by Chris Bunch
Hal nodded dumbly, terrified that he would be one of the ones found unsatisfactory, and returned to his unit. There were already half a dozen failures, after only two weeks.
Hal Kailas was afraid he'd be the seventh.
Saslic was a natural flier, and her dragon seemed to revel at every moment in the air, the pair quickly progressing to aerial acrobatics, turning, twisting in the stormy skies above the base.
She tried to help Hal on what he was doing wrong, but had to admit, finally, that it was just a matter of "feel," and he should maybe relax, and it would come to him in a flash.
Sir Loren Damian also learned easily, as he seemed to do everything, without effort and with a bit of a smile on his lanky face.
The other knight on the course, Calabar, was stodgy, but competent. One nasty habit he had was carrying a dogwhip with him, and belaboring his dragon at the slightest "failure."
Garadice told him he was heading for trouble, that dragons, like men, loved masters, if masters there had to be, who were easy in the saddle.
Calabar curled a lip and said, "In my experience, a master who gives a serf an ounce of slack is on the way to making a rebel, a bandit, and deserves a whipping as much as his disobedient thrall."
Asser seemed to be learning, then, one day, he was absent from roll call. Two days later, he was brought back, in manacles, by a pair of military warders, who'd caught him on the streets of Rozen.
Everyone expected him to be thrown out, and finally vanish. But he was kept on, although his evenings were spent with a shovel and broom under the tutelage of Serjeant Patrice. No one knew what story he told Garadice, but Farren said, a trace of envy in his voice, "Th' bastid must've a throat that's silver, pure silver."
"It seems fairly certain," Garadice read, "that the dragon's egg, which is about two feet long, is sat upon, in the nest, for about four months before hatching. The Kit is carefully tended by both parents for almost a year, until it is deemed ready to leave the nest. During this time, it's vulnerable only to two things: the weather, and man.
"Dragons seem to return to the same nest, year after year, refurbishing it with considerable skill before the cow deposits the egg."
He closed the book.
"Stop yawning, Mariah, or were you signaling for a break? Outside, all of you, breathe some rain, and wake up."
The class clattered out of the room, and down the hall to the main hall's entranceway, staring out at the rain, almost as gray as the stone and the sea beyond, that sheeted down.
"Damned glad to be inside on a day like this," Saslic said. "Look… way out there, to sea. That fisherman's in heavy weather."
Mynta Gart was staring at it.
"Sometimes, I think I wish…" Her voice trailed off.
"You were out there, getting bobbed around?" Hal suggested.
"Just so."
"The hells with that," Farren said. "Old Garry—sorry, Rai—goin' on about the dragon's egg, and nary a word about how they ring th' bell for each other, which might've kept me awake.
"D'yer know, I was brushin' that beast of mine, and his wanger came out shootin' out, like a dog's. Big as one of these damn' columns here. I skittered out of the way in a shot for fear he was feelin' lovelorn! Makes a man humble, feelin' inferior, even me, the grandest of lovers, an' ud put me off my feed for a week, were there anyone around here who's feelin' romantic-like about me.
"Which there ain't, an' I'm thinkin' about tryin' a new brand of soap."
Hal sat glumly in the stables, staring at the dragon across from him, which he was thinking of as his less and less. The next beast that would be his, the way things were going, would be another horse, back in the cavalry.
He wasn't supposed to be out of his hut, but the curfew regulations, like most of the others put out by Pers Spense, weren't being enforced, to Serjeant Patrice's annoyance.
"These men and women are adults, or had damned well better be if they're going to be trusted scouting for an entire army," Garadice had said flatly. "So we'll treat them like adults until they give damned good cause to warrant other considerations, in which case it will probably be best to just return them to their parent formations."
The penned dragon across from him had stared at Hal, wondering what he was doing here this deep in the night, but eventually the yellow eyes had closed, and the monster started breathing in a soft bubble.
Hal wasn't really seeing the dragon, but thinking over and over about what he was, what he must, be doing wrong, and why he couldn't seem to get it right.
About half the surviving class were now flying alone, well on their way toward graduation, while Kailas farted about like a stumblebum, having not a clue as to what he should be doing.
He started, hearing the stable door creak open, saw Saslic slip in, close the door behind her.
"What—"
She came over to him. "I couldn't sleep, and went to your hut. Farren said you'd gone out, probably to offer yourself as a sacrifice to the dragon god.
"I figured I'd find you here."
"Farren always makes life easier," Hal said. "Pull up a bucket and help me sulk."
Saslic stayed on her feet.
"You've got to stop worrying, Hal. You get all tensed up, and then you get jerky, and get more tense, like a kitten chasing its tail."
"I know," Kailas said. "But knowing and being able to do something about it seem to be two different things. Hells, I'm such a dunderbrain, I probably deserve being back on a horse, chasing bandits."
Saslic moved behind him, started rubbing his shoulders.
"I can feel the muscles knotted up," she said softly.
"Do you remember," she said after awhile, "the night we got caught, sitting out by Patrice?"
"I do."
"I had the idea you were going to kiss me before that asshole materialized."
"The thought was in my mind."
"Well?"
Hal stood, turned, and was holding her. She was small, light, and felt very good in his arms. He kissed her, and that felt better. She kissed him back, tongue writhing in his mouth, and he couldn't remember having felt that good in a long time.
Then they were lying, close together, in a hay manger. Her tunic was unbuttoned, and he was kissing the small buttons of her nipples, her fingers moving in his hair.
She broke from the kiss, and said, breathing hard, "You could be a gentleman, you know, and take off your breeches and tunic for a bedsheet. Straw isn't the easiest thing on a girl's bottom, you know."
They didn't stop making love until the drums of reveille began tapping.
"Dammit, Hal, quit trying to pull the poor dragon's head off," Rai snapped. "Gently! Feel what you want!"
Hal clenched his teeth, felt, again, his muscles clenching. Then his body remembered Saslic's gentle fingers, and all at once, he had it. He felt one with the dragon he was riding, and the monster responded, banking easily left, tucking a wing, and coming back on its own course.
"Now a right turn," Rai said, his voice suddenly excited.
Again the dragon banked, and this time Hal tapped it into a shallow dive, back toward the base, a gray blur in the grayness.
He didn't feel the cold wind coming off the sea, nor the spatter of rain that caught him as he sent the dragon curveting through the skies.
He did have it, and knew it, and wondered at his own clumsiness of bare minutes ago. It was, he thought, like watching a butterfly stagger out of its chrysalis onto a leaf, and, moments later, soar into the summer air.
He looked back over his shoulder, saw Rai grinning at him.
"See how easy it is?" the young Garadice said.
And it was easy.
"There probably has never been a creature so perfectly adapted for fighting as a dragon," Garadice read, "from its dual horns to the impressive fangs. Dragons, in territorial or mating battles, also use their neck spikes to tear at their opponent.
"The four claws are equally adept at ripping at their enemies with the three talons on each.
&n
bsp; "The steering tail is also used to lash at an enemy, easily its most lethal weapon. The wing talons are used not only to impale prey, but to tear away wings, since a beast's wings are more delicate away from the forward, ribbed edge.
"Dragons have remarkable powers of healing and even regeneration, although a dragon that's entirely lost a wing or a limb is doomed.
"It's interesting that the beasts not only fight in earnest, but seem, from what I've observed, to play at fighting, although it appears as if that can become real combat quite easily, which is frequently to the death."
Dragon games, Hal thought, scribbling in his notebook. Men's games. Like war…
Most students weren't slow as Hal had been, nor flashy like Saslic and Damian.
Mynta Gart plugged along, learning steadily, stolidly. Farren learned his new craft readily, always with a ready jest. So did Vad Feccia, in spite of his almost-fear of dragons, to Hal's minor disappointment.
Ev Larnell was quick to learn, even if he was hesitant to try out something new. Hal was glad he hadn't said anything to anyone about Ev's lie about being an experienced flier, although a couple of the cadre wondered aloud why he seemed to be slower than someone with his background should have been.
Other students couldn't seem to learn, were quietly but quickly removed from the school, their gear vanished with them, their mattresses rolled as if no one had ever slept there.
There were other losses…
Hal was walking his dragon in the horse ring, and heard a dragon scream. He saw Sir Brant Calabar lashing at his dragon's neck as the creature flapped clear of the ground, savagely yanking back on its reins.
The dragon's wings beat faster, and it climbed for altitude rapidly. But that evidently wasn't quick enough for Calabar, for he kept hitting the creature with his dogwhip. Hal could hear the man's shouting, couldn't make out the words.
The dragon was flying almost straight up, slowing.
Then it tucked a wing, and turned through a semi-circle, back toward the ground.
Calabar lost his hold, flailed, and, screaming, fell, 500 feet or more. He hit near in the middle of one of the exercise rings with a sodden thud, very final, like a bag of grain tossed from a high-bedded wagon.
Hal was the first to reach him. Calabar was motionless, his eyes glaring straight up. It didn't look as if he had an unbroken bone in his body.
His dragon circled overhead, screaming, and Hal thought his screams were triumphant.
Two more students died and were buried in the next week after Calabar. After their funerals, Garadice behaved as if they'd never been, and pushed the students even harder, spending more and more time in the air.
"Guess there was someat goin' about," Farren joked, and then everyone did as Garadice had, and the three had never lived.
That was the beginning of a ghastly tradition in the dragon flights.
One thing the students had to learn was there were days a dragon simply would not fly. No one seemed to know why, including Garadice, who said that was one problem with his pre-war shows: "You'd have the area filled, and your dragon would be sulking in his wagon, and you'd best leave him alone, or maybe feed him or her choice tidbits until the mood passed."
One student didn't listen to his advice, and kept chivvying her dragon. The brute started hissing, then, before she could jump back, snapped out, taking most of her arm off.
"Now, that's a way to get out of bein' kilt acrost the Straits I've naught considered, an' wi' a nice pension, I'd hope," Farren said, and everyone was a bit more careful around the beasts after that.
Hal, now that he had the flying problem in hand, but still refusing to name his dragon, spent more hours with the beast than most. He had to keep the lead on it, but let the rope and chain slack, and took the monster away from the base, into the trees around it. The dragon seemed to care little for the weather, paying little heed to winds or rain sweeping across its leathery hide.
Saslic caught him having a one-way conversation with the creature one time, and told him he'd gone right over the edge.
Kailas thought, then agreed with her, especially since he fancied the dragon had begun, by claw gestures and hisses, to talk back.
"Now," Serjeant Te said, "Serjeant Kailas has told us how his patrols were stalked by Roche dragons, which is a new tactic.
"We've orders for all of you to start learning the same tactic, which is why you see those dummies on straw horses across that field.
"Each of you is to take your dragon off, and try to bring it close to a dummy. Encourage your dragon—no, I don't have any ideas how—to grab the rider, and tear him from his horse. It's also all right to have him take the horse and rider, too.
"Be careful, and don't run into the ground.
"First man! Kailas! Get out there and give us a good example."
"A question, Serjean'?" Farren said.
"I'm listening."
"I ain't objectin' to killin' Roche… I's'pose that's why I'm here, a'ter all. But this grabbin' an' yankin' don't appear economical't' me. One expensive dragon, one expensive rider, riskin' all't' pull some plowboy off a horse, and takin' a chance of some archer yoinkin' you through th' throat. Or puttin' an arrer int' yer dragon, which ain't likely to make him happy, either."
Te hesitated, giving Hal enough time to remember the catapults that'd been fired at the Roche dragons who'd attacked his patrol on the way back from that last scout of his.
"Orders're orders," Te said, without conviction. "But I'll pass your word on to Lieutenant Garadice."
Farren looked at Hal, made a face. Kailas nodded slightly, ran for his dragon.
* * *
Hal and Saslic made love whenever they could get away, which wasn't that often. Their instruction was coming faster and faster, and Kailas fancied he could hear the horror that was war breathing its fetid breath closer and closer.
The winter drove at them, and cut flying time. But Hal still managed to bundle himself in all that wonderfully warm issued gear as often as possible, and prod his beast into the air, and up, through the clouds to where a chill sun gleamed.
His dragon, not happy at first, warmed, and so they would fly, sailing around the huge buttresses of clouds, sometimes through them, and chancing being tossed by the winds hiding in the softness.
Then it was chancy, as he'd lower down into the solid cover, losing altitude foot by foot, hoping there wasn't a hidden outcropping just below.
Once he broke out into the open, only a few feet above the tossing waves, the cliffs of the base dim in the distance.
It was dangerous, but he was teaching himself.
And, as Saslic had said earlier, maybe vanishing in flight wasn't the best way to die, but it made for as good a funeral as anyone could wish.
"That's it," Garadice announced at one morning's formation, a touch of spring in the air. "We've nothing more to teach you.
"You're dragon fliers."
There was a gape of astonishment, then the students began cheering. The noise sounded like a great deal more than the nineteen who'd survived.
Garadice, at his own expense, had small golden dragons cast, and gave one to each student, telling them to pin them on their uniform, to be worn above any other decoration they won.
* * *
"I wish you all the luck in the world," Serjeant Patrice said. "And I'm proud to have helped make you into soldiers."
Saslic looked scornfully at his outthrust hand, refused to take it.
"No," she said, voice bitter. "Screw the way it works in romances. You're still nothing but a bully and a cheap prick to me."
She stalked away, to laughter. Patrice, face purpling, scurried back into the main hall.
And so the class broke up, each with a wagon carrying his or her distinctly unhappy dragon, creaking toward the Straits ports and Paestum, to report to different units. Now, Hal thought, the real learning will begin.
Chapter Eleven
It was a bit more than six months since Hal had been in Pae
stum, but the city had changed almost beyond recognition. The ruins from the siege had been mostly razed, and spreading far beyond the walls were caterpillering tents for the replacements and new units streaming across the Straits into Sagene.
When Hal had left, there'd been only the army. Now there were four, interspersed with Sagene armies down the Roche border, to meet the building threat of new Roche forces.
But the tactics hadn't changed, still the bloody head-smashing battles as the forces moved back and forth in the wasted, bloody landscape, hoping, each time, without luck, for a breakthrough into the heart of the enemy's country for the capital.
Hal, having a great deal of back pay in his purse, and nowhere to spend it, found a copyist involved with the replacement section who was bribable.
He was negotiating with him to keep Saslic, of course, plus Farren and possibly Ev Larnell, with him, whichever dragon flight he was assigned to, having learned there's no such word as "no" in the military if the pleader has sufficient rank or silver.
There were, at present, two flights assigned to each Deraine army, with Sagene having its own flights, roughly set up the same as Deraine's.
The transport ship had unloaded their dragons, and the new fliers were given a tented area to themselves, while they waited for orders to whichever dragon flight would need them. They were left largely in peace, no warrants rooting through their area for scut-details, since no one seemed to want to get too close to the monsters or the lunatics who rode them.
Contrasting with this were the jokes going around that no one had ever seen a dead dragon rider, and dragon riders were mainly concerned with qualifying for their king's old age pension, whereas an infantryman or cavalryman would certainly never live long enough to worry about it.
Hal was trying to figure out how much he'd have to increase the copyist's bribe to get "his" people assigned to the northernmost First Army area, near Paestum. Even though it was cold, rainy and swampy in spots, it was the area of the border he knew well, and thought that knowledge would improve his, and his friends', chances of surviving.
Then everything shattered.
Roche magicians managed to cloak the assembly of half a dozen armies, south, near the city of Frechin. They'd crossed the border, smashing a Sagene army.
