Dragonjacks: Book 1 - The Shepherd: A Dragons of Cadwaller Novel

by Vickie Knestaut

  Whatever was in the compound hadn’t cured her. It had killed her. Although it was probably the most merciful thing that could have happened to her, Sirvon would not be happy.

  Tyber wiped his hand down the front of his tunic.

  “Pendro,” Sirvon said as he stroked the top of his dragon’s lifeless muzzle.

  He leaned forward, placed his lips on the dragon’s head, and pressed his palms to either side of her face.

  Tyber glanced at the knife again, then up to the faces of the other dragonjacks gathered around the stall, watching the scene unfold.

  He wouldn’t stand a chance. But if he could get the knife before Sirvon, then he might be able to take Sirvon hostage.

  “What have you done to my dragon?” Sirvon asked, his voice measured and level, lacking all emotion.

  “Nothing,” Tyber said. “I…” he shook his head, then looked back to the fluid draining from the wound. A fly circled it, crawling along the flesh, at the edges of the ointment, looking for a clear path toward the rot.

  Straw rustled, and Sirvon had the knife again, clutched in his hand as he stood. “Get the other one!” he screamed without looking away from Tyber, his pale face growing red.

  “I want them to watch as their dragons—”

  A roar shook the barn. Wings parted the air. The barn was plunged into light as a gout of firebreath streamed through the air, billowing upward to become lost in the rafters and ropes and pulleys above.

  Verana stood tall, her wings wide, her head high, ready to expand her role as the new alpha.

  The other dragons began to dip their heads, and as they did so, Verana spun around, whipping her tail through the air over their heads. She charged out the doorway, then into the air, roaring again.

  The other dragons followed, dragging the weyrboys who cried out, digging their heels uselessly into the dirt as the dragons pursued Verana. Once the dragons cleared the barn, their wings snapped open, and the boys let go. The dragons leapt into the air, even Rius, off to pay homage and show fealty to the alpha.

  Tyber looked at Ander. Two men held him, his arms pinned behind him. The other dragonjacks all looked from the barn door to Ander, then on to Sirvon. Ander was their dragoneer now. Sirvon had fallen.

  Sirvon turned to Tyber. He still clutched his knife before him, and it looked even longer now, far longer than the length between his wrist and elbow.

  “You have really complicated things now, boy,” Sirvon said, his voice dry and rasping.

  The tip of the knife quivered.

  “Take them,” Sirvon said, his voice hardly over a whisper. “Both of them. Throw them in the cellar. Post a guard. And if they give you any trouble, break their necks.”

  Dragonjacks rushed through the gate, grabbed Tyber by the arms, and wrenched his wrists up behind his back until his shoulders sparked with pain and he leaned forward.

  “I promise you, boy,” Sirvon said as he stepped closer. The tip of the knife hovered at the tip of Tyber’s nose. “You will regret this. You will regret this in ways that you can ponder while you are locked up.”

  The blade flicked past his face. Tyber turned away, his cheek on fire. Blood trickled through his short beard.

  “Cellar. Now.”

  Chapter 15

  A heavy beam grated against the wooden door, sealing Ander and Tyber into the darkness.

  “Seems like we’re not the first guests in this root cellar,” Ander said.

  “Definitely not the first,” Tyber said. The scent of stale urine mixed with the dankness of the ground.

  “You all right?” Ander asked. His clothes rustled in the darkness.

  “Fine,” Tyber said as he pushed himself up from the ground where he’d been tossed. His right hand tingled and burned. He wiped it down the length of his thigh, then immediately regretted it. Heat penetrated the cloth of his trousers, and his leg began to burn.

  “What was in that salve?” Ander asked, his voice above Tyber now.

  “I don’t know,” Tyber said. He sat back on his heels and swept his hand through the dark but didn’t find any walls. What little light had penetrated the chamber when the dragonjacks had opened the door to throw them in had shown the room to be a small root cellar.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” Tyber said. Pendro had given the wound a startled, almost terrified look after he’d layered the compound on. Her body had tensed, her shoulder clenching in pain. As his hand and thigh pulsed with heat, he could easily imagine what it had felt like to put a heap of the compound on the raw wound.

  “You didn’t kill her, Tyber,” Ander said, his voice moving through the darkness. There was a soft sound, perhaps Ander’s hands brushing over the stone walls. “She was sick. Very sick.”

  “What’s wrong with her? And the others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tyber thought of Rius, of the brilliant blue and black, the white dots along the trailing edge of her wings as she burst from the shadows of the barn and threw herself into the sunlight and sky behind Verana.

  “Do you think our dragons are safe?”

  Ander didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think any of us are safe right now.”

  Tyber shook his hands. “This stuff burns. My hand tingles. I can feel it on my leg where I wiped my hand on my trousers. I think Koff lied to me.”

  “Koff?”

  “The herbalist,” Tyber said. “The one who sold me all that junk. It was no drawing compound. It was supposed to draw water, but it generates fire. It probably threw Pendro’s humors out of balance more than they already were. She couldn’t handle it. Koff killed her. Not me.”

  “I’ll remind you of two things,” Ander said, his voice coming from a slightly different place again. “First, Koff only sold you some ingredients. For all you know, if you knew what you were doing, it might have actually worked. Second, Sirvon is responsible for this situation. He has dragons in defiance of the King’s law. This is precisely why common people are forbidden to have dragons. He can’t care for them. He has no access to a healer.”

  “But if he had…” Tyber began, but then dropped it. If it weren’t illegal for Sirvon to have dragons, then he could seek out the help of a dragon healer without concern, but it didn’t matter. It was illegal. And for all the sky, if Sirvon was concerned about them, then he could have turned them over to someone. Someone like Trysten. And just say that they found the dragons or something, then walk away. Let Zet or one of the other healers care for them.

  But they didn’t. And they wouldn’t. And that was why he and Ander and Ren had been sent out here in the first place. The dragonjacks cared for no one other than themselves. Sirvon’s selfishness had killed Pendro. And it was killing the other dragons as well. And it might end up killing Tyber himself, along with Rius, Ander, Ren and the others.

  They had to escape. Tyber stood and found the wall. The cold stone soothed his burning hand. His fingers traced each stone, each seam, searching for a weakness.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do right now. Be ready. Look for every opportunity to escape. Search the walls. Look for loose stones. The ceiling is low, and it’s made of wood beams. We might be able to dig our way out. It looked like there was only a few inches of sod above it. And it will be dark soon.”

  Tyber cupped his palm around a stone, trying to pry it loose.

  “And Ren got away,” Ander continued. “If nothing else, he’ll bring reinforcements. If we can’t escape, then we have to stay alive long enough to be rescued.”

  “If we can get out, what about the dragons?” Tyber asked. “Verana took the horde, didn’t she?”

  “Definitely. Did you see them circling above the barn?”

  Tyber nodded in the dark, then added, “I did.” It was something to see. The colors of the dragons dazzling against the blue sky, Rius trailing Verana.

  “If we leave, will their dragons come along with us?” Tyber asked. “They w
ill, won’t they? Verana is the alpha now.”

  Ander sighed in the dark. “It appears that way. I certainly didn’t intend for this to happen. Wing Master Trysten might have done too good of a job.”

  Tyber halted his search for a second, cocked his head as if listening for the approach of his next thought.

  “Do you believe in her?”

  “Who? Wing Master Trysten?” Ander asked.

  Tyber resumed his search, prodding and pulling and pushing the stones. “Do you believe she’s the dragon queen? That she has some sort of magic that she uses over the dragons?”

  Ander chuckled. “I don’t have a good answer for you. I can’t really explain how she is able to do the things that she does, or has been purported to do. I thought that all the stories I heard were exaggerations. Bards like to build up tales, make them sound more impressive than they really are. And then people pass those tales among themselves until what was meant to entertain becomes something believed to be fact. That’s how we end up with myths and legends. It’s why people think there’s magic in the first place.”

  “But what about the story about the mountains falling? And the plains becoming a sea?”

  Ander didn’t answer right away, and Tyber could almost hear him weighing his words in his mind. “I thought they were only stories, too. Or that maybe there had been some kind of unusual fog. A flash flood. Enough reality to give the fiction some weight. But after seeing what Trysten did with Verana, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?” Tyber asked.

  “I’m no dragoneer,” Ander said. “I never meant to be. I don’t have what it takes to bond with the dragons in that way. And even if I did, it should be with Listico, not Verana. Listico is who I think of when I think of my dragon. She is the dragon I see in my dreams, the one who holds my heart. Verana merely holds my saddle. Yet Verana recognizes me as a true dragoneer, every bit as much as Merilyss saw Chanson as a dragoneer. And for what reason? Not for anything that has to do with me. It’s all Trysten’s doing. And how could she do that without magic?”

  “Do you think she’ll be able to reverse it? Will you be stuck with Verana? And all those dragonjack dragons?”

  “I don’t have any answers for you,” Ander said. “All I can tell you is that we have a mission to complete. And we can’t do it while we’re in here, because I’m pretty certain that The Shepherd isn’t in here with us.”

  Tyber recalled the shocked, then pained look of Pendro. She had turned and hissed at him as if he’d betrayed her, purposely hurting her when she was at her weakest.

  If only he’d known more about dragons, more about how to heal them, they wouldn’t be in this situation.

  “Tyber?”

  “Yes?”

  “You did good,” Ander said as if he could read Tyber’s thoughts. “I’m proud of you. You handled yourself well. Not every hordesman can think on his feet so quickly. You did a good job of improvising.”

  “I killed a dragon.”

  “You will kill many dragons before you’re an old man. It’s part of the job. And your job is not to heal the sick, but to protect the weak and defenseless. You couldn’t save Pendro. It’s not your job to save the others. But we’re still alive because of you. And Ren is free because of you. It’s going to be hard for Sirvon to kill me now because he’ll have to risk an absconded horde. Brath is Sirvon’s commander, but he doesn’t have what it takes to be a dragoneer. I can tell. He doesn’t have the force of will. He might have had it once, but the man is in chronic pain. His back bothers him. It keeps him from achieving the level of concentration that a dragoneer needs. Sirvon’s not a dumb man. He has to see that.”

  “So he needs you, but I killed his dragon.”

  “He needs me. And I need you. And Sirvon knows that, too.”

  Tyber took a deep breath, tasting the cool, foul air, as if they were in a crypt already.

  “I want him to pay, Ander.”

  “I do, too. He will. We will see to it.”

  “Not just for having the dragons. Or being a dragonjack. I want him to pay for what he’s done to the other dragons. They’re sick because of him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’d rather keep sick dragons in a barn than hand them over to someone who could help them. He could take them to a weyr—to a real weyr, and hand them over. Just say he found them. But he won’t. He’s selfish and greedy. And that’s what killed Pendro. That’s what’s going to kill all of them.”

  “That’s the kind of attitude you need to have,” Ander said. “But be careful. It’s important to have the right attitude, but it’s also important to see things clearly, see things for how they truly are. And things aren’t as simple as you want them to be. Would you walk away from Rius if it meant saving her life?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Ander was quiet a moment. “If you really meant that, then you would have walked away already.”

  Tyber wanted to ask Ander what he meant, but the answer frightened him more than anything Sirvon might have in store.

  They continued their search in silence. A loose stone or two raised their hopes, but they were unable to work any of them from the wall. Eventually, they sat and spoke little. Tyber fell into a fitful sleep, shivering on the dirt floor. It didn’t take much to wake him when the beam began to move against the wooden door again.

  “Ander,” Tyber called in a whisper.

  “I hear it,” he replied. “Watch yourself. I’m sure they will be armed.”

  The door swung back on leather hinges. Fresh air swept in.

  “Come on out of there,” Sirvon called. Lantern light revealed his face, and the eyes of the gods gleamed above his head as if they were watching to see what happened next.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them. And know that I have several arrows pointed at the doorway, and several arrows pointed at your dragons.”

  “What is it you want?” Ander called.

  “I want you to come out,” Sirvon said. “We have some things to discuss. And you will not draw my men in there after you. Like I said, I have arrows on your dragons.”

  Tyber squeezed through the narrow doorway. Hands grabbed his arms and whisked him aside. Men on either side of Sirvon held notched arrows. One pointed his arrow tip at Tyber, the other pointed his at the doorway of the cellar.

  Tyber looked toward the barn, searching for some sign of Rius. A column of smoke rose from behind the weyr. The smell of charred meat filled the air.

  There was a shuffle of movement behind Tyber, off to his right, and then Ander was standing beside him, dragonjacks pinning his arms.

  “First of all,” Sirvon said as he folded his hands before himself, “let me explain why the two of you aren’t already dead.”

  He looked at Ander. “I don’t know how, but you appear to have a pull over the dragons that I have never seen.”

  Sirvon nodded and gestured at Ander, and then Tyber realized that he was actually indicating something behind and above them. He twisted around as much as he could, and gasped. The dragons were all gathered around the root cellar with Verana perched on the top, sitting tall with her tail wrapped around the base of her. She looked down at Ander as if waiting to see what he would do.

  From her side, Rius stared at Tyber. The light of Sirvon’s lantern didn’t quite reach her, but she was the smallest of the horde and easy to make out.

  “We cannot get them back into the weyr,” Sirvon said. “We have tried to drag Verana in with a chain, and she will have none of it. She will not leave her perch there.”

  “And that’s going to be a problem in a few hours, isn’t it?” Ander asked. “When dawn arrives?”

  Sirvon nodded. “You see my problem. Or at least one of them.”

  “I see them all,” Ander said. “You can’t kill me, either. Because the dragons will abscond. All of them. Because no one else here has the will to command an alpha.”

  Brath shifted, his grip on Tyber's arm growing tighter.
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  “No one else here has the level of sorcery that you do,” Sirvon said. “You will let me know how it is that you so thoroughly and easily took command of the horde. And you will let me know how you killed Pendro.”

  “She was sick,” Ander said.

  Sirvon glanced at Tyber, and Tyber lifted his chin, holding it high, refusing to look away.

  “The second reason I haven’t killed you,” Sirvon said, pointing at Tyber, “is because you touched that foul compound with your bare hand and you’re still alive. I dare say it’s still on you, isn’t it? Let’s see your hand.”

  Sirvon approached. Tyber clenched his fist and held it at his side.

  “Your hand,” Sirvon said as he stepped up to Tyber, holding the lantern before him.

  Tyber glared at him.

  Sirvon nodded at Halton, who held Tyber’s left arm. Brath jerked him to the right, tossing him off balance. Halton spun Tyber around to face him, then drew his fist back and punched Tyber hard in the left eye.

  Tyber’s head snapped back. He spun around. Someone shoved him, and he fell forward onto his face. He gasped as a knee settled into his back, and then a hand pried open his right fist.

  The shadows in the grass before him shifted. Heat from the lantern pressed down on him, and it felt good, despite the throbbing in his eyes.

  “Bind him while you have him down,” Sirvon said.

  The knee pressed harder against Tyber’s spine.

  Twine bit into Tyber’s wrists behind his back.

  “The third and final reason the two of you are still alive is that I need you to call back your friend.”

  “You can’t believe I’d cooperate, can you?” Ander said.

  The knee disappeared from Tyber’s back. He inhaled deeply, choking on dust and a bit of grass.

  “There is far more going on here than you know, Ander. I am not just some freebooter that you happened across. I have connections. Associates. And I assure you that your friend, should he try to leave that camp, will find his flight cut drastically short. There is nowhere for him to go. Nowhere for him to seek help.”

  “As far as I can tell, you don’t have a single dragon with which to carry out that threat.”