Rain Wilds Chronicles (216 page)

Silence cloaked the dock.

Skelly stared, stricken, at her empty hands and scratched wrists. The last man had not wanted to go into the river.

“No one could have stopped that,” Hennesey told her. “And it was probably a better death than they would have faced back in Chalced.” A muttering began from the shore. Before it could rise any louder, Leftrin stepped to his ship's railing. “Dragons are on their way to attack Chalced, to punish them for hunting dragons! Send word to Bingtown that they must be braced for retaliation.”

A breathless quiet followed his words.

Tillamon shocked everyone when she lifted her voice. “And perhaps Cassarick and Trehaug may wish to consider well what happens to cities that harbor dragon killers!”

Day the 21st of the Plough Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kerig Sweetwater, Master of the Birds, Bingtown

To Erek Dunwarrow of Trehaug

 

Erek, old friend, this is not an official notification. It will take the Guild masters here a month of dithering before they can decide to take the action, but I am sure it will be approved. Your name is almost the only one that has come up to fill the recently vacated post of Bird Master at Cassarick. Kim had risen to control his own coop and oversee those of his journeymen. There will be fewer birds and journeymen under your supervision than in your Bingtown post, but I feel it will be every bit as difficult a task. It is a large responsibility and to be honest, you will be stepping into a shambles of dirty coops, unhealthy birds, poorly kept records, and undisciplined apprentices.

So, of course, I consider you precisely the man for the job!

But if, by any chance, this is not something you would take on, please notify me immediately via a Dunwarrow carrier, and I shall withdraw my advocacy of you.

Not likely, say I!

With pride in my former apprentice,

Kerig

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

Chalced

R
eyn felt slightly queasy. He took a deep breath, then reached for his water skin and took a sip. It helped. A little. This mode of traveling by dragon was, as he had hoped, much different from when Tintaglia had once carried him clutched in her claws. Back then, his fear and worry that Malta was already dead and the clench of the dragon's powerful feet on his ribs had distracted him from the actual flight. This time he rode high, between her wings, the wind in his face; and always aware of how high above the ground he was and how much his seat swayed with the motions of her flight. His back ached and his stomach was very unhappy.

He tried not to think of how old was this contraption in which he sat. Tried not to wonder how strong those peculiar straps and buckles were, and if it had been built more for show than strength. It was too late to worry about such things, and still too early to worry about the war they were bringing to Chalced. Far below him, the world was spread out like a lumpy carpet. The first day they had flown over rolling meadows and forested hills. Then they had crossed a region of swamps full of fronds and reeds and sloughs with still brown water and dead trees jutting from them. There had been a river they'd crossed, running shallow over its rocky bed, its face broken by white plumes of spray. Beyond the narrow river there had been a range of flatlands and broken hills, with trees and rushing streams in gullies. He knew by the rising of the sun that at least twice the dragons had made sharp course corrections. They were not flying directly to Chalced, but following some incomprehensible dragon route, probably one that maximized hunting opportunities and places for landing and resting. It made sense. It would have made more sense if the dragons had deigned to discuss it with the humans. Since their council of war, they'd been remarkably uncommunicative with the humans, with the possible exception of Rapskal.

Or perhaps it was only Heeby who made no barrier between herself and her keeper. Whatever the reason, Rapskal had started to irritate Reyn with his martial airs. Late last night, he had put his finger on the source of his annoyance. It was that Rapskal spoke and carried himself as if he were a man older and more experienced than Reyn. Some of the keepers seemed to have accepted him in that role. Nortel seemed to have attached himself to Rapskal as his lieutenant, passing on his tolerantly received orders about how camp was to be set up and nightly weapons drill. Of the other keepers, Reyn felt that only Kase and Boxter had fully fallen in with Rapskal's insistence that they must now begin to conduct themselves as dragon warriors. The four of them spent much time of an evening sharpening knives and polishing armor and checking dragon harnesses.

Today, Reyn looked down on a harsh rolling brown land with upthrusts of rock and random patches of dusty green brush. He'd never imagined such a place and knew that it appeared on no map he had ever studied. Chalced might claim to rule the lands right up to the edge of the Rain Wild River, but these regions, he would wager, had seen little of men in the last hundred years.

To either side of him, in front of him and behind him, dragons flew, some with riders and harnesses, some bare of any adornment. Despite Rapskal's posturing in Kelsingra, he and Heeby did not lead the way. Ranculos was out in front most often, though sometimes it was Mercor, and for a time it had been Tintaglia. All the dragons seemed to know whence they were bound, whether from ancient memories or from shared thoughts, he did not know. Reyn had thought that Icefyre as the eldest dragon and the one hottest for vengeance would lead the dragons. Instead, he was uncomfortably aware that both Icefyre and Kalo constantly vied for a spot just behind and above Tintaglia. He suspected he knew the significance of that, for several times Tintaglia had caused him to roar with terror as she folded her wings to drop down and then come up behind both of them, or suddenly put on a surge of wing beats that carried him up so high he felt he could not breathe. He knew from conversations with Davvie at night that the drakes' open rivalry for that position terrified him.

“Icefyre knows he scares me. He overflies us so close that I can scarcely draw a breath in the wind of his wings. Or he goes very high, and then sweeps in right in front of Kalo, so that he must either dodge or collide with the old bastard. And if I get frightened and beg Kalo to let him fly where he wishes, Kalo becomes annoyed with me.”

“I could ask Sestican if you might ride with me,” Lecter offered, but Davvie had shaken his head.

“No. That will just make Kalo angrier with me. He wants me to shout insults at Icefyre. He says he will not dare to attack us, but how can he know?” After a moment, he added quietly, “Thank you all the same.”

Their camps at night often seemed oddly festive to Reyn. He felt the old man among such youthful Elderlings. They quickly fell back into the routine they had obviously shared before. Every day, as afternoon began to approach evening, the dragons descended, demanding to be rid of riders and harnesses so they might hunt. Once dismounted and the dragons launched, the keepers commenced gathering firewood and setting up a camp. The dragons gave little thought to the comfort of the humans they were abandoning for the hunt. The keepers might find themselves in a hillside meadow one afternoon and on a rocky mountain ridge the next. Reyn watched in admiration as they quickly arranged their bedrolls and set out to look for water and meat. Sometimes they found neither, but as often as not, one of them would bring down a rabbit or a wild goat to share. They all carried hardtack, tea, and dried fish, so even when the hunting was scarce, they did not go hungry. Spring was upon the land, and at one stopping point, Sedric amazed them all by teaching them to gather dandelion greens and watercress from a stream. So they shared food and a fire and conversation every evening.

The first two nights there were jests and songs and some mock swordfights as some of the keepers experimented with their Elderling weapons. Rapskal tried to give them advice on stance and grip for their weapons, but soon gave up when it turned into good-natured roughhousing. Reyn watched the younger men measure themselves against one another and was relieved when a shout that food was ready broke up their exercises.

Shared hot meat and cold water seemed to content all of them. They told him stories of their journey up the river, and he recounted how Tintaglia had carried him in her claws to search for Malta and dropped him into the sea when they found her. Pirates and rescued slaves and a Chalcedean fleet opposed by liveships seemed only a wonder tale to them, and he feared that his small effort to convey the terror and horror of that war only made it seem a glorious adventure.

Sometimes Rapskal told stories too. He spoke with a strange cadence, and sometimes he groped for words, as if the language of his birth did not allow for names of weapons and maneuvers. He spoke of dragon wars, when Kelsingra had had to defend itself against raiding parties of dragons seeking to make a claim on the silver seeps in the river. Reyn was heartsick to hear him speak of Elderlings battling one another on the ground as their dragons fought savagely in the air. Even worse was to know that the dragons' and Elderlings' enmity with Chalced reached back, not decades, but possibly centuries. The keepers sat in rapt silence when Tellator recounted stories of Elderlings captured and tortured by Chalcedeans, and the vengeance taken on their captors. There were times when Reyn thought that perhaps Elderlings were not so different from humans after all.

And times when he decided they emphatically were.

None of the keepers seemed to think it odd when Jerd chose a partner for the evening and they retired from the others, not even when she chose a different partner the second night. Davvie and Sylve shared blankets and a long night conversation that kept Reyn awake with their confidential murmuring. The lack of sexuality in their obviously intimate friendship puzzled him almost as much as Jerd's casual promiscuity. He and Carson and Malta had had several long and philosophical conversations about how these new Elderlings might form their society. This was his first unveiled look at it, and he tried to conceal his surprise and dismay. He suddenly felt a stranger to their culture, as provincial as when he and Malta had been shocked by the hedonism of old Jamaillia. He lay awake both nights, wondering if this was the world that Phron would grow up in, and how the influx of other changed Rain Wilders that Tillamon would bring with her would view these new Elderlings. Those thoughts were almost more disturbing than pondering about the war that lay before them.

By the third night, he had accepted it as how things were among the keepers. That was the first night that Rapskal had all but bullied them into weapons practice after their meal. Reyn had thought it a bad time for it. They were all weary, and as soon as he had eaten, all he wanted to do was sleep. But he knew a bit of swordsmanship, more than any of the keepers, he thought, and he agreed with Rapskal that if they were going to carry such weapons, they should have some idea how to use them. In the evenings that followed, he tried not to let his discouragement show. Some of the keepers, such as Nortel and Boxter, were enthusiastic about learning and probably more dangerous. Davvie and Kase tried but were easily discouraged. Both Sylve and Jerd had brought bows, and both were fair but unexceptional shots with them. Rapskal was the one who surprised him. He easily matched Reyn's level of skill, and in some areas he surpassed him. Even so, Reyn tried not to wonder how well any of their talents would hold up in battle conditions. He'd seen men fighting one another and dying on the decks of ships and had hoped never to witness it again. It was one thing to swing a blade in practice; it was another thing entirely to drive a knife into another man's body.

Down below them, the late afternoon shadows stretched longer from the bushes, revealing to him that they were taller than he had thought they were. He did not look forward to spending a night in such a barren place but kept his mouth closed. It was useless to voice an opinion on where they landed. That would be determined by the dragons, and right now they were led by Skrim and Dortean. Their riders sat low in their saddles, leaning forward or dangerously far to the side and shouting comments to one another. Kase and Boxter were as alike as their orange dragons, and they had even chosen matching harnesses and tunics for themselves. He watched them and wondered if he had ever seemed as youthful and carefree as they did. They rode to war on dragons and seemed to accept it as just another day in their lives.

Behind him, he heard a wild shout and looked back to see that Icefyre had just made another pass at Kalo and his rider. He had only a glimpse of Davvie's white face and open mouth before Tintaglia tipped sharply to one side. He seized the low arms of his dragon saddle and held tight as his body was thrown heavily against the side of it. They fell away from the formation. Distantly he heard Davvie shouting something about “you torn-up old umbrella!” His effort to insult the black dragon would have made Reyn laugh if he hadn't been in fear for his own life.

He fought to draw a breath against the wind slashing past his face. His fingers hurt from holding on so tightly, and still they fell. He felt blood start to pound in his face and then it dripped warmly from his nose. He could not form his thoughts into words to beg mercy from the dragon; instead he simply pressed his terror toward her mind and held on as tightly as he could as the sere brown earth rushed up at him.

Then the world shifted and he closed his eyes and gripped until his fingers were numb as his body was slammed in the other direction. When he opened his eyes, the wind against his face pressed out tears that ran along the sides of his face. Tintaglia was moving in a long swift glide over the face of the hard earth. Ahead of them, a herd of deerlike creatures were bounding along in high leaps. He feared he knew what was about to happen. “No!” he pleaded, and then the impact came.

Reyn was flung against his chest strap so hard that it drove the breath from his body. He felt something furry hit him hard and then bounce away. For a moment or perhaps longer, he lost awareness. When he came back to himself, dusty air filled his nostrils and the shrill bleating of injured animals. He opened his eyes, wiped at them, and blinked. He tried to climb out of his seat before he remembered that a strap across his chest secured him. He unbuckled it with sore fingers, stood up, and tumbled to the earth. He collapsed there, delighting in how still it was, how firm under his hands. Then he felt the dragon move and he got up, first to his knees and then barely upright as he made a shambling run away from her. He passed two bleating deer, their shattered bones sticking out of them like bloody sticks. A third was lying still, and the fourth had its head bent at an improbable angle. He threw himself down on top of it.

He waited for his heart to calm. His hearing came back more strongly and he could breathe again. He wanted water but didn't want to go back to the dragon saddle to get it. He could wait. Never bother a dragon in the first few moments of a kill, he counseled himself.