Forged by Fire (15 page)
“Fold,” I ordered, and I rapped her shoulder girdle hard with my knuckles. Slowly she furled her wings and tucked them to her flanks. “Leg up.”
She shifted her weight and crooked a hind leg up, as if she were holding it fastidiously off soiled ground. Using her lifted knee as a step, as I had whenever I’d mounted a destrier to groom when in the dragonmaster’s stables, I swung onto the dragon, slid forward to her neck, and lay prone along the saddle. With shaking hands I grasped the smooth wooden hand rungs jutting alongside the escoa’s neck, then rammed my feet into the stirrup rungs at the rear of the saddle, either side the escoa’s spine. Her saddle bags hung from her neck like pendulous fruits.
“How do I urge her airborne?”
Ryn stared at me as if I were yolkbrained. “Pull against the reins and drive your heels against her spine.”
“My reins are tethered to your saddle.”
“Oh . . .” He chewed his lower lip and shrugged. “Pull back on the hand rungs, then, and kick hard.”
“Do we take a run at the flight, or spring airborne from standing?”
“Only destriers can spring airborne from standing.”
“So we’ll have to urge our mounts into a run.”
“Yes.”
“This courtyard long enough?”
“Not for a train of six.” He swallowed, glanced at the stablehands’ cottage, looked as if he wanted to bolt.
“Untie the lead and turn us about,” I ordered. “And don’t try to run from me, Ryn. I’ve no desire to bleed the life from you, but if I have to, I will. Just do as I tell you, and I won’t hurt you. I vow it.”
He was as naked and thin as a skeleton, standing unclad before me, shivering. Just then thunder exploded overhead, a furious clap that slammed like a giant mallet against roof top and earth. The escoas shied, and one of them trumpeted in fear.
“Quickly, Ryn! If we’re caught now, both of us’ll die be neath an Auditor’s blade!”
He whirled, untethered the lead escoa, and led her at a trot in a wide circle to the end of the courtyard that was directly opposite the stablehands’ hut. My mount followed, snorting and tossing her snout. The reins tethered to the escoa behind me went briefly taut; then the third escoa fol lowed. And so on, down the line.
This is madness, I thought to myself, envisioning all of us tangled in the courtyard, dragons trumpeting in fear, wingspars snapped, barbells ripped out of nares, necks broken.
Ryn climbed gingerly aboard his mount. He looked back at me and opened his mouth as if to shout something, and my insides went cold as death, but then he clapped his mouth shut, turned forward, and dropped into flying posi tion. He looked like a freshly whittled arrow lying slender and bare between his escoa’s unfurled wings.
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!
Ryn’s mount hare-lunged toward the far end of the courtyard, and I kicked Ickwi hard on either side of her spine to urge her to follow. There was a gentle tug on my saddle from behind, and then we were all loping across the courtyard, toward the stablehands’ hut, and Ryn’s mount was lunging swiftly at the fore of the line, her great wings lifted high and beating the air, spread so wide they encom passed half the courtyard, and then she gathered herself and sprang airborne, and Ickwi gathered herself beneath me and she sprang skyward just as her neck shot forward, the reins between her and the lead escoa taut as a bow string. There was a violent jerk on my saddle from the rear, as the reins between Ickwi and the escoa next in line went taut, and suddenly I knew we’d not survive this; there was no way—
But no. We were airborne, rising over the stablehands’ hut, skimming over the daronpuis’ building so close I swore I heard Ickwi’s scales rasp against stone, and then we were rising into the skies in jerky stages.
The daronpuis’ quarters fell away from us. We gained altitude, Ickwi’s wingbeats growing even and steady. No jerks or tugs came either fore or aft of my saddle. The white domes of the temple loomed below, and at my shoulder height, the tip of the golden spire jutting up from the tem ple’s central dome flashed by.
Wind, noise, the lurch and list and heave of muscle: drag onflight. I was terrified. I’d fall off without an experienced rider pinning me into my saddle. I was sure of it.
Clinging hold, chin pressed against dragon neck, I dared turn slightly to look behind me. There were four escoas tethered in the string after us. Incredibly, I’d done it. I’d stolen my own escoas from the messenger byre.
Below us, the shingled rooftops of the Noua Sor tene ments appeared, a dark patchwork of peaks. We continued south, then began descending rather steeply. The arbiyesku warehouse flashed by below.
The ground rushed toward us. Fast. I tensed, clung tight to the hand rungs. Gritted my teeth. Closed my eyes.
“Slow down!” I screamed, and then we landed. Dragons slammed one into another and bawled. I was thrown from the saddle, hit the ground hard. Dust billowed around me. Agony in my ribs. They were fractured anew; I was sure of it. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. . . .
Through the dust I saw Ryn leap off the lead escoa and reach for Ickwi, who was rearing, frothy blood foaming around her nose barbell. Ryn held her reins firmly and cooed to her. Gritting my teeth, I struggled to my feet, took a shallow breath, and lurched toward the escoa tethered behind Ickwi.
Her barbell had been wrenched almost entirely free of her nose; the steel dangled over her chin, sheathed in a skein of bloody phlegm. A jagged flap of flesh hung from her destroyed nares, cluttered with shards of cartilage and bone. She was half rearing, eyes rolling, a foreleg hanging askew as if boneless.
I fumbled with her barbell, managed to unscrew one end, and slid it from the mess of her nose. Cartilage rasped in a gristly way as I pulled the barbell clear. She snorted bloody foam at me and settled, shuddering, on three legs, her fourth tucked close to her breast. The bitter reek of agitated dragon fogged the air.
I stared at the line of mutilated dragons behind her as wind blew gustily. What had I done?
Dust and dead grass lifted into the air in violently whirl ing funnels, then blew raggedly apart. The darkness about us suddenly turned starkly silver from a sheet of lightning. Thunder reverberated for long, long miles over the sea of savanna. Blood dripped from ruined nares.
Bolt their wings together. Hobble them. Get them re strained.
I went through a saddlebag, withdrew hobbles, dropped them on the ground. Found the wing bolts. The escoa shied a little, and the dragon tethered behind her screamed. I grabbed one wingspar and rapped it with my knuckles.
“Fold, hey! Fold!”
She obeyed, trembling as she gathered wing leather over dorsum, the reek of her like wet copper in my mouth. Once her wings were folded, I inserted a clamping bolt through one of the coin-sized holes that had been punched through her wing leather, slid the bolt through the saddle loop, and clamped it shut. Did the same with the other wing. Good. Now she couldn’t unfurl her wings; they were bolted shut to the saddle.
I stooped beneath her breast, gritting my teeth against the pain in my fractured ribs, and stroked her oily dewlaps. I was about to hobble her; then I stopped. No need. She had a broken foreleg; she was going nowhere.
Ryn had calmed and restrained Ickwi. Wordlessly he un screwed the nose barbell from the hideously damaged nares of the fourth escoa in line. I went to work on the fifth.
When we had all the escoas restrained, I faced Ryn, my hands slick with dragon blood. I was reeling a little. “I’m going into the arbiyesku.” I gasped. “Turn around so I can gag and bind you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.You don’t need to bind me.” He shivered in the wind, which blew wildly about us, swirling first one way, then blasting another. Far behind Ryn, over the jungle mountains in the distance, lightning spasmed. Thunder rolled toward us, then erupted with three great claps. Both of us flinched, and the lathered escoas shied and tossed their snouts.
I made a decision, hoped I wouldn’t regret it. “I’ll bring you clothes when I return,” I wheezed; then I turned and loped toward the arbiyesku, ignoring the knives of pain and creaking, bubbling sounds issuing from my ribs.
In the far east, greenish light was spilling across the black table of night. Dawn was coming.
I staggered into the arbiyesku compound, clattered up the stairs of the women’s barracks, and barged through the door. Shouts of alarm, muffled thuds, silhouettes bolting upright from the floor . . .
“Savga?” I called. “Savga?”
A shadow hurtled through the dark and flung itself at my knees. I staggered back a little under the impact, then knelt to grip her tight.
“Thank the One Dragon you’re safe,” I murmured against her neck as the women of the arbiyesku surrounded us.
“She said you were taken by soldiers,” said a shadow with a voice that sounded like scree sliding down a moun tainside. I looked up: Tiwana-auntie.
“I was, but I’ve escaped. I need to speak to someone from the myazedo. Quickly.”
Stillness and silence from the women surrounding me.
I suppressed the urge to scream with impatience, slowly stood, and spoke as calmly as possible. “I’ve stolen the es coas from the messenger byre. They’re not far from here, near the cocoon warehouse. I need help bringing them to the myazedo in the hills.”
Savga was the first to speak in the stunned silence. “You’re taking me to Mother?”
I hadn’t planned to, not at all. But there was little to be done. Savga was present, and I was going to the myazedo where her mother might be. Ergo . . .
I nodded tersely. She flung herself around my knees again and sobbed with raw abandon. I placed a hand gently on her head.
“Please,” I said to the humped shadow and glistening white eyes that was Tiwana-auntie. “We have to move now, before the theft is discovered.”
With a grunt, she shouldered by me and led the way outside. The men had woken at the alarmed cries of the women and were crowded around the foot of the barracks’ stairs. As I started to descend them, I saw someone famil iar standing amongst those men, his bald pate identifiable under the starlight.
“What are
you
doing here?” I cried.
“Things are happening, girl—”
“Where’s Gen?”
“Wish I knew.” The dragonmaster spat. “Something’s gone bad; I can feel it.”
My spine prickled. “I thought you were in the destrier stables, readying a stall for . . . for . . . a destrier.”
“Gen told me where he’d hidden you and the puling kitten. When he disappeared I went looking for you, only to find you gone, too.” He sounded outraged, as if Gen and I had planned our respective disappearances.
I took a deep breath. “We need to get to the myazedo in the hills. Tonight. I’ve stolen the escoas that were stabled in the messenger byres. They’re hobbled behind the cocoon warehouse, on the savanna. You can help fly the escoas out now that you’re here. They were . . . injured in getting this far.”
Eyes stared at me, stunned. Thunder blasted the sky, and the stairs I was stood upon shook.
“There’s a storm,” Tiwana-auntie croaked. “The Wet starts.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“Dawn comes. You might be seen.”
“Not if we leave
now
.”
The dragonmaster stalked toward the stairs, shoulders hunched. “Have you lost your reason, or do you speak truth?”
“They’re behind the warehouse; I swear it.”
“How many of ’em?”
“Six.”
“How’d you fly them out by yourself?”
“I took an apprentice herald as a hostage and tethered the dragons together by nose barbell.”
“No wonder they’ve been injured,” he said, disgusted.
“Better six injured than no escoas at all. How many have
you
managed to procure?”
“Procure,”
he said acidly. “Steal, is the truth of it.”
“They’re my dragons. Can’t steal what you own. Now, are you coming or not?”
A rhetorical question. We both knew he would.
Another savage gust of wind. The dragon behind us yawed from side to side, and my dragon pitched and reeled and floundered. Her muscles bulged as her neck strained far forward, as if she believed she might free herself of the anchorlike drag behind her if only she reached far enough. The muscles in her powerful shoulder girdle shuddered. Her desperation and fear were palpable. I had to release the dragon tethered to our saddle or she would be the death of all three of us.
I fumbled for the paring knife I’d knotted into the fabric of my bitoo, back at the messenger byre. A difficult maneu ver, one-handed, on a pitching dragon, while rain hurtled down like ceramic shards.
Mo fa cinai, wabaten ris balu.
Purest Dragon, become my strength.
I had the paring knife. Clenching the saddle with knees and thighs, I stretched down to my left knee, to the leather saddle loop to which the dragonmaster had tethered my spare escoa by means of a makeshift neck halter. I slashed at the tether. Missed.
A fork of lightning hissed across the clay gray sky, turn ing the world briefly, starkly white, and a hundred or so feet below us jungle flashed as bilious green as a wildcat’s eyes.
I slashed again. Steel sank into leather. Another gust of wind slammed hard into us and we slewed to the side. My paring knife went spinning from my hand.
The slashed tether went taut, then snapped, snaking away from us like a wild whip, and the sudden release from the dragon behind us was as if we’d been cast free from a mooring, and my escoa flew strong.
I raised my head slightly and squinted in the driving rain. I couldn’t see Ryn behind me with Savga huddled be neath him, her wrists tied tight to the saddle rungs to keep her seated. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since I’d last glimpsed them. Nor could I see the dragonmaster ahead of me, Piah gripping his waist. When the storm had devoured us, all had become confusion.
We’d left the arbiyesku mounted upon three dragons, just as a sickly dawn had begun to seep through the para sitic clouds swarming the sky. I flew solo. I’d wanted Savga to fly with the dragonmaster, but no, he’d needed Piah be hind him, to give directions to the myazedo camp as best he could from the bizarre perspective of an aerial view. Ryn, as an apprentice herald, had more experience than I at fly ing dragons, so I’d deemed it safer for Savga to fly with him than me.
All I could think of now was Ryn’s bony back and his youth, and how foolish I’d been to entrust Savga’s life to a thirteen-year-old boy.
Thunder slammed like a cudgel against my head. Light ning sizzled and forked, charging the air with a metallic tang. My skin tingled nastily, as if I’d been stung all over by a clawful of scorpions.
I could hang on no longer. I would plummet to my death, I was sure of it.
Land, I willed my dragon. Land.
But far below, the jungle was a great, hirsute green fist defiantly clenched shut against us.
Lightning flashed, and in the brilliant white glare rain looked like milk and wing leather like wet, rippling alabaster, and the fingers of my hands, bone. I was plunged into gray murk again, murk that may have been dawn or late morn or may even have been noon. Impossible to tell.
Another deafening boom of thunder exploded around me with such force I felt the noise as an intrusion within my chest, as if the raw muscle of my heart had been touched.
My mount suddenly dropped her hind legs down and craned her neck skyward. I was all but vertical, standing in my stirrup rungs, and I shrieked as I lost my grip on a hand rung. I was tipping backward. . . .
Wings shredded the air on either side of me, great leather sheets flapping furiously, and we landed, not with a hard jolt, but with a discernible rebound, as though the ground were exceptionally resilient. Foliage slapped me as my es coa dropped to all fours, her muscles clenching, twitching, and flexing as she sought her balance. Rain pounded around us in furious gusts, and wind soughed over the surrounding bush and trees.
Shuddering, I sat up in the saddle and squinted through tree branches into the sky, shielding the rain from my eyes with one hand.
“Savga!” I bellowed. “Ryn!”
Nothing above but foaming, curdled cloud, driving rain, and seething wind. I looked behind us, to see if by chance we’d been followed.
Great Dragon.
My escoa had landed on the bough of a cliff-clinging tree, and the bough jutted out over a valley of dense, windswept jungle. Treetops moaned and swayed far below us in the wind, while the tree we’d landed on creaked, and branches bobbed up and down and lashed this way and that, and leaves fluttered and slapped, and twigs cascaded to the hanging garden of snarled vines and hanks of moss and parasitic plants far below us. The ground wasn’t visible.
I lay in the saddle and melded to leather and wood. I breathed shallowly, hesitantly, as if the rise and fall of my chest might unbalance my dragon.
She moved. Her wings were widespread, like a grounded bat, the claws at the ends of both wing tips wrapped tight around slender offshoots from our bough.
Lightning flashed.
My dragon moved again, tentatively, clumsily, and the slim branch she held in her left wing tip claws snapped. We listed sharply to one side. I screamed. Thunder boomed.
Beneath me, the escoa’s muscles flexed and clenched as she struggled to balance on the bough. She found her footing, settled her weight over her hips, and released the branch on her right.
After a pause, she flapped her wings a few times to shake off rainwater. She drew them in and folded them as best she could over her back. I welcomed the wet, leathery em brace; it held me better in my saddle.
She squatted down on the bough, phlegmatic. Shook wa ter off her arrow-shaped head. Waited.
There was nothing to do but stay in my saddle and wait along with her.