Trysten peered into the lead dragon’s green eyes, visible and vibrant in the pale blue face. There was no mistaking. That dragon was in charge. She was the alpha. She was claiming these skies for her own.
Elevera rumbled beneath Trysten.
“Not yet,” she said, then pulled her bowstring back a couple of inches more.
Kaylar on the left and Deslan on the right released their arrows. The riders behind them followed. The second wave of Western riders unleashed theirs, but Kaylar and Deslan were already peeling away, presenting the bellies of their dragons to take the arrows, and take one Verillium did.
Trysten’s stomach flinched with the blow delivered to the dragon. The first wave of riders held their arrows, aiming for Trysten.
It would be their loss.
More Aeronian hordesmen let loose with arrows. Trysten winced as the iron tips battered shoulders, chests, flicked through the soft membranes of wings. A Western rider yelped and his arrow flew off into the heather as he clutched at a hole ripped from his shin to the back of his calf.
Still, the first wave of Westerners held their bowstrings taught.
Trysten’s shoulder quivered. Her elbow wavered with the tension.
She’d get one shot at this. It had to count.
The second wave had all taken their shots at the Aeronian dragons that had formed the arms of the U. They drew second arrows, notched them, and aimed them at Trysten.
She took a deep breath. Hold it. Hold it. Just a few more seconds. She needed to be able to see not only the eyes of the alpha but the eyes of her counterpart.
Almost.
And then her counterpart looked down.
A spray of arrows erupted from underneath Elevera. They raced up and caught the alpha in the throat, in the chest. Despite herself, Trysten coughed, gagged. Her arrow flew wild as the Western alpha went limp. It’s head reared up to one side as it fell away.
“Fish and—”
Elevera swept hard to the left as the rest of the Western horde released its arrows. Trysten grunted as a few bounced off Elevera’s scales, and a few whipped through her wing membranes. She leaned to the left as Elevera banked hard, and below, she saw the remnants of both royal hordes charging up into the Western horde. They were disadvantaged, fighting from underneath, but they had caused enough confusion to disrupt the Western horde's attack.
Elevera twisted upward in a tight spiral, whipsawing Trysten across the saddle. She grappled for the saddle’s lip and clutched it tight. She took a deep breath, then opened herself up as she felt the fire and might erupt in her dragon.
A great roar split the sky. Fire chased after it as Elevera flashed her wings over all the hordes. Confusion broke out among the dragons below that weren’t bonded to Elevera.
As the golden alpha ended her display in a tight circle, more than half of the Western dragons began to flock upward, rising up, falling in behind their new alpha as the men on their backs shouted and gestured.
Trysten grinned at the sight.
The smile fell away, however, as the second wave of Western riders notched arrows and released a volley into the royal hordesmen as they slipped past underneath.
With a thought to Elevera, Trysten ordered the recently captured Western dragons up into the sky, far up and away, where their arrows could do no harm. The Western dragons obeyed immediately, drifting off to the north and upward as the men shouted and took aim at Elevera. As they notched their arrows, however, their mounts tilted to the side suddenly and sent the arrows high and wide to fall harmlessly to the stone below.
The second wave of Western dragons banked hard and attempted to pursue the royal dragons. Trysten signaled for her horde to intercept the Western horde. Their point dragon was easily recognized as the alpha now. Trysten felt the residual restraint the dragon had endured to refrain from responding to Elevera’s display.
And then she felt it build up in Elevera again.
“Whoa, Lady. Not yet!” Trysten cautioned, but it was either too late to stop Elevera, or the gold dragon had other plans. Elevera lunged upwards again, spreading her wings and letting out another great roar.
As she did so, Trysten gasped. Her awareness and will spread further out and encompassed even more dragons.
“By the wilds!” she shouted, and then Elevera ended her display, banked into a tight circle.
Trysten peered at the dragons below. More than half of the royal dragons were whipping around, plunging up through the air and taking another volley of arrows as they rose up to fall in behind their new alpha. The former alpha of the reinforcements led the others, and upon her back flopped the limp body of her former dragoneer.
The remaining Western horde banked, then appeared to be confused, disoriented by what was happening. Their pause gave Muzad a chance to order a retaliatory attack. The remains of his horde turned sharply in the air and came charging at the Western horde.
As the enemy horde scrambled to take up a defensive position, Trysten ordered her own horde to fly full-on at the Westerners.
The remaining aggressors staggered at the sight. Muzad’s handful of dragons would be on them in seconds, but Trysten’s horde of more than thirty dragons would be on them a few seconds later.
The remaining Dragoneer cut some curt symbols through the air, and then flicked his heels across the shoulders of his dragon. She folded her wings and dropped. The other dragons in the horde followed suit.
The slowest dragon in the horde received the full brunt of Muzad's fury. Avice clipped the dragon as it began to drop. It twisted away in a spray of scales and blood.
Trysten gritted her teeth and arched her back against the flash of pain. Her own wound throbbed as all her muscles tightened, but she ignored it and ordered a pursuit.
The combined Cadwallian hordes fell through the air, shadowing the remains of the Western horde. As they neared the ground, the Western dragons snapped their wings open and began to glide off at tremendous speeds toward the west, toward Aerona.
“Not on my watch!” Trysten yelled. She signaled for Elevera to snap her own wings open.
The Westerners glanced over their shoulders. Trysten’s dragons were fresh, and though sore from the previous day's battle, they still had the advantage of having been in flight for no more than half an hour. Still, the Western riders urged their dragons on at full speed as they hunkered down behind the necks of their mounts.
It was a race to Aerona.
As the heather slipped by beneath them, Aerona came into view. For a second, Trysten was surprised at how small it looked; a knot of cottages on a small hillock beside the river. It nearly looked marooned, as if the village had been washed up onto the tiny outcropping above the sea of heather and left there. But it was her home. And she was its dragoneer. She pushed Elevera harder, and the distance between the two hordes continued to dwindle.
But it was starting to look like the Western horde had too much of a head start.
Trysten sat up, took her bow, notched an arrow, and let it go at the closest rider.
The wild bucking of Elevera, the hard pumping of her wings as she threw herself at the other dragons with her greatest speed, didn’t allow Trysten to take a good aim. The arrow went wide. Elevera would have to slow to allow her to get a good aim. If she slowed, the other dragons would slip out of range.
Trysten gritted her teeth and urged the dragons on faster. Faster. She blinked water away from her eyes as the wind whipped her face. The fire of fatigued muscles began to filter through her in the ghostly way that the dragons’ sensations affected her.
Almost. So close. But not close enough.
The Western Dragoneer sat up. His arm whipped up into the air. He made a series of gestures that Trysten couldn’t understand.
But then a slight pressure rippled across her chest, radiating from her belly to her shoulders.
Firebreath.
The Western Dragoneer had ordered a firebreath attack as they approached the village. With all of its thatch roofs,
dried out by the heat and sun of the last few days, the village wouldn't stand a chance.
“Nooo!” Trysten roared. Elevera echoed.
The entire horde took up the call, and the Westerners looked over their shoulders at the collective roar of nearly three dozen dragons.
Ahead, nineteen riderless dragons streamed from behind the roofs of Aerona's cottages. They took to the sky, roared in return, and raced out across the village from the weyr yard where they had emerged.
The Western dragon riders all sat up in surprise.
“Get them!” Trysten yelled at the riderless dragons of Aerona. They beat their wings and rushed at the horde that would threaten their own.
Firebreath erupted, but not from the Western dragons.
The enemy horde scattered to avoid the approaching wall of fire-breathing dragons as they swept in from the bounds of Aerona. As the formation broke, Elevera closed the distance between the two hordes and cut to the left. She charged directly into the alpha.
Trysten gripped the lip of the saddle as her dragon bucked with the force of the collision. Elevera bounced away, flicked out her wings to right herself, and then took off into the air again, pumping upward, her own firebreath building as she once again displayed that she was the unchallenged alpha of these skies. They belonged to her.
And as Trysten looked down, over her shoulder, she saw the broken alpha from the west flopping in the heather, gashes across her back. Then she moved no more.
Chapter 25
All of the dragons began to swirl around Elevara except for Muzad’s. His horde hung back and circled in their own holding pattern a short distance off, the riders still clutching their bows, their arrows pointed aimlessly at the ground as the men watched the display.
Elevera swept the skies with her wings, banked, and took up a circling pattern around the perimeter of the village. As she did so, the Western dragons fell in behind her. The Western riders shouted in their strange language. They took up their arrows and aimed at the people below only to have their dragons buck and see-saw, disrupting their aim until they gave up and did nothing more than clutch the lips of their saddles.
Behind them, the riderless dragons fell in. Trysten looked over her shoulder. It was a sight to behold. Dragons without saddles or riders took up formation and followed close behind the recently captured wave of Western dragons. Behind them, the riders of Aerona fell in, and then the other wave of Western riders took up the rear as they encountered the same problems with taking up their bows as the first wave did. They clung to their saddles as well and stared forward with pale masks of fear and awe.
Below, the people of Aerona stood and stared at the sky. Children ran along, trailing behind through the lanes of the village, screaming and waving as the shadows of the dragons washed over them. People stopped what they were doing and yelled for others to come outside. Soon the whole village watched the unimaginable horde of Elevera's dragons encircle the entire village as if it was nothing more than a dole of doves.
As they approached the western edge of the village, work on the catapults stopped. The people seeding the firebreak stopped as well. Across the village, everyone stood and watched, their mouths open in disbelief.
Elevera spread her wings and lowered her haunches as she began to drift down through the sky. The dragons around her did the same. As Elevera landed, Trysten whipped the straps away from her hips, grabbed her bow, and slid to the ground as more dragons than she ever thought possible landed around her. The sky rained dragons. Currents of air whirled around her and sent stray bits of straw flitting in every direction as the dragons landed around Elevera.
Trysten looked up. Dragons blotted out the sun. Men shouted. Cadwallian and Western. Trysten hurried through the dragons, dodging wings and claws and swinging tails in search of dragons she didn’t recognize, dragons that bore enemy riders.
Excited yelling erupted all around. Everywhere was dragon scale and dragon flesh. Wings rustled. Heads tossed. A Western rider dropped to the ground in front of Trysten. He landed in a crouch, then slowly stood. His hand went to a dagger at his belt as his eyes went to the sword at her side.
More yelling.
Shouting.
And then Trysten realized it was Western. One voice rose above the others.
She reached for the hilt of the dragonslayer sword as the man in front of her cocked his head toward the loudest of the voices.
Rodden.
It was Rodden. Rodden was out here, among the men, shouting in their tongue.
The hordesman in front of her turned back to Trysten. Recognition flooded his face. He lifted his hands to his shoulders, palms out, and then sank to his knees. He muttered something, then bowed his head to the ground.
Trysten’s hand fell away from the hilt of her sword as Rodden’s voice rang out over the yard. All of the Western riders looked at Trysten, then knelt, heads bowed low.
She turned to Rodden. He smiled at her, making the motion indicating a heart in front of his chest, his fists clasped and pumping.
"Sa yalla," he said, bowing his head.
Trysten let out a long, slow breath. It was over.
II
Curtain of Fire
Chapter 26
In the confusion of people and dragon wings in the weyr yard, Trysten came across Alea. The young hordesman clutched her bow in her hand and held it at her side. At the sight of the group of four Westerners kneeling ahead of Trysten, Alea reached for an arrow in her quiver, but then let her hand fall to her side.
“What’s going on?” she whispered to Trysten.
“Trysten!” Paege hollered through the dragons. “Trysten?”
“Paege! Over here.”
Paege emerged from the wall of dragons, pulling a Western rider behind him. At the sight of Trysten, the man fell to his knees and bowed his head, his elbow still ensnared in Paege’s grip.
“What in the wilds are they doing?” Paege asked as he stared with confusion at his prisoner.
Trysten nodded at the weyr. “Rodden said something to them. I don’t know what, but they don’t seem to be resisting now.”
"They're all like that," Paege said. "Every prisoner I came across is on his knees with his head down."
Trysten shrugged. “Round them up,” she told Paege and Alea. “None of them are to be hurt. They will not give us any resistance. And make sure Rodden is all right. Put him back in his stall.”
“Where should we put them?” Paege asked.
There were far too many of them to stick into the cottages as they had done with the first round of prisoners. Even if they found three or four cottages to hold them, they didn’t have the villagers available to act as guards. Everyone was busy preparing for the battle. The prisoners were too much of a liability. Keeping them wasn’t possible. But neither was slaughtering them.
“Put them in the weyr for the time being,” Trysten finally said.
“What is going on here?” Prince Aymon asked as he made his way through the dragons, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked wrung out, pain obvious on his face.
“You are responsible for these prisoners?” he asked.
“They are mine. Their dragons belong to Elevera’s horde.”
“I saw that,” Prince Aymon said. “How many prisoners are there?”
“About thirty,” Muzad said, joining the Prince and answering the question meant for Trysten. “They were attacking a royal horde when we found them. If we were in the mother city, their executions would be underway, and we would not be having this conversation, would we?”
“No,” Prince Aymon said. “We would not. But we are in Aerona.”
The Prince nodded to the prisoner kneeling in front of Trysten. “What are they doing?” he asked.
"I'm not sure," Trysten said. "But they stopped resisting once Rodden spoke to them."
“They will resist when you are not expecting it,” Muzad said, glaring at Trysten. "They will walk out of here with your head on a pike because you are n
ot wise enough to recognize your enemies. You should let me kill them now.”
"We're not doing this again, Muzad," Trysten said, crossing her arms. "I'm tired of it, and we don't have the time."
“Since you are against the customary executions, what are you going to do with them?" Prince Aymon asked. "There are thirty of them at least, right?”
“I’m going to release them,” Trysten said.
The Prince lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “Release them?”
“We can’t hold them,” Trysten said with a shake of her head. “There are too many of them. And with the army coming...”
“But release them?” the Prince asked, scanning the crowd as if counting the prisoners.
Trysten looked around, then turned back to the Prince. “I’ll strip them of all weapons and put them back on their dragons. We’ll fly them a distance north and drop them off with no supplies. They can find their way back to the Western kingdom from there.”
“And if they decide to find their way back here?”
“By the time they make their way back, the army will have been dealt with.”
Prince Aymon took a deep breath and looked around again. He nodded, more to himself than to Trysten. “All right. But if they come back here, they will be captured under my authority. If they show their faces back in this village, they belong to Muzad, and no one will stand between him and military justice. Understood?”
Trysten’s face hardened. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“We’re at war, Trysten. I am far more concerned with the safety of our villagers and hordesmen than I am with that of these men. They are prisoners of war. They deserve to be executed. That is why we meet in the skies of battle.”
With that, Prince Aymon turned and walked toward the royal tents, Muzad trailing behind. The Prince appeared to be surveying the dragons, looking for something, while Muzad grumbled at him.
“Get the hordesmen,” Trysten said to Paege. “Tell them to strip the Western dragons of all armament and supplies. Everything but saddles. Make sure the prisoners have no weapons or supplies on them and then put them back up in the saddles.”
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 67