At the entrance to the weyr, Trysten’s mother took a step forward, only to be restrained by her husband’s hand. She stopped, her wrist held behind her.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her gaze dropped to the hole in Trysten’s armor.
“I will be,” Trysten said, then swallowed hard to keep the pain and struggle out of her voice.
Her father nodded. “She has a duty to see to yet.”
Caron stepped back, not quite to her husband’s side. She covered her mouth with her hand and gave a nod. Tears dampened her eyes.
Trysten passed down the aisle of the weyr. She could sense Elevera behind her. Ahead, the courier dragons shuffled with impatience, nearly ready to go. Weyrmen hurried about, stuffing saddlebags full of supplies that might be needed. The breath of the courier dragons came in unison as they watched her stride past, and on up the stairs to her den. There, she stepped inside, sat at her table, and dipped her quill in the ink well. She held it above the ledger, and her hand trembled. It shook and quivered as the battle came back in flashes. Every blow. Every arrow. Bones into the stones. A cairn exploding with the collision of a stricken dragon. All of it played across her as if she herself was the ledger.
How could the Western Dragon Lord go through that? How could he put himself through all of that? She had to do it. It was her duty to defend the village, and now that she knew what it entailed, knew the cost of that battle, the thought of going off again made her want to curl into a ball beneath the table and cry until she turned to dust and slipped through the cracks in the floorboards. It was an awful, horrible thing, and she wondered how anyone could willingly participate in it. It was one thing to have to defend her kingdom, but what kind of monsters were these Western men? What kind of ghastly things purposefully flew into their kingdom and sought out battle, sought out injury and death? How could any dragon lord do that?
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. In the midst of it, as every blow echoed through her bones, she drew on Elevera’s strength. It kept her going. Even with a rent in her wings and a bellyful of arrows, a bellyful that she took to save Trysten’s life, Elevera had kept a calmness about her. She held a stoic attitude as if the battle was as inevitable as the storms that roll down from the mountains. She lost members of her horde, and the ones that she had gained, the captured Western dragons, she regarded them in the same manner that she viewed her own. The very dragons that had carried the Western hordesmen and had clawed and bitten her brethren were now her own, and she would look after them and protect them as much as the dragons she grew up with in this weyr.
Such amazing creatures. She was not worthy of Elevera’s loyalty. None of the humans were.
A drop of ink fell to the blank page of the ledger. Trysten lowered her hand and began to write out the names of the fallen, and those unaccounted for. With their names recorded, she dipped her quill again, and her hand hovered over the page, unsure of where to begin in her written record of the battle.
A knock came to the door. Before she could tell the intruder to go away, her father opened the door and walked in.
“Put down the quill,” he said as closed the door behind himself.
Trysten sat back in her chair, shocked. “It is my duty.”
Mardoc shook his head. “Record the names of the fallen, but do not write your account of the battle yet. What you say may be used against you.”
“What?”
“The prince,” Mardoc continued as he entered the room, leaning upon his staff. “When he arrives, he may read your entry, especially after a visit to the tavern and he hears all about today’s battle.”
“But if he hears about it—”
“Tavern talk is not as reliable as the written word.” Mardoc collapsed with heavy bones into the chair on the other side of the table. “Tell me what happened. Tell me first.”
The quill slipped from Trysten’s fingers. The tip of it made a mark across Issod’s name. She picked the quill up and attempted to brush the ink away with the tips of her fingers, but only succeeded in smearing it further.
“Oh, Father…” Trysten began. She slumped back in her chair. “You can’t even begin to imagine.”
“I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “In all my days, I have never seen a dragoneer capture an enemy horde and bring it back before. I have never heard of such a thing. Before today, if one had even told me such a thing was possible, I would never have believed it until I saw it with my own eyes.”
He leaned forward and rested more of his weight upon his staff. “How far do your powers go, Little Heart?”
The pet name nearly shattered Trysten. She was no longer Little Heart. She was no longer that young girl who had merely wanted to be Dragoneer.
“It was awful. There was another dragon lord—”
“Another?” Mardoc leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide and face long with surprise.
Trysten nodded. “A Western dragon lord. The Hollin men said it was the same horde that attacked them. But they had these swords. And after I…” Trysten took a deep breath.
Mardoc held up a hand. “Start from the beginning.”
And so Trysten started from the beginning and told her father of everything that had happened since they left the village that morning. She told of the two battles, of capturing the first horde and of how the second was lost. Once she finished, her father merely gave his head a slight shake.
“What kind of men do such a thing?” Trysten asked, and then found she had run out of breath.
“They rode with a dragon lord,” Mardoc said. “They knew the cost of loss.”
Trysten shook her head. “But we… If anything… We would never.”
“But we are not a people of war. War is a way of life for the Westerners—”
“But how could they know?” Trysten asked. “If they had a dragon lord, they had to know that they would be virtually unstoppable. How could a normal horde ever hope to beat them? Look at how quickly they defeated the entire Hollin weyr. It’s almost as if they had to know…”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Mardoc nodded. “As if they knew they might go up against a dragon lord. And not just any dragon lord, but one that could take their horde.”
A chill ran through Trysten. Her eyes dropped to the ledger.
Mardoc tapped the floor with his staff. “It’s enough to record the names of the fallen for now. Let’s see to others—”
“But it’s the custom—”
“There is nothing customary about being a dragoneer. Not anymore. Not since you have taken the title. Come. We must see to other things.” He stood to indicate that the discussion was over.
Trysten slipped the stopper into her ink well, then followed her father down the stairs. She paused and glanced back at the den. If her father, a man who stood by the customs of the dragoneers so steadfastly until the end could tell her to wait to write the record of battle, then what was the chance that things had been left out? What was the chance that all the dragoneers before her had been selective in what they recorded of their history?
As they stepped onto the landing, Trysten surveyed the weyr beneath them. There was still a bustle of activity as people ran about, seeing to the injured dragons and seeking out the last few people in the village who hadn’t heard the story of the battle as undoubtedly told to them by one of the Aerona hordesmen.
They descended into the weyr and found Galelin overseeing the work of an apprentice who patched up a rent in a dragon’s wing.
“How’s Elevera?” Trysten asked.
Galelin nodded, then issued a last few commands to the nervous apprentice before he ushered Trysten and Mardoc over to the corner of an empty stall. Trysten’s gut tightened as she braced herself for terrible news.
“Elevera will be fine,” Galelin said in a hushed tone. “A day or two in the stable, and she’ll be terrorizing doles of doves like old times.”
As puzzlement settled onto Trysten’s face, Galelin
leaned forward and glanced from Trysten to Mardoc. “I saw one of those swords brought back from the battle. One of the hordesmen was waving it about, showing it off, spoils of war and all that, as if this whole wild fighting season was nothing more than a matter of sport.”
Galelin spat into the corner.
Trysten’s back tightened. She hadn’t forbidden the men to plunder the bodies of the fallen hordesmen, but perhaps she ought to have.
“I recognized it,” Galelin continued. “In one of the calmer moments, I slipped back to my cottage and looked it up in a book of myth.”
“Myth?” Mardoc asked.
“Myth,” Galelin confirmed with a nod. “It is the sword carried by the hordesmen of The Second Horde.”
“The Second Horde?” Trysten asked with a cocked eyebrow. She had begun to think of the horde as the second horde and was a bit incredulous to think it was what it was actually called.
“I’ve heard this tale,” Mardoc said. “A long time ago. From my grandfather.”
“You never told me,” Trysten said.
“The Second Horde was the elite guard of one of the Originals. When he took human form and searched for a mate, he became vulnerable, mortal. To protect himself, he personally trained a weyr of hordesmen to act as his personal guards. As he had offspring, he raised them—”
“Wait. I thought he had one daughter; Adalina,” Trysten said with a shake of her head.
“You cannot have an army with one child,” Galelin said.
“It seems that I do,” Mardoc quipped.
“But the swords… They are… They have one purpose that I can see,” Trysten said.
“Make no mistake. They are deadly to anyone who takes their blows. But it is not humans that the Original needed protection from. Even in human form, he was far mightier than even the strongest man to have ever lived.”
“He needed protection from dragons?”
“Other Originals,” Galelin corrected. “Those swords were meant to slay other Originals.”
Trysten glanced from Galelin to Mardoc. “What does this mean, then? That those men had those swords?”
Galelin cleared his throat. “It means that when those men fail to return, whoever sent them will know that they encountered someone mighty enough to slay the Original’s personal guards.”
After Trysten had seen to the rest of the injured men and dragons and had her own injury treated, she had served the village once again as a guest of honor at a banquet. She forced herself to smile and say the appropriate things throughout the dinner. But as soon as she could, she retired to the weyr. Most of the villagers remained in the square, celebrating with drink and music. Only a single night watchman greeted Trysten when she entered. He eyed her with open awe. She nodded to him, and he nodded back as she walked down the aisle and looked into the eyes of each dragon. Their breath came slow and steady and matched her steps. She stopped at Elevera’s stall and peered up at the dragon. She was on her feet already, and though Trysten wanted to step inside the stall, crouch, and peer at Galelin’s handiwork, she couldn’t bring herself to tear herself away from her gaze. Trysten took a deep breath with the rest of the dragons, and then lifted her palm up and out.
Elevera lowered her head and rested the side of her muzzle against Trysten’s hand. She recalled the song, the subtle shifts in the dragons’ breathing patterns. She remembered the different rhythms, the rising and falling, the swelling and crashing, and it seemed as if entire conversations, whole storied songs were passed between the dragons with nothing more than the changing rhythms of their breath. She had been able to sit and listen to it all when she was a girl. She could take it in with rapture for hours on end until her father came in and all the dragons fell into unison as if they were every bit the edge of a blade, nothing more than a tool waiting for the warrior’s command.
And now she was the warrior, and these dragons were a weapon for her to wield.
The pit of her stomach hollowed out in grief. She gritted her teeth, and her throat clenched closed at never being able to hear that song again. On the one hand, she trembled with knowing how much she had given up. On the other hand, how could she not take the title and responsibility that accident and life and history had bestowed upon her?
Trysten took a deep, trembling breath as a tear dropped down her cheek. Her fingers curled, clutched at the golden muzzle of Elevera. She pulled the dragon closer, then rested her brow against the dragon’s nose.
“Sing for me,” Trysten whispered. “Please.”
Elevera’s breath slowed as it swept over Trysten’s face. Down the aisle, the breathing of the smaller courier dragons picked up. Across the weyr, the dragons altered their breathing, swung their patterns, rolled low, grumbling breaths. Crescendos of high, quick breaths made a staccato rhythm up and down the aisle. The weyr brimmed to the rafters with their quiet song as the dragons sang for their dragoneer who wept for all that was lost and what was yet to come.
Vickie Knestaut & Danny Knestaut
The Dragoneer: Book 2
The Prince
I
The Prince
Chapter 1
Trysten tied the leather saddle straps around her waist and raised her head to survey the range of mountains to the west. Elevera was restless, her emotions strong. Images of clouds and a dragon’s-eye view of the ground far below flooded Trysten’s mind. The dragon shifted beneath the saddle, her belly still tender from taking arrows in the battle the week before. Her gold wings itched where Galelin had stitched the torn leathery membranes. Despite her healing wounds, she was eager for flight and impatient for the sky.
“Easy, girl,” Trysten mumbled, her hands knotting the straps that secured her to the saddle. The mountains were gray and motionless on the border between the kingdoms, yet the tickle at the back of her neck grew. A Western horde could sweep down from the pass any minute, but it was the threat from the east that tightened her shoulders the most.
She tugged the strap at her side while she turned and peered at the empty eastern horizon. The dawn sun washed across the land as if it were spreading its arms wide to suggest that there was nothing here to see, nothing at all. And that made it all the worse.
Behind her, the hordesmen of Aerona weyr waited on their mounts. Their fists gripped the forward lip of their saddles, ready to tell their dragons with a tug of leather and a kick of the heels that it was time to return to the sky. At the edge of the weyr yard, more than a dozen dragons stood staked to the ground on thick ropes that would be nothing more than a slight inconvenience if any of them decided to leave. They were not prisoners. They had bonded with Elevera, and they stayed because the alpha dragon wished it.
Too bad Trysten couldn’t say the same for their former riders.
Borsal stepped out of the weyr, a short stick in his hand. He walked to a cage of doves along the outer wall and nodded to Trysten.
She nodded back, then made a chopping motion with her hand.
The cage door snapped open with a pop. Borsal ran the stick vigorously along the rungs of the cage. Startled doves fled through the opening and raced for the sky. Trysten swung her arm around her head once, then pointed to the dole of doves that rose in a flurry and flutter of wings.
As she gave a gentle hitch to Elevera’s sides and yanked on the lip of the saddle, the dragon was already crouching, then leaping into the air with a mighty shove of her great, golden wings. The village fell away beneath her as Elevera pushed hard to gain altitude and not let the small, nimble doves outpace her.
Air whooshed behind her as the other dragons followed suit. Trysten could not only hear them, she could sense them as well. She knew that she could look over her shoulder and know exactly which dragon she’d see.
Soon, the dole leveled off and tried to make a horizontal run from the trailing dragons. Elevera shifted her focus to speed and quickly caught up with the dole and flew past it. As the dole broke to the left, Paege flanked it upon Sone, the new beta, and together they kept the d
ole moving forward until Trysten ordered the doves turned around and herded back to the village.
Typically, dole herding was a maneuver performed out over the open hills, far from the village. Today though, Trysten wanted to make an impression. As Elevera surged ahead and blocked the progress of the doves, Trysten issued a series of orders with arm and hand gestures. The horde of dragons and riders circled and drove the doves back to the village just as she had commanded. She wanted the dole kept low to the ground. As they flew over the village, Trysten directed various hordesmen to dive through the dole. Now and then, a dragon snatched a bird from the cloud of frantic doves, but for the most part, the exercise was to practice formation flying, to keep the dole in a tight knot of birds moving from one place to another.
To Trysten’s delight, villagers gathered and craned their necks back to take in the aerial theatrics. They gestured and pointed as each rider took a turn scattering the doves to see how quickly the remaining hordesmen could herd them back into a ball. Children raced about and collected the stray gray and blue feathers that fell from the sky, as treasured as the first flakes of snow that came in the peaceful season.
Trysten grinned as she watched the reactions of those below. Fostering this sense of excitement in the villagers had been her intent all along. She wanted them to see the hordesmen and dragons having fun, enjoying themselves. After today’s exercises, Paege should have no difficulty finding recruits to fill the empty saddles.
As the dole herding continued, the excitement of the crowd changed and shifted in pitch. A man shouted, then more villagers cried out. Trysten laid her left hand upon Elevera’s neck and hitched with her right heel, but the dragon had begun to turn in the air before Trysten completed the command.
Below, three men raced away from one of the cottages being used to hold prisoners. They ran toward the mountains with several of the villagers in pursuit.
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 29