by E. E. Knight
She left Lord Lobok calling for more wine.
Three days later King Fangbreaker’s throne room was lined with many of the most noble families in the mountains, hearing the report of Field Commander Djosh. Wistala waited for it to be read again in Parl, having begged to know what the message she carried read:
Noble King and Assembled Select and Lordly Dwarves,
I write you to report a most satisfactory outcome to an attempted treachery by Lord Hammar and his barbarians on the two hundred ninetieth of this year. I thank the Fates for the eagle and his feather landed upon Lord Lobok’s door, for were it not for him not a dwarf of this expedition may be returning.
Lord Lobok insisted on our arrays being placed within hearing distance of Galahall, ready to answer a cry for assistance, and I can only marvel at his foresight, inspired, I’m told, by our lucky dragon, who sensed matters amiss.
I am told that during dinner an unusual number of barbarian leaders were present, as the infamous Hammar was building around himself a court of scoundrels. As the servants poured wine for a toast, Hammar gave some sort of code word that he was letting his illegitimate son—I shall not sully the throne room with his coarse discourse—be sold for little more than the song that wooed his mother. At this there was some stirring at the priests’ end of the table and Lord Lobok let out such a shriek of warning that we would have heard it were we camped two vesk away. Lobok drew blade and flung himself sideways behind the table, knocking over a server who was making to bring the cask of wine down on Shieldmaster Dar’s head, Lord Lobok’s bodyservant tells me.
At the calls of alarm and assistance from Lord Lobok I sent my hardhanded dwarves forward and they stormed through the windows of Galahall in good order. The barbarians made some semblance of a fight but clearly intended for the dinner to be a slaughterhouse, not a battle hall, and seemed not much experienced at close quarter fighting under roof and among furniture. Our dwarves, used to such environs, secured the boy with some loss of blood, almost all of it on the part of our opponents, and no loss of the treasure we brought to purchase him, for treachery abrogates any deal. I hope the throne will approve.
Barbarian cavalry, long prepared to finish off the villainy indoors, made an effort to harry our retreat, but our catafoua made them fall back with loss.
Wistala smiled, for she’d had Lessup’s mead-deliverers start rumors of warlike preparations in the dwarf camp where they’d just sold their honeyed brew.
I close this dispatch by saying we have lost few dwarves as we retreat in good order for the Ba-drink. I write to you in Lord Lobok’s stead, for he travels with the healing wagons, and is so dosed with medicines after his experiences he is currently unable to write legibly. If you have any orders beyond returning to the Hardhold with our young prize, they will be immediately carried out by
Your faithful Field Commander,
Djosh Scarchin
As the words were read in Parl, the dwarves grumbled and swore all over again, and King Fangbreaker paced before his throne.
“What do you say, Oracle?” a dwarf called.
Fangbreaker glowered. “This is a military matter, Guildmaster Cyoss.”
“Great King, though we would hear the dragon, you must decide, of course,” another called.
Fangbreaker turned to Wistala. “What do you think, Oracle?”
“I have not a military mind. But shouldn’t this sort of treachery be punished?”
The assembled select dwarves growled in agreement.
“I am very tired from my flight, and you all have weighty matters to long discuss,” Wistala said. “May I be excused from council of war?”
“Of course,” Fangbreaker said.
“Three cheers for the lucky dragon!” a dwarf at the back shouted.
Wistala bowed backwards out of the throne room, but she saw the fixed stare in Fangbreaker’s eyes, and trembled.
Lord Lobok’s expedition returned with Rayg in triumph and glory.
It must have been strange to the thin little youth, to be borne across the Ba-drink in a garlanded boat, flanked by lordly dwarves and rowed between Thul’s Hardhold and Tall Rock, under a rain of tiny white mountain flowers—and bits of paper and wax wrapping—thrown from the balconies and the Titan Bridge.
Even as they returned a new expedition set out, under three of the Wheel of Fire’s greatest generals.
Wistala heard from the star-guild that King Fangbreaker had decided to launch a “punitive expedition” into the barbarian lands, to teach the barbarians a real lesson for the treachery at Galahall. They were keeping their exact plans secret, but the star-guild had provided detailed maps of Kark and the Blacklake area, for barbarians from that region had been identified as among the slain around Galahall.
Wistala hung about, asked if she’d be needed to relay messages, and was told that the sight of a dragon in the sky might give away the column’s presence.
When night fell, she flew away from the Wheel of Fire with all the speed she could manage and almost tore her wings off making it to the Green Dragon Inn. There she dictated a letter to be given to Hammar, and a much longer one to be sent to Ragwrist.
Lord Hammar,
You and I have had our differences in the past, but the enemies of my blood, the dwarves of the Wheel of Fire, are marching on Blacklake and Kark, intent on destruction and murder. Whether you tell your barbarian allies to move their women and children away from those areas or plan an ambush is entirely up to you.
A Daughter of Hypatia
Jessup looked at the note after he finished writing it in his chicken-run hand. Wistala pressed her librarian medallion into some very ordinary red wax he helpfully dribbled at the bottom.
“This is a dangerous game you are playing, Wistala.”
She stretched her aching wings and back muscle. “It’s no game, I assure you, and the stakes are beyond anything that can be placed on a table or dice-rug.”
“Mod Lada would like news of her son, if you have any. She saw him seized up from table after that treacherous dwarf-lord started attacking the wine stewards and signaled his ambush.”
Wistala told what she’d heard from the astronomers’ guild: “I have not spoken to Rayg, but I am told he’s been apprenticed to the Guild of Inventors. Evidently he showed some intelligence in the Hall of Inventions as he passed through it, and recognized some piece of artifice and its use, which much impressed the keepers there. It is a high honor, only the brightest dwarves gain an apprenticeship in that guild. I can assure her those dwarves are the best-treated of the Wheel of Fire.”
Jessup pulled back a lock of his remaining hair. “It is a strange road we’ve traveled since that day we buried Avalanche.”
“And there are still more trolls to slay.”
“I’ll let you deal with the trolls. I’ll keep my inn and tell your story to anyone who asks about the sign.”
“May it not have an end for a long time,” Wistala said.
Jessup reached up, tickled her under the chin. “I’ve always wanted to do that. I never tire of looking at you, Wistala. There’s something about dragons. All power and dread symmetry.”
“I must be off. I have much more flying to do, yes, all the way to the Imperial Library at Thallia. I hope they don’t panic and think I’ve come to burn it. I need to speak to a librarian.”
“What will you do there?”
“Learn about dams.”
Chapter 27
When Wistala returned to her tower a score of days later, she found all of the Wheel of Fire were aquiver. The punitive expedition had not sent communication in many days, and not a few wondered at the silence.
She received a most odd note shortly after rising the next day. Yellowteeth hurried to get her minder, who hurried to get his guild-chief, who read the note and sent for the escort Wistala requested.
So it was in the company of the star-guild that she went to meet the Dragonblade on the Titan bridge.
He stood in the center, in his ar
mor but with sword in scabbard and cloak about him, helm hanging from his belt. His broad face was much as she remembered it, perhaps a little wearier.
“I’ve long been curious to meet this Oracle dragon for some time now, but was occupied on the other side of the Inland Ocean.” For some reason Wistala was relieved. As soon as he said occupied on the other side, she feared a mention of the Sadda-Vale.
“So you’ve seen me, Drakossozh. Is there to be a duel here, under the eyes of the Wheel of Fire?”
“A duel? With vermin? Spare me your wit, creature.”
“Then I will go about my business—,” Wistala began.
“No. Walk with me. I will start no fight with you here. You have my word.”
Wistala wondered if she could trust the word of an assassin.
“I must be growing old. You are the second dragon to slip through my fingers,” he said.
“Who was the first?”
He turned toward the Hardhold. “Come. I wish to show you something, Oracle.”
He led her down many sets of stairs, across chambers filled with trophies and statues, and finally down a shaft where one traveled by having the floor descend rather than going afoot. He gave a password to guards in a workshop filled with the sound of hammers and deeper pounding, and Wistala smelled hot metal and burning coal.
She passed a group of young dwarves, their faces unmasked, listening to another older dwarf talk as he pointed with a stick at various features of a hose that fed water into a series of smaller and smaller pipes, until it shot out the bottom with tremendous force. She recognized Rayg among the apprentices, the only human other than Drakossozh this far in the Hardhold.
“We’re deep in the Guild of the Armorers,” the Dragonblade said. They passed racks of weapons and stacked helms, with dwarves bent over workbenches on all sides. The symphony of noise was as chaotic as a battle, and the air thick with the tang of heated metal. “Have you ever wondered how the Wheel of Fire got its name?” he asked.
“You see the burning shield here and there,” Wistala said. “It’s an emblem.”
“They were called the Wheel of Fire before that. Here, follow.”
He passed into a quieter gallery. The ceiling here was wide but low, and Wistala smelled an oily smell like lamp fats overlaid with other workshop odors.
Long ranks of machines stood in little bays. Some had wooden platforms next to them, one or two had been wheeled out so the dwarves could work. A few of the workers gave Wistala a startled look as she crouched to get through the doors.
The pieces of craftsmanship were like great walls on wheels of assorted sizes. If there was an average, she would put that wheels were fully dwarf height and the walls perhaps twice that, but it seemed some walls and wheels came taller and some shorter, some wider and some narrower. But on each two spars jutted out from the axles of the wheels behind the wall, with handles at irregular intervals. Wistala watched a team of dwarves move one by having four dwarves stand at each spar and lift, then push it forward. Behind the shield were big tanks like water-cisterns, only with hoses and glass devices like clock faces fixed to the joints, along with assorted levers and cables connecting wheel to tanks.
But the objects at the front caught her attention more than anything.
Pipes projected from slits in the great wheeled shields. The slits, indeed the shields themselves, reminded her of overlarge dwarf battle-masks with their thin gaps so the dwarves could see and still have their eyes shielded.
Open-jawed dragon heads, horribly real, had been fixed to the front of the pipes, their faces forever frozen into snarling fury. Their eyes had been replaced by painted crystals, but otherwise they looked ready to come alive. There were heads with eight horns and heads with none, heads with green scales and heads with bronze, heads of hatchlings, drakes, drakka, dragons, dragonelles. . . .
Some were familiar.
The world spun about her. She fixed her eyes on the Dragonblade, who stood with hand on sword hilt, helmet cradled at his elbow. His knees were bent just a trifle, as though he were waiting to leap into action. Wistala noticed shadows, heard excited breathing, the alcoves just ahead.
“I’m not aware of all the mechanics to their operation,” the Dragonblade explained from somewhere on the other side of the Endless Steppe, or so it seemed to her ears. “But the turning of the wheels forces air into one of the tanks, and that air is then used to drive flame, like dragonflame, out of the other tank and through the pipe at the front. It’s ignited by a coal gas-flame there. Certainly not what a dragon is capable of, but I hear it’s terrifying in tunnel warfare.”
The dwarves had all frozen in their labors, watching her as though fixed by spellcraft.
“Most interesting,” Wistala said. “Is there another stop to the tour, or am I done?”
“You hold your anger well. Here’s another test.” He extended his gauntleted palm. In it rested two ancient Hypatian coins, one of gold, the other of silver. “I found these in the jowls of a bronze I killed on the banks of the Whitewater. There was also a female hatchling there. That hatchling wouldn’t have been you, would it?”
Wistala shot out her tongue, but the Dragonblade was quicker of hand, closed his fingers around the coins and withdrew them.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were offering me a treat,” Wistala said. “Speaking of which, I am late for my dinner.”
“A dragon who can hold her temper,” the Dragonblade said.
Just,, Wistala thought.
“There’s something about you that frightens me,” the Dragonblade said, eyebrows together. His horridly flat face wrinkled in thought. “A dragon who can keep her temper could be a deadly enemy. Or—”
“Or what?” Wistala asked.
“I won’t misjudge you again,” the Dragonblade said, not answering her question and crossing to the opposite gallery. “You’ve escaped me twice. There won’t be a third.”
“No,” Wistala said. “I expect there won’t.”
“And even if I fall, I have a son and a daughter to avenge me.”
“I’ve met your son. I hope he gets his chance.”
“Ah, yes. Not his finest performance. I thought I’d try him on an easier target his first night out. I never thought you’d chew your wings open. They’ve grown out nicely.”
Wistala took a breath. If she kept her eyes on the Dragonblade, she couldn’t see the heads, except he kept strolling around so she couldn’t help but view the machines.
“I wonder if Fangbreaker knows all your history,” the Dragonblade said.
“I wonder if he knows you’ve disobeyed him, and killed when he told you to capture.”
She turned and moved back through the workshops, keeping one eye on him just in case. But he stood there, helmet at his hip, chuckling. “You may walk away, dragon. Even fly. But wherever you go, you cannot hide forever. Dragons are noticed, you see?”
As she retraced her steps back dwarves seemed to be rushing about everywhere, or standing on stairways talking and gesticulating. Something had them dreadfully agitated but Wistala did not ask what. Her head hurt, perhaps from the fumes in the workshops, and she wanted to retire to her tower to sleep.
“Dhssol.”
“Oracle, what do you think?” some asked, but she passed in a daze.
“Dhssol! Dhssol!” the dwarves said, one to the other. Dwarf wives wailed it from their balconies as Wistala crossed the Titan bridge.
“Who is this Dhssol?” she asked one of the leather-slippered court workers.
“Not a who, a what,” he said, pulling at his beard. “ ‘Disaster,’ it would be in Parl. An evil star is on our house.”
The dwarves of the star-guild told her the terrible news when she returned to her tower. A tradesdwarf of the Chartered Company had made a rare appearance at the Wheel of Fire to bring tidings of sorrow and fear: the punitive column had been wiped out almost to a dwarf.
After a bloody march through villages where the dwarves left burned bodies in w
ooden cages, they’d been betrayed by their hired scouts, supposedly belonging to a rival clan to the lands they’d been traversing. The false scouts led to a flooded river, and while attempting to cross, they had been attacked during a snowstorm from both sides and by forces shooting down the river in narrow boats.
Hammar, now called the Dwarfhanger by his barbarian legion, was reputed to be on the march for the Wheel of Fire, destroying what remained of the column as the survivors retreated.
Some important voices were calling for Lord Lobok to be put in charge of the defense of the city, he’d had his share of luck against the barbarians and Hammar before.
“And he’s cautious, and would not improvidently expose his troops to destruction,” Djaybee said. “He can stand against this Hammar, for years if need be. The barbarians always lose interest in war after a season. It’ll be over by the summer flowers. Should he assume command?” the scientifically minded dwarf, who’d never asked her advice before, wondered.
“I would like nothing better,” Wistala said.
They were interrupted in this discourse by a visitor. This time Gobold Fangbreaker himself came to her, rather than going through the delay of having her brought to the Throne Hall.
“Tala, you have heard the rumors?” the king said as he arrived, surrounded by his black-armored bodyguard.
“Yes. Is it true, my king?”
“True enough,” he said. “Though not quite so bad as some losing their nerve would have it. Battle Commander Vande Boltcaster has a full maneuver array of dwarves left, and they are fighting as they turn back. But they’ve been forced to abandon their train and are short on supplies and have no time or capacity to seek more. I’ve had an idea. How much do you think you can carry?”