The group headed back into the alley, crossed a street and then were quickly on the outskirts of the small trading village. They walked east down a country road for a quarter mile, then turned off into a clearing. DeMarco paused to light a cigarette, then waved his match three times in the dark. After a moment a responding match was struck off in the clearing. The small light also waved three times. The men walked towards it. A Corvale operative was standing in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by the dark shapes of the dragons they had come in on. There were five for the five men.
“Red Locust – Lorne to Toren,” Aaron Lorne said to the group, the only words he’d spoken during the entire operation. He lit a cigarette. The other men jumped into action at the unusual orders, quickly huddling. Aaron could hear them discussing outpost and dragon locations. He dragged on his cigarette, forcing himself to be patient. The Red Locust would pull every single available SDC resource into getting Aaron to Conners Toren at the SDC headquarters at New Wyelin as swiftly as possible. He’d never used the command before. None of the five or six Corvale authorized to use it had.
Aaron held a mouthful of smoke, quietly running his fingers across the pixie eye scar on his cheek. So the NEST riders were falsemarked and that was how the organization was growing so swiftly. The loyalty of dragons could be earned in a few ways, none easy. The eastern tribes of the Corvale and Vylass traditionally marked their warriors with tattoos. The marks chronicled victories, enemies slain. Aaron Lorne was one of the first to discover dragons and learn that the mystical creatures were predisposed to serve marked men. Aaron’s extensive marks, gained over his many travels, alone and with Cal Mast, had given him the keys to a dragon army hidden in the mountains. When others sought to imitate his success, many a Corvale and Vylass warrior put the pieces together and headed to the mountains themselves. Dragons were extremely rare and dangerous. But it was not the scarcity of dragons that made an expansion like the NEST’s impossible. It was the scarcity of marked warriors to claim them. NEST had found a way to cheat by copying one man’s real marks onto his soldiers. They must have someone with talent doing the marking. In the past, others had tried faking marks to earn the loyalty of dragons. The dragons could always tell. Something in the closely guarded art of mark making, known only to the mark masters among the Corvale and Vylass. The attempted deceivers were generally torn to pieces. Dragons did not appreciate subterfuge.
“Aaron,” said DeMarco, finally breaking the huddle and approaching, “we would send an unmanned dragon east to the Vercount relay. They should have three ready. Two to advance the order, one to spell you. By the western side of the Great River we can have full support lined up. We’ll send an unmanned backup in a more southerly route, around Landor. I ride with you until we clear NEST territory.” The last statement was more a question.
Aaron nodded. “I’ll give the unmanned a five minute headstart. Get the notes written.” DeMarco turned back and the men huddled again, this time to mask the light of a small lantern as they hurriedly wrote out the ciphers for a Red Locust between their present location and Conners Toren. Once written, one of the notes was fastened to the fastest unladen dragon, who was directed to fly to the Vercount relay. The dragons had no interest in human vocabulary, but they did remember and understand the names of a limited number of places. Off it went into the eastern night sky, briefly blotting out the bright stars as it flew to the horizon.
The backup, taking the Landor route, would leave after Aaron and DeMarco. That left one dragon for the remaining four men. They would need to head east on foot, saving the dragon for scouting under cover of night, avoiding the attention of NEST. It wasn’t Aaron’s problem. He had enough to worry about. He blew smoke into the cold air, watched the winds carry it west, towards the enemy. Could he smell it? Did he know Aaron knew who he was?
Aaron wished for more support. He wished Cal were here. Since they’d parted ways after Delhonne, Aaron hadn’t seen Cal often. Cal maintained a loose affiliation with the SDC, but had his own dragons, commonly known as the Unflagged. NEST had tried for Cal a few times, but he had proven more resilient than their usual prey. The Unflagged could usually be found somewhere in Garen following Cal’s exile from Castalan. Not close enough.
After a few minutes, Aaron put out his cigarette and drained his waterskin. He handed two daggers and a purse full of gold to Pierce. Not payment, just making himself as light as possible. He would be in the air a long time. He and DeMarco climbed on to the backs of their dragons and kicked off.
When the unmanned dragon reached the Vercount relay, it was greeted by a grizzled Corvale veteran. He’d seen it, even in the dark sky, from several miles away. The watch at this westernmost SDC outpost was kept around the clock. Since the rise of NEST, they always paid particular attention to the west. He shifted his torch to his off hand and removed the note from the dragon’s neckpouch. After permitting himself a surprised grunt at its contents, he returned to the cabin to wake the other two men stationed there. Within ten minutes, one of their dragons was prepped and ready to fly and the other was already winging its way east to the next outpost.
Aaron and DeMarco arrived twenty minutes later. Aaron immediately mounted the prepped dragon and continued east alone. DeMarco would stay here until the first dragon was rested and then continue onwards at a slower pace.
It was when the unmanned dragon from Vercount arrived at the next relay station that things really began to happen. This station had four dragons waiting, which meant it could send three Red Locust notifications out and still have a fresh dragon ready for Aaron Lorne. One of those dragons went to the Great River Branch outpost, the center for SDC dragon routing and logistics for all flights and operations west of Delhonne. Messages flew in all directions from the Great River Branch.
As the sun rose in the east, all SDC flights were grounded, all contracts placed on temporary hold. More than a few nobles awoke in confusion as their hired mounts and guides abandoned them mid-journey. Others arrived at launch pads for prescheduled and prepaid flights only to find no one there. The flight corridor between Ellis and New Wyelin was cleared of non-essential activity. It would take the accountants and logisticians weeks to fully restore normal operations and figure out how much revenue had been lost in a single day’s work. Aaron didn’t care. Their enemy had a significant head start in preparing for the inevitably approaching war. While Aaron tried to close the gap, every second mattered.
He switched dragons in midair about halfway between the Eostre-Tannes border and the Great River. He switched again at the Great River, taking pleasure in timing his jump so he was over the clear blue water. By then he had two fresh dragons, one in front to cut the wind, rotating them every two hours or so. As he crossed the northern border of Tannes, he had been in the air for nearly twenty hours. The last rays of the western sun fell on Aaron as he set down briefly in a field past the border to empty his bladder, stretch his aching back, and drink some water. Two hours later he entered the outskirts of the new Corvale territory. He could see the deep, blue mountains ahead in the night.
The border scouts had already been alerted to the Red Locust. They had fresh dragons and a full escort waiting for Aaron. They joined him and all began the rough climb for altitude up the southern face of the Frome Mountains, the torches on the lead dragons swirling in the wind. After they cleared the first pass, the winds grew more favorable. Aaron was able to sit back and rest as his dragon found a good coasting level. His back hurt. Another hour and they reached the Tear, a flat sheet of rockwall with a jagged gap running down the center. It was hard to fight the winds and clear the rockwall, which left visitors to the SDC and the Corvale with little option but to navigate the narrow path the gap provided. Aaron let his escort lead the way into the deeper blackness, trusting his dragon to navigate the slim turns by memory as the darkness enfolded them. The Tear lasted only a few hundred feet, then opened out into the Deathbowl.
After the claustrophobic Tear, the Deathbowl felt impos
sibly open, exposed. A massive canyon which stretched in all directions, the Deathbowl’s construction had eaten up a good third of the costs of the new Corvale community in the mountains. It was their great defense against invasion by dragonarmy. The natural bowl spanned a mile across at the center. The Tear was to the south, providing the only entry and exit without fighting for exhausting altitude in unfavorable winds. The rim of the bowl was nearly circular and level. The Corvale had cleared off shelves along the exterior, creating suitable space for dragons to land, rest, and wait. If an enemy entered in force, they would find all the shelves occupied by dragons. As the invaders struggled to find rest and shelter, the Corvale could rotate and attack in shifts. Or they could simply wait until the invading dragons collapsed of exhaustion and sank to the canyon floor to be dispatched easily from above. No one had tried to attack the Deathbowl yet. Outside the Corvale and the rare guest, few had seen it.
Directly across the center of the Deathbowl was the recently built New Wyelin and its crowning jewel, the SDC Hall of Far East. A long landing platform stretched out in front of the structure, like a protruding tongue. After crossing the entirety of Tannes and then some, almost twenty-six hours of straight flight, Aaron landed.
The commanding officer of New Wyelin’s dragonarmy garrison waited as Aaron approached the traditional silver Corvale washing bowl and cleaned his hands and face. Aaron gave the commander a nod but said nothing as he continued forward in a brisk walk towards the Hall of Far East. Moments later, Aaron threw back the large wooden doors and entered the long space, a grand table ahead of him. It was empty aside from Conners Toren, Aaron’s lord, the leader of the Delhonne Corvale and Chief Executive Officer of the SDC, seated at the head. Aaron did not break stride but continued forward, took a knee in front of his master. After Conners bid him to rise, Aaron told him that, after over ten years of searching, they had found the Prisoner, and he sat atop NEST. War was coming and there was no doubt the Corvale would be the ultimate target of this uncaged evil.
Night of the Chalk (Spies of Dragon and Chalk Book 1) Page 32