Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (6 page)

           
“Geez.”
He made a sympathetic whistling noise. “You really are just a kid.”

           
“My
name is Jaevid,” I told him with a frown. I was getting tired of being referred
to as just a halfbreed or a kid. I was both, yes, but I had a name.

           
Felix
smirked. “Jaevid, huh?”

           
“Or
just Jae,” I added.

           
He
laughed as he stood back, eying the belt like he was trying to make sure it
looked good. “You’ve got boots, right?”

           
“Yeah.”
I nodded, and sat down on the edge of my bed to start putting them on.

“Good, cause I don’t think my spares
would fit you anyway.” Felix started talking while he cleaned up his side of
the room, advising me to do the same once I was dressed. “They do random room
inspections, so you better have all your stuff put away. Uniforms have to be
folded neatly, boots by the bedside if you aren’t wearing them. Your bed has to
be made, books stacked up, and no trash on the floor. Pretty standard stuff.”

I started cleaning my side while he
talked, not that there was much to clean. I put my clothes and books away, and
followed him down toward the dining hall on the first floor. He grabbed a large
piece of bread, breaking it in half and shoving some in my direction. He ate
while he rushed me out into the cold morning air, talking around the food in
his mouth.

Felix explained that official training
wouldn’t start for a few more days, when everyone finally had all the gear that
was being made for us. But this was our chance to get a leg up on the others
and start getting some preliminary training from our sponsor.

Lieutenant Derrick was outside the
Roost, fitting a saddle to his own dragon. I recognized it was the saddle my
father had made for him. The gleaming white creature flared the fins on the
side of her head when she saw us coming close, hissing and snapping her jaws.
It made
Sile
look back, arching a brow questioningly
at us as we approached. For once, I wasn’t the one he narrowed his eyes at,
like he was expecting some kind of explanation.

“Felix Farrow, sir.” My new roommate
introduced himself, clasping a fist over his chest and bowing at the waist.
“There was some trouble with room arrangements, and I volunteered to switch . .
. with your permission, of course.”

Sile
did look at me then. It made me
flinch. I didn’t know what to say.

“I suppose,” Lieutenant Derrick
answered hesitantly. “If that’s what you want.”

Felix nodded. “Yes sir, I’m sure. With
all due respect, I’m probably the only one who isn’t going to try to snap his
skinny neck during the night.” He laughed tensely.

Sile
gave a snort, but didn’t answer. He
went back to fixing the saddle onto his dragon. The beautiful, sleek female had
scales like polished pearl. Her eyes were a pale, glacier blue and she looked
at us like we were something to eat. She wasn’t as big as Mavrik, and her build
was more lithe. She hissed at me again, her wild eyes turning away when
Sile
gave her neck a slap.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve both come,” he
announced, turning back to face us. “Every morning, I expect you to meet me
here before sunup. You’ll be doing drill rides, once you get your saddles.
You’ll be running in full armor, four laps around the outer wall. There is a
reason dragonriders are the preferred soldier of his majesty, the king.
We
are
an elite breed
. We are held
to a higher standard of performance—one you have only just begun to
appreciate. I expect the very best from you at all times.
It
isn’t lineage or bloodlines that make men good soldiers
,
it is sweat and blood
. I can assure you, you’ll be drenched
in both before your time at this academy is over.”

Felix wasn’t smiling or laughing
anymore. I was horrified.

“For today, I’ll be taking you up one
at a time for a demonstrational ride, then you can get to running those laps.
It’d be in your best interest to get over your air sickness now, so you aren’t
throwing up on your first day of formal aerial maneuvers.”
Sile
went on, curling a finger at me to call me forward. “You’re up first, Jaevid.”

I didn’t want to go anywhere near him,
the saddle, or the snarling white dragon that swishing her long tail. But I had
no choice now. I staggered forward, watching as
Sile
gave the seat of the saddle a pat. It looked intimidating, and much too small
for two people.

He gave his dragon a hand signal and
she put her belly on the ground, lowering so we could climb onto her back. I
was practically sitting in
Sile’s
lap, which was
awkward and uncomfortable. Clearly this saddle wasn’t made for two people. It
felt like I might fall off as soon as we got moving.

Sile
was a little more secure in his seat,
with his legs put down into two sheath-like leather sleeves build into the
saddle. They came up to his knees, fitting like boots. I saw what they were
meant for; those leg-holsters were what would keep him in the saddle when his
dragon turned at awkward angles in the sky. I was shaking all over as
Sile
showed me the handles on either side of the saddle.

“I won’t let you fall,” he assured me
as he belted a leather harness around my shoulders that literally strapped us
together. It was like he was wearing me as a backpack in the front. “Valla will
go easy on you, at first.”

Valla didn’t seem to like me being on
her back one bit. When she stood, she shifted and shook herself, flexing her
shoulders and snapping her jaws like my added weight was uncomfortable for her.
She growled and hissed, making flustered chirps as she turned her head to the
side to glare at me with one big, blue eye.

Sile
gave her neck a pat again, gave a
sharp whistle, and she reared back onto her hind legs, spreading her forearms
wide to flare her wings. I saw Felix stumbled back a few feet as she let out a
shrill roar, and leapt skyward. The earth fell away from beneath us, and the
sudden force of gravity on my body smashed me back against
Sile’s
chest.

I’d experienced fear a few times, but
this was my first encounter with sheer terror. I didn’t handle it very well. It
took everything I had not to throw up as we rocketed up into the sky. The
initial ride was so rough I was afraid something was wrong. Valla took in
forceful sweeps with her wings. It felt clumsy and chaotic, like we weren’t
making any progress, until I caught a glimpse of the ground far below.

She leveled off once we were several
hundred feet above the academy, circling at a gentle speed. Looking down made
me dizzy, and I was gripping the handles so tightly my hands felt numb. The air
was cold, and the sky above was pink as the sun began to rise. I could still
see stars peeking through the twilight.

That’s when I realized how beautiful
it was, and I forgot all my fears.

To the right, I could see where the
mountains sloped down, opening to let in a view of the ocean far away in the
distance. The rest of the way around us, the peaks of the mountains were still
covered in snow.
Sile
pointed over my shoulder,
showing me a few dark spots in the distance. There were other dragons already
flying with their riders.

My feelings of awe and exhilaration
lasted for about three minutes. Once I had finally gotten comfortable, maybe
even decided this was kind of fun,
Sile
turned up the
speed again. He gave Valla another nudge, and with a few forceful wing beats,
we went lurching forward.

We did spins. We did spirals. We went
up so fast all I could see was blue sky and blurs of clouds. We went down so
suddenly I lost my breath and couldn’t catch it again until we’d slowed down.
All the while,
Sile
was trying to shout directions at
me, and I couldn’t understand anything he said with the wind in my face.

Swooping back down toward the earth,
Valla cupped her wings and hovered for a moment while she stretched out her
strong hind legs and landed. We came to a sudden lurching halt, and immediately
I felt like I was going to throw up.

I barely made it out of the saddle in
time.
Sile
must have heard me gagging, because he
frantically started unbuckling the harness that tethered us together. He all
but dropped me out of the saddle, and as soon as I hit the ground, I started
throwing up. When I finally pulled myself together and looked up, Felix as
standing over me with a look of horror on his face; now it was his turn.

I sat in the shade while Felix had his
demonstrational ride. It still felt like the world was spinning around me.
Sile
had given me a canteen of water, and told me to keep
drinking until I felt better. When they landed again, my head had finally
started to clear, but I was still really embarrassed that I’d actually gotten
motion sick.

Until Felix threw up, too.

He seemed all right, at first. He
unbuckled, got down, and staggered a few feet. He was even grinning, and giving
me
a thumbs
up. Then I saw his face get really pale,
his eyes went wide, and he hunched over to puke in the grass just like I had.

Sile
was laughing when he got out of the
saddle, shaking his head at us and wrinkling his nose at the smell. “Looks like
you boys have a lot to get used to.” He chuckled, giving me a nod. “Let him
drink some, too. Take a few minutes,
then
you both
have laps to run. Meet me again in the dining hall for lunch after you’ve
cleaned yourselves up.”

six

Running
four laps around the outer wall of the academy probably doesn’t sound like a
big deal. But that was somewhere around four miles, and for someone who’d never
run that far just for exercise, it was pure torture. My legs ached, my lungs
felt like someone with big fists was squeezing them shut, and I was soaked with
sweat.

Felix seemed to handle it much better.
He ran behind me the whole time, and gave me a shove if I slowed down too much.
I knew if I stopped, he’d drag me by the ears if he had to. I couldn’t imagine
what it was going to be like to run those laps in full armor.

As we rounded the last corner on our
final lap, I was limping because my calves felt like they were about to pop off
the back of my legs. I was
starving,
dripping sweat,
and ready to lie back down and sleep the whole afternoon away. But
Sile
had a full day planned for us

We hurried through bathing, changing
into clean uniforms, and getting back down to the dining hall. It was a little
after noon, so there were a lot of other students and instructors eating while
we sat and waited for
Sile
.

Felix plopped down across from me at
one of the long tables, bringing a tray he’d piled high with food for us to
share. “Eat while you can,” he said as he grabbed a leg of roasted chicken for
himself from one of the plates. “I bet we’re about to get a jump start on some
academics.”

I groaned, hesitantly taking a loaf of
bread and piece of fruit for myself. “I guess if my brain is hurting, too,
it’ll take some of the focus off my legs.”

He laughed with his mouth full. “Get
used to it. We’ve got two whole years of this ahead of us now.”

Even after everything I’d been through
so far: the aches, the pain, even the throwing up—hearing that still made
me smile somehow. This was going to be the most difficult thing I’d ever done,
but it was the first time in my life I’d ever felt like I was doing something
worthwhile. It was the first thing that ever promised any kind of future for
me.

Sile
finally joined us after we’d eaten,
sitting down and dumping a pile of maps onto the table between us. They smelled
musty, and were made of thick parchment that had been crinkled and weathered
from use. He started to spread some out on the table, using cups and plates to
hold them out flat.

“Meet your new best friend,”
Sile
announced, sitting back so we could lean in and get a
good look. “You’re only useful if you know where you are, and where you need to
be. In and out of the saddle, knowing your maps is vital. You’ll spend more
time with your nose pressed against this paper than doing anything else. In a
week, I expect you both to be able to duplicate this purely out of memory.”

My jaw dropped. The map was so
detailed, I had no idea how we’d ever be able to memorize it all. It wasn’t
just a map of the valley; it was a map of the entire kingdom of Maldobar. I’d
never actually seen a map of it before, and my eyes were immediately drawn
across the paper at all the details written with black ink.

Maldobar was a very large peninsula,
bordering the sea on the east, west, and south sides. There were forests,
rivers, streams, mountains, cities, roads, islands, and even the small desert
in the bottom. Every feature had a name, and was labeled in curled writing.
There were also different elevations noted in various places, mostly in the
mountain regions.

To the north was the forbidding wall
of forest labeled with only one word:
Luntharda
. I
stared at it. It was just a solid mass of forest that covered the whole top
part of Maldobar, cutting it off from the rest of the continent. The Wild
Forest.
The kingdom of the gray elves.
That was where
my mother had come from, and it was the same kingdom Maldobar had been at war
with for so many years.

Sile
explained to us about the various
markings on the map key, letting us ask questions while he ate his lunch. We
discussed the features of the mountains, flying at the different elevations,
and the four watch posts where we might get deployed when we finished training.
Northwatch
was by far the most dangerous, since it
was only a few miles from the border of
Luntharda
.
Sile
said that was where all new riders had to go if they
wanted to earn their stripes.

Finally Felix sat back and let out a
noisy sigh. “So what starts first? I mean, as far as training goes. Where do we
even begin?”

Sile
sat back in his seat some, glancing
between us as he folded his arms across his chest. “Boys, this is as much a
mind game as it is a test of physical strength and stamina. You’ll be stretched
beyond your limits every single day. You’re going to feel like you’re drowning,
but just don’t let yourself give up. I expect you to get up before the call to
arms in the morning.” He paused, and glanced at me with a meaningful prick of
his brow. “That’s the morning horn blast. You run the drills I told you about, in
the air and on the ground. I’ll show you the flight pattern on your first
official day—you probably won’t have your saddles by then, so you’ll have
to
piggy back
for a while. You need to be back at the
breaking dome for your morning brief right after the call to arms. Then you’ll
head to the gymnasium after the brief for your first lessons in ground combat
training. That will take up the first half of your day, so be prepared.”

Felix snorted, “Yeah. I’ve heard about
that. They’re going to beat the basics into us, right?”

“We all start at the bottom as
fledglings. In this brotherhood, respect must be earned.”
Sile
shrugged. It made me wonder what kind of respect he’d won for himself. I didn’t
know what he’d been through, or what battles he’d fought. I didn’t really know
much about him at all, except that he had a strange interest in my future.

“You’ll be allowed to break for lunch,
and then you’ll report to the Roost for basic flight patterns and maneuvers.
Although, on your first few days, you’ll probably be learning how to actually
put a saddle on your dragon.”
Sile
smirked like that
was funny to him. I could understand why the idea of watching me try to wrestle
a big saddle that weighed more than I did onto the back of a wild, ornery
dragon might be amusing to someone else. It made me sick to my stomach, though.
“Your afternoons will be spent in classes learning the language of hand signals
we use in the air, and of course, studying your maps.”

“Can’t wait.” Felix was grinning. He
actually looked happy about all this, like he couldn’t wait to get started.

Sile
just rolled his eyes. “We’ll see how
you feel about it after your first week. Unless you’re psychotic, you’ll be
writing your mother begging her to let you come back home to your soft, warm
bed.”

As we settled back into our room for
the night, Felix was especially chatty. I could tell he was really excited from
our talk with
Sile
. He went on about his own dragon,
a female he’d named
Novalla
. He called her Nova for
short, and told me she was bigger than most females he’d ever seen bred.

“You’ll like her,” he promised with a
wide grin. “She’s like a lazy housecat, once you get to know her. I bet she’ll
get along with yours. What’s his name?”

“Mavrik,” I answered as I shucked off
my boots.

Felix couldn’t sit still for a second.
He was sitting, then he was up and laying out his gear, then he was looking for
his maps, and then he was back sitting on the bed again. I couldn’t believe he
still had any energy left at all, after what we’d been through all day.

“So, tell me about yourself,” he
demanded. “I don’t know anything about you, well, except that you’ve somehow
landed in the last place in the world I’d ever expect to see a halfbreed. We’re
going to be roommates for the next two years, so we might as well get to know
one another.”

“What is it you want to know?” I
looked at him from across the room.

He’d gotten up again, and was
obsessively adjusting the laces on his boots. “Well,” he spoke without looking
up. “Your dad is Ulric Broadfeather, right? The tackmaster?”

I frowned. Already I could tell this
was going to be an uncomfortable conversation for me. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“What about siblings? Or is it just
you?”

I told him about Roland and the twins,
who were my half siblings. There wasn’t much to tell, really. Roland was rarely
around, and I’d made a point to avoid
Emry
and Lin at
all costs.

“I never had any brothers or sisters,”
Felix said as he put one boot down and started working on the other. “My dad
popped off a son right away, which is all he wanted, and that was it for kids.
He’s not exactly a family man. He comes around to tell me when I’m doing
something wrong, or when I’ve embarrassed the family name somehow, but beyond
that . . . we don’t really know each other.”

Felix and I had more in common than
I’d anticipated. Or at least, it was starting to sound that way. “Yeah, Ulric
doesn’t really like me.” I couldn’t keep from laughing some at that. It was a
huge understatement. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“What about your mom? I mean your real
one, not your stepmom,” he asked. “What’s she like?”

I hesitated. No one had ever asked me
about her before. She was obviously where the
elven
half of my blood had come from, so generally people avoided acknowledging she’d
ever existed. I looked up at him warily, and wondered if this was going to end
with me having to defend her honor.

Felix met my gaze, waiting for my
reply with a curious arch to his brow. “What?”

I looked away quickly, and shrugged.
“She’s dead.” I decided to be vague.

“Did she have a name?” He wasn’t going
to let me off with that pitiful answer.

“
Alowin
,” I
answered reluctantly.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear she’s gone.”
He actually sounded sincere. “You must miss her.”

I just bobbed my head. It hurt to talk
about her. My memories of her were precious, and I didn’t want to share them
with anyone I thought might smear her name or accuse her of something she’d
never done. People had called her a witch before, or worse.

“So,” Felix started to speak again,
and I could tell by his voice that he was changing the subject. “On to the
important stuff. Girls. You have one in the pocket back at home?”

“What?” I gawked at him. That was
ridiculous, but for some reason, it made my face started to burn with
embarrassment. “No, of course not.”

“You sly pup.” He grinned at me
cunningly. “You do! Look at you, blushing like an idiot. What’s she like, eh?”

I tried to glare at him, to look
convincingly resentful of his accusations. But it was no use. “She’s just my
friend. It’s not like that at all.”

“Oh sure.” He rolled his eyes. Putting
his shoes aside, he leaned forward where he sat on the edge of his bed. He
looked very interested in what he thought was my love life. “A name, Jae. She’s
got one, doesn’t she?”

“Katalina,” I grumbled back. “Really,
she’s just a friend. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her before I left to
come here. She probably thinks I’m dead.”

“Dead?
Pfft
,
yeah right.” Felix finally started to settle in for the night, kicking back
onto his bed, and getting comfortable. “Just write her a letter. Tell her what
happened, that you’re staying here for a while to be a dragonrider. I bet
she’ll be after you like flies on flop, then. It just kills the girls, you
know.”

“What does?” I wasn’t sure what he
meant by all that, or if I even wanted Katalina to be after me.

“The dragonrider bit,” he answered
like I should have known that already. “You don’t get it do you?”

No, I definitely didn’t.

“The ladies love us, Jae. We’re the
heroes. We’re the ones all the other foot soldiers, knights, and cavalrymen
wish
they were. We’re masters of the
sky, the best of the best, and believe me . . . the ladies know it. They can’t
get enough of us.”

He jumped out of his bed again,
looking at me with a huge grin on his face, and that light of mischief wild in
his eyes. “Picture this: the annual officer’s ball, and all the big names are
there. We’re talking generals, colonels, knights, and everyone who’s anyone. Of
course, all the nobles come to pay their respects, and they bring their dainty
little daughters with them to go husband shopping. They’re all dolled up and
looking for a hero’s arm to hang on. Sure, the ground men and cavalry boys can
show them a few scars, talk up a few stories, but as soon as
we
hit the doorway—everything
changes.”

I wasn’t convinced.
At
least, not for my own sake.
Sure, I could see rich noble girls going
after someone like Felix. He was a dragonrider, and he was also a duke’s son.
Dragon or not, I was still just a halfbreed. I couldn’t imagine noble girls
flocking to dance with a bruised up, scrawny halfbreed who was three years
younger than all the other students in my class. Girls, even the ones my age,
were pretty much always taller than me, anyway.