“As was my home cave until the dwarves across the lake came. Let us put an end to this feud. At least the one that exists between your family and mine.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll know when you have children of your own. Where can I find your father?”
She hesitated. “He rode with his armsmen and dogs, answering the call of the mountain king to hunt you down. He took the north trail.”
Wistala sighed. “I’ll make it easier for him to find me.”
“You shouldn’t. He will kill you.”
“Perhaps,” Wistala said. “Will you consider what I said?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Now I go to convince your father.”
With some pain she rose into the air and winged across the lake. She found a trail, an old sort of road winding along the lakeside and over little chasms on bridges and between thin, wind-bent trees. The road was nothing compared to Rainfall’s, it was little more than a paved goat trail. It looked old enough for blighters to have built it. Old as war.
But also old as bridges. She alighted on one, and looked to where her eye caught a glint of metal. She retreated to the far side of the ancient bridge and waited.
The file of riders soon came over the rise and down the path toward the bridge, which leaped across a chasm to waters that lapped where her tail would reach if she let it dangle. Instead she wrapped it about the bridge; the masonry looked loose enough to be pulled apart if she exerted herself.
The men spotted her and let out halloos. They dismounted and clapped visors across helms, notched arrows into bows, and the Dragonblade came forward with spear and sword.
With a shout, one of his handlers released the dogs, who poured across the bridge in a bristle-backed river.
Wistala flapped her wings, hard, held fast by her tail. The force of the windstorm sent the dogs plummeting off the bridge into the waters below—some with a knock or two, but they swam to rocks and climbed upon them to bark up at their now impossible-to-reach prey.
The Dragonblade stepped forward, looked down at the vociferous, dripping pack, pulled back his visor and laughed loud and long. He had to lean on his spear shaft.
“Dragonelle,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You are hard on my dog packs.”
So he did know the name for a female dragon!
“Your daughter told me I could find you on this road,” Wistala said.
The Dragonblade’s face went white, and he raised his spear for a throw. His son behind came forward with a bow ready. “If you’ve—”
“I haven’t touched so much as a winter cabbage,” Wistala said. “I was all politeness to your girl.”
“I will still kill you,” the Dragonblade said.
“Let me speak first,” Wistala insisted. “Our kind have shed rivers of blood, matched against each other. I would have the flow stopped. Shall it always be thus, one family slaughtering another, until the ending of the world?”
“Or the ending of dragons,” the Dragonblade said. “Calls for peace are always made by those at a disadvantage.”
Wistala hugged the road, covering her belly with stone, readied to parry blade or spear with wing-points. “Come then,” she said. “Let’s start the madness afresh.”
The boy raised the bow, sighted with his good eye, but his father held him back. “You must let me finish, as well.” He plunged his spear point-first into the dirt beside the road. “There’s been enough killing for one day. You came to my doorstep and did no harm—”
“You would believe a—,” his son said.
The Dragonblade glared at him. “I believe this one. And my eyes. I see no smoke at our part of the lakeshore. And shut it, you fool hounds!”
Drakossozh looked thoughtful for a moment, and the dogs, silenced for only a moment, started up again. “The dwarves will pay no more hide-bounties, at least not for a long while. Perhaps I should take up chickens. They taste better and do not singe off one’s eyebrows. You have your peace. What is your name?”
“Wistala.”
“Ah. You are only the second dragon to ever escape me, Wistala. Wear that with pride, as you do that little bauble between your eyes.”
“Who was the first?” Wistala said.
“A drake, a young gray.”
Wistala’s hearts stopped. “What? When?”
“A dozen years ago or so,” he said. “I’ve heard no more trouble of him, I expect he died raiding some farmer’s pigpen. No scales, you know. He would be—wait, you two must be related.”
“I hope so,” Wistala said, wishing the Dragonblade’s dogs would cease barking. It detracted from the solemnity of the moment.
“Now I do fear to let you go. Were two such resourceful dragons to meet up again . . . but something in my heart says it will not go ill for me, or my family. Go, Wistala. No blade or arrow of mine will touch you.”
The boy fired, and the Dragonblade threw up a blur of an elbow that knocked the arrow off its path. It skittered harmlessly down the rocks. Wistala gulped, it was just as well they had not fought.
“Eliam, you vex me. But we will talk at home. Go, Wistala, and let my dogs quiet, before I finish off the pack myself.”
Wistala took a deep breath and launched herself into the air. She watched the spear point until she was out of range.
The old dragon proverb: Trust, but keep an eye open.
Epilogue
Wistala sat in the old troll cave, near the entrance where the air was cleaner, and dictated her memories of the battle that destroyed the Wheel of Fire, and much of the combined barbarian power in the north, to Lada.
Of Rayg she had no happy news. A great many dwarves fled down their mysterious holes to the darkroads as Thul’s Hardhold fell, and as Rayg hadn’t been carried off by the barbarians or been found among the dead, she assumed he’d fled for his life with them. The barbarians had caused so much destruction, it was doubtful that he could return through Hardhold, even if he wanted to. But he was in the company of dwarves who would respect him, very different circumstances from abject slavery in the north.
The thaneship had passed to Ragwrist, of all people, as Mossbell was the largest estate in the thanedom with Galahall divided between Hammar’s barbarian relations. Wistala had sold him Mossbell for a song—literally, for he had a wonderful voice. Now Ragwrist complained of his generosity to his tenants, driving him to the poverty of only drinking wines from the less renowned vineyards.
The circus went to Brok, who kept it out of barbarian lands, where dwarves were increasingly unwelcome, perhaps justifiably.
The Green Dragon Inn still stood, and tall tales had grown up around it and its sign. People in later years reached up to touch it for luck, and heard stories so bizarre and inaccurate, Wistala would have smiled to hear.
Widow Lessup retired with Yari-Tab in the modestly restored Mossbell hall and devoted herself to feeding and supervising the surviving cats, who kept the mice from nibbling the hooves of Dsossa’s “north herd” of white horses.
What remained of the Wheel of Fire Dwarves came under the leadership of Lord Lobok, who, if he ever led his fighting dwarves out of the mountains again, would be assured an entertaining place in the annals of military history.
Speaking of which, Wistala had no particular desire to accomplish a war history, but the librarians had asked for a dragon’s-eye memoir, and they would get one. It was the least an Agent of Librarians could do, before setting off in search of her brother.
As she talked, chose phrases, and answered the occasional question, Wistala’s thoughts kept returning to the dilemma of dragons. On the one sii, there was the sort of grasping survival of dragons like that smelly wretch in the far north—scattering, hermitage, or worst, assassination—and on the other a useful servitude, a survival that depended on being of use to others, like the man-carrying dragons more and more sailors of the northern part of the Inland Ocean reported.
Could dragons cooperate, form an order like the old city-states of Hypat? Certainly an extended family could, as the odd dragons of the Sadda-Vale proved. And if they did, suppose a Masmodon or a Fangbreaker or worse arose at the council table? Selfishness and greed were not the least of dragon faults.
Oddly enough, she wished she could talk the matter over with that dragon DharSii. He had unpleasant manners, to be sure, and was the most arrogant creature who ever cracked an egg, but she could trust him to give an intelligent opinion. And perhaps even more important, an honest one. For in obtaining his opinion, she’d have to sum up her life and actions—she wondered if she’d done right or wrong, though why she should care what he would think of her past she did not know.
The Wheel of Fire would butcher no more hatchlings in their home cave, and Hammar’s half-Hypatian, half-barbarian plot to gain power in war and conquest had vanished in the catafoua mouth, and the Dragonblade had hung up his spear, even if he wasn’t exactly raising chickens. She’d kept her promises—
Save the last one to Father.
But felt little satisfaction in were-blood. Avenging her own was a grim duty, like breaking a bullock’s back in a dive so that you could eat, and just as necessary to survival. Ignoring those who kill others in the hope they won’t get around to you only means that when they appear to take your head and scales, they would apply all they learned in other victories, making your chances against them so much the worse.
