Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 26

Alison ran the car fifty yards back and pointed it at the wall. "We'll aim to hit it at a slight angle," she told Taneem as she found a good spot to wedge the slapstick against the accelerator. "That way, it'll hopefully go flying a different direction than we do."

"That would probably be best," Taneem agreed from behind her, a hint of dark humor peeking through the tension in her voice.

Alison smiled to herself. Taneem was still young, and still very much unsure of herself. But she had spirit, and she had courage.

Actually, in many ways she reminded Alison of herself.

"Okay," Alison said, pulling her feet up into a crouch on the seat and reaching down with the slapstick. "Ready?"

Taneem wrapped her forelegs tightly around Alison's chest beneath her arms. "Ready."

Bracing herself, Alison jammed the slapstick against the accelerator.

The car leaped forward. Alison steered with one hand, holding herself steady against the dashboard with the other.

The wall rushed toward them. Letting go of the wheel, Alison grabbed tightly to Taneem's forelegs. If this didn't work . . .

And with a crunch of metal and plastic, they hit the wall.

The car leaped upward beneath them, the force throwing Alison off balance and nearly tossing her out of the vehicle. The wall and land and sky twisted dizzyingly, and she was yanked off her feet as Taneem leaped. For a frozen fraction of a second she seemed to be drifting through the air, feeling her body turning sideways. The pressure of the K'da forelegs around her torso abruptly vanished—

With a teeth-rattling thud against her back and legs and head, she slammed against something hard.

And as the stars cleared away from her vision, she found herself looking down at the ground far below.

"Taneem?" she croaked. The word came out with a grunt of pain; she hadn't realized just how hard she'd hit the ceramic.

"Here," Taneem's voice came from her shoulder. "I realized suddenly that we would not both fit side by side."

"Good thinking," Alison said. The words came out easier this time. Carefully shifting her throbbing shoulder blades, she took stock of her situation.

Taneem had been right about there being enough room up here. But only just barely. Instead of lying flat in the trough, as Alison had expected, she found herself lying mostly on her right side with her body angling backward against the upwardly curving part of the wall.

It wasn't nearly as stable a position as she'd hoped for. As it was, leaning just a little too far forward would move her center of mass over the edge, and she would be on her way to the ground twenty feet below and either a broken back or a full set of broken ribs.

Worse, lying half upright like this also meant she wasn't as well hidden as she'd hoped to be. Someone standing at the very base of the wall and looking up would have no trouble seeing that something was up here.

But with their stolen car now lying upside down at the base of the wall a dozen feet away it was too late to change plans. The noise of the crash had probably triggered alarms all the way back to the house, and within minutes hordes of ugly Brummgas would be converging on this spot.

Within minutes, hordes of ugly Brummgas were.

There was nothing subtle about their arrival, either. They swarmed in full force, with lights and noise and ground cars and the sounds of air support overhead. Most of them were Brummgas, but there was a scattering of humans among them.

Including Gazen, the slavemaster she'd had her run-in with a few nights ago. He wandered around the edge of the activity, his posture one of brooding watchfulness. He had his snub-nosed laser rifle slung in military ready position over his shoulder.

For perhaps ten minutes the guards wandered around the area, examining the car and the tire tracks on the wall, their big feet stomping over any of the more subtle clues Alison might have left behind. One of them spotted Dumbarton and Mrishpaw, and the center of activity shifted for a minute while they bundled the unconscious mercenaries into one of the cars and sent them back to the house.

Their attention returned to the wall and car for another few minutes. Then, at a command from one of the humans, they split into two groups, one heading north toward the slave area, the other heading south toward the gate.

One of the humans stayed where he was, standing by the overturned car. As the noise of Brummgan feet faded into the night, Alison could hear him talking softly on his comm clip.

"—thought she could ram it through the wall, I suppose," he said. "Pretty stupid. Or just desperate . . . No, I sent them out in both directions. Whichever way she went, she has to be on foot. Shouldn't be too hard to pick up . . . Yes, sir, I told them you wanted her alive if possible."

The man glanced to the side as another figure came into Alison's view beneath the overhang. It was Gazen, still wandering thoughtfully around. "No, sir, no sign of anyone else . . . Yes, sir, I'll keep you posted." He touched his comm clip, turning it off.

"You're wrong, you know," Gazen told him. "He's here."

"Who, Morgan?" The other man snorted. "That would be a neat trick."

"Morgan specializes in neat tricks," Gazen countered mildly.

"Well, if he's here, we'll get him," the other promised, his voice dark. "We'll get both of them."

"And the dragon?" Gazen asked.

"Him, too." The other gave an audible sniff. "Unless you'd rather we save him for you."

"Don't worry about it," Gazen said. His voice was still mild, but Alison could hear a grim anticipation lurking beneath it. "When he shows himself the next time, I'll be there."

"Yeah," the other man said. "Whatever." Brushing past Gazen, he disappeared out of Alison's sight. A moment later she heard the sound of a car heading north.

Gazen remained where he was, watching the other's departure. Then, slowly, he turned around in a complete circle. Once, he glanced up toward the wall's overhang, and Alison tensed. But he was looking above the spot where the car had crashed, and there was nothing there for him to see. "Come on out, dragon," he murmured aloud as he lowered his eyes again. "Come on out. Time to play."

Alison felt Taneem stirring against her skin. Gazen stood there a moment longer, then turned and headed north. He passed almost directly beneath Alison and disappeared, his footsteps fading into the night murmurs.

Alison silently counted out fifteen minutes. "Taneem?" she whispered at last.

A bit of weight came onto her shoulder, and a K'da tongue flicked past her cheek. "He's gone," Taneem confirmed. "All of them are gone."

Alison took a careful breath. "Well," she whispered. "It worked."

"It would seem so," Taneem agreed cautiously. "What now?"

Alison chewed at her lip. They certainly couldn't stay here forever. "Hang on," she said. "I'm going to try something."

Carefully, she started to lift her knees. The movement shifted her center of mass toward the edge, and for a second she thought she was going to fall. Hastily, she put her legs back down. She waited a moment for her heart to settle down again, then tried lifting just one knee.

Again, her center of mass shifted, but not nearly as far or as alarmingly. Drawing the knee toward her chest as far as she dared, she planted it against the inside of the lip and carefully pushed.

It worked. As she straightened her leg, the rest of her body moved a few inches down the trough. "There we go," she told Taneem, trying to keep her voice light. "It's not fast, but it'll get us there."

"Where will it get us?"

"To the slave areas," Alison said. "That's our best chance of finding food and shelter until the Malison Ring reinforcements Uncle Virge called get here."

"But won't the Brummgas search that area?"

"Trust me," Alison said grimly as she pushed herself another few inches north. "At the rate we're going, they'll have had time to search the whole place twice before we get there." She screwed up her nose as a small feather tickled her face. "I just hope we're not pushing out a trail of feathers even the Patri Chookoock could follow."

"They are surely used to seeing feathers below the wall," Taneem pointed out. "And there should be enough breeze to keep them spread out."

"If not, there's nothing we can do about it," Alison said. "And there's always the chance they won't even bother looking very hard for me. Now that Neverlin has what he wants, he and Frost could easily be gone by morning."

"With the information they need to destroy Draycos's people."

Alison winced. That was, unfortunately, the downside to this whole thing. "We've got over a month before they arrive," she reminded Taneem. "And there's still one safe that has all of that same information. We just have to figure out how to get to it."

"There are many parts of this that I don't understand," Taneem said. "But you have never lied to me before. I will trust you."

Alison gazed out into the night, her throat tight. "Thank you," she managed. "We'd better stop talking now. If we happen on any patrols, it would be nice if we know it before they do."