Squire Derel

by Rachel Ford

  I’d been in the air the morning Helena died. It was the last time I’d flown.

  I’d taken a temporary leave of absence from the training program. After a while, temporary became extended. And then, after my father died and my ancestral duties became mine, extended became permanent. I’d resigned my spot.

  I hadn’t imagined I’d ever ride again.

  “Mount up, Callaghan,” the redhead was saying.

  I swallowed, and breathed out and then in. And I nodded and moved for an ebony wyvern. No one had claimed him yet, which I didn’t understand. He was not the largest dragon tethered here, but there was keen understanding in his golden eyes, a kind of careful intelligence as he watched my approach, that I recognized. My training had never progressed far enough for me to be assigned my own wyvern. But I’d worked with enough to appreciate that look.

  Like people, some dragons were born – well, smarter, and more intuitive. And if I was going to take a dragon I’d never trained with into battle? I’d be damned if I was trusting my life to a dummy.

  “I knew you’d be here, KP,” Tommy was saying. “I have them all saddled.”

  “Good work, Squire. If anyone else shows up, tell them we’re in the air. Tell them to get their asses up here too.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I put a foot in the first rung on the saddle, and then I paused. “Ana,” I said.

  “KP?”

  “Here.” There was a sword, strapped to the saddle, and I reached up and unbuckled it. It was wyvern steel. “Take this.”

  She seemed surprised. “Won’t you need it?”

  The saddle would be reinforced with wyvern steel. I’d be protected. But she and Phillip had nothing. “I’ll be fine. You’ll need it, though, in case the riders spot you.”

  “What’ll you do, if you come face-to-face with one of them?” Aaronsen asked. “You can’t kill a dragon without wyvern steel.”

  I smiled. “Sure you can. Ask Ana.” Then, I climbed up, and tucked my legs into the stirrups. “You two stick together. Stay safe, you understand?”

  He nodded, and Ana swallowed. “You too, KP.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  The redhead, meanwhile, was giving orders. “Squires, stand aside. The rest of you too: if you don’t know how to fly, get out of the way.”

  “Lay low for a few minutes,” Lidek added. “Even if they see us leave, you’ll be safe from dragon fire: the wyvern steel will shield you.”

  “Copy that, sir,” someone said.

  “We’re going to do what we can to take those sons-of-bitches down. If you get the chance, if any of the riders come low enough, shoot them. Don’t hesitate. Kill on sight.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And get the rest of the knights mobilized.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Alright.” He turned to the redhead. “Let’s give these bastards hell, then.”

  She smiled. “You got it, Commander. Riders, move out. Move out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – Callaghan

  The wind rushed past. I flicked the reins again, gently: just enough pressure to let him know that he should continue. He flapped his wings again. Another rush of air and sound passed, and then another, and another.

  And then we were levitating off the ground, hovering a few meters above the surface, and then a few more. Each new beat brought us higher and higher.

  I swallowed, a thrill of excitement and fear washing over me. This sensation, this feeling, of rising, of climbing through the air: I’d dreamed of it, ever since I was a child. There was something surreal, unreal, about watching the world grow smaller and smaller, and the heavens nearer and nearer.

  But this was no time to marvel at the feeling. The redhead – I still didn’t know her name, I realized – had gone first, then her two riders, and then Lidek. I went next, and Angelo behind me. Six riders, climbing into the night sky, appearing from nowhere.

  It was too much to hope we’d go unnoticed. And we didn’t. It took a few moments, but as soon as the first wyvern climbed above the smoke, the Southerners spotted us. It was pure chaos after that.

  I’d barely begun to get my feel for commanding the remarkable creature I’d claimed. Part of it was muscle memory, the kind, once trained in, you didn’t forget. Part of it was knowing your wyvern.

  I didn’t know this one, nor it me. I didn’t know how it would react to sharp turns or sudden dips. I didn’t know how fast he could accelerate, or how quickly he could stop.

  This was a battle-ready dragon. I had no question that he’d be in top condition. But even a small difference between expectation and ability could mean the difference between life and death. If I moved too soon, expecting him to be slower, I could get us killed. If I moved too late, expecting him to be faster, I could get us killed.

  I didn’t know. And he didn’t know how to anticipate my actions. That was the other piece of this. Just as the rider got to know the dragon, the dragon would learn the way his rider thought. He’d learn what a subtle shift in weight from one side or the other meant, what a lean portended, and how wide to turn with a tug on the reins.

  We were flying into battle handicapped. Better to fly handicapped than not fly at all, I reminded myself.

  The Southerners were coming at us in a tight cluster, four of the twelve a little ways before the others.

  We spread out, partly due to the order of flight, and partly due to design. There were only six of us. That meant we were two-to-one, by the numbers. How it would play out in the air, though, was anyone’s guess.

  But the surest way for any of us to wind up dead was to dive single file into a swarm of enemy dragons and knights. No, better to draw them out, to make them break off from their pack and chase us, one or two at a time.

  It worked. I was rightward of Lidek, a little to his rear. I reined my wyvern further to the side, to put more distance between us. One of the Southern knights, then another, broke from the flock. I saw others go for Angelo and Lidek, and the three wyvern riders, and a few flying high or low. The band seemed to disperse in every direction. But I was focused on the two coming for me.

  Well fuck. It’s go time.

  I’d never been in a proper wyvern battle. I’d sparred against fellow trainees, and trainers. But a real battle, where we were trying to kill each other? Of course not.

  Then again, other than Lidek, no one on the field probably had. We were all too young to have seen real combat beyond a few skirmishes. But not the real deal. Not against dragons and enemies from across the border. Northerner or Southerner, we were all new to this. I reminded myself of that, too, and gritted my teeth. “Come on,” I said, urging the beast forward. “Let’s cook these sons-of-bitches.”

  The compound below us was shrouded in smoke, glowing red here and there where the fire blazed bright. The moon overhead was mostly hidden, as were the stars, but a few patches of silvery light peeked out. It was enough to see by, though it cast the underbellies of our various wyvern in a strange, reddish glow.

  The two dragons that had broken off to meet me were closer now, approaching from an angle, like the two sides of a V racing toward the point – where I was the point. I gritted my teeth and reached for the holster. I’d given up my blade to Ana, but most riders carried a gun. I prayed this one – whoever he’d been – did too.

  Sure enough, just under a weatherproof flap in the saddle, my fingers found purchase on a pistol grip. I breathed out a sigh of relief. In jousts like this, where wyvern steel shielded the rider from dragon fire, the object usually was to get close enough to strike a blow at the wyvern. Kill a dragon, kill its rider. Ground a dragon, ground its rider. It was a basic principle of aerial combat. A human would not survive a fall from heights like these. Even if he survived a crash landing, if his bird was too injured to get back in the air, he was no more a threat than any other banged up fighter.

  That’s what these riders would be doing: flying in close, to try to strike a blow at my mount.


  But I had no wyvern steel blade, and my energy pistol wouldn’t faze a dragon. I was going to have to try another tactic. It would be harder, but, if I could pull it off, more just. It was the men, not the dragons, who had brought the fight here, after all.

  I aimed for the riders.

  It was tricky business, to manage reins, to try to maintain your hold with one hand, while aiming with another. It didn’t matter if you wielded a blade or a pistol. It was tricky all the same.

  But it had been a long time since I’d done either. I fought the fear that bubbled up as I raised an arm, and my balance shifted.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. You’ve done this before.

  I glanced down the length of the pistol. In the air, its ranged advantage seemed very small. Every beat of my dragon’s wings, every beat of the oncoming wyverns’, meant my targets shifted. I was a good shot, but after seventy or eighty meters, a pistol’s accuracy dropped. It was still lethal at three hundred meters, but the chance of hitting your target was low. And after three hundred meters, the charge began to disperse. In optimal weather conditions, you’d still hurt someone at three hundred and fifty meters and singe them at four hundred.

  Even with a pistol, the nearer you were, the better your odds. But enemy riders wouldn’t just stay still and let you take aim. They’d be moving and moving fast; and the instant one of them realized what I was up to, they’d take action. There would be a sweet spot, a moment where I was close enough to be accurate – if my skill was up to it – and far enough away to avoid a head-on collision. And it would last for a second or two, and no more.

  The two wyvern were close now, about a hundred and fifty meters out. I breathed in and held my breath. I lined my sights up center torso of the rider to my right. Right hand, right eye, rightward target. He was readying his blade for a strike. He dipped as his dragon drew back its wings. I rose as mine lowered them. Then I came down, and he came up.

  And my sights slipped back into alignment, and I pulled the trigger.

  I didn’t wait to see if I’d hit. I veered sharply to the left, straight for the other rider, and dug my heels into my mount. It was a standard signal to attack. At least, it had been back in the day. I hoped it was the same now.

  We were on a collision course, dragon to dragon. I saw that in the half an instant before a wall of fire washed over me. A kind of protective bubble formed, encircling the saddle and me, and I could see nothing but red and orange flames.

  I felt my wyvern lurch, and with the rush of fire by my head, I heard snarling and tearing. In the next instant, his body – with me strapped to it – flung wide, in a semi-circle, as if it was continuing in one direction while the front of him was whipping in the other.

  The fire disappeared, but the world continued to spin. We were changing course, heading back in the way we’d come. We were following our attacker, and as my vision cleared, I understood why.

  My wyvern had wrapped his jaws around the neck of the other and was biting hard. Streams of blood, glimmering silvery purple in the moonlight, ran from the wounds. The two creatures flailed, their giant bodies thrashing into one another. I tipped precariously in the saddle, and fought to right myself, to get a clear line of sight on the other rider.

  Cold sweat traced up and down my back, slicking my forehead and wetting my palms as I slid back into the saddle. My hand shook as I searched for the Southerner.

  But he wasn’t there. The dragon’s saddle was empty. Sometime between the initial impact and now, he must have slipped to his death.

  Fuck, I thought, realizing how close I’d come to that same fate. Then, I clicked the reins, in the release sequence I’d learned so many years ago. My wyvern responded on cue.

  A dragon, on its own, might still attack. But a dragon leaking blood like this one? He’d flee. We didn’t need to kill him.

  And there were other enemies still in the air who did require our attention.

  I turned, angling to return to the fray. Then, I froze. Beyond the smoke, beyond Shire’s End and Terrence’s Fort, due south as the crow flies, I saw a thousand tiny lights on the horizon. I saw vehicles and horsemen, wyvern and infantry.

  I saw the invasion.

  Chapter Thirty – Derel

  “You heard Ragersen,” one of the knights was saying, “let’s move out.”

  I caught Aaronsen by the arm. “Hey, how are you doing, Phil?”

  He blinked. “Me? I’m fine.”

  “You sure? What they gave you, it was powerful.”

  He nodded. “I’m fine, Ana. A little – woozy. But alright. The knock upside the head was worse.”

  I glanced him over. In addition to everything else, he’d lost a lot of blood. Still, I nodded. Hiding here wasn’t going to do us any favors. “Stay close. We’ll make a run for the trees again. And then, from there –”

  I cut off as a sound, at once terrible and far too familiar, hit my ears. It was the sound of wings: dragon wings. Shit.

  The KP’s had already taken off. They wouldn’t be returning. This wouldn’t be our people. No. Those wings meant only one thing: we’d been discovered.

  As if to bear out the conclusion, the net overhead burst into flames, and in a moment, fire bore down on all of us. I clutched the blade in one hand, raising it above us, and Phillip in another. He towered over me, wrapping his own arm over my shoulders. I think we both caught our breath as the stream of fire surrounded us.

  I could see the flames as they neared and bounced off an invisible shield, like a kind of protective bubble surrounding us. Heat seeped through, not hot enough to burn us, but hot enough that I appreciated anew the safety of our barrier. Hot enough that I shivered in fear.

  I felt Phillip shiver too, and I sent up a prayer of thanks for those old elven mages to whom we owed our lives right now. Whatever the elves had been, whatever they’d done, it was their magic, and the secrets they taught human smiths, that saved our asses in the moment.

  Then the fire passed, and the rush of heat and smoke quieted. I heard the screams of a few squires, a knight calling a challenge, and the nervous growling and stomping of dragons behind us.

  But my eyes were fixed on what appeared out of that smoke and fire: a face, terrible and brown, with fangs that shone white against the night, and eyes that were lit with a hellish yellow gold light.

  It was on the ground, as if it had landed during the blast. And it seemed to spot Phillip and me too, for it advanced, one step at a time. A knight charged forward wyvern steel blade raised to strike. With a quick flick of its tail, the monster tossed him aside.

  It stopped a few meters in front of us. Smoke streamed from its nostrils, and its jaws parted. I felt my heart sink at the appearance of those terrible teeth. Images of the last time I’d seen that sight flooded my mind – back, before all this. Back when Ilyen was alive. Back before we’d admitted these double-crossers and spies, these saboteurs and assassins.

  Cold fear made way for fierce hate, burning in my soul as hot as the blast of fire that left its parted jaws. These bastards – they’d murdered Ilyen. They’d tried to murder Lil, and Phillip, and the commander. They’d murdered so many already. They would murder so many more, before the night was out.

  But not if I could help it. I was ready when the flames dissipated, leaping off the ball of my foot and pumping my legs as hard and fast as they would go. I crossed the distance quickly. The dragon drew in another breath, readying to engulf me in flames.

  “Phillip, go,” I screamed.

  The flames came, just as I propelled myself off the ground. I jumped high, as high as I could, my blade before me. If I didn’t make the leap, I wanted to make sure I didn’t dive into the monster’s jaws.

  But I didn’t need to worry. I cleared his teeth, my heels grazing its nose. I ran as soon as my feet found purchase, propelling myself onward and upward without giving myself time to worry about balance. If I kept moving forward, kept driving on, the motion would keep me from tumbling.

  The fire fell
away, a rush of heat behind me, and the monster blinked in surprise as I raced backwards, toward its neck. Those golden eyes gleamed with shock and fear, an animalistic terror, so patently obvious that I almost felt a twinge of regret.

  But I had no time for regret. I kept going, flying over the crests of its head, racing along the scales of its wide neck. It was like running along a thick, downed tree, except, in addition to the roundness that made finding a foothold precarious, it squirmed under my feet.

  I had the unhappy thought that, at any minute, I’d be cast aside with as much ease as that knight had been discarded, and then trampled under those great feet, or shredded by those razor-sharp claws. I prayed my foot wouldn’t catch in one of the folds of the gilded purple caparison running down its back.

  But, somehow, I managed to stay on track. And three strides turned into four, and four to five; and then I had passed the neck and reached the monster’s back.

  And here I came face-to-face with a different kind of monster. This monster wielded a blade, and where there had been a killing instinct in the dragon’s eyes, here there was a hungry, murderous gleam.

  The fire in my chest raged hotter, and I loosed a scream. The Southern knight was scrambling to loose himself from his saddle and raise his blade to meet mine. I brought my sword to his, arresting the strike midway. And I leaped, dropping the blade as I went and catching his head in my hands.

  I went down hard, twisting as I went, and felt, more than heard, the snapping of bone. The knight’s body stiffened for half a second, and then went limp. I was still screaming as I retrieved my blade and plunged it into him. I was taking no chances.

  But he was dead already. His head lolled backward, held in place by tissue and muscle. I’d snapped the bones.

  Now, the dragon under me quivered, as if it could sense the violence that had been done behind his head. Its wings flapped, once, twice and again. I glanced around, looking for a way down.

  We were lifting off the ground, and I was too near the creature’s wings to dare an escape. The sinewy cords of muscle running up and down them, strong enough to lift man and beast, could pulverize a human form without much effort.