Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

  She placed them on her shelf with the others, stepped back, then crossed her arms over her chest. She looked around her den. It didn’t feel safe to leave them in here. She grabbed them from the shelf, thundered down the steps, and took off at a trot for her own cottage.

  As she burst through the door of the cottage, Caron looked up from her knitting needles, a riding sweater pooled in her lap. “Trysten?”

  She held the books up. “I’m just putting these someplace safe until I get back.”

  “What are those?” Caron asked as Trysten hurried into her bedroom.

  “Gifts from Aymon,” Trysten called out as she stacked the books on her dresser. She stepped back and looked at them, and then looked around the room. They didn’t quite feel safe here, either, but it was the best idea she had. The Originals hadn’t shown themselves in her cottage, and if they did, Caron would be able to see them.

  Trysten shivered slightly as she recalled the dreams she’d had before she discovered the violated cairns where the fallen Second Hordesmen had been buried. Dreams of creatures that were half-man, half-dragon. She shook her head to clear it. No time now for ghost stories.

  “Gifts from Aymon?” Caron asked from the bedroom doorway. “I thought they looked like books! That’s quite an expensive gift. Why aren’t you keeping them in the den?”

  Trysten jumped, and her hand flew to her pendant. “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she grumbled at Caron. “They’re safer here.”

  “Safer?”

  “I’ll explain later. Aymon’s waiting for me in the yard.” She started for the doorway.

  “Is Clemens leaving with him?”

  “Clemens?” Trysten asked. She stopped short before her mother. “No. Why?”

  Caron gave a slight shrug while she stared at the books. “Nothing. It’s just that... How many weeks ago was it that Aymon was threatening to take you back to the mother city in irons? And now he is bringing you gifts. Books. I hear there is a caravan of supplies on its way. He even brought you a new dragon healer.”

  Trysten shook her head. “It’s not like Clemens is replacing Galelin. He’s here as a supplement. I mean, how many dragons can we expect Galelin to take care of, really?”

  Caron nodded as if conceding the point. “I know. I understand that. It just seems odd that Prince Aymon shows up with more than eighty men, and he’s taking all of them with him except one.”

  She looked Trysten directly in the eyes. “He is leaving behind the one man who by necessity will have to work closely with you and your family.”

  Trysten’s head shifted back on her neck slightly. “Huh. I never thought of it like that.”

  Caron shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. It’s just odd is all. Stay on your toes.”

  “Do you think we should be concerned? Should we talk to Galelin?”

  Caron shook her head. “Oh, by all the wilds, absolutely not. I checked in on him last night, and he was busy chatting away with young Clemens. He seemed to be delighted to have someone to talk shop with. And having met Clemens, I can see why. He’s a charming young man and Galelin looks more alive than he has in a long while. I am just suspicious by nature, I suppose.”

  “It makes sense that we would need another dragon healer eventually,” Trysten said. “There are over forty dragons in the horde now. And although Galelin has two apprentices, it will be years before they can be of real help to him.”

  Caron glanced back at the books on the dresser. “I’m probably worrying about nothing. I am grateful for all Prince Aymon has done for us, for the village. You should have seen him during the battle, commanding the village defenses,” Caron said, coming close to retelling her story of the battle, how she spent the morning with the archers, loosing arrows until blisters burst on her fingers.

  “We got off to a rough start with him,” she continued. “And now it feels like he’s trying a little too hard to make up for it, you know? Just be careful, Little Heart.”

  Trysten rolled her eyes at her mother and opened her mouth to protest the pet name.

  “I will call you Little Heart as long as I draw breath,” Caron said with a smile. “No matter how many times you tell me not to.”

  “That’s great, Mother,” Trysten said, rolling her eyes again. “I’ve got to go. Aymon is ready to leave and waiting on me.” She slipped past her mother in the doorway and headed for the cottage door.

  “Be careful!” Caron called after her.

  Chapter 7

  Trysten blew out a long breath as the ashen field of battle passed behind them in Elevera’s wake. Ahead lay the stone and heather of the plains, and beyond, the gray stone of the Cadwaller mountains. Leaving the scorched battle scene behind was not the relief that Trysten had hoped. She could still see the mashed heather that marked the path of the Western army. Ruts gouged by the wheels of the army’s spear launchers, and the beasts of burden pulling them, scarred the ground. The landscape of her home had been forever changed, as had all of the people of Aerona.

  Trysten looked at the high, wispy clouds above and opened herself to the dragons. They were joyous and excited to be flying again. Ahead, the white wings of Kingwind set the pace, and although Elevera wasn’t pleased to be traveling behind the Prince’s dragon, she was willing to do so for Trysten, as long as Kingwind didn’t pretend to own these skies. Elevera knew quite well that the royal alpha was only passing through and her home skies were far away.

  From time to time, Trysten scanned the landscape below for signs of retreating Western soldiers. Weeks had passed since the battle, but still, she found herself looking for what was left of the defeated army. Their absence was odd.

  The day after the battle, she had ordered a small party of hordesmen to fly out to The Wilds and look for signs of fleeing soldiers. They spotted several Westerners who had perished along the way, but they saw nothing else. For days afterward, Trysten ordered more surveillance flights, varying the times and flight paths. Still, the hordesmen saw no signs of fleeing soldiers. They even flew close to the Gul Pass but saw nothing to report. It was as if the soldiers had vanished once they fled over the horizon visible from Aerona.

  Even the dead men were gone now. Trysten hadn’t agreed with her hordesmen when they balked at the idea of burying the bodies found in their search, but she didn’t push it. Vultures and wolves would take care of the dead when all else failed. There were more immediate things that required attention. Their own fallen needed to be buried, along with the Western soldiers who had fallen right outside of the village. In her mind, she still heard the crack of hammers smashing rocks. The almost metal sound of stones clacking against each other as the burial mound was built had been constant in the week following the army’s defeat.

  She shook her head. It was too easy to get caught up in thoughts of the battle. For her and for others who had been there. For the whole village. But she needed to be clear-headed now. As the plains gently rose into hills, and the hills abruptly grew into the forested slope of the Cadwaller Mountains, she scouted for a potential location for the King’s outpost.

  Elevera pumped her wings harder to lift herself and Trysten into the increasingly thin air. Soon the trees became sparse, scattered between patches of scree that spread from rockface to rockface. Elevera continued to climb, and Trysten looked around, once again scanning for retreating soldiers. But there was no sign that anyone had ever passed this way.

  Ahead, the pass suddenly loomed before them in the crotch of two mountain peaks where snowmelt gathered and eventually became the Gul River. Trysten’s grip tightened on the lip of Elevera’s saddle. She reached for the hilt of her sword, expecting an Original to spring through the pass, so great was her unease. Elevera felt it too, her shoulders tense beneath the saddle.

  Prince Aymon whipped his arm up and around to signal for his hordes to follow him. Kingwind banked slightly to the right as Aymon led them across the mouth of the pass in a wide circle. Trysten peered into the passage of broken stone. It was amazing th
at snow alone could choke the pass in the winter; the wind and the thin air too much for a dragon and rider to bear. Beyond, Trysten caught a glimpse of the Western kingdom and saw more mountains than she had expected. She had always imagined that the Cadwaller Mountains were more like a fence, that on the other side was another plain like hers stretching off in the other direction. But mountains staggered out as far she could see.

  Aymon flew the swell in another large circle before ordering off his escorts. As Trysten signaled for her riders to fall in behind her, a heavy dread filled her. She watched as Aymon’s face tracked the pass ahead of her, watching it open up again as he completed his circle. And then Kingwind banked. Trysten flew past the white dragon and began another loop around the pass. She turned to watch as Aymon and his eighty dragons peeled away and flew into the pass without a glance behind. She tried not to think of them being consumed, gnashed between great, granite teeth and swallowed down to the gullet of the land. She shuddered and beneath her, Elevera growled her response.

  When the last of Aymon’s invasion force disappeared into the pass, Trysten ordered her own horde to approach. They flew back across the mouth of the pass once more, and Trysten stole a glance of wings beating hard, the royal dragons see-sawing slightly in a gust, passing between the barren shoulders of two mountains.

  She leaned forward slightly onto the lip of her saddle, and Elevera banked to the left and began to drop down, thankful to return to warmer air that was not so thin.

  “Goodbye, Aymon, Prince of Cadwaller,” Trysten whispered to the trees and mountains ahead. It felt like a final farewell.

  Chapter 8

  Once they cleared the treeline again, Trysten and the four hordesmen with her surveyed the land for a suitable location for the King’s outpost. They settled on a site near the top edge of the treeline. If they built the outpost near the cliff face, it would mostly be hidden from anyone coming through the pass. Yet someone stationed at the top of the cliff would have an uninterrupted view of anyone passing into the kingdom from the west.

  The site was beside a large pool ringed with pine trees at the base of a waterfall. The ground beneath them, seen through breaks in the canopy of trees, looked relatively flat and free of stone. Yet it was impossible to land a dragon anywhere close.

  Trysten eyed the pool. It was difficult to see how deep it was but she suspected it was quite shallow, based on the creek bubbling from the far end of the pool. She directed Elevera to fly closer, drawing tighter and tighter circles before hovering directly over the pool. Finally, Trysten gulped in a deep breath, held it, and wished for Elevera to land.

  The alpha dragon awkwardly maneuvered into the narrow clearing formed by the pool and hit the water with a splash. Trysten rocked forward, bracing herself for a soaking.

  Elevera shuffled her weight beneath her. The water came up to her chest, but no further.

  Above, the other riders flew in swooping circles and hollered at Trysten, laughing and calling her crazy. She grinned and waved at them, then undid her restraints.

  Little daylight penetrated the thick canopy around the pool, but Trysten was able to see that the ground was clear and littered with pine straw. A few spits of rock poked through the plush surface of fallen pine needles. Several trees had fallen and leaned at various angles to the ground.

  Trysten swept her leg up and over Elevera’s neck. With a shove, she pushed herself off the saddle and splashed into the pool. Water enveloped her up to her elbows, and it was mountain cold. Her teeth chattered as she looked up to Elevera. The alpha stared down at her dragoneer and felt without a doubt that this was the strangest, most useless thing anyone had ever asked of her. Trysten grinned as the dragon’s annoyance and irritation flashed through her.

  “Oh, you’ll get over it. Scales dry.”

  She waded the short distance to the shore. Once there, her hand went to the hilt of the dragonslayer sword. The quiet of the woods draped her in an eerie stillness. She looked around, trying to peer around the tree trunks. It was unsettling to be closed in. Most of her life was spent looking across uninterrupted vistas. Not being able to see more than a few hundred feet in any direction, whether for the tree trunks or the face of the cliff, made her uneasy.

  As she trudged along the edge of the pool, Trysten surveyed the woods around her. Prince Aymon had briefly discussed what he had in mind for an outpost, and Trysten pictured it being built in the small, nearly flat space abutting the pool. The trees could be felled and used for logs needed for the outpost building. There were plenty of stones to use for a foundation and walls, even a bunker if the outpost should come under attack.

  It would do nicely.

  A discolored patch of ground caught Trysten’s attention near the base of the cliff, right at the edge of the pool. She approached, one hand on her sword, and found the remains of a campfire, black and cold. Soot and ash stained the rock wall. A few pine needles had fallen onto the ash, their bronze color brilliant against the black of the charred ground. The fire had been dead for some time, but not long enough to be completely covered by the rain of pine needles.

  Trysten looked around as if Western soldiers would step out from behind the tree trunks. She grasped the hilt of the sword tighter with one hand as the other clasped the scabbard.

  Elevera shifted her weight, sending ripples out to lap the shore. She made a sound like a hissing cough and flapped her wings once. The dragon’s impatience and irritation flooded Trysten.

  “Shhh,” Trysten hushed, then after looking around once more, crouched to the edge of the campfire. Among the ashes lay the bones of a small animal. She picked up what was probably a leg bone, its hard surface streaked with dried grease. She grasped either end in her hands and snapped the bone in half. The wet crackle of it sounded too loud in the hush of the woods. The bone still had some play in it. It wasn’t the dry snap of something that had been dead for a long time.

  She scanned the area once more, but nothing emerged from among the trunks. She glanced up into the deep green canopies of pine. Nothing waited for her up there, either.

  Whoever had made a camp at the base of the cliff had moved on at least several days ago. How long would it have taken a Western soldier to move here on foot from Aerona? Unencumbered by the trappings of an army and its equipment, a person could walk from the village to the edge of The Wilds in a day. From there, however, it was uncertain. She had no idea how long it would take someone to climb from the edge of The Wilds to this spot right below the treeline. Two weeks had passed since the battle. Could this fire have been dead for a week and a half?

  She dropped the bones back to the ash, then wiped her hands on her wet leggings. If a fleeing soldier had lit this campfire, then it was all the more reason that they should build the outpost here.

  Elevera made another odd noise, a gasping whop, then shuffled her feet in the pool. Murky water rose up around her as she stirred the silt.

  “All right,” Trysten said as she stood. “I’ve imposed upon your dignity long enough. Let’s get back and get things moving, shall we?”

  The dappled light around her was interrupted, eclipsed by a dragon passing overhead, quiet and dark from the sun near its zenith.

  Elevera stirred once more, impatient and tense as Trysten stepped back into the pool and waded out to her. She found the stirrup just beneath the water’s surface, then pulled herself up into the saddle, and fastened her straps. Water ran down Elevera’s sides. Scales would dry, but it would probably be an uncomfortable ride back to the village for Trysten.

  “Let’s go, Lady,” Trysten said with a flick of her heels.

  Elevera reared back on her haunches, spread her wings, and pushed up into the air awkwardly as she tried to avoid clipping the canopy. Elevera was the largest dragon in the horde, so the other riders should have less trouble landing in the water until they were able to clear enough trees to make a yard for the dragons.

  As soon as Elevera cleared the canopy, Trysten led the horde in a loop that
took them back up to the opening of the pass. As they flew by, Trysten peered down the passage once more. There was no sign at all of Aymon or any of his dragons. She had hoped to get a final glimpse of them beyond the passage, out over the trees of the Western kingdom that looked so much like the trees of their own Wilds. She didn’t know why she had expected them to be different, mysterious and aggressive like the Western soldiers. But they were just the same pine trees, mixed with patches of lighter-colored aspen, that decorated her side of the mountains.

  Her hands flexed on the lip of the saddle. Should she slip through the pass? Just far enough to look around, to make sure that Aymon and his men were all right? She had lost any sense of the royal dragons as soon as they entered the pass. It was unsettling, almost as if a door had been closed and locked behind them. The temptation to take a peek was strong.

  No. Aymon was right. Her place was in Aerona. She was the Dragoneer.

  Trysten looked toward home, out across the drop of stones and spray of forest that tumbled to the plains below. The gentle hills and the glistening ribbon of the Gul River would guide her and her horde back to the village with its wide, scorched swath of ash and berm of stones.

  Trysten circled her arm through the air twice, then pointed east, toward Aerona.

  May Prince Aymon and his men return, she wished to the wind.

  Chapter 9

  It was a cold ride across the plains and back to Aerona. By the time Elevera landed in the weyr yard, Trysten’s teeth were chattering. The sun and air had wicked some of the water from her clothes, but she was still cold, damp, and uncomfortable.

  As soon as she stepped inside the weyr, Kaylar ran up to her, braids bouncing against her shoulders.

  “You need to speak to Rodden,” Kaylar said as she stepped up to Trysten.