Page 120 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

A dragonelle on the other side of the column tossed demen this way and that, stomping and swinging her tail. She saw one knocked off into darkness by a tail swipe. A wet splat sounded out of the shadow.

The drakka dashed ahead and fell into line with admirable speed, as though the only thing that mattered in their young lives was getting noses into line, the space of a fully extended tail between them.

She could hear the steps of the demen horde now, a sound walking through spur-deep leaves to faint claw-taps.

“Drakka! Loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.

Orange gouts of flame struck the foremost.

“Drakka! Protect the rear. Firemaids, scale wall, three across!”

As the drakka dragon-dashed to the rear, the remaining six dragonelles dropped into a strange back-to-front set of interlocking pairs. The three biggest dragonelles plopped their backsides down, hugging ground, tails pointed toward the enemy. They swung their tails back and forth, not in unison, but at random. The backward-facing dragons watched flanks and rear, the forward-facing dragonelles held their breath as the demen surged through their burning, fallen comrades. The flames showed the approaching forms admirably.

The other three dragonelles filled the spaces, sii just behind the backwards-facing saa.

Wistala stuck close to Ayafeeia, who kept one eye on the approaching demen and the other on the dragonelle who’d reduced the flanking attack into smears of blood and twitching bodies. She breathed fire into a hole.

The demen charge broke against those swinging tails. Demen were crushed between two meeting tailswipes, or batted against the Star Tunnel’s walls, or knocked head over heels before being crushed like an insect under a branch. Those few who dodged through the maze of movement, brandishing frightful-looking barbed swords and spears, met lashing saa-strikes that separated torso from legs or sent entire bodies flying, leaving only the spinning head to bounce off the tunnel floor like a dropped melon.

The mass piled up, just out of reach of the waving tails.

“Firemaids, loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.

The tails flattened against the mass of haunches as the three dragonelles emptied their firebladders. Wistala smelled the hot, oily smell of dragonflame and the flames burst among the demen as though howling, dancing, blue-orange-yellow beasts rampaged in their ranks.

Keee, keeee came the screams from the demen, hissing like Widow Lessup’s old kettle before making the morning infusion.

“What’s left is running,” one of the Firemaids called, spitting to cool her mouth.

“Drakka, finish them,” Ayafeeia said. “Run and pounce, before they get back to their holes.”

It wasn’t a battle anymore, if it ever was. It was an extermination.

Wistala couldn’t watch the rest.

They had to relocate, to remove themselves from the reek of blood and waste.

“It doesn’t usually go that well,” Ayafeeia said, as the Firemaids settled down to a meal of the vanquished. “If they’d been quicker and quieter, as demen usually are, it might have gone ill. I’ve been engulfed before. It seems they suddenly flood up from the floor and walls and you’re in a sea of them. You’re lucky to form fighting pairs.”

She and a pair of drakka, returning from the fight with gore-smeared mouths and saa, attended to Wistala’s wound. They dusted it with some kind of ground lichen and wetted the root that Wistala knew as dwarfsbeard to revive the sticky strands before laying it on and binding it with sponges.

“It’s a shallow cut. They always look worse than they really are,” one of the drakka said, checking the bindings. “You’ll be limping for a while.”

“Well, Wistala. I’d say you arrived just in time to see the last of the Demen War,” Ayafeeia said. “I envy you. You can tell your hatchlings a fine story someday.”

“I should think you’d have a better one,” Wistala said. “You led the fight.”

“She—” a Firemaid began.

“Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, “the Firemaids take a most solemn oath of celibacy, so that we may be more devoted in defense to the Empire. Hatchling survivals are two to one favoring the female, so we must do much of the work of defense of those who do take mates.”

One of the dragonelles licked at her torn and riven scale. “Oath or no, some recant at the first opportunity, like—”

“Enough of that,” Ayafeeia said.

Wistala couldn’t help but be moved at such an attitude. This green bodyguard had saved her life twice now. She’d often despaired of finding a mate—she’d once promised her father that she would avenge their family’s destruction by having many hatchlings—but if she couldn’t have her own, she could certainly protect those of others.

But she was also a Hypatian librarian. The title meant much to her. Would she have to renounce her Hypatian rank if she joined these sisters from the Lavadome?

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