Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles)

by Nicole Conway

  Felix laughed loudly, grinning at me in that same mischievous way he had when I first met him. “Yeah, exactly like that.”

  The dormitory was dark and quiet once we were all settled in. Felix was already snoring in his bed, when I got back from the washroom down the hall. I hadn’t gotten an opportunity to bathe in almost a week, and I knew probably stank to high heaven. I finally got a chance to look at myself in the mirror behind the washstand before I left. Now I understood why Felix had asked about my bruises. Some were green and healing, but others were still deep purple. I could trace the outline of Ulric’s hand on one of my cheeks, and a boot print on my forehead.

  I hated seeing my reflection. It reminded me just how different I looked from everyone else. If I combed my hair just right, no one could see my slightly pointed ears. But you could still tell I was a halfbreed, even without that. My features were a little sharper, and my cheekbones were high. Katty always told me I had a pretty face, and somehow that never made me feel any better about it.

  Crawling under the stiff sheets of my bed, I curled up and tried to sleep. It didn’t come easy, though, even if I was exhausted. Felix snored loudly, and sometimes mumbled in his sleep. I couldn’t get over the sinking, swirling panic that made me made me sick at my stomach whenever I thought about what I was about to do. I still wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a dragonrider. Lieutenant Derrick had faith in me, obviously. He was paying for all my gear, after all, and had agreed to be my sponsor. Mavrik had faith in me, too, or he wouldn’t have agreed to pair up with me. I didn’t want to disappoint either of them.

  The night passed slowly, and I stayed awake rubbing the necklace my mother had given me while I stared at the shadows on the walls from the moonlight outside. It was hard not to miss her. I wondered if she’d be proud of me.

  Early in the morning, I heard the trumpet sound that signaled it was time to get up. It wasn’t even sunrise yet. I hadn’t slept much, so I was still tired. I moved sluggishly to get up and start dressing.

  Felix, on the other hand, popped out of bed like he’d been bucked off a horse. I couldn’t figure out how he’d even heard the trumpet over his own snoring. He started scrambling to get dressed, putting on the same dark blue tunic and black pants that matched my uniform. Neither of us had vambraces yet, but he had a belt that he buckled around his waist before he sat down to put on his boots.

  “Don’t you have a sword belt?” he asked me.

  I shook my head, wondering if Lieutenant Derrick had forgotten to get me one. He probably hadn’t expected he’d have to provide me an entire wardrobe.

  “Here.” Felix rummaged around through his belongings, tossing me a spare.

  I’d never worn a sword belt before. It was way too big, and I had a hard time getting it to fit like I thought it should have. Finally, Felix came over with a sigh to help me.

  “Looks like puberty forgot all about you, huh?” He chuckled as he punched a new hole through the belt so it would fit me without falling off. “How old are you anyway?”

  I told him, and he just stared at me like I’d grown a third eyeball.

  “Geez.” He made a sympathetic whistling noise. “You really are just a kid.”

  “My name is Jaevid,” I told him with a frown. I was getting tired of being referred to as just a halfbreed or a kid. I was both, yes, but I had a name.

  Felix smirked. “Jaevid, huh?”

  “Or just Jae,” I added.

  He laughed as he stood back, eying the belt like he was trying to make sure it looked good. “You’ve got boots, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, and sat down on the edge of my bed to start putting them on.

  “Good, cause I don’t think my spares would fit you anyway.” Felix started talking while he cleaned up his side of the room, advising me to do the same once I was dressed. “They do random room inspections, so you better have all your stuff put away. Uniforms have to be folded neatly, boots by the bedside if you aren’t wearing them. Your bed has to be made, books stacked up, and no trash on the floor. Pretty standard stuff.”

  I started cleaning my side while he talked, not that there was much to clean. I put my clothes and books away, and followed him down toward the dining hall on the first floor. He grabbed a large piece of bread, breaking it in half and shoving some in my direction. He ate while he rushed me out into the cold morning air, talking around the food in his mouth.

  Felix explained that official training wouldn’t start for a few more days, when everyone finally had all the gear that was being made for us. But this was our chance to get a leg up on the others and start getting some preliminary training from our sponsor.

  Lieutenant Derrick was outside the Roost, fitting a saddle to his own dragon. I recognized it was the saddle my father had made for him. The gleaming white creature flared the fins on the side of her head when she saw us coming close, hissing and snapping her jaws. It made Sile look back, arching a brow questioningly at us as we approached. For once, I wasn’t the one he narrowed his eyes at, like he was expecting some kind of explanation.

  “Felix Farrow, sir.” My new roommate introduced himself, clasping a fist over his chest and bowing at the waist. “There was some trouble with room arrangements, and I volunteered to switch . . . with your permission, of course.”

  Sile did look at me then. It made me flinch. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I suppose,” Lieutenant Derrick answered hesitantly. “If that’s what you want.”

  Felix nodded. “Yes sir, I’m sure. With all due respect, I’m probably the only one who isn’t going to try to snap his skinny neck during the night.” He laughed tensely.

  Sile gave a snort, but didn’t answer. He went back to fixing the saddle onto his dragon. The beautiful, sleek female had scales like polished pearl. Her eyes were a pale, glacier blue and she looked at us like we were something to eat. She wasn’t as big as Mavrik, and her build was more lithe. She hissed at me again, her wild eyes turning away when Sile gave her neck a slap.

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve both come,” he announced, turning back to face us. “Every morning, I expect you to meet me here before sunup. You’ll be doing drill rides, once you get your saddles. You’ll be running in full armor, four laps around the outer wall. There is a reason dragonriders are the preferred soldier of his majesty, the king. We are an elite breed. We are held to a higher standard of performance—one you have only just begun to appreciate. I expect the very best from you at all times. It isn’t lineage or bloodlines that make men good soldiers, it is sweat and blood. I can assure you, you’ll be drenched in both before your time at this academy is over.”

  Felix wasn’t smiling or laughing anymore. I was horrified.

  “For today, I’ll be taking you up one at a time for a demonstrational ride, then you can get to running those laps. It’d be in your best interest to get over your air sickness now, so you aren’t throwing up on your first day of formal aerial maneuvers.” Sile went on, curling a finger at me to call me forward. “You’re up first, Jaevid.”

  I didn’t want to go anywhere near him, the saddle, or the snarling white dragon that swishing her long tail. But I had no choice now. I staggered forward, watching as Sile gave the seat of the saddle a pat. It looked intimidating, and much too small for two people.

  He gave his dragon a hand signal and she put her belly on the ground, lowering so we could climb onto her back. I was practically sitting in Sile’s lap, which was awkward and uncomfortable. Clearly this saddle wasn’t made for two people. It felt like I might fall off as soon as we got moving.

  Sile was a little more secure in his seat, with his legs put down into two sheath-like leather sleeves build into the saddle. They came up to his knees, fitting like boots. I saw what they were meant for; those leg-holsters were what would keep him in the saddle when his dragon turned at awkward angles in the sky. I was shaking all over as Sile showed me the handles on either side of the saddle.

  “I won’t let you fall,” he ass
ured me as he belted a leather harness around my shoulders that literally strapped us together. It was like he was wearing me as a backpack in the front. “Valla will go easy on you, at first.”

  Valla didn’t seem to like me being on her back one bit. When she stood, she shifted and shook herself, flexing her shoulders and snapping her jaws like my added weight was uncomfortable for her. She growled and hissed, making flustered chirps as she turned her head to the side to glare at me with one big, blue eye.

  Sile gave her neck a pat again, gave a sharp whistle, and she reared back onto her hind legs, spreading her forearms wide to flare her wings. I saw Felix stumbled back a few feet as she let out a shrill roar, and leapt skyward. The earth fell away from beneath us, and the sudden force of gravity on my body smashed me back against Sile’s chest.

  I’d experienced fear a few times, but this was my first encounter with sheer terror. I didn’t handle it very well. It took everything I had not to throw up as we rocketed up into the sky. The initial ride was so rough I was afraid something was wrong. Valla took in forceful sweeps with her wings. It felt clumsy and chaotic, like we weren’t making any progress, until I caught a glimpse of the ground far below.

  She leveled off once we were several hundred feet above the academy, circling at a gentle speed. Looking down made me dizzy, and I was gripping the handles so tightly my hands felt numb. The air was cold, and the sky above was pink as the sun began to rise. I could still see stars peeking through the twilight.

  That’s when I realized how beautiful it was, and I forgot all my fears.

  To the right, I could see where the mountains sloped down, opening to let in a view of the ocean far away in the distance. The rest of the way around us, the peaks of the mountains were still covered in snow. Sile pointed over my shoulder, showing me a few dark spots in the distance. There were other dragons already flying with their riders.

  My feelings of awe and exhilaration lasted for about three minutes. Once I had finally gotten comfortable, maybe even decided this was kind of fun, Sile turned up the speed again. He gave Valla another nudge, and with a few forceful wing beats, we went lurching forward.

  We did spins. We did spirals. We went up so fast all I could see was blue sky and blurs of clouds. We went down so suddenly I lost my breath and couldn’t catch it again until we’d slowed down. All the while, Sile was trying to shout directions at me, and I couldn’t understand anything he said with the wind in my face.

  Swooping back down toward the earth, Valla cupped her wings and hovered for a moment while she stretched out her strong hind legs and landed. We came to a sudden lurching halt, and immediately I felt like I was going to throw up.

  I barely made it out of the saddle in time. Sile must have heard me gagging, because he frantically started unbuckling the harness that tethered us together. He all but dropped me out of the saddle, and as soon as I hit the ground, I started throwing up. When I finally pulled myself together and looked up, Felix as standing over me with a look of horror on his face; now it was his turn.

  I sat in the shade while Felix had his demonstrational ride. It still felt like the world was spinning around me. Sile had given me a canteen of water, and told me to keep drinking until I felt better. When they landed again, my head had finally started to clear, but I was still really embarrassed that I’d actually gotten motion sick.

  Until Felix threw up, too.

  He seemed all right, at first. He unbuckled, got down, and staggered a few feet. He was even grinning, and giving me a thumbs up. Then I saw his face get really pale, his eyes went wide, and he hunched over to puke in the grass just like I had.

  Sile was laughing when he got out of the saddle, shaking his head at us and wrinkling his nose at the smell. “Looks like you boys have a lot to get used to.” He chuckled, giving me a nod. “Let him drink some, too. Take a few minutes, then you both have laps to run. Meet me again in the dining hall for lunch after you’ve cleaned yourselves up.”

  six

  Running four laps around the outer wall of the academy probably doesn’t sound like a big deal. But that was somewhere around four miles, and for someone who’d never run that far just for exercise, it was pure torture. My legs ached, my lungs felt like someone with big fists was squeezing them shut, and I was soaked with sweat.

  Felix seemed to handle it much better. He ran behind me the whole time, and gave me a shove if I slowed down too much. I knew if I stopped, he’d drag me by the ears if he had to. I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like to run those laps in full armor.

  As we rounded the last corner on our final lap, I was limping because my calves felt like they were about to pop off the back of my legs. I was starving, dripping sweat, and ready to lie back down and sleep the whole afternoon away. But Sile had a full day planned for us

  We hurried through bathing, changing into clean uniforms, and getting back down to the dining hall. It was a little after noon, so there were a lot of other students and instructors eating while we sat and waited for Sile.

  Felix plopped down across from me at one of the long tables, bringing a tray he’d piled high with food for us to share. “Eat while you can,” he said as he grabbed a leg of roasted chicken for himself from one of the plates. “I bet we’re about to get a jump start on some academics.”

  I groaned, hesitantly taking a loaf of bread and piece of fruit for myself. “I guess if my brain is hurting, too, it’ll take some of the focus off my legs.”

  He laughed with his mouth full. “Get used to it. We’ve got two whole years of this ahead of us now.”

  Even after everything I’d been through so far: the aches, the pain, even the throwing up—hearing that still made me smile somehow. This was going to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done, but it was the first time in my life I’d ever felt like I was doing something worthwhile. It was the first thing that ever promised any kind of future for me.

  Sile finally joined us after we’d eaten, sitting down and dumping a pile of maps onto the table between us. They smelled musty, and were made of thick parchment that had been crinkled and weathered from use. He started to spread some out on the table, using cups and plates to hold them out flat.

  “Meet your new best friend,” Sile announced, sitting back so we could lean in and get a good look. “You’re only useful if you know where you are, and where you need to be. In and out of the saddle, knowing your maps is vital. You’ll spend more time with your nose pressed against this paper than doing anything else. In a week, I expect you both to be able to duplicate this purely out of memory.”

  My jaw dropped. The map was so detailed, I had no idea how we’d ever be able to memorize it all. It wasn’t just a map of the valley; it was a map of the entire kingdom of Maldobar. I’d never actually seen a map of it before, and my eyes were immediately drawn across the paper at all the details written with black ink.

  Maldobar was a very large peninsula, bordering the sea on the east, west, and south sides. There were forests, rivers, streams, mountains, cities, roads, islands, and even the small desert in the bottom. Every feature had a name, and was labeled in curled writing. There were also different elevations noted in various places, mostly in the mountain regions.

  To the north was the forbidding wall of forest labeled with only one word: Luntharda. I stared at it. It was just a solid mass of forest that covered the whole top part of Maldobar, cutting it off from the rest of the continent. The Wild Forest. The kingdom of the gray elves. That was where my mother had come from, and it was the same kingdom Maldobar had been at war with for so many years.

  Sile explained to us about the various markings on the map key, letting us ask questions while he ate his lunch. We discussed the features of the mountains, flying at the different elevations, and the four watch posts where we might get deployed when we finished training. Northwatch was by far the most dangerous, since it was only a few miles from the border of Luntharda. Sile said that was where all new riders had to go if they wanted to e
arn their stripes.

  Finally Felix sat back and let out a noisy sigh. “So what starts first? I mean, as far as training goes. Where do we even begin?”

  Sile sat back in his seat some, glancing between us as he folded his arms across his chest. “Boys, this is as much a mind game as it is a test of physical strength and stamina. You’ll be stretched beyond your limits every single day. You’re going to feel like you’re drowning, but just don’t let yourself give up. I expect you to get up before the call to arms in the morning.” He paused, and glanced at me with a meaningful prick of his brow. “That’s the morning horn blast. You run the drills I told you about, in the air and on the ground. I’ll show you the flight pattern on your first official day—you probably won’t have your saddles by then, so you’ll have to piggy back for a while. You need to be back at the breaking dome for your morning brief right after the call to arms. Then you’ll head to the gymnasium after the brief for your first lessons in ground combat training. That will take up the first half of your day, so be prepared.”

  Felix snorted, “Yeah. I’ve heard about that. They’re going to beat the basics into us, right?”

  “We all start at the bottom as fledglings. In this brotherhood, respect must be earned.” Sile shrugged. It made me wonder what kind of respect he’d won for himself. I didn’t know what he’d been through, or what battles he’d fought. I didn’t really know much about him at all, except that he had a strange interest in my future.

  “You’ll be allowed to break for lunch, and then you’ll report to the Roost for basic flight patterns and maneuvers. Although, on your first few days, you’ll probably be learning how to actually put a saddle on your dragon.” Sile smirked like that was funny to him. I could understand why the idea of watching me try to wrestle a big saddle that weighed more than I did onto the back of a wild, ornery dragon might be amusing to someone else. It made me sick to my stomach, though. “Your afternoons will be spent in classes learning the language of hand signals we use in the air, and of course, studying your maps.”