AuRon snorted. His skin had been penetrated several times in that fight. But legends tend to treat facts as seeds—what eventually grows is what counts.
“We could make them think some dragons are fighting on your side.”
“It might slow them down. Give the princedoms time to organize.”
“They’ll need that. It takes forever to get them to agree on anything, from what I’m told by my brother-in-law.”
They bade farewell that night, lest they eat the poor widow out of house and home by noon the next day. AuRon promised to give Hieba news and Nissa promised to use what remained of her funds to visit Dairuss, if the Dragon Empire ever ceased its rampage.
They hurried south along the coast and soon found signs of war. Wrecked and burned ships could be seen in the surf or pulled up on the shore. They also found a dead, half-eaten whale rolling in the surf, with unmistakable arrow-shaped dragon-bites taken out of its fatty skin.
“The Aerial Host seeks to refill their firebladders with whale-fat,” AuRon said, as they bobbed in the warm salt water beside the body.
AuRon and Wistala marked a pair of ridden dragons wheeling high together and AuRon and Wistala landed.
“My guess is that’s a patrol over their camp.”
“Do you suppose they’re there? Sleeping?”
“It’s midday, but anything’s possible,” AuRon said.
“Keep hidden. I’ll go in fast and draw off the guards. If there aren’t any other dragons, I’ll attack. If there are, I’ll fly north as fast as I can. Stay down if I’m pursued and meet me later at Nissa’s palace.”
They took water and walked forward toward the camp, resting their wings for the coming exertion and keeping hidden under tall palms. The dragons on guard continued to wheel above.
AuRon tore across the sky. The guards flew down to intercept. He executed a neat cornering swoop, loosing his flame on the boats pulled up onto the sand. It spread widely, thanks to the force of his turn. The salt-dried wood roared into flame at once.
Lightened by the contents of his firebladder, AuRon climbed to meet the diving guards. Wistala saw projectiles launched by the riders flash across the sky. Her brother dodged them like a writhing snake, flipping on his back and changing directions again in a tighter turn than the heavier guards could match.
One managed to lash out and just tear a mouthful of trailing wing.
AuRon straightened, loose skin on the right wing flapping, and put on speed in his fastest climb. His pursuers followed.
Wistala launched herself into the air, but kept low, just touching the tops of the palm trees with her wingtips. The dragons and their riders either failed to see her or kept their attention on AuRon, chasing him south.
The camp of the Aerial Host was on a wide coastal island, separated from the land by an inlet, save for a narrow, bare neck attaching it to the mainland and curving like a claw around the lagoon. A ridge of slightly higher ground thick with palms ran up the center of the island. There were stone rings here and there, old foundations for huts, Wistala imagined.
AuRon had taken care of the boats, but there were still nets. The fishermen responsible for feeding the Aerial Host were venturing out to throw seawater on their burning ships when Wistala roared out of the jungle and onto the beach, setting their draped nets alight upon their supports.
Then she turned on the supplies drawn high onto the dunes out of the tide’s reach.
She smashed barrels and casks, tore open grain bags and set them alight, and hurled anything iron she could find out into the surf. Canvas and cordage, saddle-leather and spare bowstrings, she swept it all into a great pile and set it alight.
She felt a sharp pinch in her flank and looked down to see two crossbow bolts wedged in her saa, and a third piercing the slack skin at her shoulder above the wing joint. She heard a pop and saw a hole appear in her fringe as a bolt passed through.
The warriors were brave to shoot at her, but not brave enough to shorten the distance sufficiently so their bolts could get through her scale.
“If you’re going to shoot at a dragon, kill it with the first volley,” she shouted to them, hugging the ground as she scuttled forward through the patchy grass of the dunes. “All you’ve done is rouse my ire.”
Wistala didn’t care for roaring out threats. Male dragons usually were noisy while they fought, but females went about their bloody business quickly and quietly. If she could destroy these men, though, the others of the camp might decide that it would be better to scuttle away and live another day than to die without their usual dragon allies.
She dragon-dashed forward, and the crossbow men decided to race each other in the hope that the slowest would delay her as she devoured him. Wistala spat a few torfs of flame after them, all that was left in her firebladder, then left the wreckage and began a low, palm-top-hugging flight back north.
AuRon suddenly appeared above.
“I outlasted them,” he called. “The Aerial Host shouldn’t leave their camp guarded by two old dragons forced to spend their day in the air, circling. They flagged at once and turned back east.”
“Or they went for reinforcements,” Wistala said.
They flew first northwest and then north, changing direction by an eighth of a turn every hour or so to confuse any observers on the ground, until they fell, exhausted, into a patch of thick, high grass and bamboo adjacent to a swamp. The wet marsh beneath felt like batting-stuffed cushions to their weary muscles and aching joints.
They were too tired to eat much, save for a few lizards, beetles, snails, and leeches tongued up from the marshy water.
“I smell pig,” Wistala said. “Let’s sleep for an hour, then try driving them.”
“I’m too tired to sleep,” AuRon said, exhausted. A dragonfly with a wingspan like a sparrow hawk swooped by, gobbling up a cloud of insects and alternately exploring and being driven away by acidic dragon-scent, and AuRon lazily snapped it down.
“Then you can keep watch, if you like.”
“We’ve declared ourselves open enemies of the Empire,” AuRon said, panting. “A gray dragon with a twice-snipped tail won’t be hard to identify, or a long, broad green.”
“Worried that Natasatch or your offspring will suffer?”
“Imfamnia likes Natasatch, for some reason. The two in the Aerial Host will be fine. It’s my daughter in Uldam I fear for.”
“She’s clever and unconventional,” Wistala said, fading. “I shouldn’t worry.”
She fell into a deep, rasping sleep and AuRon laid his neck and tail across her. His color-shifting skin ran with thin stripes and green streamers like the bamboo all around. He slowly relaxed, keeping one eye on the sky until night fell.
They both woke slowly and stretched aching bodies. They hunted under a moisture-furred moon. AuRon managed to drive the pigs Wistala had smelled toward her and she brought a big male down with a pounce. Its skin was a disgusting mass of ticks and leeches, but the flesh was tasty.
“Quite a feast for setting out to war,” AuRon said.
“I like honesty,” Wistala said. “They would have killed us quietly, if they could. Now they’ll have to be noisy about it. Questions might be asked. Why we, after the massacre at the Ghioz feast, suddenly oppose NiVom. Odd, though. We’re both now set against something we love. You with your mate, me with poor old Hypatia.”
“Poor old Hypatia is corrupt, thanks to the dragons,” AuRon said.
“We can’t fight them here.”
“Obviously. We’re only two.”
“Then back to the Sadda-Vale? It’s advantageous ground. Those fogs would work to our advantage.”
“Even if we could get Scabia and the rest in the air, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Our brother is up to something. While I slept, I wore my dragonhelm. He’s in a deep plot—I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a little like being sure the sun is moving. When is our brother not up to something?”
“I have a sense that’s he’s in difficulty and there are dragons involved. A tall tower on a jagged peninsula overlooking water.”
“Dragons and a tall tower, eh? He’s in Juutfod.”
“Do you know it?”
“A little. It’s the last remnant of our family’s old enemy, the Circle of Man and the wizard who needed hatchlings so bad he hired the Dragonblade and the Wheel of Fire to hunt for them.”
“I thought that story was long since ended. You took care of the wizard, I avenged our family name upon the dwarfs, and our brother killed the Dragonblade.”
“The story continues as long as we live,” AuRon said.
Wistala stretched her wings. “I can manage more flying now, I think. Let’s continue the tale.”
Chapter 10
Scabia the White had more than the usual Sadda-Vale burdens on her mind. The Outside World, which she’d done her best to avoid and ignore, had intruded on her precious hall.
She welcomed her troubles in a way. In the long years of just her daughter and her insipid but well-formed mate eating a long march of similar meals, over conversation as unvarying as the drips through the hole in the great rotunda of Vesshall, they might as well have been three statues frozen in time and space with a group of blighters polishing them and keeping vermin from moving into cracks and crevices.
