by Dante King
Gabby nodded.
“You better spill the beans then,” I said, leaning back against the wall.
Rupert opened his mouth to get started on what I hoped was going to be an enlightening and half-sane tale. He was silenced by a ferocious knocking on the front door. It was less a knocking and more of a pounding, the solid wood of the door rattling on its iron pin-barrel hinges.
“I think someone’s at the door, lads,” I said.
Being the closest to the door, Rupert reached out and pulled the bolt.
The door crashed open as the knocker—the pounder—hit it again. Rupert jumped backward out of the way, and the door hit the wall behind and took a chunk of masonry out of it.
Lieutenant Kaleen stepped over the threshold. She was looking less sardonically amused than she usually did, and more genuinely pissed off. The sarcastic smile which usually adorned her face when she was scrutinizing the rank and file was absent. It was replaced with a flat pursing of the lips that spoke of imminent trouble.
Sergeant Milena followed Kaleen in. She was looking just as grim as her twin and ran a hand through her short, white hair as she stepped inside. She glanced around the room, noting the occupants, and frowning slightly at the sight of Bjorn struggling to get back to his feet and right the sofa.
“On your feet!” Milena barked in a whiplash voice.
Gabby sprang up from the armchair he had been relaxing in. Bjorn managed to finally get upright, looking more than a little embarrassed.
I noticed then that another person—a man—had walked in behind Sergeant Milena. He was a tall, thin guy. His face was as long and thin as an axe blade. He didn’t have much in the way of a forehead, but he was packing enough nose and chin for two. His hair was mostly black, shot with a handful of bright blonde hairs—where you’d normally say someone was going gray this man was going gold. His gray eyes were as distant and frigid as a couple of stars, and he sported a neat dark beard. His age was impossible to determine, especially in this world. The motherfucker could have been in his late thirties or just clocked a hundred for all I knew. One thing was certain though; he exuded an air that he would not be trifled with lightly, nor suffer idiocy. He reminded me of my old principal.
Sergeant Milena evidently noticed me looking at the newcomer because she said, “Gentlemen, this—as you jackasses know,” and the sergeant indicated Gabby, Bjorn, and Rupert, “—is Captain Cade. He is the commanding field officer of the Rank One Dragonmancers and, subsequently, their coteries.”
There was quite a juicy little silence left after these words. It matured nicely. Deepened and broadened until Captain Cade deemed it ripe enough to squash.
“I would be gratified,” he said, in a surprisingly mellow and serene voice, “if you three men would be so accommodating as to divulge to me just where you were today, when you were supposed to be assembling in the middle bailey in preparation to meet Dragonmancer Noctis here?”
I couldn’t help but wonder how this man had managed to become a Captain when he wasn’t a dragonmancer. He was, from what I could tell, a male, so that precluded him being bonded to a dragon. I was, as I had been told many times, the first male dragonmancer in a very long while.
Captain Cade looked at Gabby, his distant gray eyes searching the man’s stubbly face.
Gabby stared blankly back.
Realization flittered over the captain’s face, and he swallowed back a cough before turning to Rupert.
“Well, soldier?” he prompted politely.
There was something about his cultivated tone that filled me with disquiet. I felt like it was the politeness that precedes someone going completely ballistic. The sort of civility which one neighbor might employ with another, less considerate neighbor who has let their hedge grow over the fence, right before they lose it and brain them with a shovel.
Rupert stuttered a few times, doing a fair impersonation of an engine that is turning over but refuses to catch.
“We f-f-found them, Captain!”
“Found who?” Captain Cade asked.
Sergeant Milena glared at the twitching lad with the ridiculous Robin Hood hat perched on black hair that he had obviously cut himself.
“What the fuck are you on about, Dyer?” she said in a faintly resigned voice.
“We f-f-found th-them!” Rupert repeated.
“Who?” Sergeant Milena snapped. “Let me just warn, lad, this better be a fucking good excuse. This better be a really fucking good excuse. This better be the mother of all excuses because, in case you weren’t aware, you and your two fellow members of this dream team are so deep in shit that it’s going to be a wonder if you manage to surface again. Now, who did you find?”
Rupert took a deep breath, twitched a couple of times, and then said, “We f-followed a lead and learned that th-the Bloodletters have taken refuge in Drakereach, Sergeant!”
Another silence followed this pronouncement. This one though was much shorter and had a ringing quality to it.
I looked at Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen. Just for a second, I thought I saw a joint look of consternation and shock pass over their faces.
The new guy, Captain Cade, stood up a little straighter. His thin face tightened, and his eyes glittered with a light that you might normally expect to find twinkling on the edge of a very sharp knife. His eyes were fixed on Rupert, boring into him.
Then, Sergeant Milena swelled, and she began ripping into Rupert with the sort of gusto that I thought only existed on the parade ground of movies like Full Metal Jacket.
“Of all the goddamn ridiculous cockatrice cack that I was expecting to come out of your mouth, soldier, even I wasn’t expecting this!”
“But, ma’am,” Rupert started to say, “I s-swear th—”
“Shut the fuck up, soldier!” snapped Sergeant Milena wearily. “Just shut the fuck up. You know, it’s men like you that can make this job really rub. The gods know I try to be a more optimistic person when I wake up in the morning. More positive than the day before. But today, the only thing that I’m positive about is that you three are a bunch of fucking idiots the likes of which I have rarely had the misfortune to meet.”
At this point, thought Captain Cade was going to interject and ask a question. He was looking intently at Rupert, his eyes occasionally shifting to Bjorn and Gabby. He looked like a man with something on his mind. However, Sergeant Milena was in full flow, and the thin man did not get a chance to voice anything.
“You realize that failing to be at the side of your dragonmancer when you should be is punishable by being hung from the castle walls, don’t you?” the irate sergeant said.
“You can answer that one,” Lieutenant Kaleen prompted Rupert.
“Uh, yes Serge—” Rupert tried to say.
“Then why, if you’re cognizant of that fact, would you try and sell me this load of bollocks about Bloodletters?”
“Sergeant, Rupert’s telling the truth,” Bjorn rumbled somewhat tentatively. “He’s—”
“Well, fuck me!” the sergeant cut across the half-Jotunn warrior, causing whatever words were about to come out from between his bearded lips to go scuttling back down his throat. “I must have a fucking brain worm and not even know it, because I don’t remember asking you a damned thing, Bjorn!”
Bjorn swallowed and closed his mouth.
Despite knowing that trying to help my men was fruitless, I couldn’t leave them to be roasted without at least trying to stand up for them. I stepped away from the wall and drew myself up to my full height.
“Sergeant Milena?” I said.
“What is it, Dragonmancer Noctis?”
“Respectfully, Rupert might be onto something. Those guys we fought in the town—”
“What guys?” Milena asked me.
I blinked and stared at her. Then I looked at Lieutenant Kaleen. “Uh, the guys, the gray-clad ninja dudes that the four of us—along with Saya and Elenari and their coteries—battled only the other night.”
T
he two white-haired, red-eyed twins gave me matching blank looks and said nothing.
“We told you about them the other night!” I said, completely nonplussed as to why they were acting like I was talking Dutch to them.
“Lieutenant Kaleen, do you recall the dragonmancer telling us about these ‘ninjas’?” Sergeant Milena asked her sibling.
“No, Sergeant Milena,” Lieutenant Kaleen replied casually, shaking her head.
I narrowed my eyes but said nothing.
What the fuck is going on here? I thought.
“Something,” Noctis’ voice insinuated itself into my head, “is not as it seems.”
I had to agree.
Not only that, but a captain had shown up for something as trivial as a disciplinary matter. Cade’s presence was a definite red flag that had all my internal alarms blaring.
“Gentlemen,” Captain Cade said, crossing his wiry arms over his chest and looking at Bjorn, Gabby, and Rupert, “what exactly do you think you found? What made you think that you fought Bloodletters? They’re a myth. A tavern rumor.”
A flurry of agitated twitches passed over Rupert’s face. He opened his mouth to answer.
“I don’t want to hear any more of this garbage,” Sergeant Milena said, holding up a hand.
She took a deep breath and looked at each man of my squad in turn.
“Consider this your first and only warning,” she said gravely. “You know that failure to be at your dragonmancer’s side when required is as good as deserting the battlefield. Next time it happens, you’ll be taken up to the top of the wall, dressed up all pretty in a hemp cravat, and given one chance to dance on air. Got it?”
There was a chorus of gulps, though they might just have been added in by my brain for effect.
“Yes, Sergeant!” said Bjorn and Rupert.
Then, Gabby, Rupert, and Bjorn saluted—making the sign of the claw with their index finger over their heart—and stood to attention.
“Captain Cade,” Sergeant Milena said, gesturing toward the open door, “I know that you have things to do.”
“I do,” Cade said with a nod. “I can leave this little matter with you two?”
“You can,” Lieutenant Kaleen said with a nod. “Thank you, sir.”
Cade looked like he was itching to stay behind and grill my coterie about the Bloodletters, but he was clearly a busy man. I wasn’t exactly an expert on military rank, but it did seem that he outranked Milena and Kaleen. Again, I found this somewhat strange since I’d been given the impression that dragonmancers were the cream of the crop, and this Cade guy was obviously not one of those.
He gave us all one last searching look with his cold gray eyes and then ducked out through the door.
Sergeant Milena stood for a few moments longer, regarding the three men who still stood at attention. Then she took her leave and walked out into the sporadic noon sunshine.
Lieutenant Kaleen walked slowly to the door. When she was on the threshold, she turned, pointed at me, and crooked a finger. “Michael Noctis,” she said in her usual mildly acerbic voice, “a word outside.”
I followed Lieutenant Kaleen outside the house, and she closed the door behind us. With my dragon-enhanced hearing, I was actually able to hear the sound of Gabby, Rupert, and Bjorn all letting out the breaths they had been holding, even through the thickness of the door.
Lieutenant Kaleen led me right, down the street a little, in the opposite direction of the Academy. I glanced left and saw the tall, rangy figure of Captain Cade striding away in the other direction.
Sergeant Milena was waiting for us in the shadowy lee of a closed pottery shop.
“Sergeant,” I said, “what did you mean back there, pretending that you didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about with the Bloodletters? You saw the bodies!”
“Course I knew what you were talking about,” Sergeant Milena said breezily. “Don’t be a fool. I was banking on you realizing that I wouldn’t just blatantly lie like that unless I had a good reason.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I hate this sort of clandestine bullshit,” I said bluntly.
“All you need to know is this,” Lieutenant Kaleen said, putting a hand on my shoulder and fixing me with her unwavering blood-red gaze. “The existence of the Bloodletters is not a subject for general consumption.”
“Especially,” Sergeant Milena said, “around men like Captain Cade.”
“Doesn’t he outrank you?”
“He does,” Kaleen replied.
“Am I going to end up on the copping block for insubordination along with you two?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“The Overseer is aware of this.” Milena sighed, and I got the impression she was trying to talk down to me. “Cade is not a dragonmancer. While he does, indeed, outrank us, there are things he doesn’t understand—things he cannot understand.”
“Right,” I said, remaining unconvinced.
“Don’t worry about your men,” Sergeant Milena said. “We won’t be holding them to that warning. And we’ll ask them all about what they discovered in the town. For now, just make sure that they don’t skip out on their duties again though, you hear? You keep them in line. That’s part of what it means to be a dragonmancer. And let them know that they should leave the sleuthing to others. Weak men like them—that is to say non-dragonmancers—might sleuth their ways into an early grave if they’re not careful.”
That struck a chord with me, her wording.
Weak men… Non-dragonmancers…
I knew my guys weren’t weak. They were three fantastic fighters—not nearly in the same league as dragonmancers when it came to strength and stamina, of course, but I couldn’t imagine there were many better warriors among the regular troopers of the Mystocean Empire.
“Sergeant,” I said, struck by a thought, “my squad, they’re good guys, you know. I was just wondering, have you ever heard of any way in which a coterie has been altered—strengthened in a similar way to dragonmancers.”
Lieutenant Kaleen scoffed, but Sergeant Milena looked at me pensively.
“You have Arcane practice at some point in the near future, I imagine,” the sergeant said. “You might find that that is the place to voice those sorts of queries. Now, we must be off. what I’ve said here, Dragonmancer Noctis; keep those headache magnets of yours out of trouble. And don’t go jabbering around the Academy about Bloodletters. That’s an order.”
With that, the Sergeant marched off without looking back.
Lieutenant Kaleen started to follow and then turned sharply around to face me. Her red eyes roved over my face. Her usual sardonic grin widened a little. She winked at me, and then said, as she backed away, “Keep in mind that it’s those stir the shitpot, whether out of good intentions or bad, that usually end up licking the spoon.”
Then she was gone, leaving me standing there with nothing but my whirling thoughts for company. The sun peeked out from behind the fast-moving clouds just then and bathed me in its warm glow. I puffed out my cheeks.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked the street quietly, but the street didn’t answer.
Suddenly, a chorus of gasps went up from the few soldiers milling about the barracks. The sunlight was blotted out, and a sharp wind whipped up, blowing dust and litter around.
I shielded my eyes and looked up.
A dragon—a big dragon—had come to hover above the street. Its wings beat periodically, but I got the impression that it was the thing’s copious latent magic that kept it aloft more than anything else.
“That’s a Titan!” I heard a soldier say in an awed voice from off to my left.
The dragon beat its wings again, and I took a step back to steady myself against the blast of wind that set window shutters to flapping and a couple of stray dogs to barking.
I recognized the beast now, as I squinted up through my narrowed eyelids. It was Sonos, the dragon paired with Claire, the Seer.
I raised my hand in greeting,
and the dragon dropped its massive head toward me. On closer inspection, I saw that the eyes, each as big as a basketball, were different colors: one was red and the other was greenish blue.
Claire’s eyes, I thought.
“Yes,” Noctis said, speaking to me from within his crystal, “the Seer is in Titan form. She is Sonos for the time being.”
The dragon opened its huge maw and spoke then, in a surprisingly quiet voice. I had been expecting the sort of booming vocalization that would send me through the nearest wall.
“An event that has not occurred in millennia is about to begin, dragonmancer,” the dragon said. “Two, in fact... You had better come with me.”
My stomach clenched into a knot inside my abdomen, then uncoiled and seemed to vanish altogether.
That could only mean one thing.
Elenari and Saya…
They were about to give birth.
Chapter Seven
There are few things in life that might distract a man from the reality that he is flying along next to a dragon roughly the size of a school bus. However, as I soared on the back of Noctis, flying alongside Sonos, I don’t mind admitting that I was fairly fucking preoccupied.
I had never witnessed anyone, or anything for that matter, giving birth. The closest I had got to such a thing was that scene in the R-rated version of Knocked Up when you see the crown of the baby pressing out of Katherine Heigl’s fake hootenanny. If that was anything to go by, I was about as interested in witnessing the miracle of creation as self-circumcising.
I had concluded, after the short time that I had spent in this world, that dragons were versatile creatures when it came to occupying space. I had the impression that, depending on the strength of the dragonmancer that they were bonded to, they could materialize in almost any size—taking the form of something as relatively small as a Great Dane or as something as massive as the Luck Dragon flapping along on my left.
Noctis had adopted, in his current form, the rough proportions of a large cart horse. A good size for riding; big enough to be comfortable but small enough to allow for sharp and snazzy flying if so needed.
