The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding

by Vickie Knestaut

  She sucked in a deep breath and raised her face to the sky. It was a solid, uniform gray again. The rain fell steady, in large, cold drops. If it kept up much longer, flood waters would drive the hares up onto the sides of the hill. It would make for easier hunting. Perhaps that is what she would do. She would be the huntress. She would spend the day, dawn to dusk, with a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. She’d catch whatever she could and sell the meat and fur. And when the fighting season came and the land was bathed in the sun that brought the rock heather to flowers the color of pink flesh, then she would lift her head to the sun and sky, to the shaded underbellies of the dragons, and she would wish them success and victory knowing that she had given everything she could to see that the weyr survived.

  “I’m really sorry,” Paege said.

  “For what?”

  “For all of this. For everything that’s happened.”

  Trysten thought and tried to figure out what to say, how to respond, but the hush of the rain and sound of their boots squishing and sucking at the mud robbed her of thought, as if the cold had numbed her brain.

  “I’m sorry for not stopping it,” Paege said. “I should have done more, but I didn’t really think it would go this far. I didn’t believe for one minute that I’d actually be named Dragoneer.”

  As if on an unfortunate cue, the owner of the tavern called out his congratulations to Paege as he hurried past, a package tucked under his arm. Paege flashed a grin and gave a quick wave. Trysten pulled the edges of her cloak closer.

  “You were expecting my father to come to his senses?”

  Paege didn’t respond right away. “I was expecting you to… be a little bolder.”

  “What?” Trysten stopped and turned on Paege. “Bolder? You were waiting for me to be bolder?”

  Paege looked off to the mountains. “What was I going to do? I couldn’t tell your father that I can’t be the Dragoneer. He wouldn’t listen to me. Besides, like I already told you, it wasn’t like he was asking me. He was definitely bestowing the honor upon me. It doesn’t really feel like I get a say in the matter.”

  “So what, then? You needed me to come down, swoop in and rescue you from your fate? Is that it?”

  “No,” Paege said with a shake of his head. “It’s… Look, I don’t want to fight about this.”

  “Is that an order, your Highness?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “What? You can’t handle the pressure of being the man in charge now?”

  “I can’t handle being the Dragoneer. I can’t handle Elevera. You know that. Your command to her didn’t work. She doesn’t give a wild hop about it. She tolerates me. She listens to me only because she knows you want her to. She knows that you’re the true Dragoneer. Not me. And you know it, too. And I know you know it, so that’s why I expected you to… to…”

  “To what?”

  “To care! To take charge.”

  “I did take charge!” Trysten yelled. “I hopped on Ulbeg’s back and took your braid, right? And what did that get me? And I tried to take charge and teach you how to ride her, but you’re so… closed up that Elevera can’t make any connection with you. You’re like a block of ice to her, Paege! She might as well be carrying a snow man around on her back for all the more you connect with her.”

  Paege’s posture straightened, became as solid and hard as the ice she accused him of.

  Trysten’s shoulders slumped. “Paege, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Which is why you said it?” he said in a tone that matched his posture. “Because you have a habit of going around and saying things you don’t mean?”

  Trysten’s mouth flopped open. No words came. She remembered what her mother had insinuated about her and honesty. Perhaps she wasn’t always honest because honesty brought that look to Paege’s face. His jaw shifted. His eyelids squinted the tiniest bit, her eyes hard and sharp as the flint in the exposed beds of rock along the river’s edge.

  He shook his head. “That’s fine. I can’t be mad at you for telling the truth.”

  Paege turned and began to walk away.

  “Paege!”

  He kept walking. Trysten’s feet refused her commands to carry her forward, to close the distance growing between them as if they knew it was better that she didn’t. She would just hurt him again. So she stood and watched Paege move away until he turned the corner and left her with nothing but a lane filled with bits of gray sky and dark fragments of her faceless reflection.

  Chapter 22

  Wild dreams drove Trysten from her sleep with a cry. She sat up in her bed.

  “Trysten?” her mother called in the dark.

  “Something’s wrong. With the dragons. Something’s wrong.” She flung back her blankets and searched for a pair of riding trousers in the dark.

  Rather than ask her to explain herself, her mother went to the fire in the main room and lit a candle, meeting Trysten at the door to her room.

  “I’m going to the weyr,” Trysten said. “Please don’t try to stop me. I must go.” Without saying a word, Caron nodded once. Trysten crushed her in a brief hug then hurried out of the cottage.

  Cold air smacked Trysten when she stepped outside. She drew a deep breath and felt the frigid air erase the warmth of sleep from her lungs. She blinked once, then looked up into the sky. Patches of stars shone through rents and breaks in the deck of clouds.

  Trysten ran to the weyr and flung the door open. A knot of weyrmen stood around Aeronwind’s stall. The breathing of the dragons was different. It wasn’t the solid, uniform hush of air that filled the weyr whenever the Dragoneer was present. Their breath held no rhythm, no unison. The sound of it was quiet, barely audible. Chaos flooded into Trysten’s veins as she rushed down the aisle.

  Bolsar eyed her approach. Rather than say a word towards her, he returned his attention to the stall. “Your daughter is here.”

  “What’s the matter?” Trysten called, then pulled up short outside the stall.

  Her father sat upon the foot stool. He leaned forward, until his chest was nearly between his knees. His forehead and palms rested upon the chest of Aeronwind. For a second, it appeared that Trysten was too late, that the great alpha dragon had died. Her wings drooped. The edge of them laid against the ground. She appeared to list further to her left side than she had before. Her eyes remained closed, and her scales lacked their luster, as if they had lost both color and shine. As Trysten peered back and forth along the bulk of the dragon, she noted the rapid, shallow movements of the dragon’s chest. Aeronwind lived. For now.

  “Our lady has taken a turn for the worse, I’m afraid,” Galelin said from the rear corner of the stall.

  “Do something,” Trysten commanded.

  Galelin stared at Mardoc. He gave a slight shrug. “It is out of my hands. By the clouds and sky, only the highest can have her now.”

  “No,” Trysten said. “We’re not ready.”

  Bolsar placed a hand upon her shoulder. She ripped it away and spun nearly about. Elevera stood in the next stall with her neck stooped, curved. She stared at Trysten, then peered down at Aeronwind. The breathing, the asynchronous tones of it, all rushed at her and she felt as if she were being pummeled. She took a deep breath and turned back to her father, who still sat with his head against the dragon’s chest.

  “Where’s Paege?” Trysten asked.

  “It isn’t necessary,” Galelin said with a shake of his head.

  “Necessary for what? What if he wants to say goodbye?”

  “He’s had his chance,” Bolsar said. “We all have. It will do no good to have the whole wild village in here wringing hands.”

  Trysten peered down the aisle, past the dragons who stirred in their stalls. The whole weyr felt unsettled, on edge. The hand wringing wasn’t only on the part of the villagers.

  She turned her attention back at Elevera. It felt like placing her hand near the embers of a fire on a cold night. It felt good for a brief seco
nd, but quickly became too much. There was too much there. Everything all at once until her breath locked up, her heart skipped, and the room swam beneath her.

  Paege had to be here. He had to be present for this. If he shared this with Elevera, it would hopefully be enough.

  No one called after her as she ran to the back of the weyr. She crashed through the door that separated the hordesmen’s quarters from the weyr. She left the door open, and the scant light that fell through quickly faded away and left her to stumble through the tables and chairs and benches that littered the hordesmen’s dining hall. She barked her shins and cracked her knees. She clenched her teeth and drew tight breaths through them. She swatted at the dark and knocked aside what she could before she reached the other end of the hall. There, she flung open the door to the bunk hall.

  Several candles had already been lit, and a couple of the nearest hordesmen were getting out of their bunks.

  “What do you want?” the nearest man asked.

  “Where’s Paege?”

  The man looked her over as if trying to assess something, to come to a decision.

  “Paege!” Trysten hollered.

  Paege rolled out of a bunk at the end of the hall. He stood in his bare feet with his bare chest. Instead of a nightshirt, he wore a pair of loose-fitting short pants. “What is it?”

  Trysten hurried forward several steps, then paused and turned back a bit, as if ready to bolt through the door. “Aeronwind. She’s about to die.”

  The silence in the hall grew profound in the shadow of her words. It towered up and over all of them. The hordesmen traded glances, and then all of them looked to Paege, who still stood at the head of the bunk hall.

  Whispers broke out. One man questioned how Trysten knew. Another flat out asked what Mardoc would do. Trysten’s gut tightened. She drew up her spine and clenched her fists as the whispers grew in number and volume. The hall filled with the sound of men who were unsure of what to do, of what was coming. It was the sound of a horde without an alpha.

  “Where’s Galelin and Mardoc?” Paege called out, loud enough that his question drowned out the whispers, tamped them all down into ashen silence.

  “With Aeronwind. In her stall. Galelin says there’s nothing more to do. But it’s her time. She is departing. Soon.”

  Again, the whispers came.

  “How soon?” Paege asked, his voice loud and forceful in a way she had not heard before. It stirred a sense in her chest. He might pull this off yet.

  “Tonight. Hours. Minutes.”

  “Lysu,” Paege called to one of the men. “Take half the men out to spread the word. Let the people know the vigil will be tonight. Tennin, you take the other half of the men and work with the weyrmen who are here. See to the other dragons. Keep them calm, make sure they are fed and watered. Make sure every man, woman, and child you see has something to do, something to keep their hands busy. I want to see no idleness at all this night. Do you understand?”

  The eighteen men stood along the aisle that ran through the bunk hall. They stared at Paege, then nodded. They turned back to their bunks and began to pull clothes from beneath their mattresses and get dressed.

  A tense sigh escaped Trysten. She had not expected such a display from her mild-mannered friend. Relief soaked into her shoulders. In his orders she heard a hint of the commanding presence of a dragoneer.

  As soon as Paege dressed, he trotted down the hall. The commanding expression that he wore earlier had disappeared. Now he looked concerned, worried. He looked like the old Paege that she had always known.

  “How’s Elevera?” he asked.

  Trysten turned away from him and hurried back toward the weyr.

  Paege soon caught up and grasped her elbow. “How’s Elevera?” he asked again.

  “The dragons are unsettled. All of them. The whole horde. Can’t you feel it?”

  Paege looked ahead, as if the feeling might be something large and garishly colored plopped right in the middle of the weyr’s central aisle. “Will she accept me?”

  Trysten swallowed hard. Tears welled in her eyes and added to the wealth of things making it difficult to look at Paege at the moment. “I don’t know.” She turned away from him and trotted into the weyr. The weyrmen on night watch all looked up at Trysten and Paege as they came in.

  A new sensation hit the air. Cold like the first winter wind off the mountains, and then hard and prickly like the air after a violent, dry thunderstorm. The goose flesh raised on her arms and the air smelled both burnt and cold.

  As they stepped before Aeronwind’s stall, the breathing of the whole horde ceased. Completely stopped. The silence was more complete than anything Trysten had known. Her heart thundered in her ears.

  Mardoc raised his ashen face to the vaulted ceiling. His fingers curled into claws, like a dragon’s claws without the scales. Even he had stopped breathing. His chest was as still as Aeronwind’s.

  Trysten sucked in a breath to call out to her father, but she found she could not. The words were pressed against something in her. She stood with with the words trapped inside her as she watched a single tear fall from the corner of her father’s eye and slip into the dark tangle of his beard as if seeking to hide.

  An anguished cry fled her father. Tore from him, shredding itself upon his bared teeth.

  Trysten stumbled back a step. Her hands flew to her own mouth, clamped down over it as her father cried out and his hands curled and raked down over the side of Aeronwind’s body. His eyes squeezed shut, as if the life left him as well.

  Up and down the aisle, from Ulbeg to Elevera, the dragons let out a long, dry hiss to match her father’s cry. Trysten trembled. She shook and shivered and if she weren’t so scared, so panicked, she’d turn and cry out for them all to stop it. Stop it, please.

  Her father’s head fell forward. He landed against the inert form of Aeronwind. His shoulders heaved and a great sob escaped. He lifted his hands and planted them back against his dragon’s side, and he clutched at what he could. His hands worked, curled, patted, stroked and clawed at the hide as he sobbed and sobbed into the dragon’s side.

  Galelin stepped forward and placed a hand upon Mardoc’s shoulder.

  Trysten began to rush forward. Paege grabbed her shoulder as Bolsar stepped before her.

  “You should not be here,” Bolsar said. “It is not for a man’s family to see this.”

  “What?”

  “Leave him. He needs to grieve. This is a private thing between a dragoneer and his alpha. It is not to be shared with his family.”

  “What?” Trysten repeated.

  “It’s all right,” Paege said as his grip on her shoulder tightened. “They told me about this. They told me to expect it. This is how it’s supposed to go. How it happens.”

  Trysten whirled around, ready to thrash Paege for his comment. She stopped. He stared up at Elevera. She followed his gaze.

  The last of the hiss escaped Elevera, and the horde followed suit. Silence collapsed upon the weyr, and all of them were stranded upon her father’s sobbing. Elevera turned her attention, swept her graceful head and neck from Aeronwind and Mardoc to her.

  Trysten wrenched herself free of Paege’s grip and fled the weyr.

  Chapter 23

  The night dug its fingers into Trysten and rattled her, gripped her muscles and shook her bones. She lifted her face off her knees and hugged her legs tighter, trying harder to draw the heat in. The rock she sat on dug into her hip, but she didn’t care. With the sleeve of her sweater, she wiped tears away from her eyes and stared up at the tatters of clouds and the riot of stars beyond them. It looked as if the old world had been torn away, just ripped off the surface of the village, and underneath, or up above, as it was with the case of the sky, bits of bone shone down through the dark muscle of whatever hovered over them, whatever saw fit to see things turn out as they had.

  It wasn’t fair in the least. None of it. Yet as soon as she thought it, she saw her father crying, sob
bing. That wasn’t her father at all. It was some ghost, some demon left in his body after Aeronwind’s death. Then there was Elevera’s expectant stare, wanting something, and wanting it from her.

  She didn’t have it. Whatever it was that Elevera wanted, whatever it was that Trysten needed in order to make her father believe that she should have succeeded him, she certainly didn’t have it. It wasn’t in her.

  On top of that, there was Aeronwind. Poor Aeronwind. She had known. She knew that it was her fault that her dragoneer was injured, that he could no longer ride after she broke her leg and fell on him upon landing. How awful it was for her to die feeling like such a disappointment. Whether Aeronwind was concerned about Elevera’s ability to succeed her, Trysten couldn’t tell.

  All of it, however, was just awful. It was terrible that it happened to them, out here in the middle of nowhere with the fighting season bearing down on them.

  She looked to the mountains. How much longer would it be before the first of the hordesmen from the Western Kingdom came across? And how would they ever be ready for them?

  Trysten wiped her palms across her face. At least it was out of her hands at this point. There was nothing to be done. She took a deep breath. If Elevera was unable to find what she needed in Paege and the horde absconded, then there was nothing Trysten could do any longer.

  A small spray of rocks tumbled down the path off to Trysten’s left. She peered back into the darkness. A familiar form walked down the path and then made her way through the marsh grass. Without a word, Trysten’s mother climbed up on the rocks and sat beside her daughter in the dark. Together, they peered at the clouds and stars and listened to the river burble as a lone trail lark let out a series of low, long whistles that sounded like it wanted to tell the mountains of its profound disappointment and loneliness.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Trysten finally said.

  Her mother didn’t respond right away. “I didn’t think Aeronwind would pass tonight. It usually takes a third fever for a dragon to succumb.”