a flurry of blows. She countered with exactly the same Nuyallith technique, called the angry cat, and suffered only a cut on her cheek before Grandion stormed in, bellowing, “Paws off!” He decapitated the rajal with an open-clawed swipe of his talons. A fang-filled grin flashed briefly in Lia’s direction. “Try to keep up, Human girl.”
He immolated a rajal in Dragon fire.
Reversing her blades, Lia stabbed backward, piercing a female attacker through the heart. She spun away from the falling beast. “You keep missing them.”
Grandion pounced on one of the great cats, flattening it beneath his hind paw. “Missed that one, too.”
“Braggart,” Lia shot back, casting about for the dragonet.
There was a rajal clinging to his back, Lia saw, and another gnawing at Grandion’s left wing. The black rajals were tenacious and powerful, sleek jungle hunters, but a strange force was at work here. What rajal would willingly take on a Dragon? Had that powerful, fishy smell emanating from Flicker driven them mad? No time to think. Grandion, whirling, slapped Lia with the rajal hanging from his wing. Her sharp blades attempted to fillet the beast, but the right stuck in its spine. The cat’s snarling muzzle was inches from her own as they grappled in the dirt, Lia held the feline off by dint of shoving her armoured wristlet into its gaping jaw, while she scrabbled with the other hand for her forked daggers.
“Die!” she screamed, striking deep and true.
The cat squashed Hualiama with its dying spasms. Squirming out from beneath the dead weight, Lia had to roll aside desperately as Grandion’s paws thumped down around her. She found herself the recipient of an unexpected ride on top of his right hind paw and bounced off his belly before throwing herself clear.
“Watch your clumsy paws!” she shouted, casting about for more attackers.
Grandion lunged, snapping a rajal in half with a click of his jaws. Lia hurled her blade in a flat, skimming arc to pierce a rajal savaging Flicker. She raced toward it, but a crack of lightning from her left blew a hole the size of her torso in the rajal’s chest. Blue Dragon powers. She grinned. Always handy when you could imitate a storm all on your own.
Suddenly, there were no more rajals left standing. Black bodies lay where they had fallen or been thrown, one or two rajals still mewling out the last moments of their lives. The awesome power of a Blue Dragon–with a little help from his Human sidekick–had seen to that.
Reaching Flicker, Lia gathered the stunned dragonet into her arms. “Flicker, darling.” She stroked him gently. “You’re safe now. What happened?”
“Lia?”
He was too weak to speak more than her name. A tiny purr cut off as the dragonet slumped across her forearm. Lia checked him over rapidly; apart from a clearly broken ankle, and the cuts sustained as he had struggled to escape the tightly twisted wire, Flicker appeared unhurt. Horror choked her. What sadist would deliberately disable a dragonet this way, twisting the wire with pliers to prevent a dragonet’s cunning claws from untangling himself?
Grandion nosed her shoulder. “Give the dragonet a drink. Can you remove that wire? It’s restricting his breathing.”
Lia selected a metal saw from her wristlet and set to work. The Tourmaline Dragon moved off for a moment, examining the battleground and finishing off a couple of the cats.
“Stinks of evil magic,” he commented. “Here’s your sword, girl.”
She sheathed the blade efficiently and uncorked a water gourd. “Flicker, drink.” He had strength enough to swallow greedily.
Cool wind ruffled her platinum locks. Scenting a moist, metallic tang, Hualiama’s eyes flicked up to assess the incoming storm. Great, leaden thunderheads reared their heads into the sky, grey in the underbelly and deceptively white above. A decent blow was in the offing, she judged–but suddenly, a different intuition struck like a barbed fishing spear into Lia’s belly. She knew, and the tenor of her response somehow alerted Grandion, too, because his muzzle rose as he tested the air with more than just his sense of smell. This was a trap.
For an endless moment, the world hushed in anticipation.
Three juvenile Red Dragons soared up from beneath the cliff edge, snarling at them with almost identical expressions. A clutch of brothers, Lia thought, not one of them smaller than her Grandion. The Tourmaline Dragon immediately leaped into the air, but he hovered protectively over Hualiama, clearly unwilling to abandon her. Noble Grandion. She knew his posture would place him at a significant disadvantage during