Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

  “I’m right here!” Trysten screamed into the wind. She urged Elevera to dive faster. She drew an arrow and loosed it at the closest Original. A Western dragon swooped between them and caught the arrow in her wing.

  Firebreath bubbled up in Elevera.

  “Oh no,” Trysten groaned. She clutched the lip of the saddle again as Elevera rose up and thrashed her head and tail and fire arced out across the battle.

  Arrows rained down upon them in response. One tore through the flesh of Trysten’s upper left arm, and she screamed. Several more bounced off the scales of Elevera while a couple pierced her wing membranes.

  The Originals stalled and then began to pump up through the air toward Trysten and Elevera. She wracked her mind and heart to find the dragons new to her horde and prayed to the gods above that they were Western, that she might call them to her and send them crashing down upon the Originals. Drive them into the rocks below.

  But there was too much going on. Too many dragons. Too many hearts and minds for Trysten to grasp on to. It was a vast waterfall of emotions and thoughts and feelings that tore past her, threatening to sweep her away.

  Trysten slammed her bow down onto the hook on her saddle, then gripped the hilt of her sword. As she began to pull it free, the Originals in human form each did the same, pulling a dragonslayer sword from scabbards at their sides.

  “This is how you want to play it, then fine!” Trysten shouted. She drew the sword and lifted it back, over her shoulder. Her left hand trembled as she clutched the lip of the saddle to anchor herself. Her stomach flinched, and her breath caught as one, and then a second arrow found purchase in Elevera’s soft underside. The alpha dragon groaned with the mounting weight of injury.

  The Originals banked sharply upwards in a maneuver that she would never be able to duplicate. Trysten’s mind threatened to bend with the sight, the movement of the men on the dragon backs, their motions sickening with the echo of something just out of sight behind them.

  They grinned with terrifying glee as they fixed their sight on something above Elevera.

  Trysten raised her eyes as a shadow blotted out the sun. The magenta belly of Verillium passed overhead, then banked to her side. Kaylar let loose with an arrow.

  “Kaylar!” Trysten screamed.

  The arrow slammed into the chest of one of the Originals. He flinched with the impact, but then the arrow dropped away as his dark dragon scales were swallowed up by a black tunic and he was a man again.

  Verillium began to spiral, drawing a wide circle meant to take her back behind the Originals where Kaylar could get off another shot while the Originals were in a position of having to aim overhead.

  The dark couriers lifted past Elevera, ignoring the blast of firebreath let loose at them. They twisted around, turned in a sickening manner, and crashed into Verillium. A blade flashed in the sunlight. Trysten’s shoulder exploded in pain.

  Kaylar screamed.

  Trysten’s stomach heaved and clenched. She grew lightheaded and grappled with the weight of the sword. Verillium twisted, rolling in the sky once beneath the flapping, frantic wings of the Originals.

  And then she dropped away, one wing fluttering weakly. But Trysten couldn’t watch, couldn’t turn her eyes away from the Originals. Dangling from the claws of one was Kaylar, screaming and struggling, her fists beating at the legs and claws of the beast as her saddle dangled from her, still secured by her restraints. The severed strap of Verillium’s harness quivered in the air below her.

  The Originals had cut Kaylar’s saddle off of Verillium.

  Pain slammed into Trysten as Verillium hit the ground and rolled. The Originals banked sharply toward the mouth of the pass.

  “No-ooooo!” Trysten screamed, crumbling at the sight of her friend, helpless and dangling from the claws of the dark courier like a twist of nest grass in a bird’s foot.

  Dragons parted. Royal and Western alike moved aside and formed a channel with Elevera on one end and the Originals on the other. Inside Trysten, all sensation stopped as she focused on the couriers.

  “Stop!” she cried, her voice cracking. “You will stop!”

  The wings of the Originals slowed, nearly stopping, and then picked back up.

  The brief silence in Trysten’s mind, almost a respite, was obliterated by the sudden return of the dragons’ awareness. Pain slammed into her again. Her teeth clenched as another dragon hit the slope and rolled. Arrows pocked dragon scales all around her. Her own flesh sang with the pain of battle.

  The channel of clear sky between herself and the retreating Originals wavered, began to close.

  The sight of Kaylar struggling in the claws of the courier blurred behind the Dragoneer’s tears.

  Trysten thrust her sword into its scabbard.

  “I will come for you,” she called, her voice wrenched into a knot and hardly louder than the pounding of her heart. “I promise.”

  The channel of dragon flesh and wings collapsed. Screaming and wing beats and the roar of firebreath filled her ears again. Trysten clutched at the bow on her saddle. An arrow slammed into the leather of the saddle and bounced off.

  Trysten drew an arrow and took aim in the direction the arrow had come from. Elevera swept to her left. Trysten tracked a Western rider closing in on them and she loosed her arrow, pulling another from her quiver.

  Pain made warm rubber of her muscles. She became liquid, flowing. Her head pounded and rage wrapped around her, holding her up. Her hands never stilled. Her fingers sang with fire, her arms smoldered. Blood poured down her arm, down her side and became a warm oil that kept her moving. Her heels tapped a complex rhythm over Elevera’s shoulders, sending the dragon up and down, left and right. She rolled over and raked her claws along a Western belly as Trysten took aim downward, at a dragon passing beneath her, and then the rider was no longer a threat.

  Several more times, Trysten was whipsawed across the saddle as Elevera rose up and roared, took in more dragons. Trysten roared with her, her muscles crackling, and her lungs clawing at the sky, her pain and rage elevated on Elevera’s column of fire. The sky began to fill with a rotating cloud of dragon wings, all of which belonged to Elevera and were too far away to be a threat.

  The battle went on until enough dragons had died that Trysten could cut through the chaos around her and marshall Elevera’s horde. Like a wizard in an old bard’s tale, she swept her arms up and down, swished them in circles as if wielding a magic wand while scores of dragons swept about her, buffeted her with wind. They raced around like the sky itself given form until the remaining Western dragons had been sent tumbling to the unforgiving ground below. Until nothing remained but one golden alpha and her rider to rule the sky. And every dragon still alive belonged to them.

  Trysten’s arms fell to her side and throbbed. She gasped in a shuddering breath as she surveyed the cloud of dragons circling around her, slow and methodical, wings twitching, sweeping, twisting to keep them all together, in formation. The riders were a mix of royal, Western, and the dead. And the living merely clutched their saddles and clung to their mounts, their bows and quivers forgotten.

  Among them, Prince Aymon sat upon Kingwind. A hand clutched his shoulder as he stared at her, his face raw and lit with a mixture of awe and fear. His beard and the ends of his hair stirred in the wind.

  Beneath them, the slope between the pass and the cliff was littered with fallen. Dragons. Men. Arrows like wild grass trampled under an unrelenting wind.

  Trysten turned her face to the pass. It yawned before her, empty and vacant, inviting and taunting.

  This had to end. She quivered with pain. She was nearly outside of her own head with it, struggling to come back down into her own body, leaving behind the wings and scales, the long, graceful neck and the chest full of fire for the body of arms and legs, the braids and the pain and the twisting throb of knee-bending vulnerability.

  How could she have let the Originals do that? How could she let them get Kaylar?

 
Elevera stiffened, stirred, and groaned beneath Trysten. A wave of pain washed over her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she swayed in the saddle before lurching forward and grasping the lip.

  There were fallen to see to.

  “Come on, Lady,” Trysten whispered, her voice raw from screaming. “To the ground.”

  Elevera banked and swirled through the sky like the sun set loose from its path.

  Chapter 51

  Elevera landed hard upon the clearing at the base of the cliff. Trysten rocked forward with the motion, winced at the pain that flashed through Elevera, and then went numb as she surveyed the damage around her. The base of the cliff was littered with fallen dragons. They lay piled and twisted together, Western and royal. One, a Western dragon, had pitched off the edge of the cliff and landed on the outpost. The building was shattered, its back half gone, and the front of it leaning back against the dragon’s body. Off to her left, another dragon had crashed to the ground and snapped several trees.

  The workers who had built the outpost began to emerge from the woods. They eyed the damage and looked at Trysten.

  Her stomach quivered and twisted. Cramps wracked her and her skin prickled with goose flesh. Waves of pain flashed over her. Her numb fingers, fiery red and threatening blisters fumbled at the leather straps at her waist. She retrieved a blade from her saddlebag and sliced through the restraints as the air around her blustered and stirred.

  She looked up to see the brilliant white of Kingwind’s wings fold and tuck behind her back. Prince Aymon undid his restraints, then dismounted. As soon as he was on the ground, Kingwind collapsed behind him, her neck curled around slightly as if the sight before her was too much to take.

  Aymon looked back at his dragon and seemed to be caught between tending to her and moving toward Trysten.

  Trysten thrust the blade through the last of the straps. As she tried to put it back, it slipped from her aching and numb fingers. It tumbled to the ground below and lay among the stones and dirt. She swung her leg up and over Elevera’s neck, then slid down. She hit the ground, stumbled, then landed hard on her backside.

  Aymon stepped up to her and extended his left hand. Dark wetness seared the upper sleeve of his tunic to his right arm.

  “You’re alive,” Trysten whispered.

  Aymon nodded. “Thanks to you. Once again.”

  She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.

  “What happened?” Trysten asked. “What was that?”

  Aymon looked up to the pass. Rocks skittered down from the edge of the cliff and bounced off the still chest of a silver-colored dragon laying at the cliff’s base.

  “I wish I could say,” Aymon said. “We were flying home, returning through the pass, and then suddenly, there were...” He gestured at the dragons at the base of the cliff. He shook his head in disbelief. “They... If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear they appeared out of nowhere. They were not there, and then they were.” He looked at her. “I swear to you that we entered that pass alone.”

  Shadows swept over the clearing as dragons passed overhead.

  “What about the Originals? Gerig? Can he stop them?”

  “Gerig?” Aymon asked. His brow furrowed in confusion. “Of Cadwaller? The Wing Master?”

  Trysten nodded. She lifted her arm to point at the pass, but it was so heavy, it flopped to her side. “He led a swell of close to two hundred dragons into the pass. Yesterday. They went looking for you.”

  Aymon shook his head slowly.

  “They were to find you,” Trysten said. “And attack any weyr they found.”

  The rigor of Aymon’s shaking head increased. “No. No, we didn’t see him. We didn’t see anyone. Nothing. The whole time we were there.”

  Trysten stared a moment more, waiting for his words to register. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Aymon echoed. “There’s nothing there. Not a soul. Not a weyr. Not a city or a village. We flew for days up and down the coast of a sea. We flew through the mountains. We flew in the day and saw nothing. We flew in the night and saw no lights. There is nothing there. No sign of civilization, not so much as a hut, a shack, or a fishing boat on the sea.”

  Trysten blinked at him.

  “We gave up,” Aymon said. “There was plenty to eat. Game. Fish. Fresh water streams everywhere. But we couldn’t find anything, so we came back. We never saw Gerig. We never saw another dragon until we entered the pass.”

  “How...” Trysten looked up to the pass. “I have to go get Kaylar. You take care of the fallen.”

  Trysten turned back to Elevera. The dragon stood a little lower to the ground than usual. Her wings were tattered, numerous ragged holes had been punched through the membranes. A strip of wing membrane twisted in a breeze where it hung halfway down her wing. Tension flooded Trysten’s muscles as she felt the effort Elevera expended to stay upright, stay on her claws, keep her weight from the bristle of a dozen arrows that stuck out of her belly, one at a severe angle from her chest where the tip had become lodged between scales and burrowed into the skin. It burned.

  Her right foreleg quivered. It burned as well, and Trysten’s arm felt hot and wet as she recalled a gash Elevera had suffered after colliding with another dragon.

  “Oh,” Trysten said. She clamped her hand over her open mouth and pressed to hold back the tears. She was so injured. Elevera was so hurt.

  Elevera turned her head away, ashamed to have not been stronger, more resilient, to have been made of iron and stone and turned back the tip of every arrow, every raking claw.

  There was no way she could carry Trysten through the pass, let alone fight the Originals.

  Clouds of dirt and pine straw danced away from Trysten as another dragon sat down on the other side of Kingwind. It was Sone. Trysten knew it before she turned and saw the deep red dragon peering at her over the collapsed and panting royal dragon.

  “Trysten!” Paege called as he undid his restraints. “Are you all right?” He slipped from his dragon’s shoulders and landed with a crunch between Sone and Kingwind.

  “How is Sone?” Trysten asked as she stumbled toward Paege, but she knew, could feel that the beta had fared far better than her alpha. “I need your dragon. I have to go get Kaylar.”

  She stepped past Paege. His fist clamped around her arm.

  “Stop.”

  Trysten yanked, tried to twist her arm from his grip, but her muscles and limbs all felt so soft and far away.

  “Trysten!” Paege snapped.

  “They cut her off her dragon!” Trysten cried, her eyes searching Paege’s face while she attempted to wrench her arm free.

  “Trysten!”

  Her fight fell away.

  Aymon stepped up to them. “We have to get word back to my father, now.”

  “Shut up! For once, just shut up,” Paege snapped at Aymon. He pulled Trysten’s arm, and spun her around.

  “Paege!” Trysten called. Her voice ached, broken glass pressed into her throat. “Let me go! I need Sone! That’s an order.”

  His hands grabbed her by the shoulders, held her, and for a second she thought he might drive her like a stake into the ground to keep her there.

  His fingers curled into the flesh of her shoulders, and he pulled her tight against him. The touch broke the spell, cleared the pain of the dragons and brought her back into her own mind. Her knees quivered.

  “We’ll get her,” Paege said. His voice cracked and he blinked, his eyes, glassy and wet. “I promise you, Trysten. I promise you on my life and Sone’s. We’ll get her. But we need to take care of you and Elevera first. See to the others.”

  Trysten opened her mouth to protest, and began to twist away from Paege. He released her left shoulder and raised his hand. His finger pointed upward, to the sky.

  Trysten swallowed her words as she lifted her face. Scores of dragons circled overhead. Sixty. Eighty? They swept around in slow circles. Her own horde— Aerona’s horde—or what was left of it, darted about, shifting ar
ound the cloud of wings as if taking a count, measuring and recording what she had hung from the sky.

  She looked from the horde to the mouth of the pass. She swallowed hard. How full and empty at the same time. How vacant she felt while propped up with rage. If she could explode, twist herself into the greatest blast of firebreath the world had ever seen, she’d drive herself into those stones, those mountain slopes and bring them down upon the world, the hate and pain and bury it all. Plow it beneath miles of rock.

  “My word,” Aymon whispered. “What are we going to do with all of those prisoners? I don’t suppose you erected a proper jail while I was in the pass?”

  Trysten gripped Paege’s shoulder to steady herself, as if she were about to climb him like a tree and reach up to the sky, snatch the dragons from the blue.

  She looked at Paege. “I’ll order their dragons to land in the pass. You and the others go. Disarm the Western hordesmen, take their equipment, and get them off their dragons.”

  Paege shook his head as if confused.

  “Then send them through the pass. They have to go through the pass. And tell them... Tell them...” Trysten’s mind bumped about the inside of her head in search of the words she needed. “Tell them... Sa yalla rem. Sa yalla taplum. Chesset Opplenot. Say it. Let me hear you say it.”

  Paege blinked. His eyes darted from her left eye to the right and back, as if he couldn’t bring himself to be still.

  “Say it!” Trysten spat. “I need to hear you say it.”

  Paege swallowed. “Sa yalla. Rem. Sa yalla taplum. Chesset Opplenot.”

  Trysten nodded. “Good enough. She shoved Paege’s shoulders and he drifted back a step. “Tell them. Set them loose at the pass. Kill them if they try to come here, to Cadwaller. Make sure they go back. And make sure you tell them that. Tell them what I said. Sa yalla rem. Sa yalla taplum. Chesset Opplenot. Go!”

  Paege nodded, and ran to Sone.

  As the beta dragon lifted off and approached the swirling horde above, Aymon stepped up beside Trysten. “What does that mean? What is he telling them?”