Chapter 27
When Wistala returned to her tower a score of days later, she found all of the Wheel of Fire were aquiver. The punitive expedition had not sent communication in many days, and not a few wondered at the silence.
She received a most odd note shortly after rising the next day. Yellowteeth hurried to get her minder, who hurried to get his guild-chief, who read the note and sent for the escort Wistala requested.
So it was in the company of the star-guild that she went to meet the Dragonblade on the Titan bridge.
He stood in the center, in his armor but with sword in scabbard and cloak about him, helm hanging from his belt. His broad face was much as she remembered it, perhaps a little wearier.
“I’ve long been curious to meet this Oracle dragon for some time now, but was occupied on the other side of the Inland Ocean.” For some reason Wistala was relieved. As soon as he said occupied on the other side, she feared a mention of the Sadda-Vale.
“So you’ve seen me, Drakossozh. Is there to be a duel here, under the eyes of the Wheel of Fire?”
“A duel? With vermin? Spare me your wit, creature.”
“Then I will go about my business—,” Wistala began.
“No. Walk with me. I will start no fight with you here. You have my word.”
Wistala wondered if she could trust the word of an assassin.
“I must be growing old. You are the second dragon to slip through my fingers,” he said.
“Who was the first?”
He turned toward the Hardhold. “Come. I wish to show you something, Oracle.
He led her down many sets of stairs, across chambers filled with trophies and statues, and finally down a shaft where one traveled by having the floor descend rather than going afoot. He gave a password to guards in a workshop filled with the sound of hammers and deeper pounding, and Wistala smelled hot metal and burning coal.
She passed a group of young dwarves, their faces unmasked, listening to another older dwarf talk as he pointed with a stick at various features of a hose that fed water into a series of smaller and smaller pipes, until it shot out the bottom with tremendous force. She recognized Rayg among the apprentices, the only human other than Drakossozh this far in the Hardhold.
“We’re deep in the Guild of the Armorers,” the Dragonblade said. They passed racks of weapons and stacked helms, with dwarves bent over workbenches on all sides. The symphony of noise was as chaotic as a battle, and the air thick with the tang of heated metal. “Have you ever wondered how the Wheel of Fire got its name?” he asked.
“You see the burning shield here and there,” Wistala said. “It’s an emblem.”
“They were called the Wheel of Fire before that. Here, follow.”
He passed into a quieter gallery. The ceiling here was wide but low, and Wistala smelled an oily smell like lamp fats overlaid with other workshop odors.
Long ranks of machines stood in little bays. Some had wooden platforms next to them, one or two had been wheeled out so the dwarves could work. A few of the workers gave Wistala a startled look as she crouched to get through the doors.
The pieces of craftsmanship were like great walls on wheels of assorted sizes. If there was an average, she would put that wheels were fully dwarf height and the walls perhaps twice that, but it seemed some walls and wheels came taller and some shorter, some wider and some narrower. But on each two spars jutted out from the axles of the wheels behind the wall, with handles at irregular intervals. Wistala watched a team of dwarves move one by having four dwarves stand at each spar and lift, then push it forward. Behind the shield were big tanks like water-cisterns, only with hoses and glass devices like clock faces fixed to the joints, along with assorted levers and cables connecting wheel to tanks.
But the objects at the front caught her attention more than anything.
Pipes projected from slits in the great wheeled shields. The slits, indeed the shields themselves, reminded her of overlarge dwarf battle-masks with their thin gaps so the dwarves could see and still have their eyes shielded.
Open-jawed dragon heads, horribly real, had been fixed to the front of the pipes, their faces forever frozen into snarling fury. Their eyes had been replaced by painted crystals, but otherwise they looked ready to come alive. There were heads with eight horns and heads with none, heads with green scales and heads with bronze, heads of hatchlings, drakes, drakka, dragons, dragonelles. . . .
Some were familiar.
The world spun about her. She fixed her eyes on the Dragonblade, who stood with hand on sword hilt, helmet cradled at his elbow. His knees were bent just a trifle, as though he were waiting to leap into action. Wistala noticed shadows, heard excited breathing, the alcoves just ahead.
“I’m not aware of all the mechanics to their operation,” the Dragonblade explained from somewhere on the other side of the Endless Steppe, or so it seemed to her ears. “But the turning of the wheels forces air into one of the tanks, and that air is then used to drive flame, like dragonflame, out of the other tank and through the pipe at the front. It’s ignited by a coal gas-flame there. Certainly not what a dragon is capable of, but I hear it’s terrifying in tunnel warfare.”
The dwarves had all frozen in their labors, watching her as though fixed by spellcraft.
“Most interesting,” Wistala said. “Is there another stop to the tour, or am I done?”
“You hold your anger well. Here’s another test.” He extended his gauntleted palm. In it rested two ancient Hypatian coins, one of gold, the other of silver. “I found these in the jowls of a bronze I killed on the banks of the Whitewater. There was also a female hatchling there. That hatchling wouldn’t have been you, would it?”
Wistala shot out her tongue, but the Dragonblade was quicker of hand, closed his fingers around the coins and withdrew them.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were offering me a treat,” Wistala said. “Speaking of which, I am late for my dinner.”
“A dragon who can hold her temper,” the Dragonblade said.
Just,, Wistala thought.
“There’s something about you that frightens me,” the Dragonblade said, eyebrows together. His horridly flat face wrinkled in thought. “A dragon who can keep her temper could be a deadly enemy. Or—”
“Or what?” Wistala asked.
“I won’t misjudge you again,” the Dragonblade said, not answering her question and crossing to the opposite gallery. “You’ve escaped me twice. There won’t be a third.”
“No,” Wistala said. “I expect there won’t.”
“And even if I fall, I have a son and a daughter to avenge me.”
“I’ve met your son. I hope he gets his chance.”
“Ah, yes. Not his finest performance. I thought I’d try him on an easier target his first night out. I never thought you’d chew your wings open. They’ve grown out nicely.”
Wistala took a breath. If she kept her eyes on the Dragonblade, she couldn’t see the heads, except he kept strolling around so she couldn’t help but view the machines.
“I wonder if Fangbreaker knows all your history,” the Dragonblade said.
“I wonder if he knows you’ve disobeyed him, and killed when he told you to capture.”
She turned and moved back through the workshops, keeping one eye on him just in case. But he stood there, helmet at his hip, chuckling. “You may walk away, dragon. Even fly. But wherever you go, you cannot hide forever. Dragons are noticed, you see?”
As she retraced her steps back dwarves seemed to be rushing about everywhere, or standing on stairways talking and gesticulating. Something had them dreadfully agitated but Wistala did not ask what. Her head hurt, perhaps from the fumes in the workshops, and she wanted to retire to her tower to sleep.
“Dhssol.”
“Oracle, what do you think?” some asked, but she passed in a daze.
“Dhssol! Dhssol!” the dwarves said, one to the other. Dwarf wives wailed it from their balconies as Wistala crossed the Titan bridge.
“Who is this Dhssol?” she asked one of the leather-slippered court workers.
“Not a who, a what,” he said, pulling at his beard. “ ‘Disaster,’ it would be in Parl. An evil star is on our house.”
 
The dwarves of the star-guild told her the terrible news when she returned to her tower. A tradesdwarf of the Chartered Company had made a rare appearance at the Wheel of Fire to bring tidings of sorrow and fear: the punitive column had been wiped out almost to a dwarf.
After a bloody march through villages where the dwarves left burned bodies in wooden cages, they’d been betrayed by their hired scouts, supposedly belonging to a rival clan to the lands they’d been traversing. The false scouts led to a flooded river, and while attempting to cross, they had been attacked during a snowstorm from both sides and by forces shooting down the river in narrow boats.
Hammar, now called the Dwarfhanger by his barbarian legion, was reputed to be on the march for the Wheel of Fire, destroying what remained of the column as the survivors retreated.
Some important voices were calling for Lord Lobok to be put in charge of the defense of the city, he’d had his share of luck against the barbarians and Hammar before.
“And he’s cautious, and would not improvidently expose his troops to destruction,” Djaybee said. “He can stand against this Hammar, for years if need be. The barbarians always lose interest in war after a season. It’ll be over by the summer flowers. Should he assume command?” the scientifically minded dwarf, who’d never asked her advice before, wondered.
“I would like nothing better,” Wistala said.
They were interrupted in this discourse by a visitor. This time Gobold Fangbreaker himself came to her, rather than going through the delay of having her brought to the Throne Hall.
“Tala, you have heard the rumors?” the king said as he arrived, surrounded by his black-armored bodyguard.
“Yes. Is it true, my king?”
“True enough,” he said. “Though not quite so bad as some losing their nerve would have it. Battle Commander Vande Boltcaster has a full maneuver array of dwarves left, and they are fighting as they turn back. But they’ve been forced to abandon their train and are short on supplies and have no time or capacity to seek more. I’ve had an idea. How much do you think you can carry?”
“The weight of several dwarves,” Wistala said. “Over short distances.”
“This will be a long flight of short hops, then. I need you to bring him food, medicines, and above all crossbow bolts.”
“My wings are at your command, Great King,” she said.
“There’s been talk of you being absent for some time,” King Fangbreaker said. “To where did you fly?”
“To see my friends at the circus. They go into winter camp about this time each year.”
“Hmpf,” said King Fangbreaker, from behind his shield. “You seem the type to keep friends long. How about enemies?”
“I’ve set out to make no enemies, my king,” Wistala said. “I made more friends than enemies with the circus. Of course, there are those who felt they were cheated—”
“I don’t mean that. Ach, I don’t know what I mean. I’m overwrought, imagining things. You put new heart in me. Eat a good meal and be ready to fly by tonight. The star-guild will supply you with a map based on our best information.”
Wistala lowered her head to the floor, and King Fangbreaker left. She later learned he’d walked all about the city, calming the citizens on both sides of the Titan bridge, answering questions from the lowliest porter to guild-heads.
That night she came to the Titan bridge, where she was loaded with milk-powders, sugarcubes, crossbow bolts, slabs of honey, medicines, even rolls of needle and thread for stitching wounds. Dwarf wives came and stuck flowers in her scales or tied ribbons with messages inked on them about her sii and saa. She was asked to look for so many dwarves that the king’s bodyguard had to push away the supplicants.
She tried a short practice flight, and returned to the bridge.
“I can carry more,” she said, not altogether sure that she could. More bundles were strapped to her back and chest, everywhere but where her wings could flap.
The King himself drank a toast in her honor and gave her a heaping handful of gold coins to eat, slathered with something sweet and hard the dwarves called cocolat. It gave her a rush of energy, and she launched herself again, and even gliding seemed somewhat of a strain.
Behind her, they set off red fireworks.
She had to relearn to fly, laden as she was, and it was slow going until she learned to better angle her wings. After an hour she dropped, exhausted, sure she could never reach the sky again, but she did.
And so she fought her way north, an hour’s flight, a half hour’s rest, another hour’s flight, a quarter hour’s rest, another hour’s flight, a drop from exhaustion into sleep that ended at daybreak.
The next day she passed over the track of the punitive expedition. The snow had covered the burned foundations, but crows poked at charred heaps here and there, extracting unburnt marrow. She’d never heard of war like this in the Hypatian books of tactics and maneuver, parley and honorable surrender. The dwarves had struck with a heavy, vengeful hand.
Or had she?
 
Wistala landed in a crowd of cheering dwarves the next dusk. Their eyes burned so bright behind their masks that they glowed. Beards were shorn to show loss of comrades and officers, and they hadn’t had time or energy to clean the caked blood from their armor.
Battle Commander Vande Boltcaster moved with a limp, walking with the aid of a broken bow. His officers untied and distributed the messages bound on her legs and tail—many would never be read by the eyes for which they were intended.
“Can you carry out wounded?” Boltcaster asked her. “I have three hero-dwarves we’ve been carrying since the Norssund.”
“Oh, for some wine,” she said.
“Gone,” Boltcaster said. “Like much else. There’s toasted horsemeat and boiled entrails galore, if you like. They were to be breakfast, but there’s not a dwarf here who wouldn’t give you his portion.”
“Can you make it back?” Wistala said. The dwarves were taking turns to slip away from their lines and write notes on everything from wrapping-paper to bits of wood, in blood if nothing else would serve, and tying it to her. She submitted, hating herself for what she was about to do.
“I’ll know when we reach the Shoulder-Fell. How long before the king marches to our aid?”
“I have not seen a dwarf set out beyond the outer wall,” Wistala said, honestly enough.
Some of the dwarves growled at that.
“Silence, there,” Boltcaster barked. “I’ve still reports to send, and you have families.”
“How do you move?”
“Loose march-square. If the barbarians come, we fall in tight. The cavalry hasn’t been trained that can break a Wheel of Fire shield wall.”
“Where are the barbarians?” Wistala asked.
“Where aren’t they?” a dwarf answered.
“They mostly follow our trail, scavenging discarded metalwork and despoiling the dead,” Boltcaster said. “We’ve had demands for surrender, and each time they’ve ridden from that direction. Good treatment. Ha! What do you expect, fighting savages such as these. Blighters would puke at some of their deeds.”
Wistala took off down the path and winged over the dwarven defenses—felled trees, mostly—to halfhearted cheers. She saw some horses in the trees beyond and loosed some fire, more for show than for effect, and cast about until she saw tightly knit campfires. She swooped in low over the tents.
Barbarian chieftains called for their archers and pointed. A few desultory arrows sang through the air around her.
“Tell Hammar they make for the Shoulder Fell,” she said, flying upside down to keep out the shafts. She repeated it again over another group of tents, before turning back for the dwarves.
They stuffed her with horse entrails before she took off the next morning, with the three wounded dwarves tied across her back. The burden seemed light compared with the supplies she’d carried in the previous day.
By the time she returned to the Titan bridge, one of the wounded had died. The other two were untied and rushed into the Hardhold.
Wistala lay on the bridge like a dead thing as the dwarves untied the messages. One of the lordly dwarves took the courier-pouch from her neck and rushed it to the king.
Fangbreaker himself came down to the bridge to see her, stumping along on his horse hoof, which clomped on the wood planks of the bridge.
“They are in bad shape, my king,” Wistala said. Some in the crowd cried out, and she heard mutters of dhssol. “I fear I am, too.”
“Boltcaster’s need is great,” King Fangbreaker said. “I must ask you to fly again as soon as you’ve rested. He needs more supplies.”
“You go,” Wistala said.
“What?”
Wistala raised her head, too tired to do much but speak. If the bodyguard closed on her, it would be all she could do to roll off the bridge. “You go. Gather your forces and go to his aid.”
The crowd went instantly silent.
“No,” said the king. “Boltcaster must rely on his own skill and courage. We cannot take that risk. Every dwarf will be needed here.”
“Or you could return with your number of warriors doubled,” Wistala said.
“She’s exhausted,” King Fangbreaker said, loudly. “The dragon is mazed. Pay her no mind. Go, good Oracle, go to your tower and rest.” He reached for a handful of cocolat-covered coins to place in her mouth and evidently thought the better of it. He tossed the bag down before her.
“Eat these—you’ll feel better.”
Wistala picked the bag up but did not eat them. Instead she bowed to the king and turned for her tower, trying to forget the masked faces of the doomed dwarves in Boltcaster’s column. They were getting what they deserved. Would she?
The bodyguard closed around the king behind her, seeing the hard stares of some in the crowd.
 
Wistala slept, and ate, and waited.
The news finally came: Boltcaster and his remaining dwarves had been defeated on the slopes of a mountain, evidently the barbarians had prepared and then rolled rocks down on them from above, breaking the shield wall just before a charge.
Fangbreaker called their end “glorious” and a credit to the Wheel of Fire. But there were mutterings against him, arrests, even an assassination or two, and suicides that some said were not suicides.
One of these was the son of Lord Lobok, who finally agreed to take command of the outer wall at the edge of the Ba-drink.
The star-guild whispered of threats to her life, and Yellowteeth grew afraid to go down for coal. Wistala shrugged off the danger. The dwarves needed every warrior who could carry a spear and would not waste any on a dragon that could be dealt with later.
Then came a dread winter morning when word spread that a barbarian horde was on the foothills below the Ba-drink. With them were Hypatian mercenaries, cavalry, even gargants. Will-making became a popular diversion, there were parties of a desperate nature on the balconies as the dwarves who would defend the walls spent one last night with their kith and kin.
Wistala watched, from her high tower, the barges creep across the Ba-drink, disgorge the dwarves for the walls, and then return for more. Control of the Ba-drink meant control of the herds on the south shores of the lake, and access to the east road for supplies, so the wall had to be held to avoid a bitter siege.
She looked at the sheer walls of Thul’s Hardhold. Many were the balconies that hung black banners, mourning their losses.
Djaybee joined her at the thin window slits.
“I think you should know, there’s a dozen of the king’s guard at the base of the tower. They don’t want you to leave,” Djaybee said. Yellowteeth hung about the passage down, as if fearing a rush of footsteps, but what he could do other than slicken the steps with shovelfuls of dragon waste she did not know. “Hard words passed between us, and I was cautioned against keeping counsel with you. I fear another night of knives is coming.”
“Night of knives?”
“As there was when our noble king, a curse be upon his name, claimed all power. Those who opposed him never woke again, but were found dead behind their bedcurtains.”
“We’d best take turns keeping watch,” Wistala said.
Her sleep was uneasy that night, and the tower went cold, for Yellowteeth was too terrified to descend the stairs to get more coal. Wistala finally let him sleep in the corner farthest from the door while she and Djaybee took turns at the stairs.
She awoke to a tickle behind her chin, dreaming that Jizara was poking her with her tail-tip. She opened her eye and froze.
Yellowteeth stood next to her neck, his shovel handle somehow transformed into a spear pressing against the interstices between her scales above her neck heart.
“Greetings from the Assassins’ Guild,” Yellowteeth said, his Parl-pigdin markedly reduced. “The king has a message for you as you die: Where is the crown of Masmodon, Oracle? Where is my crown?