Page 201 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

When she flew back to the ruins, she found Thane Hesturr there with a few of his retainers.

“It seems your company started on the sheep without me,” he said. “I smoothed it over and told them I said you might feed yourselves from the flocks and I would reimburse them. But I’m not a rich man.”

“Our help has a price,” Ayafeeia said, when Wistala passed on the thane’s complaint. She bit off a response. If this would be her role as a diplomat, “smoothing” over matters of poached sheep, her term as ambassador would be short-lived—she’d rather be telling fortunes with the circus again.

“I’m sorry we’re taking up your shepherds’ grazing space.”

“It matters not. They like to bring the sheep here so they can poke around in the ruins. There’s always some new rumor about where gold is buried.”

“If there is gold buried here we’ll soon have it up. Dragons have noses for refined metals. We were hunting those here when we had the unfortunate dispute with your father.”

“I was a boy when he died,” Thane Hesturr said, sounding very much out of humor. Before, he’d spoken of it lightly. Perhaps he was just tired from his journey, or perhaps he’d heard multiple complaints about missing animals. “I will take your help. While you are of aid to Hypatia, I offer you my courage and strength and support. Should you fail in your alliance, I will take my grandfather’s revenge upon you.”

Wistala translated that for Ayafeeia. She asked what he meant by support.

“Meat, fowl, and fish. Also, such irons as you might like. We’ll be collecting old nails and broken tools for you.”

“By the Stormbringer and the Nightdeath, we can use that,” Ayafeeia responded to the translated offer.

Wistala flew out on a night reconnaissance to see how many of the rumors were true.

One she could verify at once: The Ironriders had moved before the Hypatians could gather, it seemed.

The carrion birds led her to the work of the Ironriders.

She passed over burned villages, with heaps of the dead staked out lining the roads. Heads, black with flies and poked and torn by birds, lay in the road like oversized onions.

Other villages and homesteads lay empty. She hoped the owners had fled and the pieces of torn clothing and footwear were just bits and pieces dropped by the riders as they carried off their loot.

From the heights, she saw groups of riders. They’d set up tall, narrow tents from which the fragrant aroma of smoking meat rose into the skies.

So these were the mighty Ironriders. Both the men and their horses appeared bony and undersized, but Wistala knew better than to rely overly on appearances.

The Ironriders, meeting no resistance, had already divided. One column of riders went north, a second stabbed east, and a third headed off to the south, perhaps to seize the river gap where the mighty Falnges fell past the dwarves of the Chartered Company.

The northbound column she would not worry about. If they intended to pass into Varvar lands seeking plunder they’d be in for the fight of their lives, in thick, wolf-haunted woods crossed by many rivers. She knew how quickly the barbarians there would drop their eternal feuds to unite against invaders.

As for the southbound column, they would have a long and difficult trip across hills that would meet them like a series of walls. They would not be able to use their horses to advantage, and the few settlements in the wild mountain foothills would have plenty of warning of their arrival and drive their flocks even higher into the mountains. They would lose many horses on the thin soil of the foothills.

The center column, however, was the most numerous. It aimed straight for the old road that passed through all the thanedoms of the Hypatian north. Once on that, the horsemen could travel like poison in a bloodstream from town to town and finally into the sun-blessed city of Hypat itself. The Ironriders would burn art a thousand years old to toast their horseflesh on sticks and strip the temples of their silver statues.

But perhaps, just perhaps, Hypatia would summon its legions in time, put competent generals at their head, and destroy the northern invaders, then turn to meet the southern.

Hypatia would like to know what sort of numbers had come across the pass, thanks to the treacherous Wheel of Fire.

She passed to the other side of the Red Mountains and trembled. Winking lights of charcoal fires dusted the open plain everywhere there weren’t corrals of horses and goats and sheep. Laden carts sat full of hay and grain, and packs of dogs ran here and there.

The greatest summer priestly festivals in Hypatia didn’t draw a third as many people. Yet these were warriors, with feathers and furs trimming shield and scabbard, under the painted bones tingling wind chimes of a hundred nomadic princedoms.

No wonder DharSii had brought a warning. Had he told of another army such as this to the south? She’d heard talk of it.

She wondered what the Red Queen had promised the princes of the Ironriders to gain their cooperation. Loot? Would each warrior be allowed to carry off one woman and one child as slaves, bound across the leather and sheepskin of their saddles?

What did Mother say about fighting? Hit them where they’re thin. A deer is vulnerable at the leg or neck. A man at the knee, elbow, and throat. Of course, dwarves present a problem—they’re thick everywhere to look at. Thin only in flexibility, dwarves, and she’d improvised her way into breaking a king who would not bend.

The Ironriders ran thin in this pass.

“Excellent ground, Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, when she took her up after dusk that night to view the pass. “I have never seen a finer place for dragons to do battle.”

---