Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

  The wild dragon leaned into the heat of the stove.

  “You are not my pet,” Trysten said. “You are free to leave at any time.”

  The little dragon’s forked tongue lashed out at her as if dismissing a ridiculous claim.

  Trysten sighed, then went back into her den. She took a piece of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill from a basket and laid them on her table. She struck a lantern, and as she sat it atop the table and eyed the light it cast, she thought of retiring to the bunk hall for a bite to eat first, something warm to drink among the chatter of the hordesmen.

  In the outer chamber, the wild dragon curled up beneath the belly of the stove like a mangy cur that had followed her home. His claws scraped against the wooden floor as he made himself comfortable.

  She was procrastinating. “Might as well get this over with,” she said.

  Footsteps creaked up her stairs, and Borsal stepped into the open doorway. He carried a dish of goat meat in one hand and a bowl of water in the other. He grinned at the dragon curled up on the floor and looked genuinely touched by the sight.

  “He’s not a pet,” Trysten said to the weyr master.

  “No, he’s a dragon,” Borsal replied. “And he’s in my weyr, so he’s my responsibility.” He crouched, then placed the dish and bowl on the floor and nudged them toward the wild dragon.

  The dragon lifted his head and flicked his tongue at Borsal, then stood in a half-crouch. He looked poised for an attack, and it bothered Trysten to realize that she couldn’t tell whether the dragon was going to attack the food or Borsal.

  “He’s a cute fella. I think we should keep him,” Borsal said.

  Trysten sighed. “He’s not a pet. This isn’t his home.”

  Borsal snorted. “You tell him that. You’re the Dragon Lord.” And with that, he retreated back down to the weyr.

  The wild dragon lunged forward and began to gulp down the chunks of goat meat.

  “You are not a pet,” Trysten said to him.

  He ignored her.

  She turned her attention to the parchment before her. Lightning flashed and dropped ragged, sharp shadows across the den. She flinched, then looked about, half expecting one of the Originals to have materialized.

  She uncorked her inkwell, then dipped the tip of the quill inside. She drew the nib across the lip of the well, then moved her hand to the piece of parchment. There her hand hovered, quivering slightly as a drop of ink welled up at the quill’s tip like a tear about to fall.

  A thump of wood struck the bottom step below. It was the sound of her father’s staff on the steps. She drew the tip of the quill against the lip of the inkwell again, scraping off the last of the ink before setting the quill aside and replacing the cork in the bottle.

  She sat back and folded her hands over her belly and waited. Soon, Mardoc stepped into the doorway and stared down at the wild dragon.

  He looked up at his daughter. “How many of them did you bring back?”

  Trysten shrugged. “I didn’t bring any of them. He followed without any input from me.”

  The little dragon didn’t seem the least bit disturbed as he circled the bowl and dish once and then curled up again beside the stove. Mardoc stepped over him and entered the inner den.

  “How did you end up with a wild dragon?” Mardoc asked. “Did you slay the mighty alpha?”

  “Funny,” Trysten said, clearly not amused. “I didn’t even see an alpha, including the one I went after.” She told her father of all that had happened since she left the weyr that morning.

  Mardoc took a seat at her table and listened, nodding on occasion, and looking surprised at other times.

  “So now,” Trysten said as she motioned at the blank piece of parchment before her, “I have to send a letter to the King and let him know that not only is there still an army out here, but they have a fort. And we have not seen his son in days, but an enemy horde emerged from the very pass he entered.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Prince has fallen,” Mardoc said.

  “I know,” Trysten said, rubbing the tips of her fingers against her brow. “But it doesn’t look like he was successful.”

  Mardoc opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. He studied the blank parchment between them.

  “It was a risky move,” he finally said. Lightning flashed outside and thunder roared almost instantly as if to punctuate his statement. Mardoc looked to the window. The dwindling evening light combined with the angle of the lantern light cast odd half-shadows across his brow and cheekbones. “If we don’t see him again, then he will have died with honor.”

  Trysten sat up and shook her head. “What a wild fool. If he fell, it was his own doing. And I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I think I will miss him.”

  The wild dragon let out a noise like a sigh of contentment. Wood popped and ashes shifted inside the iron belly of the stove. The little dragon stirred but did not lift his head. How strange it was to be this close to the creature, and not feel what he felt.

  She thought of the dark dragon, the courier from the Originals. It had been blank to her as well. Her brow furrowed slightly as she considered the wild one.

  “He fought well for Aerona,” Mardoc said. “But, no matter what has or has not happened to the Prince, we still have to deal with this new information. The King needs to know. This has gone far beyond Aerona now.” He nodded at the parchment on the table.

  Trysten sighed and sat back in her chair. She looked at the clay inkwell. Shadows from the rain-whipped glass slicked down over it. “I know. I intend to.” She looked over her shoulder, at the window. “But I can’t send a courier out in this.”

  “You can’t send a courier out before the ink dries.” Mardoc leaned forward and tapped a finger against the parchment.

  “I know. It’s just that...” She looked up at her father. “Where do I begin? How do I tell the King that an enemy soldier has informed me that there is a Western army staging area in The Wilds? That the army didn’t even come through the Gul Pass, but some secret passage further south? How do I tell the King that while his son flew into the West to stop the enemy, I stayed here and drew figures in the dirt with one of their hordesmen?”

  Mardoc’s chair creaked as he leaned back. He twiddled his palms back and forth so that the staff between them spun slowly like a spindle. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  “You don’t,” he said. “You tell the King that you recovered Rast and you tell him what Rast has told you. The King does not need to be burdened with what Rodden has said until we know it to be reliable information. For now, we do not know if Rodden understood you and Kaylar or if the two of you understood him correctly. Until we do, it is only a distraction.”

  Trysten nodded and motioned at the parchment. “And I tell him that a Western horde came through the pass this morning and headed toward the fort Rast described, but that is the only thing to come through the pass since Prince Aymon left.”

  “Yes. Your responsibility is to inform the King of what he needs to know to protect and defend Cadwaller. He will draw his own conclusions and make his own decisions. He will grieve if he feels it necessary. You are not delivering bad news, you are merely reporting what is. That is your duty.”

  Lightning flashed, but the angle of it was different. It didn’t plunge the room into a blinding lack of shadows. The storm was right overhead. Thunder rattled the walls, and the rafters above creaked. Someone below let out a low Ooooh! at the might of it.

  Trysten looked out to the dragon curled up in the antechamber. At what point would he get bored and wander off? Probably never now that Borsal was feeding him.

  She looked back at Mardoc, studied his face. “You are maddening, sometimes,” she said.

  “Oh?” Mardoc asked. “I am, am I?”

  Trysten nodded. “I found Ulbeg because I could feel his sore scales and raw skin, his longing for the sky and frustration at being restrained. I feel every arrow and spear, e
very injury the dragons feel as if they were injuries to my own body. Their pain is my pain. When they fall, part of me falls with them. You can’t know what that’s like. I know what they think, in the odd way they think it, and I can make them act with only a thought. But you, you know their wisdom. I envy you that.”

  Mardoc leaned forward and took Trysten’s hands in his. “In time, Little Heart. In time,” he said, patting her hand. “For now, you can only trust that they will share their wisdom when you need it. They always do.”

  Lightning lit the room again, but the thunder was a few seconds behind and didn’t shake the building this time.

  Trysten took a deep breath and reached for her quill. She had best get this letter written so the ink could dry. The courier must leave as soon as the storm had passed.

  In the antechamber, the wild dragon’s claws scraped against the floor. Trysten looked down at her table and tried to ignore the little beast. His sudden and unprovoked devotion to her made her uncomfortable. Or perhaps it was her inability to know what went on in the dragon’s heart and mind that made her uneasy.

  She pulled the parchment closer and dipped her quill in the inkwell, pondering the words she would write. Just as she brought the quill to the parchment, a sudden flurry and flapping of wings drew her attention. The wild dragon dashed over Mardoc’s shoulder and landed with a thud on the top of the table. The table legs barked against the floor as the dragon’s mass and momentum shoved the table against Trysten. The lantern tipped, and oil spilled out and erupted in flame.

  “Fish and birds!” Trysten screamed, jumping up from her chair . The dragon leaped from the table and flew in tight, undulating circles above them as Trysten grabbed the lantern away from the tabletop. Flames licked at her flesh, and she screamed at her father to step aside. As he moved away, Trysten gripped the edge of the table with her free hand, lifted, then shoved the table over. It clattered against the back of Mardoc’s chair before sliding off and landing flat on the floor and smothering the flames.

  “Ouch!” Trysten cursed, and then crouched to place the lantern on the floor. She shook her hand as if the heat could be shed like water.

  Footsteps thundered up the stairs.

  “Out!” Trysten shouted at the wild dragon. “Get out!” She pointed at the den door.

  The dragon zipped down and crashed against the floor of the antechamber. He bounced back up and flew over the rail of the stairs and banked off to the right just as Paege and several other hordesmen appeared in the doorway.

  “Everything all right?” Paege asked.

  Trysten shook her hands, then examined them in the light, trembling even though she knew she was safe. Her hand stung but didn’t look seriously injured. She shuddered and remembered the day of the battle, how her fingers were burned, pink and swollen and stiff for days. How her mother worked for a week to comb the singed hairs from her head. How she soaked her hair in water scented with lavender every day for two weeks, but nothing could erase the smell of charred braids except time. And time passed so slowly, even while rushing forward.

  She shook her head to clear it and lowered her hands to her side. She looked up and caught her father studying her, his face making it clear that he felt her pain as much as she felt the pain of her dragons.

  “Everything’s fine,” Mardoc said to Paege. “An accident.”

  “Did you burn yourself?” Paege asked. “Should I fetch Galelin?”

  “I’ve had worse,” Trysten said. “I’ll be fine. But keep that thing out of my den.”

  Paege looked slightly taken aback. “As you wish.”

  He ushered the hordesmen back down the stairs.

  Trysten righted the table. An oily stain marred the surface, but the wood underneath had not had a chance to burn. Her inkwell, however, had shattered upon hitting the floor. A dark splotch of ink stained the wooden floor and ran along the cracks like a creeping shadow.

  She looked up to the ceiling, unsure of why.

  “Well,” Mardoc said. “I believe you’ve had enough excitement for the day. I’ll take my leave of you.”

  “Father?”

  Mardoc looked back.

  “Thank you.”

  Mardoc grinned. “It is my duty. As a father and as Fallen.”

  “You perform your duties well,” Trysten said, smiling. “In all of your roles.”

  Mardoc bowed his head to her, turned and left the den.

  Trysten regarded the mess. She’d need to go downstairs and fetch some rags and find another inkwell. By then, she’d have found the words she needed to inform the King.

  With a last look to the window, she turned and followed Mardoc’s footsteps down to the weyr.

  Chapter 22

  Before returning home for the night, Trysten stopped by Galelin’s cottage. The storm had moved on, leaving only an intermittent drizzle in its wake, and the clouds hung thick and heavy enough to sop up the remaining light in the dwindling evening. In the windows of her uncle’s cottage, the light of more than one lamp smoldered through the thin curtains. It was an unusual sight.

  After she knocked on the door, a flutter of small dragon wings flew by overhead. As Trysten waited for Galelin to answer the door, she looked to the west. It was a cool rain that had broken the heat, and though it was still the early summer, she hoped to see a fresh blanket of snow across the tops of the peaks. Fresh snow signaled the waning days of the fighting season, but the dull low clouds obscured the tops of the mountains. Besides, the fighting season may not end again if the Western armies made their base on this side of the mountain passes, if indeed they relied on the passes at all.

  The door swung open.

  “Trysten!” Clemens said as he smiled down at her. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you. Is Galelin here?” she asked.

  “Come in, my dear dragoneer,” Galelin called from within.

  Clemens stepped back, then closed the door as Trysten stepped through.

  Galelin sat at his table along with two cups of tea. Books and parchment fanned out around him as usual, but what had changed was the second spread of books and documents that fanned out from the other cup of tea, presumably where Clemens had been sitting just off Galelin’s left elbow. Between the two, where the fanned out text intersected, there was a buffer of books and parchments twisted this way and that.

  “Cup of tea, my dear?” Galelin asked.

  Before she had finished nodding, Clemens moved off to the hob.

  “Hold it right there!” Galelin barked at Clemens, and reached for the kettle.

  “I may be an old man, but I still have responsibilities to fulfill. Allow me to pour a cup of tea for my niece.”

  Clemens grinned at Trysten, then held his hands up in mock surrender as he back-pedaled to his stool at the table.

  “Come to see about poor little Ulbeg?” Galelin asked.

  A slight thump hit the wall near the door.

  Galelin and Clemens each turned in the direction of the slight scratching that followed.

  “Ignore him,” Trysten said.

  Galelin grinned. “I’ve never heard of a wild dragon that latched onto someone before.”

  Trysten thought of the man she had run into that morning, the way the dragon draped himself over the man’s shoulders. Hopefully, this dragon wouldn’t attempt the same thing with her.

  “I know,” Clemens said to Galelin. “I traveled to The Wilds once to study wild dragons. They were very aloof.. They stayed in their hordes and for the most part, avoided us, although they were always nearby. I suspect they associate humans with food, but I’ve never seen one behave like this.”

  He moved toward the door.

  “Please,” Trysten said as she held up a hand. “Don’t. I could use a break.”

  “I have to agree with Trysten,” Galelin said. “We might be able to get a closer look at him later, but I don’t want a wet, wild dragon loose in here.” He patted a book that laid open before him.

  “You have to be car
eful. He nearly set the weyr on fire an hour ago,” Trysten said.

  Galelin lifted his eyebrows in a questioning look.

  “He knocked over a lantern in my den,” she explained.

  Galelin nodded, then pushed himself to his feet. His knees cracked as he moved to the fireplace. “It sounds like you had quite an interesting day. Should you take me out to see Rast?”

  Trysten shook her head even though Galelin wasn’t looking at her. “There’s nowhere to land a dragon. We have to either land at the foot of the mountains, or on a clearing high up and walk to the shack. It’s a rigorous walk either way.”

  Galelin brought the kettle back to the table. “Too far for an old man,” he said.

  “I can go,” Clemens said.

  “I don’t know,” Trysten said. “The woman who is taking care of him is a bit odd, but I don’t think she’s incapable. Rast didn’t have any complaints about his care. I don’t want to give her the message that we don’t trust her.”

  “I would still feel better if someone else looked him over,” Galelin said.

  “Agreed,” Trysten said. “Frankly, I’d like to bring him back, but he’s too banged up. Broken leg and broken ribs. He can’t walk down the mountain, and we can’t put him on the back of a dragon.”

  “So are you thinking of a mule-drawn cart?” Galelin asked.

  Trysten’s gaze drifted to the top of the table. She had already considered it on the flight back, but it didn’t seem feasible, or safe in the least. She shook her head. “Not after what happened to the cutting party. I’m afraid he has to wait until he’s healed enough to fly.”

  “That could be a couple of months with those injuries,” Galelin said.

  Trysten shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, but maybe it can be helped,” Clemens said. “What about flying him under the dragon?”

  “Under?” Trysten asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes. Under. One time we had to evacuate some injured people from a work site and get them back to the mother city quickly. They were too injured to fly, so we made slings that went from the necks of the dragons to a harness around their hips. It formed a hammock, of sorts, and the injured flew home nestled inside.”