"These must be the weapons the knights spoke of. Quick!" he hissed, "While the gnome is gone. Take what looks useful and leave."
It was a draconian! Two draconians! "What about the girl we followed here?" The other draconian asked.
Mara's heart sank. She heard again in her mind Kalend saying,
They'll camp around us and wait for something to break — reinforcements, or better weapons…
The captain shrugged. "She's served her purpose. If you see her, kill her, and don't waste time."
Mara pressed against the tunnel wall, hidden by the shadows of cable and hanging hardware.
Four other draconians marched out of the narrow side tunnel into the hall. They were all carrying huge, cruel weapons. Their wings filled the tunnel. They had clawed hands and horrid sharp fangs. One of them started right for her. Mara the Brave couldn't help herself. She whimpered.
The draconians heard her. One lashed forward with a spear. Panicked, Mara dropped flat. The spear nearly parted her hair. Another draconian hissed and slashed sideways with his sword. She leapt up, dodged the sword, backing farther away. A mace raked her shoulder.
She began running, heading for escape out the skylight. I should stop them! she thought frantically, but a cold voice in her mind said, "Face it. You're not a warrior, not even a thief. You're only a very stupid little girl."
She bounced from wall to wall randomly to dodge more thrown weapons, stumbling over a pile of canisters. She paused. The top one had a label; in the middle of the polysyllables, Mara recognized the common word for PEST. She picked the canister up and tucked it under her arm. If it was the new batch of pesticide, she could dump it over herself and it would make her invisible. She began opening it, then stopped.
If it was the old batch, it might kill her.
But then, she could throw it back at the approaching draconians and kill them. She tugged at the top again.
Or she might make them invisible. She had a brief vision of herself surrounded by invisible draconians. She tossed the canister aside and kept running.
The draconians were close behind her when she reached the skylight. She leapt for the opening lever, pulling it down with her full weight. It groaned as it moved… and lowered a cantilevered weight, which tugged a guy rope, which spun a flywheel, which rotated an axis, which turned a worm gear, which wound up the pull rope…
Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the end of the rope flapping uselessly.
"It would be nice," Mara muttered between clenched teeth, "if just once, a gnome invention worked reliably." And that gave Mara the idea.
She grabbed the dangling rope, swung up on it, pumping her legs vigorously. Kicking off the ceiling, she spun around and swung back over the heads of the astonished draconians. One of them raised a spear, but not quickly enough; it barely scratched her.
Mara let go of the rope, landing well behind the confused draconians, and dashed back the way she had come. But she had to make certain they followed her. At the bend in the tunnel, she scooped up a handful of decaying spare parts from old mechanisms and skimmed them off the tunnel walls and ceiling into the draconians. A rusted bolt caught the captain on his reptilian snout.
The captain howled. "After her! Kill her!"
"Quickly, or slowly?" A subordinate asked.
"Quickly," he hissed. A hex nut clanged off his helmet. "But not too quickly."
They dashed after her again, weapons ready, their terrible jaws open. Mara fled, but made sure that they saw which way she turned. They chased her confidently; after all, what did they have to fear from a single unarmed human child?
The draconians came on her suddenly, around a comer. She was apparently helpless with fear.
The draconian captain leered at her and barked unnecessarily, "Now you die."
"If you must!" she said more coolly than she felt. "But be quick."
The draconian eyed her with resentment, tinged with admiration. "Don't we frighten you?"
"You? Never." Mara pointed to the floor. "That thing frightens me. I can bear anything," she said earnestly, "but the Flying Deathaxe."
At a gesture from his captain, the lead draconian picked it up. "This thing?" he said, laughing, incredulously.
Mara shrank away. "Don't pull that cord. Please. Put it down — "
The captain smiled at her, revealing an amazing quantity of pointed teeth. "Of course, I'll put it down." He set it on the ground in front of her with a low bow. As he straightened up, with one swift motion he pulled the starting cord, setting the propellers in motion. He watched, chuckling evilly.
The propellers spun and, unbelievably, the Deathaxe rose into the air. As it cleared the floor, the razor-sharp axe blade swung back and forth with a loud shearing noise. It hovered, hesitated, then began slowly spinning in a circle. Mara watched, open-mouthed, as the axe blade sliced through a boom extending from the tunnel wall. Now the axe was moving faster, and the circle was widening as well. Mara took a nervous step backward.
The Deathaxe hit the roof and bounced off. The blade sliced through the helmet and head of a draconian soldier without slowing down. The soldier turned to stone and toppled.
The captain uttered a command, succinct even for draconian field orders: "Run!"
Mara obeyed. So did the other draconians. The axe gashed the wall where she had been standing a moment before, spun back on itself, and cut one of the draconian soldiers in the chest before careening upward to strike the ceiling and spin back down.
The wounded draconian, shouting in panic, crashed head-on into one of his companions. Both sank to the tunnel floor, unconscious but not dead. The remaining two sprinted after Mara, just ahead of the whining, humming Deathaxe.
Mara wouldn't have thought that the heavy draconians could run that fast, but then she surprised herself with her own speed. Once, in a crazy rebound off a hanging pulley, the Deathaxe spun into the floor in front of her and shot straight up at her. She fell backward, rolled between the legs of the startled draconian soldier behind her, and leapt to one side. The Deathaxe cut off his head. Turning to stone, it thudded to the floor where she had been. The draconian captain behind her screeched with frustration. The Deathaxe, now behind him, spun back toward both of them, and they were off again.
Perversely, the axe continued after them, instead of backtracking or taking wrong tunnels. Mara wondered if that was a side-function of Standback's sensors. She also wondered how long she and the draconian captain could keep up their pace; she was naturally faster, but he had more endurance. If she should tire or fall… She grit her teeth and kept dodging and running.
After what seemed like days, Mara thought that the axe might be slowing down. A minute more and she was positive; it was losing forward momentum and spinning more slowly. Finally, with a creak from its handle and a flutter of propellers, the Deathaxe crashed to the tunnel floor. Mara and the draconian, wheezing, collapsed — a spear's length apart — just beyond it.
The draconian recovered first. He rose unsteadily and searched for the sword. He had dropped it when he fell. The weapon was now lying within Mara's reach.
Mara staggered to her feet, picked up the heavy sword and nearly overbalanced. The draconian laughed at her and moved forward to recover it and kill her.
Mara heard an uneasy rustling on the tunnel ceiling above her, though she could see nothing. She swung the sword against the tunnel wall and banged it, shouting.
The air was suddenly filled with a terrible chittering and the sound of hundreds of wings. The draconian, disconcerted, waved his arms in the air. Mara steadied the sword, gathering her strength.
The draconian opened his mouth and snapped at the noises in the empty air; there was a tiny shriek, which cut off abruptly. Mara, feeling sick, took a deep breath and lunged with the sword.