Page 10 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

Alive after all these years. At least he hoped. She’d made powerful enemies, it seemed.

The Isle of Ice could support another dragon. As long as she liked fish and shellflesh. How had she survived so long out among men and dwarves? To hear the tale, she’d humbled both the Wheel of Fire dwarves and the Dragonblade.

Which reminded him. He took up the trap to play with and secured the metal chimes for Natasatch and the hatchlings. They would make a fine treat for dessert after celebrating his daughters’ first hunt.

It would be hard to leave them, even for a little while. He’d have to ask Ouistrela to keep an eye on the cave.

He conditioned himself for another distance flight with a short trip north to Grass Point. He didn’t find a moose for the wolves, but he did manage to snatch up an elk floundering in a spring mire.

Natasatch accepted his decision to leave the island in search of his sister. The first time she’d heard his voice as a full-grown dragon, he’d been calling Wistala’s name in that horrible chicken coop of a prison she’d been chained in.

“A dragonsire always feels the urge to roam far as his hatchlings come aboveground,” she said. “Even if I find your devotion to a memory strange.”

“Perhaps it is because we were separated so young. Had we both matured properly, I may have gone off and left her to her home hunting range. But if she still lives, I must tell her that there is a place where dragons live in safety.”

“And beastly weather,” Natasatch said. “I will welcome her to this little cave, my love. I’m sure she has much she could teach our hatchlings, if she’s survived in the Upper World all these years.”>The men looked as though they were nerving themselves for a charge, and the dwarf sidestepped down the side of the dining hall, keeping stone to back and pointed shield to dragon.

“Perhaps if you told me what you seek?” AuRon asked.

AuRon dashed across the back of the dining hall, spreading a curtain of fire. It pooled and burned, even on the floor slippery with muck.

“The wyrm’s emptied his fire,” the dwarf called. “We’ve got it!”

“Now we’ve the advantage,” the man with the black teeth said, leaping between two puddles of flame with silvered sword whirling elegantly.

“Would somebody restrain him before he hurts himself?” AuRon said, backing toward the entrance arch.

“Ghastmath!” the elf called. “Let’s hear the dragon out.”

Ghastmath, the black-toothed man, ignored her, but the dwarf had more to say: “Tell that to my dead uncles, after our good king Fangbreaker listened to Wistala the Oracle—”

AuRon froze in shock.

“She mazed him into folly,” the dwarf continued. “Don’t listen!”

“Repeat what you said, dwarf,” AuRon said, rounding on the little carbuncle of shield and helm.

The warrior Ghastmath, fire reflecting on his blade and cutting red shadows into his face, lunged forward with a cry. The point of his blade pierced AuRon’s breast—

AuRon whipped his head down in riposte, hooking the human under his shoulder plate with the tiny spur on his nose—an egg-breaker that most dragons lose within a week of hatching—and hurling him across the room. The blade clattered to the floor, smelling of dragonblood.

Kung!

A projectile like a small boat-anchor shot out of the dwarf’s shield, trailing a line. AuRon hugged the floor.

“Beast moves like old Gan himself.” The dwarf added a few curses that AuRon remembered from the push-pull dwarves in the traveling towers.

The line fell across his back. He reached up with a saa and grabbed it. The dwarf fumbled with gear behind his shield.

AuRon yanked the line hard and the dwarf flew across the dining hall and landed at his feet. AuRon had not yet grown to a size where he could easily carry a metal-clad dwarf in a single sii, especially if the dwarf decided to struggle, so he settled for perching both sii on his back.

AuRon heard joints popping.

The dwarf grunted and almost succeeded in rising. Dwarves were counted the strongest of the hominids, but this one must have the thews of an ox.

“Can we stop this nonsense?” AuRon asked, ducking under another arrow coming for his eye.

“Ssssst!” the elf-archer cursed.

---