Tuse motioned for quiet again, patting at the air before him as if the crowd was a restless steed. "Our own Commander Paege has recently departed with a few of our fleetest dragons to get a better assessment of the army, including its size and movements. When he reports back, we will have a better idea of what we are dealing with.”
“What are we going to do?” several in the crowd called.
“Do they have dragons?” asked another.
“They have sorcerers,” someone called out. “Sorcerers with enchanted spears.”
Tuse motioned for calm again. “Quiet! Quiet. It’s important that we get all of our facts straight. Fear is our enemy’s strongest weapon. Fear and ignorance. We must resist both.”
Galelin leaned closer to Trysten. “Did you know he was going to do this?”
Trysten shook her head.
“Listen!” Tuse continued. “We have nothing to fear. We have the protection of our horde, which is second to none in all of the kingdom.”
A few more people glanced back at Trysten, but their looks appeared to be more in line with appraising her reaction, rather than assuring themselves of Tuse’s words.
“In addition to our own horde, we also have the royal horde—”
“There is no royal horde!” someone interrupted. Trysten pitched herself onto her toes to see who said it, but she couldn’t make him out in the crowd.
“The Royal Dragoneer died last night,” the heckler went on. “The sorcerers got him with their spears. His horde is ours. What’s left of it. You saw how many dragons were in the yard this morning.”
“That’s not true!” Tuse called out. “Muzad is very much alive.”
If it weren’t such a dire situation, Trysten would have smirked with the knowledge that dislocating his shoulder while sparring with her was likely the very thing that saved Muzad's horde from becoming Elevera’s. He would not have listened to Trysten’s warnings any more than Zandell had, a mistake that cost Commander Zandell and his dragon their lives, along with others in the royal horde.
“Also,” Tuse continued, “I have been assured that Prince Aymon called for two additional hordes for reinforcements.”
“But they’ll be here tonight! The army!” cried several in the crowd.
Tuse shook his head. His complexion reddened with frustration, and the more flustered he became, the more anxious the crowd grew, their murmurs becoming a low roar.
“Prince Aymon says it will take this army four to five days to cross the plains," Tuse said.
“But it takes two days for a courier to get to the mother city. And it’ll take another four for the reinforcements to arrive,” the man in the crowd called.
Tuse straightened his back, and his face became nearly scarlet.
“These reinforcements were called for before the army was discovered.”
The noise in the crowd erupted in an agitated stew of whispers and shouts and calls.
“Before?” someone shouted out.
“Quiet!” Tuse yelled. “Quiet!” He waved his arms up and down now, looking more like he was trying to fly away than trying to settle the crowd. His attention moved quickly to his right. His eyes widened as Moore stood up after climbing onto the other side of the platform.
“Oh, for all the sky,” Trysten grumbled to herself.
“Before?” Moore yelled at the crowd. “The Prince called for reinforcements before the army was discovered? Can you believe that?”
Several in the crowd shouted back at Moore. They couldn't believe it either.
“Moore!” Tuse snapped. “Get down.” He motioned for Moore to leave.
“I’m telling you all that I have seen this army with my very own eyes," Moore continued, enjoying the crowd's attention.
“Fish and birds!” Trysten snapped. She began to push through the crowd, parting it with her shoulder as necessary.
“I have seen these devils! I have felt their breath! I watched as their arrows mowed down the whole cutting party. They killed my own brother! You all know who you lost on that cutting party, who you lost to these devils!”
“Moore!” Tuse yelled. “Please get off the platform now!”
“He’s lying to you!” Moore called out, motioning to Tuse. He stomped back and forth across the platform, shaking it, but never getting within arm's reach of Tuse. “He won’t tell you the truth, but I will. It’s a load of rubbish that they called for reinforcements before they discovered the army. The truth is is that there are no reinforcements. There is no one coming to your rescue.”
“Moore! I must insist—” Tuse tried to interrupt.
The pitch of the crowd rose and approached a frenzy.
“There were hundreds of them!" Moore shouted, the crowd's agitation feeding his own. "A thousand. Archers. Fire in their eyes. Faces painted black with the fires they had come from. I tell you, they are coming to destroy us. To turn this village into a pile of ash. And they are doing it because of her.”
Moore thrust his finger at Trysten, who had nearly reached the stage.
“Moore! I’ve had it,” Tuse called. “If you don’t get down this minute—”
“He wants to silence me because I know the truth!” Moore yelled out. “They want our dragoneer because she is a sorceress.”
Trysten reached the platform, gripped the edge, and swung a leg up to lift herself atop it.
Moore backpedaled toward Tuse.
“There is no hope for us who stay here!” Moore yelled out. “They will slaughter us all like goats. We must leave!”
Trysten pushed herself to her feet.
“They don’t want me to speak the truth, but I was there!” Moore stammered, losing some of his bluster as Trysten approached.
Trysten recalled the deft set of movements that Kaylar had used to take Moore down the last time he ran his mouth. Moore wouldn’t have it this time, though. He turned, brushed past Tuse, and leaped down into the crowd. As he moved away, Vanon, one of the Aerona hordesmen, grabbed him around the shoulder and arm. Moore struggled briefly before Vanon wrenched his arm up behind his back until he yelped.
“Let him go!” Tuse called.
Vanon glanced at Trysten. She nodded.
With a look of disagreement on his face, Vanon reluctantly released Moore, but not before saying something to the man that put a look of fear on his face.
“We are not silencing anyone,” Tuse called out, his hands raised for the attention of the crowd, but it was getting beyond control. So many people shouted questions and concerns and traded information and gossip at such a level that hardly anyone could be heard.
“People!” Tuse shouted and waved his hands. “My fellow villagers! Hear me!”
Trysten drew in a deep breath as the people in the crowd looked up at her and shouted a variety of things. Many of them wanted to know how she could let this happen, why she wasn’t out there protecting them now. Where to start? No one would listen. She watched fear spread over their faces and infiltrate their words until the commotion threatened to split her ears.
What to do?
“People of Aerona!” A chorus of loud, strong voices rose above the panic and babble of the crowd. Everyone stopped shouting and turned, trying to locate the source of the sound. And there stood Prince Aymon, his hand resting on his cane. Behind him, fanned out in either direction as if he were point in a V formation, stood his hordesmen.
“People of Aerona!” Prince Aymon shouted loud and clear, as the last of the panicked voices diminished into whispers.
“Hear me, people of Aerona,” Prince Aymon said. “It is true that an army is approaching from the west. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I engaged it, and I have this wound to show for it.” He tapped his cane lightly upon the ground.
“But unlike Moore, I went into the woods. My dragon was taken down not by some ridiculous sorcerer with an enchanted spear, but rather with a contraption. A machine. Nothing magical about it. If Moore has seen these sorcerers with his own eyes, then let him speak n
ow.”
All eyes turned to Moore, who looked to the ground where he stood.
“These are mere men with machines, and we will soon know how many men. But their numbers don't matter. You have some of the finest dragons in the kingdom out here. You know dragons. All of you do. And you know what chance a man has against a hordesman on a dragon. You know what chance a score of men on the ground has against a dragon on the wing.”
“But these spears!” someone shouted out, and Trysten saw it was Focil, Tannil’s father. “They took your dragon by your own admission.”
“True enough,” Prince Aymon said with a bob of his head. “I did lose my dragon. But now we know better. We know of these machines, their existence. And we know they are made of wood.”
Trysten’s back tightened. They didn’t really know that. It was an assumption.
“Wood burns, does it not?” Prince Aymon asked. “And what good is a weapon of wood against the breath of a dragon?”
The crowd murmured among itself.
“Reinforcements are coming. They will be here any day. I have personally called for two hordes to assist me. No army can stand against four hordes. And that is the second mistake this army has made — assuming that they would advance upon us and find only one horde protecting the village.”
Prince Aymon scanned the crowd as if waiting for someone to ask what the first mistake was. When no one took the bait, he continued.
“The first mistake they made, and by far the biggest, was choosing to attack Aerona in the first place.”
More murmurs broke out among the crowd. If Prince Aymon was disappointed to see that his speech wasn’t having a stronger impact, then he made no show of it.
“How can the reinforcements be here any day?” Focil called out. “It takes six days—”
“I sent out a courier six days ago to ask for reinforcements.”
“Before you knew about the army?”
Prince Aymon’s gaze slid up to Trysten, and then back out to the crowd.
“I’m sure I need not remind any of you of the standoff we had six days ago," he said, “when I attempted to take Trysten into irons and was thwarted by this village and the Aerona horde. That was the day that I sent out my courier to the mother city with a request for reinforcements.”
Trysten scanned the crowd quickly and caught sight of her parents standing at the edge of the group, off to her left. Her throat tightened as she sensed what was coming. Caron lowered her face slightly as if steeling herself as well.
“I called for reinforcements,” Prince Aymon went on, “because I have discovered that your dragoneer is indeed not what she seems.”
Trysten turned her attention back to the crowd. They looked from the Prince to her, their faces falling into looks of confusion and expectation. She clasped her wrist behind her back as heat flushed up her neck.
“Your dragoneer is more than just a dragoneer. She is a Dragon Lord!” the Prince proclaimed.
Trysten’s head snapped around to Prince Aymon. Although she had suspected he was leading up to that announcement, she was shocked that he’d gone through with it.
The crowd broke out in excited whispers.
“For those of you unfamiliar with such a title, it is given to those who are born of intermarried dragoneer lines.”
Trysten looked back to her parents. Her mother gripped her father’s arm with both hands, and it wasn’t clear if she was bracing herself, or preparing to brace her husband. Redness crept up her face as she stared directly at Trysten.
Her father, however, stood as solid and stoic as ever as he looked across the crowd at the Prince and his men.
“The innate abilities of a dragoneer is amplified in the offspring of these couples. In this case, it has been greatly amplified, to the point that Mardoc's and Caron's daughter has become the first woman to bond with an alpha dragon in centuries.”
Trysten cocked an eyebrow and tried not to smirk at the Prince. Apparently women in history had been known to bond with dragons after all.
All of the eyes in the village turned to her, scrutinizing her as if for the first time. None of this could truly be new to the villagers. Rumors of Dragon Lords had circulated since the arrival of the Hollin hordesmen, and Trysten’s own abilities and her bond with Elevera had been a village-wide topic of conversation since before the start of the fighting season.
But to have the Prince announce it with the authority of his position in the kingdom left her feeling exposed. Whispers broke out. A few people even pointed at her. She stood tall and straight as the shaft of an arrow in Elevera's quiver, her eyes pinned on the Prince.
“How lucky for us!” he exclaimed. “How lucky indeed that the Western army would have the misfortune to aim their might at the one village in the entire kingdom protected by the greatest Dragoneer this kingdom has produced since my own father.”
Trysten’s eyes widened. She had not known that the Prince was descended from a line of dragoneers. It made sense that it would have been a dragoneer who had overthrown the feudal lords that initially ruled this land. She thought of Paege's warning that the Prince feared her and understood now. As a bonded dragoneer, King Cadwaller would know better than others how much more power Trysten held than he did.
“Trysten will turn away this army. On that, you have my word," the Prince continued. "I owe my life to your dragoneer. She risked hers to save my own, even after I had threatened to arrest her, and after I had called for reinforcements to make sure that I had the might to follow through on my threat. But after the events of last evening, and the events that lay before us this week, I now know that such courage, such loyalty, such strength of character is commonplace here in Aerona, among the many of you.”
Prince Aymon took a step forward and did an incredible job of hiding his exhaustion and the pain of every movement of his leg.
“Yes,” he said with a nod as he surveyed the crowd. “We are facing a great challenge. We are facing an enemy force that is likely to outnumber us ten-to-one. I will not lie to you. We are facing a task that would be impossible for any village other than this one.”
He took another second to survey the crowd. Trysten joined him, shocked by how quiet everyone had become, how much they were hanging on the Prince’s words.
“I am fortunate to be here to face this enemy with you, at your side at this historical moment. I am honored that I will someday be able to tell my grandchildren that I was here. I stood among the people of Aerona as one single village turned back an entire army.”
He held up his index finger.
“One. One village. And we did it because we stood together. We did it because instead of running or cowering in root cellars, the people of Aerona stood. With cunning and determination, they built traps and obstacles that slowed the army’s march and bought the time needed to allow the royal reinforcements to arrive. And together the people of Aerona stood at the edge of the village and cheered as dragonbreath rained from the sky, burning everything it touched. Under the might of four hordes, the army ran. It retreated. And the village that remained became a place of legend. A village of heroes. Aerona.”
Trysten fought a shiver as a hush fell over the crowd. The tone and cadence of the Prince’s speech would have nearly spurred her on to do anything.
Tuse clapped his hands together.
The applause rippled across the crowd. Cheers and whistles erupted as the people of Aerona pledged to stand by the Prince, to stay and fight. Aerona would stand.
A number of villagers, Moore included, had slunk away from the crowd as it shifted and began to surround Prince Aymon. Her parents, however, remained where they stood, not at all eager to get closer to the man. She jumped from the platform and headed over to them.
“I’m sorry,” Trysten said as she approached Mardoc and Caron. “I had no idea he was going to do that.”
Mardoc took a deep breath that lifted his shoulders. “No matter. It was pretty much an open secret. If anyone didn’t suspect you, i
t was only because he didn’t know of the Dragon Lord legend.”
“But you and Mother...”
Caron’s hands slipped away from Mardoc’s bicep. She stood at his side. “We’ll be fine. A village of heroes, right?”
A little blush crept over Trysten’s cheeks to hear the Prince’s words repeated back to her. Out of context, they sounded trite, and she was embarrassed to have been moved by them.
“No one will hold us against that old, forgotten law,” Mardoc continued. “Not here, at least. And I doubt that Prince Aymon will ever make a move against you or our family now. He needs you in his good graces more than ever.”
Trysten looked over her shoulder at the bustling crowd shimmering with excitement around the Prince.
“Still,” she said as she turned back to her parents. “It was your secret, and I’ve done a terrible job of keeping it.”
Mardoc gripped his daughter by the shoulder. “Nothing has changed, Little Heart. Everything is as it has been. You are still a Dragon Lord, and we are still your parents.”
"And the Prince still loves to hear himself talk," Caron mumbled, glancing in Prince Aymon's direction.
Trysten scanned the crowd behind her. Despite all the attention given to the Prince at the moment, a number of the villagers met her gaze as well. They regarded her for a second or two with looks that she couldn’t quite identify. It was as if they were trying to decide how to think of her now that the girl they had grown up with had become something that only existed in myth and legend until now.
Everything had changed. Maybe not with the Prince’s words, not at that exact moment, but things had definitely changed. Her desire to be the Dragoneer had been realized, only to be forced aside as she was handed the weightier title of Dragon Lord. All she had wanted was Elevera and her horde, and a lifetime of defending Aerona against the Western hordes that her own father had fought as had his father, and his father before him.
All of that had slipped through her fingers like silvery sand, and instead in her hand rested a legend that spanned kingdoms and centuries.
“Well,” Galelin said as he shuffled up to them, a bit out of breath. “I was certainly not expecting that from our dear Prince.”
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 56
