The Dragoneer Trilogy

by Vickie Knestaut

  “The battle dragons are all girls,” Tannil spat. “The boys just run errands because they aren’t strong enough for battle.”

  “They’re dragons!” Focil shot back.

  “Tannil’s skills with the bow are more than adequate. That is what is most important for a hordesman,” Trysten interjected, trying to turn the conversation in a positive direction.

  “So she can shoot others and be shot at?” Focil asked.

  He turned to face Trysten and behind his furrowed brow and angry expression, she could see the fear in his eyes. To even suggest that his daughter could be hurt, or worse, appeared to soften the man considerably as the words passed his lips. But once they were spoken, he grew as hard and unyielding as the scales upon a dragon’s back. His fear was rooted in reality, and there was nothing Trysten could do to win this argument.

  “I understand that you and your dragons and hordesmen are all that protect us from the Western kingdom,” Focil continued. His words were watered down, subdued a bit by the taste of his own fear. “But you can’t have my daughter. I will not stand in the way of either of my sons once they are of age, but I will not give you my girl. I forbid it.”

  Focil swallowed hard as he crossed his arms over his chest to signify that there would be no more discussion.

  “I’m not yours to give away!” Tannil spat. “What, am I some kind of goat that you get to trade? I—”

  “Tannil,” Trysten snapped. “There is nothing I can do. I cannot allow you into the horde against your father’s wishes.”

  The tension rose across the weyr. Even Elevera lifted her head slightly and shuffled her weight from one set of feet to the other.

  “But I will be of age at the solstice! What do a few months matter?” Tannil cried.

  Trysten sighed. “Come back at the solstice, and you will have a place here. But we must uphold the rules of the village. That is what we fight for. That is what we fly for.”

  “You heard her!” Focil snapped. “Get back home now, Tannil!”

  “But the rules say that women aren’t allowed…” Tannil objected.

  Trysten shook her head, drew in a tight breath, and did her best not to turn on Tannil’s father. Tannil’s objection had hit a nerve. Platitudes about following rules felt traitorous in Trysten’s mouth. She could kick herself. Why had she not expected this?

  “Come back at the solstice. Please,” Trysten placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  Tannil’s green eyes darted back and forth between Trysten and Focil. As tears pushed at her thick lashes and threatened to spill over, Trysten felt smaller and smaller. Not only for the hypocrisy that Tannil had pointed out but what felt like an embarrassing lack of ability to manage the situation. Tannil was still a child according to their laws, and that was not a law Trysten was prepared to break.

  Tannil spun on her heel and raced away. A sob escaped her as she ran, fists pumping. Her hair had been done up in bouncing braids like Trysten’s.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Focil sneered at Trysten.

  Kaylar took a half a step forward. “What she’s done is save the village. You should be grateful and proud of your daughter’s courage like my own father is.”

  Focil glanced at Kaylar, then quickly to the ground. Without a further word, he turned and left in the direction he had come, apparently satisfied that he’d successfully chased his daughter away from the weyr. For now.

  Trysten took a deep breath. She glanced up at Elevera, who watched Focil leave.

  “What a pig’s hind end,” Kaylar muttered as soon as Focil was out of earshot.

  The twins snickered. Alea looked either stricken or appalled with her pale face and her gaze locked on the ground.

  Trysten glanced again to the rear of the weyr, to the doorway Tannil had bolted through in her escape. Despite her best efforts, it was starting to look like there wouldn’t be a whole lot of progress to show when the Prince finally arrived.

  Chapter 8

  Midway through the afternoon, Trysten dismissed her class of recruits to practice the hand signals among themselves. She left the weyr and headed for Galelin’s cottage. She knocked several times before she heard a stool scrape against the floor.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. What is it?” Galelin muttered as he opened the door. His shoulders drooped, and he sighed as if disappointed to find Trysten on his stoop.

  “Are you all right?” Trysten asked.

  “I suppose you’ve come to see if I’ve made any progress,” Galelin asked. Without waiting for a response, he turned away from the door, leaving it open for Trysten to enter and close behind herself.

  He sat with an audible oof at the stool before his table. Several books lay open around him. Three cups sat among the scattered texts. Trysten stood beside the table. She reached out to one of the nearest books, but her fingers paused inches away, then fell back to her side. Without Galelin offering her a cup of tea, she felt like an intruder.

  “The recruitment isn’t going as well as I’d hoped,” she said. “I had four new recruits. A fifth that was too young, but every bit as eager as I’d like to see.”

  When Galelin made no comment, Trysten added, “I’d hoped for more. To see more people.”

  Galelin rubbed his hands over his face. “A lot is going on, or so I hear. A cutting party. Stone gatherers for a new weyr. Extra guards for the prisoners.”

  The tips of Trysten’s fingers traced along the edge of the table. “If the Prince comes to send me away, I want him to see what he is destroying. I was hoping for more recruits. I was hoping to have every saddle full upon his arrival, but I was unrealistic. That’s not going to happen. And it will be weeks before the cutting party returns. If the Prince is a few more days in arriving, we might at least have a trench ready for the new foundation.”

  Galelin nodded. “So you’re hoping that I have something to give you to dangle before his nose.”

  “I need all the help I can get,” Trysten sighed.

  Galelin looked up at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, as if studying her. “Would you tell him of your gift?”

  “The dragons?” she asked.

  Galelin nodded again.

  Trysten turned away partially, unsure why. She was so used to hiding her gift that it felt raw and cold to have someone toss it before her. Her eyes fell upon the dragonslayer sword at the back of Galelin’s table. A slight shiver shook her.

  “I have an idea,” she said, reaching for the sword. The thing felt awful in her hand, heavy and oily, but sure and steady in her grip. She wanted to both drop it and clutch it tighter at the same time. Galelin leaned away from her a slight bit.

  “Do you have a blanket that I might wrap this up in?”

  “What do you plan to do with it, may I ask?”

  “I plan to see if we can inspire a little motivation in our guests.”

  Galelin’s lips parted with an audible smack. His eyes widened. The movement highlighted the bags in the droopy skin beneath his lower lids.

  “No! I’m not going to use it,” Trysten said with a shake of her head. “Never. I can’t believe you’d even think that. But these prisoners are from the West, and so were the Second Hordesmen. This sword might be a strange thing out of mythology for us, but it could be quite common for them. Their reaction might tell us something.”

  “Or their lack of a reaction,” Galelin offered, his breath quiet.

  “Exactly. We don’t seem to have any other paths to follow at the moment.”

  Galelin glanced at the books all around him. “I do feel as if I’m off in the heather for now. Go on.” He motioned at the corner of his cottage. “Take the blanket off my bed, but do try not to slice it open. It needs to warm an old man’s bones, after all.”

  As Trysten carried the sword back to Galelin’s bed, he gathered up a few of the books he’d been studying. His collection of teacups looked blank and robbed.

  With the sword wrapped in the blanket, she and Galelin walked to the edg
e of the village where nine of the prisoners were being held. She had purposefully selected the cottage housing the prisoners who had not escaped. Hopefully, they were unaware of what had happened and might be a little more cooperative.

  The guard at the door let them in. Two more villagers, men Trysten knew as a shepherd and a tanner, stepped inside with them, hands upon the hilts of short swords tucked inside their belts. Her jaw tightened at the thought of what she had done to these men. They were hardworking men who led peaceful lives and produced tangible goods that benefited the community. Now their flocks and hides were tended by others as these men spent their days guarding prisoners Trysten had captured without thought to how they’d be handled.

  The prisoners all made eye contact with Galelin first and then turned to Trysten. They studied her up and down, then glanced back at Galelin as if seeking an explanation from someone they already knew.

  As Galelin placed his books upon a small table, then sat with a thud in the accompanying chair, recognition dawned on the face of one of the prisoners. “Kalit,” he said, sharp and forceful as if thrusting with a short sword of his own. He pointed at Trysten and barked out a few more words as he glanced around at his companions. They all talked in excited tones, exchanging sharp words with emphatic hand gestures.

  Trysten blinked and found her breath stuck inside her chest. Much to her surprise, facing these men across the gulf of sky had been nothing to her. It had been frightening and exhilarating and punctuated with moments of terror and despair, especially when she watched Verillium spiral to the ground with Issod dead upon her back. But at no point had Trysten felt the apprehension and fear that she felt now, face-to-face with the men who had tried to kill her, the men she would have killed had things not turned out as they had.

  The guards shifted and tensed. Their hands tightened around the hilts of their swords. The outbursts of the prisoners settled down. They said a few more things to Galelin, then gestured at Trysten as if asking for an explanation.

  “I would say that you’ve provoked a response from them,” Galelin said.

  “I doubt they are happy to see me,” Trysten said without looking away from the men.

  “Do you have a plan for how you wish to proceed?” Galelin asked.

  “What do you normally do?”

  Galelin let out a sigh. He pointed to the table. “Yaddim.”

  The prisoner closest to Galelin chuckled and shook his head. He pointed to the table. “Yad-dim,” he said in slow, drawn-out tones likely meant to mock Galelin, treating him as if he were an imbecile.

  The other prisoners cracked grins. One let out a weak snort as if it were a stale joke.

  “I think we’ve established that this is a table,” Galelin said. “Table.” He pointed to the table again.

  “Table,” the prisoner repeated.

  Galelin reached into the pocket of his tunic and produced a small gem, a ruby. It caught Trysten’s eyes. She had not expected to see such a thing.

  “Ruby,” Galelin said and pointed to the stone.

  “Roo-bee,” the prisoner said.

  “That’s it. Good. Ruby.” Galelin rolled his hand in the air.

  “Roo-bee. Gadalla chee’ought.”

  “Guh-dalla, chee-ought,” Galelin said with a nod.

  One of the prisoners gave an apathetic clap as if Galelin were a child mastering the simplest of lessons. Trysten shot the man a glare. He stared back at her, not the least bit intimidated by her without her dragon.

  “Gadalla chee’ought,” Galelin whispered to himself as he produced a piece of charcoal and used it to scrawl the word down in the margins of a book. “Ruby.”

  “How do you know that is what is meant?” Trysten asked. “He could have meant red, or hard, or valuable, precious.”

  “Perhaps,” Galelin said as he pocketed the stone. “But it is an item that is likely in their kingdom as well, and if it has the same value there, then it is likely a subject well-reviewed in their language. So I look for the words gadalla chee’ought in my texts and hope that I find them, along with the list of other words I have accumulated from the prisoners. If I can match up their words with a particular language text, then I can begin to translate.”

  “You mean to say that you have books in languages you can’t read?”

  Galelin nodded. “Translation texts. They are helpful if one should have a question for someone who doesn’t speak our language.”

  The urge to ask Galelin who he was communicating with in a foreign language pressed at Trysten, but her impatience to make some headway in the investigation won out. The prisoners hardly seemed willing to cooperate, based on the way they treated Galelin. For all she knew, they were giving him crude statements to repeat back for their own amusement.

  But what reason was she, or anyone else, giving them to cooperate? They were captured in battle, imprisoned, and without a way to communicate with them, for all they knew, they would be executed as soon as it suited the village.

  Something different would be needed to get things moving.

  She placed the sword upon the table and flung the blanket back.

  The eyes of the prisoners grew. Several of them dropped their jaws. They looked to Trysten.

  “Sha bock ta reem,” the closest prisoner said in a near whisper to Trysten.

  “Reem,” another man repeated, then gave a solemn nod.

  Trysten pointed to the sword, and though the name sword came to her tongue, she could not say it. It wasn’t true. It was not a sword that rested on the table. Instead, she pointed at one of the short swords in the guard’s belt, then motioned for it.

  The guard glanced at his companion with an inquisitive look.

  “Give it to me,” Trysten said. “Your sword. Hand it over.”

  The guard looked to Galelin as if to have her order confirmed, and then drew the sword from his belt. He handed it, hilt-first, to Trysten. She took it and held it in front of her. Pointing at it she said, “Sword.”

  “Sword,” the prisoner said.

  “Sword,” Trysten said again with a nod. Then she pointed at the dragonslayer. She turned her hand over, opened her palm and gestured at it as if inviting the prisoner to name it.

  “Ga sha assee. Bock nombret sa yalla ough reem.”

  “That’s quite a mouthful,” one of the guards mumbled.

  Trysten pointed to the sword in her hand again. “Sword.” She gestured at the dragonslayer blade again.

  The prisoner pointed at the weapon, and then the tip of his finger slid toward Trysten’s heart. “Bock nombret sa yalla. Sa yalla.”

  “Yalla,” one of the others prisoners said with a nod. “Wesh ta nombret creft antonneck etta see meum ta reem.”

  The closest prisoner looked back at his companion and nodded. His face was solemn, nearly pale. There was nothing mocking in their tones any longer.

  Trysten pointed at the dragonslayer. “Sa yalla?”

  The prisoner looked a bit startled as if Trysten had said something so absurd as to cause him concern for her sanity.

  “Vane.” He shook his head. “Sa vane yalla.”

  He pointed to the dragonslayer, then raised both of his fists into the air. He clutched an invisible sword and drove it down into the ground with a grunt. He then glanced up at Trysten, his face slightly red with the effort, and some emotion that bubbled beneath, far enough away that Trysten couldn’t identify it.

  “Sa yalla.” He pointed at Trysten’s heart. “Sa yalla.”

  “What do you suppose that means?” one of the guards asked. “Woman?”

  Galelin shook his head. “It means what he said. Sa yalla.”

  The prisoner glanced at Galelin, nodded emphatically, then pointed at Trysten again. “Sa yalla. Sa yalla. Bock nombret sa yalla.”

  A tremble coursed through Trysten. She didn’t know what sa yalla meant, but it was important to them. They recognized the dragonslayer sword and they seemed to know its purpose. But anyone who had witnessed the battle would know how
the weapon was meant to be used.

  Trysten picked up the ghastly sword and held it in front of her. A prisoner gasped. Others looked around frantically for an escape. Several dropped to their knees, their eyes wide. She placed the sword back in its blanket and turned to leave.

  She had known since the battle that the Second Horde was somehow connected to the Western Kingdom. But she hadn’t expected the connection to be fear. The Western hordesmen were terrified.

  Chapter 9

  After returning the dragonslayer sword to Galelin’s cottage, Trysten paused on her trek back to the weyr and glanced off to the west. How were Rast and his companion making out? Had they found a translator? Would they be back with the dawn, a shrewd trader riding behind the bulk of Rast, ready to demand a hefty price to tell her what the Westerners were saying?

  Waiting was not something she was good at. What in the wilds was taking the Prince so long? She glanced to the east, scanned the horizon, and saw nothing but a few, high clouds making their way over the edge of the sky.

  As she stepped into the weyr, the sound of the dragons breathing in unison filled her head.

  “Elevera,” Trysten said as she approached her dragon. “Are you up for a ride?”

  The gold dragon dipped her head as if in a nod. Trysten entered the stall and examined the membranes of Elevera’s wings where Galelin had stitched shut the wounds from their last battle. The sutures would hold, and Elevera would tell her if she wasn’t capable.

  As Trysten removed her saddle and tack from a trunk at the back of the stall, a man cleared his throat. Trysten turned around, her arms filled with the saddle.

  Borsal stood at the head of the stall, arms crossed over his chest, chin held high. “I’ve been trying to have a word with you all day, ma’am, but for the Dragoneer, you spend precious little time in your den.”