Page 35 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

Assuming he could be spared.

“Am I excused, then?” Rayg asked.

“Of course. NoSohoth, aid him. If Mother Kyrithia herself is needed to wash out bladders, see that she does it.”

Mother Kyrithia ran the Imperial Line’s kitchens. She predated old Tyr FeHazathant and was indulged and bowed to more than the Copper. But she could make the stringiest old rock-lizard taste like the tenderest cut of veal.

There his mind went again, flying in two directions.

NoSohoth lingered. “And the old?”

“We’ll do what we can for them, but it’s the hatchlings we must see to.”

“One thing, my Tyr,” NoSohoth said, glancing at the ceiling where the bats hung.

“Yes?”

NoSohoth put his head close alongside the Copper’s and dropped his voice to a whisper. “As it stands now, this is a tragedy. Grieve with the families over their dead, and you will have their love and respect; the love between you and the hills of the Lavadome will be refreshed and renewed as it was in the days of your victory over the Dragonblade and the hag-riddens. Send this human in with his contraptions and his potions, and no doubt some hatchlings will die in any case. Suddenly you are responsible for their deaths. The physician’s dilemma.”

NoSohoth was always counseling the safety of inaction.

The Copper had received only one piece of wisdom from his parents once pushed off the shelf by the Gray Rat, a suggestion that he try to overcome. Somehow that had stuck with him more than all the lessons he’d learned in the Drakwatch caves, or the deep knowledge of the Anklenes. He would rather try to overcome this wretched blight than be a dignified picture of grief.

“Let them hate. Even a handful of hatchlings saved will count for more in the long flight. Our numbers are few enough.”

“My Tyr—”

“Do your best, NoSohoth. Perhaps I’ll put you in charge of the kern trade from now on, if you don’t mind one more burden.”

NoSohoth’s griff fluttered in excitement. “Speak not of burdens. The Empire and my Tyr have all I have to give. Virtue in the performance of one’s duties—”

“Find some reliable, scientifically minded Anklene to examine the kern-trains on arrival. Oh, and have Rayg show this blight to the physician.” The Copper had to cut NoSohoth off, or he’d be talking until a new coat of scales came in.

The thought of some gold quietly changing sii as a dragon was selected for the position might run NoSohoth’s mind down happier paths.

“A wise decision, my Tyr,” NoSohoth said.

“Now go help Rayg in the kitchens, would you? He’ll need some intelligent thralls who are used to working close to dragons. Start with the body-thralls.”

“Yes, my Tyr.”

“Tell my mate I’ll be with her shortly.”

“Yes, my Tyr.”

After NoSohoth left, the Copper looked up at the red eyes in the shadows above.

“Wail. Gnash. You’ve a long flight ahead of you.”

The bats dropped and glided down, landing on each wing close to the shoulder. They patted and nuzzled his ridge of collar muscle in a manner some might find affectionate, if the observer didn’t know they were searching for a vein.

The Copper had met a family of overlarge cave-bats as a hatchling. They had a taste for blood, and loved dragonblood above all things. Though it made them a little tipsy and insensible, it also had caused them to grow into bats of enormous proportions.

He’d adopted a line of bats, or perhaps they’d adopted him, much in the way a toothy lamprey adopts a whitefish, and they had become his most trusted—albeit dirtiest and laziest—servants. He’d cured them of fouling his sleeping chamber out of necessity. Nilrasha wouldn’t stand for bat-droppings.

“A sup, pleassse?” Wail keened.

“Not yet,” he warned. “I want you clearheaded.”

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