Dragon Rule

Ayafeeia snorted. “She’s wearing this. You look good in it, Queen-Consort Wistala. Let’s not delay, now that you’re dressed for the party, go up and see and be seen.”

Party. Wistala stifled a snort. Ayafeeia avoided the socializing Imperial Line, despite being of Tyr Fehazathant’s line. The only parties she had a taste for were battles.

Wistala made a light clattering sound as she walked wearing the armor ching-ching-ching-ching—the sound reminded her of coin rattling in a purse.

She went to the top of Imperial Rock, reflecting light from the polished armor on the passageways around her.

“Your orders, my Queen,” Ayafeeia asked.

“You know more about warfare than I do. Should we fight them in the hills, or concentrate on defending Imperial Rock?”

“We’re better off staying mobile, striking and flying again. If you stay in one place, they use war machines on you. Spirits, are they in the Lavadome already?”

Wistala saw one of the Aerial Host flying in loops at the edge of the Lavadome, above the north passageway down to the river ring.

Dragons, drakes and drakka, many carrying eggs or with hatchlings riding on their back, streamed toward Imperial Rock. The Drakwatch, guarding the entrances, urged them on.

The dwarfs came in waves. Wistala had to admire the precision of the attack.

War machines fired clusters of sparking missiles into the air at the flying dragons. They spread as they rose, like dandelion seeds blown by a strong wind. A Firemaid dove, dropping fire and a fountain of sparks shot up around her. She rolled over and fell.

Flying wildly, the last of the Aerial Host she’d sent to defend the holes swooped left and right, avoiding the fireworks.

It wasn’t HeBellereth.

HeBellereth fallen, the Lavadome overrun—and I’m responsible, Wistala thought.

The dwarfs, in open ranks, formed a crescent around Imperial Rock. From the height, they reminded Wistala of ants among the beetles of their war machines.

They’d taken captives. Thralls mostly, but also a few drakes and drakka. They had them bound, carried on poles, heavy axmen to either side.

“Parley!” a great fat dwarf with a booming voice shouted. His beard glowed redly.

Wistala and a few others cautiously looked over the edge of the gardens. Parley, when by appearances they were charging toward victory.

But appearances could be deceiving. Wistala was reminded of her first battle with the Firemaids, when a last, suicidal charge by starving demen had been turned back in the Star Tunnel by a few disciplined dragonelles and drakka. These Wheel of Fire dwarves had a ragged air about them, their shields and helmets were patched and dinged, and hardly a beard among them glowed. Only a dwarf who’d suffered a prolonged period of poverty let his beard go dark, without even sugar-water to keep the lichens they cultivated in their thick beards thriving.

Was this attack also a last, desperate gasp of a dying nation?

“We come only for Wistala, who betrayed our king to his death. Give her to us, and we release the captives!”

That may be, but bearer-dwarfs and slave blighters hammered and notched together war machines just behind the first rank of fighters.

“Give us Wistala!” a chorus of dwarfs called.

“Wistala! Wistala!” they chanted. One of the war machines fired a helmet full of burning coals that exploded when they struck Imperial Rock.

“Do it,” a court dragon named CuRemon urged. “All they want is you. Trade your life for all of ours.”

“You think the dwarfs would stop with me?” Wistala asked.

“We’d only be one dragon less in finding out,” a drakka said.

“Stop that, now,” NoSohoth said. He turned to Wistala. “Don’t listen to them. The Tyr doesn’t negotiate with invaders—unless it’s terms of their surrender.”

The dwarf crescent was spreading. And thinning.

She tried to pick out detail on the dwarfs but only had a vague impression of heavy armor and beards. They moved deliberately, trotting, but they must have been very tired. What faces they could see were thin and haggard.

They’d come a long way, quickly, fighting hard against the current, and then they’d battled their way into the Lavadome. Dwarfs were famously indefatigable, but if she could break up their attack somehow—

“NoSohoth, I’ll lead the demen in an attack on their left. When we engage, have the Drakwatch attack.”

“But that’ll leave no one to defend—” CuRemon sputtered.

“No one? The Imperial Rock is full of dragons, Wyrr, Skotl, and Ankelene. They’ll have to fight for once. Even dead, some of them are so fat they’ll plug up the entrance until the dwarfs drag them out.”

“You hear me,” she told the spectators atop Imperial Rock. “You look like dragons and speak like them. Let’s see you fight like them, for once in your pampered lives!”

They grumbled, but a few made for the passageway down. Odd that they were more outraged at the Queen-Consort upbraiding them than a band of invading dwarves wrecking as they came. Maybe her parents had a point—if the tales about their origins were true. Dragons shouldn’t allow themselves to get too civilized.

Hurrying to the other side of the Lavadome, she spread her wings and—

“Wistala, don’t, it’s too heavy!” NoSohoth shouted.

Remarkably, her wings didn’t fold on her. Of course, she always had been a strong dragon. She glided down toward the Ankelene pyramid. She tried a few experimental beats—she might be able to hold herself up, even in the Tyr’s armor.

The Tyr’s demen legion were arrayed around the Ankelene Pyramid, defending the archives and workshops and healing nooks.

She called on the demen to gather.

“This is the day, demen legion,” Wistala said. “The enemies of your blood stand before you!”

“Yes, the dwarfs, who slaughtered your females and children in battle after battle.” Wistala knew little dwarf/demen history, only that their wars were long and bloody, with entire communities slaughtered in raid and counterraid. Life was as hard as stone in the Lower World.

The demen started up an eerie hissing that wasn’t quite a whistle, and clacked their spines together. On a demen it was hard to tell where limb and carapace ended and armor and weapons began. Wistala thought it sounded like a swarm of insects.

“We fight, we drink blood?” their general asked.

What had started as a victorious drink of blood every now and then had grown into a need terrible and desperate. Wistala wondered how they’d ever sate their appetites after a battle again. The idea was to lose less dragons, not more.

“You can drink from my own veins,” Wistala said. “Form for an attack!”

LaDibar and a few other Ankelenes stood at the top of the stairs leading to their hill. “If you take the Tyr’s legion, who—”

“Arm your thralls and make your own flame,” Wistala ordered. What had happened to dragons over the years in the Lavadome?

“Follow me,” she said, trotting around to the west side of Imperial Rock. Instinctively, she flapped her wings and the next thing she knew she was aloft.

Perhaps a heavier male dragon couldn’t fly with the Tyr’s traditional battle armor on, but she could. Hard flying with the armor—it cut the wind and made it harder to push through the air with the proper lift.

She circled back and the demen cheered.

A knot of dwarf-warriors, coming around to encircle Imperial Rock, saw the oncoming demen. She couldn’t read their expressions, but they were clearly shocked to see demen formed up and ready to fight for the Lavadome.

One of them raised a metallic tube, with smaller vessels and cylinders attached, capped with a bellowslike structure.

Wistala couldn’t identify it and certainly didn’t wish to see its effects. She folded her wings and dropped, spitting fire that fell only a little faster than she did. Her nostrils were well-scorched by her own flame.

The war machine sparked and sputtered as it burned, shooting thin projectiles in all directions.

The dwarfs fell into a defensive line and the demen washed over them like an incoming wave. The first demen in line locked limbs onto the dwarfs’ shields, the second braced himself low to keep the others from being shoved forward or pulled back, and the third ran up and over the backs of the second and first ranks.

The dwarf line disappeared under a carpet of demen as they rushed up and over. The dwarfs fell back.

A dwarf-leader called on his signalman to wave a banner. Wistala swooped down and struck hard with her tail, sending both rolling and cracking like a pair of dropped melons.

White sparking streaks surrounded her and Wistala felt a stabbing pain. Her wings were holed in a dozen places. She came to earth in a mushroom field, sending the growths up in a shower of fertilizer.

She’d been struck by nine or ten shafts like heavy crossbow bolts. They stank of sulphur. Luckily none caught her under the throat or in her wing joints. Three pierced her chest armor and ground a claw’s width into her scale. If it weren’t for the Tyr’s armor—

Dwarfs charged from three directions, axes and spears aiming.