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too.
    ‘Jasaan?’ A second voice.
    ‘Vish?’
    ‘Yep. Still alive. Skjorl?’
    ‘Still got all my bits.’ Friendly voices in the dark gave him strength. ‘Can you see anything?’
    ‘I can see you.’
    ‘The roof caved in.’ Jasaan’s voice was strained but he wasn’t gasping.
    ‘And the dragon?’
    ‘It’s not moving.’
    ‘You can
see
it?’ He couldn’t make out any other light.
    There was a pause. ‘It’s close. And I’m hurt.’
    Skjorl frowned at that. Adamantine Men were never hurt. They kept going or they fell over and crawled off to die, and if that was what they were going to do, they did it on their own without
bothering anyone about it. The creed of the Guard had no room for the sick or the injured, no time or space for helping the wounded. You stopped to help someone when there was a dragon about, you
both wound up dead. That simple. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Over here.’
    ‘What about the dragon. It moving?’
    ‘I think it’s stuck.’
    What Skjorl should be doing, he decided, was leaving. What Jasaan ought to be doing, unless he had two broken legs and two broken arms, was crawling over to wherever that dragon was and tipping
poison down its throat.
    No.
His
company. So that was what
he
ought to be doing.
    Crap.
    ‘Vish! You keep going. See if you can find another way out of here.’
    ‘Bollocks!
You
do that. I got me a dragon to slay.’
    ‘Where’s the other one?’
    ‘Can’t see.’
    ‘You keep away from that tunnel.’
    ‘You think I’m an idiot, boss?’
    Skjorl growled. He started to move as quickly as he could through the haze of dust and the litter of rubble. Off towards Jasaan. By the time he got there, he could see the pile of fallen stone
where the dragon had to be.
    The floor shuddered again. The other dragon, the one that had burned Jex and Kasern and the others. It was somewhere behind the cave-in now. Or could be a third. No way to tell.
    Jasaan was standing up, leaning against the broken stub of one of the pillars. He had one foot held off the ground. Ankle. Skjorl could see that straight away. Couldn’t walk. Could hop
though.
    ‘You’re alive then.’
    Jasaan nodded.
    ‘That way.’ Skjorl pointed back the way he’d come. ‘Look for a way out.’ Maybe there wasn’t one, but it was that or climb past the collapsed roof, over the
top of one dragon and straight into the path of another.
    ‘Don’t know why you’re standing around gossiping. Got nothing better to do?’ Vish trotted past them both.
    ‘I can’t, Skjorl.’ There was that pain in Jasaan’s voice again. ‘I can hardly move.’
    ‘You just wait here then.’ Skjorl took a moment and then followed Vish. Through the settling dust he could see the edges of the collapse. It was huge. Some building or other had sat
on top of the cisterns and the whole thing had come down. Great slabs of cracked brickwork, of tiled floor covered in mosaics. Stone pillars and old scorched beams that still smelled of ash.
    Another rumble, a reminder that there was a second dragon around here somewhere.
    ‘Hey! Dragon! Are you already dead under there?’ Vish had his axe out, his own faithful mistress.
    ‘Still plenty of eggs to end if it is.’ Skjorl stared at the rubble. Looked up. He could feel a breeze. There was a way out here if they wanted it.
    ‘Ah. There you are. Tyan’s fury – if only I had a spear!’
    The dragon was buried from the neck down. It’s eyes were very slightly open, but it didn’t move. Skjorl’s first thought was that it was dead, but then he saw it blink.
    ‘Spear through the eye,’ muttered Vish as Skjorl stood beside him. ‘That would do it. Right in deep.’
    The head shifted slightly. Turned a fraction towards them. Despite himself, Skjorl froze for an instant. He had a dragon, right in front of him. A woken adult dragon. He took another moment to
savour not being dead.
    ‘Poison. We have to poison it.’ There was always leaving it alone. Letting it starve