A Flight of Marewings

by Kristen S. Walker

  “Of course.” Ameyron slipped the egg into the pouch and tucked the whole thing inside the front of his robe, against his chest. Then he realized what she’d said and looked up in surprise. “Wait. We?”

  Omalia was already surrounded again by a swarm of dragonlings, each one eager for her touch. “If there are as many crystalbell bugs as you imply, one young dragonling won’t be enough to stop them all. And I would like to see this outbreak first hand. If we can figure out what went wrong, then that could be a valuable insight for my own research.”

  He brightened. “And we can find out who the assassin was together!” He held out his hand to the red dragonling again, wondering if it would remember who fed it before, but the creature snarled and darted away from his touch. He snatched his hand back.

  Omalia sighed. “You still have a lot to learn. It will be better for me to be there to help you.”

  Ameyron chuckled nervously. “True. I am happy for another researcher to work on this. Thank you.”

  Ameyron caught up on Omalia’s dragonling writings while he waited for the egg to hatch. He studied her detailed research journal with interest: she had learned a lot about their behavior from months of observation before she finally attempted to steal an egg for herself, and then with each subsequent monster she caught and tamed after that, she refined the process of training. The first one she had caught, the female who became the leader of the flock, also helped train future additions by asserting her dominance. It seemed that socialization was a key part of their training—so he would rely on Omalia’s flock to help.

  He prepared for the hatching with trepidation. Because he did not trust leaving the egg alone, he carried it with him inside his robe, and jumped at any imagined movement from inside the shell. He purchased, at some expense, a quantity of fresh meat scraps for the chick.

  Two days after he received the egg, he felt it move at last. A faint tapping sound came from inside the shell.

  Ameyron immediately removed the egg from the pouch and placed it on the floor before him. With one eye on the egg, he tore up the meat into what he hoped were bite-sized pieces and put them in a bowl. Then he crouched on the floor with meat on one side and his book of notes on the other. He was determined not to miss this opportunity.

  The egg rocked back and forth as its occupant struggled to emerge. Then, with a sudden violent movement, it toppled onto its side and one end broke open. In the cracks, a pointed, scaly gray and brown head emerged.

  The little dragonling wriggled and squirmed until its front legs were free. Then it clawed the rest of the way out. The rest of its body was covered in the same plain gray and brown mottled pattern as the head. The head looked too large for its body, and it struggled to hold it up. By comparison, the wings looked too small and wrinkled to function at all, and the tiny tail whipped around wildly as if it had no control.

  He knew from Omalia’s notes that they were born plain, for camouflage, and gained more vivid colorings as they reached mating age, and the wings would enable them to fly in only a few short weeks. However, confronted with the reality of the hatchling, Ameyron could not help but feel a twinge of disappointment. He remembered Omalia’s flock like a brilliant cloud of butterflies and thought that there could be something wrong with the pitiful creature before him.

  He doubted that she could have known what was in the shell, though. He resigned himself to give the creature a chance—defective or not, he was using it for observation, and if it deviated from the norm in its development he would soon know by comparison with her research.

  He realized that the animal was crying and sniffing the air. It smelled the food. As he watched, it turned its head toward him and tried to get to its feet.

  Ameyron remembered the bowl of meat and fished for a tiny morsel—the mouth on the hatchling looked even smaller than he had estimated. He held out the food.

  The dragonling eagerly snatched the meat out of his fingers and swallowed it in a single gulp. It lifted its tiny head and cried for more.

  He quickly found that it could manage to consume any piece he offered it, as fast as he provided them, and he soon discovered himself holding the dragonling in one hand and stuffing meat into its mouth with the other just to quiet the piercing cries. Its belly swelled and stretched as it ate, until he had a ball of scales and wings nearly twice the size of what had come out of the egg. Satiated at last, it promptly fell asleep in his hand.

  Ameyron sat on the floor, his notes neglected beside him, and stared in surprise at the beast in his hands. Was it really this simple? All of the years of dealing with monsters—watching out for their wild temperaments and violent behavior—planning out how he would build a cage to constrain them and traps to ensnare them without doing injury to himself. And yet here he was, with a tiny yet reportedly fierce creature in his hand, asleep and trusting as if he were its caring mother.

  Had he really just tamed his first magical beast at last?

  He didn’t have time to worry about the implications for now. Omalia had already arranged for them to travel with a trading caravan heading to Kyratia. They had a month’s journey back to Kyratia ahead of them.

  The next day, he joined the caravan on the way out of the city, carrying the tiny dragonling in a sling he fashioned out of an old shirt. For now, it was merely content to eat and sleep, and it would be an easy traveling companion. He hoped that by the time he got back to the city, it would be ready to hunt—and he prayed that its hunting skills would not be needed.

  26

  Korinna VIII

  Korinna found training at the mountain fort to be entirely different from her basic training. Gone was the strict schedule: each day brought a new challenge. On the first day, the new candidates had to climb the rocky mountain face to reach the marewing stables at the peak, using only ropes and spikes to secure themselves from falling to their deaths. Fortunately, even the once-clumsy Orivan managed to struggle safely to the top.

  When they arrived at last, exhausted and frightened, they spent the rest of the day mucking out the stables and polishing the marewings’ tack without seeing a single marewing up close.

  Fortunately, at the end of the day when they were ready to return for their supper and feared the climb back down, Sergeant Navera revealed a vertical tunnel inside the mountain that linked the main fort with the marewings’ roost. Large baskets on a winch rope allowed food to be carried up to the riders from below, and the tired candidates could ride these back down for the evening, one at a time. When it was Korinna’s turn, she laid down in the basket and nearly fell asleep from the gentle rocking as she descended.

  The next day, Sergeant Navera roused them from their beds before dawn and sent them down the mountainside into the forest, where they had to catch their own breakfast. Wilderness survival had been part of her basic training, but now Korinna found that she had to manage without the standard recruits’ equipment; instead, the candidates were armed with only a flint and dagger, and had to fashion snares and spears for themselves to hunt. At the end of the day, they all came back more tired and hungry than they had started, after a meager meal of fish that Itychia had managed to catch in a stream.

  On the third day, they didn’t see Sergeant Navera at all. Instead, the candidates were sent to assist the kitchen staff with menial preparations. By now, midway through the sixth month of summer, fresh food supplies from the harvest were growing scarce; the military’s rations were supplemented with roots from the forest, which waited in great piles to be peeled and diced for the supper pot. But they all peeled without complaint, even Mkumba, who had learned much more patience than when Korinna had last trained with him.

  The training routine went on like this, with a mixture of grueling tests and menial labor. All of the candidates learned to climb up the mountain with confidence, even while carrying heavy packs of supplies on their backs, and they eventually learned how to climb back down as well. Their infantry weapons drills were replaced with focused archery practice. The sho
rt bows they had learned on were replaced with great longbows that took an enormous amount of strength to draw, but they could shoot targets over great distances. They also spent time with a bowyer to craft their own bows, from selecting a tree in the forest to curing the wood and slowly curving it over time to take the shape and strength they needed.

  At the end of the day, when they weren’t too tired, the three friends went up on the walls of the fort to get a glimpse of the marewings as they went out for their evening exercise. When they weren’t assigned to the roost, this could be the only chance that the candidates got to see the monsters and remind themselves what they were working for.

  By now, Korinna could identify many of the marewings by their distinctive markings even at a distance. Sergeant Navera’s dappled gray, Stormcloud, was usually the first to take to the sky. Another gray whose coat was fading to white, ridden by the captain of one of the two units posted at the fort, was Mistborn. Firefly, a young bay roan and her reckless young rider, were fond of acrobatics and often performed aerial stunts near the fort where they had an audience. A flash of scarlet wings with a black tail streaming out behind it was a sure sign of Firefly.

  Korinna shielded her eyes from the glare of the setting sun and pointed when she saw Firefly appear. “There. Looks like she’s doing somersaults again.”

  The boys turned to look. Orivan sucked in his breath. “Is it really safe to do that so close to the side of the cliff?”

  Mkumba whistled low with appreciation when Firefly pulled away from the dangerous outcropping with only moments to spare. “Agility is important in a fight. They could be practicing how to dodge projectile weapons or other attackers.”

  Orivan winced and looked away. “How would you know? Have you ever seen a marewing fight before?”

  Mkumba shook his head. “But the principles of battle are the same in the air as on the land. Be where your opponent doesn’t expect you to be.”

  “I know there’s a huge difference between fighting on land and at sea.” Orivan folded his arms. “The drills we learned for infantry aren’t like any ship maneuvers I’ve ever seen. How can we possibly imagine what the sky is like?”

  “In practice they may be different, but in theory—”

  “We’ll learn that when it comes to it,” Korinna interrupted before their argument could go any further. Mkumba still acted like he knew more about fighting than the other mercenaries, and she had no more patience for his bragging. She searched for another topic that would distract them. “What color would you want, if you could choose?”

  “Pure black,” Mkumba said immediately.

  Orivan laughed. “Just like the Warlord’s, of course.” He shook his head. “I think I’d want one that wouldn’t stand out so much, like a brown or a gray. But I’ll just be happy with anything.”

  Korinna looked back up at the parade of colors across the sky. “I think the ones that are two colors are more interesting.” She pointed to one with a tan coat and darker markings. “Like that one. I think they call that dun.”

  Mkumba looked at her sidelong. “Or chestnut with white markings, like Commander Varranor’s Skyfire?”

  “No,” she said quickly, turning her face.

  “I think it would look more striking to have a white horse next to Nightshade,” Orivan suggested unhelpfully. “Just think about white and black riding next to each other. It’d be like a painting.”

  Korinna glared at him. “Who says that I care about matching with Galenos?”

  The others stopped talking and looked away from her. An uncomfortable silence fell over the trio.

  At last Korinna broke the awkward pause with a sigh. “What is it?”

  Orivan shuffled his feet. “We’re not supposed to talk about you and the Warlord.”

  Mkumba nodded. “We know about your future plans with him and the city, but we can’t say anything or the enemy might overhear.”

  Korinna frowned. Where had they heard so much? “And you’re okay with just keeping it a secret?”

  Orivan gave her a hopeful smile. “We think you’ll make a good duchess.”

  “So long as you don’t forget who your friends are,” Mkumba added, draping his arm around her shoulders.

  She laughed and hugged him. “Okay, then. I’ll contract the best of the Architects Guild to construct magnificent stables to house your lovely marewings. I can’t give you money or titles if you’re mercenaries, of course, but I can see your company taken care of in style.” She kicked the worn fortress wall with the toe of her boot. “I think that a lot of these old facilities could use an update.”

  Orivan raised his fist to the sky. “And better food in the mess hall!”

  At last the time came in the candidates’ training to learn more about marewings. Unlike Commander Varranor’s hands-on lecture that had gone awry in Fort Ropytos, Sergeant Navera collected her students on one side of the mess hall one afternoon between lunch and dinner. At her instruction, the candidates dragged several tables together and sat down facing a huge piece of slate mounted on the wall. The sergeant picked up a piece of chalk and began sketching a complex diagram of marewing anatomy.

  Korinna shared a table with Orivan and Mkumba. With some reluctance, she invited Herokha to join them. The other woman accepted and pulled a young man named Douhyos over with her.

  She looked around for their other roommate, but she was nowhere to be found. Korinna frowned and turned to Herokha. “Have you seen Itychia?”

  Herokha shook her head. “I don’t think she’s coming to this lecture.”

  “Why not?” Korinna shot a look up at the sergeant, certain that she would disapprove.

  Herokha raised her eyebrows. “Haven’t you heard? She already knows all of this. It’s her second time.”

  The others overheard the conversation and leaned in closer with sudden interest. “Second time for what?” Mkumba asked.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t say,” Herokha demurred, but the smirk on her face showed how pleased she was to have the latest information again. “It’s quite tragic.”

  Douhyos snorted. “I was already in the company when it happened, and no one tried to keep it a secret then. Itychia was a rider once, but her marewing died.”

  Korinna put a hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. She knew that Itychia had been a mercenary for several years, but she never talked about what she’d done in the Storm Petrels before being chosen as a candidate. Now the empty look behind the woman’s eyes made sense.

  “I thought marewings lived for a long time,” Orivan said.

  Herokha shot a look at Douhyos before answering. “Usually, they do. But she had an accident—”

  “An acid-spitting harpy attacked her unit when they were on patrol,” Douhyos said bluntly, ruining Herokha’s dramatic account again.

  Herokha sat back and folded her arms. “Are you telling this story, or am I?”

  Douhyos shrugged. “I was at Fort Inazelas when it happened. I saw the wounds caused by the acid. It was lucky that more marewings and riders weren’t killed.”

  Mkumba drummed his fingers on the table. “So if she lost her first marewing, why does she get a second chance?”

  Herokha gestured for her friend to answer, and turned away from the rest of the group.

  “Not every former rider gets a second chance,” Douhyos said with a shake of his head. “Most retire because of age, injuries, or just heartbreak. But since Itychia is still so young, and her commanding officer said that there was no way she could have avoided the attack, they gave her the option to try again.”

  Korinna bit her lip, thinking of the poor woman’s suffering. “So she has to go through all of this training again, and hope.”

  Douhyos nodded. “Except, apparently, these lectures.”

  Sergeant Navera brushed chalk off her hands and cleared her throat. “If I can have your attention, we will begin.”

  The candidates snapped to attention and faced the front of the room.

  Through
the lectures, the candidates learned that riders communicated with their marewings through physical signals as well as some type of emotional connection that Sergeant Navera struggled to explain.

  “It’s not quite like magic,” she said with an unusually fond smile for her typically gruff demeanor. “And it’s not unique to marewings. Philosophers have theorized for centuries that the lesser beasts, without the advantage of a fully developed language for communication, have become more sensitive to subtle cues that allow them to read another’s emotional state. Some people have also learned this skill, like the charlatan fortuneteller on the street corner who watches your reactions to see when her so-called palm reading hits close to the truth.

  “But something about marewings makes them even more sensitive to a person’s emotional state.” The sergeant’s eyes swept the room, pausing on each candidate in turn. “You must learn to control your own feelings in order to connect with them. This connection does not happen overnight—it’s built up with time and trust, just as with any other relationship. But the relationship with your marewing, should you catch one, will be the deepest bond that you ever experience.”

  Navera went on to explain that marewings would only bond with a single rider, and were actively hostile to any other human who tried to approach them. “Except,” she held up one finger, “an experienced rider with a solid bond can sometimes persuade their marewing to accept a second passenger for a limited flight. The passenger has to be polite and calm to win the marewing’s trust. You must obey everything that the rider tells you.”

  When the sergeant was satisfied that all of the candidates (save for Itychia, who remained absent from the lectures) were prepared, she brought them to the roost at the mountain peak early one morning for a practice flight.

  “This will be your only chance to get used to flying before you catch your own marewing,” Navera warned them. “Pay attention to everything that the rider does. This will also test how far you have overcome your instinctive fear of heights. If you can’t handle it now, then I doubt you will be successful when the time comes to catch one yourself.”