Ander nodded, and a grin pulled up a corner of his lips. “Don’t look so surprised. She’s the youngest of the lot. The last to hatch of her brood. She’s going to need a bit more care than the older dragons. I’m glad you’ll be the one with her. You are good at caring for others.”
Tyber began to shake his head, and his mind stumbled, trying to come up with a good reason why it couldn’t be him. It shouldn’t be him.
“But you know,” Tyber said, his voice nearly a whisper.
Ander lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “Know what?”
“You know about me. You know that I…” He took a deep breath. “You were going to send me to prison if I didn’t come here.”
Ander nodded and clasped his hands behind his back. The pale gold braids that decorated the shoulders of his hordesman’s tunic shifted as he pulled his shoulders back. “You have yet to disappoint me, Tyber. I saw the way you behaved toward your siblings, toward Erik and our sister. I am not asking you to do anything that is beyond you.”
With a nod to Rius, Ander stepped away.
Tyber turned back to the dragon and was surprised to find her face just a few inches from his own. She stared at him with her black, unblinking eyes as if trying to fathom him, trying to figure out why he behaved the way that he did.
Tyber shook his head slightly. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I really don’t.”
Rius nodded once as if she understood. She shuffled her weight upon her claws, flicked her wings once, then folded them against her body.
An absence filled Tyber, as if he had been in a room filled with people seated in the dark, regarding him silently. He could hear their collective breath and feel their eyes upon him. Then they were gone. Sudden and severe. And only their absence was left.
He felt great sorrow. He inhaled a deep breath through his nose, expanding his chest and trying to crowd the pain from him. He’d cried enough already. He’d shed tears in all of the private, secret places he could find in the city. He wouldn’t do it here, not in front of this dragon.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll do the best I can. But I’m just me. I’m here for my brothers and sisters. We need the money. It’s nothing personal.”
Rius’ tongue flicked out of her muzzle and slapped Tyber on the forehead. His head jolted back more in surprise than with the force of the blow. He blinked at the stone wall behind the dragon, the dark mortar between the stones stained with how many decades of lantern smoke.
The wall stared down at him as if to suggest there was nowhere else to go. It was the dragon or the prison.
“Hey, Tyber!” Ren called. He stood several stalls away, his hand on the muzzle of a teal dragon, his other hand rubbing the top of her head. “I think she likes you!” He threw his head back in laughter.
An embarrassed grin and a quick flush of heat passed over Tyber’s face as he looked back to Rius. The dragon continued to stare at him with her dark eyes. In them, he found Master Gury’s words. The dragons had inherited the wisdom of the gods’ original creation. It seemed deep and endless in her black eyes.
“Then you should know better,” Tyber whispered to her.
Chapter 13
Ander clapped his hands and drew the attention of the recruits. He promised that they’d all have time to get to know their dragons later. In the meantime, he wanted to show them how to handle the tack. And so began a long day in which they were shown the various pieces of gear used in dragon riding, and how to handle them. They oiled saddles and polished them until Ander could stare into the leather and see himself nod with satisfaction. Buckles were made to shine. Straps bent with supple ease but held fast when yanked. The recruits practiced tying the knots that held hordesmen to their saddles, and a few of the recruits took glee from looping leather cords through the belts of fellow recruits and securing them to posts. The volunteers struggled to pull themselves free without touching the knots so that Ander might assure everyone that a hordesman who tied the proper knots would not leave his saddle until he was ready.
Finally, they practiced harnessing their dragons, slipping the leather straps over the shoulders of the creatures and securing the straps across their chests. They attached braided leather leads to brass rings at the center of the harnesses and led the dragons up and down the weyr aisle in an awkward parade. Finally, after they practiced placing the saddles on the shoulders of their dragons, Ander called the recruits to take their dragons out into the yard.
As Tyber led Rius down the aisle, he heard a sharp command barked from out in the yard where two wings and their dragoneer had already assembled. The command was a word Tyber did not recognize, but the dragons apparently did. Wings snapped open, and several men yelled out in surprise.
Tyber’s breath stalled in his chest as a few of the recruits around him gasped in surprise.
“We’re flying?” Ren asked. “Today? Isn’t that a bit soon?”
Ander turned around but continued to lead Listico down the aisle. “You will be in the air today, but you won’t truly be flying. Your dragons haven’t learned how to take orders from their riders yet. They will be following the commands of Merilyss, their alpha, and Chanson, your horde’s dragoneer.”
Tyber glanced around. Behind them, a man not much older than themselves led a pale pink dragon down the aisle, behind Weiss and ahead of the next proctor. The man wore a tunic much like Ander’s, but it was the same color as the robes worn by the weyrboys.
Ander raised his voice slightly. “This will be a short flight. We will circle the city once or twice, then come straight back to the yard. There is nothing any of you have to do. You will be secured to your saddles using the same knots that you learned earlier. Your dragon will not know how to interpret your commands, so anything you do on her back will largely be ignored. All that is required of you is to sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“But I thought recruits didn’t get to ride dragons until they had learned the signals and motions,” Ren said.
Ander nodded. “That is how we prefer to do it, but we’ve had to make some exceptions this time. In the past, we’ve been able to spend more time teaching recruits to bond with their dragons. But, as you know, we’ve had to accelerate things. We believe this exercise will help. Consider it an informal first trial.”
An informal first trial? The words rang in Tyber’s head. Surely he didn’t mean it. Would letting Rius fly him around the city once really count as his trial? Would he receive his bonus and be set free that very night? Surely not.
He looked back to Rius as if she might know the answer.
Weiss’ reedy voice piped up. “How old are the dragons.”
Ander looked up at the ceiling briefly as if the answer might be found floating up around there. “Four.”
“Four!” Ren gasped.
Tyber looked at Rius. She regarded him with a cool stare. She was a bit larger than the biggest horse he’d ever seen. It was difficult to think of the dragon as four years old.
“I don’t have to tell any of you what happened to the other dragons, do I?” Ander asked.
“How old is your dragon?” Weiss asked.
“Listico is forty-five.”
Tyber turned to Ander’s fiery red dragon. She was far and away larger than the others. She was bigger than several shacks outside True Gate, but not quite the size of his family’s cottage. It was sometimes difficult to see these dragons up close and think of them on the wing.
A slight edge of panic cut into Tyber. He looked back to Rius and studied the movements of her muscles as they shifted beneath her blue scales. Knowing that she was four years old made her seem more fragile somehow as if climbing onto Rius’ shoulders was the same as climbing onto little Lin’s shoulders.
Surely this wasn’t really the first trial. Ren had said the first trial was a test, a battle simulation, according to Ren’s father. But perhaps things were truly different now than when Ren’s father was a recruit.
Tyber nearly raised his hand, but th
en tightened his grip on the reins. It would be bad form to ask, to seem so eager to leave. There was no reason to worry. All he had to do was sit on a dragon and not fall off.
Yet when he glanced beyond the bulk of Rius, he saw more than one pale, grim face as the recruits filed into the courtyard as if on their way to their own executions.
Chapter 14
The group stopped at a point just under half the distance between the weyr entrance and the start of Dragon Lane. Bystanders gathered at the edge of the yard to watch. Tyber suddenly felt as a showman might, an actor upon the stage of some roving play. And perhaps that was all that he needed to be. Act the part. Collect his pay and go home. He pushed his shoulders back and stared defiantly at the crowd as he searched for familiar faces.
There were none. Not only did Tyber not see anyone familiar, but those in the crowd wore expressions he wasn’t used to seeing, looks of awe and respect. The adults grinned at the sight, while the children stared wide-eyed. People leaned in and traded words with each other while keeping their eyes on the dragons. It felt strange to look out at those people and feel as if he was someone they admired.
He looked back at Rius. The dragon stared across the yard, over the heads of a few hordesmen in the archery range. Whatever it was that she stared at, Tyber couldn’t determine, but she seemed keen on it.
His attention shifted to Chanson and Merilyss as they strode past. Merilyss turned her head and regarded Tyber as she ambled by. He felt like she was sizing him up. He turned his head away and looked to the ground where Merilyss’ large claws had left impressions in the chamomile. The sweet scent of the flowers drifted up to Tyber. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
“All right!” Ander called out. “Listen up! You know what to do. Everyone up in your saddle and secure yourselves. I will come around and check your knots. Up now!”
Tyber suddenly couldn’t remember what to do with his lead. He looked at it, and then up at Rius as if she might have the answer. How incredibly daft and dumb it was for him to lead this beast around as if he could ever hope to make her go someplace she didn’t want to. If all the recruits in his group tried, could they even keep one of these young dragons from taking off?
He glanced at Ren, who wound his lead into a loop and then secured it under the lip on the front of the saddle. Tyber did the same, then stood before the stirrup.
Rius turned her head around on her long neck to watch.
“I’ll get it,” Tyber said. He slipped his toe into the stirrup, then reached up to take hold of the gullet in one hand and the cantle in the other. He took a deep breath, then pushed off with his left foot and pulled himself up with his right. He paused briefly, then let go of the cantle to swing his left leg around, and suddenly he was in the seat of the saddle, staring at the graceful blue neck of the dragon that looked back at him.
Tyber grinned at Rius. “How was that?”
The dragon looked away, toward Merilyss.
“Come on,” Tyber said. “It’s my first time in the saddle. It wasn’t that bad.”
Rius shifted her attention to the dragon ahead of them. A recruit by the name of Nonek stood before the stirrup of his dragon. The dragon was the orange of a sunset when the air was heavy in the early part of the peaceful season. The young man had hold of the cantle and gullet as instructed, but he appeared to be frozen at that stage. His face was cast downward, hidden between the meat of his arms. His shoulders and back heaved with quick, heavy breaths.
Tyber’s gut tightened. The young man was not in good shape.
“Nonek?” Ander called out. “Need a hand there?”
Nonek shook his head. He lifted his face slightly, and his gaunt cheeks were ashen.
“Let’s get moving then. Up with you. Just step up. Pull with your arms.”
Nonek remained frozen in his spot.
Rius shifted her posture. Tyber leaned forward and grabbed hold of the lip of the saddle.
“Nonek?” Ander asked. He handed the lead of Listico off to Chanson and approached.
His eyes met Tyber’s briefly. “Tie yourself down,” he said, then flicked his finger in Tyber’s direction.
As Tyber gathered up the leather cords on the saddle and began to feed them through his belt, Ander stepped up to Nonek and placed a hand upon the young man’s shoulder. Nonek flinched as if struck.
Ander pulled his hand away and said something to him, his voice soft and indiscernible.
Nonek nodded. His fingers flexed on the cantle, but otherwise, the boy stood stock still.
Ander said something more.
“I can’t!” Nonek snapped and flinched as if his own words had struck him hard upon his back.
Tyber dropped one set of cords and fished up the set on his left. He could hardly look away from the sight before him. Nonek was a quiet boy who had looked nervous since Tyber first laid eyes upon him.
“Come on, Nonek,” Tyber whispered under his breath. “You can do it. Easy as stepping up a stair.” That is if the stair was a quarter the size of a cottage, had teeth and claws, and was prepared to haul a person up into the air above the city.
Ander placed his hand upon the young man’s back, right below his neck. The tips of his fingers pressed lightly into the dark fabric of the recruit’s tunic. Nonek’s face appeared to tighten, but it was difficult to tell with his arms raised, and his head pitched forward.
Nonek shook his head. His left hand fell away from the cantle, hung in the air for a few seconds, and then fell to his side.
Ander patted his back.
Nonek let go, then turned to Ander. Tyber leaned forward some, turned his head to the side a few degrees to better hear what was being said. Despite the hushed silence of the crowd gathered at the end of Dragon Lane, the words were lost, buried between the two men.
Finally, Nonek turned away from the crowd. With a last reassuring pat from Ander, Nonek walked back along the line of dragons, his face cast to the chamomile under his feet.
As he passed Rius, Tyber opened his mouth to offer some encouragement, a kind word, something to soften the blow, but the words did not come. What could he say? Anything he said would feel insincere and not be enough.
Then Nonek was gone, behind Tyber and Rius. A weyrboy in his swishing red robes ran out and clasped the reins of Nonek’s orange dragon and led it away from the line. The stump of Nonek’s blond braid shifted across the dragon’s breast like a trophy of a battle freshly won.
“Remember,” Ander called out, then looked up and down his group, “your dragon is not under your control. It will be responding to Merilyss the entire time. Your job as a recruit is to sit still. And do not touch your restraints. Is that understood?”
Muffled agreements ran up and down the group of recruits. Ander began to walk down one side of the line of dragons and then back up the other, checking the restraints, offering, “Good,” and a nod of approval at each stop. Finally, he stopped at Listico, stepped up into his own saddle, tied off his restraints, and nodded to the other proctor and the Dragoneer.
Chanson raised his hand, and it looked as if he were offering something to the sky. Rius’ muscles shifted beneath Tyber. His eyes widened at the realization of how powerful she was.
The Dragoneer cried out a strange word as he dropped his arm. The dragons all snapped their wings open with a score of cracks that lashed the air and beat a collective gasp from the crowd. The horde of dragons reared back, front legs in the air.
“Son of the scale!” Tyber gasped as he lurched forward and clutched the fat lip of the saddle.
With a rush of air, Rius pumped her wings down and shoved off with her hind legs. The force of the launch jerked at Tyber’s shoulder joints and jolted his spine. He pulled himself forward, then nearly collapsed into the small spines along the back of Rius’ neck as the dragon slowed down and momentum was transferred to her beating wings.
The saddle dipped and rose with each wing beat, and Tyber was immediately grateful for the light lunch they had bee
n served in the weyr. His fingers began to ache and throb with the tight grip he held on the saddle, but then all sensation in his hands dropped away as if loosened and tossed like gloves to the ground below.
Tyber peered over Rius’ side as she passed over the crowd at the end of Dragon Lane. They onlookers bent their necks back. Some used their hands to shield their eyes from the evening sun as the watched the recruits sail overhead. The downdraft of the wings sent a few caps tumbling across the ground and skirts billowed out behind awe-struck women. Children ran through the crowd, dodging through stationary adults. They lifted their small faces to the dragons as they raced on their short legs to keep pace.
Tyber grinned at them. He recalled having done much the same once when he was a boy. Father had taken the lot of them to a ceremony in which new hordesmen were sworn in. Tyber didn’t remember much about the event except for the ending. The new hordesmen had mounted their dragons and flown over the crowd, looped back, and did it once again. Tyber and Theola had raced the dragons, arms out, flapping, ready to fly away with them.
As if reading his mind, the boys below cleared the thicket of adults and began to flap their wings in imitation of the dragons.
Tyber released the lip of Rius’ saddle. He sat solid and secure in the seat, rocking back and forth slightly with the rhythm of the dragon’s flight. He extended his arms, then began to flap them as well as he grinned at the running children below.
The children squealed in delight and then fell behind as the blue dragon picked up speed and altitude. As Tyber looked back to keep track of the children, his gaze caught on the white speckles at the trailing edge of Rius’ wings. They shifted and twisted as the wing membranes billowed out on the downstroke, and then dipped back and fell away as Rius folded her wings in slightly to lift them back up. Air ran like water over the spots that fluttered and rippled like the twinkling of the gods’ eyes.
The sight entranced him. He lifted his head to the sky, nearly expecting to see the stars amidst the daylight, between the spaces in the mounting clouds.
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