by John Ringo
“Hi,” someone said, walking up behind him. It was one of the wyvern-riders, and Herzer started when he realized that it was a she. In their leather uniforms and helmet it was hard to distinguish sex at any sort of distance. “I’m Vickie. Let’s get you strapped up.”
“O-kay,” Herzer said. “Where do I put this?” he asked, holding up his bag. He’d packed one spare uniform and some light clothes including a bathing suit someone had dredged up in his size.
“Don’t ask Joanna, or you might not like the answer,” Vickie said with a smile. She took the bag and stepped nimbly up the wyvern’s legs to the top where she attached the bag just behind the saddle. The dragon made another questioning sound and shifted the leg she was standing on at which she slapped it on the side. “Shut up, Chance.”
“The way this works is you lie down on his back. Don’t try to sit up. It looks great in pictures and it works like shit in reality. See the slots on the side?”
“Yup,” Herzer replied. He’d been giving the harness a good look. “How do I handle the reins?”
“Like Joanna said, don’t,” Vickie replied. “I’ll hook them up, though. The top reins are for up, the bottom reins, which hook to your feet, are for down. Pull right with the top reins to go right, left reins to go left. Don’t try to do a stoop, you won’t like it.”
“What’s a stoop?”
“If you don’t know what it is, you don’t want to try it. Just hang on and don’t mess with the reins. Chauncey will follow us just fine as long as you don’t mess with anything.”
She waited as he climbed up the wyvern, then attached straps across his thighs. There were clear grab straps on the front but the only thing actually holding him on were the thigh straps. She finished by hooking the bottom reins onto his boots and pushing the top reins, which were one continuous circuit of leather, under his body.
“The worst part about riding dragon-back is learning to keep your legs still. You go and stretch and this bad boy is going to head for the ground like a falcon. Got it?”
“Got it,” Herzer said settling his body in the seat. He was glad he hadn’t brought his armor; it would have been very uncomfortable. “Is it Chance or Chauncey?” he asked.
“It’s Chauncey,” Vickie admitted. “I call him Chance for short.”
“What’s taking so long, Vickie?” Joanna bellowed and Herzer realized everyone else was already mounted. “You’re supposed to be mounting him up, not arranging a mounting!”
Vickie looked at him with a dyspeptic expression. “Gotta go.”
“See ya.” Herzer grinned, wriggling closer into the seat. “We’ll arrange the other some other time.”
Vickie chuckled and patted him on the butt as she climbed down.
“Thanks, but I don’t go both ways,” she said as she jumped nimbly to the ground.
“Pity,” Herzer muttered as he watched her mount her wyvern. As soon as she was on, Joanna spread her wings and with a massive blast of wind, lifted off the hill and swept down over the river.
Chauncey was apparently well trained because with a bound that caused Herzer’s neck to snap back he leapt forward and upward into the air, following the larger dragon. Immediately the air was filled with wings as the formation of dragons reached for the sky.
For a moment it was all that Herzer could do to control his vomit reaction. The combination of the height and the up and down motion of the wyvern as it got up air speed was sickening. But after that brief spasm he found himself caught up in the spectacular view. The dragons were making a curving climb to the right that carried them first out over the Shenan River, which glittered in the early morning light, then over the town of Raven’s Mill itself. Looking around he realized that they were already higher than Massan Mountain. As he thought that he grabbed the straps because the wyvern suddenly stopped flapping. For a moment he thought something had gone wrong but it was just a glide period as the formation turned towards the mountain across the river.
As they passed back over Raven’s Hill Herzer felt an upward motion that wasn’t from the dragon and realized that they had passed over a thermal. Apparently to take advantage of it the dragons began their slow wing-beats again and they rapidly gained height until they lost the thermal and ceased flapping. They crossed the river at a gentle glide and Herzer had to wonder where they were going. The ocean was to the east but they were going west.
Just as he really started to get worried, it wasn’t impossible that New Destiny might have co-opted this “mercenary” dragon to kidnap Duke Edmund and his family, they passed over Massan Mountain and hit another, much stronger thermal.
This was, apparently, what Joanna had been looking for because she began a climb at the end of the mountain, in the midst of the thermal, and the dragons seemed to rocket into the air under the power of their wings and the much greater energy of the rising air.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Daneh had ceded Rachel the front seat on Joanna’s back and Rachel had initially been quite happy with that. She was looking forward to flying dragon-back. However, shortly after climbing on, as the dragon muttered various imprecations about sharp shoes, she rethought her position. For one thing, while she wouldn’t have preferred to have the view to the front blocked by her mother’s buttocks, it was now hers that were directly in view. What was worse, she badly needed to pass wind. The change in altitude, the frisson of fear on the lift-off, the whole experience was causing her internals to rearrange quite disastrously. And while she and her mother had had some tough times, gassing in her face was not going to be anything but killer embarrassing.
To take her mind off of it, she decided to brave the dragon’s wrath.
“Joanna!” she yelled. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” the dragon rumbled in reply, without turning her head. “But if you think I’m going to look you in the eye you need to stop reading fantasies. Flying is hard enough without having to look backwards!”
“That’s fine,” Rachel shouted back. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask,” the dragon said.
“Are you always this touchy or is there something in particular that has you pissed off?”
Rachel felt the seat under her shaking and clutched at the grab-straps, but after a moment she realized that it was just the dragon laughing.
“A little of both,” Joanna admitted. “I’ve been called a bitch before, plenty of times. But this mission has me ticked in a major way.”
“Why?” Rachel yelled. “Southern skies, warm seas, tropical sun…”
“Long damned flight,” Joanna admitted. “We don’t get to go on a pleasure cruise. The ship’s supposedly set up to let us land from, but my guess is we’re going to have to fly most of the way. That’s like doing a five, six, ten day marathon. We can do it, but it’s still a pain in the ass.”
“Oh.”
“And that’s not all,” Joanna said, warming to the subject. “What the hell are we going to eat? The ship we’re meeting can’t possibly carry enough fresh meat for us for the whole trip. So that means, what? Salt beef? Fish? Raw fish? I hate sushi!”
“Sorry!”
“Not your fault,” Joanna said. “I hate this Fallen world. I want to be able to Change. Any time I want. I want to eat chocolate.”
Rachel just nodded at that; she felt the same way.
For that matter, if she was in the pre-Fall days, even riding like this, she could have her gas bypassed rather than be impolite. Oh, well, at least geneticists had long ago fixed the smell problem.
“Damn thing,” Joanna muttered.
“What?” Rachel shouted back. Due to the rush of the wind, Rachel had to shout but any statement from the dragon was fairly clear.
“Oh, nothing,” the dragon replied. “Your boyfriend’s mount is riding my slipstream. It’s just an extra weight to pull.”
Rachel looked from side to side and noticed that the other dragons had spread out in a v, with the exception of Herzer.
&nbs
p; “He’s not controlling his mount!” she pointed out.
“I know, it’s just Chauncey being lazy. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Why are the other ones in a v?” Rachel yelled. “They look like they’re going to run into each other.”
“Slipstream again,” Joanna answered. “There’s a low-pressure area that passes out to either side. Ever see geese fly over?”
“Plenty of times.”
“Same thing. That doesn’t drag directly on me, though, like Chauncey is. Damn idiot wyvern.”
They continued in a slow spiral upward, riding the thermal and the power of the slowly flapping wings for what seemed half the morning. But by the rise of the sun it couldn’t have been more than a half an hour. Finally, Rachel felt a drop, more a feeling of lightness.
“Top of the thermal,” Joanna said, banking to the east. “I got at least three thousand meters out of it, which is pretty good for a morning in October.”
Rachel had been avidly looking at the view in the distance but at those words she looked down. And then screwed her eyes tight shut and grabbed at the straps.
“Don’t look down,” Joanna chuckled.
“Too late,” Rachel replied.
“Oh, what the hell is that idiot doing?” Joanna growled.
* * *
Herzer had realized during the climb-out that Chauncey was riding the bigger dragon’s slipstream. But he for sure wasn’t going to try to mess with a spiraling climb. However, when the dragons lined out and glided into the sun, he decided that it was worth seeing if he could shift down the line. The worst that was going to happen was that he would release Chauncey and the wyvern would go back to his accustomed place.
There remained one problem. He was directly behind Joanna, no more than twenty meters. Her tail actually whipped back and forth past Chauncey’s nose, close enough to nearly hit it. The tail end of the extended V formation of the wyverns was actually behind his present position. Which meant that he would have to slow down, then catch back up. He knew neither command.
Going on a hunch, he slowly pulled back on the climbing reins until the slack was out, then pulled back on those and the diving reins, very slightly. His clamp held the reins snugly but he was always careful not to flex too hard lest he cut the reins like snapping a twig.
Herzer wasn’t even sure what Chauncey did, but they began to drift backwards from the larger dragon, while staying more or less at the same height. He was actually dropping slightly below her, but staying on an even keel, not in a “dive” or whatever.
Herzer let back out on the reins and then pulled, ever so slightly, on the left rein. Obediently, Chauncey entered a slight bank to the left, but they also began to lose height. Herzer loosened up on the rein, pulled a bit to the right, and shortly found himself just outside the left-most of the riders on more or less the same heading. Unfortunately, he was about sixty meters below the wyvern and nearly a hundred behind.
Oh, well.
The rider just happened to be Vickie and he could hear her shouting at him, but he wasn’t sure what she could do about his experimentation.
The problem was simple. He had to get up to their level and get Chauncey to speed up so that he could enter the proper formation. They were now, steadily, pulling ahead of him and either gaining altitude or he was losing it in comparison. But Chauncey seemed content to obey orders and follow the present course. Despite the fact that it was the wrong one.
He pulled, gently, on both up reins. All that did was cause him to lose more ground, but they did gain some height, briefly. Then Chauncey pulled against the reins and reentered the glide. Herzer suddenly remembered a term “stall speed” and wondered, briefly, just how close he had come to making the dragon “crash.” If such a thing was possible.
He suddenly had a very clear vision of a tree limb in his face. Shortly after the Fall he had been one of the people chosen, because he had some limited riding experience, to “help out” with a round-up of feral animals. While he had been trying to keep a boar from killing a female friend, Diablo had jumped over the spitted boar and Herzer’s forehead had impacted a tree limb at nearly a full gallop.
The recovery had been slow and painful. But if he screwed up this ride, he was looking at a several-thousand-meter fall. That was not even vaguely survivable.
But he really needed to catch up to the formation.
“Up, Chauncey,” he yelled. “Go! Forward! Hut! Hut!” There didn’t seem to be any way to beat at him. He’d never really seen the riders make any motions except small rein movements.
But. His boot was actually over skin, not on the saddle. He doubted that was unintentional.
“Hi, Chauncey,” he yelled, digging his boot into the side of the dragon as hard as he could.
The startled wyvern began flapping its wings, rapidly gaining speed. So rapidly that the formation was coming up much too quickly. And he was still slightly below it.
“Up!” he called, pulling back on the reins. At the last moment he checked his instinctive reaction to yank back and instead applied a gentle pressure, as if he was trying to get Diablo to go to a moderately slower gallop.
The control worked, Chauncey adjusted his angle of flight and went upward, losing some forward speed at the same time, but when they returned to level flight, by simply letting out on the reins, they were above and past the formation. Also slightly farther out to the left and he had no idea how that had happened.
“What the hell are you doing?” Joanna bellowed. “I told you to just go along for the ride!”
“He was in your slipstream!” Herzer yelled back. “I didn’t think you should have to tow him!”
“If it had been a problem I would have told you!” Joanna raged back. “Now what are you going to do, hotshot?”
He had to go backwards, down and to the right. The “slot” he was trying to get to was about ten or twenty meters to his right and about the same back. About sixty meters down. He seemed to be in a slightly less efficient glide than the other dragons, probably because he wasn’t coasting in the same vortexes.
Well, he’d tried the up reins, and the up and down. And turned left and right.
“I guess I’ll try the down reins,” he muttered and pushed back, lightly, on the right down rein.
* * *
Rachel had been watching Herzer’s fumbling entry into flight with some amusement but she gasped in horror as the dragon turned over on its right wing and plummeted towards the ground.
“Oh, my God!” she shouted.
Joanna turned her head slightly to the side and tisked. “That’s what we call a stoop.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Well, the reason we call it a stoop is that it’s fisking stoopid.”
* * *
Herzer grabbed at the straps as the dragon seemed to turn, briefly, upside down. He had a very clear view of the underside of Vickie’s dragon as he passed and he realized he was screaming, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to do at the moment.
However, he was only briefly inverted, if he ever actually had been, and he quickly gained control of the beast, taking the climb straps and pulling back on them slightly less gently than he had been.
The dragon pulled out of its dive in a strong swoop upward and to the left, pushing upward with strong strokes of its wings and Herzer let out a bellow of joy at the incredible feeling of having that power at his control.
“Yes!” he shouted, as the dragon pulled up to the level of the formation. More confident now he let it rise to slightly above the formation then angled it into the slot at a downward glide. At the last Chauncey seemed to sense the vortex and entered the slot of his own accord.
“Oh, my God!” Herzer shouted over to Vickie, a smile plastered on his face.
“You’re fisking crazy!” Vickie shouted back. “You could have killed yourself.”
“That’s what’s so great!” Herzer yelled back, still grinning. “Normally it’s human beings trying t
o kill me. This time it was just physics!”
“Give him a break, Vickie,” the next rider over shouted. “The first time she stooped she pissed herself.”
“Thank you so very much, Jerry!” Vickie shouted back. “You’d better check your straps well for that!”
“It was great!” Herzer yelled. “Let’s do it again!”
“Not a chance,” Jerry yelled. “The reason we’re flying like this is it’s a long flight today. You’ve already pushed him harder than was a good idea. Just let it be. Time for aerobatics on the trip.”
“He’s not a dragon-rider!” Vickie yelled back.
“Dragon. Rider. Dragon-rider!” Jerry pointed then laughed.
“How long are we flying today?” Herzer yelled.
“Long time, four or five hours,” Vickie replied. “That’s pretty close to the limit of a dragon’s endurance.”
“Oh,” Herzer muttered. “I didn’t know,” he added in a yell.
“It should be fine,” Vickie yelled. “It’s not that they wear out, they just need to feed by then. And full dragons don’t fly very well. We usually fly a couple of hours, then feed them, then fly again. This way we’ll fly four or five hours, then they’ll have to gorge. And once they gorge they won’t be any good for hours.”
“What if they don’t get fed?” Herzer yelled.
“You don’t want to be around a hungry dragon,” Jerry replied. “You really don’t.”
* * *
The dragons hissed like giant tea kettles, swinging their heads angrily from side to side. But the chains they were attached to kept them far enough apart that even their tails couldn’t strike at the ones to either side.
On the other hand, to get the large platters to them would require getting close enough to get bitten.
The destination of the group had been Newfell Naval Base, a growing facility near the mouth of the Gem River. It was at the very tip of a massive bay that marked the joining of the Gem and Poma rivers, the latter of which was fed by, among others, the Shenan that ran by Raven’s Mill.