“Out of my way or I’ll kill you,” he said.
His eyes kept flicking in the direction Auron had taken.
Wistala didn’t know what he expected to accomplish. He was smaller than she, and Auron was bigger still, at least in length. Auron had bested the copper in every contest they’d had. She should bleat a warning, scream and have Auron come running as he did when they came out of their eggs.
But the Gray Vex had a big enough head. A bite or two would do him good.
She ate a few dead dropped bats on her way back to the egg shelf, upset for some reason. They made slugmeat taste like fresh horse, but her gut needed something to work on beyond vague worry.
She climbed up onto the eggshelf. Jizara was matching herself against Mother’s tail-tip, standing up when it stood, rolling when it rolled, a prrum in her throat.
“Mother, I was hunting slugs, and—”
“Earth Spirit,” Jizara said. “You get any thicker, and your tail will disappear!” Jizara proudly displayed her long, lean tail, and she never tired of matching her extremities to those of her stumpier sister.
“Jizara, don’t tease. Wistala, you’re all latent wingbone, as I was, and short limbs are the stronger for it.” Mother, despite the more plentiful meals since the melt began, was breathing audibly from the effort of the tail game.
“Mother, the copper is after Auron.”
Mother stared, long and slow, out into the depths of the cave. “I’d hoped he’d left. Auron may kill him. Your father never knows when to back down either.”
“Maybe they’ll do each other in,” Jizara said. “We’ll have more food and a little quiet.”
“Every hatchling is precious,” Mother said. “There are few enough left, and it’s the rare drake who grows to dragonhood these days.”
“If there are fewer drakes, that means fewer songs sung to dragonelles,” Jizara said.
“Well, in the North—”
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” came a hatchling’s shout. “Others!
Assassins, dwarves, here in the cave.” Auron jumped clean to the egg shelf, his stripes hard and black against his skin and blood running from behind his crest. Wistala heard metal ring against stone somewhere in the cave, felt her scales rise.
Mother swept her tail around Wistala and her sister, putting her body between whatever approached and her daughters. “We are discovered?”
Auron turned this way and that, going in three directions at once. “They’re here. With spears, Mother.”
Mother looked out into the gloom of the cavern. “No! I’m faint with hunger, and the winter’s been so—”
Mother reached up with her long neck and put her mouth about a loose stalactite. She wrenched it free, and Wistala felt air move. “I hope you aren’t too big for this, my hatchlings. Auron, take your sisters and go to the surface. At once! Climb, my love, climb.” She shoved Wistala up the wall with her nose.
Wistala climbed toward the patch of shadow with the faintly new air flowing down from it.
Wistala looked down at the egg shelf, where chaos ruled. Jizara clung to Mother’s leg, all eyes and bristling scales and fluttering griff. Auron stood at the egg shelf, tail twitching, crest-shrouded eyes fixed on ranks of approaching mounds of metal and muscle, short-legged fellows with beards that glowed like fire. Had they drunk some latter-day dragonfire before charging into the cavern?
She almost lost her grip with her sii as she counted the numbers. Behind the dwarves, she saw what she took to be an exceptionally tall dwarf or broad man in black armor. The tall figure wore a winged helm and gestured with a broad-headed spear that sparked and glowed as though it had a life of its own. He pointed it toward the egg shelf, and dwarves bearing some kind of wood-and-metal contraption on their backs hurried up a broken stalagmite. With his other hand, he held the straining lines of a pack of hairy-backed dogs the size of ponies.
Mother, her head level with Wistala and imploring Jizara to release her grip, must have seen them, too. Wistala got a brief thought—Him! Gobold has sold us out!—before Mother reached down and picked Auron up by the base of his neck. She threw him into the air toward the hole. Auron twisted as he flew and struck next to Wistala at the opening. Wistala reached and held him as he found his grips. As he breathed, Auron’s ribs moved so fast, they were a blur.
Dwarven climbing poles struck the egg shelf with a klank!
“Climb! Auron, climb!” Mother called.
Jizara, we’re up here. Climb with us! Wistala thought, but her sister retreated behind Mother’s hindquarters as the first dwarf-helm appeared over the rim of the egg shelf. Jizara looked up at her, stupidly, not even recognizing her. Sister!
Scrring came the sound like an arrow in her ear. She saw blades flash silver in the lichen-light as they were drawn.
Auron drove his crest into her side, and the tenuous connection vanished. Wistala, up and away! came Mother’s last frantic thought, and with it a horrible, clawing fear that blinded and deafened. Wistala fled upward.