Page 81 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

“What, fix the hovel of those who do battle with us?” Seeg said. “You’ve gone mad, that’s what’s happened.” The insult made the Copper believe a sliver of opportunity had appeared, now he just had to widen it enough to wriggle through.

“Who started the war?” the Copper asked.

A scattering of dwarfs chorused: “The barbarians, of course!”

“What was the reason.”

Some murmurs broke out as the dwarfs consulted.

“We’re sure it was their fault. You know humans. Whatever bargains their fathers strike are forgotten by the sons.”

The Copper nodded. “Well, perhaps it was their fault. I certainly wasn’t around for it. I do have certain resources, perhaps I can pay, oh, what do you people in the north call it—weregild, is it?”

“Forked-tongue dragon!”

“It’s split, perhaps, but that just is so a dragon’s most sensitive taste buds may close up so they are protected from his flame. I’d hardly call it a fork.”

“How much is certainly important,” Seeg said. “But more important still is whether we can find a place safe from our enemies.”

“I once had all the wealth of dragonkind at my command,” the Copper said. “While I don’t expect to get that back, I did have some personal possessions, tributes and presents and such, that I intend to reclaim.”

“Ha! Hot air. Just what you’d expect from a dragon,” the grapnel dwarf said.

The Copper drew himself up to his full height and extended his wings as far as they’d go without the bad one drooping. “My name is RuGaard, former Tyr of the Dragon Empire and Worlds Upper and Lower, and I don’t make idle boasts. I will regain what is mine, or you may sell me to the dragons who usurped my throne. Either way, you will profit.”

“You are RuGaard?” Seeg said.

“I heard he was a Copper dragon,” a dwarf said in Seeg’s ear.

“And blind in one eye.”

“Crippled, too. By the Golden Tree, it is him.”

“Ha-hem,” said Seeg. “You may have just won yourself a little more life, dragon. You seem to understand dwarfs well enough that I suspect we could become partners. Certainly not friends, probably not allies, but partners—yes, we may just be able to get that to work.”

He gave the instructions for a single dwarf to send a flag of truce to Shadowcatch.

Once negotiations were under way, the atmosphere in the dwarf-den lightened.

“We’re not part of the Dragon Empire, either, and we’d like to keep it that way. What are your standards for joining this ‘Northern Alliance’?”

“We never thought of it as standards so much, just each dwarf that joins swears never to betray another of the alliance.”

“Might I join?”

“You don’t shy away from putting yourself forward, do you? What’s your game?”

“I’ve been a lonely exile these past twelve years. The Empire tried to kill me more than once after I’d agreed to go. In the end, they’ll either kill me or I’ll get Tyr NiVom. Sad, we were once friends.”

“Politics does that. There was no more loyal dwarf to Fang-breaker than myself, yet I curse his name now for the death of my comrades. All for his vanity.”

The Copper sent a message to Shadowcatch requesting food and drink, as he was close to starving. True enough, the dwarfs themselves were on rations that hardly qualified as food—tree bark, straw from bedding, and cave lichens went into their soup.

Shadowcatch, reading between the lines, it seemed, or just out of his own oversized sense of what counted as a meal, sent down quarters of beef and mutton, a cask of sweet fortified wine, and onions and potatoes for “ballast.” It was carried in by the “scouts.” The dwarfs weren’t quite ready to trust a second dragon by the Copper.

The dwarfs fell on the foodstuffs like the Copper’s rats, barely toasting the meat on sticks before devouring it. It occurred to the Copper that Shadowcatch could have poisoned the food and gotten rid of the lot of them—dragon stomachs were cast from the same material that went into their scale, it seemed, and alkaloids that would kill a hominid found their way into the firebladder.

“I prefer honest beer. This stuff sticks to the tongue, rather than cleaning it.”

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