Dragonmaster

by Chris Bunch

  Since it was an unseasonably warm fall evening, most of them were gathered outside their huts, talking while they polished.

  Mynta Gart saw Brant Calabar staggering away from the steps down to the rocky beach with yet another full bucket, said, “Guess our Serjeant Patrice is havin’ himself a salt water bath.”

  “Good for his complexion, I’d bet,” Saslic said.

  “A better wash’d be to trail him overside for a league or so,” Gart said. “And then cut loose the hawser.”

  “You sound like a sailor,” Saslic said.

  “That I am,” Gart said proudly. “Will be again, once the fighting stops. Once had my own coaster, then got bit by that patriotic fever, and got made a mate on one of the king’s patrol boats.

  “Which was damn stupid of me, since what navy Roche has looks to be hiding in port until the war’s over.”

  “So why’d you volunteer for dragon flying?” Hal asked.

  “Why not? Used to be, when I was up on the north coast, I’d see wild dragons overhead, some heading, no doubt, for Black Island.

  “Looked romantic and free to me.” She looked around at the trainees.

  “Damn, but I love this freedom.”

  “What about you, Kailas?” Feccia asked, when the rueful laughter died. “You have a personal invite from the king to bless us with your company?”

  “Where I’m from,” Hal said, “that’s not a question civil men ask.”

  “Prob’ly wise,” Feccia said. “I’ve heard villains are careful about things like that.”

  Something snapped inside Hal. He’d made a bit of a joke about solving his problem, and now was suddenly the time. Crossbelts and white polish sailing, he was on his feet and blurred across the ten feet to the bigger man.

  His mouth was gaping, and Hal, anger giving him strength, yanked Feccia to his feet. He slapped him hard across the mouth twice, and blood erupted.

  Hal let him stumble back, kicked him hard in the stomach, was about to hammer him, double-fisted, across the back of the neck when Ev Larnell pulled him back. Kailas spun, was about to go after Larnell when the red rage faded.

  He dropped his hands.

  “Sorry.”

  Hal turned back to Feccia, gagging, bent over, and jerked him erect.

  “Now, listen, for I’ll only say this once,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper even as his fury died. “You’ll not talk to me, nor about me to anyone else, unless you’re ordered.”

  Feccia stared up at him, his expression that of a cow staring at the butcher’s hammer. Hal backhanded him twice again, grated, “Did you understand?”

  The man nodded dumbly, and Hal shoved him away. Feccia stumbled off, toward the jakes, stopped, vomited, then staggered on.

  The anger was now cold, gone in Kailas.

  The other trainees were looking at him, quite strangely.

  Saslic suddenly grinned.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re lovely when you’re angry, soldier?”

  The tension broke, and there was a nervous laugh, and the trainees went back to their cleaning.

  “You look like you’ve been in a fight, Feccia,” Serjeant Patrice said through his grin. “You know fighting’s forbidden here.”

  “Nossir,” Feccia muttered, breathing coming painfully past cracked ribs. His face was puffed, swollen and bruised. “Not fighting, Serjeant. Walked into a doorjamb, Serjeant.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure, Serjeant.”

  Patrice stepped back. “Damned surprise, this. Maybe you might end up making a soldier.”

  That night, in their hut, Hal decided to break his own rule, and asked Rai Garadice if his father happened to be a dragon flier.

  “He is,” Garadice said. “Trained me, even if he thought I was still too young to go on the circuit with him.”

  “I thought so,” Hal said, and said he’d tried to find a job with Garadice just before the war started, and that he’d said he was going to go find a place in the country and let the world go past until it was tired of war.

  “That was his intent,” Rai said. “Then, after Paestum was besieged, he—what was it Gart said this afternoon?—got bit by patriotic fever, and tried to enlist.

  “They told him he was too old, and go home.

  “He moped around for awhile, and I thought he’d given up, then he started writing letters to everybody when the war started dragging on. Including, I think, to Saslic’s father at the King’s Menagerie, saying he knew a lot about dragons, and they could be the key to victory.

  “I guess everybody thought he was a little bit mad, since nobody’s yet figured out what good dragons are for, other than playing spy in the sky, or so I’m told.

  “Anyway, they came to him, made him a lieutenant officer, put him out with twenty others, and now he’s a dragon requisition officer, responsible for buying dragons from their owners, or taking young ones from their nests and taming them to be flown.

  “I hope he might be with our dragons when they finally arrive.”

  “Be a damn relief,” Farren put in from his corner, “if the king’d give him orders to boot this eejit Spense back into a horse ring, and get some bodies in wot know which end of a dragon poops and which end bites.”

  “So then we’ve got three dragon riders in one hut,” Ev Larnell put in.

  “You’ve got experience?” Garadice said.

  “Course I do,” Larnell said. “In my district, we had fairs, and we’d always have dragon riders to top the day.”

  “And you were one of them?”

  “Sure,” Larnell said.

  “How’d you rig your harness?” Garadice asked.

  There was a long silence from Larnell’s end of the room, then, “Why, just like everybody, we used ropes as reins, to a heavy metal bit and a chain headstall.”

  “What about saddles?”

  “Just like on a horse,” Larnell said, and his voice was thin. “Except with long straps, under the front legs and coming forward from just in front of the back ones.”

  “Oh,” Garadice said flatly.

  Hal realized there was more than one phony in the class besides Feccia.

  The next day, after the forenoon drill, Ev Larnell came to Hal. He licked his lips, and said, tentatively, “I need a favor.”

  “If I can.”

  “Last night . . . well, I guess you and Garadice figured out that I’ve never really been on a dragon in my life.”

  Hal made a noncommittal noise.

  “You’re right,” Larnell said, his voice getting desperate. “All I’ve done is seen ’em fly overhead, and I went to a show once, before I joined up.”

  “So why’d you lie?”

  “Because . . . because I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “I joined up when Paestum was surrounded by the Roche, and went to Sagene with the King’s Own Borderers.

  “We’ve fought in every battle so far, and generally in the vanguard. Kailas, every man, twice over, in my company’s been killed or taken off, grave wounded.

  “I’m the only one who’s still alive from the first ones, and I know they’re going to keep putting us in the thick of things, and then, when we’re wiped out, bringing up fresh men, so it’s like a whole new unit, and there’s no need to give us rest.

  “But I remember . . . I’ll always remember. Remember what it’s like, seeing all your friends, down in death, friends you were joking with an hour earlier. Then you determine you’re not going to let anybody close, let anybody be your friend, and maybe that’s worse.” Larnell’s voice was growing higher. “I just couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I’m no shirker . . . I wouldn’t run away. But I thought, if I claimed I knew something about dragons, it’d get me out of the lines. Give me a chance to think, to pull myself together.

  “Don’t tell on me,” he pleaded, and his voice was that of a child, terrified of being reported to his parents.

  Hal looked into his eyes, saw the
wrinkles at the edges, thought Larnell had the gaze of a very old man.

  “Look,” Hal said after a moment. “I don’t nark on people. I’ve said it before, I’ll probably say it again.

  “You want to fly dragons, that’s good. But don’t start things, like you did last night. Keep your mouth shut, and don’t go looking to get exposed.”

  “I won’t. I promise I won’t. And thanks. Thank you.”

  He bobbed his head twice, scurried away.

  Excellent, Hal thought. Now, you’re all of what, twenty, and you’re a priest confessor. And what if Larnell finishes training, and then breaks in combat, and puts somebody’s ass in a sling?

  If that happens, a part of his brain said coldly, you’ll have to kill him yourself.

  “Can I get you something from the canteen, Hal?” Vad Feccia asked, parading an ingratiating smile.

  “No, thanks.”

  Feccia hesitated, then ran off.

  Serjeant Te had witnessed the exchange.

  “He’s been acting a bit different since he had some kind of accident I heard about,” he observed.

  “He is that,” Hal said shortly.

  “Almost like a bully that’s been whipped into line . . . or the way a dog licks the arse of a bigger dog that got him on his back, pawing for mercy . . . except, of course, there’s no fighting at this school.”

  Hal made no answer. Feccia had been very friendly with Kailas since the “fight,” which Hal considered no more than a shoving match.

  “Word of advice, young Serjeant,” Te said. “A snake that turns once can do it again.”

  “I’d already figured that.”

  “Thought you might’ve.”

  “This ’un might be in’trestin’,” Farren Mariah said. “You see what I’m wigglin’ here?”

  “Looks like,” Hal said carefully, “a kid’s toy. You going back to your childhood, Farren, playing the simpleton, hoping to get away from one of Patrice’s little fun details?”

  “Heh. Heh.” Mariah said deliberately, if uninformatively. “What sort of kid’s toy?”

  “Uh...”

  “Like the shitwagon coming down the line, ’bout halfway with its rounds,” Rai Garadice said. The four hutmates were crouched in the door to their hut, Farren having cautioned them, without explaining, against being seen.

  “Wood, wood, goodwood,” Mariah said. By now, the others were used to his occasional rhyming slang. “Just so, just like, and keep thinking that.

  “And who’s ramblin’ up the row toward the shitwagon?”

  “Patrice.”

  “Heh. Heh. Heh,” Farren said again, spacing his “hehs” deliberately.

  “This center piece’s carved by me, out of a bit whittledy from the wagon’s arse. It’s dipped in real shit—used my own, sackerficin’ an sanctifyin’, like they said—an’ rubbed with some herbs I plucked on the last run beyont the grounds I know the meanin’ of. Plus I said some words my gran’sire taught me when I was puttin’ it together.

  “Th’ wheels’re toothpicks, an’ touched an’ charmed by rubbin’ against the real ones out there.

  “Now, be watchin’, that wagon, and I’ll be chantin’ away.”

  Garadice drew back, a little nervously. Farren grinned, seeing that.

  “Careful m’magic don’t slip, an’ you go hoppin’ out as a toady-frog.

  Wagon roll

  Wagon creak

  Full of stuff

  I’ll not speak

  Wheel wiggle

  Wheel haul

  Wheel wobble

  Wheel FALL!!

  At the last words, Farren twisted one of the toothpick wheels off the toy.

  But no one noticed.

  Outside, a wheel on the real privy carrier groaned, and gave way.

  The cart teetered, and Serjeant Patrice had a moment to shout alarm. Then it crashed sideways, spilling a brown wave high into the air, to splash down over the warrant.

  He tried to run, but the wagon was turning on its side, and more ordure washed over him.

  There were shouts, screams, laughter as the students tumbled out of their huts.

  “Paradise,” Hal said, solemnly taking Farren by the ears and kissing him.

  “Git away!” Mariah spluttered.

  “You are a wizard,” Ev Larnell said.

  “It’ll be a long night’s cleanup he’ll be having us doing,” Rai said. “But worth every minute.”

  “Can I ask a question, Serjeant?” Hal asked Te, who’d taken charge of the formation due to Patrice’s absence.

  “Ask.”

  “You’re assigned to this class, correct?”

  “Aye.”

  “But I haven’t seen you doing any teaching, or more than a morning run once a week or so.”

  “Aye.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  Te smiled, the look of a cat with many, many secrets, didn’t respond.

  “I’ve got a question of my own, Kailas.”

  “Yes, Serjeant.”

  “Do you have any ideas how that unfortunate accident could’ve happened to poor Serjeant Patrice?”

  “No, Serjeant.”

  “Didn’t think you would. Nobody else does either.” Te smiled, and his skull face looked almost friendly.

  “Go after your classmates, young Serjeant. Late class is coming up.”

  Hal, realizing he wasn’t going to get an answer to his question, saluted, and doubled away.

  As he ran, a possible answer came—just as a high-ranking officer didn’t get where he was without having a bit of a political sense, the same had to be true of a troop serjeant.

  Was Te aware of how screwed this school was, and making sure none of the blame would stick to his coat?

  Some of the students had gotten in the habit of sitting behind the row of huts, in a quiet glade, between curfew and bed check, when the weather permitted. It gave them a chance to talk about the day, to try to decide if they were ever going to look at a dragon, let alone learn how to ride one.

  Since fall was edging toward winter, most brought blankets to sit on and wrap around themselves.

  One night, everyone had gone to bed except for Hal and Saslic.

  It was clear, a chill in the air, and it seemed very natural for them to lean together, and look up at the almost-full moon.

  “Do you suppose,” Saslic asked softly, “that over in Roche there are a boy and girl dragon rider, looking up at the same moon . . . ? I wonder what they’re thinking. Romantic things, maybe?”

  Hal had been wondering about the Roche as well, except that his thoughts were running more toward some ideas he had for killing Roche dragon fliers, no matter their sex.

  “Of course,” he said hastily. “Romantic things, and about, umm, dancing in the moonlight, and . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and he was looking into her eyes, great moonpools.

  It seemed like a good idea to kiss her, and he was moving closer, her lips parting, and a voice whispered in their ear.

  “How wonderfully romantic!”

  Hal whirled, saw Serjeant Patrice, who’d crept up behind them on his hands and knees.

  “We have a great deal of energy, do we, to be wanting to play stinkfinger when we ought to be in bed like good little boys and girls?”

  “Uh...”

  “On your feet, students, and at attention! Move!”

  They obeyed.

  “I suppose, with all this vim and vigor, you’d appreciate a task to occupy you for the rest of the night, wouldn’t you, since you can’t be sleepy?”

  “Uh . . .” Hal managed.

  “Is the shitwagon fixed yet, Serjeant?” Saslic said.

  “No, more’s the pity. Not that I’d detail you for that, since it makes noise, and I don’t want any of your classmates disturbed from their slumber merely because of your . . . pastimes.

  “You go change into your fatigue suits, children. And then meet me on the far side of where the horse ring used to be. There’s at
least one stable that wasn’t cleaned thoroughly from the old days.”

  By false dawn, that stable was as clean as it had been on the day it’d been built, Hal and Saslic working by lantern light and with Patrice’s occasional check-in.

  “Very good,” he approved, just as the drums of reveille began clattering. “Now, back to your huts, and change into class uniform. You’ve an easy fifteen minutes, and I don’t want either of you late, or stinking of horse dung like you do now.

  “Fifteen minutes, and I’ve planned a nice cross-country run for us before breaking our fasts.”

  Brooms were clattered down and the two pelted for their huts, knowing there was absolutely no way they’d be able to get clean, let alone dressed.

  But then came the surprise.

  Two huts—Hal’s and Saslic’s—gleamed with fire- and lamplight.

  “Come on, you eejiots,” Farren shouted, and Mynta Gart beckoned from the other hut. “Water’s heatin’, and yer uniforms’re ready.”

  Busy hands helped Hal out of his stinking fatigue suit, and buckets of soapy water were cascaded about him, as he stood, shivering, outside the hut. Across the way, Saslic was getting similar treatment.

  Hal was too tired to even consider lascivious thoughts as his clothes were hurled at him, pulled on.

  The only thought that did come, as he and the other students ran toward the shrilling of whistles in the assembly area, was that, with or without dragons, somehow the students had come together, and formed a team, cadre be damned.

  The next day the dragons arrived, and everything changed.

  10

  There were twenty-five dragons, angrily hissing, long necks snaking around, trying to sink their fangs into anyone around. They were chain-lashed to wagons, each drawn by ten oxen.

  Hal thought they were just entering their prime.

  Saslic agreed, and said they were four, maybe five years old.

  “A little young for riding, but easier to train,” Rai Garadice added, then yelped in glee, broke formation, in spite of Serjeant Patrice’s snarl, and ran into the arms of a medium-height, frothy-bearded man Hal recognized.