her eyes and allowed herself to breathe. The dragon had obeyed.
Then the woman opened her eyes and looked back to the battered castle, to see the opened gate area and the even larger gouge in the wall to the side. Smoke was rising from both openings, and from the roof as well, from fires no doubt begun by Agradeleous' breath. Now, seeing Brynn's sword held high as she and the dragon flew away, her army began its charge.
By the time Agradeleous set Brynn down beside the elves and Runtly, and she was able to ride her pony back to the oasis, the fighting was done, the fortress taken, and the few defenders left alive had been herded together in a small circle.
Brvnn rode to that circle and dismounted. Then she walked about the ter-?fjed, overwhelmed Behrenese.
"Supply them and send them on their way," told her warriors, and then to the prisoners, she instructed, ?Go and tell , ur countrymen of the fate of Garou Oasis. Tell them of the Dragon of To-n of the fate that will befall them, all of them, unless the Chezru Chieftain declares To-gai free. There are no castle walls strong enough to defy me." And then she walked away.
PART 4 THE DRAGON OF TO-GAI Chapter 30 One Angry Cat, One Clever Mouse
"From Alzuth?" the Chezru Chieftain asked, referring to the next r~ city in line south of Pruda, and, to his thinking, the next city in JJL. line for the Dragon of To-gai. Only a couple of weeks before, Yakim Douan had heard of the fall of Pruda, and now, hearing that frantic men had arrived bearing news of another disaster, he expected that Alzuth had fallen.
His new attendant, a skinny and tall Shepherd named Took, shook his head slowly. ?Garou Oasis, God-Voice," he said quietly.
The others in the room, Yatols who had come in with reports of increas-ing pirate activity and other unsettling events, began to whisper nervously. The Chezru Chieftain motioned for them to remain calm, but his own ex-pression showed that he, too, was a bit unsettled by the unexpected news. For Garou Oasis was not along the plateau line directly south of Pruda, as he had expected the Dragon of To-gai to run, but was farther inland, far-ther east, and along the southwestern road out of Jacintha.
Yakim Douan slumped back in his chair, his face tight with concentration.
"God-Voice, what does it mean?" Yatol De Hamman asked desperately. ?Does the Dragon of To-gai intend to charge at Jacintha? ?
Again, the Chezru Chieftain patted his hand reassuringly in the air. ?Show the emissaries in," he instructed Took, and the man bowed repeat-edly, skittering for the door, and returned in a moment with three dirty men, one of whom, Doyugga Doy, Yakim Douan recognized as an ambas-sador from Garou.
"God-Voice," Doyugga said, prostrating himself on the floor before the Chezru Chieftain. ?I beseech you! She is mighty beyond words! Her horse can change into a great dragon, wielding fire as she wields fire! And the barbarians follow her without regard to their own lives! They are mad, God-Voice! Mad, I say!" ?The oasis was overrun?" Yakim Douan asked calmly.
"Crushed!" the man replied. ?They swept in like a sandstorm. I think that they were sand, yes, magically transformed sand, sweeping in on fast grinds. My master, Yatol embrace him, brought in all of the villagers, as many as our fortress could hold, but the Ru leader turned her horse into a dragon and smashed down our walls! And then her warriors flew in on the wind, as many as grains of sand!"
The other Yatols began talking amongst themselves nervously, exclaim-ing ?dragon!" or ?sandstorm!"
repeatedly, but Yakim Douan was less im-pressed. He had been hearing these stories over and over again, about every war that had been fought in the last few centuries. Without fail, those flee-ing exaggerated the strength of the enemy, if only to put aside any blame they might otherwise have to shoulder for running away in the first place.
Still, Yakim Douan understood that he had to take this threat seriously, though he doubted that the To-gai-ru, even if all of their tribes had com-bined into a singular force, could have any chance of doing much harm at all to mighty Jacintha.
But there remained the issue of this dragon...
"You saw the wurm yourself?" he asked Doyugga, and the man's head began to bob.
"God-Voice, it was as large as a great house! Its breath was fire, its tail thunder! Its claws dug the stone as easily