Dragon Raider

by Ava Richardson

  “Oh, I am sorry, brother – you must forgive my clumsiness, and help me learn,” Lila said. “This is my foster-father, the Chief Kasian of Malata, the Chief of the Sea Raiders!” She inclined her head to Crux, seeking to rectify the situation, not even noticing how Kasian stiffened at Lila’s introduction, a shadow passing over his eyes. To him, he is Lila’s father, I thought, suddenly aware of how complicated the situation was between them.

  Crux gingerly leaned forward to sniff at the man with his great snout, before huffing a large cloud of sooty smoke, making the man cough and flap it away.

  “He says that he’s pleased to meet you, and that any father to Lila can be a father to him. His name is Crux,” Lila interpreted.

  “Oh. I see.” The chief was still astonished, peering behind the dragon to see the damage his tail had already done to the Ariel. “I thought you said that you were bringing eggs, Lila? Or smaller dragons?” he said hesitantly.

  As soon as the Raiders had realized that Crux was not intending to eat them (just yet), they relaxed only slightly, with Senga and Adair being the first to hurry to Lila’s side. I hung back, watching the exchange, suddenly feeling out of place.

  They look so happy, I thought as I watched Lila hug Adair fiercely, and then take him to be introduced to Crux. I had to admit that I felt more than a little stab of jealousy at that. Didn’t Lila want me to be there too, when she introduced Crux?

  Enough, Danu, I scolded myself. I should be pleased that Crux was being taken to so well by the two younger Raiders, and that we had managed to successfully negotiate with an angry mother dragon! Besides, I had other things to worry about – such as the future of the Western Isles, and Princess Lila.

  The princess-to-be, I thought as I watched Lila scramble back atop Crux’s back with ease now, her laughter infecting the two young Raiders with her confidence. Adair approached cautiously, and his sister Senga not at all, at first, but slowly, Adair took a few hesitant steps forward to be snuffed by the Phoenix dragon, to loudly exclaim, “He’s like a hot spring – only not so wet!” He laughed, finally beckoning his sister over to the same experience.

  It was the dragon’s internal fires, I could have told them, if they had bothered to ask me. Dragons are ancient beings, so old as to have always been. They were creatures born with fire inside of them as snow is born of water.

  Lila did have it, I thought as I watched her. She had a way of reaching people – but not by her shouts or scowls or her commands, it was instead when she was at her most joyful that others responded to her. Now, if only I could get her to use that for the good of all of the people of the islands – not just the Raiders.

  “You dream big, little dragon friend,” Crux’s voice shone in my head, and I looked up to see that he had turned his head lazily, bathing in the affection the way that a cat bathes in sunlight. His great green and gold eyes were half-closed, and he was making a pleased, churring sound.

  “I do,” I whispered back to him, but he only closed his eyes as if nothing had been said between us at all.

  “Father? There is more news!” Lila called to the chief, who was trying to minimize the damage that a full-grown dragon was wreaking on his boat. There was already a mess of lines that had been brought down, and one of the aft sails was in danger of losing its rigging.

  “More?” Kasian said faintly. I don’t think that the old Raider could handle this much change, this fast.

  “Yes. On our flight south we saw three of Havick’s war galleons, heading south across the Barrens,” she crowed joyously. “Too much for our three boats to take on alone, but, with Crux here…”

  The chief’s stance shifted, his back straightening in the same breath as his frown deepened. “No, foster-daughter. We couldn’t. Even with this marvelous beast,” (I noted that he added the last part a little quickly) “that would be one ship each, and the Ariel and the others could never outgun one of those galleons.”

  “But Father,” Lila said.

  Don’t let her do it! I thought desperately, before instantly feeling a little ashamed. I wanted Lila to succeed – I really did, but, to further divide the people of the Isles? She needed to be taking the dragon to the others, to encourage us all to stand up to Havick… That was her destiny, I thought – or at least, that is what the prophesy told me. But a queen doesn’t threaten and bully people, a queen doesn’t need mercenaries…Or shouldn’t need mercenaries, I added. Some monarchs were worse than others; Dark Enric for one, I shivered.

  “How far off were they?” the chief called out.

  “A day or more from the Free Isles,” Lila responded, this time a little more somberly.

  “They could be heading this way, or on routine patrol.” The chief was growling. “At least that is a very fine way to use a dragon!” He called up at her, trying to ameliorate the tension between them. “We have advance warning of the ships. We should scatter the pirate fleet so if he does decide to attack we can harry him!” The big man looked happier now that he had a purpose again. A purpose as a Raider, not as a mercenary. I wondered if Lila noticed this distinction, or whether she was too caught up in the flush of her new bond to pay it heed. As the chief started barking orders to the other Raiders, they, too, seemed to take heart at the prospect of sailing rather than flying.

  The princess will have her work cut out for her, if she wants to turn them all to the ways of dragons rather than boats, I thought, as I joined behind Adair, Senga, and Lila as they readied to go ashore.

  “I will fish, and then I will find a spot in the cliffs to sleep,” Crux announced to Lila, clearly audible through my own dragon connection.

  “I will come with you to select a nest,” Lila immediately turned and said.

  “Lila – you must see your mother,” her foster-father said, a look of worry passing over his face. I wondered what the big man must be thinking, now that his daughter had a new mentor and best friend in the form of a dragon. Was he scared of losing her?

  “I can find my own nest, Lila wave-rider. But I will return tonight.” Crux yawned, blowing hot breath down the length of the Ariel. I saw several crew members make the sign to avert the evil across their chest, before hurrying on with their work.

  No, this really doesn’t bode well, I thought.

  With Lila off with her father, and Senga and Adair going back to their families in the huts and buildings of Malata, I was left standing on the docks amidst the tides of bustling Raiders. The docks were always busy, it seemed. A constant buzz of activity filled my ears as the crew replaced the broken lines of the Ariel, and retrieved the cargo that had tumbled over the deck. The other two of the largest boats were cleaned and repaired, with bits of cargo and kit carried off and others put on as the Raiders prepared to follow the chief’s wishes. It was nighttime now, and lanterns were lit up and down the length of the dock. My steps ghosted into town, where already there were loud voices and singing rising from some of the larger of the open meeting places.

  I didn’t need any spell of no-see-me here, as I walked. I was ignored just as completely anyway, as all of the Raiders who weren’t working had plenty to discuss and talk about.

  I am Danu Geidt, adept and dragon-friend, and I am alone, I thought a little miserably as I sat on the edge of the stone seawall. Looking out across the small harbor, out between the boats that bobbed there, I saw the first glimmer of stars over the western horizon, where somewhere very far away the Haunted Isle, or the Isle of Sebol, would also be lighting its lanterns.

  “Oh, Afar,” I breathed to my distant mentor. “What am I to do now?” Why did it seem that once I had actually supposedly “helped” Lila, I now felt like I had failed? Maybe my mission wasn’t just to help Lila get her dragon, but to help Lila realize who she truly is…

  Chapter 18

  Lila, unsure and adrift

  Mother?” I said to the woman who was gathering and stacking leather training hauberks. It was evening and the lights on the house had been lit, but still my mother was working in t
he sheds out the back.

  “Oh Lila, thank the waters.” She looked harried, older than she had when I left only X days ago. Had she always had that grey hair at her temples?

  “I did it, Mother,” I said with exhausted relief. I hadn’t imagined just how tiring riding a dragon could be! “Although I think that I will have to get a saddle made.”

  “Word came to me that a dragon was landing on the Ariel.” Mother shook her head as if it were a disgrace, but she was smiling at the same time. “Your father will not be pleased, no doubt,” she added.

  “Wood can be mended. Ropes can be re-spliced.” I shrugged it off. “But I did it! I got a dragon to bond with me…” I still didn’t quite know how I had done it – or even if I had done anything at all. I explained the events of the last couple of days, as much to prove to myself that what I had gone through was actually real.

  Maybe I hadn’t done anything at all, I thought. It had seemed like Crux had chosen me, after all, because of whatever he had seen about me that he liked – not the other way around.

  “Just like all friendships. We never deserve them, but they happen anyway,” Pela intoned sagely. “And the mother Blue? She just let you go?” There was a twinge of worry to my mothers’ voice, a bit of steel in her eyes as I knew that she was assessing how worried she would have to be. Was she about to have an angry den mother dragon descend on top of her island, seeking vengeance?

  “She did. Thanks to Danu, and a Crimson Red who spoke for us,” I told her.

  “Ah. Danu the wizard’s boy…” My mother looked across the practice yard for a moment, before turning her eyes back to me, quizzically.

  “What?” I said, feeling a little flustered, and I didn’t know why.

  “Nothing, Lila. So, are you going to go with him to find out about the prophecy now, or…?” My mother still looked at me with skeptical eyes.

  “Good heavens no!” I laughed. “I was hoping that he might return to the Haunted Isle all on his own!” I laughed, but something clutched at my heart as I said it. I was being unfair. And Crux wanted Danu to fly with us, I remembered. Whatever this bond was between me and Crux – Danu was a part of it now. But he wants me to be a princess – and I don’t want to! I knew I was also lying to my mother, wasn’t I? No. I did want Danu to get out of my hair and stop going on about that silly prophecy of his. I had a dragon now, after all – why did I need to go off to find out about the history of long-dead kings and queens and the prophecies made about them.

  “You made a promise, Lila, to help him investigate the prophecy,” my mother said seriously. “You know the way of it. A Raider has to rely on those around them. We’re family. And our promise to our own is our bond.”

  “But he’s not one of our own!” I burst out, hot and bothered and feeling very annoyed – but in that same instant I regretted saying it. He had stood up for me against the Blue dragon. He had even tried to cover my fear of heights from the rest of the crew back on board the boat.

  “Lila! You sailed with him. That makes him family,” my mother said crossly, readjusting the training hauberks on the stack even though they were fine. “Believe me, daughter, it pains me to have to agree with him – but your word is a bond.”

  A bond is a bond, the way that my mother’s words echoed both Danu’s and the Crimson Red’s was uncanny. It made me feel small-hearted, and now that I had bonded with Crux – with a being who accepted me just as I was, tomboy, Raider, fierce, stubborn and all – I didn’t want to be that person.

  “You’re right, as always, Mother,” I said, hanging my head. “I will talk to him.”

  “Good. I’m not telling you to run away to be a princess, but I am telling you to honor your promises,” my mother said, before she sighed. “And anyway – there is something that I have been talking about with your father, I mean – your foster-father.”

  Hearing my mother call him that out loud shocked me, somehow. Why? It is what he is, I argued with myself. But for some reason, it made my heart ache to think that they might be pulling away from me. Just as I have from them, insisting on going after dragons.

  “What?”

  “This.” She turned to the basket that she had been working from, reached into the bottom to pull out a bolt of cloth – one of my old linen shirts from when I was a child.

  “A shirt?” I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “It’s inside. I should have shown it to you a long time ago, I guess – but there was just never the time.” My mother huffed and fussed with the hauberks, not looking at me as I carefully unwrapped my old shirt to see a smaller square of cloth. White linen, of a finer sort than I had seen the Raider’s make. It even had a delicate lace edge all around it in scallop shapes, and in the corner, was an embroidered moniker.

  “Lila,” it read in flowing script, whilst underneath was the unmistakable green Sea-Crown of Roskilde. The scrap of cloth was old, but still strong. It smelled very faintly of my mother’s – my foster-mother’s – lavender and mint cloth-saves. I realized that it must have been bundled away at the bottom of a chest for years.

  “Is that…” my hands started to tremble all on their own.

  “Yes. It’s you, Lila. Your name, over the crown. It was with you when the Raiding party found you and brought you to me. It was swaddled in with the blankets – I don’t think anyone had thought to search the blankets of a child for anything of value – but yet there was.”

  “But that could just be the crest of Roskilde.” I tried to ignore the fact that my heart was telling me. Why I was a little fairer than the other Raiders. Why I was a little longer limbed. “Any babe in Roskilde could have this…”

  “No, Lila. A mother doesn’t furnish her child with the country’s crest, but with that of their own family. A mother doesn’t just attach a flag to a child that someone else dreamed up, a mother wants her child to have her own name, her own home,” my foster-mother said sadly, and I knew that she was talking about herself. “That is your crest, the Sea Crown. You are the Princess of Roskilde.”

  I had always known I was the product of a raid. But, in the way that we Raiders have, I thought that it was just happenstance that the story of my life matched the prophesy so. I had never taken Danu’s tale seriously. That I really could be the Princess of Roskilde.

  “You knew?” I said in a low voice. “All this time, and you knew?”

  My foster-mother shook her head. “I guessed. I never knew. Or I didn’t let myself guess. It was a fine ship you were found on, but your parents were already dead. I was so sad from the loss of my own son Ruck,” she said with dark eyes.

  The words ‘my own son’ tore through me like a gale through an unprotected port.

  “I reasoned maybe you were some lady’s daughter, one of the ones who had stood against Havick as he rose to power back then. Those were crazy times, Lila, and I am glad that you were not able to see them.” My mother gave off her stacking and sat down heavily on the edge of a cask in the evening gloom. “I was half-mad with grief over Ruck, I think – but even out here in the Free Isles, we caught some of the news. Roskilde collapsed over a winter, and the counsellor Havick rose in power. There were murders. Ships mysteriously sunk, courtiers poisoned. No one knew who it was at first, until the royal family themselves disappeared, and the Raiders were paid to attack the villages with increased force.”

  I didn’t want to hear what my mother had to tell me. I didn’t even want to empathize with the people of those times. So, what if they had been raided? That was life out here on the islands. Raiding was raiding!

  But the look on my foster-mother’s face only broke my heart a little more. She looked scared and even ashamed – even though she had nothing to be ashamed of, at all.

  “We attacked the splintering Roskilde, seeking out their ships wherever we could find them,” she said sorrowfully. “It was not an honorable time for us, Lila – I admit that now. We didn’t question the money paid us to make the raids…and that was when we found you, and when I found
that cloth with you. I told myself you must belong to the nobles, but I didn’t dare ask or think further. Now with that wizard’s boy here…”

  “Mother. I will never leave you. I will never not be your daughter,” I promised her, suddenly angry.

  I wasn’t really a Raider. That was a fact that I had always known, of course, ever since Lasarn told me so many years ago – but that fact didn’t seem to make a difference before, and now, to find out that Danu had been right, that entire wars and battles had been fought around my birth – that was something else entirely. I need time to think. I shoved the cloth into my shirt. But I also need my mother to know that I will be here for her.

  “Mother,” I said, putting a hand to her shoulder.

  “Ah, Lila.” The woman smiled sadly and patted my hand. “You are a good girl. Brave and fast. You take after Kasian in that.” She raised her head. “But even my old bones can see when there is a sea change coming. You will call me Pela from now on, and you will call your father Chief Kasian.”

  I opened and closed my mouth, stunned. “But…”

  “It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, Lila, it means that I am letting you be your own person,” my mother – Pela – said. “I am righting the wrong which has been done to you a long time ago. A Raider keeps her word, and a Raider honors her debts.”

  At that, the woman stood up, a tear running down one cheek as she turned and walked stiffly back into the house. Oh, mother. I felt ashamed at causing this sadness in her. She had only ever sought to protect me…

  But my shame warred with a new feeling of joy in my heart. I could be my own person.

  The usual carousing of the Raiders seemed odd to me as I walked down past the huts to the dock. Their voices were no longer the friendly voices of family, but instead, they were the voices of people who had stolen me.

  No, given me a life, I corrected. I felt a knot of anger in my chest, but I couldn’t say who was better deserving of the blame for keeping me from the life I was born to for so many years. Was it to my father and mother – my foster-father and mother— who better deserved the blame? Or was it to Havick who had killed my parents and left me to die as the Raider attacked? That was what Pela—her given name still awkward even to think—had said – that my parents had already been dead when they had found me, so it was no crime Pela and Kasian had committed in taking and raising an orphaned, abandoned child. Still, I felt angry at the Raiders for not being my family, somehow, for taking me from them – even though I knew that it wasn’t their fault.