She walked up to the trio of dwarfs watching over their stock. They sat in a ring, smoking and exchanging quiet words over a beer-cask with Hypatian letters on it.
“Come to view the merchandise again?” one of the dwarfs asked. “No sickness. Plenty of kids, even one mother-to-be. We’re not counting the not-yet-born, of course. Bonus for you.”
“Yes, I would like a closer look,” Wistala said. She reared up, and came down with all of her weight on the dwarfs, trapping them in her sii. She stomped furiously.
When the dwarfs were reduced to muddy stains, she turned on the occupants in the pens. The dark-haired Ironriders shrank away from her.
Some were chained together. It was the work of only a few moments to break the links. They set up a wailing.
“All of you! Run!” Wistala managed.
They didn’t understand her, so she flapped at them, just missing with her wingtips, until the whole mass was running for the low hills of the southern steppelands. They left only one behind, an old fellow who looked like he’d died from exposure. She extracted his tongue before burning him.
Once she was sure of their departure, she loosed her flame into the pen and on the dead dwarfs.
When she told Yefkoa what had happened the next morning, she expected complaints. Yefkoa stood silent for a moment, then said, “Good. Only fair way to take thralls is battle; this burning villages and hauling them in from the bushes bothers me. It means trouble, though, and things were going well with OuThroth.”
“Like you, I was almost enslaved when I was young. It was dwarfs then, too. I can’t right the wrong done to my family, but I can save another.”
While they ate, OuThroth hurried over.
“I must ask you about one matter. There were some dwarfs camped outside the walls yesterday. We were in negotiations about the purchase of thralls. The negotiations were taking overlong, as being dwarfs, they pressed their advantage to the limit and asked for a price above the very clouds. My watchmen heard signs of fighting last night, and this morning both dwarfs and thralls seem to be gone.”
“They are, after a fashion,” Wistala said. “Believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted those thralls. I’ve been among the Ironriders for some time, seeking old bones.”
“Disgusting custom,” Yefkoa said. “Some Ironriders dare to wear dragon-scale, or have the skulls of those killed in fighting as clan totems.”
“That’s not an answer,” OuThroth said. He was capable of pressing a point when a potential profit was involved.
“Your thrall-gatherers were trying to cheat you,” Wistala said. “Fully a third of the thralls they were trying to sell you were diseased. It’s not an easy illness to spot—they go pale and listless and bloodshot about the eyes, and while not immediately fatal, it does leave the victims vulnerable to other, more quick-killing diseases.”
“What did you do with the bodies?”
“We ate them. We were famished.”
“You ate diseased flesh?”
“Only after a good roasting,” Yefkoa said.
“Don’t worry—it does not spread to dragons,” Wistala said.
“I understand there is already a great loss of thralls underground,” Wistala said. “Had a more experienced person spotted the disease, they would have been traced back to you. Or worse, the signs might have been missed altogether and a vast die-off of thralls could happen underground.”
Getting rid of the thralls was an audacious move, but Wistala had her reasons. The way she saw it, OuThroth had two options. He could report to NoSohoth that a pair of dragonelles that he admitted devoured a couple of slave pens full of thralls, or he could feign ignorance of the entire matter.
No matter what he did with the first option, it would reek of mismanagement of his Protectorate. Letting a pair of unknown dragonelles eat stock . . .
No, he would tell the Hypatians to shut up if they valued their slave-trading concession, pass along the disease story, and if worse came to worst claim that killing the dwarfs was rough borderland justice for their attempt to cheat the Dragon Empire.
“It would set the works back years,” Yefkoa said, breaking in on Wistala’s thoughts.
OuThroth bowed. “You’ve done me a great service, Yefkoa and errr . . .”
“My oath-sister, Tala,” Yefkoa supplied.
“That is a handsome headdress you wear, Tala. It is elegantly shaped. Elven-make?”
“A family heirloom. All I know with certainty is that it is old.”