Page 139 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“I’ll be gutted,” SiDrakkon said.

The gate crumbled next; then a piece of wall where the tower had been attached fell away. A huge, crescent-shaped gap opened up.

The Copper roused Fourfang with a poke of his tail and sent the blighter to give a message to the king.

HeBellereth returned, a big chunk of his wing flapping as he landed. “Stitchers!” he roared. “They punched a hole in me with a rock of their own,” he said as the blighters went to work.

“You’ve done enough for now. Rest,” Nivom said.

“I’m getting the wind under me now,” HeBellereth said. “I’ll bring down another section of wall before you can recite Ryu-Var’s Tally of Drakine Virtues—if I can get this wing fixed.”

“Can you teach me how to do this, Nivom?” SiDrakkon asked.

“It takes practice. Some days of work,” HeBellereth said.

“The cheering and horn blowing have stopped over there, I notice,” the Copper said.

HeBellereth put in a long night, making two-score or more runs. Some simply missed, or the boulder bounced wrong, or it did no apparent damage. But by the time dawn came up the town looked very different. The smooth stone wall had been opened in three wide sections, the entire gate area lay in ruins, and the southernmost tower had collapsed, leaving a whole quarter of the city undefended.

The humans were frantically arranging the rubble to form an improvised wall.

But the real blow to the Ghi men came at dawn. The sun came up to reveal the king’s army camped south of the city, the hillsides thick with squatting blighters that made them look like vast melon fields. The tribes howled and clashed their spears against their leather shields, setting up a steady, doom-laden thrumming that echoed from bluff to bluff in the river valley. The Copper wondered if any human in those closely packed streets counted on still drawing breath by the next sunset.>“With what forces?”

“HeBellereth.”

“He lives? Good. But one dragon would be wasted. Now, with all five of us, we’ve got a good chance of clearing those towers of war machines.”

“They’ve built more, many more, on every rooftop in the town,” Nivom said. “You can see them from our hilltop.”

“Delay always allows the enemy time to prepare,” SiDrakkon said. “Still, enough fire should make them abandon their machines. It may take several days, but I’ve seen it done.”

“Your honor, Nivom has a plan to bring down the walls,” the Copper said.

“Sacrifice every blighter here to the Earth Spirit; it still won’t bring an earthquake.”

“No, sir. With rocks. Dropped by HeBellereth.”

“Ahh, youth,” SiDrakkon said, softening his tone a little. “Always thinking they can reinvent warfare. It’s been tried in other places. Never works—not one stone out of scores of scores goes true. No, I’ve got the experience.”

“You don’t understand,” Nivom said. “It’s a matter of force and momentum. He’s been knocking down trees for days now—”

SiDrakkon’s griff dropped and rattled. “Trees don’t shoot back. No, we’ll start this very night. No, not another word out of either of you! It seems I got here just in time before you all got yourselves killed. Fire and terror are the way to go with humans; believe me. They’re not dwarves, after all. Fire and terror, drakes. Fire and terror. Now, we’ve got to hurry. According to the griffaran there’s an army of Ghi men on the march, big enough to sweep this collection and two more besides off these hills.”

SiDrakkon’s second assault on the city walls was an improvement on the first only in its brevity. His duelist, enraged by javelins fired into his wings and belly, plunged into the city, and managed to make a good deal of noise roaring and smashing before he was silenced. The two young dragons, fast friends since their days in the Drakwatch, according to Nivom, died together when one was brought down in front of the gate tower and the other flew to fight beside him.

HeBellereth had the sense to empty his fire bladder in one long pass over the city and returned, setting the blighters to work fastening shut the holes in his wings with bits of leather and wooden pegs.

“They’re ready for dragons, all right,” HeBellereth said, wincing as a bone needle passed through his wing skin.

SiDrakkon alighted and the blighters ran from his growlings. He knocked over a tree with his tail and tore apart a meat-smoking hut.

“With four more dragons I could have done it,” he raged. “Three to go in and draw fire, and the rest to attack the war machines before they could be reloaded. Only four more!”

Nivom had a few words with HeBellereth and approached SiDrakkon. “Your honor, we can still try the rocks. HeBellereth is willing, and he wasn’t injured.”

“I should think not, the way he dropped his flame and flapped away. Yes. Send him back over there. I’d like to see that.”

Nivom set the blighters to work at the rock pile. There was a good deal of cheering and horn blowing from the other side of the river, and the men ventured from their gates to swarm over the corpses of the young dragons like hungry ants on a bit of dropped fruit.

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