Page 123 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

Rainfall spoke: “Just a mouthful of the best silver I could find.”

The coins slipped easily down her throat, greased by the thick saliva the smell of metals brought to her mouth.

“But you need the coin,” she objected. (Once the coins were safe in her stomach!)

“I matched need against deserve, and deserve won. I have some proofs of the money resting there still in my bag.” He pulled on the strap of his satchel so the coins within jingled.

Wistala napped out the morning light under a cool slab in a quiet corner of Tumbledown, concealed by a cascade of runners dropped by the ferns clinging above. She’d gone to the pasture to look for Stog, but only a mare and her colt remained. The men must have put him to work.

She felt a soft nuzzle under her chin. “Tchatlassat?” came a familiar purr.

Wistala came wide awake in a flash. “Yari-Tab?”

She’d grown wide-bodied feasting on rats, or had a bellyful of young, perhaps. “I smelled you as I was finishing my night’s prowl and followed the trail. Such doings in the Tumbledown. Digging by my entrance to the Deep Run. What’s the hunt?”

Wistala had to think for a moment—she was so used to speaking in Elvish. “Hominids come for the gold.”

“Will there be fighting? The rats would like that.”

“No, my host has arranged a diversion.”

“Serves them right, savage beasts. But when mice can’t be found—”

Wistala raised her head and stretched. “Sister! I’ve a wonderful idea!”

“Yes!” Yari-Tab said, settling down in the warm spot left by her throat. “A good nap till noontime. Then perhaps a sunbath.”

“No. I know of a catless barn that has the mice running wild. Come along to it, and I can promise you all the hunting you like. Perhaps a little goat milk now and then. The owner is a kindly sort.”

Yari-Tab fixed eyes on her. “Warm and dry?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, tchatlassat! I would like that.”

“You deserve it. I’ll explain things to Rainfall. Once he knows that you’re the spring from where this new stream of wealth flows, he’ll take you in. I’m sure of it.”

With Yari-Tab running scout, Wistala made it to a hillside downwind from the sheep and watched events beneath the triple arch from an overhanging slab. Shirtless men brought the coin out in small buckets, to be laid on a clean white sheet spread out on the ground in front of the hole that had been widened. Feeney and another man dressed in similar robes and tassled hat passed the coins back and forth before moving them to a chest—in the case of the visitors—or a low trough.

Stog made an appearance, dragging a sledge piled with firewood. The man leading the mule struck him about the flanks to drive him on, and Wistala felt her fire bladder pulse. Poor Stog—he was an extraordinarily strong beast.

Yari-Tab grew bored with events and fell asleep in the sun.

By evening they’d brought out the last of the small hoard of coins. Rainfall emerged from the tunnel dirtier than ever, holding what looked like a platter of considerable weight wrapped in a piece of leather. He showed it to the pair of priests.

Wistala couldn’t see much from her vantage. It looked like a piece of pinkish stone, but the low priests both touched it as they spoke. After they nodded, Rainfall took it away to Jessup’s wagon, spoke to him, and placed it on the high driving seat.

As the sun set, the gathered hominids set up a feast. A bonfire was lighted with the pile of wood Stog dragged. Some of the shepherds took out pipes and drums and small hand harps as others roasted a pig.

“That’s a mouthwatering smell,” Wistala said.

“Aye, but I must hunt,” Yari-Tab said. “I’ve kittens growing fast within, and they’re hungry, too.”

Wistala marked Rainfall wandering the opposite hill outside the bonfire light, taking a small bite now and then from a joint of the remaining mutton from last night’s meal. He probably meant to find her and offer it. “Wait. I might return with something tastier than a sewer rat.”

The moonlight-washed ruins frowned down on the figures moving about the bonfire, as though waiting for the merrymakers to disperse so they could return to their gradual collapse.

Wistala saw Rainfall, smelled the mutton, and rattled her griff against her scales to attract his attention.

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