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It wasn’t HeBellereth.
HeBellereth fallen, the Lavadome overrun—and I’m responsible, Wistala thought.
The dwarfs, in open ranks, formed a crescent around Imperial Rock. From the height, they reminded Wistala of ants among the beetles of their war machines.
They’d taken captives. Thralls mostly, but also a few drakes and drakka. They had them bound, carried on poles, heavy axmen to either side.
“Parley!” a great fat dwarf with a booming voice shouted. His beard glowed redly.
Wistala and a few others cautiously looked over the edge of the gardens. Parley, when by appearances they were charging toward victory.
But appearances could be deceiving. Wistala was reminded of her first battle with the Firemaids, when a last, suicidal charge by starving demen had been turned back in the Star Tunnel by a few disciplined dragonelles and drakka. These Wheel of Fire dwarves had a ragged air about them, their shields and helmets were patched and dinged, and hardly a beard among them glowed. Only a dwarf who’d suffered a prolonged period of poverty let his beard go dark, without even sugar-water to keep the lichens they cultivated in their thick beards thriving.
Was this attack also a last, desperate gasp of a dying nation?
“We come only for Wistala, who betrayed our king to his death. Give her to us, and we release the captives!”
That may be, but bearer-dwarfs and slave blighters hammered and notched together war machines just behind the first rank of fighters.
“Give us Wistala!” a chorus of dwarfs called.
“Wistala! Wistala!” they chanted. One of the war machines fired a helmet full of burning coals that exploded when they struck Imperial Rock.
“Do it,” a court dragon named CuRemon urged. “All they want is you. Trade your life for all of ours.”
“You think the dwarfs would stop with me?” Wistala asked.
“We’d only be one dragon less in finding out,” a drakka said.
“Stop that, now,” NoSohoth said. He turned to Wistala. “Don’t listen to them. The Tyr doesn’t negotiate with invaders—unless it’s terms of their surrender.”
The dwarf crescent was spreading. And thinning.
She tried to pick out detail on the dwarfs but only had a vague impression of heavy armor and beards. They moved deliberately, trotting, but they must have been very tired. What faces they could see were thin and haggard.
They’d come a long way, quickly, fighting hard against the current, and then they’d battled their way into the Lavadome. Dwarfs were famously indefatigable, but if she could break up their attack somehow—
“NoSohoth, I’ll lead the demen in an attack on their left. When we engage, have the Drakwatch attack.”
“But that’ll leave no one to defend—” CuRemon sputtered.
“No one? The Imperial Rock is full of dragons, Wyrr, Skotl, and Ankelene. They’ll have to fight for once. Even dead, some of them are so fat they’ll plug up the entrance until the dwarfs drag them out.”
“You hear me,” she told the spectators atop Imperial Rock. “You look like dragons and speak like them. Let’s see you fight like them, for once in your pampered lives!”
They grumbled, but a few made for the passageway down. Odd that they were more outraged at the Queen-Consort upbraiding them than a band of invading dwarves wrecking as they came. Maybe her parents had a point—if the tales about their origins were true. Dragons shouldn’t allow themselves to get too civilized.
Hurrying to the other side of the Lavadome, she spread her wings and—
“Wistala, don’t, it’s too heavy!” NoSohoth shouted.
Remarkably, her wings didn’t fold on her. Of course, she always had been a strong dragon. She glided down toward the Ankelene pyramid. She tried a few experimental beats—she might be able to hold herself up, even in the Tyr’s armor.
The Tyr’s demen legion were arrayed around the Ankelene Pyramid, defending the archives and workshops and healing nooks.
She called on the demen to gather.
“This is the day, demen legion,” Wistala said. “The enemies of your blood stand before you!”
