The Dragoneer Trilogy

by Vickie Knestaut

  Unless, of course, Trysten could capture the horde with its riders still upon their dragons. If the Western hordesmen never got a chance to tell anyone about the dam, it could still be finished in secret.

  The temptation struck Trysten to order an attack. If they swept down and used gravity to give them speed and momentum, they might be able to disrupt the horde long enough to allow Muzad and his men to catch up. The combined numbers would overwhelm the diminished enemy horde, but it would come at a high cost. They would certainly lose a few more dragons and several more riders in such a battle.

  Her lips drew into a tight grimace as she clutched the lip of the saddle. They couldn’t afford losses like that. Not now. The reinforcements would arrive any day, but they weren’t in Aerona yet. The safer option would be to wait, to get the Western Dragoneer and take his horde, his riders, and the information they carried.

  Chapter 15

  The sun had climbed only a bit higher in the sky, but it felt like a whole day had passed upon the back of Elevera by the time Trysten saw the army in full. A dragon circled the army in long, lazy swoops. Beneath the dragon, the army marched across the green and gray of the gentle hills like a rippling dark stain. In the middle of the stain, lighter-colored blocks appeared. As Trysten approached, the blocks resolved into the spear launchers Paege had described.

  Trysten ordered her horde to sweep into a shallow dive. It would allow them to put on some speed and close the distance between them and the Western horde. It would also give the Aerona dragons a bit of rest as they glided through the air under the power of wind and gravity.

  Ahead, the dragon swooping over the army turned into a tight spiral and fluttered to the ground. It landed among the troops. The army stopped its advance and waited. They were prepared for a fight.

  The bottom fell away from Trysten’s stomach. In the middle of the army, protected by spear launchers and longbow archers, sat the alpha dragon, her dragoneer upon her back. It was a devastatingly brilliant maneuver.

  The Aerona horde had no hope of capturing the Western horde. If Trysten wanted to protect the secret of the dam builders, she’d have to take out every dragon and rider individually, and do it before they reached the protection of the army.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Paege, who watched the sky ahead through squinted eyes, his face stoic. At this point, should they even bother to attack the Western horde? The villagers at Quiet Creek would have to be collected soon and ferried back to Aerona. There was no way they could be left out in the open now.

  Muzad and his men wouldn’t know enough to turn back. They were likely to get what was left of their devastated horde completely obliterated, and as much as that would be their own fault, the weyr needed the riders if they hoped to resist the cunning of this army.

  Or the cunning of the Originals.

  That was something else to consider. The Original who’d met Trysten in her den had a distinct look to himself. It was easy to see that he wasn’t quite human, but rather like a puppet crafted by a doll maker who had nothing to go on but a description of a human, having not seen one himself. If they flew over the army, would there be men like that among the soldiers?

  Trysten hunkered down a little more against Elevera’s neck. The wind whipped over her cheeks and dried out her eyes. She blinked hard and willed her dragon on as she opened herself up to the sensations around her. The sun warmed her back. Her legs ached with the hours spent in the saddle. Elevera was alert, tense, aware of the presence of another alpha. The muscles along her back and chest ached with the sustained effort of flight.

  Below, one of Muzad’s dragons struggled to keep up. Pain seared along the dragon’s back with each stroke of her wings. Trysten couldn’t see an injury, but it was there. She felt it.

  As she took in the Western dragons, her jaw tightened. They were exhausted. They ached all over. A number of them struggled with battle wounds. One had severe chest pain. Something was wrong with her heart. Yet she kept the pace, knowing in the way dragons knew such things that if she stopped now, short of the alpha, then her rider would die.

  Muzad’s arm went up and ordered an attack. The thrashing of his horde’s wings increased as they tried to catch the Western horde before it reached the army. They closed a bit of the gap, but as they did so, another of the royal dragons fluttered down out of the sky. She landed hard against the heather and stone. She was smart enough to tuck her wings in against her back, but there was nothing she could do for her hapless rider as the dragon rolled over with the momentum of her hard landing.

  “Fish and birds!” Trysten spat at the sight. The dragon righted herself and immediately looked back at her shoulders, at the fallen rider limp and lifeless upon her back.

  The royal hordesmen let loose with a flurry of arrows. The dragon with the pain in her heart had fallen to the back of the horde, and she took the brunt of Muzad’s assault. The rider lurched forward with the blow of an arrow, but it did not stay in his back. He turned around to release some answering shots, but only managed to get off one before his mount fell from the sky, the fire in her chest finally too heavy to allow her to remain aloft.

  Trysten ordered bows up and arrows notched as the horde swept down and nearly closed the gap. They may not be able to take the Western Dragoneer, but they could at least help their odds a bit.

  The Aerona horde let loose a volley of arrows, hitting several of the dragons along the Western flank. Another rider lurched forward as an arrow punched him in the back, but the tip failed to penetrate his armor, and the arrow dropped away. His dragon, having taken a number of the arrows in the wings, began to fall away without enough unbroken wing membrane to keep herself, her rider, and her gear aloft. In response, the rider tossed away his bow, the quiver on his saddle as well as the one on his back. He cut away several bags that fell to the ground, and then the Aerona horde let loose with another volley.

  Trysten closed her eyes, for a heartbeat, wanting to not see anything more, but then whipped them open for fear of missing a thing.

  An arrow lodged itself in the man’s shoulder. More arrows shredded the dragon’s wings. Trysten let out a groan as pain blossomed and burned along the wings she didn’t have.

  As the dragon dropped away at dangerous speeds, the rest of the horde tried to return a volley of arrows, but the Aerona horde was still too high and too far back to be in any danger.

  Trysten turned her attention to the army ahead. She tried to feel anything that might be the Originals. She hadn’t sensed anything from the Original in her den, but she had been far too startled by his presence to think to try and feel it out.

  Nothing. She felt the pain of the warring dragons on either side, but nothing more.

  Finally, the Western horde dipped down and dove for the protection of the army. To Trysten’s relief, Muzad showed enough wisdom to order his horde away. The remaining dragons heeded their riders and banked hard to the right, peeling away from the pursuit rather than flying into the range of the spear launchers.

  Trysten ordered her horde to follow, bank to the left, then level off. They remained high enough to avoid the spear launchers but low enough to get a look at the army below.

  Thousands of men. Thousands dressed in black, gray, and green stared up at the Aerona horde. She couldn’t see their faces or read them like she read the dragons, but it took no special powers to recognize their hatred for their enemy, the Aerona horde and all of Cadwaller. At this point, the royal horde hardly looked like a threat with fewer than a dozen dragons in flight. Trysten's horde, however, was still formidable even with a few dragons missing.

  Half the men below hefted long black shields. The other half of the army notched arrows and raised their points to the sky. There was no way their arrows could come close to the Aerona horde, but it was a warning nonetheless.

  In the middle of the army, the spear launchers stood. All five of them appeared to shimmy slightly as the platforms rotated and the spear-bearing arms turned slowly. Three of t
hem appeared to be tracking the horde through the sky. The remaining two tracked the royal horde as Muzad led his dragons around the other way.

  Teams of great, blue-gray beasts stood tethered to the fronts of the spear launchers. They were about six times the size of a man. Shaggy fur covered them. There were twenty beasts to a team, and Trysten couldn’t help but think of them as a horde.

  Among the spear launchers, a space opened up as men cleared out. In the middle of this space sat a large, sandy gray dragon watching Elevera soar through the sky. She completely ignored Avice and focused solely on the magnificent alpha of the Aeronian skies.

  Around the Western alpha, the remains of her horde fluttered to the ground. One dragon collapsed upon touchdown and fell upon her side. Trysten gritted her teeth against the sharp pain in her nonexistent wing. A cry came up to the lonely sky, and her heart fluttered as she thought of her father, pinned beneath the great mass of the fallen Aeronwind.

  The Western horde had won. It had cost them greatly, but they had won.

  Chapter 16

  A sudden rumble coursed through Elevera and shook Trysten’s bones. She placed a hand against the dragon's neck to calm her, to tell her not to bother, but then thought better of it. Trysten replaced her hand on the lip of the saddle and tightened her grip.

  Elevera flourished her wings again, flashing them up and out and then down in a display to make herself look as large as possible to the dragons below. She roared and whipped her head side to side as fire scorched the sky, then banked and streaked back across her own horde and circled around, waiting for an answer to her challenge.

  The sandy gray alpha below shuffled her weight. Her wings flicked out and fluttered. Her haunches dipped as if to launch her into the sky.

  Excited shouts broke out among the Western soldiers. Several of them dropped their shields and longbows before rushing across the ground to the alpha.

  But the Western Dragoneer held the alpha with his will. She settled for lashing her tail and releasing a roar at the approaching soldiers, a roar that licked with fire.

  Trysten clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on the saddle lip in frustration. Fish and birds! How were they going to take this alpha and the horde?

  As if to answer her unspoken thought, Muzad ordered several hordesmen to attack a target. He levied a finger at the alpha.

  Three hordesmen banked, then began a sharp dive toward the alpha. Archers took aim. The spear launchers continued to creak and rumble as men spun a set of wheels, one on each side of the platform, with increased fury.

  A soldier shouted. The men at the wheels stopped. Nets full of stones dropped from the back of the spear launchers and crashed to the ground with a thump as the arm sprung forward. A rack of scaffolding attached at the far end of the arm swiveled slightly, swinging upwards, and then four great spears flew out of the contraption as the armature stopped abruptly with a crack.

  Trysten held her breath as the royal hordesmen scrambled to avoid the weapon. A spear hit one of the dragons in the back, above her hips. The spear stuck a second then peeled back like a lever before dropping away. The dragon roared, and Trysten’s back arched in sympathetic pain. The other two dragons twisted and shifted and slipped cleanly through the barrage of spears.

  Even at her altitude, Trysten heard the clicks and clatter of shields raised across an army, edges bumping against each other as the men prepared for firebreath. Longbow archers raised their weapons through gaps in the shields. The Western Dragoneer hunched down as if preparing to leap to the sky after all.

  The royal dragons cut their dive short and aborted their attack, but they left their bellies exposed. A bristle of arrows erupted from the phalanx of soldiers as a dark orange dragon left Muzad’s horde and dropped out of the sky. The dragon fell with her wings at her side, letting the pull of gravity speed her to the ground.

  Trysten leaned forward, fought against doubling over as arrows pierced the undersides of the three dragons. But they had done their job. The archers and spear launchers scrambled to reload as the fourth dragon and rider dove. She snapped her wings open at the last second.

  The orange dragon roared as she closed in on the alpha and Dragoneer. But she wasn’t fast enough. A second wave of arrows erupted from the archers. The rider and dragon didn’t stand a chance.

  The Western alpha laid herself out flat to the ground in a maneuver Trysten hadn’t expected to see. The orange, royal dragon, twisting in the air as arrows prickled her all over, crashed to the ground behind the Western alpha. The dragon hit hard and fast, flipped and rolled with her momentum. Western soldiers scrambled and dove, but a number of them were simply crushed.

  Trysten clasped her hand over her mouth. Swords were drawn, and the soldiers fell upon the remains of the dragon and rider.

  “Muzad!” Trysten shouted across the gulf of sky. She pointed to the east, to the village.

  Muzad saw her, then looked back to the carnage below. One of the three that had taken her share of the first barrage of arrows struggled to gain altitude with her shredded wings. She would not make it back to the village. The dark blue dragon that had taken the spear to the hip managed to pull herself back up into the sky, out of the reach of archers and spear launchers, but blood dripped from her right back claw. She would not make it back to the village either.

  Below, the Western alpha stood back up and turned her head to the carnage behind her. The Dragoneer upon her back lifted his face to the sky. And though she couldn’t quite see his expression, Trysten felt his sneer as surely as if it slithered over her shoulders like the coils of a snake.

  There was nothing left to do except to collect the wounded and those at the creek. Trysten ordered her horde to fall in behind her and follow her back to the weyr.

  Elevera banked through the sky, and the Aeronian dragons swooped into a V formation behind her. The hulk of the mountains sat behind them and taunted, almost leering at the manner of which the hordes had been turned away.

  In the air on the other side of the army, Muzad gave a similar order. The remaining dragons fell in behind him and Avice and they began to follow Trysten, except for Jurdun, Muzad’s new commander, who dropped down on an angle, heading for the struggling copper dragon with the shredded wings that would soon fall from the sky in exhaustion and leave her rider stranded ahead of the army.

  Chapter 17

  Trysten ordered the horde to ground as they approached Quiet Creek. The dragons landed hard around her, the beasts worn and tired from the battle and flight. As Trysten gave the signal for her riders to rest and refresh, she saw the royal horde come down behind hers and land a little farther up the shore of the creek.

  The men who worked at piling stones into the creek stopped their work as the dragons landed. Leeden, the leader of the work detail, jogged up to Trysten as she dismounted.

  “We saw the dragons fly over,” Leeden said as he halted before Trysten. He looked around at the others. His brow lowered and he appeared to be taking a quick count of dragons and riders. “Did you get them?” he finally asked.

  “They took shelter among the ranks of the army. We couldn’t get close enough to capture them.” Trysten glanced over her shoulder at Muzad, who approached in the stiff-legged manner of a rider who’d been in the sky for half a day.

  “That’s a shame,” Leeden said and shook his head. He looked back at the men behind him. They had resumed their work.

  “We have to evacuate you and your men,” Trysten said. “The Western hordesmen saw you. The army knows what you’re doing. They’ll send either scouts or the rest of their horde to stop you and undo your work before the spear launchers get here.”

  Leeden drew in a deep breath. “This dam is our best hope of holding that army up. We get it high enough, they’ll have to stop their advance, disassemble those launchers, cross the creek, then reassemble them on the other side. It’d take them a whole day just to cross this creek.”

  “We can’t leave you here. You’ll be slaughter
ed. All of you," Trysten said.

  Leeden looked up the gentle western slope that funneled Quiet Creek into the River Gul. He planted his hands upon his hips then turned his attention to Trysten. “Can’t you protect us? Surely you can hold them off. Either their horde or their scouts.”

  Trysten’s eyes widened a bit in surprise after hearing such a suggestion. “You saw them fly over. They nearly made it to Aerona this morning. We can’t afford to leave the village unguarded. We have to take you back. We’ll find a different way.”

  “Trysten!” Muzad shouted from behind her. “Why didn’t you take advantage?”

  She whirled around to find the other dragoneer storming toward her, his hands clenched into fists and his face full of dark fury.

  “Take advantage?” she asked.

  “You let my men throw away their lives and dragons for nothing!”

  “What?” Trysten asked. Her brow furrowed in confusion, but her back straightened. Muzad was coming for a fight. Her hand itched to reach for the dragonslayer sword at her side.

  “Why didn’t you order an attack on that forsaken dragoneer! For all that is wild and split, Trysten! My men had drawn their arrows. My men lost three dragons and a rider to give your horde a wide-open shot to end this there and then. And you blew it! You blew it!” Muzad shook his fists before him in barely-contained rage. His men hurried along the shore of the creek to fall in behind him.

  Trysten blinked. Her lips parted, but she was unsure of what to say, how to defend herself against Muzad’s accusations. One of the last things she’d expected to hear from him was that it her fault that his men had died for nothing.

  “You didn’t call for cover," Trysten said. "How was I to know your plan?"

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you any of this!” Muzad shouted. He slammed a fist into an open palm. “You call yourself a dragoneer, yet you can’t even fight the simplest battles. You think you’re too special, too blessed to risk a bloody nose? If that’s the case, then you might as well take your yellow dragon and flee to the plains.”