“The weight of several dwarves,” Wistala said. “Over short distances.”
“This will be a long flight of short hops, then. I need you to bring him food, medicines, and above all crossbow bolts.”
“My wings are at your command, Great King,” she said.
“There’s been talk of you being absent for some time,” King Fangbreaker said. “To where did you fly?”
“To see my friends at the circus. They go into winter camp about this time each year.”
“Hmpf,” said King Fangbreaker, from behind his shield. “You seem the type to keep friends long. How about enemies?”
“I’ve set out to make no enemies, my king,” Wistala said. “I made more friends than enemies with the circus. Of course, there are those who felt they were cheated—”
“I don’t mean that. Ach, I don’t know what I mean. I’m overwrought, imagining things. You put new heart in me. Eat a good meal and be ready to fly by tonight. The star-guild will supply you with a map based on our best information.”
Wistala lowered her head to the floor, and King Fangbreaker left. She later learned he’d walked all about the city, calming the citizens on both sides of the Titan bridge, answering questions from the lowliest porter to guild-heads.
That night she came to the Titan bridge, where she was loaded with milk-powders, sugarcubes, crossbow bolts, slabs of honey, medicines, even rolls of needle and thread for stitching wounds. Dwarf wives came and stuck flowers in her scales or tied ribbons with messages inked on them about her sii and saa. She was asked to look for so many dwarves that the king’s bodyguard had to push away the supplicants.
She tried a short practice flight, and returned to the bridge.
“I can carry more,” she said, not altogether sure that she could. More bundles were strapped to her back and chest, everywhere but where her wings could flap.
The King himself drank a toast in her honor and gave her a heaping handful of gold coins to eat, slathered with something sweet and hard the dwarves called cocolat. It gave her a rush of energy, and she launched herself again, and even gliding seemed somewhat of a strain.
Behind her, they set off red fireworks.
She had to relearn to fly, laden as she was, and it was slow going until she learned to better angle her wings. After an hour she dropped, exhausted, sure she could never reach the sky again, but she did.
And so she fought her way north, an hour’s flight, a half hour’s rest, another hour’s flight, a quarter hour’s rest, another hour’s flight, a drop from exhaustion into sleep that ended at daybreak.
The next day she passed over the track of the punitive expedition. The snow had covered the burned foundations, but crows poked at charred heaps here and there, extracting unburnt marrow. She’d never heard of war like this in the Hypatian books of tactics and maneuver, parley and honorable surrender. The dwarves had struck with a heavy, vengeful hand.
Or had she?
Wistala landed in a crowd of cheering dwarves the next dusk. Their eyes burned so bright behind their masks that they glowed. Beards were shorn to show loss of comrades and officers, and they hadn’t had time or energy to clean the caked blood from their armor.
Battle Commander Vande Boltcaster moved with a limp, walking with the aid of a broken bow. His officers untied and distributed the messages bound on her legs and tail—many would never be read by the eyes for which they were intended.
“Can you carry out wounded?” Boltcaster asked her. “I have three hero-dwarves we’ve been carrying since the Norssund.”
“Oh, for some wine,” she said.
“Gone,” Boltcaster said. “Like much else. There’s toasted horsemeat and boiled entrails galore, if you like. They were to be breakfast, but there’s not a dwarf here who wouldn’t give you his portion.”
“Can you make it back?” Wistala said. The dwarves were taking turns to slip away from their lines and write notes on everything from wrapping-paper to bits of wood, in blood if nothing else would serve, and tying it to her. She submitted, hating herself for what she was about to do.
“I’ll know when we reach the Shoulder-Fell. How long before the king marches to our aid?”
“I have not seen a dwarf set out beyond the outer wall,” Wistala said, honestly enough.
Some of the dwarves growled at that.
“Silence, there,” Boltcaster barked. “I’ve still reports to send, and you have families.”
“How do you move?”
“Loose march-square. If the barbarians come, we fall in tight. The cavalry hasn’t been trained that can break a Wheel of Fire shield wall.”
“Where are the barbarians?” Wistala asked.
“Where aren’t they?” a dwarf answered.
“They mostly follow our trail, scavenging discarded metalwork and despoiling the dead,” Boltcaster said. “We’ve had demands for surrender, and each time they’ve ridden from that direction. Good treatment. Ha! What do you expect, fighting savages such as these. Blighters would puke at some of their deeds.”
Wistala took off down the path and winged over the dwarven defenses—felled trees, mostly—to halfhearted cheers. She saw some horses in the trees beyond and loosed some fire, more for show than for effect, and cast about until she saw tightly knit campfires. She swooped in low over the tents.
Barbarian chieftains called for their archers and pointed. A few desultory arrows sang through the air around her.
“Tell Hammar they make for the Shoulder Fell,” she said, flying upside down to keep out the shafts. She repeated it again over another group of tents, before turning back for the dwarves.
They stuffed her with horse entrails before she took off the next morning, with the three wounded dwarves tied across her back. The burden seemed light compared with the supplies she’d carried in the previous day.
By the time she returned to the Titan bridge, one of the wounded had died. The other two were untied and rushed into the Hardhold.
Wistala lay on the bridge like a dead thing as the dwarves untied the messages. One of the lordly dwarves took the courier-pouch from her neck and rushed it to the king.
Fangbreaker himself came down to the bridge to see her, stumping along on his horse hoof, which clomped on the wood planks of the bridge.
“They are in bad shape, my king,” Wistala said. Some in the crowd cried out, and she heard mutters of dhssol. “I fear I am, too.”
“Boltcaster’s need is great,” King Fangbreaker said. “I must ask you to fly again as soon as you’ve rested. He needs more supplies.”
“You go,” Wistala said.
“What?”
Wistala raised her head, too tired to do much but speak. If the bodyguard closed on her, it would be all she could do to roll off the bridge. “You go. Gather your forces and go to his aid.”
The crowd went instantly silent.
“No,” said the king. “Boltcaster must rely on his own skill and courage. We cannot take that risk. Every dwarf will be needed here.”
“Or you could return with your number of warriors doubled,” Wistala said.
“She’s exhausted,” King Fangbreaker said, loudly. “The dragon is mazed. Pay her no mind. Go, good Oracle, go to your tower and rest.” He reached for a handful of cocolat-covered coins to place in her mouth and evidently thought the better of it. He tossed the bag down before her.
“Eat these—you’ll feel better.”
Wistala picked the bag up but did not eat them. Instead she bowed to the king and turned for her tower, trying to forget the masked faces of the doomed dwarves in Boltcaster’s column. They were getting what they deserved. Would she?
The bodyguard closed around the king behind her, seeing the hard stares of some in the crowd.
Wistala slept, and ate, and waited.
The news finally came: Boltcaster and his remaining dwarves had been defeated on the slopes of a mountain, evidently the barbarians had prepared and then rolled rocks down on them from above, breaking the shield wall just before a charge.
Fangbreaker called their end “glorious” and a credit to the Wheel of Fire. But there were mutterings against him, arrests, even an assassination or two, and suicides that some said were not suicides.
One of these was the son of Lord Lobok, who finally agreed to take command of the outer wall at the edge of the Ba-drink.
The star-guild whispered of threats to her life, and Yellowteeth grew afraid to go down for coal. Wistala shrugged off the danger. The dwarves needed every warrior who could carry a spear and would not waste any on a dragon that could be dealt with later.
Then came a dread winter morning when word spread that a barbarian horde was on the foothills below the Ba-drink. With them were Hypatian mercenaries, cavalry, even gargants. Will-making became a popular diversion, there were parties of a desperate nature on the balconies as the dwarves who would defend the walls spent one last night with their kith and kin.
Wistala watched, from her high tower, the barges creep across the Ba-drink, disgorge the dwarves for the walls, and then return for more. Control of the Ba-drink meant control of the herds on the south shores of the lake, and access to the east road for supplies, so the wall had to be held to avoid a bitter siege.