Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the
end of the rope flapping uselessly.
“It would be nice,” Mara muttered between clenched
teeth, “if just once, a gnome invention worked reliably.”
And that gave Mara the idea.
She grabbed the dangling rope, swung up on it,
pumping her legs vigorously. Kicking off the ceiling, she
spun around and swung back over the heads of the
astonished draconians. One of them raised a spear, but not
quickly enough; it barely scratched her.
Mara let go of the rope, landing well behind the
confused draconians, and dashed back the way she had
come. But she had to make certain they followed her. At
the bend in the tunnel, she scooped up a handful of
decaying spare parts from old mechanisms and skimmed
them off the tunnel walls and ceiling into the draconians.
A rusted bolt caught the captain on his reptilian snout.
The captain howled. “After her! Kill her!”
“Quickly, or slowly?” A subordinate asked.
“Quickly,” he hissed. A hex nut clanged off his
helmet. “But not too quickly.”
They dashed after her again, weapons ready, their
terrible jaws open. Mara fled, but made sure that they saw
which way she turned. They chased her confidently; after
all, what did they have to fear from a single unarmed
human child?
The draconians came on her suddenly, around a
comer. She was apparently helpless with fear.
The draconian captain leered at her and barked
unnecessarily, “Now you die.”
“If you must!” she said more coolly than she felt. “But
be quick.”
The draconian eyed her with resentment, tinged with
admiration. “Don’t we frighten you?”
“You? Never.” Mara pointed to the floor. “That thing
frightens me. I can bear anything,” she said earnestly, “but
the Flying Deathaxe.”
At a gesture from his captain, the lead draconian
picked it up. “This thing?” he said, laughing,
incredulously.
Mara shrank away. “Don’t pull that cord. Please. Put it
down – ”
The captain smiled at her, revealing an amazing
quantity of pointed teeth. “Of course, I’ll put it down.” He
set it on the ground in front of her with a low bow. As he
straightened up, with one swift motion he pulled the
starting cord, setting the propellers in motion. He watched,
chuckling evilly.
The propellers spun and, unbelievably, the Deathaxe
rose into the air. As it cleared the floor, the razor-sharp
axe blade swung back and forth with a loud shearing
noise. It hovered, hesitated, then began slowly spinning in
a circle. Mara watched, open-mouthed, as the axe blade
sliced through a boom extending from the tunnel wall.
Now the axe was moving faster, and the circle was
widening as well. Mara took a nervous step backward.
The Deathaxe hit the roof and bounced off. The blade
sliced through the helmet and head of a draconian soldier
without slowing down. The soldier turned to stone and
toppled.
The captain uttered a command, succinct even for
draconian field orders: “Run!”
Mara obeyed. So did the other draconians. The axe
gashed the wall where she had been standing a moment
before, spun back on itself, and cut one of the draconian
soldiers in the chest before careening upward to strike the
ceiling and spin back down.
The wounded draconian, shouting in panic, crashed
head-on into one of his companions. Both sank to the
tunnel floor, unconscious but not dead. The remaining two
sprinted after Mara, just ahead of the whining, humming
Deathaxe.
Mara wouldn’t have thought that the heavy draconians
could run that fast, but then she surprised herself with her
own speed. Once, in a crazy rebound off a hanging pulley,
the Deathaxe spun into the floor in front of her and shot
straight up at her. She fell backward, rolled between the
legs of the startled draconian soldier behind her, and leapt
to one side. The Deathaxe cut off his head. Turning to
stone, it thudded to the floor where she had been. The
draconian captain behind her screeched with frustration.
The Deathaxe, now behind him, spun back toward both of
them, and they were off again.
Perversely, the axe continued after them, instead of
backtracking or taking wrong tunnels. Mara wondered if
that was a side-function of Standback’s sensors. She also