Page 116 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“I do cry ally.”

They both made a perfunctory clucking noise at the sky.

“I welcome your coming,” NiThonius said. “Let me introduce King Onato of the Rains and Winds and the Three River Savanna. You met his father, I believe.”

“A great warrior and friend to the Lavadome,” SiDrakkon said. He gurgled out a few words in a tongue the Copper did not understand.

“Did you catch that?” the Copper asked.

“I can’t make snout nor tail of their yammering. But I expect I’ll learn if we’re here long.”

Some of the king’s retainers unrolled white material and tied it between the branches of two spreading trees. The king sat beneath atop a folding wooden sort of post-seat, and NiThonius settled down beside. SiDrakkon dismissed the welcoming party and joined the repose, calling Nivom forward. The Copper followed behind.

“A Drakwatch commander and an Imperial Courier. I’m impressed you’ve come so well arrayed,” NiThonius said.

“I was not impressed with your welcoming banquet when we emerged from the Lower World.”

NiThonius pulled back his head a little. “I did not expect so many. I’d asked my old friend the Tyr for a cunning dragon or two to help me cope with the Ghi.”

“And what could be accomplished against fortresses by a dragon or two?”

“I would rather attack them where they are vulnerable, rather than behind scale or stone.”

“Where are they vulnerable?”

“Where their archers can’t stand behind battlements and their war machines throw javelin, rock, and fire. I’m a little old to be flitting about, laying waste to flocks and herds. The men of Ghi, the Stonemen, would probably be induced to quit most of the lands they’ve grabbed if we make the lands unprofitable. They are keen calculators, not prideful. Also, they have some salt mines and clayworks and lumber camps. Burn them and kill the workers, swim up under their trade boats, scatter their herds, and burn their crops in the night. A war of stealth and surprise will weary them before too many years pass. That’s why I asked for an active young dragon or two. And that is what our allies gathered provision for.”

SiDrakkon tore up the ground with his claws, and the king and his retainers scooted back on their hindquarters, perhaps fearing their new ally would lash out. “I’ve no patience for that kind of warfare. The Lavadome needs Bant’s herds, not tales of a burned crop or shepherd’s lodge.”

“A salt mine is no shepherd’s cot. Without salt, men do not last here.”

“A war of many small cuts doesn’t answer our need.”

“It is the only kind of warfare left to us, at least in Bant.”

“How is that?”

NiThonius said a few words to his human ally. “The king has lost many of his finest warriors in fruitless assaults. Those who remain are discouraged and scattered.”

“You say that as though the fault lay at another’s sii.”

“Perhaps I delayed too long. The northern half of the country was under the protection of my clutchwinner. After he and his mate were killed, the collapse came so quickly—now the Stonemen build a new strongpoint at a watering spring just north of the Green Dancer that flows below.”

“Build?” SiDrakkon said. “It’s unfinished?”

“They have a stout wooden palisade. The stoneworks rise day by day.”

“There is where we’ll strike, then. They won’t expect a hard blow after having won so much, and I wish to move before word of our arrival may spread. Nivom, tell your sissa, rouse the Firemaidens—we fly at once! We’ll give them a taste of dragon fury that’ll put hearts back into these spiritless whelps.”

After the longest, hardest march of his life, the Copper stayed far to the rear of the attack, watching events from the top of a rock pile.

He didn’t feel the least bit tired, not with the night full of the fire of battle. If it weren’t for SiDrakkon’s forcibly expressed orders…

The plains beyond the rivers had these rocky, windswept piles of stones like river-smoothed rocks grown to dragon proportion and heaped. The Copper had become almost as acquainted with the wildlife of the rocks as he had with the grasslands. The rock piles were thick with hopping, naked tailed rodents that the Firemaidens flushed with a quick blast of flame. As he watched the battle, he probed his gum line with his tongue for the remains of the rat he’d just eaten.

He watched carefully as SiDrakkon’s orders were executed, remembering details for a report to the Tyr.

His orders had the virtue of simplicity. First the Firemaidens, the most skilled huntresses of their number at the fore, would attack whatever sentries stood on the outskirts of the water hole. One had been killed on the rock pile where the Copper now stood, and his blood still scented the air.

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