“You can at least investigate, can’t you? It can’t hurt…”
It could get her killed, but that was a remote danger. Her sister was right here and now. “No promises,” Mirabel said.
“I knew you’d come through,” said Monica.
As Mirabel Stonefist trudged glumly across a lumpy wet moor, she thought she should have chosen “stonehead” for her fighting surname instead of “stonefist.” She’d broken fingers often enough to disprove the truth of her chosen epithet, and over a moderately long career more than one person had commented on her personality in granitic terms. Stonehead, bonehead, too stubborn to quit and too dumb to figure a way out…
She had passed three abandoned, ruined villages already, the thatched roofs long since rotted, a few tumbled stone walls blacked by fire. She’d found hearthstones standing on end like grave markers, and not one coin of any metal.
And she’d found dragon tracks. Not, to someone who had been in the unfortunate expedition to kill the Grand Dragon Karshnak of Kreshnivok, very big dragon tracks, but big enough to trip over and fall splat in. It had been raining for days, as usual in autumn, and the dragon tracks were all full of very cold water.
Her biggest mistake, she thought, had been birth order. If she’d been born after Gervais, she’d have been the cute little baby sister, and no one would ever have called on her to solve problems for the family. But as the oldest—the big sister to them all—she’d been cast as family protector and family servant from the beginning.
And her next biggest mistake, at least in the present instance, had been telling the Ladies’ Aid & Armor Society that she was just going to check on things. With that excuse, no one else could find the time to come with her, so here she was, trudging across a cold, wet slope by herself, in dragon country.
They must really hate her. They must be slapping each other on the back, back home, and bragging on how they’d gotten rid of her. They must—
“Dammit, ’Bel, wait up!” The wind had dropped from its usual mournful moan, and she heard the thin scream from behind. She whirled. There—a long way back and below—an arm waved vigorously. She blinked. As if a dragon-laid spell of misery had been lifted, her mood rose. Heads bobbed among the wet heather. Two—three? She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t alone anymore, and she felt almost as warm as if she were leaning on a wall in the palace courtyard in the sun.
They were, of course, grumbling when they came within earshot. “Should’ve called yourself Mirabel Longlegs—” Siobhan Bladehawk said. “Don’t you ever sleep at night? We were beginning to think we’d never catch up.”
“And why’d you go off in that snit?” asked Krystal, flipping the beaded fringe on her vest. “See this? I lost three strings, two of them with real lapis beads, trying to track you through that white-thorn thicket. You could just as easily have gone around it, rather than making me get my knees all scratched—”
“Shut up, Krystal,” Siobhan said. “Though she has a point, ’Bel. What got into you, anyway?”
Mirabel sniffed, and hated herself for it. “Bella said if I was just investigating, I could go alone—nobody should bother—”
“Bella’s having hot flashes,” Siobhan said. “Not herself these days, our Bella, and worried about having to retire. We unelected her right after you left, and then we came after you. If you had just waited a day, stead of storming out like that—”
“But you’re so impetuous,” Krystal said, pouting. She pulled the end of her silver-gilt braid around, frowned at it, and nipped off a split end with her small, white, even teeth.
The third member of the party appeared, along with a shaggy pack pony, its harness hung with a startling number of brightly polished horse brasses.
“I needed a holiday,” Sophora said, her massive frame dwarfing everything but the mountains. “And a chance for some healthy open-air exercise.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer grinned. “Besides, I think that idiot Balon of Torm is trying to rob the realm, and this will give him a chance, he thinks. The fool.”
Mirabel’s mood now suited a sunny May morning. Not even the next squall off the mountain could make her miserable. Krystal, though, turned her back to the blowing rain and pouted again.
“This is ruining my fringes.”
“Shut up, Krystal,” said everyone casually. The world was back to normal.
Cavernous Dire had subsisted on rockrats, rock squirrels, rock grouse, and the occasional rock (mild serpentine, with streaks of copper sulfate, eased his draconic fire-vats, he’d found). In midwinter, he might be lucky enough to flame a mountain goat before it got away, or even a murk ox (once widespread, now confined to a few foggy mountain valleys). But autumn meant hunger, unless he traveled far into the plains, where he could be hunted by man and dragon alike.
Now, as he lay on the cold stone floor of his cave, stirring the meager pile of his treasure, he scented something new, something approaching from the high, cold peaks of the Tanglefoots. He sniffed. Not a mountain goat. Not a murk ox (and besides, it wasn’t foggy enough for the murk ox to be abroad). A sharp, hot smell, rather like the smell of his own fire on rock.
Like many basically unattractive men, Cavernous Dire had been convinced of his own good looks, back when he was a young lad who coated his hair with woolfat, and had remained convinced that he had turned his back on considerable female attention when he chose to become a miser. So, when he realized that the unfamiliar aroma wafting down the cold wet wind was another dragon, his first thought was, “Of course.” A she-dragon had been attracted by his elegance, and hoped to make up to him.
Quickly, he shoved his treasure to the back of the cave, and piled rocks on it. No thieving, lustful she-dragon was going to get his treasure, though he had to admit it was pleasant to find that the girls still pursued him. He edged to the front of his cave and looked upwind, into the swirls of rain. There—was she there? Or—over there?
The women of the expedition set up camp with the swift, capable movements of those experienced in such things. The tent blew over only once, and proved large enough for them all, plus Dumpling the pony, over whose steaming coat Siobhan labored until she was as wet as it had been, and so were half their blankets. Then she polished the horse brasses on Dumpling’s harness; she had insisted that any horse under her care would be properly adorned and she knew the others wouldn’t bother. Meanwhile, the others built a fire and cooked their usual hearty fare, under cover of the front flap.
They were all sitting relaxed around the fire, full of mutton stew and trail bread, sipping the contents of the stoneware jug Sophora had brought, when they heard a shriek. It sounded like someone falling off a very high cliff, and unhappy about it.
Scientific experimentation has shown that it is impossible to put on breastplate, gorget, helm, greaves, armlets, and gauntlets in less than one minute, and thus some magical power must have aided the warrior women, for they were all outside the tent, properly armored, armed, and ready for inspection when the dragon fell out of the sky and squashed the tent flat.
“Dumpling!” cried Siobhan, and lunged for the tent as the pony squealed and a series of thumps suggested that hind hooves were in use.
“No, wait—” Mirabel grabbed her. Siobhan, doughty warrior that she was, had one weakness: an intemperate concern for the welfare of horseflesh. “You can hear he’s alive.”
“Ssss….” A warm glow, as of live coals being revived, appeared in the gloom where the tent had been. Dumpling squealed again. Something ripped, and hoofbeats receded into the distance. “Ahhh… sss…”