The Dragoneer Trilogy

by Vickie Knestaut

  He stopped and looked back at the crowd. “It seems that the dragon is out of the weyr, so to speak.”

  Chapter 7

  When Paege returned to the weyr, he, Trysten, Mardoc, and Muzad all crowded into the Prince’s tent to hear the update on the army.

  Prince Aymon sat with his left leg out along the length of his cot, his back resting against a stack of pillows. Mardoc sat in one of the chairs at the square table in the middle of the tent, but the rest of them stood.

  “There are two thousand of them, at least,” Paege said as he put his palms on the table and leaned against it.

  “They saw you,” Prince Aymon said.

  Paege nodded. “They have five contraptions. Large platforms on wheels. At the front of the platform is a post that looks as big as a tree. Pine, I think. It is mounted at the front of the platform, but it bends toward the back of the platform. There, the top of the post supports a cross-bar that is laden with four large spears, all sitting in some sort of grate."

  “I suspected as much,” Prince Aymon said with a nod. “It sounds like a basic catapult.” He looked to Muzad. “But it releases spears instead of stones.”

  Muzad crossed his arms over his chest and nodded without looking away from Paege.

  “These platforms are pulled by beasts of burden unlike anything I have seen before,” Paege continued. “They’re larger than horses. Covered in a grayish, ragged hair. Almost blue. Teams of them are lashed to the platforms. They are hauling them over the hills, leaving great ruts behind them. We can clearly see where they pulled them out of the mountains.”

  “How did they get them down the mountains?” Muzad asked.

  “A path has been cut through the trees. We could see it from our position. They haven’t gone very far.”

  “The hills are slowing them down,” Prince Aymon said with a nod.

  “Now,” Paege said. “But they’re nearly out of the worst of the hills.”

  “No matter,” Muzad said with a shake of his head. “It will be a simple matter to rout this army. What is protecting the spear launchers? Soldiers with longbows and shields?”

  Paege stood up straight and nodded. “Two thousand men. Some of them lifted their shields when we flew over. Shields as long as a man is tall.”

  “To deflect the dragon breath,” Muzad said. “No matter. The army is moving forward, and the soldiers are stationed before the spear launchers, correct?”

  Paege nodded.

  Muzad nearly snorted with a smirk. “Then we fly in at a perpendicular angle. Come in from the side. They will not have time to turn their spear launchers on us, and by the time their archers take up position to offer resistance, their weapons will already be in flame.”

  Paege crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought the same thing. I even made a low pass to see how close I could get before the archers took up aim.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “The platforms swivel.”

  Trysten sucked in a tight breath.

  “Swivel?” Muzad asked.

  “They turn. Rotate. The men on the platforms turn a wheel mounted to the side of the platform to turn the launcher to meet the enemy."

  Muzad’s arms fell to his side. His eyes widened some, and all traces of his smug vanity fell away. “How quickly were they able to turn these platforms?”

  “Not so fast that I couldn’t have gotten down lower and delivered a blast of dragonbreath before they got it into position, but I was one rider upon one dragon. If I were trying with a whole horde in formation, they probably would have started turning it sooner, tracking me across the sky. I don’t think that we can get close to these things without setting them off.”

  “Are you sure?” Muzad asked.

  Paege’s brow furrowed. “I saw it with my own eyes. All of the contraptions were identical in size and design. There’s no reason to think that only one of them has this ability.”

  Muzad crossed his arms over his chest again. He looked down at Prince Aymon. “No matter. They can only launch until they are on fire. One pass, and we will take them out.”

  Trysten went rigid with the memory of the spears slipping out of the woods, emerging from a small clearing. They went so high and fast. Each blow of the iron-tipped spear rang like the clapper of a bell against her slight body as the spears had passed through the flesh of the dragons. She closed her eyes to calm her mind, her body alive with the ache of dying dragons.

  “We can’t do that,” Trysten said, her voice hardly over a whisper.

  “What?” Muzad asked.

  Trysten shook her head. “We can’t do that. We can’t come in like that. We can’t just fly at the machines like that. We’ll lose too many dragons.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at Muzad. His face burned red at her challenge.

  “Too many dragons? I would think that you would be a little more worried about losing too many people. They are battle dragons. This is what they were bred and born for. They fight. They live for the fight. And if you can’t stomach the thought of losing a few of them in a fight, then you better hang your saddle up now, because the enemy is going to roll right over you.”

  “No,” Trysten said. Her knees felt weak, and she wished to pace, to walk off the memory of Muzad’s men dying, plummeting to their deaths—the pitiful cry of Prince Aymon’s dragon before it finally lay still. “There has to be a better way. A different way.”

  Muzad let out a laugh that nearly sounded like a strangled snort. “A better way? Well, by all means, let’s hear it. But I’ve been fighting with dragons for over twenty years. There is no other way to approach this. We either come at them from the side, or from front-on.”

  “How about the back?” Paege asked.

  Muzad waved a dismissive hand at him. “It doesn’t matter which direction you come from. The result will be the same. They will apparently swivel their spear launchers to meet our hordes head-on while they scramble their longbow archers. My men and I will lead the assault, as we will stand a better chance of avoiding the spears—”

  “So your shoulder is well enough to ride, then?” Mardoc asked as he leaned forward some on his stool. He lifted his eyebrows at Muzad to emphasize that he was asking a question.

  Trysten strained to suppress a smile as Muzad glared at her father. It was enough, however, to shake the dark chill of the memories from her.

  “I could ride this fight with one arm tied behind my back, Fallen,” Muzad nearly growled.

  The urge to smile fell away from Trysten.

  “Be that as it may,” Prince Aymon broke in, “I was there, Muzad. You were not. And Zandell is no longer here to tell us what it was like to face their weapons on the back of a horde.”

  “I’m here,” Trysten said.

  Prince Aymon nodded. “Indeed you are. So let us not be so hasty in throwing away our good riders and their dragons. Even if you manage to get some of your riders through the initial volley of spears, in order to effectively use dragonbreath, you’ll have to fly low enough to expose your mounts' bellies to the archers.”

  “They can’t pluck arrows and hold their shields at the same time,” Muzad said.

  Prince Aymon twisted around in his cot a bit to look up at Muzad. “And then what will you use to set fire to the weapons if your dragons spent their breath on the archers?”

  “Let your Dragon Lord deal with the spear launchers, then,” Muzad said with a nod of his head. “If she is so concerned about ruffling her braids, then let her do the easy part.”

  “That’s enough, Muzad. We’re all on the same side here, remember?” Prince Aymon said.

  “This army means to accomplish its task," the Prince continued. “No king in his right mind would sanction the cost of such things without making certain that all situations are anticipated. If I were in charge of this army, I’d have the men double-up. One would cover himself and shield the archer beside him in case of attack. As soon as the first horde passed, the archer would be ready for the second horde. And if
the second horde spent its breath to stop the archers’ arrows, then there would hardly be any point in the attack at all. No. We have to think of something better. Something different. Something our enemy wouldn’t consider.”

  “Flaming arrows,” Paege said.

  “What of them?” Prince Aymon asked.

  “The Hollin men spoke of how the horde who attacked their village used flaming arrows to burn the village.”

  “Indeed,” Prince Aymon said. “Most effective. The village had been reduced to ash before we arrived.”

  “We could adapt the technique.” Paege looked to Trysten as if seeking affirmation. “We could use dragonbreath to light our own arrows and take aim at the spear launchers.”

  Prince Aymon nodded as if considering it.

  “They’d just bat the arrows away,” Mardoc said. “Put out the flames before they had a chance to catch.”

  “So we’d have to find some way to distract them,” Trysten said.

  “Wait,” Muzad spoke up. “Light arrows with dragonbreath? That’s insane. If you got close enough to firebreath to light an arrow, your bow, as well as your arm, are just as likely to go up in flames.”

  “The horde that attacked Hollin did it. If they did it,” Paege said, and then looked to Trysten again, “we can do it.”

  “What about a fire break?” Mardoc asked.

  “A fire break?” Prince Aymon asked.

  “Years ago, a great fire swept the plains to the south. A severe drought and the fighting winds drove the flames up north. We watched from the village as a curtain of smoke obscured the southern sky and drew closer to us with each day.

  “My grandfather, who was Dragoneer at the time, ordered his hordesmen, as well as volunteers to set fire to the heather to the south of the village. We burned a great, wide swath between the fire and the village, but we were careful about it, not letting our fire get out of hand. When we were done, the wildfire stopped when it reached our break, as it had nothing left to burn but the cold ashes we had left for it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Prince Aymon said.

  Mardoc looked to Trysten. “We make a fire break. We seed the heather just to the west of the village with flammable material. Whatever we can get that will burn easily. Then we build batteries along the western edge of the village. We pile up stones in long mounds, as a high as a man’s shoulders. From there, our archers will wait. When about half of the army has passed over this break, our archers begin launching flaming arrows into the break.”

  “A wall of fire,” Prince Aymon said, his voice couched in a whisper of admiration.

  “Some of the men will scramble to put the fires out. Others will scramble to take cover from our archers, who will follow up with launching arrows into the army. Others will then have to contend with our dragons, who will drop from the sky full of fire and rage.”

  "We'll add catapults," Muzad said with a nod. "I can instruct the villagers in how to build them."

  “They won’t stand a chance,” Prince Aymon said.

  Trysten did her best not to picture it. Men took a little too much pride, it seemed, in thinking up ways to undo things, people and lives in particular.

  “But to do this,” Muzad said, “we have to let the army get right on top of the village. Can we risk that?”

  “The reinforcements will have arrived by then,” Prince Aymon said. “Not only will they have arrived, but they will have had a day or more to rest their mounts.”

  He looked to Trysten. Something odd rested in his gaze. Was he holding back from implying that it would also give the reinforcements time to adjust to the idea of her?

  “We don’t need the reinforcements,” Muzad said. “We can set up this fire break halfway. Let them meet their end far from here where the stench of their rot won’t be noticed.”

  Trysten’s eyes narrowed on Muzad.

  “We don’t have time,” Mardoc said. “We’d have to transport dozens of archers out there. We’d have to build batteries to protect them. The flammable materials we have are here. And after our dragons carried all of that material out there, they’d be too exhausted to fight.”

  “Not our dragons,” Muzad said.

  “Mardoc's right,” Prince Aymon said. “It is to our advantage if the final battle is fought right here, right outside of Aerona. I have found that there is nothing that quite inspires the common man to fight like knowing that his home and family are right behind him. The battle will be fought here.”

  “Your Highness—” Muzad began.

  “Mardoc,” Prince Aymon continued, and it surprised Trysten as she noted that Aymon had not called her father Fallen. “It is a brilliant idea, and it is your idea. Since you’ve had the experience of seeing one of these breaks initiated before you are in charge of setting up this one now.”

  Mardoc nodded.

  “Muzad,” Prince Aymon went on, “you and your men will be in charge of building the batteries and catapults. Build the batteries just as Mardoc said. I want them built of stone, high as a man’s shoulders, and long enough to conceal a score of standing archers. I want four—No, five of them constructed, but be sure not to obstruct the entrance to the weyr. I want a clear view of the west from the weyr doors. Understand?”

  There was the barest hint of a pause before Muzad spoke. “Yes, your Highness.”

  “Paege, I want you to begin engaging the enemy now. I spoke with the villagers, and they had some interesting ideas on how to delay the army. They suggested traps, ditches, and one young woman even suggested that a Quiet Creek might be dammed up before it empties into the River Gul, making it quite difficult for the army to cross, especially with their spear launchers. You are in charge of making sure that the enemy is kept on its toes. I want them to lose sleep. I want them to lose morale. I want them to feel defeated before they even reach our horizon. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Trysten, you are in charge of planning the final battle. Obviously, you will be in charge of the final attack.”

  Muzad opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again. His teeth clicked together with all the subtlety of bone breaking.

  Despite the honor of the Prince’s appointment, Trysten drew in a tight breath. Although the fire break and the village archers would offer a lot of distraction, it would still be impossible to pull off such an attack without heavy casualties.

  “The village archers will only be able to engage the front of the army, the nose of the assault,” Trysten said.

  “The fire break, if we do it right,” Prince Aymon said, “should nearly cut the army in half. The village will contend with the forward half. You will have to contend with the back half. But it will keep the enemy from being able to scramble archers to the sides in defense of the weapons. They will be vulnerable. There will be four hordes. Once the spear launchers are rendered unusable, then you will strafe the army with firebreath until they flee.”

  Trysten wished for something to grip—the edge of a seat, the corner of a table, something to steady herself on. Instead, she simply nodded and tried not to picture the rest of Muzad’s horde falling before the spear launchers. Behind them, both the royal hordes would swoop down, one on top of the other. The horde on the bottom would lay down firebreath and take arrows from the archers on either side of the flight path as the horde on top concentrated its firebreath on the spear launchers. That would leave Trysten’s horde in the rear to swoop in, take the arrows that hadn’t been loosed on the previous horde, and then finish the job with the remaining dragons.

  She opened her mouth to object, but then held her tongue. It wasn’t enough to say that it wouldn’t work, because it would. But it would cost them more than half of their dragons and riders to accomplish it. It would be a slaughter, and the dragons that remained would hardly be enough to disperse the remains of the army, who would still have their longbows.

  She looked up at Muzad. He glared back at her.

  The man would be dead within a week. />
  “Is that all?” Trysten asked.

  Prince Aymon nodded. “Dismissed.”

  Chapter 8

  As Trysten stepped inside the weyr to check on Rodden, the breathing of the dragons snapped into unison. The absence of their normal song hung heavy over Trysten. The regular, synchronous breathing sounded too much like a drum beat, a war drum marching them along to their deaths.

  Trysten walked to Elevera’s stall. The dragon lowered her head until Trysten reached up and patted her golden muzzle.

  “How are you feeling?” Trysten asked, her eyes half closed as she felt for the dragon’s pain, the dull ache of the arrow she took the day before, on the edge of The Wilds. Elevera's muscles throbbed, especially in her chest and along her wings, and the sensation nearly curled Trysten’s mind as she felt sensations for body parts she did not have.

  The dragon planted the top edge of her muzzle against Trysten’s chest and gave a little shove that set Trysten back on her heels.

  “What? What was that?” Trysten asked with a smile as she grabbed her dragon’s muzzle to steady herself.

  Flight filled her head. Blue sky. Clouds below. The crispness of the thin air, the bite of it. The ground so far away, farther than the sky that was all around them. Wind and wings and the world of the dragons surrounded her.

  “Not right now,” Trysten said as she rubbed the scales on the top of her dragon’s head. “You need to rest. Heal.”

  Elevera lifted her head from Trysten’s reach and gave it a vigorous shake. The shake traveled down the dragon’s neck to her wings, then eventually to her tail as she shimmied her whole body like a dog shaking off rain.

  The smile faded from Trysten’s face as she looked down the aisle, toward the back of the weyr. Her gaze paused at each stall, at each dragon that stood and watched her and waited for her orders, eager to respond to Trysten’s wishes.

  How awful that such magnificent creatures should be placed in the care of humans. This was not their battle. Not the dragons. They had no stake in this. Maejel, at the end of the weyr, was now every bit a member of Elevera’s horde despite having borne a rider intent on killing Trysten and the Aerona horde.