Hordesmen: The Wisdom of Dragons #4

by Vickie Knestaut

  It was a strange thing. He had no idea which wagon carried Chanson, yet if the dragoneer died, Merilyss would simply know. Master Gury had denied that magic was at play. He said it was some sort of force that permeated the air, governed by the spirits of the dragoneer and alpha twining, the bond of two who had absolute faith in one another. Sure sounded like magic.

  Rius pumped her wings a few more times, then settled in to coast a bit as the grass ahead whipped itself to the ground, and the next blast of wind barreled toward them.

  Ahead, dragons rose on the shoulders of a gust. Rius tilted the leading edge of her wings, lifting them. The chill blast struck Tyber and drove him and the dragon back and higher into the air.

  He tensed as if Chanson’s final breath would be whipped away with the gust, dragged off to the east like the rope that bound Wanlin.

  Aerona waited if he needed it.

  Rius shifted beneath him. She folded her wings in slightly, dipping the leading edges down. They slid through the wind like a hot knife through a block of lard.

  Except there was nothing hot about the day’s ride.

  They settled in behind Maybelle again. The horde remained in formation. Chanson had drawn his next breath.

  Tyber scanned the grass below as it whipped about. Even the plains fowl wouldn’t bother moving today. Not unless a cow or horse threatened to step on them. The crossbows were quiet. Everyone braced themselves against a hard, grinding day.

  He squinted at the horizon.

  There.

  His heart skittered in his chest. Dragons. Dragons on the horizon.

  He whipped his hands into the air and looked for Chanson out of habit. Then he saw Olsid and Merilyss on the opposite side of the caravan, the riderless Wende close behind, her saddle vacant, yet full of foreboding.

  As soon as Tyber began to signal, Olsid sat up straight, staring beyond Tyber. The proctor nodded, yanked off his glove, stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly.

  Maintain formation.

  Tyber studied the horizon. The dragons looked bigger now. They were spaced apart. The pale gray of the cloud deck was visible between the dark dots. Five of them. At least.

  Tyber scanned the grass again. It was possible that the dragonjacks were a distraction. Others might be waiting in ambush. If so, the violent wind would soon give them away.

  He leaned forward, placing his hands on the back of Rius’ neck, careful not to give her the signal for firebreath. He looked to the west, a bit to the north.

  If the bond broke, he would push Rius for Aerona. He would have to. It would be the only thing he could do. He shouldn’t have accepted this. Not if the price was slaying his dragon. They should have said as much upfront.

  Shouts rose from the caravan before being dashed away by the wind. Men on horseback began to guide the cattle in closer to the road. Mercenaries climbed to the tops of the wagons, their ever-present crossbows hefted before them.

  Tyber sat up. If the bond broke, he and Rius would leave. But until then, he’d given his word. He would protect the caravan. The people in the mother city needed that food.

  Rius swung around the head of the caravan and began to glide back towards the rear, picking up speed as she was pushed by the wind. Out across the plain, the dragons appeared larger as they neared. Nine of them. Maybe more. They were flapping their wings a good bit. Occasionally, Tyber could see more dragons behind the others. But they were flying diagonally into the wind, and paying a price for it.

  Olsid whistled. He signaled for them to fall into a V formation.

  Tyber’s jaw clenched.

  Merilyss swept away from the caravan, banking hard and fast as the wind pushed her toward the east. The dragons behind her mimicked her movement and fell in as the left flank. Tyber pressed Rius to her right, over the caravan, and on to take her place in the right flank.

  As Rius moved into position behind Ren and Maybelle, Tyber eyed the approaching dragons. There might be eleven. It was hard to say yet. He blinked. His eyes were too dry to see well. He released the saddle lip and rubbed his hands against his thighs. The shearling in his gloves pressed against his palms and itched.

  He couldn’t pluck his bow with gloves on. Should he take them off now?

  Wait. Wait for orders. Patience. Those that won the battle were those who were patient enough to see the end. So said Master Vark.

  Theola. Did she feel like this as she slipped off to her first battle?

  A clenching wave passed through Tyber’s gut. He stirred in his saddle.

  Theola had faced Western hordesmen. Warriors from across the mountains. They were about to confront thieves. Bullies. Nathers with dragons.

  Tyber straightened in his saddle, his back rigid. That’s right. Nathers with dragons. He recalled the look of shock and terror on Nather’s face as Rius let out a stream of firebreath. If Theola could handle Western hordesmen, then surely Tyber could hold his own against eleven dragonjacks that were outnumbered two-to-one.

  Wende broke formation.

  She dipped as a gust of wind pushed them all to their left. Most of the dragons turned slightly, presenting their sides and taking the cross-currents off their wings. Wende turned to the left and dropped, diving under Merilyss and charging ahead.

  “Wende!” Olsid snapped.

  The dragon looked back at her former rider, then drifted off to the side, blocking Herminion’s line-of-sight.

  Olsid watched the dragonjacks. He reached for his bow, drew an arrow, and sat with the arrow across the saddle. Wende stilled her wings, twisted them slightly, and drifted back down until she flew behind and below Merilyss.

  Had Chanson died? Was Wende absconding? The horde breaking up?

  Olsid replaced his bow, and with an arrow still clutched in his hand, he signaled for a straight line.

  Tyber urged Rius ahead, drifting slightly to the right. He let up on his urging as they drew abreast of Ren and Maybelle.

  Ren looked at Tyber, nodding once. He held his palm level before himself, clutched it into a fist, shook it once and nodded.

  Tyber returned the wish for good luck, then faced the dragonjacks.

  Eleven of them. And Olsid had decided to tip his hand.

  The lead dragonjack plucked a bow from the side of his saddle, drew an arrow from his back, then loosed it into the air. It arced upward, high and straight before a gust of wind caught it and pushed it slightly toward the east, letting it fall away well before and wide of the horde.

  He then signaled something that made no sense. Fly atop point.

  In near unison, the dragonjacks banked off to the east, swung around, and let the wind whisk them away.

  Tyber leaned forward, watching and waiting for orders.

  Olsid sat back in the saddle. He looked across each wing, then signaled for them to resume their patrol.

  The dragonjacks continued to flee, casting glances over their shoulders.

  But Olsid had refused the bait.

  Chapter 18

  With each blow of Tyber’s mallet, snow blew outward in a puff. His left hand, clutching the tent stake, tingled with his efforts, prickling like hundreds of needles danced over his skin. Luckily, he didn’t fumble the stake or miss its head.

  After the final blow, he lunged forward, dropping to his knees at the next canvas loop. He picked up the stake that he’d dropped beside it earlier, then placed the tip through the loop and drove it through the trampled grass until he felt the stake settle against the ground.

  Snow and wind, together with the fur-lined hood pulled tight around his head, muffled the sound of the mallets across the campsite. On the other side of the flat tent, Ren gave a last, savage blow to a stake, driving it well into the ground. He looked at Tyber, his shoulders heaving slightly with his efforts. A sharp gust cut across them, pushing Tyber’s hood back and tearing Ren’s from his head altogether.

  The wind scoured away the snow that had settled on the tent.

  “Drive them in deep!” Ren commanded
as he flipped his hood back up. “I am not dealing with a collapsed tent in the middle of the night.”

  Tyber nodded and turned his attention back to the stake as Ren hurried to the corner.

  “Recruits!” Ander shouted.

  Tyber looked over his shoulder. Ander stood in the place where the grass would have been cleared for a fire, had they any hope of a fire on a night like this.

  “Oh please tell us we’re spending the night in the caravan,” Ren mumbled, his complaint barely audible over the howl of wind.

  “Gather up!” Ander called, twitching his gloved fingers to call them forward.

  Tyber dropped his mallet and hurried, half-stumbling to Ander. His legs were still stiff from the day’s flight. He’d been over-alert the rest of the day, watching for the dragonjacks to return.

  He stopped near Ander, then looked off to the caravan. It was barely visible. Clouds of snow blew across the ground, obscuring the wagons. Dark shadows hurried about. Light shone in a window blocked with oiled canvas. It looked warm. Warmer than he would ever possibly be again.

  “You did good today,” Ander called, lifting his voice over the restless growl of the wind. “From where I sat, you all looked like any of the finest hordesmen I have flown with. Your formation was tight. Your responses to Olsid impeccable. You really made me proud.”

  Tyber grabbed the edges of his cloak and pulled it tighter around himself. Snow bit into his cheeks, so numb that they burned. Fat flakes caught in his eyelashes and blurred his vision.

  “I want you to spend some time tonight reviewing battle scenarios with your bunkmates. What we saw today was an overt assessment of our ranks. The dragonjacks came to have a look at what was guarding the caravan.”

  Tyber glanced at Ren, waiting for a smart remark about Wende, but Ren remained quiet, squinting into the snow. His breath billowed out before him, dashed away quickly by the wind.

  It would be a cold, cold night. Would Chanson survive?

  “Only they know if what they saw was enough of a deterrent,” Ander continued. “That last move of theirs was an attempt to bait us into pursuit. They wanted to draw us away from the caravan without actually engaging us. They might have simply wanted to know if we could be baited so easily. They might also have had forces waiting for us farther out, near the horizon. It is quite likely we will see them again. Or their friends. So I’m serious. Review, review, review.”

  Ander drove his fist into his palm. “Quiz each other. Go over signals. All the strategies and tactics that Chanson, Olsid, and myself have taught you. I want you to not have to even think when Olsid signals an order. Don’t think, do! Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Proctor!” they shouted.

  Ander nodded. “Good. Make me proud, boys. Now get out of this wild snow!”

  Within moments, Ren and Tyber had their tent standing and secured. They raced to their dragons and whipped gear out of their saddlebags, a process made more difficult by the dragons’ refusal to stand. The dragons laid on the ground, curled as tight as possible and pressed close together. Now and then, a blast of light flashed among the tightly packed cluster, and the heat of the firebreath disappeared as quickly as the light.

  Finally, Tyber and Ren collapsed in their tent, lying atop their gear, panting.

  “You want to go first?” Ren asked in the near-dark.

  Tyber shook his head. “Give me a few minutes. I’m not sure I’m still alive, yet.”

  Ren snorted. “That’s not funny, man.”

  Tyber took a couple ragged breaths. “No. I guess it isn’t.”

  Ren pushed himself to his hands and knees. He shuffled through his gear, then sat back on his heels, his head brushing against the sloping canvas above him.

  “I’ll go first. If I don’t come back in a few minutes, come look for me, will you?”

  Tyber drew his cloak closer. If Ren was going first, Tyber thought he should unfasten his bedroll and crawl inside, get as warm as possible. But that would require that he pull his hands out from under his cloak.

  “You die out there, I’m feeding you to Rius,” Tyber finally said.

  “A true pal,” Ren said, then turned away. A moment later, a rush of cold air streamed in and clutched at Tyber.

  He sat up, spun around, and reached for the dangling ties of the flap. Before he could begin knotting them, a hooded figure barged in, brushing past Tyber and collapsing atop Ren’s gear.

  “Ren?” Tyber asked.

  “No. It’s me,” Quall said.

  “Quall,” Tyber sighed. He’d been trying to avoid the recruit since the awkward night by the river, but that would be wild-well impossible now with Quall huddled on Ren’s side of the tent.

  “What do you want?” Tyber asked. The tent flap shook and shivered with the wind. The canvas sides of the tent rattled and flapped as if they sat inside an angry beast.

  “Beat it all,” Tyber said under his breath as he turned to the ties and began to knot them off.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Quall said. His palms whispered as he rubbed them together. “For the honey. Last night. I’ve never had any before. Did you know that?”

  Tyber recalled the taste, the unreal sweetness mixed with the hint and tang of iron from the steel blade of his knife. It was a lifetime ago.

  “I was happy to share,” Tyber said, gritting his teeth as his fingers fumbled one of the ties. “I didn’t deserve it. What they gave me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why didn’t you deserve it?”

  Tyber moved on to the next tie. “We all work hard. The whole horde. We should share the rewards.”

  Quall inched forward, pushing aside a bag between himself and Tyber. Water sloshed softly, and it seemed so strange, that their waterskins should still hold water and not ice.

  “I’ll remember that about you,” Quall said. “I promise you that. If you’re the one.”

  “The one what?” Tyber demanded. “Are you still going on about that?”

  Quall sat upright, his silhouette barely visible against the dark canvas. When the wind eased and the canvas stopped fluttering, Quall almost disappeared into it, leaving Tyber with the feeling that he’d never get him out of the tent again, like an odor.

  “By all the scales, Ty. We faced them. We stared them dead in the eye.”

  Tyber turned back to the tent flap. “And they turned tail and fled. Bullies with dragons. Nothing more.”

  Quall grasped Tyber by the shoulder. Tyber twisted away, and Quall’s hand fell to the gear and shadows between them.

  “They’re coming for us,” Quall said. “You heard Ander, right? They’re coming for us. And you saw Wende. Under the eyes of the gods, Tyber, we’re going to die. Some of us are. Will you do it?”

  Tyber dropped the ties and turned around to face Quall. He wrapped his arms around his shins and pulled his legs close, huddling his heat to himself. “Do what?”

  “Kill Rius.”

  “No! No one is killing dragons! Except us. We’re killing their dragons if they come after us.”

  “I’d do it,” Quall said. “Loymoss. If we’re in the air. If I know that… I’d do it. If I had to.”

  “It’s not going to happen! Look, Quall—”

  “I don’t want you to forget me!” Quall cried, his voice high and hard on the ears. Tyber clenched his teeth against the sound.

  “If I die,” Quall went on, “I don’t want you to forget me. I won’t be gone if you remember me, right? I won’t—Oh, by the eyes of the gods, Ty! They’ll just build a cairn right over the top of me. Me and Loymoss. If they build one at all. And no one will know. Everyone will forget. And all my family will hear is that I didn’t make it back and they can’t ever come and see my grave and now that Decker is dead it’s like I never was at all!”

  “Decker?”

  Quall grabbed Tyber’s knee. “You didn’t forget Decker, did you?”

  Decker’s face, along with those of the other recruits w
ho had fallen on the trip to Aerona, had begun to blur in Tyber’s memory. He hadn’t been close to any of them. It wasn’t his horde.

  Tyber shook his head. “No! I didn’t forget him. I just don’t know what he has to do with anything.”

  “You cut that boy loose, right?” Quall asked. “The one you caught in the grass.”

  “What does it matter, Quall?”

  “Why do you do stuff like that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Quall’s hand slid from Tyber’s knee. “Can I tell you something now?” he asked.

  “Ty-ber!” Ren yelled. “Open the flap!”

  Tyber yanked the ties away from the tent flap, then scooted back just as Ren charged through. He barreled into Tyber, knocking him back and landing on top of him.

  “What in the wilds?” Ren cried as he rolled off Tyber and into Quall. “Is the whole wild wing in here?”

  Tyber sat up. “I’ve got to feed Rius.”

  He started to crawl for the flap, then remembered the feed was in his gear.

  “Who the heck are you?” Ren asked. “Aunger?”

  “It’s me,” Quall said.

  “Quall?”

  “I need my bag,” Tyber said. “I have to feed Rius.”

  “Quall?” Ren repeated. “What are you doing here? You get lost or something?”

  Without a further word, Quall scurried out of the tent, leaving the flap writhing slightly in the wind.

  “What was he doing in here?” Ren asked. “Let me guess, keeping your side of the tent warm while you warmed up mine. How thoughtful of both of you.”

  Tyber fumbled in his feed bag, grasped the burlap of Rius’ sack, then slipped out of the tent.

  The circle of tents rocked and shivered, buffeted by the wind. A flash of light and curl of flame leapt from the dragons beyond. Snow had begun to gather on them, and they were so entangled Tyber couldn’t tell them apart until Rius lifted her head.

  Merilyss lifted her head as well and sprayed a blast of warmth over the hides of her horde.

  Chapter 19

  The canvas shuddered around Tyber.