The weyrmen were no match for her.
Elevera roared again. She threw her golden head high until the roar erupted into a howl that crashed against and threatened to loosen every stone and plank in the weyr. The men clamped hands to their ears and hunched over as if expecting the howl to collapse, to tip and fall upon them like a toppled pillar of stone.
Trysten rushed forward, called into the whirlwind of noise and wild emotion, and abandoned need.
The weyrmen summoned by Bolsar crashed into her.
She twisted, lunged. In the panic to answer Elevera’s call, she launched a fist into the face of one of the men. He spun away, but someone else snatched up her arm.
“No!” She hollered. “Let me go!”
“Trysten!” her father shouted as she fell and landed hard upon her back. Her breath burst from her, and for a brief instant, she expected to see it geyser up in fire, smoke winding its way around the column of flame.
“Let her go!” her mother screamed from the end of the weyr. Trysten arched her back, kicked, snapped her torso left and right, but the weyrmen held her down. They clamped their arms down on hers as their faces reddened in the lantern light.
“Get her out of here!” Bolsar yelled again. “She’s upsetting the dragons.”
“No!” Trysten howled. “They’re going to abscond!” Her breath didn’t come out hot enough, hard enough. It didn’t blow these men away as the wings of dragons snapped all about her like a crackling fire.
“Let her go!” Mardoc bellowed. “Now!”
The weyrmen glanced back at their former boss. As they did so, the dragons roared. All of them. All at one time. The air shivered and the roars pitched into howls like Elevera’s. All of the dragons together built into a great crescendo, a piercing noise of loneliness that threatened to peel away everyone’s skin with a sound of longing.
An answering howl pushed at the back of Trysten’s teeth. The urge stole her breath from her, came from nowhere, from some place so deep inside her that it felt to be beyond her, as if she were but a gate for a trumpeting call. She curled up, her knees rising over her torso as she let out a groan through her teeth that were clenched so tightly she felt they might shatter. The men let her go to pitch themselves back on their heels and clamp their hands over their ears as they eyed the howling dragons in terror.
Elevera gaze bore into Trysten. It pushed through her skin and muscle as if it were fog, past her bones, brushing them aside like river reeds. Trysten gasped as she let go. She let go of everything. She released her hold on all that she held to be true, all that she knew, everything that made her who she was. She was not Trysten, not the daughter of Mardoc and Caron, not the friend of Paege or the young woman who wanted to be Dragoneer more than anything. All of it dropped away from her, floated from her hands. It lifted from her skin as if washed away by the River Gul. Nothing was left except Elevera’s eyes and a sense of want and need that cored Trysten’s world.
She embraced it and faded into the longing. She became it.
“Elevera!” Paege yelled. “No! Stop!”
The men who had tackled her grabbed her arms and tugged, but then dropped her and fled as Elevera charged forward, her maw wide and rippling with fire. The dragon drew up before Trysten. Her great head swung back and forth in challenge.
Silence fell upon the weyr. Silence, and then the song of dragons as each began to breathe again. Their raspy, dry breaths filled the weyr and overran the stunned space before they fell into a single, synchronous rhythm.
Paege approached. As he came closer, Elevera hissed at him, lowered her head and raised her wings in an attack posture. Paege held up a hand, out to Elevera, then stopped. He removed the helmet from his head and crouched slowly at the edge of the dragon’s striking distance.
Trysten looked up at him from her position on her back. Her breath came in gulps. All of her felt limp, empty, her muscles wrung out and stitched back onto her bones.
Paege held the helmet out to her briefly, then said, “I believe this is yours.” He placed it on the ground, and after a glance at Elevera, tossed the helmet in her direction.
Trysten rolled onto her side. Paege stood upright, in his hordesman outfit, as his dragoneer armor was still being prepared. The look on his face was solid, expressionless. She searched it for relief, for regret, for any sign at all to betray what he felt.
Her eyes fell to the helmet. What he felt was there, in the helmet that he had passed on to her.
She pushed herself up to her knees, then picked up the helmet and held it before herself. At Aeronwind’s stall, her father stood and grasped the half-wall. His own expression was also blank, as solid and uncommitted as Paege’s. He was watching her, waiting to see what would happen next. Behind him, Galelin stood and wiped tears away from eyes and did his best to quell a sob behind his grin. His eyes met Trysten’s and he gave a slight nod.
She rose to her feet and held the helmet before her still. At the end of the weyr, the villagers crowded around the entrance. Some even spilled into the aisle they were expressly forbidden to be in. No one stopped them. The hordesmen and weyrmen all stood and watched Trysten. They ceased to breathe.
She turned to Paege again, and before asking if he was sure, she stopped herself. This wasn’t about what he wanted, what her father wanted, or even what she herself wanted. This was about saving the horde. This was about being the Dragoneer.
Trysten took a deep breath, then lifted the helmet and donned it. It sat loose about her head, and it smelled of her father.
Paege, standing before her, bowed his head and dropped to one knee. The act nearly startled her, but then she recalled what it meant, how the villagers knelt to the Dragoneer upon his return from battle. Upon her return from battle. She looked to her father. Galelin had placed a hand upon her father’s shoulder. Mardoc stood a moment longer. His face darkened to a shade of red. He opened the stall door.
Trysten’s hands clenched. No! He could not do this! He could not take this from her now!
The stall door opened with a creaking complaint. Beyond, the mass of Aeronwind lay, still and growing cold, her fire gone. Mardoc stepped through, out into the aisle, and then after calling Galelin to his side, he took the dragon healer’s arm and lowered himself to one knee.
Trysten’s hand flew up to her mouth as she choked back a sob. She drew in a deep breath through clenched teeth as Galelin followed suit. Around the weyr, the hordesmen and weyrmen each bowed their heads and dropped to a knee. She met her mother’s eyes as outside, the villagers all paid honor to their new Dragoneer.
II
The Second Horde
Chapter 26
A sharp snap of wood upon wood woke Trysten. She sat upright in bed. Her father stood in the middle of the room, leaning against his staff.
“It’s time to get going.”
Trysten closed her eyes against exhaustion. It had been such a late night whirled with both excitement and sorrow, triumph and mourning. Secretly, she had hoped that being Dragoneer meant that she could sleep in a bit, at least this once.
“Aeronwind awaits,” her father added.
Trysten gave a nod, then rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the butts of her palms. She threw back the blankets from her bed.
“Your mother found you a uniform to wear for today. You will pay a visit to Jalite when we get back and be fitted for your own.”
Trysten nodded. She had also secretly hoped that her father’s days of telling her what to do were over. She was the Dragoneer, now. But on the other hand, he knew what to do. Trysten did not have the experience of being a hordesman to guide her in protocol.
Her father left the room, and Trysten dressed in a hurry. The uniform her mother had laid out upon her dressing table was a bit large, and clearly made for a man, but still, it felt magical to pull on the gold and blue sweater with spiraling cables down the arm. It smelled of straw, and a bit of sweat and sky. It was a garment that had seen action, that had logged a lot of time betwe
en the flesh of a warrior and his leather armor, which Trysten picked up and slid over her head. She tugged at the hem of it and admired the look of it, the contrast between her brightly colored sleeves and the dark leather that covered her chest. The village seal of a dragon twisting around a stone was embossed over her heart. A wide grin spread across her face as it sunk into her sleep-addled head that this was hers. She’d earned it. She was the Dragoneer.
She picked up her father’s helmet and carried it into the other room. Her father sat at the table and chewed on a piece of bread spread with lard. Trysten sat at the table beside him, in her place. Her mother placed a cup of tea and a slice of bread before her as well and gave her a huge smile.
“You look so nice in that uniform,” her mother said. “I was hoping it would fit.”
“It will do for the burial procession,” Mardoc said around a mouthful.
The joy fled the room as if sucked into a bellows. Caron turned away and busied herself with her knitting.
“Your primary duty today is to lead the procession to the burial mounds, to lay the first stone, and to lay the last stone while staying busy between those two events. Do you know where the burial mounds are?”
Trysten nodded. She had ventured out to them with Paege when they were both children. She had found it to be an eerie, disturbing place, and hadn’t been back since, but she remembered the trail, and whenever she passed the trail head, she recalled the experience with chills.
“That’s good. You will take Paege as your commander. Keep him close, and he will tell you what you need to know. The place of the fallen is at the rear of the procession.”
Trysten winced at the term. It made her father sound disgraceful for doing nothing more than outliving his mount.
“After you lay the last stone, there will be a moment of silence, and then you will lead the procession back to the village. There will be a feast waiting for us.”
Trysten nodded. She recalled the burial feasts from past deaths. They had been all-day affairs in which every one in the village dropped whatever one was working on and instead spent the day preparing food. Although an air of mourning underscored the day, as a child, Trysten had enjoyed the novelty and excitement of it, of the whole village coming together to serve a giant meal along what looked to be miles of tables lined down the central aisle of the weyr.
She recalled the ringing bells, the clanging that announced the return of the hordesmen. She had rushed to the village’s edge, Paege in tow, and there she saw her father looking so tired and exhausted, and she recalled thinking how odd it was for him to look that way when she had spent the day having fun and sneaking treats.
Over her breakfast, Trysten stole a glance at her father. Exhaustion already clung to his face. Dark sacks hung beneath his eyes. The look of anguish upon his face last night, when Aeronwind finally died, appeared to have wrung his face out and left it limp, ragged.
He hadn’t congratulated her yet. He hadn’t thanked her for saving the horde. She had written it off as grief and shock. Would it come? Did it matter? She was the Dragoneer now, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. She had done what she had to do.
By the time Trysten and her father arrived at the weyr, preparations for the burial were underway. She took a deep breath, pulled her shoulders back and stepped inside. As she did, the breathing of the dragons around her settled into a single, unified breath. It was a sign that her father was at the weyr. Then it occurred to her that no, it was a sign that she was at the weyr.
The weyrmen had already removed the wall and gate of Aeronwind’s stall and constructed a platform beneath her body. It consisted of six poles running right-to-left down the length of her body, and then three poles running front to back. Each hordesman and Trysten would take one end of a pole. Keeping with tradition, one hordesman, in full battle uniform, would remain in the weyr to stand vigil over Aeronwind’s stall until her burial was finished.
The sight of such a mighty beast laid out upon a platform, to be carried over stones and trails by hordesmen instead of by her wings, nearly brought tears to Trysten’s eyes. When she saw his fatigue stuffed and imperfectly concealed behind a stoic look, she wanted to draw him close in an embrace.
Her father nodded to Aeronwind. “You will take the central pole; the one in front. Let’s be on our way.”
Galelin approached and placed a hand upon Mardoc’s bicep. “How are you this morning?”
Mardoc shrugged off Galelin’s hand. “I’ll be fine.”
Galelin shot a quick nod at Trysten as if to assure her that he’d look after her father. The gesture struck her as both touching and insulting. Her father didn’t need looked after like a dawdling old man, but at the same time, with his twisted leg, she wasn’t sure how he’d make it to the burial mounds and back.
“If you’re ready,” Mardoc said to Trysten.
She looked about the weyr. The hordesmen gathered around Aeronwind’s stall looked from Mardoc to her, then back to Mardoc. A bit of heat flushed over her cheeks, and she joined the others in looking towards her father.
One of the hordesmen cleared his throat. Trysten glanced back. Paege crouched down and grasped one of the poles that ran beneath the deceased dragon. He gave a slight nod to the front of the platform.
She looked again to her father. He no longer seemed so weak and helpless. He could have at least told her what was expected of her, what the protocol was. It wasn’t her fault that she had been excluded from funeral processions in the past.
Several of the hordesmen took up positions around the platform as she approached. Their stares pressed against her, prodded her like iron rods. It unsettled her a bit to look in their eyes and not know their thoughts or what they felt as easily as she could look into the eyes of a dragon and know the same.
At the head of the stall, Trysten stepped before the front of the platform. As she turned around, a few more of the hordesmen left the ranks of those gathered around the stall. A few, standing in a tight knot, stared at her a second longer, and then looked back to her father who kept his eyes locked on hers, his weight resting on his staff. Galelin stood behind him and to the side. If he had climbed up onto her father’s shoulder and crouched, still and pert as a gargoyle, it wouldn’t have surprised Trysten much at all.
The stragglers looked back to Trysten. She crouched and wrapped her hands around the rough-hewn length of log that formed the center brace for the funerary platform. Leather creaked and fabric rustled as the hordesmen behind her all crouched and grasped the posts that ran perpendicular to the central brace.
“Ready?” Trysten asked as she looked at the stragglers.
A few looked to her father before joining the others and taking up positions around the platform. On the count of three, the hordesmen heaved and the platform rose off the ground. Trysten gritted her teeth and pulled, and once she had the post above her waist, she shifted her hands and pushed until the post rested upon her shoulder. The weight of it felt like it might drive her into ground like a nail beneath a mallet. How she was ever to make it to the burial mounds, she had no idea. But she would do it. It was her responsibility. Not only as Dragoneer, but as someone who loved her father, and who saw past the stoic mask and glimpsed the twinge of grief when the hordesmen lifted the body of his dead dragon onto their shoulders.
“Forward,” Trysten called out, and the weight of the platform propelled her out of the stall. They maneuvered the tight corner with their load, then proceeded out of the weyr and onto the wide path cut through the rocky landscape with Aeronwind upon their shoulders, her father and Galelin in the rear. The bright sunlight promised to heat the day quickly.
Chapter 27
By the time the first burial mounds came into view, Trysten’s back and shoulders screamed with pain. Her sweater and leather armor felt hot and heavy. As the procession passed among the cairns piled up on either side of the trail, a shiver ran up her spine despite the heat. She recalled being here as a girl, and feeling as if
she and Paege had ventured to the edge of the world. The cairns stood tall and silent, wide as small mountains themselves. In some of the older ones, stone heather had taken root among the rocks. The emptiness of the graves amplified the emptiness she felt from the dragon behind her. It left her feeling hollow and alone, despite the nearly twenty men who made up the procession.
When they cleared the existing cairns, she directed the hordesmen to leave the trail and pick their way back over the rocks and through the heather. Once they were a respectable distance off of the trail, she called for the others to lower their load. She stopped and crouched as the weight of Aeronwind pressed down on her. Finally, with relief, she lowered the post off her shoulder and set the funerary platform among the stones.
She stood and stretched, pressed her hands into the small of her back. Slight groans escaped some of the hordesmen as they stretched as well. Water skins were opened and passed around. Bits of cheese and dried meat were shared beneath the sun. As the wind blew in from the north, the sweat evaporated from her skin and left a chill in its place. In silence they rested and watched as Mardoc and Galelin brought up the rear. They had fallen behind, but not by as much as Trysten had feared. She wanted to go out to her father, to meet him, to bring him a skin of water even though she could see Galelin had water. But it would only embarrass Mardoc so she stayed put. She looked around at the other hordesmen as they chatted in quiet, sparse tones and looked at the cairns and stole glances at the cloud-shrouded mountains in the west.
As Mardoc and Galelin came to a stop at the outer edge of the group, Trysten stood. She walked a short distance off, picked up a rock, and carried it back to Aeronwind. As she crouched next to the dragon, her back ached and her knees throbbed. She placed the rock next to Aeronwind’s head. She stood and gritted her teeth against the complaint in her knees. It seemed that the rest had only made matters worse, given her body a chance to catalog its gripes.
The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding Page 16