Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

  Verillium spread her wings and lowered her haunches to land. Trysten held her breath as she watched the sling containing Clemens writhe and shift, the man inside presumably preparing for the landing.

  The dragon set down on her hind legs, gave her wings a final thrust downward, then settled onto her forelegs.

  Clemens popped his head out of the sling with a wide grin plastered over his face. He opened his mouth to say something, presumably to assure them he was fine, or perhaps pat himself on the back for his contraption, but Kaylar cut him off.

  “Men approaching along the river,” she shouted. “Eight of them.”

  “Along the river?” Trysten asked, approaching Verillium.

  Clemens looked up, contorting himself to see more of Kaylar than her boot. He shimmied out of the sling, then stood and dusted his knees with his hands.

  “What’s so odd about that?” Brand called out. “Just some men out for a walk, right?”

  Kaylar shook her head. “They’re not villagers. I thought so at first, so I flew out a ways to take a look. They ignored me. A few looked up at me, but no wave or anything.”

  Trysten’s brow furrowed. That was unusual. It was customary for villagers to wave at the hordesmen, almost to signal that all was well, in addition to just being polite.

  “But a few of them,” Kaylar said as she leaned forward slightly in her saddle, “are wearing riding armor. I swear it. Armor like Rodden’s.”

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  “Which side of the river?” Paege asked.

  “This side,” Kaylar said as she pointed to the ground.

  “You don’t think it’s the prisoners, do you?” Paege asked over Trysten’s shoulders. “The ones we released to the north?”

  They had dropped off more than twenty men to the north after they had captured the horde that had been blockading Aerona and intercepting its couriers. Why would only eight return?

  But the riding armor was troubling. The riding sweaters worn by the Western hordesmen sported darker, more muted colors than the ones crafted by the Aerona knitters guild.

  Even if it wasn’t the men she had ordered off their dragons far to the north of here, it sounded like Western hordesmen all the same.

  “Listen up!” Trysten shouted across the yard. “Hordesmen, arm yourselves and meet me on the eastern edge of the village. Swords and bows, but no one uses a weapon until I say so. Clemens, get that sling off Verillium. Kaylar, you’re with us.”

  “Move!” Trysten shouted, then whipped around to find Paege standing right in front of her, his face concerned and shocked.

  “Bring Rodden with you,” she said, then dodged around him and ran for the bow and quiver kept in Elevera’s stall.

  Chapter 25

  Trysten halted where the single road leaving the village twisted away from the river and cut through the plains on a winding path that would eventually take it to the mother city. Next to the river, eight men moved single-file along a narrow footpath that followed the riverbank for some distance.

  Her hand went to the hilt of her sword, but this wasn’t an attack. The men kept their pace steady. A number of them had removed their sweaters and wore them around their waists, the sleeves tied together around the bottom hem of their leather bodices. Even at this distance, Trysten could see that the men looked horribly sunburned, their skin dark and fiery with the unrelenting sun of the plains. They did not appear to be armed and if they were indeed eight of the hordesmen she had set loose, how could they be? She dropped them off without a single weapon, not even a blade among the lot of them. She had hoped that they’d be too busy trying to survive to bother anyone else or do anything more than make their way back to the Gul Pass and their homes.

  But she kept their dragons, and if they had come back for them as Rodden had, they would be sorely disappointed. All of their dragons had fallen in the battle. Every single one. And at the hands of their own countrymen.

  Yallit zipped out past Trysten and the others. He curved up and around before coming back and settling on the peak of a cottage roof. A villager peered out the window of her cottage and shifted her attention between the hordesmen and the approaching men.

  Paege approached with Rodden in tow, his hand clamped over the Western man’s bicep. As they stepped up beside Trysten, Paege nodded. “That’s them. I recognize them. I can’t believe it. Why in the wilds did they come back here?”

  “Same as Rodden,” Trysten said.

  “Sa yalla,” Rodden said as if Trysten were taking roll call.

  “Well, aren’t they going to be a little upset when they find that their dragons are no longer here?” Paege asked.

  “They’re unarmed,” Trysten said loud enough for the others to hear. “Violence only if necessary and on my command. No one is going to be hurt today. Understood?”

  Mumbled agreement passed over the hordesmen with short swords in their belts and quivers of arrows bristling from their backs.

  “Rodden,” Trysten snapped.

  “Yes?” Rodden asked, and his accent sounded thicker, stranger than usual, away from the weyr.

  “Do you know those men? Are they familiar to you?”

  Rodden didn’t respond right away. Kaylar jogged up to him and added a couple words in the Western language.

  “Hordesmen. Hordesmen of Opplenot,” Rodden said.

  “Do you know them?” Trysten asked.

  Rodden didn’t respond right away. He shook his head. “That is...No. No.”

  “Where are the others?” Paege asked as he looked around and across the river as if more men might be slinking through the grass on the other side. “Is this an ambush?”

  “No,” Trysten said. “They don’t have bows or arrows. Where would they have gotten them?”

  “Maybe they stole them,” Paege suggested.

  “From whom?” Trysten asked. “There wasn’t a soul between Aerona and the dropoff location. It’s the fighting season. No one would have been wandering around out there. They are unarmed.”

  “Wolves,” Brand offered. “Maybe wolves got the others.”

  “It would be fair,” Karno spat.

  “That’s enough,” Trysten said. “Come on.”

  She plunged into the heather at the side of the road, the hordesmen and Rodden close behind. The heather quickly gave way to lush, waist-high grass as they approached the banks of the river. The grass rustled against their thighs and knees as the hordesmen marched out to meet the advancing men. Still, the Westerners did not alter their approach. They acted as if they were just a group of friends walking along the river on their way to someplace. Surely they weren’t still making their way back to the Gul Pass, and just didn’t recognize Aerona as the village where they had been captured and stripped of their weapons and supplies?

  A muffled bout of shouting and chatter caught Trysten’s attention. She looked back. Men and women had gathered along the edge of the village. Several of them held shovels or planks of wood. More of them held bows. They shoved a few arrows into the ground beside them, and there they sat, their fletchings up above the grass and heather like absurd flowers waiting to be picked and plucked.

  “Archers, keep your arrows in your quivers,” Trysten said loud enough for everyone to hear. Only her hordesmen had quivers, but she hoped that the villagers would heed her advice to keep calm and to keep the notches of their arrows off the bowstrings.

  “Rodden, tell these men their dragons aren’t here. If they ask, tell them that they were killed in battle.”

  She looked over her shoulder and hoped to see Rodden had understood her. His expression was nearly unreadable. He wasn’t going to try and escape with them, was he? No. Maejel was still in the weyr. He wouldn’t leave without his dragon, and he knew full well that Maejel would never leave without Elevera.

  “Rodden?”

  Rodden looked at her and nodded, as if in agreement, but there was no sign on his face that he had understood a word of what she had said.

 
As soon as they were close enough that Trysten could see their eyes, the Westerners stopped.

  A few steps later, Trysten halted. The hordesmen of Aerona fanned out behind her.

  Instead of examining and assessing the larger and meaner-looking hordesmen standing behind Trysten, the men kept their eyes on her.

  “Sa yalla,” the lead man said, then spread his arms and dropped to his knees. A glint of pain flicked over his face when his knees hit the ground. He looked to the swaying blades of grass between them. The flesh on his arms clung to his bones. Around the neck of his bodice, a yawning cavern of skin hung around the man’s collarbone where famine had hollowed it out. All of the men were emaciated. Starved. They couldn’t put up a fight if they wanted to.

  Her hand dropped away from the hilt of her sword.

  Rodden stepped forward and held his hands out slightly. The men looked at him as if he were familiar. He let loose with a long, chattering stream of their language.

  “What’s he talking about?” Vanon whispered, presumably to Kaylar.

  “Dunno,” she whispered back. “Too fast. I can’t understand a thing.”

  The man upon his knees answered Rodden. His words were slower, nearly slurred. He didn’t need to speak the Cadwaller tongue for Trysten to hear the exhaustion in his voice.

  “Cayont. Eade tracca. Reem. Taplit yallum nauct pothem strayit. Oppelima. Oppelima taplum.”

  Trysten’s heart took off faster than a dragon at full flight. Oppelima?

  Rodden nodded, then gestured back at Trysten. “Oppelima. Sa taplum. Sa Mandana eade sa yalla.”

  Rodden turned and bowed his head toward Trysten as he held his arms out at his side.

  The rest of the men dropped to their knees and held their arms out at their sides.

  “They’re surrendering,” Brand said.

  “Smart men,” Karno quipped.

  “Oh, for the love of sky!” Kaylar gasped.

  Trysten glanced over her shoulder at her friend, who looked to be in utter shock. Kaylar looked back and forth between Trysten and the kneeling men. “I think I know what they mean!”

  She shoved past Trysten to stand beside Rodden. “Oppelima eade molinda not Opplenot?”

  Rodden looked up at Kaylar. His eyes grew wide, and a grin spread over his face. “Tracca eshlum.”

  Kaylar’s face paled even more. She looked back at Trysten, and then on to Rodden. “Sa yalla,” Kaylar said, her voice nearly quivering. “Oppelima eade sa. Sa not yallum. Not yalla.” She touched her chest.

  Rodden nodded. “Tracca eshlum.” The grin on his face widened. He nodded to Trysten. “Sa yalla. Sa yalla eade oppelima not Opplenot, not yallim. Fashim dop yallim! Rodden held his arms out, hands cupped as if to indicate something large, something expansive.

  “Wow,” Kaylar said. She waved her hand before her face.

  “What!” Trysten snapped.

  Kaylar held up her index finger, signaled for another moment. “Sa yalla echem fashim.” She rolled her hand through the air as if searching for something, pulling forth and dismissing all the words that weren’t right. Her brow furrowed.

  Trysten’s hand went to her belly, pressed against the knot growing there.

  “Adalina,” Rodden said with a nod. He glanced at Trysten.

  “Adalina? Adalina!” Kaylar shot a look at Trysten as well. “Eade sa yalla?”

  “Reem,” Rodden said with a very curt, affirmative nod. It was not to be questioned. He looked at the other Western hordesmen. “Reem!”

  The other men nodded. “Tracca echem, a few of them muttered, their attention on Trysten.

  Kaylar’s face turned red. She fluttered her hand in front of herself. “All right. All right, if I understand him right, if I got this right, Oppelima means queen. She is the heart. The heart of power. Queen of all yallim. Every dragon. Every person.”

  Trysten’s breath stopped in her chest. “Adalina.” Her heart pounded in her head, her pulse beating a drum.

  Kaylar nodded. Rodden nodded.

  “Sa yalla,” Kaylar said as she looked back at Trysten, “means heart of Adalina. You are the heart of Adalina.”

  Rodden nodded. “Sa yalla,” he said and gestured at Trysten. “Heart of Adalina.”

  Trysten looked at the men kneeling before her. She knew what was coming before Kaylar said it.

  Kaylar swallowed hard, then looked at her friend and Dragoneer.

  “You are their queen.”

  II

  Heart of Adalina

  Chapter 26

  The afternoon passed in a blur as Trysten made arrangements for the Western hordesmen to be secured in a vacant cottage. After that, she met with Tuse to explain the situation and listen to his hand-wringing over what to do with the prisoners.

  She assured him she’d take care of everything, and possibly dedicate some space in the new weyr for holding prisoners. It was not her intent to hold prisoners though, and she would figure out what to do with them before long.

  As she left the council chambers, Paege was waiting for her, leaning against the circular, stone wall of the building.

  “You should stop by your uncle’s cottage and have a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Paege grinned. “Yeah. You should. I’ll join you.”

  As they walked toward the edge of the village, where Galelin’s cottage sat near the weyr, Trysten shook her head. “I can’t even begin to believe this.”

  Paege grinned. “It is really far-fetched.”

  “Me,” Trysten laid her hand upon her chest. “Queen of the Western kingdom?”

  “I know.”

  Trysten shook her head. “We must have misunderstood. There’s some miscommunication or something.”

  “Absolutely, your Highness.”

  Trysten glared at Paege. As she did so, Yallit swept around and landed hard in the lane, a few yards in front of them. He lifted his wings up and flicked his tongue out at her in greeting.

  “Neither one of you is helping,” Trysten said.

  Paege chuckled. “Oh, come on. You can’t see the humor in all of this?”

  Trysten shook her head. “There is nothing funny about this. I’m not their queen.”

  Paege shrugged. “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why? Why aren’t you their queen?” he asked.

  “Because I’m not. I’m not anyone’s queen. I’m the Dragoneer of Aerona weyr. That’s it,” Trysten said.

  “And Dragon Lord,” Paege said as he nodded back at Yallit, who had crouched into an awkward sitting position. The little dragon wrapped his tail around himself and settled in to watch the villagers who called to him.

  “That doesn’t make me a queen.” Trysten folded her arms over her chest as if the matter was closed.

  “Come on,” Paege said with another nod, this time aimed at the end of the lane. “Let’s not keep Galelin and your parents waiting.”

  “My parents?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  Paege continued on. He held out his hand to Yallit. The wild dragon lifted his muzzle and Paege scratched the scales on his snout.

  Trysten looked around. A number of villagers had stopped in pursuit of their business to stare and talk amongst themselves. She couldn’t catch anything more than bare snippets of what they said, but it seemed that most of them were talking about the prisoners, while a few discussed Yallit.

  She trotted to catch up with Paege. As she approached Yallit, he rose up onto his haunches and swiveled his head on his long neck to watch her pass. As soon as she caught up to Paege, she heard the small, smart snap of Yallit’s wings as he hopped up into the air again. He zipped about above them as they approached Galelin’s cottage. She slipped inside behind Paege, shutting the door quickly before Yallit could follow her in.

  “Have a seat,” Galelin said and motioned toward a stool at his table.

  Trysten looked around the small cottage. “Where’s Clemens?”

  “This is a family meeting,
” Mardoc said from a chair near the fire, where he sat next to Caron.

  “I suggested that he step over to the cottage and look over our newest guests,” Galelin said. “After their journey, it seemed that someone might want to look them over.”

  Paege rested his hand briefly on Trysten’s shoulder and pressed slightly in the direction of Galelin’s table before he went over to the fireplace and took the kettle from the hob.

  Trysten drifted to the table as if still under the press of Paege’s hand, and sat on a stool while Yallit scratched at the door.

  “I never dreamed they’d come back,” Trysten said.

  Galelin shook his head. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t have dreamed of that. How did you end up with Rodden?”

  “Where is Rodden?” Mardoc asked.

  “He and Kaylar went to the cottage to talk to the prisoners, to try and find out why they came back,” Trysten said.

  “Seems to me that we know why they came back,” Paege said as he crossed the room, the kettle dangling in his hand.

  “That’s nonsense,” Trysten snapped.

  “Their claim doesn’t sound all that unreasonable,” Mardoc said. “They’ve seen you take their dragons. They saw the riderless dragons emerge from the other side of the village and come after them with firebreath. I don’t think there’s any doubt in their minds that there is something indeed special about you.”

  “And then there’s that time we flew them out north, under your control, not theirs,” Paege said as he filled the kettle. “And after forcing them to slide out of their saddles, you took their dragons. Then they watched as their riderless dragons abandoned them to follow you home. No one should be able to do that, except maybe a queen. The queen of dragons.”

  “I’m not a queen,” Trysten said.

  Yallit scratched at the door as if to let them know he had something to add.

  Trysten’s shoulders tensed with the nagging of the wild dragon.

  “Does it matter?” Mardoc asked. “They think what they think. And if they think you are their queen, then this might be the very thing needed to turn this war around.”