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

by Vickie Knestaut

  Myler finally stepped forward and patted Cetteth on the neck. She swung her head around until her nose was near his temple. She sniffed loudly at his long hair, her muzzle following him even as he crouched down to retrieve her saddle. She watched as he carried it back to the crate and dropped it inside.

  Myler kicked the crate. A loud crack reverberated through the weyr as the wood bounced off the stone wall.

  Tyber turned back to Rius.

  They couldn’t get out of this place soon enough.

  The rest of them led their dragons into the yard. Tyber glanced at the house and found himself looking for the weeping woman again as if she were a fixture out there now, a monument to her own sorrow. He thought of Fang again, thought of the first stone he had placed on his friend, resting it on Fang’s lifeless belly. He had been waiting for Fang to react, to shove at the stone with his hands, look at Tyber with disbelief in his blue eyes, and ask what they thought they were doing.

  But Fang had said nothing. He had only laid there and waited patiently to be buried far from the city they all called home.

  Even if these people weren’t the dragonjacks that had attacked the caravan, they were still the same. They would have attacked the caravan. They would have loosed arrows at Tyber and his friends.

  They were not to be pitied.

  Tyber looked over his shoulder. The orange dragon with the lesion on her shoulder was barely visible in the shadows. Myler stood just beyond the dragon. He watched in the cool silence, his face unreadable. Did the ruthlessness of the dragonjacks bother him at all? Even now? Yesterday, he had helped bury his fallen dragoneer simply because The Shepherd no longer had use for him. If the man could no longer ride Cetteth because of a lesion on her shoulder, would The Shepherd dispose of him as well?

  Tyber took a deep breath and turned to Rius. Served him right. Why would Myler, or anyone for that matter, get mixed up with a crowd of dragonjacks anyway?

  He pulled himself up into Rius’ saddle and tied himself down. The riders watched Ander. The dragons watched Verana. Ander tied off his restraints.

  The dragonjacks were getting what they had asked for. But the dragons shouldn’t be treated like this. They shouldn’t be crammed inside a dark barn that stank of infection and death. They should have a dragon healer to look after them. They belonged to the King, not these thieves.

  He shifted in the saddle as he recalled Listico and Ander flying over the mother city, searching for Tyber as he raced down the narrow, crowded streets, a stolen purse clutched in his hand.

  He cleared his throat, then looked at Ander. The sooner they got underway, the better. Hopefully this exercise would help them all bond. The sooner they earned the trust of the dragonjacks, the quicker they could betray them.

  Ander lifted his arm, pointed up and forward as he called out, “Take the sky!”

  Verana reared, wings wide, then pushed herself into the sky just as women and children started to emerge from the house. Tyber relayed the order to Rius, and soon she was in the air as well, climbing after Maybelle.

  Behind, the other dragons rose into the air. Children at the house pointed. One ran across the yard, following them, flapping his arms at his side.

  Tyber grinned, then killed the grin as he looked back at the other riders. The dragons struggled. One wobbled in the air as if having a difficult time getting her wings to beat synchronously. The wing on the right didn’t sweep down as far as the left.

  Rius shifted beneath him. He turned his attention forward to find Ander had leveled off already. Tyber hurriedly shoved down on the lip of the saddle and pressed his heels into Rius’ shoulders, telling her to level off, but she was already doing so, content to follow the lead of her alpha. A bit of heat flushed over his face as Maybelle laid in behind Verana, as perfect and clean as formation flying would allow.

  The embarrassment was short-lived, however, as the dragonjacks all struggled to get their mounts into formation. But then again, why should they concern themselves with clean formations? They weren’t trained to fight battles, to fly maneuvers. They were trained to be bullies with dragons. To use them like weapons in order to steal and intimidate.

  Rius shifted again, and Tyber looked forward in time to see Ander finish a command. As Verana drifted to the left, Tyber guessed that Ander had ordered them to bank. He sent Rius after Maybelle and Verana. Off to his left, Brath and Irvess followed, but not quickly. As a result, the left leg of the V formation began to break up, turning into a crooked H without the crossbar.

  Tyber shook his head in disgust.

  Ander peered over his shoulder and motioned again for everyone to fall in behind him in a V formation. Brath repeated the gesture, but with an extra flourish that Tyber didn’t recognize.

  As Verana swept low over the tall grass, the rest of the dragons fell in line. Ander ordered them up on a reverse course to the left. Tyber pulled on the saddle lip and raked his heels up Rius’ shoulders. She lifted behind Maybelle, staying in close formation. It wasn’t the kind of maneuvering that Dragoneer Chanson or Master Groal would have been happy with, but it wasn’t sloppy.

  However, the rest of the horde kept going, flying right beneath Tyber in a straight line. The formation broke. Several of the riders signaled. A couple looked up to Ander and Verana. The rest looked at Brath. Whatever it was they signaled, it made no sense. One of the riders appeared to have told Brath to lift the third horizon beside the dragon.

  Tyber’s brow furrowed as he flung his attention up to Ander and Verana as they completed the maneuver, turning sharply to the left and sliding through a quarter barrel roll until Verana was level again, parallel with the horizon. Ander watched as Maybelle and Rius fell in smoothly behind them, then looked back to the rest of the horde as it scattered and turned, and the dragons began to rise in pursuit of their alpha with no semblance of formation at all.

  What a mess.

  After studying the situation a moment, Ander ordered the dragons to go to ground, pointing at the weyr yard. He brought Verana around and sent her down to the yard. Ren glanced at Tyber over his shoulder. His face wore the same tight expression of exasperation and concern that he’d flashed when they’d done something to upset Dragoneer Chanson or one of the proctors back in the academy. He turned away, then sent Maybelle racing after Verana. Rius dove after her, and as she did, Tyber watched over his shoulder as the rest of the horde banked in a clumsy manner, more or less heading for the yard.

  For all the sky, it was a sheer wonder that The Shepherd found this horde acceptable at all.

  Tyber pulled up on Rius’ saddle lip, pushed his heels down her shoulder, and ended with a quick tap. She dropped her rear and flapped her wings hard, lowering herself slowly until her back claws took the ground. She dropped onto her foreclaws.

  “What happened up there?” Ander asked from beside Verana as Brath and Irvess touched the ground.

  “What happened?” Brath echoed. He shook his head. “We can’t make heads or tails of what you’re going on about.”

  Ander nodded. He looked at the others as they landed. “What does this mean?”

  He repeated the motion to reverse course up and to the left.

  Brath leaned forward in his saddle, his brow furrowing. He smirked and chuckled dryly to himself as he shook his head. “You just told us to ring the woman.”

  “Ring the woman?” Ander asked.

  Ren laughed.

  Brath nodded. “That’s exactly what you called for. Isn’t it?”

  He looked back to the others and asked if that wasn’t exactly what Ander had called for.

  The dragonjacks nodded.

  “What does ring the woman mean?” Ander asked.

  Brath smiled and shook his head again. He shrugged. “That’s why we were so confused. Don’t mean a thing. Ring her like how? Like a bell?”

  “How would you signal for reverse course, up and to the left?” Ander asked.

  “You mean how is it done?” Brath asked. “I thought you a
nd your boys there were academy men. How could you not know—”

  “Show me how.”

  Brath sat up in the saddle. A flicker of pain crossed his face. He lifted his arm and went through a series of motions. One of the gestures was unrecognizable. Otherwise, it looked as if he had ordered a sunlight screen.

  “Oh, man,” Ren said, his voice low. “We’re in trouble.”

  “That’s how it’s done,” Brath said, his face growing red.

  Ander wiped his hand across his face. He nodded. “I can see that. Where did you learn the signaling language?”

  “Sirvon.”

  Ander nodded again. “All right. It seems like Tyber, Ren, and I have a little bit of work to do.”

  Tyber sat upright in his saddle, eyes wide in surprise.

  “We need to be using the same signals if we’re to have any hope of working together. And since The Shepherd is expecting us to work things out, Brath, you will assign some riders to teach the signaling language to myself, Tyber, and Ren.”

  Brath smiled and sat forward in his saddle, looking pleased with himself.

  “That’s our top priority,” Ander went on. “Look after your dragons. Brath, select our tutors quickly. We don’t have any time to waste.”

  Brath nodded curtly, his thick face smug and smiling broadly.

  Chapter 20

  Tyber checked his restraints again, then silently scolded himself for being so wild nervous. It wasn’t like he was still at the academy, and Brath was definitely not a proctor, even though he sat on Irvess at the head of the horde and surveyed the dragons and riders behind him, waiting to see if they were ready to go.

  Learning the signaling language of the dragonjacks over the last few days had been more difficult than anticipated. They used a lot of the same gestures and signs that were taught at the academy, but they had different meanings to the dragonjacks. No one was able to say why the signals were different, but most likely, the dragonjacks had deliberately changed the meanings tied to the gestures in order to confuse any hordesmen they came across.

  Ander’s willingness to learn their language had a surprising impact on the dragonjacks. Ander, Tyber, and Ren were treated with far less suspicion. As they became more fluent in the language, the dragonjacks started to treat them more and more as if they truly belonged.

  Now they were being tested in the air.

  Brath whipped his arm up and pointed to the sky above and ahead. His left palm butted the air to his side, and then he grasped the lip of the saddle. Irvess reared back, and Tyber followed the least strange of the commands, yanking back on his saddle lip and raking his heel up Rius’ shoulder.

  The horde launched itself into the sky behind Irvess. It was a pitiful, sloppy formation. Verana flew off of Irvess’ left. Rius and Maybelle were each positioned midway back on either leg of the V formation. Maybelle struggled to stay in position as the dragon in front of her drifted from side-to-side, then dipped on occasion before falling back.

  Rius didn’t have as much trouble, but she still struggled to keep up her position relative to Irvess and the other dragons. If they had launched like this at the academy, they would have immediately been grounded and given a long dose of Dragoneer Chanson’s ire. This was pathetic. They looked more like a flock of birds than a horde of dragons.

  Brath swept his arm around as if pitching an underhanded ball. Level off. At the academy, that meant to dip, and would usually be followed by an indication of what to dip beneath.

  Tyber leveled Rius off. Sanda, the rose-colored dragon before him, lifted to Rius’ altitude, then straightened out as well. She began to drift to the left, then was corrected and drifted too far to the right.

  Tyber shook his head. What was wrong with these people?

  Brath went through a series of gestures, and Tyber followed through. He swept to the right, banking along with Irvess, then let up as Rius started to slip out of formation, or what the formation should be. Brath signaled for a rolling dive. No, that was the signal for a swinging reversal. Tyber leaned out of the bank and tapped Rius' right shoulder twice. She began to roll to her left, flapping her wings hard to keep herself from losing too much altitude as she shifted suddenly in the sky.

  “Ty!” Ren shouted.

  Tyber glanced up as a dragon the color of winter grass came sliding toward him, still locked in her right bank.

  He leaned against the saddle, shoving hard on the lip and pressing his heels into Rius’ shoulder. She folded her wings in and dropped quickly. The air ruffled overhead, and a shadow briefly eclipsed Tyber as the other dragon passed by.

  Brath yelled out the rider’s name.

  Tyber sat up, told Rius to level off, then glanced up. Brath and Ander both stared down at him from their mounts. They exchanged glances, and then Brath ordered Tyber to proceed forward in an arrow formation. Except that in dragonjack language, it meant to resume formation.

  Tyber sighed.

  He signaled his acknowledgment, then realized his mistake and followed it with the signal to hit the target hard at best speed.

  Brath nodded from above, then repeated his order to resume formation.

  As Tyber sent Rius back up, he surveyed the horde from below. It was easy to see that the problem wasn’t simply the riders and their lack of discipline or training. A deep blue dragon, one so dark as to almost be black, staggered in the air. She favored her right wing as if it were sore.

  Rius rose with ease and resumed her place in the formation.

  The commander surveyed the horde once more, then signaled for a dive to break with him. He leaned into the saddle lip and sent Irvess dipping, folding her wings in for speed.

  With a flash of her brown tail, she undulated into a dive and fell toward the grass. The dragons ahead mimicked the move, more or less. As soon as the dragon before Tyber fell, he ordered Rius to do the same. She dropped smoothly into the dive as easily as Tyber might have stepped off a branch and fell to the waiting Wight river back home.

  Brath sat up in his saddle and leaned back hard as he told Irvess to break the dive. Her wings snapped open with an audible pop, and then she was racing her shadow across the ducking and waving grasses. Verana followed suit. Ahead, Sanda snapped her rose-colored wings open. But the pop wasn’t as loud or crisp. A rent blossomed in her left wing, the skin of her membrane splitting along the third phalangeal strut.

  Tyber gasped.

  As he ordered Rius out of the dive, the tear spread all the way back to the trailing edge of Sanda’s wing as she listed hard to the left. Ehner, her rider, tried to correct her, but it only added to her instability.

  “Up!” Tyber cried and yanked on the saddle lip.

  Rius traded momentum for altitude and sailed safely over Sanda. As they passed, Tyber twisted around in the saddle and watched as the other dragon struggled, then threw down her hindquarters as if the ground was a fleeing goat to be snatched for a meal. Tyber held his breath.

  Sanda hit the ground. Her rear feet skipped, dragging through the grass, then she fell onto all fours, spreading her wings wide. She belly-flopped into the grass, bounced and flapped her wings once, and miraculously stayed upright as she came to a rest on the ground.

  Her rider lifted his face past Tyber, looking to something beyond him.

  Tyber whipped around in the saddle. Irvess had fallen behind Verana, and both dragons were banking around. Ander signaled in the dragonjack’s gestures for everyone to take the ground.

  Tyber let out his pent-up breath. A slight wave of dizziness spread through him as he inhaled deeply, then sent Rius into a bank, bringing her back to Sanda.

  Chapter 21

  Ehner swung his leg over Sanda’s neck and stood on the stirrup a moment, staring at the ruined wing splayed across the tufts of grass. The dragon turned her head and surveyed the injury. She let out a low groan as if she knew how bad it was.

  Ehner trembled slightly, then let himself down as the other dragons landed around him.

  “What happene
d?” Brath demanded as he whipped off his restraints and began to climb down.

  “I don’t know,” Ehner said as he stepped off the stirrups. He ran his hands through his long hair. “We were… I don’t…”

  Ander approached as the dragon lifted her wings. A flap of skin waved in the air like a bedsheet on a laundry line.

  A rider gasped.

  Sanda jutted her head forward, her maw tipped up. She sniffed at her wing.

  Ander halted for a second as if he, too, had been caught off guard by the severity of the injury.

  “It’s a wonder you survived that landing,” Brath said as he approached.

  Ehner said something. Soft and quiet. It sounded like he had said that he wished they hadn’t.

  “We’ll get this patched up,” Ander said. He turned to Tyber and motioned for him. “Bring your mending kit.”

  Tyber dropped out of the saddle and began to rummage through the saddlebag.

  “Mending kit?” Brath asked. “You think you can fix that?”

  “I don’t know if we have enough thread,” Ander said. “Ren, bring your kit, too.”

  He then started for Verana, presumably to get his kit as well. They had enough sinew thread to mend a few small puncture wounds or a serious rent in the wing membranes. Enough to get a dragon back to the weyr if she took injury in battle, but what had happened to Sanda was far beyond light battle damage. This was a situation in which someone would fly back to the weyr and fetch the dragon healer.

  Ehner squatted before the leading edge of the wing. He hung his head, his fingers raking his thatch of blond hair.

  Brath placed a hand on Ehner’s shoulder and said something.

  Ehner looked up at him, his face red, his mouth parted and his eyes filled with anguish as he spoke quickly to Brath. He said something about getting word.

  Brath shook his head and looked back to Sanda and her damaged wing. His response went unheard.

  Tyber’s fingers found the tightly rolled bundle of leather he was searching for. He pulled it free, then started for Sanda at a jog.