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“Let’s fly! To stay is death.”
AuSurath rose into the air but stopped with a jerk. A troll had him by the tail and one rear saa. He clawed with the other in a flapping panic.
“Too heavy,” AuSurath grunted.
“I’ve got it, old friend. Avenge me!”
Gundar ran lightly down his back, drawing his sword, launched himself off his tail, and landed atop the troll. His shining dagger fell, and rose again covered in green-and-black slime. He tore through the troll’s flesh like a rat digging into a corpse, using both hand and blade to tear at the thing’s shoulder.
With a mighty blow, Gundar plunged his dagger deep into the joint of the limb anchoring him. A second stab and the troll relaxed, falling as its blood pumped out into the night.
AuSurath rose, flapping hard. Two onrushing trolls jumped for him and collided with a scaly thunk!
He wheeled and Gundar looked up at him. His rider gave a quick salute—and was dashed into dressed meat and naked bone by the fist-swipe of the dying troll.
AuSurath watched pieces of Gundar fall, numb and cold and shocked and then his wings took over and, driven by horror, they bore him off into the night.
It took him the entire flight to the delvings to come to terms with the idea that the Heavy Wing of the Aerial Host as he’d known it was no more. The Grand Commander had fallen in battle, as had almost all of the dragons, yet the Wing Commander escaped. What would the gossips in the Lavadome say?
They didn’t understand the circumstances. They hadn’t seen dragons torn apart like cooked chickens on the riverbank. They would still judge him, though.
He followed the shining river to the delvings, saw the welcoming orange and yellow lights of lanterns at the sandy landing at midriver.
No. He couldn’t face the enormity of it just yet. Something was nagging at him.
AuSurath was not a dragon of exemplary reason. When experience and training couldn’t guide him, he had a hard time laying out arguments for and against. He was the first to admit it. But he had a way of feeling his way through to a solution in strange circumstances. At the moment, instinct told him that he needed to speak to Varatheela, perhaps more than he’d ever needed to speak to anyone.
Something was dreadfully wrong with what had happened at the riverbank. He couldn’t cite the exact reason just yet, but he was sure of it, just as he would know a mammal by the general shape and fur, without going through a catechism of questions about live birth and using milk to feed its young.
Well, if they were marching up the Old North Road, they shouldn’t be very hard to find.
It took him two days of steady flight without food, rest, or much more than a mouthful of water to reach them.
The way he saw it, there was little point in sleeping, anyway. His dreams, as sure as sunrise, would put him back among the trolls on the riverbank, and nothing on earth could make him return there ever again if he could help it.
They were resting in a town plaza in front of an inn, near the longest bridge on the road. The inn had, appropriately enough, a dragon on it.
The objects were wavy and unreal-looking. The world seemed to sway as he landed.
“Betrayed. NiVom wants us dead,” he managed, just.
When he had his wind back he continued. “We were stationed on the riverbank so we could be attacked. We were just waiting for it. Gundar dead. BaMelphistran dead. All dead. Murder.”
He tasted wine in his mouth. They were attempting to revive him. It worked just long enough for him to say:
“They don’t need dragons anymore, Father. Something dreadful is driving the Tyr.”
Before he finally dropped into an exhausted unconsciousness.
BOOK THREE
Outcome
“ALL TALES END IN TRAGEDY. FOLLOW THE HERO LONG ENOUGH,
YOU’LL STEP ACROSS HIS CORPSE.”
—Ballad of the Dragon Kings (Elvish origin)
