Page 103 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

He ran his hand over her scales. “Like . . . like cast iron, only rougher.”

Wistala used a saa to scritch at the back of her shoulder, where a few of her hatchling scales still clung. One dropped off, and she flipped it to him with her nose. “One of your own.”

“I may keep this?”

“You may.”

He bowed in gratitude.

“Could I ask a favor of you?” Wistala asked.

“I’ve more wealth than my father saw in his lifetime, thanks to you. I’d do my best.”

“I’d like to start bringing home game to Mossbell. Rainfall has been feeding me for so long, I’d like to do the same for him.”

“The master gives too much. He’s . . . he’s noble that way. Go on.”

“I need a sort of harness that will allow me to carry a few birds or a quartered deer. Can you manage it?”

“I’ll see the hidesman and blacksmith a-morrow.” He scratched his close-cropped head again, circling her and cocking his head this way and that in thought.

Wistala bowed. “Thank you. Anything I can do to help—”

“Stand still.”

He took a ball of string from his pocket and measured her, along the back, around her neck, across her shoulders, making little marks on the string with a bit of charcoal. “I expect I’ll have it done by blueberry day.”

“Which is?” The profusion of hominid holidays were all jumbled in Wistala’s head; they celebrated everything from turns of the stars and moon to hop-picking to the ripening of the first plum.

“Eight days.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m the one obliged, Wisssakle.”

“Wistala.”

Jessup did better on the second try. When Wistala nuzzled him and gave a bit of a prrum to congratulate him, his face broke into a grin. “Me conversing with a dragon in its own tongue. Like something out of a bedtime story.”

With the air warm and spring in full bloom, Stog came outdoors. His hooves had been turned flaky and white by Rainfall’s applications, but strong and healthy hoof lived beneath, revealed as the diseased parts fell away.

Wistala took Stog to see Avalanche’s grave, as a final proof of Rainfall’s goodness and the turn of his fortune marked by the mule’s arrival at Mossbell.

Stog snorted. According to the mule, horses got all the glory, and mules did all the work. “We can go twice as far, carrying twice the load, on half the feed as a horse. Up hills they’d break a leg on and down valleys that would mean their necks, too. But where’s the poetry, the statuary?”

“Just wait. I’ll give you a chance to show a pack of horses a trick or two.”

Jessup came through on his harness. It was a clever bit of craft, looping around her neck, tail, and forelimbs. There were eyes here and there in the leather straps, where she could hook game nets (or bags, or waterskins, she thought). She had room in the buckles for her to almost double in size. He took it away almost as soon as she tried it on, insisting on improvements, and returned it with twin linked straps running ladderlike down her back. She found some game nets in Mossbell’s dry attic and learned to fix them on herself.

With that, she told Rainfall she’d be gone a few days and plunged into the Thickets. She did hunt, but her real purpose was a trek to Galahall.

Know your hunting ground, Mother always used to say. As hatchlings, Auron had always ignored that advice and plunged straight into the center of the home cave as if expecting a slug to pop up and ask to be eaten. Hunting took patience, knowledge of game trails and habits, and above all, a feel for terrain, weather, and wind.>“Hello, Stog,” Wistala said in the beast-tongue the mule had used in his calumnies. “Welcome to Mossbell.”

“Drop all the two-leggeds,” Stog said to no one in particular. “Left to rot again.”

Rainfall worked long into the night on the mule’s hooves, gathering plants and then mixing them with a white powder he kept in a clay jar. Then he filled four leather-bottomed canvas bags with the sharp-smelling mix and tied them to the mule’s hooves, after fixing a wooden gate around his neck that kept him from lowering his head to chew the poultices free.

“Bug me! That stings,” Stog said, and tried to bite Rainfall as he worked.

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