The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding

by Vickie Knestaut

  Trysten reached out and patted the dragon on his neck. She pushed her shoulders back. No, they hadn’t gotten carried away. The nip on Ulbeg’s tail needed to be addressed, but it wasn’t serious. And if her father had let her join the consideration, then she wouldn’t have had to take such rash actions. Taking Ulbeg out to spar with Paege had been her only way to stand up for herself.

  As Bolsar went on about what a reckless stunt it was that she had pulled, Trysten reached out and patted Ulbeg on the neck again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

  Ulbeg bobbed his head once as if he understood.

  Chapter 9

  Once Trysten had Ulbeg in the stall, she searched for Galelin. The healer was still not in the weyr. Bolsar stood outside the stall, arms crossed, brow scrunched.

  “Wait here,” Trysten said and gave Ulbeg another pat on the neck. As she left the stall, Bolsar stepped back and turned slightly towards the other end of the weyr, where the stairs to her father’s den waited.

  Instead of heading to her father’s den, Trysten went the other direction.

  “Where do you think you are going?” Bolsar called after her.

  “Ulbeg needs help, and I don’t know where Galelin is,” Trysten called back.

  “He’s on his way. You best get up to your father’s den before you make things worse for yourself or the weyr.”

  Trysten opened a cabinet in a storage area in the center of the weyr. She pulled out some linen used to bandage the dragons, as well as some salve that Galelin always applied to open wounds. As she carried these back, she caught sight of her father limping along, through the other end of the weyr, among the hordesmen leading their dragons back to their stalls.

  He said nothing. He made no motion. He merely maintained eye contact and kept moving at a steady pace with his cumbersome staff, and Trysten’s heart nearly snapped for the sight.

  He should have been leading Aeronwind, his dragon, with his shoulders back and straight, his chest broad and wide and seemingly as tough as the dragons he led. The man heading towards her was still strong and willful, but broken as well. By the wilds, she had been reckless. Not only with Ulbeg, but with her father. He’d been through so much since the accident. And here she was creating havoc and chaos while he worked towards a smooth transition.

  She took a deep breath, then hurried on. She gave her head a slight shake and her braids bounced off her shoulders. No. She had done what she had to. That was what her father would have done. If someone had denied him what should be his by right, then he would have fought for it. It was what it meant to be a dragoneer. He fought for what was right, and by the wilds, it was her right to fly in the consideration. If he had allowed her to fly in the exercises, given her a chance to prove her worth, she wouldn’t have had to take it. She had not been reckless. She behaved with reason. She had asserted her right.

  She dodged into Ulbeg’s stall and fell to her knees beside the dragon.

  “Bring me clean water,” Trysten called over her shoulder.

  “What?” Bolsar asked. “I’m not a weyrboy—”

  “Bring me some clean water for this dragon’s wounds!” she snapped.

  Bolsar glanced from Trysten to the foot of the hall, where her father and the other hordesmen were. He grumbled, then moved on.

  A moment later, he returned with a pail of water and plunked it down beside Trysten. Water sloshed over the sides and wet the leg of her pants. While Bolsar slunk back, she plunged some strips of linen into the water, wrung them out, and began to wipe away the dried blood on Ulbeg’s tail.

  “How is he?” her father asked from the head of the stall.

  Trysten peered over her shoulder. His staff leaned against the stall’s wall. His left hand gripped the top edge. His face was solid and expressionless.

  “Elevera gave his tail a nip. It’s nothing serious.”

  “I told her to wait for you—” Bolsar began.

  “Quiet,” Mardoc said. “Now, Trysten, why did Elevera give him a nip in the tail?”

  Trysten took in a deep breath, and beneath the scents of hay and dirt, she hoped to bury the urge to sigh.

  “He disobeyed Elevera’s orders.” She dunked the strip of linen into the pail and began to wrap another strip around the wound.

  “Leave it,” Mardoc said. “I want Galelin to take a look.”

  “It’s nothing serious.”

  “I said to leave it. Galelin is the horde healer. I want him to look at it.”

  Trysten dropped the length of linen to the ground. She pushed herself up and turned around.

  “If you would have—”

  “Why should I have given you a chance? We have already discussed this. I have already given you my reasons and told you why you cannot be the Dragoneer. And so what do you do? You disobey my orders. You act with reckless disregard for yourself, your father, and that poor dragon there, not to mention Elevera and Paege. You put yourself in danger. You put all these hordesmen and their dragons into danger. What were you thinking when you shot those arrows? You could have hit any—”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “You got lucky. But your luck ran out, didn’t it?” Mardoc nodded to Ulbeg’s tail. As he did so, Galelin squeezed through the crowd of hordesmen and weyrmen gathered around the dragon’s stall.

  Although heat flushed up Trysten’s neck and face, she held her chin up. Her jaw tightened. She took a deep breath and tried to stretch out her lungs, which felt bound in tight leather strips.

  “Ulbeg is injured because of your stubborn recklessness,” Mardoc said. “And because of your ignorance. What were you thinking by taking this dragon out? Ulbeg is too small for battle exercises, much less sparring. He has no experience. He doesn’t know how to participate. If he did, he would have known to go to ground when both Paege and Elevera ordered him to. You endangered him and yourself as well.”

  Galelin gave a small shove and moved Trysten out of his light before he knelt next to the injured dragon’s tail.

  “You have shown me and all the hordesmen and all those out watching your stunts that I was well within my own rights to deny you a saddle in the consideration, even if the law didn’t already forbid it. You have proven that you lack the judgment and the experience to fly with the hordesmen, let alone lead them.”

  Trysten swallowed hard. The words rained down upon her and she wanted nothing more than to lean back, to place a hand on the haunch of the dragon and steady herself. Instead, she lifted her chin just a fraction higher.

  “You are banished from the weyr, Trysten. You are not to set foot in here again unless you are with me. Do you understand?”

  A wave of dizziness threatened to overtake Trysten. Her heart fluttered at the sentence. “If you had—”

  “No,” her father said with a single shake of his head. “Hordesmen do not offer excuses, and if you wish to pretend that you can be one, then you can pretend to act like one. Leave. Go back home. I will speak to you further there.”

  Trysten stood a few seconds more. Despite herself, despite her effort to lock her eyes on her father’s and not look away, she let her gaze slip to the other men who stood about with hands on their hips or arms crossed over their chests. Each of them appeared angry and agitated. Bolsar himself looked as red as she felt, as if not only was he angry at her for ignoring him, but also he was angry at Mardoc for denying him the opportunity to dress her down himself.

  “Go.”

  Trysten took a breath, then glanced back at Ulbeg. The dragon returned her stare, then shifted in the stall.

  “Easy, fella,” Galelin called.

  Trysten took another deep breath, then looked down the line of stalls, past the dragons that occupied them. The dragons themselves stared down at her and ignored the weyrmen who busied themselves with wiping down the dragons or polishing saddles.

  Everything was really a mess now. Her shoulders slumped. There was no way in all the wilds that her father would let her fly now. Her chances
of becoming the Dragoneer were done for. It was a broken dream. And the thought of it slammed into her and threatened to sap the strength from her knees. She would not falter, would not fall, though. She would not give these men the satisfaction of seeing her break.

  Trysten stepped through the stall. The hordesmen all cleared a path for her. Her father regarded her with a face that barely concealed his disappointment. And it was the sadness behind the disappointment that made it worse. He had been through so much, and she had defied and embarrassed him in front of the entire weyr. Her jaw clenched. She swallowed hard. An apology unfurled in her belly like a newly hatched dragon unwinding itself.

  “Wait,” Galelin called from inside the stall.

  Everyone looked to the healer as he emerged from the stall, bits of straw stuck to his knees.

  “I believe this is yours,” he said. He held out the tassel that Ulbeg had snatched from Paege’s shoulder.

  Despite herself, a quick grin crossed Trysten’s face. As she reached out for the tassel, she glanced at her father. He eyed the tassel as well, and all traces of sadness and disappointment disappeared from his face. All that remained was the stone as he clamped down even harder upon the emotions she knew to be present.

  From there, she looked at Paege, who stood several feet away from her father. Redness flushed through his cheeks, and for a second, Trysten felt bad for embarrassing him as well. They had grown up together. They had been friends since as long as she could remember. Never did she wish to embarrass him in front of all the hordesmen and half the village.

  But a lopsided grin rose on his face. He lifted his gaze from the tassel and met her eyes. He gave a quick, curt nod.

  “Don’t you all have dragons to see to?” Mardoc bellowed across the weyr.

  Men scattered like the dole of doves that Trysten had shot at. Mardoc considered her, then the tassel again, and snatched his staff from its spot against the wall. “I will see you at home.”

  Trysten stifled her own grin. She took the tassel from Galelin with a nod, then turned away. As she walked down the aisle, her grip tightened on the braided, woolen tassel. It brushed against the bottom of her thigh as she walked, and then she could do no more to hide the grin. Even if she had forever ruined her chances of becoming the Dragoneer, no one could deny that she had shown a prowess in the air that few others could demonstrate. She had taken the tassel from the beta rider, and she had done so with a small dragon who was more used to flying missives to the mother city than flying maneuvers through the air. There would be talk in the village, certainly, and in none of that talk, could anyone take away the tassel she now clutched.

  As she passed Elevera’s stall, she glanced at the dragon. A mixture of emotions tore at her—pride for her achievement, sadness at her banishment, and frustration that things couldn’t be better, that her father couldn’t let her compete for the title on her own merit.

  Elevera bowed her head as Trysten passed. She lowered it past and beyond the stall’s wall, until her head was lower than Trysten’s and nearly in her path. Trysten reached out to pat it, and then realized what the dragon was attempting to convey. She nearly snatched her hand back. In surprise, she turned her head back to her father. He stood near Ulbeg’s stall, with Paege, and his face was tired and tight with a look of concern as Elevera bowed in a show of deference.

  Chapter 10

  The family cottage sat next to the weyr, so none of the villagers who saw her emerge had a chance to approach and ask her about the flight, about what happened in the air, or inside. They merely looked from her to the tassel in her hand before whispering to each other.

  As soon as Trysten burst into her cottage, she held the tassel up. “Mother! Look what I have.”

  Her mother turned away from a table at the end of the room where she had been adding spices to a pot. Her face grew long, her eyes wide.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Off of Paege’s shoulder.”

  Her mother appeared confused. Her eyebrows settled down over her gaze. “You snatched it off his shoulder?”

  Trysten gave a quick shake of her head. Her braids flew side-to-side. “No! Ulbeg snatched it off his shoulder. In the air. I was riding Ulbeg. Paege was riding Elevera.”

  “You were in the air? You and Paege? And Ulbeg? The small, green male?”

  “I took him out. I wanted to show Father what I could do, that I could ride with the hordesmen. At first, I just wanted to shoot a few doves out of the air, but Paege and Elevera tried to force us down, so I took his tassel. Elevera didn’t like that one bit, and she gave Ulbeg a nip on—”

  “Where’s your father?”

  Trysten’s grin faltered. “He’s in the weyr.”

  Caron gave a nod. “I assume he knows then what you did.”

  “That was the point. I wanted him to see that I could ride as well as any of the hordesmen.”

  Caron shook her head. “Trysten, your father told you that you were not allowed to participate in the consideration. What made you think that taking a dragon out without permission would make anything any better?”

  Trysten held up the tassel a fraction higher as if her mother hadn’t quite seen it well enough to know what it was, what it meant. “Ulbeg took this from Paege. If it had been the final consideration, I would be Dragoneer. I took it from him on a courier dragon, even.”

  “The title does not automatically go to the one who wins the games.”

  “I know, but… But I wanted to show him… I wanted to show them all that I could win. It isn’t fair that they keep me out of the consideration.”

  Caron sighed, then shook her head.

  “Mother,” Trysten said. Her hand and the tassel it clutched fell to her side. “I thought you would be proud of me. I beat the hordesmen. I beat Paege. I showed them that a woman could fly just as well—better, even, than any of them.”

  Caron took a deep breath. She picked up her dish again, considered it, then put it back. She turned to Trysten. “I am thankful that you didn’t get hurt. Or that no one else got hurt. But you disobeyed your father. You disobeyed the Dragoneer. That is not anything that I can be proud of, Trysten. You are my daughter, my little heart, and I love you more than anything, but I cannot be proud of your willfulness when you endanger yourself and others. Out here, we have to rely on one another and to respect the wishes of those who are in charge of our safety. It is the only way we can live this close to the mountains. You ignored your father. You ignored the village Dragoneer. And by the looks of things, unless you have a string of hares hidden behind your back, you ignored me as well.”

  Trysten flapped her arms at her side in frustration. The tassel snapped against the top of her calf. “Mother! By the wilds! Doesn’t anyone care? If we rely on the Dragoneer to keep us safe, then shouldn’t the best rider be the Dragoneer?”

  “There’s more to being a dragoneer than stealing tassels from other riders. Your father takes the lives of the hordesmen into his hands at the start of each fighting season. If they are to survive, they must follow his orders to the end, and he must be able to count on them to do as he says. If they don’t, any one of them, or all of them, could be killed. And if they are killed, there is little to stop the armies of the Western Kingdom from crossing the pass. Do you understand, Trysten?”

  She swallowed the urge to grunt in frustration. “Understand? I understand that this is unfair. If someone had denied Father something he should have, then he’d go take it. He wouldn’t stand by and do nothing. He’d act. He’d do exactly what I did.”

  Caron gave a short nod. “He would. But he’s the Dragoneer. You are not.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with me being the Dragoneer?” She held up the tassel. “I’ve proven myself.”

  The door opened behind her. Trysten dropped the tassel to her waist.

  “Why do dragons obey us?” Trysten’s father asked. The floor snapped with his staff. He stepped inside the cottage and shut the door.

  Trysten look
ed over her shoulder.

  “I asked you a question,” Mardoc continued as he proceeded to the table before the hearth. He sat hard in his chair. Its wooden legs cracked the floor and his face tore itself into a terrible grimace as his eyes squeezed shut. He took a deep breath, grasped his right knee, and rubbed it a bit. Caron took several steps forward, then stopped as if she were a dog on a rope.

  “Trysten?” her father asked again.

  She looked to the floor. Might there be some place to hide, some place to escape that look? She wasn’t sure why the dragons obeyed them. She had hints, got impressions from time to time, but why they stayed in the weyr and responded to the commands of humans was lost on her. She gave a shrug.

  Caron finally stepped forward and took the staff from her husband. She placed it in the corner of the room. “Can I get you a bowl of stew?” she asked.

  Mardoc nodded without looking to her. His eyes remained focused squarely on Trysten. “The dragons obey us because there is a bond that is formed between the Dragoneer and the alpha. There is a relationship there. It is deeper than anyone can know. It is unlike the relationship I have with your mother, or even with you, and you are a part of me. The relationship I have with Aeronwind is beyond love. It is beyond loyalty. It is formed by the last bonds shared between us and the gods. It is the last reminder of their work, of their labor, of the gifts they left us before all was destroyed. Aeronwind obeys me because she cannot stand to disappointment me, and she trusts me because she knows that I will never hurt her needlessly or carelessly. And since she obeys me, and the other dragons of the horde obey her, then they obey me as well. The horde cannot turn on its alpha. The horde is one heart, one mind. The horde cannot turn on Aeronwind any more than your hand can decided on its own to tear out your heart.”

  Trysten glanced to the floor. This was true. Elevera felt deeply about Aeronwind, and she felt deeply about Mardoc precisely because he belonged to Aeronwind.