“Don’t deny it,” Paege said with a shake of his head. He reached up and rubbed the butt of a palm beneath his eye. “I know it. I know it’s never going to happen between Elevera and me. She can sense that I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be a dragoneer. I don’t even really want to be a hordesman. If it was up to me, I’d do almost anything else.”
Paege inhaled sharply, then turned his face to the ceiling as if it were the best he could do in his effort to hide it from Trysten.
“Even now, I bet Elevera knows I’m in here telling you this. But what else can I do? Your father is keen on choosing me. I was hoping after yesterday that he would see that I’m not fit. But he only spoke of my need to train harder. And then Yahi brings us this news this morning about the fighting season and everything is happening too fast, and by the wilds, Trysten, I am not prepared for this! I’m scared to death that the horde is going to abscond when Aeronwind dies, and there is nothing I can do about it.”
Despite herself, Trysten stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Paege. She pulled him into an embrace and held him tight as he sniffed softly into her shoulder and shuddered.
Her grip on him tightened as her mind raced. There was no way her father would ever entertain the idea of her being the Dragoneer at this point. And with the news of an early fighting season combined with a fever from Aeronwind, her father would only double down on the idea that Paege ought to succeed him. He would put everything on Paege at this point as he saw time dwindle away.
The best thing to do at this point would be to help Paege be ready. It was what the village needed. It was what Elevera and the horde would need.
Trysten gripped Paege by his forearms. Her hands slid down until she held his. He looked almost anywhere rather than make eye contact with her.
“Look here,” she said, and Paege finally met her gaze.
“You will be ready,” Trysten continued. She gave his hands a squeeze. “I have a special connection with Elevera. We have had it since I was a little girl. I will work with her. I will work with you both to make sure that you are ready to assume the title when the time comes. We will not lose the horde. We will be ready when the Western Kingdom comes. You have my promise. Do you understand?”
Paege swallowed hard as he nodded, and then his nod became a shake of his head. His bangs fell before his eyes. “How? How are you going to do that? She knows that I don’t want to be the Dragoneer. She is never going to bond with me.”
“She will. I promise. Elevera is as concerned about losing the horde as you are. More so. She wants to bond with you. We just have to… work out the rough spots.”
She spoke with the best of intentions, but she couldn’t help the voice inside that also called out for Paege to tell her father all of this, that he didn’t want the title, and that he felt Trysten should have it.
She shook her head, silenced the voice. There was no point in dwelling on the idea. The horde came first. The village came after that. There was no time for what she wanted, as without the horde or the village, there would be no place for her. Without those things, nothing she wanted mattered. Helping Paege live up to the Dragoneer’s expectations was what she must do, to be true to her duty, and to be true to herself. She gave a nod as if brushing off the thoughts, tipping them into the chasm so that they might fall away as well and not be heard from any longer.
“Thank you,” Paege said. “Thank you so much.”
Trysten raised her face. Paege’s expression had calmed, had become bland. He was not exactly convinced or hopeful, but it appeared that he felt he at least had an ally. And his admission seemed to have taken a great weight off his shoulders, even if it had served to place a burden on her own.
It was worth it, however. For the horde. And for the village. For Paege, and for her father as well.
She left the weyr.
Chapter 14
Bolsar lifted his head from his worktable and glowered at Trysten when she walked into the weyr that afternoon. She held up the basket she carried, then pointed at Aeronwind’s stall. Bolsar paused, considered her a moment, then gave a nod before returning to the saddle he had been repairing.
The synchronous breaths of the dragons pulsed against Trysten as she walked down the central aisle. Their breathing was heavier, more rushed than usual. A tension hung heavy in the air and it tasted of copper, of spent lightning.
Her father remained in Aeronwind’s stall, holding his vigil for the dying dragon. Aeronwind’s breathing seemed easier than it had that morning. Enough so that Trysten looked up at Elevera with the hope that a corner had been turned, that the older alpha dragon was indeed on the mend. Elevera, however, continued to regard Trysten with a solemn expression that filled her with resignation and grief.
“Trysten?” her father asked.
His back rested against the sleeping and fevered dragon.
“Mother and I fixed you lunch.” She held the basket up. “She said I could bring it to you.”
“I appreciate it.” He nodded at an upturned box off to his side. A cold lantern and an empty cup sat upon the makeshift table.
Trysten placed the basket upon the box. She plucked the towel off the top of the basket and handed it to her father. As he spread it across his lap, she handed him a bit of mutton and some carrots in a dish.
Her father held the dish before himself and inhaled deeply. “It smells wonderful. Thank you.”
“How is she?” Trysten asked with a nod to Aeronwind, sleeping with her neck curled around so that her head rested near the Dragoneer’s feet.
Her father did not respond, but instead plucked a carrot out of the dish and popped it in his mouth.
Trysten handed over a slice of bread, a knife, and a fork. “Can I get you some more water?”
Mardoc nodded as he sliced into the mutton while chewing the carrot.
When Trysten returned, she filled his cup from a pitcher, then sat on the edge of the box. “I heard about Yahi’s prognostication this morning.”
Her father looked up from his dish. He swallowed hard. “Don’t you worry, Little Heart. Paege will be ready. I will see to it.”
Trysten glanced at Aeronwind’s expressionless face. In her earliest memory, Trysten recalled standing at her mother’s feet. The wall of the stall appeared to be immense. The vaulted ceiling of the weyr may as well have been the top of the sky itself. And there, staring down at her from nearly the top of that sky was the gray face of Aeronwind as if she was a god peering down to check on the mortals. There was such an overwhelming sense of emotion. The memory crashed through her like an impossible load dropping through the bottom of a lightweight basket now that same dragon’s face was blank and empty. It was as if the spirit of the dragon had already fled, but the shadow of such a strong, magnificent spirit proved to be enough to leave the body breathing, the heart beating, the fires of life still smoldering.
A sob caught in her throat. In the back of her mind, she considered again telling her father about Paege’s desires, about his concerns, about his belief that it was she who should succeed her father and not him.
She reached down, plucked up a strand of straw, and picked at the end of it. Now was not the time.
“Father, I’ve been thinking.”
Mardoc lowered his fork to the dish with a clink.
“I want to apologize for what I’ve done, for my actions the other day.”
His expression was curious, trying to decide where she was going.
“I was wrong to disobey your wishes,” she dashed her gaze to the dish of mutton. It was hard enough to lie to him. She couldn’t look him in the eyes and do it as well.
“I see now that for the good of the horde, and of the village, Paege needs to be made ready to accept his responsibilities.” She looked back up at him. He appeared to be shocked. Her eyes flicked up to Elevera, who watched in silence. Curiosity baked off of her like a great fire.
“If you will allow me to be in the weyr again, to work with Elevera again,
I promise you that I will do whatever I can to help Paege and Elevera bond.”
Her father resumed a slow chewing of his lunch. He swallowed, then poked at the piece of mutton with his fork as if searching for something.
“Might it be best for them both if you kept your distance?”
Trysten’s breath stopped. Her heart hammered against the bottom of her jaw. She meant to protest, but managed only instead to give her head a slight shake.
Her father cut another chunk of meat off the mutton. As he did so, his gaze fell on Aeronwind as if he expected her to snap one eye open, to sniff the air and lift the big block of her head for a bite of his lunch. She did not move, and soon, Mardoc appeared disappointed, though Trysten couldn’t imagine him disappointed in Aeronwind. Not ever.
“Perhaps Elevera is merely a bit confused,” her father continued. “She has known you for your entire life. It’s only natural that she should be familiar with you. But Paege, you understand, never really got to know her until after his father died. And between you and me,” Mardoc held the fork up and gestured between the two of them while a piece of mutton remained speared on the tines, “I suspect that part of Paege’s issue is that Elevera was his father’s mount. I’m sure that riding her would only naturally bring up some things for him. It was on Elevera’s back that his father died.”
Trysten gripped her knees. She knew that Elevera had been Paege’s father’s mount. She recalled seeing him ride her, seeing him care for her, but she never knew that he had died in flight, on Elevera’s back. She knew that he had died in battle, but somehow, that was some place distant, as if battle was a foreign city. She glanced at the dragon next to them. How could she have not made that connection?
Mardoc took his next bite and laid the fork back on the dish. He appeared to consider the dish for a moment as he chewed. Finally, he shook his head and looked up at his daughter. “Don’t get me wrong, Little Heart. I’m delighted that you have come around to seeing things my way. It shows true wisdom and an open mind on your part. But I think the best thing for Paege, and the entire horde at this point, is if you keep your distance. Give those two space to work things out. They will come together in the end. You will see. I know dragons better than I know anything else.”
Trysten stared at her father a few seconds longer and tried to consider whether or not to tell him how Paege felt, about the dangers they faced when Aeronwind died. But it would do no good. His faith in Paege was unshakable.
Without waiting for him to finish his lunch, Trysten left. She walked out of the weyr and into a shower of fat, heavy snow flakes that blurred the scenery about her.
Chapter 15
By the following morning, a few flakes still drifted down out of the gray sky. The storm had dumped several inches of snow overnight. The clouds had edges to them now, layers. Trysten turned to look behind herself. The snow would easily betray her by marking her footfalls around the base of the hill. But it seemed unlikely that anyone would follow her out into the foothills all the same. She had told her mother that she was going for a walk, and perhaps would do a little hunting. When her mother made a comment about the snow and cold, she had merely said that she couldn’t sit around the cottage, and since her father wouldn’t let her back in the weyr any time soon, she’d walk off her frustration and make herself at least a little bit useful with the bow.
A shiver ran down her. She rubbed her arms beneath the cloak she wore over two sweaters. When she had first approached Paege about meeting in secret to train, he hadn’t been keen on the idea to say the least. But he came around. He saw the wisdom in her argument. Hopefully, he didn’t get cold feet and leave her out in the foothills. He couldn’t necessarily give her a ride back to the village without raising the suspicions of her father, but a little time on the back of a warm dragon sounded delightful. Especially to her cold feet.
The silhouette of a dragon sailed over the top of a hill. Trysten rocked gently from side-to-side as the rider scanned the hills and dales below. The dragon flapped her golden wings, changed her course, and began to glide down.
A broad grin spread across Trysten’s face. Unlike birds, who always looked as if they struggled with the air, Elevera appeared to dominate the it, to be the reason air existed. The air pushed her up. It parted for her. When she neared the ground she threw her wings up and back and shoved them forward again as she extended her claws. Billows of snow lifted and fled as she touched down.
As she settled to the ground and folded her wings behind her, Paege gave a wave from the saddle. He at least appeared to belong. His leather riding armor was well-oiled. The traditional tassels of wool hung from his shoulders and from the crown of his helmet. A woolen scarf the color of Elevera braided with the gray and blue colors of Aerona’s crest gave him the look of a true hordesman, and despite herself, Trysten had a flash of herself as a maiden come to illicitly meet her sweetheart before he flew off to battle.
She cast the silly image from her mind. She was there to meet Paege, the boy she grew up with. She was there to help him bond with Elevera. She was there to save the horde and the village. Duties of a dragoneer.
She approached Elevera and Paege. The snow crunched beneath her goatskin boots. It both dampened and echoed the sound of her footfalls. The hills rising around them trapped the noise, and it felt like a pit for a moment, as if she might never get out.
Elevera let out a snort. She swung her head low in greeting, then let out a long sigh before shuffling her feet on the spot.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Trysten said as she approached the dragon.
“You weren’t followed?” Trysten asked of Paege.
He shook his head. “And neither were you. But your tracks through the snow make you easy to find.”
Trysten gave a slight nod as she reached out her hand to the dragon. Elevera rested her scaly chin in Trysten’s palm. She grinned, then recalled why she was there, and drew her hand away. Elevera lifted her head and pulled it back as if struck.
Paege glanced up at the sky, then back to the hill he had just flown over. “I told your father that I thought I could benefit from a bit of solitude with Elevera. Give us a chance to get to know each other without the interference of others.”
“And I suppose he accepted that.”
Paege nodded. “He thought it was a great idea. But I have to admit, I don’t like lying to him.”
Trysten sighed. “I don’t like it either, but what else are we supposed to do?”
He shrugged atop the back of Elevera. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. He is the Dragoneer.”
He looked up at the back of Elevera’s head for a second. She turned her head around on her long neck and stared back at him until he looked away, towards the horizon again. He let out a sigh. “Maybe I should just refuse. Maybe I should tell your father that I can’t do it. I can’t be the Dragoneer, and he has to get someone else.”
Trysten took in a deep breath, and despite the cold that bit at the back of her nose and the top of her throat, a fire rose in her. By the wilds, she wanted nothing more than what he was being handed, and here he sat considering whether not he should refuse it. What if he did just that? What if they went to her father and told him simply that Paege refused to do it, that another must be selected. With Aeronwind’s health flagging and the fighting season coming early, to whom would he turn? Might he relent and let Trysten have the title?
She swallowed. She blinked away the cold. No. He would not give the title to her. He would pick another of the hordesmen, one that he favored over the others.
They would have to start over from scratch, training a new hordesman to bond with Elevera. They didn’t have the time.
Trysten took another deep breath. “We don’t have the time. The fighting season is coming. I’m afraid if you wanted to have cold feet, you should have developed them sooner. You should have told my father the truth back when he first approached you.”
Paege’s gaze fell to the ground. A gust of wind s
tirred a whirlwind of snow that raced off between the hills. Elevera shuffled her feet, flicked her wings. Snow was not something that dragons cared for.
“Then I suppose we should get down to business,” Paege said.
Trysten nodded. She approached Elevera and held her hand up to Paege. He patted Elevera’s neck. She knelt down onto her elbows while Paege grabbed Trysten’s wrist and pulled her up. The riding saddle didn’t accommodate two riders, and so Trysten sat on the border of the blanket that stuck out from under the back of the saddle.
Paege yanked on the lip of the saddle. Elevera stood, then launched herself into the sky with a great push of her wings. Without stirrups or straps to help keep her in place, Trysten wrapped her arms around Paege’s torso.
The dragon undulated slightly beneath them as she climbed into the air. Once she reached the tops of the hills, she spread her wings wide, twisted to her right, and slid back down into the dale before she caught a breeze channeled between the two hills. With another twitch of her wings, they were lifted up into the air on the back of the wind. Elevera beat her wings some more, searched for more currents, for more air forced up over the hills as it fled the air pushed down over the distant mountains. Soon, they circled high in the sky, among the twirling flakes of snow. Off in the east, the village of Aerona was visible as a patch of flecked brown among the white foothills. Small twists of smoke lifted from various buildings, the largest one being the weyr.
Her grip on Paege tightened. How vulnerable the village looked from this height. It sat in the open, among rolling plains of snow-covered heather and grass for as far as she could see to the eastern horizon. To the west, the mountains loomed thick and dark, tops shrouded by clouds until a great, golden wing of leathery flesh eclipsed the view for a second.
Trysten’s envy bubbled through her veins, sped up, and grew sharper. The hordesmen always made themselves out to be so brave, as if they were sacrificing so much to be hordesmen, to be the dragon riders ready to fling themselves headlong into battle at a moment’s notice. They never talked of this, of the trade they made. Yes, they flew into battle, but most of the year, they rode on the backs of dragons and called it training. They lived in the sky. They were the equals of birds. Such a life was no sacrifice.
The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding Page 9