.
“I’m hungry,” the one on him said.
“No,” Wistala said. “Please, let him live.”
“Good work, Takea,” the painted stranger said. “That’s the way to hold down a prisoner.”
In fairness, he hadn’t resisted, Wistala thought, but the drakka seemed pleased. Her undersized fringe rose.
“Thank you, from nose-tip to tail,” Wistala said. “My name is Wistala Irelianova.”
