reached into his shirt and removed the indicator. The glowing arrow inside
the crystal sphere pointed straight at the battlements. Glandurg squinted
through the wind. Yes, there was a lone figure high on the castle walls.
For an instant the dwarf was so exhilarated he forgot to be afraid. The
Sparrow himself and out in the open! Truly this was his lucky day.
“Release the wings,” the dwarf commanded.
* * *
Off to the west Wiz saw a flock of pigeons or turkeys or some other kind
of heavy-bodied birds. As they came closer to the castle he could see they
were too large to be pigeons. Turkeys then.
Hey, wait a minute! There aren’t any turkeys in this World! Not only that,
but each one seemed to have two sets of wings. Biplane birds?
Then each of the birds seemed to split in two and half of each bird dove
toward Wiz.
The dwarves had taken good care to build their wings strong and light.
They had taken less care to learn how they reacted in flight and no care
at all to understand the mass of thermals, updrafts and cross currents
that swirled around the castle on a warm autumn afternoon.
Nine dwarves aimed themselves straight at the lone figure on the parapet
without hesitation or thought for consequences. So naturally the nine
dwarves went everywhere but to their target.
In his eagerness to reach his prey Glandurg had dived too steeply. He came
in fast and low, headed straight for the castle wall. Frantically he
pulled back on his control bar in an effort to avoid smashing into the
stone. His wing swooped up, lost airspeed and teetered on the verge of a
stall as it approached Wiz. Then Glandurg hit the updraft along the face
of the wall, rose like an elevator and sailed majestically over the wall a
good twenty feet above his gaping prey to drop into the courtyard behind.
Ragnar took a lesson from his leader’s approach and set his height
correctly. But his griffin had been well behind Glandurg’s and he had to
turn to the right in order to come in on Wiz. The turn brought him into
the turbulence in the lee of one of the wall towers and he was tossed like
a leaf to land nearly a hundred yards further down the wall, almost at the
feet of an astonished guardsman.
By the time Ragnar had untangled himself from the wreckage of his wing the
guardsman had drawn his sword. The dwarf scampered off with the guard in
hot pursuit.
Meanwhile the other flying dwarves had arrived. Some went left, some right
and some high. One or two threatened to smash into the wall and had to
abort, hauling their wings around in tight turns and then dropping away
into the valley.
The Wizard’s Keep was boiling like an overturned anthill. Alarm horns rang
out from the towers along the walls, guardsmen raced frantically to their
stations, dragon cavalry poured out of their cave aeries and Wiz was
surrounded by guards and wizards and hustled away to safety.
Off in the distance the griffins circled in a tight knot, watching
intently and making noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Thorfin wrinkled his nose in disgust. The wind must have shifted and now
he would have to breathe dragon stink all the rest of the way up the
cliff.
Nasty beasts! No one but a mortal would think of keeping them. And as for
riding them . . . He shivered involuntarily. Still, the dragons were all
in their caves and his target was above him.
He levered himself up onto the outcrop and found himself nose to nose with
a dragon.
It was not a very large dragon, but then Thorfin was not a very large
dwarf. More to the point, the dragon was safely resting on a ledge and
Thorfin was clinging to the cliff face by his toes and fingers. His sword
was strapped across his back in a position more picturesque than practical
and the blade wasn’t designed for dragon slaying anyway. All things
considered, the dwarf was at a serious disadvantage.
Thorfin did the best thing he could think of. He squinched his eyes