exposing yet another gaping wound.
“This thing in bad shape,” Tagg whispered to himself.
“Pretty beat up.”
The huge body towered over him and its crest was lost
in shadows above. Farther along, the body widened
abruptly, and he realized that what he was seeing was a
leg – a huge leg, folded in rest. Beneath it was a toed foot
with claws as long as his arms. Beyond, curled around
from behind, was the tip of a long tail. He recognized that
appendage now. It was what he had bitten, when he
thought it might be half a snake. The recollection set his
knees aquiver and he almost fell down.
Tagg’s nerves had taken all they could stand. He had
seen enough. He headed back.
Just as he was edging past it, the nearest eye opened an
inch, and its slitted pupil looked at him. With a howl,
Tagg erupted from the hole, bowling over a half-dozen
curious gully dwarves in the process. Behind him, the
great eyelid flickered contemptuously, and closed again.
As Tagg got to his feet, Glitch stepped forward.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well . . .” Glitch hesitated in confusion, trying to
recall what he had sent Tagg to do.
“That thing got wings?” Gandy rasped.
“It got wings, all right. Got claws an’ tail an’ gashes,
too.” Recovering his candle, Tagg handed it back to
Glitch. “Highbulp want any more look, Highbulp go look.
I”ve seen enough.”
“Gashes?” Gandy blinked. “What kind gashes?”
“That dragon all sliced up,” Tagg told him.
“Somebody hurt it pretty bad.”
Minna eased up beside him, gazing with sympathy at
the hideous face of the green dragon asleep a few feet
away. “Poor thing,” she said.
As she spoke, the dragon’s eyes opened to slits, then
closed again. It shifted slightly, sighed, and seemed to
relax, as though the pain of its wounds had somehow
eased a bit.
For an hour, then, they searched for a way out of the
rubble trap. They found nothing – at least, nothing they
could reach without going past the dragon. The shifting of
the beast in its lair had resettled the fallen stone, blocking
every exit. One after another, the searchers gave up,
shrugging and gathering into a tight little group as far
from the dragon as they could get.
When it was obvious that they were truly trapped, Clout
asked – of no one in particular – “So, now what?”
Gandy scratched his head and leaned on his mop
handle. “Dunno,” he said. “Better ask what’s-‘is- name.”
“Who?”
“WHAT’S-‘is-name. Th’ Highbulp ” He turned.
“Highbulp, what we do now?” He peered around in the
dimness. “Highbulp? Where th’ Highbulp?”
It took a few minutes to find him. With nothing better
to do. Glitch I had curled up beside a rock. He was sound
asleep.
*****
They were all asleep when Verden Leafglow
awakened – gully dwarves everywhere, scattered in
clumps and clusters about the dim recess, most of them
snoring. At a glance, she counted more than sixty of the
little creatures in plain sight, and knew there were more of
them behind rocks, in the shadows, and beneath or
beyond the sleeping heaps. One of them, she knew, had
even crept past her into her lair, thinking that in sleep she
might not notice. But it had only looked around and
returned to the others.
Her first inclination was to simply exterminate them.
But she had a better idea. They might be useful to her, if
she kept them alive for a time – and if she could make
them serve her.
Gully dwarves. Her contempt for them was even
greater than the contempt most other races felt for the
Aghar. As a dragon, she loathed ALL other races, and
these were certainly the most contemptible of the
contemptible. Even compared to the intelligence of
humans, full dwarves, and others of the kind, the
mentality of gully dwarves was so incredibly simple that
it bordered on imbecility. And compared to dragon
intelligence, it was nothing at all.
Still, the pathetic creatures had certain instincts that
might be useful. They were excellent foragers, adept at
getting into and searching out places that others might not