whom appeared to have switched sides. Hualiama wished she could go back for them, but the King and her family came first.
Flicker, will you fly ahead and see if you can delay the gates from being shut?
“Is that a dragonet?” asked Elki, peering upward.
“Aye. All the way from … uh, Fra’anior,” she said. Flying ralti sheep, she needed to start watching her tongue. Lia made a curtailed courtly bow. “Islands’ greetings, Prince of Fra’anior.”
“You silly girl!” he laughed, throwing his arm around her shoulders. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. A month or two back, Ra’aba visited and took great pleasure in recounting for us how he threw you off his Dragonship. Now you pop up here like the proverbial white rajal kitten, all fluff and vicious claws, and decide to mount a rescue?”
She chuckled at his turn of phrase. “I didn’t like being dead, Elki. Flying like a wasp up Ra’aba’s left nostril seemed to offer better entertainment. Watch out!”
Everyone ducked reflexively as a body came hurtling down from above, narrowly missing the platform. Lia gazed upward. Just a few hundred feet left. They might just make it. Then, the unmistakable clang of a heavy gate sounded from above. She had barely begun to exclaim in frustration when from below, a monstrous growl shook the platform and its chains.
A stalwart, hundred-foot Green Dragon pursued them up the mine shaft.
Hualiama slung the Haozi hunting bow off her shoulder. Perhaps she could strike an eye or a nostril before that Green Dragon caught them–or worse, melted them in a puddle of acid. The distinct crack of Grandion’s lightning attack lit the tunnel way overhead, above the winches. Lia gasped as her head turned reflexively toward the sound. Two more Greens! How were they ever going to escape this Dragon trap? Two above, one below … no time for inane thoughts. Drawing the bow to her limit, Lia aimed downward, past the massive chains, to ping the Green Dragon’s nose with an arrow. It ricocheted off his armoured scales. She immediately sent another arrow after the first, but he crisped it with a fireball that rushed toward them, but was already expiring by the time it struck the platform.
“Come to Gaffazor, little Humans!” roared the Green.
Hualiama called, “Ready to jump, everyone? Get under cover–any cover you can.”
The cage bumped to a halt. Lia saw the gates, closed. There was Flicker, scratching at the face of a soldier behind the bars, another lining up a bowshot at her friend. So many! They had sealed off the exit, just as she had feared. Arrows spat toward them. Leaping over the railing, Lia fired a reflex shot at the man threatening Flicker, catching him in the upper thigh.
“Go! Take cover!”
The Humans surged off the platform, led by Queen Shyana and Elki. “Down this corridor,” shouted the Queen.
Hualiama knelt behind the large toolbox, and set herself the task of picking off soldiers behind the gate. Meanwhile, a group of forty or fifty people scrambled down the corridor, spilling into the slaves’ living quarters. What now? Dragons growled and clashed in the shaft, the cough of their fireballs like hollow thunder. The Greens made a different, wetter sound. Acid spit?
Grandion thundered, DIE, GREEN SLUG!
That was her Dragon!
Aware of a lunatic grin curving her lips, Lia drove the soldiers back with a flurry of arrows. Right behind her, Gaffazor’s claws gripped the edge of the shaft, forcing her to leap aside or face being crushed between talon and stone.
She had a crazy idea of how they might escape. “Flicker! Go to the gate! Insult the Dragon!”
* * * *
Picking up his battered body, Flicker stared at straw-head. Whatever was she thinking? Meantime, the Green Dragon heaved past the metal cages, lifting his muzzle over the tunnel’s edge not five feet from Lia. She stood stock-still, frozen in that ready position which he hoped by his wings was the one that could spring into action in the flip of a dragonet’s wings, not the rooted-in-terror possibility which he had also seen a couple of times. Right. Insult the beast? Lia had picked the right dragonet for the job.
Over here, you crusty thousand-year-old swamp leech! Flicker shrieked. You decrepit son of a flatworm, you bilious glob of phlegm!
The Dragon’s head jerked.
Can’t catch me, you corpulent sot! Cud-munching quadruped! You’re a disgrace to your sire and your lineage, you wheezing, toothless lump of mouldy windroc excrement! You hang from that ledge like diseased snot dangling from