Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire #3)

The potbellied dwarf started at that. Eye Patch chuckled to herself and said some lilting words to the dwarf, who grumbled into his beard.

“He says no good’s ever come from teaching others Dwarvish,” Eye Patch said in her bad Drakine.

“Tell him I’m going into the cavern now. I’ll come back in a moment.”

Eye Patch translated: “He says you’d better, or he’ll skin you personally.”

He squeezed out through the cracks—just—and swam across the pool. The egg cavern seemed vast now, a great expanse filled with comforting smells but doubtful shadows and the echoes of the waterfall. He returned to the dwarves and gave them that strange up-and-down waggle of the head that hominids used.

The dwarves began to tap at their chalk marks, timing their strikes to the splashes outside. The work went fast, as it always did when the dwarves had a plan to follow. They spent a good deal of time before and after each job arguing amongst themselves in their glottal tongue, but when in action together they were swift and efficient.

He slipped back out through the crack and felt his hearts hammering. He found a patch of dark well away from the now thriving cave moss and waited, every nerve alert.

Auron passed soon enough, sniffing as he hunted. The Copper fell in behind his rival, stopping when he stopped, moving when he moved. Auron paused for a taste of water at the waterfall pool and cocked his head in that odd way of his, listening. He slipped into the water. He’d heard the dwarves tapping!

Clever, my brother.

But not as clever as I.

Auron would head for the egg shelf; he was sure of it. He positioned himself on a low ridge of stalagmites at an alley the Gray Rat would use….

The cave wall fell away, almost silently, toppling inward into netting the dwarves had ready to receive it. Auron hurried from the pool, swimming like an arrow toward Mother.

He mustn’t reach the egg shelf or things would go ill. The Copper would terrify Auron into screaming his unprotected lungs out!

The Copper jumped, landing full-weight on his brother’s scaleless back. Mother’s green gleam could just be seen in the distance.

“Got you! Death has come for you, softling,” he hissed in Auron’s ear.

The Gray Rat protested, clawed uselessly at the Copper’s scales as he whined about intruders. The Copper bit him in the soft tissue behind the griff to shut him up. He gave the rehearsed speech, but couldn’t help pouring a little extra resentment into it:

“I’ve lived in hunger and hiding since the day I came out of the shell, thanks to you. So you’ll die now, as you should have died out of the egg. Two brothers, both stronger, and you ended up with the nest. It’s time to right a great wrong. Nearly time, that is. First you get to watch Mother and the chatterer skinned. Stop writhing, you lizard—you’re worse than a snake! Too bad you won’t see me gorge myself on Father’s gold.”

He let the Gray Rat have a good look at Mother. He’d call out a warning and—

Blinding pain flashed up from his snout, and his vision burned white. He lurched away from the pain and Auron wriggled free. He bit at where he sensed his brother stood and got only air, and when he could see again, he and Auron were snapping at each other.

Why wasn’t the fool screaming out a warning to Mother? The dwarves would be on him any moment! What did he have to say to get the Gray Rat to shriek out a warning? He heard a splashing and a clatter behind—the dwarves were gathering.

Auron wasted more time in speech making: “You live this day if you trouble me no further. Though when I tell Father of this, he may feel differently. He’ll pull the mountains down to find such as you, who’d lead assassins to the egg shelf.”

The words hurt almost as much as the tail-crack. Auron spun and hurried off toward the egg shelf at a dash, finally sounding a warning. A thrown net just missing as his brother ran.

Well, the dwarves would have to deal with that. He’d smelled his sister around somewhere; if he could find her he could hold her down until the dwarves could get a loop around her snout.

He turned and saw the dwarves advancing, widely spaced across the egg cavern.

Behind them he saw a gleaming helmet, two upraised wings, and polished black scale—dragonscale!—about the shoulders. The huge man was down here after all, carrying a spear that glowed and sparked like a log in the concentrated heat of a dwarf hearth.

What was this? The dwarves weren’t carrying restraining poles and ropes. Instead they bore great bowed machines balanced across their broad backs, two carrying the bulk with another lifting the fletched end. Others had climbing ladders and spears, spears, and more spears, each with a thick crossbar to keep a pinioned dragon from pulling itself down the shaft toward the wielder.

He marked Wistala climbing toward a hole in the cavern roof above the egg shelf. Mother flung Auron up after her, then nosed at Jizara.

But Jizara stared out across the cavern, met his eyes.

Brother! Look out for the dwarves! We must escape!

The dwarves ignored him as they charged—later he thought it would have been kinder if one had split his skull with one of the broadaxes they carried across their backs—and he searched for Eye Patch. Where was she? He saw the potbellied dwarf, hanging on to the top of a stalagmite, giving orders and pointing with a gnarled bit of polished wood.

The Copper ran up to him, flung himself down.

“Spare the one on the shelf. My sister! My sister!”

The dwarf stepped on his neck. “Hmpf. You don’t want to see this.”

Ka-thun! Ka-thun!—the metal-and-wood contraptions of the dwarves launched their missiles, exploding into motion and dying a moment later, purpose served.

The dwarves yelled as they stormed toward the egg shelf in a rattle of metal—chain shirts rustling, shields banging, helm flanges rattling on shoulder plates, metal-spiked boots striking the cavern floor, and above all the kuu-kuuu-kuuuu! of the dwavrish war cries.

It sounded like the end of the world.

The big man went forward in a series of leaps, springing from prominence to prominence and jumping over formations the Copper had to climb. A flood of dogs led him, and more warriors of his kind followed behind, aiming thick arrows notched in curved bows like half-folded dragon wings.

The Copper smelled the brassy, hot-oil smell of dragonfire, heard the roar of flame devouring air. The shadows of the cave began to dance.

“In there under it, my lads. That’s the style!” the dwarf-lord grunted. At least, that was what it seemed to the Copper he was saying, though how he caught the meaning without knowing the words he could not say.

The Copper heard his mother roar, and the sound made him tremble.

“Spare my sister!” the Copper squeaked.

The dwarf looked down. “Poor wretch. We’ll not bleed her a drop. She’s worth a lot to us. Now what passes? Dogluk, hold him.”

The potbellied dwarf hurried toward the egg shelf, and the Copper scrambled up a stalagmite.

Mother lay on her side, chest heaving, neck and chest pierced by great shafts that showed feathers at one bleeding hole and gory barbed heads at the other. Her head still moved weakly, one golden eye rolling this way and that, bathed in fire leaking from her breastbone.

“You have won this battle, Gobold,” she said to the dwarf. “But I keep a last trick. The war is not over. My young live. And they are free. Free!”

The potbellied dwarf walked over to her, laughing. “Your young? One of them led us to you. Don’t look to your young. Greedy and selfish, like all dragons.” The one she’d called Gobold struck her across the mouth with first one fist, then the other.

Mother spit out a broken tooth.

“They will avenge this day!”

The potbellied dwarf laughed and, still laughing, swung his ax and struck her in the neck. By the third blow his boots were awash in blood, his stout helm, beard, and arms splotched red.

The Copper’s hearts ceased beating for a moment and he swooned.

A mass of dwarves, men, and dogs crowded on the egg shelf, embracing one another and letting blood from Mother’s wounds run into their helmets, which they then passed around and drank. Dogs, wild with excitement, chased from wound to wound, sniffing, biting her where she still twitched.

Men stood, holding nets over Jizara with heavy boot heels. His sister lay frozen in terror, eye whites bright in the cave’s gloom. The Copper wanted to fling himself down atop her, protect her, but the smell of dragonblood in the air had him clinging tight-bellied to the cave floor.

The big man came forward, his dragon-jaw blade out and ready. He stepped up to Jizara, glanced over his shoulder at the dwarves dancing and stamping about Mother’s corpse.

“Mercy,” Jizara gasped.

The big man laughed. “Nits make lice,” he said in his rough Drakine.

He pushed his blade slowly into her throat, twisting it this way and that, and, whimpering, Jizara died.

Fiends!

A dwarf dragged him back by his battered tail, but the pain was nothing to the insensate anger flooding his hearts. A howl broke from his throat, every agony he’d suffered since the moment of his hatching gathered into a single scream.

Fiends!