Page 213 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

A dam of ice and snow had built up on the southern slope. Snow exposed to the sunlight and warming spring winds was melting and running down into the pass, but as it passed into the shadows of ridges and other mountains, it froze again.

The mass created hung heavy in the mountains, an avalanche waiting to happen.

They tried making noise, for noise sometimes triggers an avalanche, they knew, but the loudest dragon roars had no effect on the ice-dam and the glacier of snow behind.Their cries brought satisfying sounds of alarm from the end of the pass.

Wistala studied it, remembering what Rainfall had taught her about bridges, loads, keystones, and so on. It seemed to her that the ice-dam resembled an upside-down bridge, with a line of rocks and boulders blocking it.

She waited for a storm to try her theory. As the blowing snow reduced the horizon to a few dragonlengths and turned the sky a smoky gray, they went to the base of the dam.

“If we can’t block the pass ourselves, maybe ice and snow will do our work for us. Ready?”

“Be sure to take off as it gives way.”

“If it gives way,” a Firemaid said. “But what about you?”

Wistala pointed with her tail-tip to the cliffside just to the left of the dam. “I’ll dash there.”

“Hope you’re a good dasher.”

“Together,” Wistala said.

They vented their flame across the base of the ice dam.

The ice and snow, or possibly rock, groaned. Wistala heard cracks.

Wistala remembered being caught in the tunnel as a hatchling with Auron. They’d battered their way out with their tails, Auron hurling himself against the ice with his body until it broke.

She turned, beat the rock with her tail, beat it until she smelled blood.

“More flame!” she gasped.

They vomited fire again. Running water turned to steam in the heat—

Krrrrrack!

A stone gave way.

The ice shifted, the whole mass moved perhaps a clawsbreadth.

Wistala held her breath, every nerve alert.

“Run, Wistala, it’s giving.”

She felt wingtips lash across her back as she hurried for the rocks. The ground slid beneath her feet.

Thunder in her ears, a roaring so loud that one felt it rather than heard it, engulfed her. She lunged, leaped, managed to cling to a fall of rocks at the base of the wall of rock.

Ice and snow roared down behind her, dragging her feet with them. She felt the ground pull at her—a strange sensation, not being able to trust the ground. Instinctively she opened her wings and tried to take off, but her broken wing just pulled against the lines and braces that held it to her body.

The flow dragged at her, its icy dust trying to choke her, but still she clung. Then she realized she was lost as well—tumbling, tumbling—and she curled her wings about her.

Then her breath was gone. Somehow she sensed which way was up and, heaving with every muscle, fought her way toward the surface. But the snow was so very heavy and she was cold and tired and broken, and oh so very sleepy . . .

She woke to a bright orange eye, found a great feathered roc staring down at her, its reins piercing its beak like a leathery mustache.

It had its claw on her throat, ready to rip out her neck hearts.

She was lying in the pass, but something was all wrong. She was at the wrong height, halfway up the sheer cliff on the south side. Then she realized that she rested on a mound of snow the size of one of the twin hills on Rainfall’s old estate.

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