Dragon Avenger

The Dragonblade swung, and she shut her eyes.



Amazingly she felt nothing, heard only a splash—her own head falling into the pool at the base of the statue?



She opened an eye. The Dragonblade had cut down Rainfall, pulled him out of the water and set him down on the ground, propped up so he sat against the fountain pool.



“Thank you,” Rainfall gasped.



The Dragonblade glanced down at her, his broad, flat face frowning, gray wisps in his dark hair and thick at his temples, and he turned and walked toward Hammar, removing his thick gauntlets.



She felt Rainfall’s hand on her snout. So tired. But the water was helping. She sucked a little more.



“The dragon’s finished,” the Dragonblade said.



Dragonelle, Wistala corrected rather absently. I lived to fly and by rights must be called a dragonelle.



“More by her own doing than any arrows,” the Dragonblade continued as he walked up to Hammar.



The Dragonblade moved so fast, Wistala wasn’t sure what she saw, but Hammar fell backwards. Ah, the Dragonblade held his gauntlets aloft; he’d lashed out and struck Hammar across the face. He threw the gloves into Hammar’s face.



“I’m a slayer, and I quit whatever feud you have,” the Dragonblade said.



“I’m takings her earsh,” the man-boy slurred, drawing a blade and moving forward. “My idea to baitsh the creasure with—”



The Dragonblade reached out, caught him by the red shoulder sash and spun him around so hard that he dropped the medicine bottle and fell. The man-boy got to his hands and feet, and the Dragonblade kicked him at the tailvent, so hard that the youth went face-down in the dirt. “Get him on his horse,” the Dragonblade said to the line of archers.



“Mount your horse, and let’s be off,” the Dragonblade said. “Vagt kom trug mid suup-seep,” he said to the barbarians, who growled and fingered their weapons. He waited expectantly.



“I thought not,” the Dragonblade said, turning.



One burst from the others, howling and waving a short ax in each hand. The Dragonblade whirled, lifted his scabbarded blade and used it to catch the pair of axes under the head. He lifted his arms so the squatty barbarian hung gripping the ax-handles with legs kicking, and head-butted him so that the barbarian dropped unconscious.



With the aid of one of his men, he remounted his armored horse. “I leave you the honor of finishing the beast off, brave and lordly men of Galahall—Ha!” He glanced back at the man-boy, who was sagging in the saddle he’d been hoisted into, and touched heels to horse flank. “Keep the rest of my fee, Thane. Gold from you could buy only wormy meat and ill-fitting shoes.”



The thane’s armsmen stirred and looked to their chief for orders.



Hammar held up a hand, and his men remained in their places. “You’ve made an enemy to remember—and regret!” Hammar shouted at the riders filing east. The Dragonblade tilted back his head and laughed. “Drakossozh!” Hammar screamed into the night. “You’ve insulted a king!” Only laughter answered.



Wistala found she had the energy to climb up into the fountain. She settled into the water, rubbing her back and washing out her wounds but also washing out one of the goldfish, poor fellow. Pleasant warmth suffused her, and she curled in the pool about the statue so her head was near Rainfall.



Not only did the water feel good, but her underside was now protected by the pool’s thick lip of masonry, as well. She rattled her griff in challenge and waited.



“Well. You heard him,” Hammar said to his bodyguards. “Kill the creature!”



“We need spears for that, Lord Hammar,” the closest said. “Longer spears than our allies carry,” he added hastily, as Hammar pointed to the spears in dirty hands all around.



“You have your swords!”



A man with a deformed lip curled up to reveal brown teeth shook his head. “It’s still moving. I’m not going near those jaws, whatever that dragon-hunter said.”



“Then start at the back and work up!”



“The tail’s just as dangerous. That boy lost his eye!”



Hammar opened his mouth as if to say something else but thought better of it. “Someone get me a bow!”



Barbarians began to ride across the yard, their horses laden with bags and tied barrels. Some carried off bound women and children.



The barbarians before Mossbell were conducting an informal market, swapping candlesticks for plate, furniture for spice boxes and kitchen implements. Hammar yelled something at one of the brow-tattooed leaders, who shrugged or glanced in any direction but the fountain or scratched their beards as if to say, Dragon . . . I see no dragon!



Part of Mossbell’s sod roof collapsed with a roar.



One of Hammar’s riders rode up with a hunting bow, fully as tall as a man. Hammar notched an arrow and drew.



Wistala saw him sight on her eye. She pressed herself flat into the water, which surged and washed over the rim.



At the last instant, Hammar shifted aim and fired an arrow into Rainfall’s chest. The elf let out a weak cry.



“That was for practice,” Hammar said.



Wistala lunged out of the water. It wasn’t a dragon-dash, more of a desperate crawl, and Hammar backpedaled, dropping his arrow—



And Mossbell’s south yard-wall exploded in orange and yellow.



Through the dust and falling bricks came three gargants, charging abreast, dwarves tied on their backs holding rein and weapon.



Behind the gargants rode others from the circus, men and women on the show horses who were used to confusion and noise and crowds, and behind them others on foot, carrying everything from mallets to clubs bristling with tent spikes.



Hammar gave them one openmouthed look and ran. Wistala did not have the strength to pursue him.



The barbarians instinctively drew together into a bunch to face the attack, linking wooden shields and raising war-pick and ax, but the dwarves tightened their formation and let the iron-shod feet of their gargants crash through and stomp the barbarians as easily as they would a flower bed. All order left the barbarians, and they ran for their lives.



But the circus was not done yet. The dwarves situated highest on beast-back fired crossbows down into the rout, passing the empty bow back for others to load and taking up another with remorseless precision.



The riders harried the barbarians at the edges, throwing knives or small axes, or hooking men at neck or feet with ropes. Ragwrist himself sent Marlil and her women after the fleeing thane and his bodyguard. They lit red candle-fireworks and rode hard on the heels of the men, shrieking like loosed demons and throwing knives until the bodyguard plunged into the woods—save for the man who was dismounted by a branch.



The battle passed in fury. Dsossa appeared as though dropped from the sky, kneeling next to Rainfall. Those on foot were the last to leave the yard, clubbing their way through the lamed and the wounded barbarians.



Wistala tried to rise to her feet, failed. The front balcony on Mossbell fell in a shower of sparks.



Ragwrist returned, dismounted, ran to Rainfall, fell to his knees. Ragwrist used his thumbs and turned up Rainfall’s eyelids. He detached the sobbing Dsossa, placed a hand on Rainfall’s heart, then tore out the offending arrow.



“He is dead,” Wistala said. She could hear no breathing.



Ragwrist blew his whistle, loudly, and again. He stopped only when he heard answering whistles from the thundering gargants.



“Quarryness is aflame,” Ragwrist said. “It would appear the thane had enemies there, as well. That fat low judge is hanging from the Hypatian Hall peak.”



Wistala’s light-headedness brought a strange sort of clarity.



“You’d better move the circus south of the bridge.” She would remain beside Rainfall, now and for eternity. . . .



Swinging, flying again—no, she was being hauled up onto gargant-back by dwarves with ropes all around.



Through a sticky eye she saw a golden summer dawn. Mossbell still flamed at the end of blackened beams. A door-pull glittered in the char-heap, and the wind was carrying off fine white ash—probably the remains of Rainfall’s library.



They passed through the village, better than half the houses were burnt, and the others were emptied, but the inn still stood. The villagers had thrown the few dead barbarians on the burning cart before the inn, and added broken shutters and doors. Some joined the circus column, carrying bundles or pushing household goods in carts, and so passed over the bridge into the next thanedom.



Ragwrist arrayed his house carts to block the bridge, and the last memory Wistala had was of Widow Lessup consoling Mod Lada—Rayg had been at academy outside Quarryness, and none in the despoiled town could say what had become of him.



They buried Rainfall the next day on a cool summer morning of the sort that always saw him long at work in his garden.



Wistala, drinking like a horse fresh from a race, begged Ragwrist to drag a dead horse from the village and a team of dwarves with a gargant went and fetched two so that she might have one the next day. They hung one and she devoured the other despite the flies. With food and water in her, she felt up to a slow, stiff walk up the riverbank to a prominence overlooking Mossbell’s grounds.