Wistala exploded out of the thorns, touching rock once as she leaped onto the hunter. She struck high, throwing her weight into his chest to knock him off the narrow crest of the hill.
They tumbled off the hill and down the other side—the direction she needed to go anyway. She dug in with her claws and shut her eyes to keep out the dust. Down—they both broke against a rock, its impact harder on her lighter body but bloodying the unprotected skin on his arm—and she went for his neck.
Vertebrate prey were most vulnerable there. If you got a good grip, you opened windpipes and blood vessels, and they couldn’t bite or gore you back. Her teeth closed, and she tasted blood and heard a strange high wheeze. The man’s hands raked at her face but found a nostril instead of her more vulnerable eye or ear holes.
He went limp.
She dropped the crushed neck, the man’s eyes dry and empty. She opened his gut with her saa to make sure of him, and his body gave a reactive twitch. . . .
The corpse twitched again as she found his liver.
Tearing the oblong organ loose, she raised her head and let it slide down her throat in two big gulps. She sucked blood from the wound, and saw something in his hand shining in the sun. Tarnished gold or brass—either would be welcome. She nibbled it free from the leather thong fixed to it that the man had wrapped about his wrist.
It was a thin round device of hammered heavy metal, a hominid figure in a circle. Hominids had strange superstitions and believed in invisible forces that attracted or repelled evil or good. Was this some kind of proof against dragons?
She licked it. No sharp taste of poison, just the thick metal-saliva. Satisfied, she sent it down her gullet to join the liver, where it would gravitate to the pocket of her innards that absorbed metals.
Smelling, listening, she picked her way south.
All the way across the next flat, the terrified, dead eyes of the man stayed with her. She’d killed a hominid from ambush. Rainfall might call it murder. While hungry, she wasn’t starving, and attacking him had been a foolish risk.
The fact of the matter was, she’d let her temper get the better of her and killed to spite the beaters behind.
She heard a faint, wailing horn. The beaters had probably come across the body. Two more blasts, some kind of signal?
The wind out of the southwest whistled as it cut through the thick thornbushes all around her. The gorge must be near; she couldn’t see any more hills to the south.
A faint and rising sound of hoofbeats came across the wind. Wistala found a rock and climbed near the top, keeping to the shadow side so light wouldn’t reflect off her scales.
Riders! A dozen at least, traveling in pairs, their horses and legs garbed in some sort of leather tenting, perhaps to keep out the thorns, trotted through the brambles, lance-tips sparkling in the sun.
All moved to cut her off from the south. She heard howling; they had dogs with them. Even if the riding men blundered past, the dogs would smell her out.
The thane’s men no doubt wanted her hide in return for some burned shingles and draperies! From Rainfall’s description, Hammar wasn’t the sort to leave an account unsettled.
Wistala gulped, the blood she’d wetted her throat long since caked over by the dry dust she breathed. Her thoughts felt slow and thick as her blood. The men would probably . . .
Dry!
She came off the rock, spat one jet of flame into the tangle right, then trotted a few steps and started another fire left.
The thin branches supporting the thorns caught fire easily, and the wind pushed the flame northwest.
She’d set up a signal to every beater in sight.
But the men would keep from downwind if they knew what was good for them.
Wistala walked along between her two columns of conflagration, nostrils held low to keep out the smoke. At new thickets, she helped spread the flame with another torf or two.
Horns, more confused signals from beyond the smoke. But most of the noise was well behind her.
Now the fire raged so she couldn’t hear anything but its crackling. Her scales reflected the worst of its heat, but she still panted, trying to see through the smoke. A stand of pine, a little above the flat, was burning, and she made for it.
The flame had already consumed the dropped needles; only the tops of the trees burned now. The tough old pines would be green again next spring, but if she wished to be breathing in a year’s time—
Wistala took a deep, lung-filling breath from below the smoke layer, picked a gap, and dashed. She felt flames licking at her flanks. The betweens of sii and saa burned in the hot soil, and she instinctively closed her digits, and she was through, coated with nothing but a thick layer of soot.
And suddenly she breathed cool, dry air, the inferno behind eating its way northwest under a mountain of smoke. From far to the west, she heard more calls as the hunters searched in smoke and confusion.
Wistala got her bearings, noted happily that the sun had fallen almost to the horizon, and moved toward the river.
She negotiated the gorge and swam downriver to the bridge and the landing where they’d tried to smash the troll. The river refreshed after the heat, ash, and dust.
The burns between her digits were painful, made more so once she climbed up the rough stairs from the landing when the blisters burst, but she’d learned a valuable lesson that would outlast the pain about her body’s resistance to fire. Next time she’d close up her toes, she thought as she passed over Mossbell’s road wall.
A dim light glimmered from the stone-flanked skylight to the library. Perhaps he was still up, reading. She smelled horses in the turnaround by the old fountain.
Wistala decided that the stable might not be the best place for her to sleep. She climbed up her yew tree and made herself as comfortable as possible in the branches.
Exhaustion allowed her to sleep.
She found Rainfall out the next day, gathering blueberries into a satchel that smelled of strawberries, acorns, hickory nuts, and onions.
“How went the hunting expedition, Wistala?” he asked with his back to her. Perhaps he smelled her approach—he had a sensitive nose.
“I . . .” She groped for the right Elvish word. “I’ve misspent your trust and lost Stog.”
He turned, his countenance a foggy morning. “I heard a most curious story from one of the thane’s riders. Two nights ago, the most astonishing creature crept into Galahall.”
“Yes—”
“According to the eyewitnesses, it was bluish, had two heads on long necks, one at either end, feathers all about the face, and shot flame from its glowing eyes. Half the country is rooming with their sheep as men stand guard with fire buckets. I don’t know what to think. Should I be on my guard that a two-headed featherface come to burn down my hall?”
Wistala’s mouth opened and then shut again.
Rainfall suddenly laughed. “Rah-ya! I’m sorry, Wistala—I shouldn’t torment you. Come inside and have a little soup and what’s left of those rabbits. I wish to hear this story.”
Wistala fought the urge to nuzzle his cheek against hers—she could just reach if she stood on her hind legs—and instead turned a quick, happy circle.
“What?” he asked as they walked. “You thought I’d be cross with you? Ever since I dragged you out of the river, there’s been excitement. Save for the awful loss of Lessup, and, of course, our Avalanche, I’d say those old tales out of the East about dragons being omens of good fortune have been proved. And don’t worry about the mule; Stog will turn up. He’s smart enough to find his way home.”
They went into the house, and he passed her a platter that held the remains of his stew and grease-fried entrails.
As she ate, she told the whole story—save for the death of the hunter. She didn’t feel a bit sorry for the damages to the thane’s Galahall, but relating the loss of Stog made her miserable, as well as her confession that she’d failed to return with his granddaughter.
“I wish you’d have discussed this adventure with me before you’d set out. I would have saved your claws the burns and wear.”
“But it’s not right.”
Rainfall poured himself a little more wine and juice squeezings. “Had you come back with her, I would have taken her in both hands. But then I’d have escorted her straight back to Galahall.”
“But you could conceal her, as you did me—”
“Tala, how can I make it plain to you? The thane misuses the law, certainly, whether he breaks it in his misuse is not for me to say. But that doesn’t relieve me of my obligation to live by it. Laws stand only by common consent; enforcement can do only so much.”
He paused and waited until she nodded, then went on: “The thane at least keeps most of the Hypatian traditions, which are just as important as laws in their way. In other provinces, there are thanes who rule like the despots of old. I’ve heard of thanes who force their landholders to will their estates over to him, lest they be labeled traitors and executed, then find an excuse to execute anyway once everything is set down in writing. All quite legal on the face of it, but appallingly against the Hypatian tradition. Hammar will die or go into his dotage eventually, and Hypat will appoint a new thane.”