It was difficult to imagine that a family that had taken the kingdom by force and made a history of warring against the West would ever do anything else. Prince Aymon was well-versed in war and quite ignorant in diplomacy. Would it take a change in power, a new king, a new queen, to make the kingdom see how useless all of this fighting was?
Adalina's kingdom had known only peace until the neighboring kingdoms had moved to undermine her power. Who had she replaced? What ruling family had been in power when she took charge?
The thought ended there. She wouldn’t allow it to go further. It was a pointless, useless path to wander down. She did not want the Cadwaller kingdom or any kingdom for that matter. She was the Dragoneer of Aerona weyr. Her loyalty remained with the village, and as long as she was alive, she would be the one to protect it, no matter who was king.
“Westerners!” a shout rang out from Trysten’s left. Her attention shot down the row of bunkers to a villager standing atop another bunker and pointing to the west.
At the horizon, a movement flickered. Then it was steady. Then it started to grow. Two men. Half a dozen. A score. Soon, nearly a hundred men marched across the field.
“Westerners!” the villager shouted again, and the call was picked up by several more people.
Trysten scrambled down the backside of the bunker as the bell in the watchtower began to clang. Cottage doors flew open, and people raced to their assigned places. The young men and women of the village poured toward the western edge, ready to take up bows and arrows. Older villagers ushered children to the council chambers in the center of the village.
As Trysten ran inside the weyr, the hordesmen were preparing for battle, pulling saddles out of trunks and placing them on the shoulders of their mounts.
“Trysten!” Borsal shouted over the din as he raced up to her.
“It’s Maejel. I’m trying to get her out of the stall, but Rodden won’t let us get close.”
She looked back to the end of the hall. There Rodden stood before his dragon, his fists clenched. His face was tight, his expression locked in that peculiar way that fear has of looking like anger at times.
“I’ll take care of it,” Trysten said. “Start saddling Elevera for me.”
Borsal nodded, then dodged off to Elevera’s stall.
She jogged up to Maejel’s stall. Rodden's face loosened up some when he saw Trysten approach.
“He was giving Borsal a bit of an attitude,” Brand said. “He doesn’t want us taking his dragon.”
“It’s my dragon,” Trysten said. She opened the gate, and as she did so, Rodden stepped back, away from her. He held his arms out as if he might block Maejel, keep her fenced behind himself and away from the Aerona hordesmen. He swallowed hard.
“Rodden,” Trysten said as she held out her hand. “We need Maejel. We need all the yallim.” She swept her hand out across the weyr.
Rodden shook his head. He turned back and laid his hands upon the dragon’s shoulder as he continued to eye Trysten.
“Shassit,” he said. “Shassit yallum. Crete chappim yoss nellate. Yallum bock. Bock!”
Trysten shook her head. “We need her. We need all of them. She belongs to Elevera.”
“Elevera,” Rodden said and looked down the aisle, toward the alpha dragon.
“Elevera,” Trysten said with a nod. “Alpha dragon. Sa yallim.”
Rodden reached up and touched Maejel’s cheek. His palm ran down the small scales there, and Maejel lowered her head. She began to wrap her neck around the man as if to protect him.
“Yallum bock,” Rodden said. “Yallum bock!” he shouted.
“No,” Trysten said as she stepped forward. “We need her.” She reached out and touched the brown dragon’s neck. Her fingers lingered a second, and then she ran her palm along the dragon’s scales.
Maejel raised her head, looked to Elevera, and then down to Trysten. The dragon breathed in unison with the others. There was no doubt that she belonged to the horde. And as far as Trysten could tell, there was no difference between the dragons of Cadwaller and the dragons of the west. Rodden had to know. He had to.
Still, it killed her not to be able to tell him why she had to sacrifice his dragon to save herself and her village from his countrymen. Anger smoldered in her. She and Rodden were not to blame for the battle. They each rode to protect their villages and kingdoms. It was the Originals who were at fault. She was confident they were the ones pitting the Westerners against the Cadwaller kingdom. For whatever reason, it was the doing of the Originals that would ultimately see Rodden stripped of his Maejel.
Trysten reached into the pocket of her tunic and pulled out the scale from the Original. She opened her hand and held it out to Rodden. He looked from it to her, and then to the scale again. He peered over at Maejel, who put her snout near Trysten’s hand, then flicked the scale with her forked tongue.
Trysten closed her fist around the scale, turned her fist over, then pointed with her other hand to Maejel. She made a quick flapping motion with her arms, then drove her fist into her open palm with a loud smack.
Rodden went pale. He looked to Maejel again. He reached up, grabbed her about the neck and pulled her head close. He spoke something soft and rapid into her ear and then crushed her head into his chest. What sounded like a moan welled up in the man, and then became a song, a prayer, and a lullaby. A ballad about a man who loved his dragon so much, so much that he would allow her to die, to fly to her death rather than keep her from the sky where she belonged.
Or at least that is what it sounded like to Trysten as she held her breath and forced herself not to tremble in rage and quake with sorrow. She blinked back tears and knew if she allowed herself even the slightest sip of air, it would be all over.
She had to remain strong. Now was the time for action, not reaction.
Rodden's voice cracked. He squeezed Maejel hard, sobbed once, then let his dragon go. He stepped back away from her, then held his arms out at his side and bowed his head at the neck. He stood that way, silent and still, swaying slightly. He moved only to step out of the way when Brand handed Trysten a harness, and she slipped it around the dragon and led Maejel from the stall. She gave the reins to Brand.
“Take her to the yard.”
Brand jerked his head at Rodden. “What about him?”
Trysten thought for a moment, trying to think of something better. But there wasn’t time, and there wasn’t room for things to go wrong. “Tie him up. Leave him on the floor of the stall.”
Brand lifted his eyebrows a bit, obviously caught off guard by the order.
“Do it,” Trysten said, then hurried down the aisle to Elevera’s stall.
Chapter 45
There would be no ceremony involving Tuse and the village sword. Tuse had it in the council chambers where he hid with the elderly, the infirm, and the children of Aerona. Should the village fall and the barred doors of the council chamber be reduced to splinters, Tuse and his ornamental sword of twining dragon tails and the River Gul would do very little to protect those inside.
But it didn’t matter. Trysten wouldn’t fail. And she wouldn't fall. She couldn’t. And so she shifted her weight upon Elevera’s saddle and watched from the weyr yard as the army marched across the field.
She had expected them to start running at some point, to let loose with a collective scream, a nightmarish shout and come racing for the village, brandishing swords and shields. But they didn’t. They marched in columns, in steady, measured steps as if Aerona was but a way station on the road to their destination.
Her stomach flipped and twisted and turned knots as she watched them approach, waiting for them to cross the firebreak, to get close enough to trigger the trap and draw the flaming arrows of the archers.
Dragons. She sensed them a second before she saw them, rising over the horizon. She sat up straighter and watched. In defiance of the predictions of both herself and Prince Aymon, the army had waited until mid-morning to attack. The sun was nearly
midway up the eastern sky. The approaching horde would have a difficult time attacking with the sun in their faces. Yet they were flying in a V formation.
They would reach the village well-ahead of the army.
Trysten’s grip tightened on the lip of the saddle. They had not expected this. They had figured that the horde would form two columns, try and direct Trysten and Muzad toward the spear launchers. It looked now as if they were content to call the hordes of Aerona into the air ahead of the ground battle.
“Hold,” Muzad shouted from behind Trysten, where his horde sat by the tents. “We’ll see to these ones. Wait until the army is too close to react before you show them the size of your horde.”
As Trysten turned around in her saddle to tell him to hold himself a moment, the man swept his arm up in the air, then brought it down in a chopping motion. With a flick of his heels, Avice reared up on her hind legs, then launched herself into the air with the rest of her horde behind her.
There were more than twice as many dragons in the approaching horde than Muzad had left. He and his men would be slaughtered.
“Karno!” Trysten shouted. “You and your men help Muzad.”
Karno nodded, then lifted his arm. “High, hordesmen!” he shouted. Ollym lunged into the sky on green wings, and Karno's hordesmen quickly followed.
Trysten’s grip tightened around the lip of her saddle. It often felt like Muzad was trying to get himself killed. She hoped he'd be less than successful this time around even if it meant she would have to deal with him again.
As Trysten watched the Cadwallian dragons rise into the sky and advance toward the Western horde, her brow furrowed. Something wasn’t right.
She scanned the edge of the village. The weyr blocked her view on the left, but off to her right, Prince Aymon stood at the edge of one of the stone bunkers. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword while his left gripped the scabbard. He stood with his back to her, his stance halfway between the approaching army and the archers lined up behind the bunker. She imagined his face was expressionless, resolute, and betrayed none of the effort it took for him to stand tall and straight without his cane that laid against the stones of the bunker.
All along the bunkers, the archers waited with bows in one hand and their first arrows in the other. Several archers, including Caron, even held their arrows so that the tips were nearly in the flames of the torches that stood wedged in the stones of the bunkers.
Between the bunkers, the catapults waited. Mardoc stood next to the first catapult, ready to launch its payload when the army was within range. Women stood about, propping up shields that would be hefted and lifted to the arrows as soon as the army was close enough. Villagers gathered around piles of stone, waiting for the chance to chuck it into the catapult’s basket as soon as it was emptied. One man sat atop the bunker and sang a low, soft tune about a shepherd boy who was lost to the wolves as he searched for his missing love. He twisted a handkerchief in his hand.
Everyone eyed the approaching army. The attention of the entire village was glued on their advance.
The perfect distraction.
Trysten whipped herself around in the saddle. Off in the southeast, dragons approached low along the horizon.
“Paege!” Trysten shouted. She pointed to the approaching horde.
She whirled around to scan the north, and sure enough, a third horde approached from the northeast.
Chapter 46
“Paege! You take the horde in the northeast. I’ll get the one in the south.”
“By yourself?” Paege asked as Sone stirred with sudden agitation.
“I’ll take the riderless dragons. You take the hordesmen.”
With that, Trysten yanked back on the lip of Elevera’s saddle and dug her heels into the dragon’s shoulders. She reared up on her hind legs and launched herself into the air.
Below, Paege began to shout out orders as Elevera twisted around and took off toward the southeast. As she flew over the secondary yard, the riderless dragons leaped up behind her and assumed formation.
Trysten hunkered down against Elevera and wrapped her arms around the dragon's neck. Elevera responded by surging forward, faster. Trysten glanced back over her shoulder. Paege and the rest of the horde had lifted up and were flying off to meet the horde in the north.
The horde in the south would have to be dispensed with as quickly as possible. She was showing her hand, now. The army was close enough that they could count the dragons as they left Aerona and see what they were up against.
Let them. Let the numbers of Aerona’s horde strike terror into their hearts.
But every second the horde wasn’t in Aerona, that was another second the village was vulnerable to attack.
“Faster!” Trysten shouted at Elevera and tightened her grip on the alpha dragon.
Ahead, the flanks of the approaching horde swept upward, rising above the point dragon until the horde drew itself into a ring. That was new. Trysten had never seen or heard of such a formation used in battle. She had no defense planned against it.
But all her known defenses relied on hordesmen to execute them. Behind her flew over forty dragons without riders. They would respond directly to her thoughts. It was time to throw something at the Westerners that they were utterly unprepared for.
Trysten scanned the ring of dragons and riders. She looked for signs that would indicate which dragon was the alpha. The one at the bottom of the ring had been point, but in their last encounter, they had hidden the beta as well as the alpha. They knew not to openly flaunt their weakness.
She would have to—
Her eyes snapped open wide as she felt the buildup of gas rumble through Elevera.
“Not yet!” Trysten shouted, but then Elevera reared back, thrusting herself up into the sky. A roar and a gout of flames seared the blue above.
“Elevera!” Trysten shouted as the riderless dragons zipped past them. And then a wave of pain ran over her along with the brief second of disorientation that came with new dragons joining the horde.
Trysten’s throat clamped shut. Avice. Avice was dead.
She looked back to the west, to the knot of dragons twisting and sweeping, diving and swooping between the village and the army. A number of them had broken off and began to approach Trysten and Elevera.
“Fish and birds!” Trysten cursed. Karno was on his own now. What was left of Muzad’s horde was flying out to show deference to their new alpha, and there didn’t appear to be anything she could do to return control of the dragons to their riders until they finished their displays.
Once Elevera completed her own display, she swooped back down and pumped furiously toward the approaching ring of Western dragons. The display from Elevera had agitated the alpha in the group. Its desire to answer Elevera’s challenge caused it to nearly light up in Trysten’s mind and heart. She could easily sense which one it was.
She grinned. Their mistake, to send in the alpha.
With a thought from Trysten, the riderless dragons drew together into a shield of scales and wings in front of Elevera. They formed a rippling wall, and though they obscured her view of the approaching horde, she could sense where the Western dragons were in relation to the riderless dragons. More importantly, she sensed where the alpha was.
As they neared, pricks of pain peppered Trysten’s skin and muscles. She gritted her teeth as arrows slammed into her wall of dragons. With a thought, she sent the wall collapsing into a tunnel formation, the mouth of which swung down and to the right to swallow up the alpha and her dragoneer.
The Western dragoneer maneuvered his mount sharply to keep her from colliding with the riderless dragons that flew all around him and drew in tighter, cutting off his escape. He would be forced to fly through them and meet Trysten and Elevera in the end.
Her teeth gritted together tightly, and her face winced in pain as more arrows pocked the scales of the dragons around her, but Trysten focused all of her attention on the approaching alpha drag
on.
The Western Dragoneer dared not take his hands from the lip of his saddle, and so his bow continued to dangle from its strap along the side.
Trysten’s hand went for hers, then paused. Far off, on the edge of her awareness, the pain and injury being inflicted on the rest of her horde rippled across her body like a shadow, like seeing someone hurt deeply and knowing the pain.
This needed to end, and it needed to end now. Quickly.
Her left hand strayed from her bow and grabbed the scabbard. Her right hand drew the dragonslayer sword.
The Dragoneer’s eyes widened at the sight of the sword. Trysten shoved her heels against the stirrups of her saddle and pushed, standing up as much as she could with the leather restraints biting into her waist.
Broken from his spell, the Dragoneer reached for his bow as Elevera dropped down and swept under the approaching alpha.
The Western alpha extended her claws, readied herself to pluck Trysten from the saddle and crush her. With all her might, Trysten swept the sword up, in an arc across the sky as the alpha began to pass overhead.
At the height of the arc, Trysten’s arm was yanked back away from her as the sword's blade found the dragon's flesh. The leather straps dug into Trysten's waist and tore at her hips. Pain blossomed across her neck, and she had a sudden instinct to tuck her chin or else her head would roll off the back of her neck.
She gasped. The alpha's claws clenched tight, drawn into closed fists right in front of Trysten's face. She tugged the sword down, then allowed gravity to lay her down flat along Elevera's spine.
The alpha above went rigid. As the dragon’s bulk began to pass over them, the slain alpha began to fall.
Before the weight of the Western dragon’s belly crushed Trysten, Elevera folded her wings against her body and dropped away. The maneuver bought a few precious seconds and allowed them to slide out from underneath the falling dragon.
But they didn't get far enough. The alpha’s tail smashed into Trysten, then whipped across her as the dragon fell away. Pain blossomed across Trysten’s face. Her neck was on fire, her whole body rang out in crushing pain. Every thought she had went into holding onto the sword, not letting it go. She reached for the pendant with her other hand, afraid that it would slide off her neck and fall away as well.
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