“But if he hears about it—”
“Tavern talk is not as reliable as the written word.” Mardoc collapsed with heavy bones into the chair on the other side of the table. “Tell me what happened. Tell me first.”
The quill slipped from Trysten’s fingers. The tip of it made a mark across Issod’s name. She picked the quill up and attempted to brush the ink away with the tips of her fingers, but only succeeded in smearing it further.
“Oh, Father…” Trysten began. She slumped back in her chair. “You can’t even begin to imagine.”
“I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “In all my days, I have never seen a dragoneer capture an enemy horde and bring it back before. I have never heard of such a thing. Before today, if one had even told me such a thing was possible, I would never have believed it until I saw it with my own eyes.”
He leaned forward and rested more of his weight upon his staff. “How far do your powers go, Little Heart?”
The pet name nearly shattered Trysten. She was no longer Little Heart. She was no longer that young girl who had merely wanted to be the Dragoneer.
“It was awful. There was another Dragon Lord—”
“Another?” Mardoc leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide and face long with surprise.
Trysten nodded. “A Western Dragon Lord. The Hollin men said it was the same horde that attacked them. But they had these swords. And after I…” Trysten took a deep breath.
Mardoc held up a hand. “Start from the beginning.”
And so Trysten started from the beginning and told her father of everything that had happened since they left the village that morning. She told of the two battles, of capturing the first horde and of how the second was lost. Once she finished, her father merely gave his head a slight shake.
“What kind of men do such a thing?” Trysten asked, and then found she had run out of breath.
“They rode with a Dragon Lord,” Mardoc said. “They knew the cost of loss.”
Trysten shook her head. “But we… If anything… We would never."
“But we are not a people of war. War is a way of life for the Westerners—”
“But how could they know?" Trysten asked. “If they had a Dragon Lord, they had to know that they would be virtually unstoppable. How could a normal horde ever hope to beat them? Look at how quickly they defeated the entire Hollin weyr. It’s almost as if they had to know…”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Mardoc nodded. “As if they knew they might go up against a Dragon Lord. And not just any Dragon Lord, but one that could take their horde.”
A chill ran through Trysten. Her eyes dropped to the ledger.
Mardoc tapped the floor with his staff. “It’s enough to record the names of the fallen for now. Let’s see to others—”
“But it’s the custom—”
“There is nothing customary about being a dragoneer. Not anymore. Not since you have taken the title. Come. We must see to other things.” He stood to indicate that the discussion was over.
Trysten slipped the stopper into her inkwell, then followed her father down the stairs. She paused and looked back at the den. If her father, a man who stood by the customs of the Dragoneers so steadfastly until the end could tell her to wait to write the record of battle, then what was the chance that other things had been left out of the records? What was the chance that all of the Dragoneers before her had been selective in what they recorded of their history?
As they stepped onto the landing, Trysten surveyed the weyr beneath them. There was still a bustle of activity as people ran about, seeing to the injured dragons and seeking out the last few people in the village who hadn’t heard the story of the battle as undoubtedly told to them by one of the Aerona hordesmen.
They descended into the weyr and found Galelin overseeing the work of an apprentice who patched up a rent in a dragon’s wing.
“How’s Elevera?” Trysten asked.
Galelin nodded, then issued a last few commands to the nervous apprentice before he ushered Trysten and Mardoc over to the corner of an empty stall. Trysten’s gut tightened as she braced herself for terrible news.
“Elevera will be fine,” Galelin said in a hushed tone. “A day or two in the stable, and she’ll be terrorizing doles of doves like old times.”
As puzzlement settled onto Trysten’s face, Galelin leaned forward and and shuffled his gaze from Trysten to Mardoc. “I saw one of those swords brought back from the battle. One of the hordesmen was waving it about, showing it off, spoils of war and all that, as if this whole wild fighting season was nothing more than a matter of sport.”
Galelin spat into the corner.
Trysten’s back tightened. She hadn’t forbidden the men to plunder the bodies of the fallen hordesmen, but perhaps she ought to have.
“I recognized it,” Galelin continued. “In one of the calmer moments, I slipped back to my cottage and looked it up in a book of myth.”
“Myth?” Mardoc asked.
“Myth,” Galelin confirmed with a nod. “It is the sword carried by the hordesmen of The Second Horde.”
“The Second Horde?” Trysten asked with a cocked eyebrow. She had begun to think of the horde as the second horde, and was a bit incredulous to think it was what it was actually called.
“I’ve heard this tale,” Mardoc said. “A long time ago. From my grandfather.”
“You never told me,” Trysten said.
“The Second Horde was the elite guard of one of the Originals. When he took human form and searched for a mate, he became vulnerable, mortal. To protect himself, he personally trained a weyr of hordesmen to act as his personal guards. As he had offspring, he raised them—”
“Wait. I thought he had one daughter; Adalina,” Trysten said with a shake of her head.
“You cannot have an army with one child,” Galelin said.
“It seems that I do,” Mardoc quipped.
“But the swords… They are… They have one purpose that I can see,” Trysten said.
“Make no mistake. They are deadly to anyone who takes their blows. But it is not humans that the Original needed protection from. Even in human form, he was far mightier than even the strongest man to have ever lived.”
“He needed protection from dragons?”
“Other Originals,” Galelin corrected. “Those swords were meant to slay other Originals.”
Trysten glanced from Galelin to Mardoc. “What does this mean, then? That those men had those swords?”
Galelin cleared his throat. “It means that when those men fail to return, whoever sent them will know that they encountered someone mighty enough to slay the Original’s personal guards.”
After Trysten had seen to the rest of the injured men and dragons, and had her own injury treated, she had served the village once again as a guest of honor at a banquet. She forced herself to smile and say the appropriate things throughout the dinner. But as soon as she could, she retired to the weyr. Most of the villagers remained in the square, celebrating with drink and music. Only a single night watchman greeted Trysten when she entered. He eyed her with open awe. She nodded to him, and he nodded back as she walked down the aisle and looked into the eyes of each dragon. Their breath came slow and steady and matched her steps. She stopped at Elevera’s stall and peered up at the dragon. She was on her feet already, and though Trysten wanted to step inside the stall, crouch, and peer at Galelin’s handiwork, she couldn’t bring herself to tear herself away from her gaze. Trysten took a deep breath with the rest of the dragons, and then lifted her palm up and out.
Elevera lowered her head and rested the side of her muzzle against Trysten’s hand. She recalled the song, the subtle shifts in the dragons’ breathing patterns. She remembered the different rhythms, the rising and falling, the swelling and crashing, and it seemed as if entire conversations, whole storied songs were passed between the dragons with nothing more than the changing rhythms of their breath. She had
been able to sit and listen to it all when she was a girl. She could take it in with rapture for hours on end until her father came in and the dragons fell into unison, as if they were every bit the edge of a blade, nothing more than a tool waiting for the warrior’s command.
And now she was the warrior, and these dragons were a weapon for her to wield.
The pit of her stomach hollowed out in grief. She gritted her teeth and her throat clenched closed at never being able to hear that song again. On one hand, she trembled with knowing how much she had given up. On the other hand, how could she not take the title and responsibility that accident and life and history had bestowed upon her?
Trysten took a deep, trembling breath as a tear dropped down her cheek. Her fingers curled, clutched at the golden muzzle of Elevera. She pulled the dragon closer, then rested her brow against the dragon’s nose.
“Sing for me,” Trysten whispered. “Please.”
Elevera’s breath slowed as it swept over Trysten’s face. Down the aisle, the breathing of the smaller courier dragons picked up. Across the weyr, the dragons altered their breathing, swung their patterns, rolled low, grumbling breaths. Crescendos of high, quick breaths made a staccato rhythm up and down the aisle. The weyr brimmed to the rafters with their quiet song as the dragons sang for their Dragoneer who wept for all that was lost and what was yet to come.
About the Authors
Yes, they’re married. Together, they write fantasy fiction featuring strong female characters and hopeful, adventurous stories appropriate for most ages. And of course, dragons.
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http://www.knestaut.net/d1
The Dragoneer: Book 1: The Bonding Page 29