“Between us we should be able to burn the boats they use to cross the Ba-drink.”

“Yes, but there’s another road around the water, it seems. We can only make things more difficult for them at the lake. No, we must fight in the pass.”

Wistala’s knowledge of warfare was limited to observing men and dwarves in battle, and the dragon attack on the blighters in Old Uldam.

“Horsemen,” Ayafeeia said. “They may be masters of warfare on four legs, but we will fight so that their charges and lances avail them not.”

Wistala saw what she meant. Or thought she did.

“Where the pass narrows there, by the rock-slides.”

“If only the dwarves would fight alongside us, yes, that would be the place,” Ayafeeia said. “With such a wall there, we could hold many.”

Wistala saw only a steep cliff on one side and a mountain broken and sharp in three places like one of her rear teeth. The road traveled around the three turns like a snake’s body.

“What kind of wall?” Wistala asked, befuddled. Would the drakka drag rocks, or push snow?

“The same sort that keeps rocks from rolling uphill, my dear. Yes. Yes. This will do very well. Perfect ground for the drakka.”

Wistala flew back to Mossbell. Ragwrist had left his estate to see to the muster of his huntsmen and militia levies.

“There were four new babies born over the winter, still alive after the winter’s sickness,” Lada said. “I cut and washed each one myself. What will happen to them, I wonder.”

“They’ll be eating mash mixed with their milk by the fall, if I have a part in the matter,” Wistala said. “But I would hide them somewhere in the hills. Perhaps a shepherd’s shelter.”

“I’d rather they died of cold than crushed under the hooves of the Ironriders. I’ve heard terrible stories.”

“What does Ragwrist intend?” Wistala asked.

“He’s mounted a small company. But they’re hunters of deer and foxes, not warriors. For the rest, he says he will hide as much as he can in the old mines on the twin hills. The entrances are blocked up, but the old airshaft has a new ladder. Though it’s been a dirty business cleaning out the bats.”

“Don’t speak to me about bats. We’ve a few of these great toothy ones with us, to lick clean our wounds and trim ragged flesh. Rodents who ride in bags. Our Tyr’s idea.”

Dragons, flying all this way with vermin snug and warm against hot wing-muscle in their bags. She shuddered at the memory.

“There’s wisdom in your Tyr’s notion, if they’re the sort of bats I’m thinking of, cattle-feeders. Their saliva numbs and it cleans.”

Back at the dragon encampment at Tumbledown, Ayafeeia put the Firemaids to work sharpening their claws.

The thane had installed some of his retainers in a corner of the ruin, and the men pounded together a new roof for three empty walls. Wistala sent for him through the warriors.

“Remember your oaths,” Ayafeeia said, walking up and down the line to inspect the leather straps and wooden pins the drakka used to hang on to the dragonelles. “Remember the years of comradeship. In this next battle they will be tested. It will take true hearts to face the coming danger and death and pass the highest test asked of our sisterhood.”

Hesturr rode in.

“What news, green allies? I have none good. There’s rumor of burned villages east of here. I believe they make for the road here.”

“They do,” Wistala said. “I’ve seen them. This is but a vangard for what is coming across the pass.”

Thane Hesturr gripped his sword in its scabbard tightly. “It will take time for us to join battle, then. We cannot fly, and there are already many riders on this side of the mountains. We must meet them first.”

“More importantly, defeat them,” Wistala said, after translating for Ayafeeia.

“Let us put the past behind us, from this day on,” Thane Roff said.

“I have no particular grievances to burn,” Wistala said. “But I am happy to call you an ally.”

“It is a long walk back to my horses and dogs. They won’t easily come near your dragons, I’m afraid. We’ll meet again on the slopes of the Red Mountains.”

“They’ll be red with more than sunlight, if we’re still there when you come.”

“Every rider that can be kept from crossing is a victory,” Roff said. “We’ll meet again, Wistala.”

“I hope so.”

The thane pointed to his retainers and standard-bearer, and they departed.

The drakka were mounting for the ride to the pass.

“I must send a messenger back to the Lavadome,” Ayafeeia said. She’d been taking more and more charge of matters as the time of battle grew closer. “Angalia, you’ve been ill since those swamps. I will send you back to the Lavadome to let our Tyr know where we will make our stand.”

Angalia, a pale green Firemaid with the wrinkles about the snout and flanks that showed her to be one who suffered from much sickness, nodded.

“May I send a messenger as well?” Wistala asked.

“Angalia may carry more than one message.”

“Not there. To my brother, on the Isle of Ice. A fast flier, and intelligent.”

“Yefkoa would be a good choice. She is young and fast.”

The dragonelle came forward, eager for her chance at distinction.

“Yefkoa, you must find a place strange to all of us. My brother is there. Go to the great river just north of where we camped. You can’t miss it—there’s a long bridge with a repaired patch in the center. Downstream from the bridge on the north side there’s a hole shaped like a dragon-eye. In it you’ll find instructions in Dwarvish notation for finding an island to the north.

“Find my brother AuRon there. Tell him that we have gone into battle. I know he lives with other dragons. Ask their aid, for their good and ours. If we fall, beg him, in my memory, to save those at Mossbell who I love best. Fly them to safety.”

“But—the battle.”

“Oh, from what I’ve seen we’ve a long fight ahead of us,” Ayafeeia said. “There’ll be blood enough for all of us, sisters.”

Chapter 19

The conduct of the battle of the pass surprised Wistala.

Luckily, it surprised the Ironriders even more.

It was a battle of angles and slopes and gravity, fought in mountain fogs and bright sun. The science-minded Anklenes might have called it a war between vertical and horizontal.

They arrived at the pass in the dead of night with the moon down so that they wouldn’t be spotted, circling in well north of the star-charting tower at the Wheel of Fire fortifications, which Wistala knew well from her brief time as an ally of the dwarves.

Wistala, clinging in a deep crevice so long to the mountainside as she waited for the order, finally decided the horses passing up the road were the ones in strange perspective, walking sideways before her.

Ayafeeia kept her forces hidden in the clouds of the mountaintops.

There were deep seams in the vertical mountain-face. The dragons settled themselves into them, latching on with sii, saa, and wing-spurs. One could even rest, hanging in that manner.

The drakka opened the fight in the dusk, creeping down into the pass to slay horses and pack animals following a long, triple file of riders passing through. There were no warriors tending the burdened animals.

Wistala watched it from high on the sheer mountain half of the pass. The drakka dashed and jumped on the animals, which screamed as they died. Their tenders fled, east and west, screaming in their unknown chopping tongue for help.

“We will have meat tonight. I’m sick of cold fish and burned raccoons,” Ayafeeia said.

The drakka jumped back onto the cliff-face and climbed to shelter.

“I think you fight just to fill your stomach, maidmother,” a dragonelle said.

Wistala, her throat tight with fear of battle, hid her anxiety by picking at a crevice.

The Ironriders sent horsemen to investigate. They walked their mounts forward, archers just behind the scouts with spears, men on foot behind them walking their mounts with swords out. Wistala’s eyes picked out the frightened pack-train leaders talking and pointing to dead animals.

Ayafeeia carefully crept across the rock face to her reserve.

“I want them in doubt as to what they face as long as possible, Verkeera,” Ayafeeia said to the greatest of the Firemaids, a massive, mature dragonelle with a bluish tinge to her deep green. “Let some of those rocks on the mountainside do your talking.”

“Yes, maidmother,” Verkeera said. She launched herself and glided over to the other side of the pass.

A mist passed through the mountains, obscuring what came next. Perhaps Verkeera, lower down, could see. In any case, Wistala heard a krrack! followed by a series of descending booms matched with screams of alarm and pain from horse and rider.

“Now that they know we’re here, we might as well get some work done. Crack rock, Firemaids. Let’s claw ourselves a shelf or two.”

The dragons cleared fallen rock, carved falls of ice, or even wedged boulders into chimneys and chutes in the cliffside to make themselves perches so they might rest more easily.