The Mud City stood on both banks of the river, surrounded by green, well-watered hills and walls of various age. The buildings were all a white or sandy color, sprouting wood supports or a plot of gardening here and there. The dwellings looked cracked and dry, like Fourfang’s sunburned skin.

He expected to see flocks and herds on the surrounding hills, but there were few animals on the heights grazing, and what there were kept close to town.

The dragons camped in a vale between two hills overlooking the town, with good cliffs to one side and a steep slope on the other.

“The Ghi men’s horsemen have not yet raided south of the river,” their Firemaid guide said.

“I don’t put anything past men. They always show up where you don’t expect ’em,” SiDrakkon said.

“And don’t let your thralls cut wood from these trees; these belong to the local chieftain. Wood pilfering will create a grudge.”

“Of course.”

The Firemaid departed, and SiDrakkon immediately ordered the thralls to gather wood for cooking fires—but only dead branches and deadfalls.

Rhea spent weary hours cleaning dust out of the Copper’s scale, while Fourfang made some kind of gruel in a pot as he was toasting a spitted lamb. Fourfang and Rhea licked the spit clean of grease when the Copper was through eating.

The Copper hoped the provisioning would improve soon; already the thralls were pushing and shoving over food allotments.

The next morning NiThonius arrived, and the whole camp stirred at the news.

He was an odd-looking dragon, rather bony and the color of a rusty shield, and had strips of cloth running from his crest and twelve horns, all tied to an ivory tusk piercing his nostrils, creating a sort of fabric shield for his eyes and nose.

Alongside him rode a fine figure of a man with a long, forked beard wrapped in gold cording. More gold cording held a sun cloth to his head, and his robes had glittering strands woven into the lapels.

SiDrakkon lined up the drakes and Firemaidens to meet him, with his bodyguard just behind him. “Let’s wait downwind; we’ll be able to hear better,” Nivom said.

“Eminent of the Bant Uphold, I bring you the Tyr’s greetings,” SiDrakkon said.

“Mate-brother to the Tyr, I long regret the Tyr’s absence from my hearth and hoard. Will you cry ally?”

“I do cry ally.”

They both made a perfunctory clucking noise at the sky.

“I welcome your coming,” NiThonius said. “Let me introduce King Onato of the Rains and Winds and the Three River Savanna. You met his father, I believe.”

“A great warrior and friend to the Lavadome,” SiDrakkon said. He gurgled out a few words in a tongue the Copper did not understand.

“Did you catch that?” the Copper asked.

“I can’t make snout nor tail of their yammering. But I expect I’ll learn if we’re here long.”

Some of the king’s retainers unrolled white material and tied it between the branches of two spreading trees. The king sat beneath atop a folding wooden sort of post-seat, and NiThonius settled down beside. SiDrakkon dismissed the welcoming party and joined the repose, calling Nivom forward. The Copper followed behind.

“A Drakwatch commander and an Imperial Courier. I’m impressed you’ve come so well arrayed,” NiThonius said.

“I was not impressed with your welcoming banquet when we emerged from the Lower World.”

NiThonius pulled back his head a little. “I did not expect so many. I’d asked my old friend the Tyr for a cunning dragon or two to help me cope with the Ghi.”

“And what could be accomplished against fortresses by a dragon or two?”

“I would rather attack them where they are vulnerable, rather than behind scale or stone.”

“Where are they vulnerable?”

“Where their archers can’t stand behind battlements and their war machines throw javelin, rock, and fire. I’m a little old to be flitting about, laying waste to flocks and herds. The men of Ghi, the Stonemen, would probably be induced to quit most of the lands they’ve grabbed if we make the lands unprofitable. They are keen calculators, not prideful. Also, they have some salt mines and clayworks and lumber camps. Burn them and kill the workers, swim up under their trade boats, scatter their herds, and burn their crops in the night. A war of stealth and surprise will weary them before too many years pass. That’s why I asked for an active young dragon or two. And that is what our allies gathered provision for.”

SiDrakkon tore up the ground with his claws, and the king and his retainers scooted back on their hindquarters, perhaps fearing their new ally would lash out. “I’ve no patience for that kind of warfare. The Lavadome needs Bant’s herds, not tales of a burned crop or shepherd’s lodge.”

“A salt mine is no shepherd’s cot. Without salt, men do not last here.”

“A war of many small cuts doesn’t answer our need.”

“It is the only kind of warfare left to us, at least in Bant.”

“How is that?”

NiThonius said a few words to his human ally. “The king has lost many of his finest warriors in fruitless assaults. Those who remain are discouraged and scattered.”

“You say that as though the fault lay at another’s sii.”

“Perhaps I delayed too long. The northern half of the country was under the protection of my clutchwinner. After he and his mate were killed, the collapse came so quickly—now the Stonemen build a new strongpoint at a watering spring just north of the Green Dancer that flows below.”

“Build?” SiDrakkon said. “It’s unfinished?”

“They have a stout wooden palisade. The stoneworks rise day by day.”

“There is where we’ll strike, then. They won’t expect a hard blow after having won so much, and I wish to move before word of our arrival may spread. Nivom, tell your sissa, rouse the Firemaidens—we fly at once! We’ll give them a taste of dragon fury that’ll put hearts back into these spiritless whelps.”

After the longest, hardest march of his life, the Copper stayed far to the rear of the attack, watching events from the top of a rock pile.

He didn’t feel the least bit tired, not with the night full of the fire of battle. If it weren’t for SiDrakkon’s forcibly expressed orders…

The plains beyond the rivers had these rocky, windswept piles of stones like river-smoothed rocks grown to dragon proportion and heaped. The Copper had become almost as acquainted with the wildlife of the rocks as he had with the grasslands. The rock piles were thick with hopping, naked tailed rodents that the Firemaidens flushed with a quick blast of flame. As he watched the battle, he probed his gum line with his tongue for the remains of the rat he’d just eaten.

He watched carefully as SiDrakkon’s orders were executed, remembering details for a report to the Tyr.

His orders had the virtue of simplicity. First the Firemaidens, the most skilled huntresses of their number at the fore, would attack whatever sentries stood on the outskirts of the water hole. One had been killed on the rock pile where the Copper now stood, and his blood still scented the air.

When Nivom gave the signal that the sentries and outwatchers had been cleared, the Drakwatch went forward.

Then SiDrakkon swooped overhead, low enough to smell the bubbling fire bladders (the dragons chewed an irritating pepper called green fury to fill their bladders), his three duelists in line behind to lessen the chance of their being spotted.

The aerial dragons struck and struck hard, setting alight the nests of wooden spikes that warded off horsemen, then picking the flaming bundles up in their saa or knocking them around with their tails.

The men rallied to the circle of stone, firing their bows and setting their spears against a descent when the Drakwatch struck, all loosing their flame at a roar from Nivom. The Drakwatch swarmed over the unfinished ramparts, scale glittering in the firelight, and the Copper wished more than anything to be with them.

The Stonemen broke and fled for their lives, and the Firemaidens had much sport hunting down stragglers in the grass.

At last a Firemaiden called to the Copper and told him that SiDrakkon bade that he join in the feast and survey the night’s work.

One of the Drakwatch had been killed in the fighting. Apart from bloodless arrow wounds to the wing tissue, SiDrakkon and the duelists had not been scratched.

They devoured some of the beasts of burden killed in the action and made presents of the rest to King Onato of the Rains and Wind and other titles. Such heads as didn’t disappear down dragon or drake gullets were lined up on the unfinished ramparts as a warning to the Ghi.

“That’s how you do it, Rugaard. A fast, heavy blow. Smash ’em up, and they’ll break and scatter,” SiDrakkon said. “When these human and blighter tribesmen see this work, they’ll rally to the king’s banner again. Especially if the banner’s carried by a victorious dragon.”

“Four victorious dragons,” one of the bodyguards said with a belch, as he nosed up a silver-hilted knife from the dirt, broke off the blade, and swallowed it.

“Forget not the drakes!” a pair from Nivom’s first sissa chorused, where they rooted among the burned bodies for coin to eat.