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“What’s your name?” he asked his rescuer.
“Asleea, your honor.”
“Asleea, there’s a rider down out there. If he’s still alive, bring him back that way. If he’s not, bring his body and whatever dropped weaponry you find. I’ll fly above, close to the cavern ceiling, and keep watch. If they come down on you, turn tail and fly like the wind. Perhaps I can surprise them.”
As it turned out, they retrieved the corpse without incident. Perhaps, having lost two riders, the remaining one flew back to wherever they came from to report.
He was a squatty sort of man, tanned and dark-haired, very different from the thin, darker, well-formed men of Anaea. His beard was almost as full as a dwarf’s, and he had several layers of clothing on to protect him from the cold.
Rayg was most interested in the crossbow quarrels he found in a leather case strapped on the man’s thigh. They were wooden, with nickel-silver tips, and two thin glass tubes to either side just behind the arrowhead containing a clear liquid.
“I’m guessing that’s poison,” Rayg said.
He carefully emptied the glass tubes on the ground, rinsed out the glass, then put them back in the sides of the quarrel. He wrapped his hand in a bit of leather and drove the quarrel into the dirt.
“Fascinating,” he said, extracting the point.
“Yes?”
“When the head strikes it slides down the shaft, just the width of my thumb. But it’s enough to shatter the glass, putting both vials into the wound.”
The Copper thought back to the fight over Anaea. “I saw FeLissarath pass over one. He died within a few seconds. I thought an arrow found one of his hearts, but it could have been one of these.”
“A few seconds, you say? That’s a deadly toxin, to bring down a dragon so fast.”
“Perhaps it found a heart after all.”
“You should take that into consideration when fighting these dragon-riders. The quarrels are light; I suppose every bit of weight counts when you’re loading a dragon. Unless they were fired from a very close range, they probably wouldn’t go through scale without a lucky shot.”>Suddenly the old Upholders flipped over on their backs, practically bending their spines in half. Tails a blur, they struck their lead pursuer, one high and one low.
The Copper saw an object fall, turning cartwheels as it plummeted to the plateau. He suspected—no, rejoiced—that it was one of the hag-riders. The dragon they struck convulsed in the air and fell, limp-winged.
But the two following avoided their quarry-turned-hunters and broke, one high and to the right, one low and to the left, a terrible perfection in their evolutions.
The male swung under his mate again, guarding her, and the low-flying dragon passed under him. FeLissarath twitched in midair, turned sideways, and began a stiff-winged fall to the surface.
The female flew to the aid of her mate, diving, but that just gave the one who turned high an opportunity. It dove on her, claws extended like a hawk after a duck, and raked her across the back.
The Copper saw one wing rise, fluttering.
But she wasn’t done yet. She lashed up with her neck, got her teeth in her opponent’s tail, and folded her wings. With her weight clinging to him, the other dragon couldn’t stay aloft, and the pair began to fall, whirling around and around to destruction on the plateau. The female pulled herself up her opponent’s tail and dug into his belly, trading bites as they went down.
So passed the Upholders of Anaea.
The Copper swung around toward the remaining hag-ridden dragon. He was descending to the aid of the other rider. But he saw another formation of three coming in, late to the fight but arriving before he could.
He couldn’t match the flying of the FeLissaraths, let alone the guided enemy dragons working in concert. No flame, almost blind in one eye, and a bad wing. He wouldn’t even get one. He turned east for the Lavadome.
But in his ascent, watching the aerial duel, he’d passed out of the shadow of the mountain and into moonlight. He realized it too late.
The three hag-ridden dragons flapped their wings in unison as they turned toward him.
Chapter 25
They made no great effort to catch up to him as he fled east. After closing to two-score dragonlengths, they seemed content to trail him.
The long flight exhausted him. He passed over unfamiliar country, dry and rocky and dotted with widely spaced patches of vegetation clinging precariously to what he suspected were seasonal water supplies. There was little sign of habitation in this waste.
Thanks to his injury, he couldn’t manipulate his wing to take the wind at a favorable angle, and he suspected he was ex-pending as much effort just to glide between beats as he would climbing. His strength would fail before dawn.
