The Dragoneer Trilogy

by Vickie Knestaut

  “Does it matter why they attack our land?” Prince Aymon asked. “It is enough that they do. And it is enough that we turn them away. It is enough that word gets out to the surrounding kingdoms that we stand against all aggressors, that our kingdom is strong enough to resist any and all attacks.”

  Borsal placed the stool behind Prince Aymon. The Prince looked at the stool, then at his men, then told Borsal to take the stool away. Borsal rolled his eyes and collected the stool to return it to where he found it.

  “That's a wonderful slogan,” Trysten said, “But as the person in charge of the weyr out here on the edge of the kingdom, I’d like to know a little more about why we are being attacked. I want to know why it is that I am fighting the same war over and over.”

  “You are fighting for the King,” Muzad spat.

  “Enough,” Prince Aymon said and flicked his wrist at Muzad again.

  The Prince shifted his weight. “Strength is best used when it is simply implied. It is preferable to a have a reputation for might, as opposed to openly demonstrating it. If your guest here should get back to his people and tell them how he was treated, then it would appear we are a bit soft, wouldn’t it?”

  “He expected to die,” Trysten said. “We brought him in here, and he went to his knees as if waiting to be slaughtered.”

  Prince Aymon nodded in approval. “Very well. Now, why would you go out of your way to contradict that belief?”

  “Because it’s not true!” Trysten cried.

  Prince Aymon shook his head. “It doesn’t matter whether or not it is true. It is true enough. If his people believe we will kill them if caught, then they will think twice before invading our realm.”

  “What! Are you listening to yourself?” Trysten pointed emphatically at the west. “There’s a whole wild army marching on our village. Do you think they are the least bit dissuaded by our reputation for brutality? And for that matter, how has this man come to believe that? Who has told him that we slaughter prisoners?”

  Prince Aymon shrugged. “It is probably the most natural thing for him to believe. They probably do the same.” Aymon’s gaze dropped to the floor as if looking for something nearby. “For all we know, they spill the blood of their enemies across the floors of their own weyrs so that they might forever trod upon it, grinding dragon droppings in with their heels."

  Despite herself, Trysten’s eyes fluttered closed for a brief second. She pictured the long, low thatched roof building she had seen in the memory of the Western dragons. It was not a place of horror that spoke of slaughter and desecrating enemies. The dragons did not remember it as such a place. It was home. And it was far away. And they longed for it.

  “You are insane,” she said with a shake of her head. “I refuse to believe that.”

  Prince Aymon readjusted his grip on the cane. His arm wavered a tiny bit.

  “Fine. Suit yourself. But I am telling you that nothing good will come of this. This man is an enemy soldier. He was sent here to slaughter the subjects of King Cadwaller. He has returned to finish the job precisely because he has found us weak. If you compound that by treating him with the respect of an honored guest, you are emboldening him and his brethren. They will not show you mercy if they should happen to make it to the borders of this village. They will see your mercy as foolishness and nothing more. Your blood will paint the soles of their boots. And so I am telling you as a military man as well as a prince of the King’s court that your guest over there should be condemned to death or at least shackled and placed in a dark room in a cottage for the rest of his days.”

  Trysten pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “What is foolish is to fight a war for no reason at all. It is wiser to discover why we fight, and fortunately for Aerona and your father's kingdom, I have the courage to do the wiser thing.”

  “Why we fight?” Muzad asked, incredulity dripping from his statement.

  Prince Aymon shifted his posture but did not move to silence Muzad. Instead, he merely looked agitated and bored.

  “We fight because they invade our land,” Muzad went on. “That is the reason. What more do you need? By all means,” he said as he swept an open palm out toward the westward-facing entrance of the weyr, “go stand out there on the edge of your village, and ask them why they are attacking us. Pour them a cup of tea. Offer them a plate of fresh-baked biscuits. Go right ahead.”

  “Muzad,” Prince Aymon grumbled.

  The Royal Dragoneer flushed with agitation.

  “I will speak to them,” Trysten said. “That is why this man is to be treated with decency. I cannot have his respect and cooperation if I behave like an animal toward him.”

  “Respect and cooperation?” Muzad spat.

  “Muzad!”

  “Your Highness—”

  “Enough!” the Prince shouted.

  The Royal Dragoneer looked ready to press his point, but then snapped to attention.

  Prince Aymon took a deep breath as he allowed his head to fall forward, his chin almost touching his breastbone. The man had aged forty years in the hours since the battle that afternoon. He looked like a frail, tired old man with coal-dyed hair as he leaned upon a cane that quivered with the strain of his weight.

  He steeled himself with another breath, then stood up to his full height. “You have earned a fair amount of leverage with me, Trysten, after your actions in battle today. I hate for you to squander that so quickly on such dangerous and foolhardy propositions, but it is your mistake to make. I will allow you to keep your prisoner as yours. If I catch him outside of the prison cottages—”

  “He will remain here,” Trysten said.

  “Here?”

  “He came back because he couldn’t bear to leave his dragon. He will give his life before he sees any harm done to her. As long as they are together, he will be no problem.”

  Prince Aymon glanced from Trysten to Maejel and back. He appeared to consider something for a second, and then came to a conclusion as he nodded to himself. He then spoke over his shoulder at Muzad. “Tell your men that this prisoner is off limits. If he is found outside of this weyr, outside of the custody of a hordesman of Aerona, he is to be gathered up and returned here. Is that understood?”

  “And he is not to be harmed,” Trysten added.

  “As she says,” Prince Aymon said.

  Muzad glared at Trysten. “By your order, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Muzad and Jurdun looked at the Prince in surprise and then stepped back before turning and leaving the Prince behind.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, the Prince turned to Trysten and asked, “Now, where is that stool?”

  Trysten hurried over to Sone’s stall where Borsal had left the stool. She brought it back and placed it behind the Prince, who sat with a groan that crumpled his face into a mask of agony before he tucked it away, his breathing fast and shallow.

  “I thought you said you learned nothing from the dragon bridge,” Prince Aymon said once he caught his breath. He transferred the cane from his left hand to his right.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Then what is it about him?” Prince Aymon said and nodded to Rodden.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what is really going on here? What are you doing with this prisoner?”

  “I’m doing exactly as I said. I plan to learn how to communicate with him so that we can discover why it is they fight with us.”

  “I can save you some trouble. They fight with us because it is their nature. It is what they do. They fight with us as a challenge to their warriors. We are game to them. Have you hunted bear?”

  “I’ve heard of bear," Trysten said.

  “Great beasts that live in the mountains. Like dogs, but twice or three times the size of a man. Huge. Thick with muscle. They don’t make for good eating, but they make for great sport. In The Wilds, the men who wear the skins of bears are treated like lords. They are the bravest, the strongest. Such is
the case with the Westerners. They fight because we are their game.”

  “How do you know that?” Trysten asked, one eyebrow arched in disbelief.

  Prince Aymon smirked. “Because I’m an educated man. Because my position and wealth afford me more knowledge than is readily available to or necessary for those who live out here.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, your reason.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t make any sense? It’s the truth no matter what you think about it," the Prince answered.

  “Then why don’t they take trophies? The Western hordesmen leave our dead. They leave their own dead. And, what sport or honor is there in sending an entire army out to slaughter us?”

  Prince Aymon looked past Trysten and out toward the dining hall. His face was blank as if caught between the desire to hide his pain and the desire to hide his embarrassment at Trysten honing in on the flaw in his explanation.

  “Be that as it may,” he finally answered, “I want to know what you learned about these men when you... communed with him through his dragon. I want every detail. You obviously learned something. Something significant enough to make you want to befriend him. Tell me now.”

  Trysten stood upright. “All right. Everything. Fine. What I caught is hard to put into words. Dragons don’t think like we do. They don’t think in words and ideas like we do. We think like a rope with a bunch of knots tied in it, and each knot is an idea that you pass hand-over-hand, one idea leading to another. Dragons think like a sack of wool being dumped. It’s everything all at once, all of it connected. It’s memories and feelings and sensations and sounds and smells, and it all hits at once, and it can’t be separated out to make sense. It is a jumble.”

  “Fascinating,” Prince Aymon said without a bit of sincerity in his voice. “Now what did you learn about our adversaries? If we have any hope of defeating them, I need to know everything about them, and I need to know now.”

  Trysten planted her hands on her hips and shook her head. She looked over to Maejel, who stared down at the space before her, where Rodden likely remained after finishing his dinner.

  “What I learned is that they have weyrs. That their land is rugged, mountainous, and filled with needled trees. The weyrs are slung low, with steep, pitched roofs of thatch. I learned that their dragons live to fly.”

  She recalled the sound she had heard. The rushing, swelling sound that she thought of as a million mothers shushing fussy infants. The sound that filled the dragons with longing. The sound that called to some part of her as well.

  “I learned that they are like us, Aymon. Like you and me.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest to indicate that the conversation was over, that she had told him all that she could or would tell him.

  Prince Aymon stared at her a moment more, his face hard and inexpressive. The flesh beneath his eyes looked hollow, shaded with exhaustion and blood loss.

  “You are sure there is nothing more to tell me?” Prince Aymon asked. “I need your complete and total honesty if we are to have any hope of surviving this week.”

  Trysten took in a sharp breath. “Why would I lie to you?”

  “Indeed. Yet you’ve been lying to me since I arrived.” He held up a hand to cut off her objection. “You’ve been withholding information about your status as a Dragon Lord.”

  “You said yourself that there is no magic, yet you would accuse me of hiding magical powers?”

  “Don't play word games with me, Trysten. Dragons are beasts that we understand very little. Just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it is magic.”

  “So you keep saying.” Trysten nodded.

  “And so you keep ignoring me,” the Prince said.

  Trysten glanced over Aymon’s head, on to Elevera’s stall where the golden dragon stood and watched her dragoneer. The dragon lowered her head some, tilted her face down a bit as if to suggest that Trysten only need say the word...

  “I promise,” Trysten said as she returned her attention to Prince Aymon. “I am telling you everything I learned from the experience. There just isn’t much to say. It wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped. I don’t think there was a useful bit of information learned.”

  “Is that so?” The Prince tilted his head.

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Prince Aymon reached up and grasped the half-wall of the nearest stall. With a grimace, he pulled himself to his feet. The cane quivered with his efforts. Once upright, he let out a short breath. His face grew red and then paled again as his breathing returned to normal. It was an expression she’d seen on her father’s face during his recovery, and she nearly had to clasp her hands behind her back to keep from reaching for the Prince, ready to steady him and take some of the weight and offer to help.

  “Well,” Prince Aymon said with a nod toward Maejel’s new stall. “It seems that the experience made quite an impression on you. I was just hoping to learn exactly what it was that made that impression. If we could...” His voice trailed off. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he looked back to Trysten.

  "I am not your enemy, Aymon," Trysten said, meeting his eyes. "I thought that I had proven that just hours ago."

  “If you will please excuse me.” Prince Aymon turned away.

  “How is your leg?” Trysten asked.

  He paused and looked over his shoulder, but didn’t make eye contact with her. “You will find me on my feet when the time comes.” He did not look back as he hobbled out of the weyr.

  Chapter 4

  Trysten let out a sigh, then turned back to Maejel’s stall. Paege stood next to it, his arms crossed over his chest, his back and the heel of his right boot both resting against the wall of the dining hall. His expression was bland, unreadable, nearly bored or full of exhaustion.

  Trysten shook her head as she approached. “That man is infuriating.”

  “He’s afraid of you,” Paege said.

  Trysten stopped in her tracks. “Me?”

  Paege nodded. He pulled his heel off the wall and planted it in the straw-strewn dirt before looking into the stall.

  Maejel shifted and sat her hindquarters down before lowering herself onto her chest. She looked uncomfortable in the small stall, but Trysten sensed no complaint in her eyes or demeanor. The dragon breathed in time with the others, drawing her breath from the pattern set by Elevera as they all waited for their next set of orders.

  Trysten brushed her hands over her arms. It felt weird at times, almost overwhelming to have such a huge collection of powerful, magnificent animals all waiting to do her bidding.

  “Because I control the dragons?” Trysten asked. She stepped to the edge of Maejel’s stall and peered in. The bowl and pitcher each sat empty upon the tray. Rodden sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the rear wall of the weyr. His back rested against Maejel’s side. His hands were folded together on his thin belly.

  Paege stepped forward. He leaned an elbow against the half-wall and looked to the prisoner as if Rodden might be listening, though it was clear that he didn’t speak a word of the Cadwaller language.

  “You are an army, Trysten. And Prince Aymon fears armies he cannot control. Think about it. There are barely two hundred people in this village, and yet we aren’t even thinking about fleeing. We’re not even questioning the wisdom of standing against an army of thousands.”

  “Once the reinforcements arrive—”

  “No,” Paege said with a shake of his head. He leaned toward her slightly and lowered his voice. “It’s not the reinforcements. If it were the reinforcements that would decide this battle, then Prince Aymon would be feeling quite confident and sure of himself. But it’s you. He knows that if he has hordes of dragons to command, it is only because you allow it.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. I don’t just allow it. It’s not like—”

  Paege held up an open palm and inched toward her a bit more. “Trysten, you are a Dragon Lord. You are not just any Dragon Lord, but
one that can take hordes over the presence of a beta. You can take enemy hordes as your own. You can take friendly hordes as your own. Dragons have been used by the Cadwaller family for generations to control its kingdom, to move information and forces across the kingdom quickly. A mob of angry peasants is no match for a horde of dragons. An army can defend itself against dragons, or it can defend itself against ground assault, but not both at the same time. Dragons are the stones with which the King has built his kingdom. And now here you are, someone who can bend those stones to her own will with just a thought. A wish.”

  Trysten shook her head. “But I’m loyal to the King. Aymon knows that.”

  Paege smirked. “You call him Aymon. You don’t call him Prince Aymon like the rest of us. And now, you seem to have established a connection to the kingdom’s nemesis.”

  Paege motioned back at Maejel and Rodden. “Prince Aymon’s family controls this kingdom, but you represent something that can snap their control. And instead of talking about how to use your gift to ensure the Cadwaller line, you talk about learning to communicate with their enemies, learning how to make peace. Can you see how that might be a threat to Prince Aymon?”

  Trysten glanced over her shoulder as if she might see Prince Aymon there, still standing at the side entrance, nodding in affirmation.

  Instead, Elevera continued to stare at her, expectant and waiting. Trysten felt a pull to go to her, to take a cue from Rodden and curl up against that hard and yet soft warmth that was her dragon. That is all she wanted. To the wilds with the kingdom, the King, and his line. She had Elevera, and that was all she really wanted.

  Her gaze shifted on to the end of the weyr, to the wide doors that looked out onto the dark west. Well, she had Elevera, but she also wanted the village to be safe. She grew up here. Her family had protected this village since the cornerstone of this weyr was laid. It was her honor, her duty, and her privilege to protect those she loved.

  She turned back to Paege.

  “Surely Aymon—Prince Aymon, can see that I’m trying to do what is best for the kingdom. If we can learn their language,” she said as she gestured at Rodden, “then we can find out why they keep attacking us. We can learn. We can start to understand. Then we might be able to bring about an end to this endless war. What could be greater for this kingdom than to stop throwing away the lives of dragons and hordesmen year after year for no reason that we know of?”