As soon as she had heard the ceiling breaking, Bayang said the growth spell the fastest she ever had. Seen through the shimmering air, the tree seemed to shrink as she expanded in size. Bracing her legs, she arched forward, knocking Lord Resak and the children to the floor. Like a living shield, she stretched herself over them just in time. Her knees buckled as the ice crashed against her back, but by sheer will she held her legs rigid enough to keep from flattening her friends.
But she couldn’t help groaning at the new pain in her injured wing. The fallen ice had probably set her recovery back another week. Near her, she heard a noise like the shattering of a hundred glass bells.
Dazed, she glanced toward the tree and saw that it been smashed by the ice slab.
Lord Resak crawled out from underneath her and shook his head groggily. “The tree,” he gasped.
“I’m sorry,” Bayang panted. “It was beautiful, Lord Resak.”
“After saving me twice,” the bear-man said, smiling, “I think you’ve earned the right to call me Uncle Resak.”
Scirye and the other children crept out from underneath the dragon and stared in dismay at the destruction. “Can you make another?” Leech asked.
“We can try,” Uncle Resak said, putting his hands beneath the edge of the giant flat chunk. “Now help me free your friend.”
Immediately the others sprang to help. The effort was sincere enough, but they were more likely to crush their hands and paws. They didn’t seem to understand that she would rather that they take care of themselves than her.
“I can do it,” she said. She took several breaths of the cold air and then set her forepaws against the belly of the ice chunk. Carefully, she walked in a squat, easing herself from underneath the crushing weight. The agony renewed itself in her wing as she slipped out from underneath the huge chunk. Now there was only her right forepaw supporting the edge.
“Step back,” she warned them. When she was sure they were in the clear, she yanked her right foreleg away and the ice smashed down.
She collapsed then, panting as she tried to recover.
“What blew up?” Koko asked.
“I don’t know,” Uncle Resak said, shaking like a dog to get the ice chips off him. “But I’m going to find out.”
Suddenly a gong began to sound, the reverberations traveling through the ice so that the dragon felt them through her paws.
Uncle Resak’s head whipped around. “Invaders,” he said grimly. “They must have followed us somehow.”
Scirye put a hand over her mouth in horror. “It’s all our fault.”
Uncle Resak shook his head. “Whether you were with me or not, they would have followed me. I think that was the real purpose of the ambush. This Roland is a clever fellow. He knew that I would come to see why there were so many vermin up there. And when I did, he was prepared.”
With one last regretful look at what had been the tree, Uncle Resak walked toward the doorway. Shrinking in size to fit through the doorway, Bayang followed him with the children. They were just in time to see a fox scurrying as fast as she could over the ice. A few paces behind were the guard wolves. All three looked grim.
“Tizheruks, Lord,” the fox panted. “At least a dozen came up at the docks.”
“They find their prey miles away in the sea.” Uncle Resak growled. “They’re how Roland tracked me.”
“I thought they were solitary creatures,” Roxanna said. “You can’t have two together except at mating time.”
“Roland must be a truly foul but very skilled master to bring so many together.” Uncle Resak grunted, and then jerked his head at the fox. “What about the narwhals and our sentries?”
“I don’t know, Lord,” the fox confessed. “But behind the Tizheruks were dozens of humans with guns.”
Bayang assumed Roland’s men were protected by breathing spells similar to the ones that Uncle Resak had cast on them.
Uncle Resak gestured toward the dragon and her friends. “Take our guests to one of the hiding places.”
Bayang remembered when she had been a hatchling cowering in her room while Badik destroyed her city. Her whole life had been preparing for this moment. “I’m staying to fight.”
Uncle Resak’s chin rested against his chest for a moment as he thought. Then he slapped a hand on the dragon’s scaly leg. “I’ll welcome your help, but the cubs will go.”
“No!” Roxanna blurted out. “This fight is as much mine as it is yours. Roland is served by awful monsters who are a danger to my clan too. And his freebooters have put Nova Hafnia under siege. That makes him my enemy too.”
Scirye folded her arms defiantly. “And we’re not going to let Roland wreck your wonderful palace either.”
“Lord—I mean, Uncle Resak is right,” Leech agreed, pulling the axes from his belt. “This is worth defending.”
She’d been so surprised and pleased when he had come to her rescue during that battle in the Wastes. But she hadn’t known how to tell him at the time.
Of course, she’d felt a small twinge of worry when she’d seen how well he had fought in the Wastes. She’d wondered if that original, murderous self, Lee No Cha, was surfacing. But then she’d told herself that Leech had only been defending her and that was hardly something the dragon-hating Lee No Cha would have done.
Leech had shown he was someone she could trust to protect her back in a fight. So were Scirye and Roxanna for that matter.
Bayang smiled. “I can always count on you three not to do the sensible thing.”
“Can we take a vote on that?” Koko asked hopefully.
“For once, I agree with the badger,” Kles said. “It would be prudent to retreat.”
“No.” Scirye had taken out her stiletto and axe. “We came to stop Roland.”
“Besides, there are families here,” Leech added.
“Yes,” Roxanna said. “His mercenaries show no mercy even to the harmless.”
Resigned to his fate, Koko covered his eyes with a paw. “Here we go again.”
Uncle Resak pointed down the corridor sternly. “You will leave.”
Scirye drew herself up stubbornly. “With all due respect, Uncle, we won’t.”
Bayang couldn’t help admiring the hatchlings who had matured into fledglings in so short a time.
“You’re wasting time arguing with them, Uncle,” Bayang said. “I’ve tried that many times already, but their heads are harder than stone.”
“And hearts bigger than their bodies,” Uncle Resak said with a grudging grin.
Bayang shrugged. “You’ve seen what they can do in battle.” She faced the hatchlings. “You can stay, but during the fight you have to follow orders, just as I’ll be obeying Uncle Resak’s commanders.” She jerked her head at Leech. “Especially you. Don’t disobey me like you did in the Wastes. It was very foolhardy.”
“I was just trying to protect you,” the hatchling protested.
She relented a little. She couldn’t treat him as if he were a helpless hatchling anymore. He deserved some respect. “Yes, and you fought well. But”—she thrust her head forward so they were eye to eye—“don’t do it again.”
“Uncle, there’s no place for them in the defense plans,” a fox objected.
Uncle Resak held up a paw. “No, the dragon’s right. I’ve seen these cubs in action. We can use this bloodthirsty little pack. Take them straight to Taqqiq. Tell him they’ll be part of our reserve.”
“Reserve?” Leech asked suspiciously. “Is that a fancy word for hiding?”
“You don’t know the palace like my clan does.” Uncle Resak tweaked Leech’s ear playfully. “Our defense won’t be a regular battle line. We’ll pick them off one by one and drive them into a trap. I’ll use the reserve when we can destroy them. Will that satisfy your pride?”
“But—,” Leech began to protest.
Uncle Resak was already stomping in his transformation dance. In a moment, his shape blurred and he became a huge bear again, though he held his staff in one paw. “Now join the reserve.” When the hatchlings still looked like they were going to argue, he held up his staff. Somehow it added to his already considerable authority. “Against my better judgment, I’ll let you fight. But how and when I say. Understood?”
The hatchlings reluctantly nodded their heads and followed the impatient fox into a side tunnel. Only Koko seemed glad about the momentary reprieve. As a precaution, Bayang brought up the rear, glancing behind her for invading monsters.
“Hurry, hurry,” the fox yipped at them. “We don’t have much time.”
With the moss on their feet, though, it was hard to run.
“I’m taking mine off,” Roxanna said impatiently. Putting a hand on Upach for support, she pulled the moss from her feet.
Impulsively, Leech, Koko, and Scirye did the same, but while Roxanna was able to skate along smoothly, they skidded and thumped against one another and the walls, to the growing impatience of their guide.
A family of foxes trotted past, bundles tied to the adults’ backs. The kits, who were almost as big as their parents, had their own smaller packs.
“You’ve done evacuation drills,” Bayang noted.
Their guide nodded, stepping to the side as a mother led a group of young wolves after the foxes. “There are hiding places with plenty of supplies deeper in the palace, as well as escape tunnels.”
Eventually, they entered a large auditorium-size room where about a hundred foxes, wolves, and bears waited. Strangely, most of them had their eyes closed.
Taqqiq growled irritably when the fox told him it was Uncle Resak’s orders that Bayang and the others were to join his force. Glancing from the hatchlings to Bayang, the wolf snarled, “I like dragons even less than humans.”
Koko put up a paw timidly. “Uh, how do you feel about badgers?”
“Oh, I like them fine,” Taqqiq said, and licked his lips pointedly. “The fat makes them so succulent, you see.”
“Heh, heh.” Koko laughed nervously. “Good thing I went on a diet.” And he folded his forepaws over his stomach, trying to squeeze himself so he would look slimmer.
As they made their way over to an empty spot, they heard a bear complain loudly to his neighbor, “Everything was fine until these strangers showed up. Then the next thing you know we were being invaded.”
Scirye was about to reply hotly, but the griffin quieted her with a touch as he always did. Leech’s shoulders slumped guiltily.
Suddenly the chamber went dark. Not just the dark of night, because the stars give off a faint light even when there is no moon. The darkness now was the complete absence of light. It was impossible for Bayang to see her paw in front of her face.
“Yee-owch,” Koko screamed.
Taqqiq barked loudly, “What’s going on?”
“I…I think I sat on an icicle,” the badger said.
There was harsh laughter from around the chamber. They heard the high voice of a fox: “How are you going to help us if you can’t even see what you’re sitting on?”
Darkness held neither terror nor confusion for Bayang, who was used to swimming in the sea depths where no sunlight ever reached. But it still took a moment for her eyes to adjust. That’s why the defenders had their eyes closed, she realized. They wanted to be able to see in the dark sooner.
“You always planned to shut off the light from the ice worms,” she said.
“In our drills, we practice moving in pitch-blackness,” a fox said grimly.
A bear gave a deep, ominous laugh. “We hunt best in the dark.”