Dragon Rule (34 page)

Wistala sniffed.

“Scat, too,” she said. She followed the bad air to a mound of troll droppings, though the less said about it the better for all concerned. For all their strength of torso and limb, a troll’s digestive system was rather haphazard, sometimes expelling food barely absorbed. This mass of skin, bones, and hair was disgustingly fresh and hardly touched by insects yet, a beetle or two crawled about on the waste waving their antennae as though celebrating their good fortune.

“Looks like its making northeast, toward our herds,” DharSii said, counting the widely spaced tracks heading down the slope. “This is fresh enough that I’ll hazard it’s still climbing that ridge.”

Almost a long mountain in itself, the ridge DharSii spoke of was cut by deep ledges, almost like colossal steps, running at an angle down toward the central lake of the Sadda-Vale, where its bulk forced one of the lake’s many bends. On the other side of the ridge were herds of winter-thinned cattle, hungrily exploring meadows springing up in the path of snow retreating to higher altitudes, along with the usual sheep and goats.

“I’ll try and follow the tracks, stalking or flying low,” DharSii said. “You get up into the cloud-cover, so you can just see the surface. If it knows it’s being followed it will make a dash for cover, we may be able to corner it. I know that ridge well, there aren’t many caves but there are fissures it will use.”

If DharSii had a fault, it was arrogance. If there was a risk to be run, he assumed he’d be the better at facing it. Gallant, but vexing for a dragon-dame who enjoyed a challenging hunt.

“Why shouldn’t I follow the trail? Green scale will give me an advantage in low flight, if the troll’s climbed the ridge already and looking behind and below.”

“I know this troll. This track is familiar. Long-fingers, I call him. I’ve tried for him several times, and he’s tried for me almost as many. I know his tricks, you don’t, and he’s nearly had me even so. One of us must put and end to the other sooner or later. He’ll be expecting me to be hunting alone, and he may take a risk that will draw him into the open. Then you may strike.”

“As you wish, you old tiger,” Wistala said.

“I’m scarcely above two hundred. Hardly old,” DharSii said. “Mature and distinguished.”

“Just don’t distinguish yourself any further with more scars,” Wistala said. “Scabia’s blighters sew skin closed like drunken spiders, and we’ve no gold or silver coin to replace lost scale. I’ll be above.”

“
Ha-hem
. I’ll return hearts and scale to you intact,” DharSii said.

Wistala snorted and opened her wings. She flapped hard to gain altitude and the concealment of cloud cover.

She flew out over the choppy water of the lake, then circled around to the other side of the ridge. After hearing that this troll and DharSii were old enemies, she’d feel terrible if she got lucky and spotted Long-fingers out in the open and vulnerable to a dive. But given the chance, she’d end the hunt quickly. DharSii was prickly about his honor but he’d understand. Trolls were too wily to let one live when you had an opportunity for a kill.

She hung in the sky, drifting, surveying the terrain below, feeling as though she’d been in this air before, hunting. Once upon a dream, perhaps. Or some old memory handed down from her parents and their parents.

She scanned the ridge, and the more gentle lands beneath, green hills rolling like waves coming up against a seaside cliff. More goats. Some sheep feeding on the north side. Perhaps if the hunt was successful they’d celebrate with fresh mutton.

A few more beats to put herself back in the mists. Wisps of moisture interfered with her vision, but still, she couldn’t see DharSii. For a deep orange dragon marked by black stripes, he could be difficult to see when he chose to move in forested shadow. Was he on foot or on wing?

Wing would be safer, but easier to see from a distance, and Long-fingers might hide. On foot he had a better chance of following the trail so he might spot the troll before it saw him—if that cluster of sensory organs trolls dangled about had eyes as she knew them, that is—

DharSii would probably be on foot, accepting the contest of wits with a troll.

She headed south, in the approximate direction of the troll’s track. It knew the ground as well as DharSii, and was crossing the ridge in a jumble of boulders and flats that offered concealment—and a possible easy meal of bird or goat.

Still no sign of DharSii, or the troll. She doubted it had made the meadows, the sheep and goats there showed no sign of being alarmed or disturbed.

She searched shadows, crevices, high bare trails and thorny hillside tangles. Her mate and the troll had disappeared.

To the winds with the plan!

She narrowed her wings and descended toward the jagged shadows of the ridge.

 

Wistala flew, more anxious with each wingbeat. She should have met DharSii by now. Visions of her mate, lying broken and half-devoured by the troll, set her imagination running wild to years of empty loneliness without him. No chance at more hatchlings, to raise as their own, no more long conversations, no more uncomfortable throat-clearings when she scored a point . . .

Dust gave them away. Dust and a noise like glacier ice cracking.

She followed the telltale feathers of kicked up dust to a boulder-littered hummock in the ridge. Here the ridge broke into wind-cut columns of rock like ships’ sails, with brush growing wherever soil could find purchase out of the wind.

The dust flung into the air came from DharSii’s wings, beating frantically at a monstrous figure riding his back. His whipping tail struck limestone as he turned, sending more flakes and dust into the air.

The troll squatted astride DharSii, as though riding him. It’s great arm-legs gripped DharSii’s crest at the horns, pulling him in ever-tightening circles.

Wistala’s fire-bladder pulsed at the sight, at the same time feeling her hearts skip a beat in shock.

Trolls were put together as though by some act of madness by the spirits, to Wistala’s mind. Their skin was purplish and veined, like the inner side of a fresh-cut rabbit-skin. Their great arms functioned as legs, tiny legs hung from their triangular torso more to steady the body and to convey items to the orifice that served as both mouth and vent. Great plates covered lungs on the outside, working like bellows to force air across their back, and their joints bent in odd and disturbing directions. Worst of all, they had no face to speak of, just a soggy mass of sense organs on a gruesome orb alternately extended and retracted from the torso like a shy snake darting in and out of a hole.

This troll used its thick, powerful leg-arms grasping the horns of DharSii’s crest to wrench her mate’s head back and down. Wistala braced herself for the inevitable, terrible snap that must come.

Wistala had killed a troll once before by breathing fire onto its delicate lung tissue. But dragon-flame, a special sulfurous fat collected and strained in the fire-bladder and then ignited when vomited by a saliva spat from the roof of the mouth, could hurt DharSii just as much as the troll. Dragonscale offered some protection, but DharSii’s leathery wing tissue could be burned, or he could inhale the fire, or it might pool and run under his scale.

If she couldn’t use her fire, she could still fight with her weight.

She folded her wings and turned into a tight dive, perhaps not as neatly as a falcon but with infinitely more power.

This “Long-fingers” was perhaps as experienced against dragons as she was against trolls. It had DharSii by a dragon’s weakest point, it’s long neck.

She swooped around jagged prominences, risking skin of neck, tail, and wing. Heedless of the danger to her wing—a hard enough strike might leave her forever broken and unable to reach the sky again—she flew to DharSii’s rescue. This was no longer a simple hunt to exterminate vermin, but a death-struggle between dragon and monster.

Pick it up—drop it from a height. Stomp and smash!
—warring instincts raged.

Teeth would be next to useless on a creature that size, her neck just didn’t have the power to do much more than score its hide. Better to strike with her tail, or there might be two dragons with broken necks. She altered her dive as though trying to reverse directions, so that the force of her swinging tail might send the troll flying right out of the Sadda-Vale.

The troll, showing the uncanny sense of its kind, threw itself sideways just as she struck, rolling DharSii along with its bulk.

“I’m here, my love!” Wistala called.

Wistala missed the troll, lashed DharSii with her tail. It struck, a whip-crack against horseflesh a thousand times louder. She saw scale fly and scatter like startled birds.

Wistala roared, half rage, half despair.

The troll, in avoiding Wistala’s blow, put itself in a position so DharSii could anchor his head by hooking horn on rock. The great black-striped dragon twisted his body and struck with his
saa
.

This time, instead of dust begin kicked into the air, droplets of dark liquid flew. DharSii’s claws came away sticky.

Vaaaaaaa!
DharSii roared as the wounded troll pulled him around in a circle as though trying to yank his head off by pure effort.

DharSii suddenly lunged into the troll’s pull, digging his horns into the fleshy torso. Now it was the dragon’s turn to plant his feet and pull.

The troll used its mighty limbs to push itself off the dragon’s crest, tearing skin and ripping open its own veins. DharSii’s horns and snout looked as though they’d been dipped in ink.

Wistala banked and by the time she swung around the troll was covering ground in an uneven run, leaving a trail of blue-black blood.

She vomited fire and the troll pulled itself in a new direction with one of its arm-legs. As she passed overhead, claws out and wings high and out of reach, the troll lashed up. Tail and leg-arm struck with a sound like tree-limbs breaking.

An orange flash and this time DharSii was atop the troll. He severed the sense-organ stalk with a sweep of his
sii
and the troll tumbled, righted itself, and ran blindly into a limestone cut.

The troll bounced back and fell, a buzzing beetle-wing noise coming from its lung-plates as the bellows forced air across the vulnerable flesh.

Still, the troll fought, lashing out with leg-arms and arm-legs, but blinded and deaf against two dragons the contest was hopeless.

She and DharSii stood far enough apart that they just might touch wingtips, making a perfectly equal triangle with the wildly swinging troll. They raised their heads in unison, lowered their fan-like
griff
to protect delicate tissue of ear and neck-hearts, and spat, eyes as slits with water-membranes down and nostrils tightly clenched.

The thin streams of oily-smelling flame made a hot, low roar of their own as they met at the troll, painting it in bright hues of blue, red, orange and yellow. Black smoke added a delicate, spiderweb framing to the inferno of sizzling flesh and sputtering flame.

They had it well aflame before it could pick itself up from the stony slope. It still writhed about horribly as the heat consumed muscle.

Big-footed rabbits fled in panic from the heat, which set puddles of water a sizzle and cracked rock. Birds shot out of the patches of yellow-and-white flowered meadow about the mountainside.

The dragons ignored them, leaning against each other and crossing necks as they caught their breath. Spreading dark smoke seemed to stain the iron-colored clouds above like blood dark against a sword’s edge.

The stench of burning troll was as bad as Wistala remembered it. Unpleasant business, but it had to be done of the Sadda-Vale’s hatchlings, and dragons, were to eat the herds they and their blighter servants tended.

“You arrived just in time, my gem,” DharSii said. “Long-fingers had one more trick behind his ears for me.”

“Next time, let me follow the troll-tracks while you watch from the skies.”

 

“Trolls interest me,” DharSii said. “Look at them, my jewel. In form and function they’re like nothing else in the world.”

“Couldn’t the same be said of dragons?” Wistala asked.

“Well, there are great birds, as you know, the Rocs. I’ve seen art in bestiaries of two-limbed dragons, wyverns, though they appear to be incapable of breathing fire, but the record is vague on that matter and there’s no way to settle the matter as they appear to be extinguished from our world.”

“I wish the same could be said for trolls.”

DharSii panted. Wistala let him breath, catching his breath as he talked. “The interesting thing about trolls is the ancient hominid books have no record of them. There’s plenty on dragons, rocs, even fanciful creatures like winged lions. Anything that carries off livestock and a hunter here and there is bound to be the subject of some interest. Yet the best dwarf compilers of arcana are mute on trolls, which have huge appetites and are very difficult to corner and kill.”

“I know. Mossbell was plagued by one when I was a drakka.”

She’d grown up on a gentle elf’s lands. Rainfall had been like a father to her after she’d lost her own to war with the Wheel of Fire dwarves.

“Odd that they have no relatives. Think of all the varieties of fish in the sea, they’re broadly similar in form. Reptiles, cats big and little. The insects that live in and above the earth, the variety of four-legged herbivores, rodents, two-legged hominids come in a range of forms. Where are the smaller troll cousins, the heavier ones, the ones adapted to living in the surf, as seals and sea-lions have?”

Wistala found the question interesting but the need for discussing it curious. DharSii was a dragon of strange obsessions, perhaps this was the reason he’d never quite fit in anywhere—the Lavadome, here in the Sadda-Vale, or while serving hominids as a mercenary warrior. She found it charming. In all her travels among the beasts, hominids, and dragons of the earth she’d never found anyone quite like him. Powerful but open and friendly, intelligent but not pompous—well, rarely pompous—well-travelled and experienced but still full of a young drake’s wonder.