Azure bonds - Kate Novak [24]
Instead of lunging her neck toward the warrior, Mist retreated and rose to her hind legs, unfurling her wings. The leathery folds of flesh caught the subterranean breeze like sails, then fanned the air back in powerful waves toward Alias's corner of the cave.
The last raven retreated to the roof to avoid the assault but Alias had no way to evade the force of the wind. She was lifted from the ground and buffeted over several large treasure chests. Her rough passage knocked the arm and leg guards off one side of her armor and left her pinned beneath a granite statue of some forgotten Hillsfar noble.
She began squirming out from beneath the stone, but Mist loped forward and laid her chin down on top of the statue. Her fetid breath made Alias gag. Mist's mouth tendrils curled in glee. Alias closed her eyes, certain she was about to have her head bitten off.
"So, little lawyer," Mist hissed, "I can slay you now by fire, for who would know I violated the codes?"
"Well, me for one," came a high-pitched but resonant voice from above. "And you know the old saying-tell a bard, and you tell the world."
Mist whirled around in surprise. The halfling bard stood on the ledge by the opening to Alias's back door. She leaned weakly against the rock wall, but her eyes sparkled with mischief and vengeance. Alias took advantage of Mist's inattention to escape from the embrace of the Hillsfar noble and began to climb up a wagon loaded with treasure.
Ruskettle strummed a chord on her tiny yarting, a miniature guitar with seven catgut strings. "Now let's see, this is spur of the moment, mind, but how about-" The bard began to sing:
I heard the mighty rush of fire
From the ledge above the cave.
The attack of a common coward
No dragon, just a knave.
She broke her oath in combat,
Now shunned by one and all.
Not even other dragons
Will have her in their hall.
"Then of course we'll need a chorus for everyone to join in on," Ruskettle continued hurriedly:
Oh, listen to the story
Of the scandal of the wyrms.
Red Mistinarperadnacles,
Rumored mad and quite infirm.
With a single belch of fire,
This fool dragon with no shame,
Her honor she has vaporized
Like the Mist that is her name.
Alias cringed at the lyrics' strained meters, but had to admire the singer's nerve. Great clouds of steam filled the dome above Mist's head. The bard hadn't a chance of outrunning the fires that had to be burning inside the wyrm. Instead of escaping, though, Alias noted, she risked her hide to gain time for me to wriggle out of danger.
Goaded forward by the image of a roasted halfling and a failed mission, Alias launched herself from the lid of a large cask toward the dragon's head. She fell short of her mark, but managed to catch a fistful of the tendrils hanging from Mist's chin. Arching her back and kicking her legs like an acrobat, the swordswoman swung herself backward, over the side of the dragon's mouth, past her dripping, exposed teeth, beyond her steaming nostrils, and landed squarely on the bridge of the dragon's nose.
Alias wedged her blade between Mist's eyes, so that the creature's pupils crossed, trying to focus on her foe.
"Match was until surrender," Alias panted, sweat rolling down her face in rivulets. Her exhaustion deepened with her proximity to the dragon's steaming and foul exhalations, yet she tightened her grip on her hilt. "Do you surrender, wyrm, or shall we see how much of your brain I can reach when I plunge my blade into one of your eyes?"
For Alias, the next few moments were frozen in time. Steam rose about her and water splattered to the floor, but the principals of the tableau stood motionless: the dragon considering the value of her eyesight and the length of the warrior's blade, Alias trying to remain perched on the creature's scaly nose, Ruskettle awaiting the outcome, so eager to witness it she would not flee like a sensible person.
Finally Mist hissed, "This time, little lawyer, you win."