“I don’t trust any humans,” the Copper said.

“How about elves?” Halfmoon, the female elf, asked. She had the caramel skin of the south, such as he’d seen in Bant. Her hair had acorns in it, though whether they were wound into it or growing out of it he couldn’t say. A raven sat on her shoulder with eyes shut, as though napping.

“I’ve known only one, as a hatchling. She was kindly, but not so kindly that she saved me from a crippling,” the Copper said.

The dwarf approached. “I think we can fit a dragon in now,” he said, as he shook dirt and bits of root from his beard.

The cave smelled a bit like skunk, but that might be a dwarf-trick to keep bears out. In any case, they were soon past the skunk smell and into a cave whose floor was slick with guano. They waded through a bowed water-catch, then climbed down a short chute and reached the tunnel proper. This was dug, not natural formation. There were fewer crevices for bats to occupy, so the droppings thinned out.

The Copper was excited to be in action again. The tension that comes from a mix of fear and anticipation of a fight made him feel alive in a way that he hadn’t experienced since well before his exile.

“Let’s get past the bats,” Red Lightning said. “Once we’re out of the stink, we can send our scouts ahead again.”

Their scouts examined some obscure marks at a corner. The elf picked up a piece of nail, which she identified as belonging to a boot.

“We’re in a bit of the old Dwarf-Kingdoms, unless I’m mistaken,” the dwarf said.

The Copper smelled dwarf more than guano now. They were close.

“Why do we still need the scouts?” he asked.

“I don’t mind their help, sir. They’re the ones who are paying, seems like they’re eager to come to grips with the dwarfs. Since spoils are to be shared, they’re probably along to make sure no coin gets eaten before it can be counted.”

The grizzled ex-barbarian and the elf consulted the dwarf at the next turn of the tunnel. A smaller branch tunnel led down. It had a half-finished look and was small enough that even a dwarf would have to stoop.

“Leave it,” the elf finally said, making a mark with a piece of chalk at the intersection.

The scouts found a hidden door in what looked like a piece of tunnel collapse. A pile of heavy and sharp-edged stones balanced precariously at the top made the cave-in look lethal to investigate.

“Something smells. I don’t mean the bats,” the Copper said.

Shadowcatch sniffed in the direction of the probing hominids, as though he could detect a betrayal by smell. “Right. Well then, if fighting starts, sir, keep an eye on them. Let me and Red Lightning and the Blind Ripper worry about the dwarfs. We’re used to handling the front. It’s my flanks I want watching.”

The Copper didn’t have a chance to respond. With a crash that must have been heard in the Lavadome, one of the boulders fell into the hole, revealing the entrance to a larger cave.

The scouts consulted with each other, and a human who was missing his right hand—the Copper remembered he was named Fyrebin; he’d stood out during the introductions because of the lost hand—defied the others and refused to enter first.

“I thought I heard a voice,” the old barbarian said.

Shadowcatch pushed up to the entrance to the cave and the Copper followed. He sensed a vast open space on the other side of the phony fall. “Me and the Blind Ripper will go forward. Tunnelbreakers. It’s tough duty, but someone has to do it.”

“I’ll come along,” the Copper said to Shadowcatch. “I’ll take your place. You manage things with the rest. You know them. They’ve never fought with me.”

Shadowcatch ground his teeth in thought. “I never questioned you before, but now I must, my Tyr. What do you have in mind?”

“I know the sounds and smells of dwarfs. I’m also a good deal smaller than you. If the Blind Ripper starts thrashing about, I can get out of his way. If things go disastrously for us, you can jam your body in this tunnel and delay until the rest find some defensive ground—I’d suggest the other side of the water-wash.”

“What do you think?” Shadowcatch asked, tapping the Blind Ripper.

The blinded dragon just shrugged. His dry sockets were disturbing. He tended to draw his lips back from his teeth and then cover them again in a nervous habit, or perhaps it was due to the injury that had robbed him of his eyes.

A grinding noise behind. This time it wasn’t Shadowcatch’s teeth.

It was a stone, as big as a roof and thick as winter ice on a shallow pond. It began to roll down a smoothed track. His gaze anticipated its track—it would strike the end of its track just beyond the opening to the tunnel, fitting into its position as neatly as a dragon’s griff behind the jawline.

It pressed down as if the mountain above added to its bulk. He could only slow it, not stop it.

He found the strength for a moment.

“Dwarfs all around,” the Blind Ripper said, backing up.

“Out, back to the tunnel,” he grunted, slapping at the gap with his tail so the Blind Ripper could find it.

“Out! Out! Out! ” he called to the Blind Ripper.

He saw the blind dragon’s tail vanish. Shadowcatch stuck his head in, saw the rolling stone with the Copper pressing the length of his body against it, scrabbling with his arms.

“Run for your lives. I’m done for,” the Copper called.

He’d taken one too many chances. Sooner or later, the luck ran out, or fate settled on you. Exhausted, he let the stone slip at last into the socket.

He turned around, his back to the gigantic wheel of a door.

A mass of dwarfs, fifty or more, stood with axes held before them. The closest was the height and width of a baby troll.

“What’ll we do, sir? Eat him raw or smoke him over his own flame?” one of them asked the frontmost dwarf.

Chapter 6

It was easy enough for AuRon to sneak into the great cave of Old Uldam. He’d lived there throughout much of his adolescence and early adulthood as sort of a tribal mascot for the blighters, who thrived thickly on the more hospitable south slopes of the mountains.

He knew each ruin in the old cave, once the principal city of the blighters during their glory days of dominance. Those ancient blighter kings had carved a city out of living rock, taking advantage of an arresting geographic feature, a sort of overhang in the mountain that created a great cave-mouth beneath. Through years of patient excavation, they’d enlarged the cave, keeping it supported by wide columns like teeth in a vast mouth, fangs bared to their enemies on the coasts of the Sunstruck Sea.

Wistala had lived here as well. Then his daughter became the Protector, saving it from a war of conquest from the Dragon Empire. His family’s fate seemed bound to the place.

It had been a long, frustrating journey to his old home. He’d probably delayed longer than he should have, but he wanted to make sure that the dragon bodies hadn’t been quietly burned in some thick patch of woods or dragged into a swamp and covered with vines. So he investigated every trail, every burned patch of lightning-struck wood, and plunged into more than one marshy dogleg off the river to feel around for dragon bones.

He met the barges at last, making their careful way back down the river, loaded with thick trunks of wood from the ever-shifting logging camps. The barges were making poor progress, with the river falling as summer wore on; sometimes they had to dam the river to put enough water under their flat-bottoms to float. He recognized them by their low timbers—they were probably chosen as the easiest vessels from which to roll a dead body over the side.

He found two sets of promising signs. One was a number of trails and drag-marks leading to Old Uldam, the other a well-trod trail to the logging camp that showed signs of heavy burdens being moved through the brush.

The logging camp trail could be explained by timber. The other one, headed east to the mountains of Old Uldam, disappeared at the first ridge. Perhaps some blighter cattle had been driven down to the riverside, tribute to the Empire.

He paused at that ridge and looked at the familiar spine of the mountains of Old Uldam. Birds, frightened into silence by his arrival, started their chirping again as he pondered.

Why this mad concern about dragon bodies? The dragons had been killed because they were political enemies of NiVom and Imfamnia, or simply useless mouths. Their deaths would bring on the fury needed to take a war to the princedoms of the Sunstruck Sea.

But if that was the case, why go to all the bother with the bodies? No, there must be something deeper going on. If the deaths were simply to inflame their relatives, a fierce oration by NiVom as the heap of bodies burned behind him would serve him better. Flames and memorial words could put fire in hearts weary of battle. There must be some other reason. Was something about the wounds revealing? So many dragons killed, so quickly. The only thing he’d ever seen slay dragons like that was the poison from a venomer.

His brother had told him that venomers were considered so deadly, the Lavadome once put them to death. In later years, they underwent a delicate operation to the roof of their mouth that rendered them harmless, though each clan was thought to hide one or two in reserve for emergencies, in case another civil war broke out.