Thank the spirits she had the comforting presence of DharSii beside her. Caught between the quiet, reserved AuRon, creepy in his ability to disappear into the scenery and his own thoughts, and RuGaard’s gloomy brooding, she needed a companion to provide mental, and a bit of exhilarating physical, escape.
There were flowers just above the ground in green meadows at the colder altitudes below the tree line. Spring had come at last.
Spring. Her hatchlings would be aboveground this spring and breathing their first fire.
Wait—not her hatchlings. They counted Aethleethia as their mother, even if they could barely comprehend a mind-picture from the lazy ninny.
The offering of her hatchlings had been Scabia’s price for giving the exiles from the Dragon Empire refuge at Vesshall in the Sadda-Vale. Scabia’s daughter, Aethleethia, was unable to have eggs of her own, and both were eager for hatchlings in their hall. The other dragons thought the father of the hatchlings was Aethleethia’s mate, NaStirath, a foolish but handsomely formed dragon of proud lineage.
She, DharSii, and NaStirath had conspired to hide the truth that DharSii was the true sire. Though one of the males did bear stripes as dark as DharSii’s, the suspicious Scabia had been placated when Wistala pointed out that her brother AuRon was also a striped dragon.
No matter who they counted as mother, the three males and two females would be ravenous, and if they were to have anything besides the bony fish or carapace-creatures and snails of the lake to eat, she and DharSii would have to find and kill the trolls that had been raiding sheep, goats, and caribou from the mountain slopes and patches of forest in the valleys.
DharSii and Wistala had discovered the remains of troll-eaten game on one of their flights to get some privacy from the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. A troll could easily eat as much as a dragon and according to DharSii, if the food supply was truly superlative, it would breed.
Scabia’s blighter servants had been frantically breeding cattle, sheep, and goats and releasing them into pasture ever since Wistala and her exiled companions arrived. There was ample game for a whole family of trolls, though the solitary trolls didn’t form anything that might be recognized as family.
So now they were on the hunt for the most dangerous vermin in the world.
Wistala liked a hunt. She liked it doubly well with a dragon she loved and admired. She’d long since learned she could admire something without loving it or love someone without admiring him; the combination of love and admiration went to her head like wine. DharSii—“Quick-Claw” in the dragon-vernacular—when on the hunt spoke and acted quickly and efficiently, with none of the stupid roaring and stomping that a typical male dragon—NaStirath, say—indulged in upon spotting the prey.
“Troll tracks,” DharSii said, waggling his wings.
She followed him down to a felled tree on a steep slope. She had to dig her claws into the earth deep to keep from sliding.
A long, muddy skid mark stood on the lower side of the fallen tree, the mosses and mushrooms devouring it were smashed and smeared where the troll had placed a foot, and it had slipped on the soggy mud beneath, sliding a short way on the slope. They could see broken branches on another tree a short distance downslope where it had arrested its slide.
Wistala sniffed.
“Scat, too,” she said. She followed the bad air to a mound of troll droppings, though the less said about it the better for all concerned. For all their strength of torso and limb, trolls had rather haphazard digestive systems, sometimes expelling food that was barely absorbed. This particular mass of skin, bones, and hair was disgustingly fresh and hardly touched by insects yet, though a beetle or two crawled about on the waste, waving antennae as though celebrating their good fortune.
“Looks like it’s making northeast, toward our herds,” DharSii said, counting the widely spaced tracks heading down the slope. “This is fresh enough that I’ll hazard it’s still climbing that ridge.”
Almost a long mountain in itself, the ridge DharSii spoke of was cut by deep ledges, like colossal steps running at an angle down toward the central lake of the Sadda-Vale, where its bulk forced one of the lake’s many bends. On the other side of the ridge were herds of winter-thinned cattle, hungrily exploring meadows springing up in the path of snow retreating to higher altitudes, along with the usual sheep and goats.
“I’ll try to follow the tracks, stalking or flying low,” DharSii said. “You get up into the cloud cover, so you can just see the surface. If it knows it’s being followed, it will make a dash for shelter, and we may be able to corner it. I know that ridge well; there aren’t many caves, but there are fissures it will use.”
If DharSii had a fault, it was arrogance. If there was a risk to be run, he assumed he would be the better at facing it. Gallant, but vexing for a dragon-dame who enjoyed a challenging hunt.
“Why shouldn’t I follow the trail? Green scale will give me an advantage in low flight, if the troll’s climbed the ridge already and looking behind and below.”
“I know this troll. This track is familiar. Long-fingers, I call him. I’ve tried for him several times, and he’s tried for me almost as many. I know his tricks, you don’t, and he’s nearly had me even so. One of us must put an end to the other sooner or later. He’ll be expecting me to be hunting alone, and he may take a risk that will draw him into the open. Then you may strike.”
“As you wish, you old tiger,” Wistala said.
“I’m scarcely above two hundred. Hardly old,” DharSii said. “Mature and distinguished.”
“Just don’t distinguish yourself any further with more scars,” Wistala said. “Scabia’s blighters sew skin closed like drunken spiders, and we’ve no gold or silver coin to replace lost scale. I’ll be above.”
“
Ha-hem
. I’ll return hearts and scale to you intact,” DharSii said.
Wistala snorted and opened her wings. She flapped hard to gain altitude and the concealment of the cloud cover.
She flew out over the choppy water of the lake, then circled around to the other side of the ridge. After hearing that this troll and DharSii were old enemies, she would feel terrible if she got lucky and spotted Long-fingers out in the open and vulnerable to a dive. But given the chance, she would end the hunt quickly. DharSii was prickly about his honor, but he’d understand. Trolls were too wily to let one live when you had an opportunity for a kill.
She hung in the sky, drifting, surveying the terrain below, feeling as though she’d been in this air before, hunting. Once upon a dream, perhaps. Or some old memory handed down from her parents and their parents.
She scanned the ridge, and the more gentle lands beneath, green hills rolling like waves coming up against a seaside cliff. More goats. Some sheep feeding on the north side. Perhaps if the hunt was successful they could celebrate with fresh mutton.
A few more beats to put herself back in the mists. Wisps of moisture interfered with her vision, but still, she couldn’t see DharSii. For a deep-orange dragon marked by black stripes, he could be difficult to see when he chose to move in forested shadow. Was he on foot or on wing?
Wing would be safer, but easier to see from a distance, and Long-fingers might hide. On foot DharSii had a better chance of following the trail, so he might spot the troll before it saw him—if that cluster of sensory organs that trolls dangled about had eyes as she knew them, that is—
DharSii would probably be on foot, accepting the contest of wits with a troll.
She headed south, in the approximate direction of the troll’s track. It knew the ground as well as DharSii did, and was crossing the ridge in a jumble of boulders and flats that offered concealment—and a possible easy meal of bird or goat.
Still no sign of DharSii, or the troll. She doubted it had made the meadows; the sheep and goats there showed no sign of being alarmed or disturbed.
She sought and searched shadows, crevices, high bare trails, and thorny hillside tangles. Her mate and the troll had disappeared.
To the winds with the plan!
She narrowed her wings and descended toward the jagged shadows of the ridge.
Wistala flew, more anxious with each wingbeat. She should have met DharSii by now. Visions of her mate lying broken and half-devoured by the troll set her imagination running wild to years of loneliness without him. No chance at more hatchlings to raise as their own, no more long conversations, no more uncomfortable throat-clearings when she scored a point . . .
Dust gave them away. Dust and a noise like glacier ice cracking.
She followed the telltale feathers of kicked-up dust to a boulder-littered hummock in the ridge. Here the ridge broke into wind-cut columns of rock like ships’ sails, with brush growing wherever soil could find purchase out of the wind.
The dust flung into the air came from DharSii’s wings, beating frantically at a monstrous figure riding his back. His whipping tail struck limestone as he turned, sending more flakes and dust into the air.
The troll squatted astride DharSii, intent on his destruction. Its great arm-legs gripped DharSii’s crest at the horns, pulling him in ever-tightening circles.
She felt her hearts skip a beat in shock.
DharSii—oh, his neck is sure to be broken! The troll is too strong!
Her firebladder pulsed, eager to empty its contents.
Trolls were put together as though by some act of madness by the spirits, to Wistala’s mind. Their skin was purplish and veined, like the inner side of a fresh-cut rabbit-skin. Their great arms functioned as legs, while tiny legs hung from the triangular torso more to steady the body and to convey items to the orifice that served as both mouth and vent. Great plates covered lungs on the outside, working like bellows to force air across the back, and the joints bent in odd and disturbing directions. Worst of all, they had no face to speak of, just a soggy mass of sense organs on a gruesome orb alternately extended and retracted from the torso like a shy snake darting in and out of a hole.
This troll used its thick, powerful leg-arms grasping the horns of DharSii’s crest to wrench her mate’s head back and down. Wistala braced herself for the inevitable terrible snap that must come.
Wistala had killed a troll once before by breathing fire onto its delicate lung tissue. But dragon-flame, a special sulfurous fat collected and strained in the firebladder and then ignited when vomited by a saliva spat from the roof of the mouth, could hurt DharSii just as much as the troll. Dragon-scale offered some protection, but DharSii’s leathery wing tissue could be burned, or he could inhale the fire, or it might pool and run under his scale.
If she couldn’t use her fire, she could still fight with her weight.
She folded her wings and turned into a tight dive, not as neatly as a falcon but with infinitely more power.
This “Long-fingers” was perhaps as experienced against dragons as she was against trolls. It had DharSii by a dragon’s weakest point, its long neck.
She swooped around jagged prominences, risking skin of neck, tail, and wing. Heedless of the danger to her wing—a hard enough strike might leave her forever broken and unable to reach the sky again—she flew to DharSii’s rescue. This was no longer a simple hunt to exterminate vermin but a death-struggle between dragon and monster.
Pick it up—drop it from a height. Stomp and smash!
Warring instincts raged.
Teeth would be next to useless on a creature of that size. Her neck just didn’t have the power to do much more than score its hide. Better to strike with her tail, or there might be two dragons with broken necks. She altered her dive as though trying to reverse directions, so that the force of her swinging tail might send the troll flying right out of the Sadda-Vale.
The troll, showing the uncanny sense of its kind, threw itself sideways just as she struck, rolling DharSii along with its bulk.
“I’m here, my love!” Wistala called.
Wistala missed the troll, lashed DharSii with her tail. It struck, a whip-crack against horseflesh but a thousand times louder. She saw scale fly and scatter like startled birds.
Wistala roared, half in rage, half in despair.
The troll, in avoiding Wistala’s blow, put itself in a position so DharSii could anchor his head by hooking horn on rock. The great black-striped dragon twisted his body and struck with his
saa
.
This time, instead of dust being kicked into the air, droplets of dark liquid flew. DharSii’s claws came away sticky.
Vaaaaaaa!
DharSii roared as the wounded troll pulled him around in a circle as though trying to yank his head off by pure effort.
DharSii suddenly lunged into the troll’s pull, digging his horns into the fleshy torso. Now it was the dragon’s turn to plant his feet and pull.
The troll used its mighty limbs to push itself off the dragon’s crest, tearing skin and ripping open its own veins. DharSii’s horns and snout looked as though they’d been dipped in ink.
Wistala banked and by the time she swung around, the troll was covering ground in an uneven run, leaving a trail of blue-black blood.