Other Tarmaks ran to the guard’s aid. Linsha struggled, but the blue-skinned warriors hauled her out of the prison cell and dragged her to the metal cage.
“Sit in here and laugh,” the guard ordered. He pushed her inside and locked the door.
Linsha felt the cage being hauled into the air. The angry guard slammed a shield into the side of cage in spite, then the Tarmaks left her gently swinging at the end of a rope. She sagged against the bars while her head threatened to explode. A number of well-chosen words in several languages told the Tarmaks exactly what she thought of them and where they could put their swords, but the warriors ignored her and went back to their posts.
After a while Linsha wriggled her arm up high enough to touch her forehead. A large lump and a sticky rivulet down the side of her face confirmed her suspicions. She would have a bangup of a bruise the next morning. Blasted Tarmaks. She hadn’t even been able to eat her dinner. She was hungry and thirsty and tired and thoroughly annoyed, and she had a headache reminiscent of a dwarf spirits hangover. Now she was hung out like a bird in a cage, and there was nothing she could do about it except try to conserve her strength until the guards decided to let her out.
Taking a deep breath, she relaxed and stared upward. The night was fully dark by this time and the stars shone bright in a flawless sky. There would probably be frost tonight, she thought unhappily—and she was without her cloak.
The hours dragged by. She tried to sleep and found that sleep was impossible, for she was too cold and cramped in the metal box. When she sought to relieve her boredom and frustration by singing bawdy tavern songs at the top of her lungs, both the prisoners and the guards yelled at her. The threat of arrows being loosed at her finally convinced her to be quiet.
Shortly after midnight, new guards came out to take the place of the old, and for a brief moment Linsha hoped they would release her. But none of them looked her way or made any move toward the cage. She watched them stride around the yard and along the walls until they were all in their places, then the ruins fell quiet again, and she had to resign herself to enduring the cage until dawn. Surely they would free her at sunrise to work with the rest of the prisoners.
Late into the night, a waning crescent moon slowly lifted its horns above the line of hills to the east. Linsha watched it wearily. She was too uncomfortable to sleep and too tired to think. Her entire mind and body felt numb from cold and exhaustion. She was so distracted by the moon and her own misery that she did not see the small, dark shape slink noiselessly along a wall toward her.
Somewhere out in the ruins, the hunting cry of an owl cut through the frosty night.
Linsha suddenly grew alert.
Linsha.
Her name rang in her head, sent by a worried and powerful mind. If she’d had any space to move, she would have jumped out of her skin. Shaking, she jerked her head down and saw the cat standing close to the posts that held the cage upright.
Linsha. One moment and I will have you free.
A bright glow suffused the small cat. Golden, shimmering light covered its body and hid it from view in a ball of dazzling power that rapidly expanded outward like a small nova into a brilliant haze that glimmered with sparks of orange, yellow, and white. Within the haze, a shape began to form with a long neck and nebulous wings of fire.
In that instant between light and shape, Linsha heard shouts and the unmistakable snap of a large crossbow. The dragon within the cloud of light screamed in pain and surprise.
Linsha’s voice rose to join the cry with her own scream of terror and denial. “No!”
The golden light vanished, leaving Linsha Winking in the dark. She could not see well, but she could hear the dragon thrashing on the ground, and she heard the unmistakable voice of the Akkad-Ur coming from somewhere close by. She twisted her head and spotted several black silhouettes on the roofline of the storehouse.
“Be still, dragon!” thundered the Tarmak general. “Be still or both you and the woman shall die.”
A sudden understanding glowed in Linsha’s mind like the light of the dragon’s power. They had been waiting for him. Damn! She berated herself. How could she not have seen it? She had said herself she thought the Tarmaks wanted the dragon to return. Having listened to the Akkad-Ur discuss Crucible and Varia, how could she not have guessed what they would do? She was not out here as punishment, she was hanging here as bait. Somehow the Tarmaks had known the dragon had returned, or perhaps they just calculated the number of days it would take for one small owl to fly to Sanction and one large dragon to fly back. Whatever they knew, they had put her in the cage in plain view and waited for Crucible to come. Would they have hung her out for the next seven days? Maybe so. And maybe she would have seen through this in another night or two. But it was Crucible’s bad luck that he came this night.
Gods above, what had they done to him? What sort of crossbow did they have that was large enough to wound a dragon?
She locked her fingers around the bars and shook the cage in a rage, angry at her own stupidity and terrified for his safety. He was still writhing in pain on the ground. She was able to see he was trying to reach something between his shoulder blades at the base of his neck. His eyes glowed with a fiery edge of scarlet, and his nostrils blew jets of steam in the cold night air. His talons scraped sparks from the stone nagging.
“I said be still, Crucible!” the Akkad-Ur shouted. “There are arrows aimed at your lady and at your neck. If you wish both of you to die, continue with this struggle.”
The sound of his name seemed to reach through his frantic struggles, for he stopped snapping at his back and crouched, his tail lashing across the yard. His large head lifted to spot his tormentors.
Inside the storehouse, the prisoners crowded up to the doors and stared horrified at the bronze. None of the Tarmak guards were visible.
Linsha froze in place and forced herself to be calm. She could not do anything to help Crucible.
“Do not try to sear us with your breath,” the Tarmak went on in a reasonable tone of voice. “You cannot reach all of us, and by the time you shot one beam, the lady knight would be dead.”
“Crucible, don’t listen,” Linsha pleaded. “Just go. Get away! Shapeshift, if you can, and go!”
“That would not be wise,” said the Akkad-Ur. “If he tries to shapeshift now, the barb in his back will kill him.”
Crucible chose to ignore him. Clamping his wings tight to his sides, he peered into Linsha’s cage.
“I smell blood,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
Linsha felt her heart contract. He was in pain and trapped by a dangerous enemy, yet his first question was for her. More than anything she wanted to reach through the bars to touch him, but she could barely move her arms from her body. Her eyes ached with unshed tears.
“Crucible,” she said. “Why did you come?”
An arrow ricocheted off the cage with a jarring clang. Crucible’s head snapped up, and a thunderous growl rumbled from his throat. He shrugged his shoulders and squirmed again with pain.
“What is this weapon you have used against me?” he roared at the Tarmaks. “What have you done?”
“It is very simple,” Linsha heard the Akkad-Ur shout from the roof. “We are planning a campaign to complete our conquest of the brass dragon’s realm. We no longer have our mercenaries or the blue dragon to help us. What we do have is you. Metallics, I am told, are much more reasonable than chromatics.”