Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (17 page)

The massive gate creaked and groaned
as it opened. Horse hooves clattered in the dark. Out of the gloom, a wagon
appeared and came to a halt inside the prison camp. It looked just like the
slave wagon we’d been trapped in before, made out of solid metal, and pulled by
a team of black horses. My breath caught in my lungs, and it felt like I had
swallowed something hard that was stuck in my throat. Sitting on the driving
seat, still wearing those white masks, were two of the elite guards from the
king.

My hand went to the knife hidden under
my tunic, and I gripped the hilt tightly. Even though I couldn’t see him, I
knew that
Sile
was in that wagon. He just had to be.
That is, if Lyon had been telling us the truth. A wave of nausea hit me when I
realized just how much was riding on our assumption that Lyon hadn’t been
playing us the entire time.

As I watched the gate begin to roll
closed again, it felt like someone was slowly choking me. It was like watching
my freedom slip through my fingers, leaving Felix and me trapped in this
horrible place. I wondered if that would be my last glimpse of the outside
world beyond these prison walls.

Then, something else distracted me
completely.

From overhead, I heard another sound
like the deep, thunderous concussion of wing beats. But I knew this sound right
away—it was the drumming of dragon wing beats in the air. Only this time,
they sounded larger than any dragon I’d ever heard flying before.

The dragon was as black as the dark
side of the moon, so the only way I knew it had landed was because I felt the
earth flinch under my boots with the impact. I could see the shadows cast over
its gleaming scales by the torchlight and the faint silver glow of the moon. It
was a monster that looked like something from a nightmare. It was twice the
size of Mavrik, with two red eyes that gleamed against the night like
smoldering coals.

“Gods and Fates,” Felix gasped. I saw
his eyes look up as an enormous dark shape descended from the night sky. “It’s
Icarus
.”

“Who?” I didn’t recognize the name,
but I could see the horror and fear on his face.

“He’s the Lord General’s dragon. A
king drake,” Felix answered, and I could hear his voice quivering with fear.
“When a dragon lives to be over a hundred years old, it becomes a king drake or
grand queen. They’re the largest and most powerful dragons alive. There’s
rarely ever more than one in existence at a time.”

“Great.” I groaned. There was only one
king drake in the whole world, and it was crouched between
Sile
and me. As if the king’s elite guards weren’t enough. We hadn’t planned to do
battle with a dragon like this.

Felix nudged me with his elbow.
“Look!”

Icarus
was crouching down to let his rider
off, and a man wearing golden armor dismounted. The Lord General was a tall
man, as tall as my father. He wore a helmet topped with a long red mane of
horsehair, and a red cape that swept the ground at his heels as he moved. The
Lord General walked around his enormous dragon toward where the wagon was
waiting.
 

The elite guards driving the wagon had
gotten down and unlocked the back door, and I found myself gripping the hilt of
my knife again. When the door opened, the Lord General stepped in and blocked
our view. I saw people getting out, and I clenched my teeth. I couldn’t see
who
it was, and it was making me furious.

Then the Lord General stepped aside,
and I saw him. Lieutenant
Sile
Derrick staggered in
front of all four of the king’s elite guards. They pushed him on, making him
trip and fall. He couldn’t even catch himself because his hands were still tied
behind his back, so he hit the dirt face-first. They had tied a gag in his
mouth and there was blood on his tunic. But he was alive.

I couldn’t even be proud that I’d been
right again about something happening to
Sile
because
things were looking more hopeless than ever. We had come here to save him, to
set him free, but not only were we trapped in a prison camp, but we were also
facing the Lord General, his king drake, and four of the king’s most
accomplished private guards—not to mention all the regular prison guards
who were standing watch with bows and arrows in the towers, ready to make us
look like pincushions. It looked impossible.

“All right.” Felix took in a deep
breath and I saw his shoulders flex. “We don’t have much time. I’ve got the
gate; you follow them and when you think you’ve got the chance, give Beckah the
signal and get
Sile
out of there.”

I nodded, but my whole body was
starting to feel numb.

“We’re about to die aren’t we?” he
asked me suddenly, glancing back and catching me off guard with that question.
He was usually so confident.

I gave a small shrug, and tried to
smile. “Maybe. But remember, you were the one who wanted to see what amazing,
unexpected thing I’d do next.”

Felix didn’t answer, but I saw his
cheek turn up in a smirk as he started slinking out of our hiding place. I
watched him slip from shadow to shadow, making his way carefully toward the
gate.

Now it was up to me. I couldn’t turn
back; too much was at stake. Alone in the dark, I watched them drag
Sile
back to his feet and lead him deeper into the prison
camp. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and balled my fists.

It was time to shake off my fear. I
had to be brave.
Sile
was counting on me.

twenty

The
elite guards were leading
Sile
deeper into the prison
camp, pushing him whenever he stopped, and keeping a knife at his back. He
wasn’t fighting them as much anymore. As I crept in closer, I saw that one of
his arms looked wrong. From the elbow down it was bloody, and there were pieces
of white bone sticking up through the skin. Somehow, they had broken it, and I
didn’t want to think about how much that must have hurt.

They forced him down the stairs that
led into the mining pit and disappeared. I hesitated. If I followed, I might
get caught out in the open. I didn’t know if there was anywhere to hide down
there.
 
I waited, looking back at
the prison guards who were milling around the wagon still. They weren’t looking
my way. My only worry was the dragon, but with that horrible stench in the air,
maybe he wouldn’t smell me.

I made a dash for the nearest
stairwell. As soon as I got a few steps down, I dropped into a crouch and
hunkered down, trying to duck against the shadows. None of the men working
below seemed to notice me. The Lord General had his back turned, saying
something to
Sile
that I couldn’t hear from so far
away. All the elite guards were standing nearby, watching. But as my eyes
tracked over the inside of the crater, I started to get a bad feeling.

The smell hit me like a kick to the
stomach, and when I saw where it was coming from, I started to gag. The crater
went down at an angle, with those dirt-carved stairwells on all sides, leading
down to where the prisoners had been mining the salt out of the ground and
loading those oversized wheelbarrows with it. In the very middle was a big pile
of smoldering ash and debris. The embers were still burning bright red and
putting off an eerie glow that made it easier to see what was going on. I
didn’t think much of it at first. I mean
,
I assumed
maybe they’d just been burning trash or waste. But as my eyes adjusted to the
change in light, I started noticing the white shapes in the ash.

Bones. They were bones.

There were hundreds of them, piled up
like a big pyre. They had been burning the bodies of the prisoners there. The
horrible stench in the air was the smell of burning flesh. As soon as I
realized that, my skin got clammy and I felt like I was going to throw up.

Suddenly, I got that strange feeling
that someone was watching me. Then a big hand grabbed a fistful of my hair.
“What have we here?” Someone spoke over me in a rough, grumbling voice. “Out
after dark, are we? Looking for a good show?”

I heard a chorus of laughs as I kicked
and fought, managing to turn around and get a glimpse of the man who had me by
the hair. He was a big, pear-shaped man with narrow shoulders and a belly that
was being mashed into a chest plate two sizes too small. He had a trimmed
beard, dark eyes, and a big scar that ran down the side of his face onto his
neck. The crest on his armor was the king’s eagle, but I knew he wasn’t a
dragonrider. Except for that crest, his armor looked like the other prison
guards.

“Well, why don’t we just give you a
front row seat?” He grinned down at me, and his teeth were covered in yellow
tobacco stains. I could just feel the evil aura coming off him like smog. He
started dragging me the rest of the way down the stairs, and I fought him every
step of the way. When we got close to the big pile of charred bones, I fought
even harder.

The Lord General turned around to see
what the commotion was. He scowled down at me, curled his lip, and sent the
guard a disapproving frown. To him, I must have looked like just another
prisoner here. I wasn’t wearing my Fledgling’s tunic and cape anymore.

“What is that, Warden?” the Lord
General asked.

“A halfbreed,” the man holding me by
the hair chuckled. “Haven’t you ever seen one before?
Sneaky
little rats.
Some of them could about pass for human, but I can smell
that elf blood in their veins a mile away. They can’t fool me. And this one’s
decided to test my rules. Looks like he’ll be meeting his ancestors sooner than
scheduled!”

The Lord General just rolled his eyes,
and didn’t even give me a second glance as he started removing his riding
gauntlets. “Do what you want, but only after the ritual is complete. I don’t
want you botching it. You have no idea what a chore this has been.” He moved
away, angrily muttering under his breath something about small favors.

When he stepped aside, I saw
Sile
up close for the first time since the officer’s ball.
He was lying on his
side,
his mouth bloody like
someone had hit him across the face really hard. Our eyes met, and I saw
something in his face I hadn’t expected. Oh sure, I had expected surprise,
confusion, maybe even a little anger . . . but
Sile
looked at me with absolute terror.

He tried to speak, but his voice
cracked. He just lay there, staring at me with a look that drove an ice-cold
spike of panic into the center of my chest. Something was wrong. I just didn’t
know what it was, yet. It was as though he wanted to tell me
something—something important.

The warden threw me down onto the
ground only a few feet away from
Sile
. He put a foot
on my chest to keep me from getting up, and stood there with his arms crossed.
He was so big and fat I couldn’t get his foot off me no matter how I tried. He
smirked down at me, and ground his heel into my ribs. It hurt, but I clenched
my teeth and refused to give him the satisfaction of crying out in pain.

I knew I had one choice now, just one
chance. Maybe things weren’t exactly going according to plan, but our plan had
been pretty much ruined the moment Lyon abandoned us. I was playing this by
ear, and now it was time for a diversion.

I tried to relax, to let my mind get
quiet. It was easier this time, which was strange considering the last time I
was in a situation like this, I’d accidentally called out a giant man-eating
turtle. Something trickled down the back of my brain like a warm shiver, making
my skin prickle and my whole body shudder at once. It grew more intense, until
I was shivering like I was cold.

“Put it down over there,” I heard the
Lord General say.

I opened my eyes to see the king’s
elite guards carrying what looked like a big, gold-plated box. It must have
been heavy, because even with four of them helping, they were still having a
hard time managing it. They set it down near the smoldering pit of bones, and
the Lord General stepped forward to run his hands over it thoughtfully. He
stroked the intricate carvings on the lid, and a strange look of pleasure
flickered across his face. He glanced up, like he was looking at someone for
approval. But the only people there to look at were the elite guards, and their
masked faces hid their expressions, and none of them moved an inch.

“Open it,” he commanded again. “Let us
begin the ritual.”

My head was starting to feel
uncomfortably hot. That intense shivering heat in my mind spread all over my
body, and made it feel like my muscles were tingling. It definitely seemed to
be coming from whatever was inside that big golden box. My heart started to
pound in my ears. My body shivered, and I tried to clear my mind again.

I reached out for Mavrik with my
thoughts, calling to him just like I had before. I waited until I felt that
sensation of weight in my chest to open my eyes toward the sky. “
Mavrik, it’s time. Let them taste of your
flame!”
 
I spoke in the
elven
language, hoping that it would still work and that
none of the guards standing around me—particularly the one with his foot
on my chest—would be able to understand.

The warden looked down at me with a
menacing smirk. “What did you say, whelp?”

Mavrik answered him for me with a
deep, bellowing roar from overhead. It was a sound I knew all too well.
Everyone looked skyward, including the Lord General, who clearly hadn’t been
expecting any other dragons to be cruising the area.

Mavrik roared again, with Nova joining
him in a chorus of fury from the air. There was an explosion of flame somewhere
outside the prison camp. All the guards began to scream in alarm.

 
Dragon flame isn’t what most people imagine. It isn’t like
the flames from an oven or a fireplace that stops burning once you douse them
with water. Dragons spit
a sticky
, very acidic venom
that reacts with the air and starts to burn instantly. They have two jets in
the back of their throat, and can spit that potent mucus about twenty feet. It
sticks to whatever it touches like milky-colored tar, and even if you manage to
snuff out the flames with water, the acid will still eat away your skin in a
matter of seconds. It’s pretty awful stuff.
Sile
had
once explained to me that dragons rarely spat flame unless commanded to. They
used it as a defensive mechanism, to protect themselves or their eggs on the
ground where they couldn’t walk or run as quickly as other predators.

I smelled the pungent odor of the
dragons’ flame burning in my nose, and I heard men shouting, the sounds of
bowstrings snapping as arrows were fired. I knew that now was my chance.

The warden wasn’t looking at me. He
was staring up at the sky like everyone else, looking for the dragons that were
showering the ground outside the prison camp with their burning venom. I pulled
out the hunting knife hidden under my tunic, and rammed it as hard as I could
into his calf. Before he could react, I ripped the knife back out again. I
stabbed him twice, and the warden howled in pain. He went stumbling back and
finally fell over as he clutched at his bleeding leg.

I was back on my feet in an instant,
rushing to where
Sile
lay on the ground. I cut the
ropes on his hands, and pulled the gag off his mouth.

“We have to get out of here now!” I
shouted over the chaos.

He was still looking at me with that
weird, haunted look of terror in his eyes. I decided maybe he was just in
shock. Maybe he was confused, worried he was seeing a ghost, or had been beaten
to the point of being delirious.

“How . .
. ?
”
he spoke in a weak voice.

“I’ll explain later,” I told him.
“We’ve only got a few minutes! Hurry, you have to get up!”

A sudden rush of heat sucked all the
air right out of my lungs. Something exploded on the ground only a few yards
away, bursting into flame as it was showered with sticky dragon venom that
caught fire immediately. It burned my eyes, and I had to shield my face. I
recognized the shards of a clay jug that landed on the ground near my boots,
and knew it had been Beckah. She was using the jugs of oil as explosives,
keeping the guards occupied and confused while we tried to make our escape.

“It’s those little fledglings from
Blybrig. Don’t just stand there, you
fools
! Shoot
them!” The Lord General bellowed with fury.

At that moment, he seemed to realize
who I was. He turned around slowly, leveling a burning glare on me as I was
helping
Sile
up to his feet. I met his gaze, seeing
the reflections of the flames in his eyes.

“Ah,” he growled, showing me a wicked
smirk. “So
you
are the little piece
of halfbreed filth that has infected my ranks. I heard about you and your wild,
mongrel of a drake.”

I squeezed the hunting knife in my
hand, putting myself between the Lord General and
Sile
.
“No,” I said. “I’m the little piece of halfbreed filth that isn’t going to let
you murder my sponsor!”

“A mistake you won’t live to regret,
I’m afraid.” His smirk broadened, and he pulled the biggest sword I’d ever seen
from a sheath at his hip. It was almost as long as I was tall, made of black
metal, and had the head of a dragon that looked a lot like
Icarus
engraved on the hilt with two red rubies for eyes.

He started to advance on me, and I got
a much better appreciation for just how tall he was. My head almost came to the
middle of his chest. Almost. A sense of doom loomed over my head as he started
to size me up, looking over me like he was deciding which part of me he wanted
to chop off first.

The dragons kept raining fire down
from the sky, and I heard
Icarus
bellow a roar of
challenge to them. Men shouted orders or screamed in pain as the acidic venom
burned them. And through it all, the Lord General came striding toward me with
the fires of battle reflecting off his bronze armor. Behind him, I saw the
ghostly figures of the elite guards through the flames.

I braced for impact, trying to
remember all my combat training. Of course, we hadn’t trained for anything like
this before. The Lord General outclassed me in every way possible, and I knew
this was going to be my end. But if he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to
let him do it without a fight—however brief it might be.

Suddenly there was another crash,
another explosion of flame as Beckah threw another jug of oil. It hit that big
gold-plated box, and fire belched up into the sky as it was smashed into a
million pieces. The Lord General let out a primal yell of frustration, running
to the remains of the box and trying to look through the wreckage like he was
searching for something.