Sthenn’s head snapped around. He opened his mouth and hissed, drawing the warning out into a dry, withered laugh.
“Little Duranix!” he wheezed. “Good of you to join us!”
“Hang on to him, Blusidar,” Duranix called. “Don’t let him go!”
“You know each other, do you? How interesting.” The joints in his long foreclaws worked. Scales squealed on scales, and Sthenn’s claws sank into Blusidar’s throat. Her tongue fell out between her parted lips.
“Stand where you are, dear friend, or I’ll tear her head right off!”
Duranix strove to conceal his concern, knowing Sthenn would only use it against him. “She’s just a child, no more than a nymph with wings.”
“Hehhh, hehhh.” Again, the dry-as-dust laughter. “Is that supposed to dissuade me? You forget, my darling enemy, I killed your clutchmates, and they were mewling newts.”
Duranix advanced two steps. Sthenn twisted away from him, trying to keep his distance and not lose his grip on Blusidar. It wasn’t a simple task. She was still resisting and hampered Sthenn’s mobility.
“Stay back!” Sthenn cried shrilly. “Stay back! I’ll kill her!”
Duranix sat back on his haunches and prepared himself to leap. “I can’t stop you. But know this: I can reach you in a single jump. You’ll die far more slowly than she, old wyrm.”
“You frighten me,” Sthenn sneered.
“I notice you’re not using your teeth. Why not? Surely an elder like you could bite through a young dragon’s throat far faster than you can strangle her. Ah, I remember. Back on the plain, when we grappled, you didn’t use your teeth then either.” Duranix’s eyes narrowed. “You’re so old, you’re more than half dead. Everything about you is decayed. Those yellow fangs of yours are as brittle as icicles, aren’t they, Sthenn? That’s why you don’t use. them. They’d shatter on hard bronze scales.”
Sthenn heaved himself and his captive a step farther away, gurgling hatred deep in his throat.
“Shall I bite through this fine young throat to prove you wrong?” he wheezed. He opened his narrow jaws and rested his long, eroding teeth on Blusidar’s neck.
“Go ahead, if you can. Blusidar, if you can hear me, keep fighting! You’re a tenth his age. He’s vicious and cruel, but he’s too feeble to hold you down forever.”
Her tail thrashed once from side to side. Sthenn shifted one of his back feet to restrain it, wavering a bit as he sought his balance again.
“Are you afraid yet, Sthenn?”
Blusidar twisted violently against the grip of her larger foe. Duranix tensed himself to strike, but Blusidar and Sthenn were too much in motion for him to aim his attack precisely. They rolled under the steplike waterfall and out again. Blusidar’s tail, freed from Sthenn’s grip, lashed out, whipping across his side and back. The spiked center ridge caught him in the face, and black blood flowed.
Furious, the green dragon let go Blusidar’s neck with one claw and raked his thick talons across her eyes.
Her high-pitched trill of pain was Duranix’s cue. He sprang, aiming his whole body at Sthenn’s head. When he landed, the stone ledge beneath them shattered, dumping all three of them into the deep pool at the base of the falls.
For a while all was swirling water, rushing bubbles, and reptilian limbs striking and clutching. When Duranix emerged at last from the tangle, Sthenn was scrambling ashore, wings outstretched. The raw wound on his chest was bleeding again, and the lacerations on his face and back oozed steadily. His decrepit lungs gasped for air as his sides heaved in and out. He looked back at Duranix.
“Come for me, old friend, and the female will bleed to death!” he panted.
It seemed too true. Blusidar lay motionless on a broken slab. Blood stained her bright scales and hid her face completely. Duranix couldn’t tell if her throat had been slashed, but dark blood was rapidly covering the stone on which she lay.
Sthenn labored into the air. He did not circle but simply called, “I’ve won, little friend! You’ve been gone too long from your pet humans. Return home and see my victory!” Then he flew away, his course erratic, his belly skimming the treetops.
Duranix went to Blusidar. Her right eye was badly cut, and there was a deep wound from her right earhole to the bottom of her left jawbone. Blood pulsed slowly from this terrible gash.
He rinsed her face and neck gently with cool water. Through these ablutions, Blusidar never moved. She barely seemed to breathe.
There was nothing Duranix could do for her eye, but the throat wound had to be closed, or she would surely die. Arching his neck and inhaling deeply, he called on the lightning deep within. It would require extraordinary precision to seal the gaping wound without incinerating Blusidar or burning off his own foreclaw.
Duranix gazed skyward for a moment, feeling a fearsome calm settle over him. He lowered his head and breathed blue-white fire on the dying dragon’s wound.
Deer were plentiful on the island, and it didn’t take long for Duranix to catch four. He carried them back to the headwaters of the river and seared a brace for his dinner. The other two he left raw. Having little experience of fire, Blusidar would be accustomed to eating her meat uncooked.
She had not stirred from where he’d laid her after closing her wound. Day passed into night and then into day again, and still she did not move. After catching the deer, Duranix never left her side. He coiled himself on a rock ledge, watching over her and listening to the wild things in the woods.
At twilight two days after the battle with Sthenn, Blusidar twitched. The tremors became aimless movements of her limbs. When her head moved side to side, Duranix’s own head lifted.
Her eye opened, and she rolled onto her side. After a pause, she crawled to the water’s edge and dipped her parched, swollen tongue in the stream.
“How do you feel?”
She spasmed hard with fear at the sound of his voice. “Why are you still here?” she said, her voice a hollow whisper.
“I waited to see you through.”
“The green... is dead?”
“No, but he’s gone.”
“Then why stay? I thought you want to kill him.”
“There’s time. He’ll be returning to our homeland to see his humans triumph over mine. He’s old and injured. I can catch him.”
Blusidar examined her reflection in the water. “My eye,” she whispered, claw waving helplessly before the ruined socket. “I cannot see with it.”
“Sthenn put it out. I can’t heal it, but in time a new one will grow in its place.” He had to reassure her of this several times before she turned her attention from her damaged face to her empty belly.
“You spoke true,” she said as she devoured the raw venison. “The green wanted to kill me. Why are such creatures living?”
“Sthenn defies explanation. In some hearts, evil arrives at birth. He’s as craven as he is wicked, and I thought if you fought him he’d flee, but I made a mistake. He felt trapped, and even a trapped rat will bite.”
She said nothing more but curled up at his feet and fell into a profound slumber. Duranix stood over her for two more days, bringing fresh game from the forest. When Blusidar awakened again, he told her he was leaving.
She considered this in silence, eating part of a deer and then moving to the stream. Once she’d drunk her fill, she said, “The green is far away. Why not stay?”
Duranix was amazed by this reversal. “I must make sure Sthenn doesn’t hurt anyone ever again,” he told her quietly. “I have to finish him.”
Blusidar rose her feet. She was steadier now, and her injuries had acquired a healing crust.
She flexed her wings several times and tilted her head, fixing him with her good eye. “When the green is dead, come back. Live here.”