Page 69 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

She fell into an exhausted sleep, but felt better and more clearheaded for the crying jag. Now that the frustration was out she could think again.

Later, she had the most extraordinary dreams. DharSii figured in them, and her blood ran hot and quick at the events. Except his griff kept poking her just beneath her right neck heart.

Waking, she came eye-to-face with a snaggletoothed horror. It was like a bat, but vastly overgrown and with a faintly scaly snout.

It licked bloody lips with a long tongue.

Impossibly, the nightmare spoke. “I’ll let ’em know,” it whispered in good Drakine. “Thanks for the sup, gentledragon. I was perishing for a taste. Good thing you reek of blood ’n dung; never would have found you otherways.”

The horror of this thing!—wretched claw-winged thing!—clinging to her neck overcame her. She let out a startled gasp and it sailed off into the tunnel dark, silent as a passing cloud.

“Now what?” one of the demen asked.

“I—I had a bad dream,” she said, more than half wondering if it was true. No, she smelled her own blood.

“Quit worrying at the bands,” the deman said. “I’m sick of wasting good whiz and ferment washing out your wounds. Serves you right if you get a hot throb and croak off.”

She passed through two feeding cycles of next to no rations. The demen fought when one tried to cut off some of her tail to eat.

The wound in her neck healed so quickly and so clean she wondered if she’d dreamed the whole conversation with the bat-creature. Perhaps it was a craze brought on by thirst. She’d never been so thirsty in her life—thoughts of water tormented every waking moment.

By obeying every order in an instant and affecting a servile wheedle, “learned my lesson and learned it well, sirs,” she received an extra bucket of water. She’d just drained the second bucket when an ominous clatter broke out. First one, then another, then another rod echoed, a quick, steady tap.

“It’s dragons come!” one guard said to another.

“Get the skewer,” the one in charge said.

Wistala’s hearts raced. She resolved, if she saw the other end of this, to die before anyone chained her like some wretched dog again.

They ran toward her with that great twist-headed spear.

She didn’t let them plant it. In agonizing pain, she swatted the point down with her wing as they approached. Her injured wing gave way afresh, the pain of the old injury back and redoubled.

But the force of the blow knocked it out of their hands. She managed to roll over part of it, a sloppy move more than half accidental.

The demen dragged and dragged, trying to extract it.

“Get the cursed machine!” one yelped. “Spark her off it, for dark’s sake.”

More delay. She felt blows of signal rods but didn’t care. Delay! Delay! Delay!

One of them took to rapping and she felt the zap of the magical lightning before she heard it. She jumped.

They dragged their spear free.

She heard a faint whoosh of flame being loosed and thought she saw shadows dance far off down the tunnel.

The blade poked into her side, just above her mainheart.

“Hold! My fellow shes are coming,” Wistala said in their tongue, wishing she knew the deman word for surrender. “A fresh-killed dragon, and I expect I’ll spurt a bit as you ram that thing home. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple of demen reeking of dragonblood. I wonder what they’ll do?”

Their big frog eyes widened still further. “Oh, bury it,” the biggest of the guards said. “We kill a prisoner and they’ll hunt us to the bottom hole.”

“Aye—Firemaids avenge their own,” his friend agreed.

This time Wistala was happy to be taken as a Firemaid and she made no effort to dissuade them.

“No, kill her,” one of the demen at the contraption said. “One less dragon, and we can hide and then come back and eat up for once on her body.”

---