Page 122 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

“Za! I’m not about to start a duel, Tyr,” LaDibar said.

“We all know that,” HeBellereth grunted.

“LaDibar, I would appreciate a suggestion,” the Copper said. “Where should we counter the Ghioz?”

“It is difficult to make a decision. There’s not enough information.”

“There’s never enough information with you,” HeBellereth growled. His griff twitched in anger.

“None of that,” NoSohoth said. “More oliban on the fire, there at the entrance.”

The thralls perfumed the air.

“HeBellereth, you believe the Ghioz will move against Hypatia?”>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?

“Tell me more about how one becomes a Firemaid,” Wistala said.

Chapter 12

The chief dragons of the Lavadome met in the map room.

The map room was a minor wonder. It was the design and labor of one of the Copper’s predecessors as Tyr, the thrall-sniffing sybarite SiDrakkon, begun in the days when he assisted Tyr FeHazathant.

SiDrakkon took the idea from a map the Anklenes made of the Lavadome, formed in three dimensions out of the poured stone the dwarves made. He turned one of the Tyr’s old hoard-rooms into a map room and had the Anklenes re-create the Upholds as though viewed from high above, mountains and rivers and forests in miniature.

The only shortcoming was that one had to be careful where one stepped, for some of the peaks proved fragile.

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