“We will make do somehow. We came to fight, not to eat. Your lands and flocks will remain undisturbed. If there is fighting, we will find sustenance.”
Roff laughed. “A dragon-army at war. To think I lived to see such things.”
“I will ride as quickly as I can to see to the muster. We meet again at Hesturr!”
She brought her dragons north into familiar lands in easy stages, flying at dawn and dusk. Under Ayafeeia’s direction they flew north in four groups, with the lead turning south every few horizons and flying south until they were the back group. By such crossing patterns, watchers on the ground might be confused.
They landed in the ancient Hypatian ruins of Hesturr, piles of overgrown rubble that some would call picturesque. To Wistala they brought back mostly bad memories—the trip that ended in the loss of her father and Rainfall’s wounding that night of the brush with the old thane, Vog.
Now the ruins of a great city held only sheep. The shepherds ran as the dragons landed and began to explore.
“Thick forests around here,” Ayafeeia said. “Bad ground for fighting, especially against horsemen. They can use the trees as cover. We can’t go after them without breaking wings.”
Wistala suspected that the shepherds of Hesturr would be missing a few sheep when next they counted. Drakka kept flitting off to hunt and returning with bits of wool stuck in their snouts.
The lack of discipline rankled. “We came here to make friends, not impoverish the locals. The thane will give us sheep enough once he catches up to us.”
Ayafeeia sent out dawn and dusk patrols to make sure the Ironriders weren’t already on their way. They reported nothing of interest except game and livestock. Wistala warned them away from the livestock again.
Her maidmother granted her permission to visit the inn near Mossbell.
Either the village had shrunk, despite the new buildings, or she’d grown.
She could only pay a brief visit to the Green Dragon Inn, sticking her head in through the half-door in the back as in the old days, after receiving many embraces upon her landing.
The cats seemed most disturbed by her presence. Old Yari-Tab had long since died, but one of her kittens was now an aged, scrawny black cat named Aroo.
“Does the rainy season end soon, you think?” he asked Wistala.
“Wistala! Your brother has been here,” Hazeleye said.
In response to that, she had to tell the story. And then tell it again, with fewer digressions into what the Lavadome was, who the Firemaids were, and why demen would bind and starve a dragon.
Widow Lessup still lived, though she had difficulty getting about.
They were still talking when Ragwrist and his mate, or rather, wife, Dsossa, rode in on lathered mounts.
“Can we expect a visit at Mossbell as well?”
“I must return to my comrades at Tumbledown.”
They talked of war and trade on the bridge. Ragwrist had a plan for taking apart the repaired center span of the great bridge that his estate was responsible for keeping in order and hiding the pieces in Wistala’s old troll-cave.
“AuRon left some kind of message for you there, if you wish to read it.”
She did, that night. It was detailed instructions on how to fly to the Isle of Ice and which dragon to ask for and some talk of wolves.
She came to regret the trip. It reminded her of how happy she’d been at Mossbell. Perhaps, once she’d helped the Firemaids of the Lavadome and paid off, in part, the debt she could never pay in full, she would be able to return. This troll-cave was a splendid spot, though it needed a good cleaning thanks to the rooks and pelicans.
When she flew back to the ruins, she found Thane Hesturr there with a few of his retainers.
“It seems your company started on the sheep without me,” he said. “I smoothed it over and told them I said you might feed yourselves from the flocks and I would reimburse them. But I’m not a rich man.”
“Our help has a price,” Ayafeeia said, when Wistala passed on the thane’s complaint. She bit off a response. If this would be her role as a diplomat, “smoothing” over matters of poached sheep, her term as ambassador would be short-lived—she’d rather be telling fortunes with the circus again.
“I’m sorry we’re taking up your shepherds’ grazing space.”
“It matters not. They like to bring the sheep here so they can poke around in the ruins. There’s always some new rumor about where gold is buried.”
“If there is gold buried here we’ll soon have it up. Dragons have noses for refined metals. We were hunting those here when we had the unfortunate dispute with your father.”
“I was a boy when he died,” Thane Hesturr said, sounding very much out of humor. Before, he’d spoken of it lightly. Perhaps he was just tired from his journey, or perhaps he’d heard multiple complaints about missing animals. “I will take your help. While you are of aid to Hypatia, I offer you my courage and strength and support. Should you fail in your alliance, I will take my grandfather’s revenge upon you.”
Wistala translated that for Ayafeeia. She asked what he meant by support.
“Meat, fowl, and fish. Also, such irons as you might like. We’ll be collecting old nails and broken tools for you.”
“By the Stormbringer and the Nightdeath, we can use that,” Ayafeeia responded to the translated offer.
Wistala flew out on a night reconnaissance to see how many of the rumors were true.
One she could verify at once: The Ironriders had moved before the Hypatians could gather, it seemed.
The carrion birds led her to the work of the Ironriders.
She passed over burned villages, with heaps of the dead staked out lining the roads. Heads, black with flies and poked and torn by birds, lay in the road like oversized onions.
Other villages and homesteads lay empty. She hoped the owners had fled and the pieces of torn clothing and footwear were just bits and pieces dropped by the riders as they carried off their loot.
From the heights, she saw groups of riders. They’d set up tall, narrow tents from which the fragrant aroma of smoking meat rose into the skies.
So these were the mighty Ironriders. Both the men and their horses appeared bony and undersized, but Wistala knew better than to rely overly on appearances.
The Ironriders, meeting no resistance, had already divided. One column of riders went north, a second stabbed east, and a third headed off to the south, perhaps to seize the river gap where the mighty Falnges fell past the dwarves of the Chartered Company.
The northbound column she would not worry about. If they intended to pass into Varvar lands seeking plunder they’d be in for the fight of their lives, in thick, wolf-haunted woods crossed by many rivers. She knew how quickly the barbarians there would drop their eternal feuds to unite against invaders.
As for the southbound column, they would have a long and difficult trip across hills that would meet them like a series of walls. They would not be able to use their horses to advantage, and the few settlements in the wild mountain foothills would have plenty of warning of their arrival and drive their flocks even higher into the mountains. They would lose many horses on the thin soil of the foothills.
The center column, however, was the most numerous. It aimed straight for the old road that passed through all the thanedoms of the Hypatian north. Once on that, the horsemen could travel like poison in a bloodstream from town to town and finally into the sun-blessed city of Hypat itself. The Ironriders would burn art a thousand years old to toast their horseflesh on sticks and strip the temples of their silver statues.
But perhaps, just perhaps, Hypatia would summon its legions in time, put competent generals at their head, and destroy the northern invaders, then turn to meet the southern.
Hypatia would like to know what sort of numbers had come across the pass, thanks to the treacherous Wheel of Fire.
She passed to the other side of the Red Mountains and trembled. Winking lights of charcoal fires dusted the open plain everywhere there weren’t corrals of horses and goats and sheep. Laden carts sat full of hay and grain, and packs of dogs ran here and there.
The greatest summer priestly festivals in Hypatia didn’t draw a third as many people. Yet these were warriors, with feathers and furs trimming shield and scabbard, under the painted bones tingling wind chimes of a hundred nomadic princedoms.
No wonder DharSii had brought a warning. Had he told of another army such as this to the south? She’d heard talk of it.
She wondered what the Red Queen had promised the princes of the Ironriders to gain their cooperation. Loot? Would each warrior be allowed to carry off one woman and one child as slaves, bound across the leather and sheepskin of their saddles?
What did Mother say about fighting? Hit them where they’re thin. A deer is vulnerable at the leg or neck. A man at the knee, elbow, and throat. Of course, dwarves present a problem—they’re thick everywhere to look at. Thin only in flexibility, dwarves, and she’d improvised her way into breaking a king who would not bend.
The Ironriders ran thin in this pass.
“Excellent ground, Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, when she took her up after dusk that night to view the pass. “I have never seen a finer place for dragons to do battle.”