Trysten led her half of the horde around the village as the half commanded by Paege flew out towards the mountains. After a distance, Paege’s group circled around and approached the village as if they were enemies from the Western Kingdom. Trysten ordered her horde to intercept. As they flew out over the foothills, she glanced up at the sun. It was barely beyond noon. The sun would serve no one any advantage at this hour, so she ordered the horde forward with speed.
As the two hordes drew closer, Paege’s horde split into two staggered columns, one slightly higher than the other. This move wasn’t new to Trysten. She’d seen it done in the air a number of times. Paege was going to spread the columns at the last second and try to force Trysten’s horde to fly between the two, and thereby take arrows from the left and the right, as well as above and below. It was a difficult maneuver to defend against. Either the rider or the dragon’s belly would be exposed to the enemy’s arrows.
If Paege commanded a full horde, Trysten would have a hard time defending against such an approach. Fortunately, with only 9 dragons, he couldn’t react to one of the few defenses against the move.
Trysten practiced in her head the series of motions needed to signal to the other riders to fan out wide at the last second while she and the dragon on her right rear flew through the middle. They would be exposed to the gauntlet, but the other riders would open with a volley of arrows meant to scatter, distract, and confuse Paege’s riders.
Her left arm tightened and drew up against her chest. Her fingers twitched to give the orders. She drew in a deep breath, and as she began to extend her arm, an idea flashed into her head. Anticipation, cunning, and a glee that nearly gnawed at her bones rocked through her.
Paege was ordering Leya to slow nearly to a halt upon his command.
He anticipated her counter-maneuver!
Trysten’s arm flew out. She began to order the counter-maneuver.
Paege’s arm flew out to his horde.
Trysten waved to cancel her order, then sent out the command to hold the V formation, dive, and let loose with the arrows.
It was too late for Paege and his horde. The dragons fanned out quickly and came to a halt. Paege signaled wildly to change orders, but his hordesmen were already busy drawing arrows and slotting them into the bows in anticipation of meeting Trysten’s horde head on and in shock.
Instead, Trysten’s horde slid underneath Paege’s. The hordesmen behind her let loose with a volley of blunted arrows that flew up and pinged the bellies of Paege’s horde.
Had it been a real battle, it would have been a devastating blow. It wouldn’t have been enough to decide the battle, but it would definitely have put the enemy dragons at an immediate disadvantage as they were forced to fight with arrows lodged in their undersides.
Trysten ordered the V formation to split. Each leg would veer around and climb, taking advantage of the confusion and giving Paege’s hordesmen a wide variety of targets to shoot and very little to concentrate an attack on.
As Elevera banked through the air and began to climb, Trysten caught sight of one of Paege’s dragons descending, gliding in her direction. Woolyn, the dark red dragon carrying Rast, came barreling down right for her and Elevera.
They had little time to react. Trysten hadn’t even had time to figure out the collection of signals needed to communicate her wishes to Elevera before the gold dragon threw up one wing, closed the other, and rolled over backwards.
A yelp of surprise escaped Trysten. The strap of her father’s helmet pressed against her chin. She grabbed at the edge of the saddle and clenched with her legs, even as the saddle’s straps dug into her hips and waist.
Woolyn flew past. Claws clutched and flailed in the air as the two dragons grappled with each other. A passing lash of Woolyn’s tail caught Elevera hard in the chest. She let out a roar, arched her back, spread her wings, and dove towards the ground before driving back up, wings beating, each flap sounding like a blast of thunder in Trysten’s startled ears.
She clutched the edge of the saddle. She knew if she wanted to, she could take control, she could order Elevera to do what she wanted, but at the moment, the alpha dragon was on her own. With stunning speed, she closed the distance between herself and Woolyn.
Rast’s dragon banked hard and lined herself up for another pass at Elevera.
Above, the mock battle had ceased. Her hordesmen circled with Paege’s, their drill forgotten as they watched Trysten and Rast duel. Paege gave a half-hearted command for Rast to cease and return to formation, but the orders went unheeded.
Woolyn’s wings shoved the air beneath her, then she dove towards Elevera, picking up speed as she went. Upon her back, Rast clutched at the edge of the saddle.
Elevera continued to climb through the air.
Rast gave the order for Woolyn to turn over. He was going to try and either knock Trysten off her saddle, or take the tassels streaming from her shoulders.
Before the thought fully registered, Elevera forced her angle up higher, faster, nearly climbing straight up in the air. It was an impressive feat, one that Trysten would think about and admire the moment she wasn’t clinging to the saddle for dear life.
The sudden push upward forced Woolyn to draw up, to bleed off some speed as she leveled out her approach. Finally, at the last second, Elevera stopped and spread her wings out wide as if she intended to catch Woolyn.
They hung there in the air for impossible seconds. The wind rattled through Trysten’s ears, tugged at her breath. She forced herself to not look down.
Woolyn, with little other choice, adjusted her flight and dove beneath Elevera rather than collide with her.
As soon as the red dragon committed to her maneuver, Elevera let out a great roar and shoved her wings down and forward. She arched her back and swung at the air again as if ready to push the entire world over on its side to get at Woolyn.
Elevera flipped over onto her back and began to glide down. Trysten clutched at the edge of the saddle and clenched her teeth for fear that her head would drop off as they streaked downward, plummeting with increasing speed towards Rast and Woolyn.
Rast glanced about, left and right, looking for Elevera. Finally, he twisted himself all the way around and saw the great, gold dragon descending upon him, upside down. His face grew wide. His jaw dropped. Trysten saw it all as they were nearly upon him.
Rast ducked. He folded himself over onto Woolyn’s neck, but not before Trysten let go of the edge of the saddle. She stretched her back, reached to the red scales flying past, and with a flicker of movement, she snatched both of the tassels streaming from Rast’s shoulders, one in each hand.
They came away with a slight tug, and then Elevera was rolling over, swaying through the air as if on the end of a great pendulum. Trysten shifted her weight with the swerves and sways of Elevera, and she held the tassels before herself, nearly as if she couldn’t believe or comprehend that she took them.
Above, and off to their right, the other hordesmen waved their arms in cheer.
A grin spread across her face. Her father may never have had to face such an open challenge as Rast had just provided, but only because he had trained and fought beside the hordesmen before he became Dragoneer. But then again, he also had the advantage of his grandfather naming him Dragoneer, of making an open display of selecting him for the challenge. Trysten’s own father had denied her that. He had left her to do just as she had done; prove herself.
And perhaps that is what he was after.
Trysten tucked Rast’s stolen tassels into a saddle bag, then ordered the horde back to the weyr.
Chapter 32
Back at the weyr, Trysten approached Rast as he dismounted. She held out the tassels dangling from her hand. He lowered his eyes briefly, and a slight flush of red passed over his face as he took the tassels from her.
“You ignored Paege’s commands,” Trysten said.
“I didn’t see them.”
Trysten stared at him a few seconds lon
ger. He clutched at the tassels. They hung limp from his hand as if he had no idea what to do with them now.
“You always have to pay attention to the Dragoneer. If that had been a real battle, you’d likely have died.”
Rast drew his shoulders back. A little more red flushed through his face. Though Trysten couldn’t read the faces of men like she could dragons, it took no skill at all to see the turmoil in the man’s face. He knew she was right, but he wouldn’t admit that she could have possibly killed him.
“Another lapse in judgment like that and you will be grounded. Understand?”
Rast gave a slight nod, then stood stock still and waited for Trysten to turn away.
She put them through the paces for the rest of the day, and as they practiced, the horde grew more attentive, less stiff. She kept them in the air as much as possible, bringing them down to the weyr only to rest the riders and dragons. With each return trip to the ground, she searched for her father lingering at the edge of the yards, the grounds, standing just inside a doorway, but he was nowhere to be seen.
As the sun lingered over the horizon, Trysten called it a day. They put the dragons back in their stalls, and with the help of the weyrmen, the dragons were wiped down, checked for injury, and the riding gear cleaned and oiled and put away.
When the hordesmen retired to the bunk house, Trysten climbed the stairs to the den. She stepped inside and the chill of the evening immediately slipped away as the fire in the hearth warmed her bones. She ran her hands over her arms as if the coolness might be brushed away, then realized she was waiting on her father. If he would see her, he would call her into the inner chamber. But he wasn’t there now. It was no longer his inner chamber. It was hers.
Trysten entered the next room. It was dark, and that seemed odd as well. The weyrmen kept the fire in the hearth attended to, but they largely ignored the inner chamber. She retreated to the receiving room, lit a candle, and then carried it back where she lit several lanterns to flood the room with a soft, warm light.
Another grin spread over her face. Her fingertips lingered over the top of the table as she walked around it, to the back side, and there she sat in the chair that she had seen her father sit in so many times. Once or twice, while he was up or out, she had sat in this very chair and pretended to be the Dragoneer, but now it was no longer for pretend. It was her seat. She had earned it.
After a slight caress of the arm rests, she gripped them and pushed herself up. From the shelf above the table, she plucked out the book that had the lists of previous dragons, hordesmen, and Dragoneers who were all resting in the burial grounds. She placed the book upon the table, sat, and turned to the first page.
As she peered through the list and looked for the Dragoneers, the door opened. Trysten looked up as Paege stepped into the receiving room. She sat back in her chair as she had seen her father do each and every time she had stepped into the den and found him sitting at his chair, behind his table, poring over a book.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Paege glanced around, as if seeing the den for the first time, or trying to evaluate what he thought of what she had done with it, which was to change not a thing.
“How was it?” Paege asked as he stepped up to the doorway between the two rooms. “Your first day, that is?”
Trysten motioned to the chair on the other side of the table. It felt weird to do so. As soon as she did it, she realized she had issued a command, and that she was sitting on the other side of the table, clearly in a superior position, though it felt silly to think of herself as superior to anyone, and especially to Paege, her childhood friend.
Trysten swallowed, then nodded. “It was good. It went well, I think.”
Paege nodded, then sat in the chair. “I was really worried there, at the start. And I wanted to apologize for Rast. I tried to order him back.”
Trysten shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t want to wish for that kind of… insubordination, but I’m nearly glad it happened. I feel like it gave me a chance to prove myself. After that, the hordesmen all seemed to be a bit more…” She searched for the word.
Paege leaned forward slightly in his chair. “You really got their attention, that’s for sure. Especially when you took both of Rast’s tassels.” He reached up and flicked the tassel on his own shoulder as he leaned back in his chair. A wide grin crossed his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before. None of us have. To tell you the truth…” Paege sat up and leaned across the table as if to impart a secret. “The men are talking about you, the way you fly. You seem to have a connection with the dragons that they’ve never seen before. Not from your father, not from anyone.”
Trysten blushed. Relief surged through her. Her lips parted, then stalled. The flush of color faded as she caught herself the second before she confided in Paege about her connection to Elevera, and how she bested Rast and Woolyn. She was already on thin ice with the hordesmen. Though Paege wasn’t likely to take anything she said back to the hordesmen’s bunk house, still, it would be wise to keep her secret to herself for the time being. It wouldn’t hurt for all of them, Paege included, to believe that she came by her talent naturally. But then again, how was her talent not natural? It was part of who she was, what she had always been. She was merely different, and her difference gave her a clear and distinct advantage over the other dragon riders.
Her gaze dipped to the book before her. Likewise, she should probably keep her peace about Jalite’s claim that there had been female dragoneers in the past. If she was right, and there was any truth to that claim, then the truth had been buried for a reason. It’d be best to know that reason before she went around sharing her suspicions, or better yet, any evidence she might discover to support the claim.
Trysten shut the book before her.
“What’s the matter?” Paege asked. “I thought you’d be happy to hear that news.”
“I am.” She leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her brow with the tips of her fingers, then gestured at the book. “I wanted to see Aeronwind’s name in the book. I’m happy with the way things have worked out, of course, but I still miss her. And I feel bad for my father.”
Paege nodded. “I understand. To tell the truth, I know this sounds awful, but I have to stop every now and then and remind myself what a sad week this has been. Losing Aeronwind was a terrible thing, all right. And I agree that it’s horrible, what has happened to your father—I mean that kind of loss—but part of me is just so relieved that the burden has been taken from my shoulders.”
Paege sat back in his chair, nearly slumped into it. The wood creaked as if the burden had been placed upon the chair instead. “I’m just pleased with the way things have turned out. You should be the Dragoneer. You should have always been the Dragoneer. From the start.”
“Are you satisfied being the commander?”
Paege appeared to consider it a moment, and then gave a slight nod. “I suppose I must be. No, I am. I mean, yes, I am fine with it.” He sat upright in his chair again. “I’m glad to be flying at your side. I may not be the Dragoneer, but I think my dad would, in some way, be even more proud of me that I have followed in his footsteps altogether, being a commander like him.”
It did seem to suit him, and Trysten was thankful for his presence, for his help, but it did seem that he was still living someone else’s life, following his father’s wishes rather than his own. But then again, he was serving the village and the kingdom. He was a capable hordesman, and he was needed as such. It was unfortunate, however, that he couldn’t serve the village and kingdom by pursuing his own wishes and desires.
Chapter 33
For several weeks, Trysten and the hordesmen practiced and drilled as the cloud cover over the mountains thinned. Even on the days when clouds overtook the foothills with squalls of wet snow and driving rain, they still looked thinner, less like a wall and more like a curtain. With each passing day, a knot grew in Trysten’s stomach as
she looked to the West and knew she was closer to being tested by the Western Kingdom.
On a clear day, as they did another round of mock battles, Rast, on Trysten’s team this time, suddenly broke formation and circled above. Woolyn banked and allowed everyone a chance to see him waving with one hand and pointing to the south southwest. Trysten peered in the indicated direction. Against the gray clouds on the horizon, she saw a series of dark dots heading their way. They were too large to be birds.
It was another horde.
The knot in Trysten’s stomach became a lead weight, and it was a wonder it didn’t drag her and Elevera from the sky. She knew the day was coming, but she hadn’t imagined it would be so incredibly soon. The Western Kingdom had caught them off guard. They didn’t have time to fly back to the weyr and arm themselves with quivers of proper arrows. A few were kept stowed in each saddle for emergencies, and that would have to be enough. She peered into the distance again, squinted, and tried to count the number of dragons approaching. It didn’t appear to be a full horde. A set of scouts, perhaps? Then it was even more important that the Western Kingdom’s scouts never returned. A missing scout party would be a far greater deterrent than word of how well-prepared they were.
The mock battle formation quickly fell into a holding pattern. The dragons flew slow circles behind Elevera as the riders turned their attention to Trysten. She peered up at the sun. It was far along the sky now, and would present only a slight advantage to the approaching horde. The best thing to do would be to engage them quickly and fiercely, keep them from gathering as much intelligence as possible.
Trysten gave out a series of orders. Practice arrows were stowed away and replaced with the three sharp arrows each carried for emergencies. With the horde as ready as they could be, Trysten ordered them to intersect the enemy with all available speed. Elevera broke the holding pattern and threw herself in the direction of the approaching horde before Trysten could even give the orders.
The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding Page 19