Chapter 10
Yari-Tab wasn’t much of a sleepmate. She got up and went off to prowl at least four times that Wistala remembered, then returned and made a production out of finding a comfortable spot.
But she did bring Wistala a dead snake a for breakfast. Wistala had no appetite, as she felt dry and sick from rat bites. Wistala wondered that the bony feline could carry the serpent, which looked fully half her weight, from wherever she’d caught it. Unfortunately, she’d have to carry the onerous weight of the coin much, much farther.
Time to be off.
“A good jump and a full belly, Talassat,” Yari-Tab said as they made their good-byes.
“A good jump and a full belly, fur-sister,” Wistala replied. The cat rubbed the side of her face against her folded griff and gave her forehead a lick.
As Wistala sniffed her way out of the ruins, she looked back at her feline friend, who found an old headless statue to sit upon and watch her leave. Wistala flicked head and tail up, and the cat raised a paw. Far off, a dog barked at the motion, and Wistala scrambled to the other side of a fallen column to put its bulk between her and the noisy dog. She looked back once more at the bottom of the hill, but Yari-Tab atop her statue was nothing but a lump against a multitude of other lumps filling the hills.
Wistala didn’t relax until she was far from the smell of burning charcoal with a forest of shadows behind her. Only then did she cast about for a meal.
She had no luck—the clanking coins atop her back sounded a warning of her approach—and she went hungry that night.
She heard the first bay from the ridgetop, her halfway-home mark, as the morning sun turned the western mountains of her birth into blood-edged teeth.
At first she guessed it to be a distant wolf cry, but when the call wasn’t answered from any quarter of the horizon, but rather taken up by other canine voices behind her—quite precisely behind her, she realized with an anxious gulp—she knew it had to be dogs.
Perhaps the dogs were after some poor stag or fox. She’d kept clear of the flocks of Tumbledown to avoid a vengeful hunt, and in all likelihood, she’d roused one anyway.
But time, she had time. Time to improvise.
Keeping to the ridge had its advantages. She could hear or see the pursuit—and it was the most direct path home. But a series of lakes to the morning side and a stream to the evening side might delay the dogs. She didn’t know much about canines except that they couldn’t smell their way across water.
Wistala trotted along until she found a sharp-sided ravine on the lake-littered side of the ridge. She let a little urine go to give it a strong dragon scent, then slid down its muddy sides. She trotted to a reed-infested pond, scattering waterfowl this way and that. She drank deep and thought for a moment—she had to get this just right.
First Wistala loosed the rest of her urine at the pond’s edge, allowing most of it to go into the water. With a little luck, it would spread and filter through the whole pond until the dogs would detect it on every bank.
She left a confusion of muddy tracks and knocked over reeds at the bank, then rolled in waterfowl droppings, smearing her sii and saa thoroughly with them. Then she backtracked and climbed the ridge to her original path at a different spot, and carefully avoided the well-marked ravine.
All the climbing made her legs weary. The heavy yoke of coins across her neck felt heavier at each step, even as her stomach felt emptier despite the water.
At the thought of the coins, her mouth flooded with the slimy drool she’d had when she first came across them. Father wouldn’t notice a mouthful or two gone—and they’d carry lighter in her stomach.
Once clear of her dog-dodge, she hurried as best as she could along the ridgetop, carrying tail high and doing her best to keep from snapping branches or trotting through muddy hollows. When her breath left her, she paused and ate a big mouthful of coin from each bag, more to take the desire out of her mind and mouth than because she actually needed it. . . .
An hour later, she came off the ridge, fixing her snout on the mountain notch that marked the source of the river gorge. If she traveled hard, she’d reach Father before nightfall. The rat bites were itching worse than ever, not quite pain, but adding to her bone-deep weariness.
She tore the loose bark off a fallen tree and managed to get a few insects, but they only made her hunger worse. Oh, for a sick porcupine or a one-winged pheasant!
A noise behind, light footfalls . . .
Wistala caught a glimpse of a hairy back, thinner than a bear’s but not much smaller. She jumped up a bank and turned into a concealing patch of milkweed.
A black dog, with foam-flecked tongue and yellow teeth, padded out of the brush. Its eyes were wide and nervous as it put its long pointed snout to the trail. It had an odd sort of fur, extremely short at its head and limbs, thick and spiked like a badger’s about the shoulders and upper back. It bore no tail that she could see. A leather collar, fixed high about its neck, and studded rings showed it to be domesticated. Even more oddly, two matching red runes were painted on its flanks. They reminded Wistala of flames or lightning bolts.
It sniffed the air and turned a nervous circle.
Wistala held her breath.
The dog trotted along her trail, nose pointed down but eyes watching the way ahead, passed her little bank upwind. The dog, like most fur-bearers, smelled like a dungheap. A faint smell of blood came from it, too.
Leap on it leap on it leap on it!
But she couldn’t. All her body seemed capable of was shivering beneath the white-yellow flowers of the milkweed.
The dog turned, obscenely bulging eyes with their evil round pupils fixing on her location. It gave one querulous bark and looked right and left, as though searching for allies among the tree trunks.
Wistala shot forth to the edge of the bank and planted her feet, extended her griff and hissed at the beast:
“Go away!”
If it understood her, it gave no sign. Instead it let loose with a deep-throated snarl and came straight at her.
Fast, so fast, it was on her in an eyeblink. They came down the bank, rolling together, the dog’s long limbs tangled with her own, teeth clattering against teeth. It yelped as she landed on its hindquarters but still sunk its teeth into her sii-shoulder joint. The upper teeth had no luck against her scales, but the lower went home.
Wistala raked it with her rear claws and felt blood and sinew. The dying dog hung on, closing its eyes to the pain. . . .
She resisted the urge to tear it free from her skin; that would do more damage. She waited until its heart stopped and then gently pried its jaws open.
Distant dog barks from the ridge told her at least one of the canine’s yelps had been heard. She nosed into the dog’s claw-torn belly and found the liver. Mother always said, if you could just eat one piece of an animal, it should always be the liver.
The body twitched as she chewed and lapped at dripping blood. It was an old dog. There were white circles about its eyes, ears, and nose. Perhaps it had become confused and broken away from the rest of the pack—
Then she licked the bite wound clean and pressed on.
Despite the meal, she’d come off worse from the engagement. Her front limb was horribly sore; she could hardly stand to move it, so she hobbled along as best as she could using the other three, now heading up into the foothills of the mountains.
She found a dry gully full of thick thorny brush and plunged into it, snaking along with half-closed eyes. The thorns rattled and snapped on her scales, red flowers above like wounds in the sky—those wretched dogs with their thin-furred muzzles would be miserable following her through it.
A tear—one of the bags had ripped open, caught on a thorny branch that had the tenacity of an iron hook. She turned and sniffed at the coins already falling from the sack.
Nothing to do but eat them.
When she came out of the thornbushes she found that her load was unbalanced, the remaining bag kept sliding over sideways—her makeshift contraption didn’t have much in the way of stabilizing straps. She ate mouthful after mouthful of coin from the other bag as she rested, greedy for each deliciously metallic swallow.
She staggered on, sick with fatigue, the coins in her gut clattering. Step after wretched step after wretched step uphill, until she thrust herself forward using only her hind legs, the front ones folded flat against her side.
The bags were too heavy; that was why her limbs gave out. She abandoned them, ate a few more coins so that they wouldn’t go to waste—maybe her last pleasure in life would be that of silver and gold rolling around in her mouth. Besides, the men would just have them anyway, and go buy themselves new mates or flocks or boots or whatever it was that men did with coin.
But, Father! She tore off one tiny pocket of canvas and spat two remaining coins into it, gripped it in her teeth as she pushed on, keeping three of her four limbs moving on into darkness.
Roaring in her ears now. She felt wet on the interior of her nostrils.
The river!
She could see the prominence ahead. The battered columns, the rocks where Father would perch and fish, the jagged spur he always used to help himself back to the sleeping spot at the old meeting place or whatever it was.
She gave a glad, trumpeting cry and staggered on—at least she wasn’t leaving a blood trail anymore. She’d failed this time, but she knew where to get more coin now, she’d be trebly-careful, cross the man-road by tree limbs above, there wouldn’t be rat bites next time . . .
Wistala limped out onto the peninsula, climbed up to Father’s prominence.
He looked dispirited and sleepy; blood seeped from a reopened wound. Perhaps he’d tried to fly again. “Father!”
“Tala! Back so soon? Bartleghaff’s only just left to see how you were doing in the ruins. But perhaps he marked you—here he comes.”
“I . . . ,” Wistala managed to gasp. Her throat felt too dry for words.
Your contraption didn’t survive the trip, I see.
Wistala squinted against the setting sun. The old condor waggled his wings this way and that on the confused air currents of the gorge as he approached.
A baying like a thousand wolves broke out from the banks of the river, louder even than the sound of water crashing into rock.
“What’s this?” Father asked.
Wistala could manage thought-pictures: “Some dogs smelled me. I killed one.”
Bartleghaff swept low over the peninsula but didn’t land. “AuRel: it’s the Dragonblade and his pack!”
Father blinked, let out a deep breath. “So he’s found me,” he said to no one in particular.
“The Dragonblade?” Wistala asked.
“The dwarves would hire him, I suppose.” His wings drooped a little farther, and he searched the banks. Wistala saw black shapes bounding through the thick mist-washed ferns. Hunched shapes moved in the lengthening shadows of the woods beyond.
“They’re coming off their horses now!” Bartleghaff shouted on another low sweeping pass.
“Fathered by a wolf and mothered by a bear, it seems, with the memory of a tortoise to boot, for his sire was killed by dragons long ago, and he’s been seeking vengeance ever since.”
“Do you suppose he was at our cave?” Wistala asked.
“Dragons must land sometime, and he always finds their refuge,” Father said.
He straightened and got to his feet, a new light in his eyes. He cocked his head at Bartleghaff and flicked a griff up and out. “Go gather your relatives for that feast, old croaker.”
Wistala didn’t like any of this. Father’s words set her trembling with the worst fear she’d ever known. If only she weren’t so small, fireless. Useless, useless, useless. “Father, I did find you some coin.” She spat out the canvas bag-bottom; her spit made it smell faintly of oats. She nosed out two tarnished coins: one of gold, the other of silver.
“Marvelous, daughter,” Father said, nuzzling her fringe. “A pair, alike and yet not twins. Like you and Auron.” He took them up with his tongue, carefully placed them to either side in his mouth.
The dogs let out another joined cry.
Must get away . . . “Are we going to run from the dogs?”
“Tala, I’m never going to fly again, in the air or on land. This fellow’s killed more dragons than you have teeth, but he’s never tried his luck against me. If I can—”
“Let me help you. I’ll draw off the dogs.”
Father stamped the ground, hard enough to cause Wistala to bounce.
“NO!”
His roar echoed off the gorge walls, louder than the rushing water, louder than the baying dogs.
Frightened, she tucked her head down into her wounded joint.
“Tala, you’re too young for this fight. The best way for you to avenge your brother and sister is to have clutches of your own. Each hatchling of your own who lives to breed avenges them thrice over.”
“The dogs—they’ll bite and hold.”
“I’m not afraid of the dogs or anything else that walks or crawls or swims. Now go.”
The dogs must have caught a fresh scent, perhaps Father’s blood on the wind, for they set up an eager clamor.
She stood there, shaking. She’d led them right to Father! That was why they’d sent a single old dog to nudge her along! “I won’t. I can’t.”
“Promise me, Wistala. Clutches of your own. Lots and lots of hatchlings.”
He nosed her over the edge of the precipice and looked once more down on her. His eyes crinkled, and he no longer looked fearsome and angry.
Love. Wistala’d seen it before when he gazed at Mother as she slept.
“Thank you for the coins, Tala.”
With that, he turned. She saw his tail whip briefly overhead, its bronze catching the last of the setting sun. She heard him growl something to Bartleghaff, but couldn’t catch it over the churn beneath.
No. She’d climbed up and escaped before. She wouldn’t climb down this time. Not even the pain in her dog-bitten sii could stop her.
She slipped over the lip of the cliff and wormed between two pieces of fallen masonry. From the crack, she watched Father advance down the ridge of the narrow peninsula, choosing a rocky outcropping difficult to approach.
Dogs ran toward him in a mass of limbs and white-rimmed eyes and teeth. Behind the dogs, a file of men approached, led by a tall, broad figure in black armor. He was carrying a spear in one hand and a great sword in the other, helm with wings reaching up and almost touching above his crown.
The Dragonblade?
As the dogs approached, Father roared:
Foe and friend ’tween cave and sky
All hear me now before I die
Fire and blood this night will see
When filial vengeance I take of thee!
If any of the assassins understood his death song, they showed no sign of it.
Father ignored the dogs as they swarmed around him, leaping to reach his joints and claws. Barbed shafts flew from the archers and broke against his crest and scales. Father sent a great jet of fire up and across the crest of the peninsula, striking man and pine woods beyond. As the trees exploded into flame, she heard men’s voices cry out. Wistala saw flaming figures fall down the steep sides of the pathway.
The dogs—all alike and bearing the same painted design on their sides as the old one she’d killed by the bank—jumped and bit and hung from Father’s belly and limbs, planting their feet and pulling, arching their backs as they tugged at his flesh. Father was screaming in pain and turned into a whirlwind, biting and lashing at the dogs with his claws. But there were so many, and new slavering beasts jumped up to take the place of each one he killed.
The man in the black armor advanced, raising his spear. It sparked and flashed like distant lightning, lighting his armor and throwing shadows all around.
A hot lump burned in Wistala’s breast. Father couldn’t kill the Dragonblade with dogs pulling at him from every direction. She dragon-dashed forward, squeaking out a roar.
She’d never smelled such a thick blood odor in her life, if anything made sharper by the oily smell of burning dragonflame.
Mad-eyed dogs came at her, and she recoiled, but as her head came up, muscles in her breast took over, and she spat. A thin jet of flame arced out at the dogs, but they jumped aside or over the pathetic puddle of flame.
The dogs, moving so fast they seemed shadow rather than flesh, piled on her.
A white-tipped spear erupted from Father’s neck, and he turned mouth wide and roaring at the black-armored figure who stood atop a rock, silhouetted against the burning trees behind. Arrows that glowed as they flew struck Father all about the neck and jaw and burned there.
Wistala staggered forward, feeling the dogs pull at her. She spat the last of her flame at dog haunches clustered at Father’s back leg and pulling him over, and was rewarded by agonized yelping above the snarls of the three dogs dragging at her.
Father rolled, crushing the dogs, sending others spinning off into the darkness, the spear lodged in his throat like a great bone. The Dragonblade leaped forward and slashed at Father’s belly, opening a wound fully the length of Wistala.
Other men stood at some kind of machine on the peninsula. It sent an oversize arrow into Father’s side, punching through scale as easily as her claw-tip could go through a leaf.
“Father!” she cried.
The Dragonblade ducked under Father’s bite and swept up with his sword. Father’s head and neck crashed down, almost severed.
Wistala forgot the pain, forgot the dogs trying to pull her limb from limb.
She looked into Father’s eyes as the battle fire faded and they went dry and glassy. AuRel, Bronze of the Line of AuNor, had joined Mother in the stars above.
Wistala wailed out her pain to the sky.
The Dragonblade knelt and kissed the pommel of his sword, and his men broke into some manner of song.
Wistala bit into a dog, exchanging pain for pain. It howled, and the Dragonblade’s men left off his victory song and turned toward her.
Other men, some carrying two-handled saws, gathered behind.
She wouldn’t end up on these rocks, her head and claws sawed off. Wistala gathered what remained of her strength and managed to stand. She tottered a few steps toward the edge of the cliff, dragging dogs at every step. The dogs pulled back, at war with her body.
Perhaps the Dragonblade read her intent. He ran forward, bloody sword held out, waving on the others, who stood gaping at Father’s bloody wounds.
The two still-living dogs snarled and fought her every step, their muzzles covered with blood, the spiky hair on their backs standing straight up. They dragged her back, away from the ledge, toward the Dragonblade.
“You shan’t have—,” Wistala grunted. She swung her tail, knocked a dog off its feet, and lunged at the ledge. She got the claws of one sii over. Now she had some real traction.
Tearing—pain.
Fly! She’d fly once before she died.
She got a saa at the edge, and the dead dog fell over the side, its jaws finally relaxing. Freed of its weight, she coiled her spine and jumped.
Wistala felt light as one of Bartleghaff’s long tip-feathers as she spun through the air. She struck the prominence Father used to climb up from the river, rolling over on a growling dog and hearing a snap, and felt free air one last time before she plunged into the cold, roaring river.