The dwarf turned in. Once she heard snores, she crept up and licked the contents of his pan. Then she picked up two of the nose bags in her mouth. The startled ponies shifted and whinnied in alarm.
She shot into the brush as the dwarf came awake, still with the grease on her tongue. Once out of hearing from the dwarf’s camp, she dropped the nose bags and licked her teeth, searching for lost tidbits. Delicious.
Father didn’t like her playing with the nose bags: “The Four Spirits gave dragons everything they need to survive, and your mother’s wit will fill any gaps.” Once dragons started relying on hominid artifice, they’d be painting their scales and wing tissue again like the decadent dragons of Silverhigh.
But Mother’s wit told her to improvise. The nose bags were big enough to hold rabbit and pheasant or several fish. When she dumped a meal of squab—oh, the thrill of leaping on them as they took wing—out for Father, he bent so far as to say that circumstances permitted a temporary utilization of the nose bags.
They were so clever! Leather straps designed to hold them on the ponies’ heads had little brass latches like dragonclaws poking through holes punched in the straps, and a rope drawstring closed them like the leg coverings she’d examined on the man Auron ate. Wistala, after a good deal of trial and error that was more error than trial, fixed the straps so they hung across her shoulders just where the neck-dip began. They swung about a little, which was a bother, and snagged on her scales. She wished she could find that dwarf again and convince him to fix the bags together somehow.
“Tell me again about burning the bridges at Sollorsoar,” Wistala urged her father.
“You’ve heard that one before,” Father said.
“I like the part where the elves either must jump into the river or burn,” Wistala said. It was easy to place the faces of wide-eyed elves who rode after Auron upon the group of warriors trapped at the center of the bridge.
“You’re an odd sort of dragonelle, Wistala. Those saddlebags, and now war stories. Even your Mother only asked for my battle anecdotes when she wanted to be lulled to sleep. You gobble them like gold.”
“She’s a young Ahregnia, or imagines herself one,” Bartleghaff said.
Curse that condor! Every time he mentioned Ahregnia, Father went into one of his lectures. She felt her sii extend as Father cleared his long throat.
“My sire knew her as sister, Wistala. A bitter female, consumed by revenge for her lost mate. Scarred she was, poisonous of mind, with tongue as sharp as her claws. Leave battles to dragons, and save your hearts for husband, hatchlings, and home cave.”
“Jizara, Auron, and Mo—”
“Are mine to avenge, daughter. If I can ever get aloft again.”
Father spread his wings, wincing at the pain in his ax-hacked neck and shoulders. He beat his wings, stirring hardly enough wind to blow Wistala’s fringe to the other side of her neck. One long black fringe-point dropped to the corner of her eye, and she reached up with her left sii and snipped it short with her claws.
“That’s a terrible habit, Wistala,” Father barked. “A long fringe means a healthy dragonelle.”
A failed attempt at flight always leaves Father irascible. But his tone still stung, no matter how many times she told herself that.
“You’re just wearing yourself out,” she said. “I smelled deer spoor in the woods. I’ll try to find you a yearling.”
“What I really need is some metal. Look at these scales coming in! A snake would be ashamed.”
“Deer wouldn’t carry gold and silver,” Bartleghaff said.
“I saw a . . . a . . . ,” Wistala said, searching for the word, “. . . road. Might riders carry gold?”
“They’d carry weapons, as well,” Father said. “I thought I saw some ruins in the forest to the southwest, probably Old Hypatian. There might be iron to be plucked. I’d settle for nails. You could carry them in your neck contraption.”
“How far?” Wistala asked.
“Too far for you to find it on foot. You’d spend weeks searching,” Bartleghaff said.
“Exactly,” Father said. “Listen, old vulture, you’re getting fat on all those fish heads. Fly and guide her so your wings stay in training.”
“Why?” Bartleghaff asked. “I need nails like I need a captive hawk’s hood and tether.”
“Call it a favor to an old friend keeping an eye on his daughter. Two, if you can spare a glance down now and then.”
“High flier! Not an errand-wing,” Bartlegaff cawed.
“Smoldering pile of feathers for taking advantage of her hospitality,” Father said. He spat a globule of fire off the steep rock-side facing the river, watched it fall and hit the froth in a hiss. It rode the waves for a moment, still burning, before succumbing to the white water. “She’s been catching and hauling fish for you for weeks. And you fair bubbled with gratitude last night over that rabbit. Or did the gratitude get coughed up along with the bones?”
Bartleghaff worked his trailing wing feathers with his beak. “Oh, very well.”