Page 94 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

She dropped into the water.

A hominid wouldn’t have been able to make it to the cut stairs, but drakka were strong swimmers; they could clasp their limbs to their side and put their whole body into the effort, sucking air through the nostrils. Wistala was bothered by the cold more than by the current—it brought back awful half-memories that took the courage out of her.

She reached the landing and pulled herself up, weary as though from a long dragon-dash.

The troll marked her movement, and it reached out with one long arm for the stairs and swung itself down.

“That’s right,” Wistala croaked, a puny vocalization that didn’t even disturb a stalking bird three rocks away. She drew breath and roared her best battle cry.

The orb turned down on her, and the troll hurried its climb. When the troll filled the view between her landing and the suspended pine trunk above, she called on her flame.

She didn’t aim her sole effectual weapon at the troll. She loosed it out, as far out into the river as she could. It struck the water and formed a pool there, floating downstream with the current.

She could never be sure what happened next, save that Rainfall saw her orange-red signal and cut the tree trunk free.

Perhaps it was the number of camouflaging branches left on the trunk that made a sound. Perhaps the tightly stretched cable’s parting at Rainfall’s ax-blow—it made a crack like a nearby lightning strike according to her host, who was in a position to know. Or perhaps the troll’s sense-orb could see in all directions, rather than only one—no one had ever lived long enough in the company of a troll to conduct any studies.

Wistala’s brain had no time for perhapses—as soon as she gave the signal, she jumped into the river.

The troll shifted as the tree-trunk fell. Rather than hitting it squarely, the projectile opened a gash in its side. This just enraged the troll rather than skewering it. Luckily for Wistala, it took its temper out on the tree, which had lodged itself in the shallow water of the riverbank. The troll picked it up and cracked it against the cliff side, again and again until only a shard remained in its grip.

Only then did it notice the arrows and spears from above.

Brave or foolish, Rainfall’s gang flung spears and fired hunting arrows down at the troll as Wistala made it to the first pillar of the bridge. She saw a spear lodge in the troll’s back. The sense-stalk stood straight up, and it began to climb.

The next thing Wistala knew, she was climbing. Using the deep crevices between the joined stones, a skilled man could make the long climb, but it would take him ten times the effort it took Wistala, with her four shorter limbs and thick muscles. She crawled up the bridge’s support like an ant hurrying up a grass stalk, her pace not greatly reduced from what she could achieve on flat ground.

But she was only halfway up when the troll reached the men.

One, a lumberman, judging by his broad leather girdle, tried his axe on the troll’s hand as it came to the cliff top. She heard the sharp thwack of the blade as it bit into the troll’s fountain-size hand even from her distance. The troll’s other hand came up and struck the lumberman such a blow, he exploded into pieces.

She passed over the bridge-rail to find the troll standing on the cliff top, searching the tree line for the fleeing men. It flushed a man and ran him down on the road, where it smashed and then swallowed him. A group of horses fled screaming from the woods, one or two pulling men along.

Wistala wasn’t sure what she could do, but she hurried toward the north end of the bridge anyway. She had one good gout of flame left in her fire bladder, if not two; she’d eaten heartily for months, and there was still an angry liquid ball inside her, waiting to get out.

She’d diverted the troll before; perhaps she could again, long enough for it to lose track of the men. . . .

A white flash on the road ahead. Wistala, gulping air as she ran, recognized the shape.

Avalanche!

The stallion—with blood in the air, even on a rainy night, and the frightened calls of mares behind him—had given in to instinct and stood his ground, eagerly pawing at the road.

The troll rounded on the stallion.

“Come on! Beast!” Avalanche neighed. Then he screamed and reared up, front hooves cutting the air before him. “Try to take of mine. I’ll kick your teeth out!”

Wistala dragon-dashed, her vision red with lost breath. The troll’s air sacs bulged from its behind; she could see flaps of raised skin like a pinecone opening and shutting as it tried to catch its breath—or was it damaged in some way? No matter—she homed in on the deep whooshing sound.

Then the troll lunged forward, its gait even stranger because of cradling its wounded hand. . . .

The troll reared up and reached for the horse as Avalanche charged. But the stallion danced sideways, and lashed out with a hind leg, kicking one of the thin forearms. Avalanche reared up and struck the troll in the mouth-without-a-face that constituted the front of its body.

The troll backed up and lifted itself.

The sense-orb hung over all like a watchful bird. As the troll’s mouth dropped open, seemingly with the idea of swallowing Avalanche whole, Wistala slid to a stop and spat her fire, as though trying to get an extra few tail-lengths of distance into it by letting momentum carry the contents of her fire bladder up her throat, accelerated by ring after ring of throat muscles.

The sense-orb whipped around, and Wistala caught one glimpse of a wide-open eye? nostril? ear? in the center of a wormy fringe—

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