Outposts

by Vickie Knestaut

Trysten sighed. “Of course not, but whatever he is, he doesn’t mean us harm. Not anymore. He’s learning our language. He’s helping out in the weyr. He’s quite good with the dragons.”

  Prince Aymon’s eyebrows lifted. “You let him near the dragons? Your own?”

  “Aymon, what is anyone going to do with my dragons while I’m alive?” Trysten asked with a scowl, rolling her eyes. “You haven’t been here dealing with him, learning from him, watching him, have you? No. Then you will support me while I run this weyr as I see fit. We are going to learn how to speak with him, and he wants to learn to speak with us.”

  “Why?”

  Trysten turned to face the weyr. It sat on the western edge of Aerona and dominated the humble skyline of cottages and sheds and barns that comprised the small settlement. It often felt that they were out on the edge of nowhere, and yet at the center of the world at the same time.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a pause. “Because we have his dragon? Because he’s here?”

  She thought of Rodden, of the way he looked at her, the way he greeted her. She recalled the song he sang to Maejel before Trysten led his dragon away into battle against his people. She had risked his dragon’s life, but she knew he understood. It was in his eyes as he blinked back his tears and allowed the melody to carry his voice over the knots in his throat. He gave her his dragon.

  Not that he needed to though. Maejel had bonded to Elevera, and she would do what Elevera commanded. But Rodden was not bonded. If he had been free to refuse Trysten when she came to place the harness upon Maejel, he still would have let his dragon go. Because Trysten was sa yalla. Aymon did not care to understand, and she wasn’t going to waste her time trying to explain it to him.

  “It’s important that Rodden learns to speak our language. He has things to tell us. He has questions to ask,” Trysten said. “Again, he is not the enemy.”

  “I’m not heartless, Trysten. Or stupid. But you ask a lot from people who have seen their friends and family fall to the Western hordes,” Aymon said, quickening his pace as he continued to the weyr.

  “So I’ve heard,” she grumbled, hurrying to keep up. From the corner of her eye, she saw the Prince glance at her, a look of surprise on his face.

  Once they entered the weyr, they found Rodden in Maejel’s stall. He stood next to his dragon, his hands absently stroking the scales along her neck and shoulder as he spoke with Kaylar. The hordesman stood outside the stall, her elbows on the half-wall, jaw resting in her palms.

  Rodden looked at Maejel. A flicker of concern and then recognition crossed his face as he recognized the shift in her breathing. He turned to see Trysten walking down the aisle, the Prince at her side. Kaylar followed his gaze, then stood up straight next to the stall.

  “How’s the leg?” Kaylar asked as Prince Aymon approached.

  The Prince nodded. “Good as new. Is it my imagination, or were you talking to this man just now?” He pointed to Kaylar, then turned the tip of his finger toward Rodden.

  “We were reviewing some words,” she answered.

  Prince Aymon turned to Rodden. “Rodden of Opplenot, I hear.”

  Rodden’s eyes widened slightly as his hand stilled upon Maejel’s neck. His mouth grew tight, and he glanced from the Prince to Kaylar, and then on to Trysten.

  “Rodden,” he said with a nod and placed his fingertips over his heart.

  “I am Prince Aymon, fifth son of the King of Cadwaller.”

  Rodden looked at Kaylar and Trysten again. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “Do you understand me?” Prince Aymon asked.

  “I am learning,” Rodden said with a nod in slow, measured syllables.

  “What did I just say?”

  Rodden straightened his back. “Do you understand me.”

  Kaylar did a half-hearted job of concealing a giggle behind her hand. Rodden looked at her. His tight-lipped expression softened into a bit of a smile. It wasn’t the sly look of a man smug with his own joke, but rather the look of a man who was pleased to get a giggle from a woman he cared about.

  Prince Aymon flushed slightly. “Do you know what a prince is?”

  The grin dropped away from Rodden’s face. He appeared to be considering it, thinking. “A prince... is a pain in the—”

  “You’ll have to excuse him,” Trysten blurted. “He has been around the hordesmen. Their language can be a bit colorful at times.”

  Prince Aymon arched an eyebrow at her. “Indeed.”

  He turned back to Rodden. “Do you know what a king is?”

  “King,” Rodden said, then nodded. “King rules men.”

  “Yes!” Prince Aymon said. He rocked forward on his toes slightly as if he alone was responsible for the breakthrough. “A king is the ruler of men. My father is King. My father is the ruler of all men of Cadwaller.”

  Rodden considered this for a moment, then turned to Kaylar. “Tey obbit chassim? Ta bock?”

  Kaylar nodded. “Neh.” She pointed at Prince Aymon. “Lim beck Cadwaller.” She then pointed to the ground.

  Rodden nodded. “Ah.” He looked back to Prince Aymon, spread his arms out at his side, and inclined his face in a bow.

  “You understand him?” Prince Aymon turned to Kaylar.

  She shifted her weight. “A little bit. Not as well as he understands me. I’ve just picked up a few of his words.”

  “But you can speak their language?” the Prince asked.

  “No,” Kaylar said with a shake of her head. “Just a few words.”

  Prince Aymon turned back to Rodden as if reconsidering something. He then looked back to Kaylar. “But he understands now. He knows who I am.”

  “He knows you are the son of the king of this land.”

  Prince Aymon nodded as if affirming that the world was as it should be. “Rodden of Opplenot, I demand to know why you have invaded my father’s kingdom.”

  Rodden looked at Kaylar again. His hand went to his chest, his fingertips pressing over his heart. “Rodden.”

  “Yes,” Prince Aymon said. “We’ve established that. Now, Rodden, why are you here?”

  Again, Rodden turned to Kaylar, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Ta bock?”

  Kaylar shifted her weight again. She looked up at the ceiling, squinting as if she were trying to pick something out of the rafters above.

  “Well,” Prince Aymon said, “explain it to him. I want an answer.”

  “He doesn’t understand,” Trysten said. “He’s come a long way, but he can’t express himself in anything more than the simplest terms. Complex ideas are still too difficult for him. He doesn’t have the words.”

  Prince Aymon looked back to Kaylar. “Translate.”

  “I don’t know the words,” Kaylar sighed. “I’m a hordesman, not a translator.”

  Prince Aymon shook his head. He looked back to Rodden. “Tomorrow, I am launching a retaliatory attack against your people.”

  Kaylar gasped.

  “My father will no longer tolerate aggression from your people. Your people and your king will be dealt with swiftly and forcefully. I demand to know what you have to say for yourself.”

  “Aymon!” Trysten snapped.

  “For all the sky, you can’t be serious!” Kaylar said.

  Rodden glanced back and forth between the two women, his face wrapped in a look of deep concern.

  “By the dragon’s scale, I am quite serious,” Prince Aymon said to Kaylar. “We cannot allow the attack on this village to go unanswered.”

  Kaylar turned to Trysten, and Trysten gave her head a slight shake and did her best to convey with her expression that Kaylar should not push the issue. Kaylar looked back to Rodden. Her face turned red.

  “Don’t tell me you are grieving for his people,” Prince Aymon said to Kaylar. “You saw them. You were there at the edge of The Wilds. You fought them yourself in the very skies over this village.”

  Kaylar took a deep breath. Her look of shock grew hard and sharp
as it turned to anger. “I am trying my hardest to learn to speak with him. I want to know why his people fight us. If we can—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Prince Aymon said with a wave of his hand. “Trysten has told me this. But we cannot wait. We have to strike now and make it clear to the enemy that this is in retaliation. You don’t wait until the next day to strike the nose of a misbehaving dog. You strike it after it misbehaves.”

  Kaylar shook her head. “He’s not a dog,” she said and gestured at Rodden. “He is a human. Like us. And what good did it do his people to escalate their attacks, huh? Did we back down? No. So why is it going to work for you? I should just sit here, in my village, beside this hornet’s nest and wait for you to stir it with a stick?”

  “I mean to do a bit more than stir,” Aymon said. “I have eighty of the finest hordesmen in the kingdom. We will destroy the first weyr we come across. And I have given orders to see an outpost built at the mouth of the Gul Pass, as well as every pass in the Cadwaller mountains, so that the enemy may no longer sneak into our kingdom unnoticed. This war will end, hordesman. I will see to it while you spend time talking to your friend there.”

  Kaylar sucked in a tight breath. She looked again at Trysten.

  Trysten looked at the Prince and shook her head. All bluster and brute force, he never even considered other paths.

  The Prince gaped at her. “What happened to ‘For Aerona!’? Where is your bloodthirst from earlier today, Trysten? What happened to riding through the pass at my side to make this man’s countrymen pay for your pain? It is not so easy when it actually has to be done, is it? When the emotions of the day have wrung themselves out. Surely you are not afraid of the confrontation?”

  “The only thing I fear, Aymon,” Trysten said quietly, “is the mistake you are making. I am not fool enough to believe that retaliation and revenge will solve anything, no matter how much I might want them for myself.”

  “Continue your work,” she said to Kaylar. The hordesman nodded.

  Turning to the Prince, Trysten sighed. “Aymon, let’s stop this. It is getting us nowhere, and we both have plenty to do before tomorrow.”

  Prince Aymon stared at Rodden for a few moments more, perhaps looking for the dawn of comprehension or a spark of fear in the man’s features. All that Trysten saw was the familiar look of confusion on Rodden’s face, the look of a man who could barely grasp one out of every ten words spoken.

  Finally, the Prince turned back to Trysten. “Thank you for trying,” he said. “If you find out anything useful from this man, please let me know. If you will excuse me.”

  Looking at Kaylar, he added, “And thank you too, hordesman.”

  Without waiting for a response, he walked away.

  Kaylar looked at Trysten, her eyebrows raised. “Well, at least that’s something.”

  “It is something,” Trysten agreed. “I’m just not sure what, and we may never know. I fear we will not see him again after tomorrow.”

  They watched Aymon walk down the aisle and out of the weyr door.

  Chapter 6

  When Trysten entered the weyr the following morning, she found Galelin and Clemens standing in Elevera’s stall. The alpha dragon was curious, but cautious as she watched them, her head lowered slightly while Galelin held her wing out at her side. He clutched the wing’s edge as Clemens leaned in and studied one of the marled patches where Galelin had sutured the membrane back together after it had been pierced with an arrow.

  It was somewhat startling to see Clemens engaged with Elevera in such an intimate way when Trysten was used to seeing only Galelin in that role. She almost wanted to step between the stranger and Elevera, then reminded herself that Elevera was very capable of defending herself if need be.

  Trysten folded her hands behind her back as she approached the alpha’s stall. “Problem, gentlemen?” she asked.

  The two dragon healers looked at her. Clemens stood up straight as Galelin released Elevera’s wing. The alpha stretched it out, then folded it behind herself before lifting her head up tall and straight in Trysten’s presence.

  “No, not at all, my dear dragoneer,” Galelin said with a grin. “I was just showing Clemens the results of my particular brand of suturing.”

  Clemens bobbed his head as if considering something.

  Trysten arched her eyebrows. “If I’m not interrupting anything, then would either of you object if I took my dragon for a flight?”

  Galelin flushed and looked a bit embarrassed as he glanced at Clemens. Trysten could tell he was enjoying himself—the village dragon healer showing off for his counterpart from the big city. She was happy to see that there was no apparent friction between them. Another dragon healer would be good company for her uncle. Although he’d never admit it, Trysten could tell Galelin was weary lately.

  “No, not at all,” Galelin said and shook his head. “Please.” He swept his hands back as if presenting the dragon to Trysten. “I’m sure she’d love the outing.”

  All signs of levity fell from his face. “Say, you’re not leaving with Prince Aymon, are you?”

  “She most certainly is not,” Prince Aymon replied from behind them.

  The three of them looked back to the side door where the Prince stood. He adjusted the strap of a satchel over his shoulder. “She is the Dragoneer of this weyr and a fine one at that. Her place is here, guarding Aerona and the mouth of Gul Pass.”

  He turned from Galelin to Trysten. “May I please see you in your den for a few minutes? I have a couple of matters I’d like to address before we depart.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, and it struck Trysten that he was genuinely asking for her permission rather than commanding her to meet with him.

  “Of course,” Trysten said, a little off her center with the Prince’s new behavior. She was accustomed to having to steel herself for every conversation. It was going to take some time for her to get used to his new approach. If he returned from his mission. She shook her head. She had to stop thinking like that. Mardoc told her to never plan for defeat, and surely, that meant the Prince’s defeat as well.

  “Let’s go,” she said, gesturing up to the den.

  Prince Aymon started toward the flight of stairs at the head of the weyr.

  Trysten glanced back at Galelin, who gave her a puzzled look of mild shock. Trysten mirrored it a second, then gave a slight shrug before waving a hand at Elevera. “Carry on, gentlemen.”

  As they entered the den, Trysten looked around for intruders. The room was empty. Before she could make it to her chair, Aymon slung the satchel from his shoulder and dropped it with a thud onto the table.

  “I have a gift I want you to have before we leave,” he said as he worked at a buckle on the leather flap.

  “A gift? What is it?” Trysten asked as she stepped up to her end of the table. Her hands clutched the table’s edge. Prince Aymon bringing her a gift was completely unexpected and a bit puzzling.

  Instead of answering the question, he pushed back the flap and pulled two leather-bound books from the satchel and handed them to her.

  “These are a gift from me. I want you to keep them.” He looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the shelf of books near her table. “But I don’t know if you want to keep them in here.”

  “What are they?” Trysten asked. She set them down, then picked up the smaller one and opened the cover.

  “They are a collection of reports. Some of them are recorded from the royal archive in the kingdom. Some are from oral accounts. They are records of what is known or suspected about the Originals.”

  Trysten gasped and looked at Aymon. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. She hadn’t really expected him to uphold his part of their bargain to share knowledge with one another.

  “And the other one is a similar volume concerning Adalina. I’m afraid it’s the drier of the two accounts.” Trysten placed the smaller book aside and pushed back the cover of the larger volume.

  “I had my scribes copy a lot
of the documents I’ve collected regarding Adalina,” he continued. “It’s a lot of dull, mundane material. Shipping manifests, bills of sale, receipts, letters taken from the remains of a library discovered on the southern edge of the kingdom. Most of the original material is in formal Seelian. I had my scribe copy it into our own tongue.”

  “Seelian?” Trysten asked.

  “You didn’t think that she spoke the Cadwaller tongue, did you?” A wry look crossed his face as if he were making a joke at her expense that she did not get.

  “I suppose not,” Trysten said with a shrug, not caring if he was mocking her, as she flipped past several pages. They were packed with tight, neat script. In the margin was a smear of ink, caught on the edge of the scribe’s hand presumably.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Trysten said as she looked up, her fingertips resting on the page.

  “You could start with, Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Trysten said. “I mean it. This is a treasure. But I have to ask, why?”

  “As I recall, we made a promise to start sharing our knowledge. This is what I know. Some of it may be true. Some of it may be lies. But even lies have a way of revealing something by the way they cover the truth.”

  He looked from the books to her and held her gaze a moment. For a brief second, she feared that he was once again going to try and convince her to go back to the mother city with him, even though he was heading in the opposite direction. And then she had a sinking feeling that he was saying goodbye as if he did not expect to come back and was passing the torch.

  “Well, then,” Aymon said. “I believe I am all set. Shall we take off, then?”

  He looked eager, almost excited. Suddenly, Trysten didn’t want him to go. “I suppose so,” she said. “Thank you again for the books. This means a lot to me, Aymon.”

  She patted the pages gently.

  “I’ll see you in the yard then, but don’t keep us waiting.”

  He picked up his satchel and left the den.

  Trysten looked down at the books. By the wilds, the last thing she wanted to do now was spend the day escorting Aymon to the pass, then scouting for a site for the construction of the outpost, but it had to be done. The books would be waiting when she returned.