Page 70 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

“Liver as big as a boat,” one said, saliva dripping.

She saw Paskinix himself leaping up the tunnel, rapping the wall each time he landed.

“Rally, rally, all rally,” he called. “Don’t kill the prisoner. We need her to negotiate. But for your mother teat’s sake, rally!”

“Rally? With what?” a guard asked.

“Our bluff’s been called,” the one at the lightning-fork agreed. “Escape!”

Paskinix began to stagger, exhausted. Fire behind silhouetted his spines.

“Save the machine!” the one at the sparking two-tipped spear called.

“Save your lives, you breedslime,” the big guard said. “Find a hole tight and dark!”

They rushed off, pushing and pulling their wheeled contraption, dragging the great spear.

“Cowards,” Paskinix called.

Wistala knocked him off his feet with a painful sweep of her wing.

He folded himself into a squat, facing the wall as before.

“Always figured I’d be finished in my sleep from one of my sons, not some stinking dragon.”

Wistala saw green scale reflecting firelight. Two wingless drakka raced forward and began sniffing around at trails, and a third leaped on Paskinix, who made no move to resist. His spines hardly twitched as she settled her saa-claws against his gut.

A fledged female, not much older than Wistala but with a much smaller fringe, surveyed the scene. She saw other heads behind and heard faint, frantic taps here and there in the distance.

“Flame and fame, you’re in wretched shape,” the dragonelle said in oddly accented Drakine. The grotesque bat rode her head, hanging about her griff like some kind of leathery, hairy collar. Wistala noticed her wings were striped with purple, yellow, and white. “Half starved and broke-winged. Best have a meal right away, so you’ve the strength to get out of these damp holes.”>The guards tried to ply him with one of those hollow tubes, opening it so a sweet-tart smell, like molasses and juniper, wafted into the tunnel. He put his mouth to it and worked the other end, and Wistala heard a sucking sound. Then he threw down the tube.

“ ’Twas my plan to lead my people to greatness,” he said in his strange Drakine, his back still to her. “It all went wrong in the war with the dwarves. I thought myself mighty clever, sneaking down the river. We’d raided up the Ghioz palace itself and came away with riches. Why not do the same to the dwarves? They and their cursed battle boats.”

“The Wheel of Fire?” she asked.

“Ye know them?”

“I’ve fought them too.”

Wistala told her tale, briefly, of how she had brought down King Fangbreaker and of the gruesome battles she’d seen, showed the long-healed scars in her wing-leather. Paskinix made excited wheezing sounds as she told of the slaughter of the dwarf-column sent into barbarian lands.

He folded his hand under a bit of carapace and worked a crack in the cave wall, widening it and sending bits of stones flying as he twisted his armored limb-shell this way and that. “I should have taken that offer yon old Tyr gave me. Not that new whelp with his damn trained monkeys riding dragonback, I mean the old Tyr. His Cussedness. An alliance.”

“You didn’t?”

“Nay. I thought I’d just gamble, try and master the wizard’s crystal, what with NooMoahk’s yon cave empty and echoing. Thought it’d show me a path to victory, ye see. But someone’d put heart in the blighters and they fought like mad. We were long licking our wounds from that beating. I even thought for a while that some blighter genius had been born and unlocked the crystal’s secrets. But they never followed us down. Next thing I knew the Star Tunnel was full of mad dragons under that green demon. Oh, she’s taken the better bits of the Tyr and his mate.”

It was like trying to piece together an entire song from a line or two at the end. In any case, he seemed in no mood to hit her again.

“May I offer something?”

“Words of comfort from a dragon? Nay.”

She took a careful breath. “You could release me. I’d serve as an ambassador to this Tyr. Perhaps he’d renew the offer that other fellow made.”

“Oh, aye. One of the Tyr’s own Firemaids. Ye’d keep my interests close to heart, I’m sure.”

“You’re clever, but you don’t know everything, Paskinix. I know nothing of this Tyr or his dragons. I fell into the Lower World thanks to a quick slip and a long fall.”

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