The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding

by Vickie Knestaut

  Nillard cocked an eyebrow as if unsure of what to make of her threat. Then his eyebrow lowered and he gave a slight nod, almost as much to himself as Trysten, as if confirming what he thought. “We’ll just see about that.”

  He stormed from Trysten’s den. As the door slammed behind him, Trysten leaned her weight onto her palms and hung her head. She allowed herself one deep breath, and then she followed Nillard out the door. The man may have been an experienced hordesman, but he was as transparent as the summer river. He planned to take the remains of his horde and leave now.

  Chapter 34

  Trysten’s feet hammered down the steps. Sure enough, Nillard stalked across the weyr, heading for the side door. His fists swung out in determined arcs, and his shoulders were hunched nearly about his ears with grave tension.

  Trysten had almost closed the distance between the two of them by the time Nillard exited the weyr and entered the side yard. As soon as Trysten stepped out from the barn that housed the dragons, she took in the very sights she had hoped and expected to see. Troughs of water had been filled for the dragons of the Hollin horde. Fresh food was wheeled in on handbarrows and fed to the Hollin dragons. The hordesmen themselves gathered around a table with the hordesmen from the Aerona weyr and shared their midday meal.

  Nillard clapped his hands, then raised them over his head. “Saddle up, men, we must be on our way.”

  “But the dragons need rest,” one of the hordesmen protested as he gestured to a dark green dragon who ate with gusto from the handbarrow parked before it.

  “They need the rest, or you need to fill your gullet with drink?” Nillard called back. “Now, men. Up in the air with you! Now!”

  The Hollin men shared a few looks of bewilderment and disappointment with their colleagues of the Aerona weyr.

  Nillard turned to Trysten. His eyes squinted as if daring her to protest, to try to stop him.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stood with her feet apart as far as the breadth of her shoulders.

  Nillard turned back to his men. “Now!” He clapped his hands together again.

  The men placed cups and plates upon the table, and then after a few handshakes were exchanged, they trotted back to their dragons and began to mount them.

  Trysten looked to Elevera, who stood where she had left her. A weyrman held her reins as another wiped down her scales. Elevera turned her attention away from the commotion of the other hordesmen and dragons and peered directly at Trysten. She nearly gave a nod of her golden head, as if to provide the confirmation Trysten sought.

  Nillard climbed into his saddle, patted his dragon upon the neck once, and then ordered her up into the air with a verbal command paired with the motion of dragging his heels upward along the dragon’s side.

  The dragon shifted from claw to claw, then dipped her head and peered at Elevera.

  Elevera held her neck up high, her head rigid and commanding among the other dragons.

  Around the remains of the Hollin horde, hordesmen gave commands for their dragons to take to the wing, to climb into the air. All of them acted slightly uncomfortable, shifting weight and bowing their heads. One dragon even staggered in a rough circle like a cat before stopping to stare at Elevera.

  Nillard yanked on the edge of his saddle. He scraped his heels across his mount’s hide, up and up, urging her into the sky. She did nothing in response but shuffle a bit and stare at Elevera, who held her ground, and commanded her horde to do the same.

  A grin pressed over Trysten’s face. She didn’t deserve such a good friend.

  “What’s going on here?” Mardoc asked from behind Trysten.

  She turned around and saw her father leaning on his staff in the doorway.

  She quickly explained the situation to him, how they had come across the remains of an absconded horde, and that they had already bonded to Elevera, much to the chagrin of the senior hordesman.

  Mardoc smirked. “I bet he liked that.”

  Trysten turned back to the scene in the yard. Nillard was off his dragon and stomping across the yard, heading right for Trysten with a great scowl and his two fists swinging wildly to either side of him with each step. The man appeared to be ready for a fight.

  He stopped short of Trysten, then looked back at Mardoc. His eyes traveled up and down the former Dragoneer.

  “I am Nillard, senior rider of the Hollin weyr. Who are you?”

  “Fallen Mardoc of Aerona weyr.”

  The fight dropped out of Nillard’s face as he inclined his head slightly and bowed at the neck. “Your service is honored.”

  Trysten worked hard at holding her tongue.

  “As is yours,” Mardoc said, returning the merest politeness.

  Nillard glanced from Mardoc to Trysten. A light appeared to go on behind his dim eyes. “You are…”

  “She is my daughter,” Mardoc said with a nod. “And Dragoneer of this weyr.”

  Nillard shifted his feet. He looked back and forth between father and daughter. His jaw dropped slightly and he appeared to be working hard at trying to figure out how to word what it was he wanted to say. Behind him, the Hollin hordesmen began to dismount their dragons. They cast looks about, from Nillard to Elevera to their own dragons and then to each other. They were slowly catching on to what had taken place. Would they react as Nillard had, or might they behave with better sense?

  Nillard appeared to find what it was he searched for in his head. He clutched his fist before himself as he turned to Mardoc. “Surely you know that it is forbidden to allow a woman to be a dragoneer.”

  Trysten’s father stiffened. His knuckles blanched as his grip tightened upon his staff. “I invite you to take your argument up with our alpha dragon.”

  Nillard turned back to Elevera. His face narrowed and his lips faded in obvious contempt.

  “How can that be?” Nillard asked with a shake of his head as he returned his attention to Mardoc. “Dragons do not bond with women. It doesn’t happen.”

  Nillard then turned his attention to Trysten. His gaze traveled up and down her as if to confirm for himself that she was indeed a woman.

  Trysten stepped forward. “Obviously that assumption lacks some truth,” Trysten said. “Elevera is the alpha of this weyr, and she has bonded with me. I am Dragoneer, and I will not tolerate your ongoing disrespect. The fact of the matter is that you flew here on an absconded horde, and your dragons have since bonded to Elevera. She is their alpha. I am your dragoneer now whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not.”

  Nillard shook his head again. He looked to Mardoc, and his expression asked if he was going to allow his daughter to speak to him in such a manner. When Mardoc did nothing to respond to his unspoken question, Nillard turned away, to the dragons, to the hordesmen who had all begun to stare at them. He lifted his hands, then threaded his fingers together behind his head as he sucked in a deep, frustrated breath.

  He turned back to Trysten, then to Mardoc. “This can’t be. You can’t allow a woman to lead a horde. Especially this horde, so close to the Western Kingdom.” Nillard pointed at the mountains, as if the others might have failed to notice the boundary between the two kingdoms. “They are coming for us. They are taking full advantage of the early end of the peaceful season, and they are fighting in a way that I have never seen in all my years. They are fighting as if they have a…”

  Trysten’s spine tightened. Her breath caught in her chest, and as if Nillard could feel her sudden tension, he glanced at her sideways.

  “As if they have a dragon lord.”

  Mardoc tensed as well. “That is a legend,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  “I have fought many battles in my days, and I tell you from the core of my heart, I have never seen anything like the battle that destroyed my weyr. The way those dragons flew, it was as if they were of a single mind, man and dragon. It was so much so that it has caused me to doubt the legends. And to top it off, I come here, and I find a horde bonded to a woman, which
I was brought up to believe could never happen. It seems to me that the unthinkable keeps happening, and so why can’t Dragon Lords be real?”

  Trysten forced herself to breathe. She shook her head as if to dismiss the whole idea of other people like herself. “It was probably an old horde smarting from defeat that invented the whole legend to begin with. It is easier to accept defeat if you think there was something mythical about your enemy, isn’t it?”

  Nillard nodded. “I used to think so myself. Sometimes it is easier to believe in the fantastical than it is to believe you can be bested, but I swear to you that what I saw could not be explained away so easily. With a decade of practice, I could not pull off the maneuvers I saw. No, I am telling you, what I saw, combined with the early end of the peaceful season, points to one fact. There is some magic about. Sorcery. Whether or not one of the Originals is involved, I cannot say, but the Western Kingdom is using some dark dealings in order to pull off what they have pulled off.”

  If Trysten’s spine could have stiffened more, it would have at Nillard’s suggestion. Part of her wondered about the veracity of his statement. Could there really be a dragon lord at work? Could there be someone like herself, someone who could know the minds of dragons as easily as she knew her own? But she bristled at the suggestion that there was any dark art to it, as if simply being able to do what she did meant that she had to be evil by nature.

  A man like Nillard could be dangerous. He would spread fear and suspicion through the horde. She had to figure out a way to get rid of him. But first thing was first.

  “It’s all a very fanciful story,” Mardoc said, “but as a dragoneer, fallen or otherwise, I must say that you have done nothing more than report the presence of a talented dragoneer in the midst of the Western Kingdom. Dragons are highly intelligent beasts. There is very little that a dragon cannot be trained to do if ridden by a skilled rider. I know this first hand.”

  Nillard looked to Trysten, then back to Mardoc. “To even be trained to bond with a woman?” He lifted an eyebrow.

  Mardoc lifted his staff slightly and tamped it back to the ground in a small gesture of irritation. “You are speaking of things you know nothing about. What do you know of how a dragon selects its partner?”

  Nillard shifted back on his heels. “I know enough. And more than that, I’ve been around long enough to know the lore, to know the laws, and I tell you that she cannot hope to withstand an onslaught from the Western Kingdom. This weyr will fall faster than Hollin did. The King must be made aware of what has happened—of what is happening. Both here in this weyr and along the mountains. Reinforcements must be sent, and your dragon…” Nillard drifted off as he turned his attention to Elevera, whose gold scales shone in the sun’s rays.

  Trysten clenched her teeth and fists rather than fly into the man and tear him apart, wrap his ridiculous beard around his throat and yank it until his face turned purple. She stormed away, leaving Nillard with her father. As she advanced out into the yard, the hordesmen from both hordes watched after her. Their chatter fell away as she approached Elevera, stopped, and turned around. Across the yard, she held everyone’s attention.

  “Let me welcome the new hordesmen to Aerona weyr.” She held up her hands, her palms outward. “It is an honor to have each of you here to fight by our sides in the air.”

  Nillard took a step towards her. With a speed and grace that reflected the man he used to be, Mardoc reached out and gripped Nillard by the bicep and dragged him to a halt. The man turned, then lowered his head in submission as decades spent in service to a horde forced him to defer to anyone—to any man—who held the Dragoneer title.

  “As most of you have heard, our new friends have brought news of the end of the peaceful season. Tragic news about the fall of Hollin weyr, about the loss of their alpha and beta dragons, about the death of their dragoneer and commander. Though we are saddened by what our brothers have lost in battle, we are also heartened by their appearance. We are honored by the choice of the remaining dragons to seek us out, to come to our weyr, to bond with our alpha and join our horde. We are not only honored, we are strengthened as well.”

  Trysten let her left hand fall to her side while she clenched her right fist before her. “We are strengthened at a time when our kingdom needs steadfast and strong hordesmen like never before. An early end to the peaceful season means that we have a long, drawn-out fighting season ahead of us. On top of that, our new friends bring word of an emboldened Western Kingdom; one with new tactics and new maneuvers.

  “The dragons of Hollin weyr have sought us out because we need their strength. We need their numbers. We need their experience to make us stronger, and make us more resilient. With the two hordes combined, we will put up the kind of resistance that will stop the Western Kingdom. We will draw a line here, at this place, at this weyr, beneath our feet and beneath the shadows of our wings. This line will not be crossed. We will hold. We will meet the enemy when they come, and we will hold."

  Paege let out a cheer that was quickly taken up by all the hordesmen of the Aerona weyr. The men from Hollin all peered at Nillard, who stood before Mardoc, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “The dragons from Hollin weyr have chosen Elevera as their alpha. It is the way of the dragons, and there is nothing that any person can do to change the hearts and minds of these magnificent beasts. It is now up to the riders. Will you join us? Will you become members of Aerona weyr? Will you ride your mounts by our sides, fly with us into battle to defend the kingdom and avenge your fallen brothers, your very families? Will you?”

  The hordesmen from Hollin weyr glanced at Nillard again. A few of them stepped forward and echoed Paege’s cheer. As they did, several more followed suit, leaving two, along with Nillard, to remain silent and stoic, arms crossed over their chests in defiance.

  What cowards these men were, that would allow the destruction of their village, the slaughter of their families, friends, and hordesmen to go unanswered rather than follow a woman and her dragon into battle. To the wilds with them, then.

  “Thank you,” Trysten said with a nod to the Hollin hordesmen who had stepped forward. “I am heartened by your courage. I am inspired by your desire to make the Western Kingdom pay for their atrocities. And we will do just that. We will make every one of their hordesmen sorry that they ever crossed the Cadwaller mountains, and we will do it this very season!” Trysten said, raising her voice to a shout as she raised her fist.

  The men followed suit this time, not waiting for Paege’s lead. Three cheers erupted from those gathered, and even one more of the Hollin hordesmen joined the ranks, leaving Nillard a single compatriot to join in his coward’s stand.

  A broad grin spread over Trysten’s face as she stepped forward to meet the newly enlarged horde. Immediately she started handing out instructions to the weyrmen sprinkled among the crowd to begin plans on how to enlarge the weyr to accommodate the newcomers, both the men and the dragons.

  Nillard turned to her father, said something, and after a nod from Mardoc, he slunk away, walking down the outside length of the weyr before turning the corner and disappearing. The remaining holdout jogged after him, but Trysten could not worry about it as she busied herself with getting to know the names of the new dragons and the hordesmen.

  Chapter 35

  After a long day, Trysten retired to her den and added the names of the new dragons and hordesmen to the weyr’s chronicle. She paused and stared at her own handwriting, there beneath her father’s. Below his inscriptions of new and lost dragons and men, there was her own mark on the weyr already. Ten new dragons and seven new hordesmen. New riders would be selected from the village population and training would begin immediately. In the course of the day, she had increased the size of the village’s weyr by more than half making it the largest horde in the weyr’s history.

  She slumped against the back of her chair. On one hand, she was thrilled to have such a coup under her cap already, to have made such a mark within her
first few weeks of being Dragoneer. On the other hand, how in the wilds was she going to manage such a huge horde? She had made a lot of progress with the original horde in the last couple of weeks, but she had the legitimacy of her father to fall back on. They saw him as their dragoneer, and when he knelt to her on the day that Aeronwind died, it was as good as an order for them to honor her as they honored him. This new horde, however, had no loyalty to her, to her family, to the village or the weyr. In her conversations with them, she found them to be a group of men who were weary and in shock from the battle. She heard snatches and bits of stories that corroborated what Nillard had told her. It seemed that the Western Kingdom had attacked the village instead of the horde, and completely overwhelmed them in a matter of minutes with tactics never before seen.

  At least they had the benefit of experience from the Hollins hordesmen.

  Among the flurry of activity, Trysten had dispatched a courier to the mother city with news of what had happened to the Hollin weyr, along with the names of the dragons and hordesmen that had survived the attack and joined the Aerona weyr. As Ulbeg and his courier charged towards the eastern horizon, Trysten dispatched two of the hordesmen on smaller, faster dragons to fly up and down the Cadwaller range, one north, and one south, and report back with any news of hordes in the sky. She put Paege in charge of drawing up a regular rotation for watch, never leaving the skies unattended. Finally, she let the village overseer know about the events. He would establish a watch in the village and alert the shepherds to be on the lookout not only for hordes in the skies, but also for signs of armies moving through the Gul Pass.

  A knock at the door to the den brought her out of reviewing the day’s events.

  “Come in.”

  Her father entered, then shut the door behind him, and as his staff clunked against the planks of her floor, she wondered how in the wilds he had gotten up the stairs without her having heard him coming.