This, too, the Dragonblade was ready for. He crouched behind his shield and the thin liquid just splattered his shield, him, and the sand around. The liquid dripped off his shield like rain off a wide jungle leaf.

“Not even any fire? Let’s end it; this is no contest at all,” the Dragonblade said. He slashed the Copper’s good leg, and the Copper collapsed face-first into the sand.

A man’s voice shouted from the entrance. The Copper didn’t understand the words, but the dragon-riders jumped to their feet and fought one another to the exit.

The dragons were coming at last!

He raised his head to see the audience in flight, and the Dragonblade kicked him behind the jaw. He saw stars and his whole neck went numb. He fought to regain control of his head and neck as painful, prickling electricity danced up and down his spine.

The Dragonblade planted himself in front of his snout, just out of reach. He pointed the tip of his sword at the Copper’s eye.

If you died fighting, were you still vanquished?

A trickle of oily-smelling liquid dribbled out of the Dragonblade’s scale greaves, spotting the sand. The Copper traced its source with his eye. It came from beneath the armor.

“Mercy,” the Copper whispered, as Jizara had. Perhaps the Dragonblade had changed. Perhaps this time he’d grant mercy to a vanquished foe.

The man just snorted and adjusted the aim of his sword tip. “Not to such as you. Last words?”

The Copper refused to waste his final breath in a curse. With what wind he had left he forced a gob out of his mouth.

A flaming torf. Pitiful. Hardly bigger than a lump of coal.

A flaming torf that struck the Dragonblade on the boot.

A flaming torf that struck the Dragonblade on the boot and set his whole leg aflame.

Which set his hips on fire.

Which crawled up his torso and yes, even flickered out the slits in his face mask.

He died rather more noisily than Mother.

A blur of gold and SiMevolant landed heavily in the sand. He stormed toward the Copper, shining like the sun itself come to earth. “What have you done? Don’t you understand? Our age is over! We must ally with men, or our flame will be extinguished forever.”

“Not yet,” the Copper gasped.

SiMevolant raised his tail. Along with the strange black stripes, a silver barb had been added to the end.

It dripped.

Open jaws and claws bounded out of the darkness. Nilrasha seized SiMevolant’s tail in her jaws and yanked, tearing a third of it off. She threw the dismembered tail away, and it rolled and twitched in the sand.

SiMevolant forgot about the injured Copper—someone had done that before, to his regret, the Copper vaguely remembered with a tickle of pride—and turned on Nilrasha, rising and spreading his wings a little, showing this backbiting female how big he truly was!

The fool. He should have kept to his cowardly ways. Don’t fight if you know nothing about fighting. He didn’t even lower himself to protect his belly.

The Copper lashed out with a saa and opened SiMevolant wide and deep.

The would-be Tyr looked down at the coils spilling from his belly, writhing like a horde of unleashed snakes.

And then Nilrasha fell on him, pushing his neck to the sand, opening windpipe and blood vessels, and SiMevolant let out a gurgling protest as he died.

“Nilrasha, you’ve come again.”

“I never thought I could fly so fast,” she said, dropping beside him. “You’re not badly hurt. Just cut up.”

“You must go up. Help the others.”

“I’ve no armor. Rayg had time and materials to make only three of the underside leathers. AuBalagrave and his dragons are wearing them.”

“The plan could fail. We’re deep beneath the Rock. You should leave, so you have room to run.”

“In victory or defeat, I’m determined to die at your side, my love.” She looked up. “Here! You! Bat. Get over here. I’ve work for you.”

Uthaned himself, a gray mouse who could fit in the Copper’s nostril, fluttered above his ear.

“The blood is in pools on the dragon-barrack floor, m’lord,” Uthaned said. “The dragons rise just high enough to kill their men in their fall.”

The Copper always regretted not being able to see it.

As Rethothanna related it to him later, like all well-fought battles, it was over before it was begun. The bats had opened veins on most of the dragon-rider mounts, numbing and cutting, numbing and cutting, and letting the blood run into the washing gutters.

In another cave it might not have worked—some attendant might have noticed the blood pooling on the floor—but not in the shining confines of the Rock. The black surface concealed the damage done until it was too late.

So when the alarm was sounded and the men ran to their mounts, the woozy beasts slipped and bumped. Those who even beat their wings hard enough to rise soon passed out, crumpled, and fell to earth. There was a terrible toll in broken necks and backs on the dragons, but the dragon-riders had it even worse.

Of course, a healthy patrol was up over the Rock, as always, and it took many lives before the hag-riders were plucked out of their saddles and their maddened, confused mounts crippled. Even AuBalagrave, one of the few dragons with his belly armored against crossbow bolts, fell with a poisoned arrowhead in his jaw. But other dragons battered and swatted the flying hag-riddens, or plucked the men off while they were reloading their weapons.

There was bitter tunnel fighting against the Andam, but the Drakwatch distinguished itself. Old NeStirrath fell at their head when a wounded human plunged a poisoned blade into him. Of all the names of the fallen from that day, his glory lasted the longest.

The Imperial line had been reduced once again. Now only a handful remained.

Imfamnia fled. Some said she had chains of gold clutched in each claw. Others said she was heavy with SiMevolant’s eggs. Or SiDrakkon’s. Or a dozen other rumored lovers, earning her the title “Jade Queen” in the Anklene Histories. None could say where she went.

A small group of men and dragons barricaded themselves deep in the rock with a reserve of food and water. They refused all attempts at parley until the Copper tottered to their tunnel, supported by Nilrasha. He dragged with him a woman clutching a squalling babe.

He showed the pair to the men at the other end of the tunnel and issued the only offer he could to give to the poison-men, for it was the only one their savage, half-formed brains could appreciate:

He summoned his best voice. “Surrender and give your lives over to us, or we’ll kill each of you, your wives, and spit your babes for roasting. The choice is yours, men: fair treatment as thralls, or death.”

Two committed suicide in despair. The rest sensibly chose thralldom.

And it was only while limping out of the Imperial Resort, with dragons and thralls alike calling him “Tyr RuGaard” and Nilrasha “Queen Ora,” that he realized what he had become.

Epilogue

An Anklene, with the assistance of two elvish thralls, stitched him up. His good sii soon functioned again, though the scarred hide on his haunch never grew a proper set of scale again, just a sort of scabby covering like a turtle’s shell.

He had to make a great many decisions from the Tyr’s shelf, but he grew used to much of the labor required of a Tyr, to the point where he looked forward to the challenges, such as rebuilding the alliance with the griffaran. He even made a sort of art of delegating authority. The real trick was matching the right sort of brains and brawn to each task.

“Rayg is a clever man. In the world I intend to build, clever men will do very well. As long as they understand their place in the Spirits’ grand design,” he said to Rhea as she scrubbed him one morning. He had to confess that he liked the smell of bath-water with a slippery woman in it. But all things in moderation.

“You might want to communicate that to him,” Nilrasha said as she performed her own ablutions.

Rayg had been kept busy studying the dragon-riders’ weapons and equipment in the hope of making improvements. Now and then he complained that he should be freed by now, but the Copper always reminded him that the bridge was not yet built.

“Release me from this trivia and I’ll finish it in thirty days,” he grumbled. But he’d grumble more in the ore mines, seeing to improvements in the hydraulics, the Copper reminded him.

Bath done and breakfast down, the Copper hooked his mate at the wing and walked her to the balcony overlooking the now-public Imperial Gardens. And yes, he had a review to do, then a short speech to give to the newest generation of Drakwatch and Firemaidens.

With his beautiful mate pacing behind, the Copper walked through the quarters of his tiny aerial host, still new and untested as a wet hatchling, but they were learning.

Instead of reins, the warriors fought chained to their saddles. For their own safety, of course. But it also established who guided whom.

He limped down a long line of dragons, with a few dragonelles sprinkled in, the red bands of the Firemaid oath around their necks. Each set of wings faced a rider, free thralls all—a fine-sounding status, as long as one didn’t think about it too much. Dragon and rider stared into each other’s eyes over a lance’s distance. Their armor was variegated, their weapons according to taste, but at least they all matched in their red cloaks. Not all the men were former dragon-riders; some were thralls who showed great loyalty and promise and skill at arms. And not all the dragons had once been hag-ridden. Those dragons who’d been victorious in combat had the Tyr’s laudi painted on their wings in inexpensive but long-lasting tones. The dragon-riders had the equivalent, called “tattooing” or some other odd-sounding Parl expression, on their arms and at the outer edges of their eyes and temples.