gully dwarves. One glance was enough for Pert. She looked where Scrib had pointed, and her eyes went wide. There, coming across the sky, was a behemoth on mighty wings, a huge, sinuous creature that seemed to be looking directly at her. She chirped, fell, rolled and scrambled upright, then fled in terror.
The cavern beneath the tree roots was packed solid with gully dwarves when she got there, and more were trying to pile in, burrowing among those already there. The space within was obviously full. For each one who managed to push his way in, another popped out. As Pert skidded to a stop, the Highbulp, Glitch the Most, tumbled past her, head over heels down the sloping bank. Just behind him, the Lady Lidda shouted, “Glitch! Get back here, stupid!”
Pert was almost bowled over as Lidda raced past her, going after the disheveled Highbulp.
But now it was too late to run. On wide, gliding wings, the dragon loomed over them, its huge head swinging this way and that as it scanned the area below. More than thirty feet in length, with a wing-span of at least that width, the great beast cast a racing shadow that seemed to cover everything.
Glitch had just gotten to his feet and looked upward. The dragon looked back at him and a muted hiss came from it like an expression of disgust. Beside Glitch, the Lady Lidda stared at the beast, then grinned and waved at it. As though vastly annoyed, the dragon turned away, banked majestically and zoomed off toward the west.
“That dragon our dragon,” Lidda told the Highbulp, who seemed to have frozen where he stood. “Glitch ‘member dragon?” Turning, she waved again. “Bye, dragon,” she called.
Pert might have been interested in all that, but she wasn’t paying much attention to them at the moment. She was standing next to the pile of collected goods, just inches from the Great Stew Bowl. And it seemed to her that the Bowl was humming softly.
With the unconscious Clonogh across his saddle, Graywing spurred the war-horse. The animal launched itself into a belly-down run that rained gravel upon the Gelnian guards closing in behind. For a moment, the plainsman thought he had escaped, but the feeling was an illusion. Behind him bugles blared, and ahead, several companies of troops turned, spotted him and began closing in.
In an instant, there were dozens, and then hundreds, of pikemen, archers, lancers and footmen moving to encircle the lone knight, and directly ahead of him a squad of Solamnic knights-errant spread in a solid arc of armor and lance points, waiting to receive him.
On a proper plains horse, light-geared and Cobartrained, and without all the heavy armor encasing him, the warrior might have eluded the trap. But, though his armor gave him protection from arrows and spears, he was no knight, and no match for those who were.
Still, he had to do something. Lifting his great lance from its saddle boot, he leveled it, braced himself for battle, touched the horse’s reins and charged.
He had no idea where Dartimien had gone, nor any time to worry about him. The Cat could take care of himself.
The sheer audacity of the charge caused the line of horsemen ahead of him to pause, and waver slightly out of position, but they corrected immediately. Faced with a madman, the Solamnians would deal with him as a madman. There was only one open way through the camp, and they wheeled to block it, forming a solid rank of iron men on iron horses, each with eight feet of deadly lance ready to impale their prey.
It was what Graywing had hoped for. With a shrill war cry he shifted his grip on his own lance, raised it and hurled it like a spear. In the same instant he veered his horse to the right, angling away from the open path, directly into the thickets along the draw.
It was a chance in a thousand, he knew, but it was the only chance he had. The instant he was shielded by brush, he swiveled around, lifted the inert Clonogh, slung him over his shoulder like a sack of seed, and threw himself to the side, diving out of his saddle. The horse thundered on, crashing through the brush, and Graywing lit with a mighty clatter of armor, and rolled into deep brush.
He didn’t know, or care very much, whether Clonogh was alive or dead. Breathless and aching from his fall, the Cobar worked frantically to shuck himself out of several hundred pounds of plate steel and binding pads. He slung his sword on his shoulder and straightened his belts. His sweat-soaked, leather-bound jerkin became a pack for the armor, and his long shield a sled. Onto it he loaded Clonogh, wrapped in his blanket like a caterpillar in its cocoon, with his extra sword-the knight’s sword-atop him to serve as a tie-bar for the strips of armor thong that held him in place. Towing the shield-sled with a hard fist, Graywing snaked through the brush, staying low, moving at right angles to the direction his horse had gone.
Only yards away now, men were crashing through the thickets in hot pursuit. Graywing let the first mob of them go by, then shifted his position, moving almost soundlessly-not through the brush, but under it.
He was nearing the bank of the nearest draw when horsemen thundered by, just a few paces away, and turned for another sweep of the brush. With a muttered oath, Graywing loosened his sword buckler and braced himself. Returning, they would be right on top of him.
Then he heard cries of terror, and the sound of horses running in confusion. For a long heartbeat he waited, listening. Then he raised his head. All around, searchers were fleeing in all directions, and a huge shadow swept across the brush. He looked up, directly into the face of an enormous dragon gliding across the sky, barely above the tree tops.
Seized by the instinctive dragonfear natural to all creatures, Graywing ducked into the screening brush, locked a fist into the “sled’s” towline and slithered deeper into the thicket. Just ahead was the bole of a big, stubby tree. Abruptly, the earth seemed to crumble beneath him. He fell on his face and his free arm shot downward into a warm, squirming mass of movement. Something-or someone-bit him on the finger and a muffled voice said, “Keep hands to yourself, clumsy!” He recoiled, and more soil sheared away, dropping him headfirst into a hole that hadn’t been there a moment before.
All around him were muffled, startled little cries of alarm and outrage.
“Somebody broke th’ ceiling,” someone said. “Who there?” another wondered. “Somebody clumsy,” still another decided. “Highbulp clumsy,” a new voice chimed in. “You got Highbulp there?” “Can’t tell,” the first said. “Dark an’ dusty in here.”
Choking and blinded, almost suffocated by the falling dust and the press of warm, small bodies around him, Graywing felt himself being hoisted and boosted from hand to hand as dozens of small hands hustled and jostled him toward a source of light.
“Pretty big somebody,” a voice in the darkness said. “Lot bigger than Highbulp.”
“Big no excuse for pushy,” another snapped. “Not ’nough room in here as is.”
Graywing was unceremoniously ejected from the hiding cave, into the filtered light of the draw. He coughed, tried to get his breath, and opened dust-grimed eyes. He was lying on his back under a canopy of limbs and a tiny, ancient-looking creature stood over him, poking him with a stick.
“This not somebody,” the Grand Notioner Gandy announced, finally. “This just a Tall.” He peered down again at the choking, dust-covered man, then whacked him on the head with his mop handle.
With an oath, Graywing rolled away, trying to clear his eyes. All around him, gully dwarves, panicked at his sudden appearance among them, turned and scurried away. Several dozen of them climbed the brush-covered bank, started to flee beyond, then turned back when they saw the chaos of armed Talls just beyond. Graywing was just getting his feet under him when a flood of panicked Aghar poured from the bank, knocking him flat again. In a blink, he was awash in gully dwarves, tumbling over him, falling on him, almost burying him in their frenzy.
Glitch the Most recovered from his fear-freeze in time to see the swarming pile of his subjects tumbling around in the bottom of the draw. Entirely forgetting the dragon of moments before, he strode to the melee and demanded, “What goin’ on here?”
Most of those in the tumbled pile ignored him, but two or three glanced around. “Who want to know?” one of them asked.
“Me!” Glitch snapped. “Your Highbulp!”
“Oh, yeah,” several of them agreed. “That right. You ol’ Glitch.”
“Right!” he grumbled.
The tumble of gully dwarves began to sort itself out. “What Glitch want to know?” somebody asked.
Glitch pondered, trying to remember what he had asked. Then he snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah. Why th’ pileup here? Have a fall?”
“No, thanks,” one of them said. “Jus’ had one.”
