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Even up here, the sand got into Neeru’s clothing. Slowly, so as not to unbalance the kite or tug on the communication cord, she loosened her shirt and shook out as much of it as she could. By the time she’d refastened the buttons, the sun was hitting the tops of the dunes ahead of her, warming her belly and legs.
Wind nudged her, urging her to soar and swoop as her ancestors had done with their dragons, to outpace the swifts, to chase the sun. All she had to do was unclip the tether and the communication cord, and she’d be free. She could go wherever she wanted—anywhere away from this endless, pointless civil war. Anywhere away from the rules that said when she could fly. Anywhere away from the infantry, and the sniggers and averted glances whenever she dragged herself past them.
But no. She’d sworn an oath to be loyal to the King and obey her commanding officer. Their unit was here to guard the western frontier, and her duty was to warn the troops on the ground if she saw the enemy coming across the desert. She couldn’t do that if she wasn’t attached to the communication cord.
More than that, if she disgraced herself in the eyes of her brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, then when the dragons returned, she wouldn’t be bonded with one. She’d rather be dead.
So she gradually turned her head from north to south and back to north, watching the farthest dunes for signs of any enemy soldiers cresting them. Every fifth time she reached the southern limit, she gave the communication cord three tugs, the signal for all quiet. Far below, a bell attached to the cord rang in sympathy. A few moments later, the groundman acknowledged with three tugs of his own, ringing a bell at her end.
The wind grew stronger, and the kite strained at the tether, jangling the bell. Neeru adjusted the flaps to stop the kite from damaging itself. This was second nature now, but how much easier it would be on the back of a dragon, a creature that understood what you wanted and would do it almost before you’d finished thinking.
We should be fighting the Asdanunders, she thought, not one another. Punish them for killing so many dragons and chasing the rest away. But without dragons, that was a fight they couldn’t win.
Would they ever find out where the dragons had gone? Not by fighting skirmish after skirmish that moved back and forth over the same few miles of territory, that much was certain.
Sounds drifted up from the ground—shouts, running, weapons striking shields and flesh. There wasn’t any training due today. Had she lost track of what day it was? It wouldn’t be the first time.
Below, the camp was in chaos. Men in enemy uniforms ran unhindered, cutting down her comrades.
How in all the hells had this happened? Why had she not seen them coming? She twisted to see the ground behind her. Movement in the scrub to the northeast. Enemy reinforcements? She pulled the cord four times—enemy sighted—twice—northeast—twice more—one mile.
No answer. She repeated the signal. Smoke tickled her nose. A wagon was on fire. The groundman had gone. She was an easy target for anyone who thought to look up. Could the enemy archers reach this high? If not, all they’d have to do was winch her down. They’d get a nasty surprise when they did—she might be half the height of a man, but she could punch as hard as any of them.
She should stay airborne and attack the enemy from above. With what? Older dragonriders were given bows or darts or alchemical rocks. She had nothing except a knife. She’d even left her shoes on the ground, to save weight.
Without warning, the kite slid to one side, then levelled out and rose with the wind. As her stomach returned to where it belonged, Neeru saw what had happened. The fighting had reached the winch, and someone had bumped into it. Her side were outnumbered. It was only a matter of time before the enemy brought her down. She wouldn’t let them do that.
Her hand clasped the release for the tether. A gust of wind caught the kite. She tumbled end over end, rising and falling like a leaf. She fought for control, trying to remember her flying lessons. If you have time, make lots of small changes, not one big one. She didn’t have time. More than once, the ground came close enough to fill her vision. By the time she was flying straight and level at a safe height, she was out over the desert, with no sign of the camp or the woods behind her.
Neeru took a moment to assess her situation. The kite was intact. The tether had gone, of course, but the communication cord was still attached, partly wrapped around the kite’s frame and partly trailing behind her.
How had the enemy got through their lines without being seen? They surely couldn’t have come across the desert, not in such numbers. Was this a sneak attack, or part of a wider assault? Was her friend Solastim all right? If they’d hurt him, she’d… she’d… What could she do about it?
Should she go back? Could she go back? A steady wind carried her westwards, too strong to fly against. Higher up, the air might be still. Even if it wasn’t, she’d have a better chance of spotting somewhere to land and shelter from the worst of the day’s heat.
She pushed the bar forward, and the kite rose in a smooth curve. This was how flight should be. When she levelled off, as she’d hoped, she seemed to be moving more slowly. She made a gentle turn to the right. A bump on the horizon caught her eye—too angular to be a dune. A building? She’d thought nobody lived in the desert, but the world was old, and had seen many changes. She could rest there. Perhaps even find water. She banked towards it.
As she drew nearer, the bump resolved into a wall built against a low hill. Behind the wall, a shallow dome was visible. She circled, looking for somewhere to land. Several buildings were crammed behind the wall. The dome was merely the top of the largest. Did the wall mean this place was a fortress? Or was it just to keep the sand out?
There was no flat space big enough for a landing within the wall. Fortunately, there was an open gate in the part farthest from the hill. She circled a few more times to lose height. Heat rising from the sand slapped her, forcing the kite upwards. She took a deep breath, unhitched her legs from the tail, and folded the wings.
The kite plummeted. Her feet scraped over the burning sand. She ran backwards, nearly tripping. At last, she stopped and bent over, panting.
She had to find shade before her feet caught fire or her head boiled. But first she had to fold the kite properly, otherwise she’d damage it when she walked—or ran—to the gate. She’d done this a hundred times or more, but she usually had a groundman to help her, and she usually hadn’t been hopping from one foot to the other, biting her lip and swearing inventively. But at last everything was tucked away in its proper place, so the kite didn’t drag on the ground when she lifted it onto her back.
She hurried towards the gate, cursing her short legs and their knees that didn’t bend how they ought to. With every step, her feet sank into the sand. She forced herself to slow down. A fall could damage the kite, possibly to the point of not being able to fly.
When she reached the gate, she leaned against it in its blessed shade. Once she felt cool enough, she turned to study the place.
The round building with the domed roof that had caught her attention in the air stood in the middle of the site, towering over everything else. Two rows of lumpy stones that resembled people led from the gate to the building’s entrance. Were they statues, maybe? Too weathered for her to identify.
It had been a long time since anyone lived here. Sand covered the ground and had drifted against the walls. The ground was paved with stone, which had become cracked and uneven over the years. Most of the buildings had some or all of the roof missing. The front of a building at the far right had partly collapsed, as had some of its internal walls and floors. Gutters clogged with sand ran along the ground. They were just wide enough to catch her foot in, so she’d have to be careful where she trod.
Had this place been a fortress? Probably not. The buildings all had big windows, making easy targets of anyone inside, and many of the gaps and passages between buildings had no windows overlooking them, so an enemy who got past the gate could move around unseen. The fact that the site was built against a hill would make it hard to attack from that direction—but the staircase that led over the wall and up the hill offered an easy route in for anyone who could climb the hill. The top of the hill would be a good place to launch the kite, if she could find the bottom of the stairs among the buildings.
The most intact, and largest, building was the one with the domed roof. It was about two hundred feet across, and maybe a hundred high. It consisted of three cylinders, one on top of another, each narrower and shorter than the one below it. That building seemed the best place to stow the kite while she explored the rest of the site. But before she spent a lot of time wandering around, she needed to find water.
Staying in the shade as much as possible, Neeru walked to the round building. In the cracks in the ground, especially near the walls, small, straggling plants grew. So there was water here.
On either side of the building’s entrance, a gutter ran into it. Within, the floor was mostly clear of sand. The building had no internal supports, and she hesitated to step into such a large space. How did it stay up? But it had stood for centuries. It would surely endure for the few hours she planned to be here.
As Neeru crossed the threshold, a cold tingle passed over her skin. So there was magic in the walls. That explained why this building was in better condition than the rest. A breeze came in through the entrance, but did little to cool her.
The floor and the walls were covered in shiny tiles, mostly in swirling patterns of blue and green. Sunlight streaming through the windows glinted off the tiles. In the middle of the floor was a group of painted statues—men, women and a child kneeling around a… big leaping fish?
She knew now what this place had to be—a temple to one of the countless false gods that the people had worshipped in the centuries before they accepted the truth of Mazor, Kashalbe and Dagoreth. Why had it not been pulled down? Because it was in the middle of a desert, most likely. And what was a temple to a fish god doing here, so far from any sea or lake? She’d have to ask a historian, if she ever met one.
She shrugged the kite off her shoulders and carefully placed it on the floor, near the entrance. She stretched and groaned with relief. It would’ve been easy to lie down on the sand and sleep, but she had a mission to perform—even if it was one she’d given herself.
She approached the statues. The gutters continued towards them and emptied into a shallow pool around their base. Around the big fish, many smaller fish swam over the waves towards the people. The people weren’t just kneeling and adoring the big fish. Some of them were using nets to scoop up the small fish. So the whole thing was an appreciation of the big fish’s generosity in letting the people eat the small fish? Who in their right mind would worship a god that allowed that? No wonder the Asdanunders had beaten them.
Another gutter ran into the other side of the pool. That didn’t make any sense. The pool would flood easily. Then again, it hardly ever rained in a desert. Maybe the pool was big enough for all the rain they were ever likely to get. The gutter came from a short wall that stood by itself at the back of the temple. Perhaps that concealed another doorway. Perhaps it led to the staircase up the hill.
Neeru hobbled to the wall, wary of her footing. More than once, she skidded on the smooth tiles. Around the wall, the sand had covered the floor evenly to a couple of inches. As she’d guessed, behind the wall was a doorway, smaller and less finished than the one she’d entered by. She was about to go through it when she saw two lines of rectangular impressions in the sand—the right size and shape to be footprints.
Neeru’s first instinct was to run. But no. She might be only twelve, and two-thirds the height she should be, and untested in battle, but she was a dragonrider, and dragonriders didn’t flee from danger. Besides, the outlines of the prints were blurred. Whoever had made them might be long gone. She unsheathed her knife—a toy, more suited to peeling vegetables than stabbing an enemy. She listened for sounds of anyone moving beyond the doorway. She heard none, though if there was anyone, she’d given them plenty of warning. Well, anyone who thought she was just a crippled girl would have a fight on their hands. She passed through the doorway.
It led not to the staircase, but to another chamber, roughly square, much smaller and gloomier than the one she’d just left. It too was tiled, but the tiles were brown and unglazed. Sand covered parts of the floor, but not enough to show footprints. Doorways in the far corners led to other rooms. In the middle of the room was the thing Neeru had been looking for—a well with a bucket next to it.
The gutter from the other room led into the well. Now the arrangement made sense. When rain fell, the gutters collected it from all over the site and brought it here. The water flowed through the pool around the statues, not into it. With nobody living here, the well might have decades’ worth of water. She peered over the rim, seeing no sign of how far away the water was. She’d have to use the bucket. But it had no rope.
She went back to the kite and unhitched the communication cord. She tied it to the handle and lowered the bucket, giving silent thanks to Dagoreth when she heard a soft splash and felt the cord go limp with a good ten feet of it still in her hands.
She raised the bucket, wincing whenever she heard it hit the side of the well. At last, it was in her hands, still almost full. She sniffed the water, smelling no decay, then took a sip. It tasted fine—cool after so much heat. She took a mouthful. Swallowed. Waited to see if it would disagree with her. It didn’t, so she gulped down as much as she could stomach, then held the bucket above her head and tipped the rest over herself.
When she’d stopped shivering, she put the bucket on the floor, leaving the cord tied to it, and went to the doorway on the right. This led to another square room, slightly bigger than the one with the well. It had a section of exposed brickwork in the far wall—a doorway that had been filled in? Sand had drifted into some of the corners. It had many bumps and dents that didn’t look natural, but nothing that was unmistakably the sign of a person. Mixed in with the sand were what looked like pieces of straw—bedding for animals, or just blown in on the wind?
Some parts of the floor were much more worn than others. Perhaps there had been furniture here once, and the occupants had walked around it. She turned to the other room off the room with the well.
This one was smaller than any she’d seen so far, and had no windows, only a small, neat hole in the roof. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she picked out a hole in the floor, directly under the one in the roof, surrounded by a circle of bricks. Perhaps it was a fireplace, which would make the hole in the roof a primitive chimney.
She crouched by the fireplace and scooped up a handful of the material in it, then let it trickle through her fingers. Sand, not ashes. So nobody had used it recently. She knew the desert could get cold at night, and she might be grateful of a fireplace then—if she had anything to burn in it, or anything to light it with.
As she stood, she noticed variations in the colour of the walls. They were pictures made of little tiles, faded and worn. She’d seen something like this in the dining room at the Nest, though much smaller. An aunt had told her it was called a mosaic.
The pictures here started at one side of the door and went about three quarters of the way round. The whole height of the walls, apart from a few inches at the top and bottom, was covered in these pictures. Most of the tiles were smaller than her little fingernail. How long must it have taken to fasten them all in place?
Here were a couple of people, running. The one behind looked over his shoulder. Behind him, a third person lay on the ground, surrounded by… a bush? No, flames. Behind and above him, a dark shape, too large to take in all at once. A map of an island? An odd-shaped storm cloud? An eye there, which would make those sticking-out things legs… So if this was an animal, which one? Two legs at the front, so where were the hind ones? Long wavy tail, big fin on its back… some sort of sea monster? That would fit with what she’d seen in the big room—this was a warning about what happened to people who displeased the fish god. Except… why was the sea monster above the people? It might’ve jumped out of the sea, but then where was the sea in this picture? And why would a sea monster burn someone? No… wait. Those bumps on its head looked a lot like horns. And the scalloped edge of its fin—it wasn’t a fin, it was a raised wing. And here—hind legs, tucked under its tail. This was no monster, it was a dragon!
But… but if it was a dragon, where was the rider? And where was the saddle on the dragon’s neck?
No time to fret about that now. She had a mission. She turned, squirming at how her damp clothes had stuck to her, then returned to the temple’s entrance. The kite was where she’d left it. (And why wouldn’t it be?) All the same, she crouched to check it for damage. It was intact. Of course it was.
Outside, the heat was stronger than she remembered. Or was that just the contrast with the interior? She explored the rest of the site, keeping to the shade as much as possible. This would be much quicker if the rest of her squad was here, but as an officer had told her once, you had to work with the forces you had, not the forces you wished you had.
The buildings were all empty, apart from the occasional length of wood or pile of bricks, half-buried in sand, that had probably formed part of the roof or an upper floor. Some of the buildings where the roof was still intact had mosaics on one wall, usually to do with the sea or things that lived in it. Why this obsession with the sea in a place so far from it? Maybe the builders were obsessed with the sea because they were so far from it.
There were no other mosaics featuring dragons.
More than once, Neeru thought she heard someone behind her, or saw someone out of the corner of her eye, but it was only the wind sighing, or sand stirring.
She found the staircase she’d seen from the gate, behind the fish god’s temple. It zigzagged almost to the top of the hill. She started up it, resting whenever it changed direction. Soon she was sweating more than after a long run. She wasn’t good with stairs at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times.
When she finally reached the top, she found a flat strip, about a hundred feet long, that ran north-south, tilted slightly to the south. It could have been made for her. Launching a kite needed a good straight run, preferably from a height and preferably downhill. Unfortunately, it also needed a stiff breeze, and there was no sign of that at present. Perhaps the wind would pick up near sunset. Though she’d have to be careful—launch too late, and by the time she got back to friendly territory, it might be too dark to land safely. Maybe she should wait until morning? If she was away from camp for too long, then when she returned—if she returned—she might be expelled from the cadre and sent back to the Nest. There were people she missed back there, but they wouldn’t welcome her if that was why she returned.
She trudged down the staircase. Her knees made that even harder than going up. Often she had to go sideways, or backwards, like on a ladder. When she reached the bottom, she was dizzy, and her limbs felt heavy. She sat down to rest in the shade of the staircase.
She woke with a start, shivering. The daylight had almost gone, as had most of the day’s heat. She had to get indoors while she could still see her way there. She hobbled on stiff legs back to the temple and sat next to the kite.
In the dim light, the statue of the fish god took on a more threatening appearance. Did Neeru want to sleep within sight of that thing? She wouldn’t see it once it got dark, but maybe that was worse. The god wasn’t real, but… could she be certain of that? She stood and, giving the statue a wide berth, went to the room with the mosaics. It’d be warmer here. Less draughty. Those were good reasons to prefer this room over the fish god’s one. She should bring the kite with her, but it was heavy, and she was tired. Moving it might damage it, and she’d only have to move it again when the time came to leave. She wasn’t supposed to leave it unguarded, but really—the place had been abandoned for years. She’d seen no sign of anyone else for miles around when she was in the air. Nobody was going to sneak in here to steal or damage the kite while she slept.
For a long time, sleep eluded her. She was used to sleeping in unfamiliar or uncomfortable places, but she missed her blanket and bedroll. She missed the sounds of her comrades settling down, whispering jokes and gossip—wise Shoinath, brave little Yentan, even their sarcastic Squad Leader, Andoyar. Most of all, she missed Solastim, and how he could say more with one gesture than most people could say in fifty words. If she didn’t make her way back to her unit, they’d never finish the night-time version of their sign language, where they drew the signs on one another’s hands.
She tried not to think about how the language might not be finished even if she did return.
The last of the light hinted at shapes in the mosaics on the walls. As the darkness became complete, orange sparks drifted down from the hole in the roof and landed in the fireplace. A fire slowly took hold, and a sharp smell passed over her. Pine resin? Surely not. The dragonriders sometimes used it in ceremonies, but why would it be here? Pine trees grew only in cold, high places, like the mountains where the Nest lay. Had another dragonrider arrived without her knowledge?
The fire grew to the point where the mosaics became visible. Intrigued, Neeru stood and walked around the room, studying the pictures.
They were scenes from the history of the dragonriders and of Nuhys. There was Igurth, the first dragonrider, receiving the secret of how to tame a dragon from Dagoreth. Igurth forming and training the first cadre. Pledging allegiance to Queen Adarsh. Names of famous dragonriders and their dragons. Helping to unify Nuhys. The war against Asdanund and its bloody stalemate. Khirayu’s brilliant strategy to end the war—sneak into Asdanund with a clutch of eggs and rear the dragons in the mountains, then launch a surprise attack from behind enemy lines. The victory celebrations. The Asdanundish resistance, made possible with ancient magical weapons. The slaughter of dragons and dragonriders. The dragons’ realisation that they were much wiser and more powerful than the human vermin who had enslaved them, and that they could escape to a place where no human could follow.
That wasn’t what had happened!
Neeru awoke, sweating. Through the hole in the roof, a circle of purple sky was visible. She lay where she had last night. She must’ve dreamed seeing the mosaics by firelight. All the same, she crawled over to the fireplace and held her hand above it. No heat rising. No smell of pine resin. She raked her hand through its contents. Cold.
She stood and went to the room with the well to draw some water. She drank several mouthfuls and splashed a little on her face.
In the main room, the kite was exactly where she’d left it. Outside, a faint breeze brushed her skin. The air above the hill shimmered. The air was much colder than when she’d last been outside. Thin streams of sand blew across the ground, braiding and unbraiding. Now would be a good time to climb the hill and launch the kite, before the wind died and the day became too hot.
And yet… why had her dream been so truthful for most of its time, then departed so wildly from history at the end? It was said that the gods sometimes sent messages in dreams. Or had she just been thinking too much about that strange picture she’d seen yesterday, of the riderless dragon killing people? She went back to the room with the mosaics.
Inside, she tapped her foot as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. What wouldn’t she have given for a torch, or even a candle?
To the left of the dragon she’d seen yesterday, more people lay on the ground. Above them, another riderless dragon breathed a wide fan of flame over them. To the left of that, a rider fell from a third dragon. The dragon’s neck was twisted in a way that suggested it had deliberately thrown the rider off.
That was impossible. Wasn’t it? The extensive training of both dragon and rider, the mental bond between them—a dragon would rather die than hurt its rider.
Here were three dragons, with saddles but without riders, facing one another. Dragons hardly ever got that close together. They were naturally aggressive and territorial, and the training made them more so. Something about their expressions… were they… talking? Planning?
No—that was just the remnants of the dream influencing how she interpreted the pictures. Dragons were powerful and clever animals, but animals all the same.
So if the dragons weren’t planning, what were they doing? Maybe they weren’t doing anything. Maybe the artist had never seen a dragon. They’d been gone for centuries, after all.
The last picture on the right was a dark triangle with a dent in one side. That had to be Pahonshoth, the mountain that was home to the Nest of the Dragonriders. The true Dragonriders, she reminded herself, not the scum who’d thrown in their lot with Brahan and the rebels. Above, a dragon looked down on it.
Farther to the left, the pictures fitted with the history she knew. They began at the doorway, with Igurth meeting Dagoreth. On the other side of the doorway was a large gap. After the dragons attacking people was a dragon with its head missing, and a big circle in front of it, centred on where its head should be. Next to that, the back half of a dragon, with a circle centred on its middle. Then, just the tail of a dragon, with a smaller circle around it. Were they passing through holes? Holes in what?
If they’d done that, and had stopped letting humans ride them, a human couldn’t follow them. But the Dragonriders had kites now. If she could find one of those holes, she could go to the dragons…
…and die as soon as one of them breathed on her kite.
Still, that would be something, wouldn’t it, if she was the one to bring the dragons back? If they’d learned to talk, she could talk to them. Persuade them not to kill dragonriders on sight. With even a handful of dragons, the King could win the civil war swiftly and decisively. With a handful more, he could reconquer Asdanund, which had grown lazy and arrogant without Nuhys in charge.
But none of that would happen if she didn’t return to her cadre, or at least, to her side’s lines.
When she’d left the room and was gulping down water from the bucket, she realised the story was unfinished. If it was meant to end with the dragons escaping, the artist wouldn’t have left that big gap on the right-hand side. The pictures would’ve been spread around the whole room, or there would’ve been a matching gap on the left. Once the war was over, and she was famous as the person who brought the dragons back, she’d commission an artist to finish the mosaics.
She untied the communication cord from the bucket, then poured the rest of the water down her front. The kite would be on her back, and it wouldn’t fly well—or at all—if it was wet. She went into the main room, checked the kite was still intact, and shouldered it.
She staggered under the sudden weight, then steadied. She took a few steps to check her balance, then marched around the outside of the temple to the foot of the staircase. It looked much longer and steeper than it had yesterday. Probably that was just the different angle of the sunlight.
She could do this. In training, she’d had to prove she could walk a mile with the kite on her back, and she’d grown bigger and stronger since then. But that was across level ground, not uphill, and in a forest, not a desert. Still, it had to be much less than a mile to the top. And she’d only have to go up today, not come down.
She climbed, much slower than yesterday, resting whenever the stairs turned. At first, she remained standing for these rests, not wanting to risk damaging the kite, and worried that it would be hard to stand again. Her legs and back soon overruled her.
Once she got above the buildings, the wind became steadier. It cooled her, but also blew sand into her eyes whenever she faced into it. Her clothes had already dried out.
As she ascended, the steps seemed to get taller and longer, so that they were too big for her to climb in a continuous stride. She had to rest more and more often. The wind grew weaker and less constant. If she didn’t reach the top soon, it would be gone.
At the next turn, she skipped her rest. Her vision blurred. Muscles ached. The hard parts of the kite dug into her. Giving up would be easy, but she forced herself onwards. For Nuhys. For victory. For Solastim.
Her foot slipped on a patch of sand. She was too tired even to put out her arms to break her fall, and fell headlong onto the stone. The pain in her knees and face revived her. She’d reached the top. A breath of wind remained.
She crawled onto the flat strip and took off the kite, panting. She wished she had some water to drink, but she couldn’t have carried the bucket as well as the kite all this way. She stood and rubbed some life back into her legs. Then she unfolded the kite and checked it for damage, relieved to find none.
She put the kite into its launch configuration—wings half-folded, tail raised so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground—and strapped herself into it. She trudged to the far end of the strip, turned around and raised her arms in prayer to Dagoreth. That done, she gripped the handles that extended the wings, bent over and ran down the strip.
With every footfall, her whole body shuddered. This was wrong, she was going too fast, she’d surely break a bone or a spar—
The ground wasn’t there any more. The kite rocked from side to side. She skimmed above the steps, stirring up sand. The temple loomed ahead of her, almost close enough to touch. She’d made a terrible mistake. The strip wasn’t for launching kites—it was too low, and faced away from the prevailing wind. She didn’t have the speed or the height she needed. She was going to crash—
Just in time, she remembered to spread her wings. The wind caught them, and she swooped above the temple. She kicked the lever that lowered the tail and slid her feet into the hooks that let her tilt it.
Past the wall, warm air rose, and she rode it in a widening spiral. By the time she levelled off, the temple and the buildings around it seemed no larger than her outstretched hand. She turned to face the sun, and her camp.
As Neeru soared above the desert, the plains, the mountains and the forest gradually came into view. She’d never seen them from this angle, nor this distance. Everything looked so close together. Smoke rose from two places in the forest. One she was fairly sure was a village that she’d seen on many previous flights. The other, she didn’t recognise.
Were the pictures in the temple a true account of what had happened to the dragons? The fact that she’d dreamed about them before seeing them suggested they were. But they contradicted what the aunts and uncles had told her about those times. Were they mistaken? They surely couldn’t be lying. What would they gain from that?
If the dragons who’d survived the war with Asdanund hadn’t been chased away, but had left of their own accord, then they probably weren’t coming back.
Then, too, the notion that the Dragonriders’ relationship with the dragons hadn’t been an equal one, but more akin to master and slave, sat uneasily with her. She had a master—quite a lot of masters, come to that, if she went all the way up the hierarchy to King En-Rydakh. But she’d accepted them willingly, knowing what she was agreeing to do, and knowing the consequences of disobedience or rebellion. She’d assumed—everyone had assumed—that a dragon wasn’t capable of making that kind of decision for itself. If it had any thoughts or feelings at all, it was grateful for being fed and sheltered, and for the companionship of its rider, in return for occasionally having to risk its life in combat.
How could the Dragonriders of that time not have known the dragons were unhappy with their lot? Did they know, and just not care? Neeru sometimes thought Captain Brakh took that attitude towards the groundmen, so perhaps that part wasn’t so surprising.
If all that was true, why had the dragons not rebelled much sooner?
A gust of wind knocked the kite sideways. She fought for control. She soon had the kite flying straight and level again, but she’d dropped quite a distance. She should’ve been paying attention to the sky, not pondering questions that might have no answers. She looked for a thermal that would allow her to regain the lost height. She spotted one and spiralled up it.
Her carelessness had cost her valuable time. Nobody in the cadre was expecting her—they’d probably assumed she was dead, if they’d found the tether and the other end of the communication cord—but hunger was gnawing at her. She was used to missing meals, and not having enough in the meals she did get, but it was now a day and a half since she’d had anything except water. One of the first things affected by hunger was your ability to make good decisions…
Her unit had been camped near a bend in a dried-up river, not far from the forest. She thought she’d spotted the site, though it was hard to be sure. There was no sign of yesterday’s carnage. Perhaps she’d got the wrong place. No—a distinctive tree stood by the river bed. And there, on top of a low hill—a flag on a pole, too small for her to see any detail, but definitely red. That was enough to make her head for it.
She skimmed over treetops, low enough that she could’ve grabbed some leaves. Suddenly she was above the camp. Someone shouted, and an arrow whizzed past her, much too close for her liking. A man next to the archer yelled at him and thumped his arm as he was about to draw again. He must’ve recognised the kite’s markings.
She circled, looking for a place to land. The ground was uneven, and any flat parts were taken by tents or equipment or soldiers. The only clear space was the river bed itself. She hoped it had dried out enough that she wouldn’t crash through dirt on top into mud underneath. She lined herself up with it and unhooked her legs from the tail.
She dropped—much too fast—and howled as her feet hit the ground. She ran backwards to slow herself, skidding and kicking up great clouds of dust. She came to a halt just in front of a large boulder that she hadn’t noticed from the air. She sank to her knees. She tried to get out of the harness, but that seemed too much work right now.
Running footsteps approached. She heard someone say, “Mazor, it’s a girl!” before exhaustion overcame her.
Neeru woke to groans and screams, and smells of blood and bleach. She was in the hospital tent, lying on a pallet with a thin blanket over her. The hard bed was luxurious compared to where she’d slept last night. Sunlight entered through a ventilation flap in the roof. So she hadn’t been out for very long.
Someone was holding her hand. Solastim. Of course.
“Nee-woo! Nee-woo!” He lifted her hand and clapped his other hand against it. He looked as though Kashalbe had just granted his greatest wish—which perhaps she had.
Neeru closed her eyes. She couldn’t face Solastim’s boundless enthusiasm just now. She wished she could sleep for a week. Solastim stroked her hair—gently at first, then more firmly when she didn’t react. She opened her eyes.
He let go of her hand and made some gestures. Those came more easily to him than words. I fetch help. She nodded, and he jumped to his feet and scampered off.
She heard him say her name a few times, followed by, “Come, come.” He hurried back to her. A grizzled old man followed, carrying a cup. Neeru recognised the man as Grodhel, the cadre’s medic.
“What’s wrong?” Grodhel asked.
“You—” She coughed. Her throat seemed full of sand. When had she last spoken? Years ago, apparently. She swallowed and tried again. “You tell me, Sir. I just woke up.”
“Can you sit?” he asked.
She propped herself on one elbow, then managed to sit cross-legged on the pallet. She shivered, and pulled the blanket around herself.
Solastim gestured. You all right?
Neeru nodded.
“What’s the freak doing in here, anyway?” Grodhel asked.
Hurt flashed across Solastim’s face at that word, before he grinned and responded with a sign that meant off-duty.
“You’ve got a tongue in your head. Why don’t you use it?”
Please don’t stick it out, Neeru thought. “Sir, he said he’s off-duty.”
Grodhel turned to Neeru. “Well, he shouldn’t be in here unless he’s sick or has permission from one of us. Tell him to go pester someone else.”
Solastim saluted and left.
“His hearing is fine, Sir. He just can’t speak much.”
“I don’t care how desperate the war is, people like him shouldn’t be allowed to serve.” He shook his head, as though trying to remember something. “When did you last eat and drink?”
“Water this morning, Sir. I ate yesterday, before dawn.”
He bent down and gave her the cup. “Drink. Slowly.”
The cup contained a lukewarm meat-flavoured stew with chunks of vegetables floating in it—standard Army fare, but to Neeru, it was a feast. She forced herself to take one sip at a time.
“Are you wounded?” Grodhel asked, standing up.
“No, Sir.”
“Any dizziness? Headache? Blurred vision? Nausea?”
“No.”
“You put the blanket around yourself. Are you cold?”
She didn’t want to appear weak, but medics always seemed to know when you were lying. “A little.”
“You’ve got a mild case of sunstroke. I’ll tell Captain Brakh to excuse you from duty for the next two days. If we discharge you before then, don’t exert yourself until you’re back on duty.”
Neeru gasped, ashamed at not having remembered sooner. “My kite. Is it damaged? Where is it?”
“They took it to the dragon pen, that’s all I know.” Grodhel scowled, no doubt thinking it ridiculous to give such a name to a place that held no dragons. “Rest. Drink plenty of water. Stay out of the sun, if you can.”
“Understood, Sir.”
Grodhel moved to the person on the next pallet. Neeru finished the stew, then lay down, shivering. She expected the noise to keep her awake, but she soon dozed off.
She woke, sweating. Someone was shaking her—Captain Brakh, the leader of her company. He was a thin, serious man, not much older than Neeru. Some of her comrades whispered that he’d been promoted before he was truly ready for the responsibility, but others countered that this was all too common in wartime.
Neeru sat up. The sudden movement made her light-headed, but she managed to salute him.
“Can you walk? Just as far as the entrance.”
“Um, yes, Sir. I’ll try.” She stood, swaying a little, and followed Brakh outside, threading her way among the resting and sleeping wounded. It was now late afternoon, and she had to shade her eyes against the sun.
Brakh looked down at a slate in his hand—Neeru didn’t think she’d ever seen him without one—and wrote something on it. “I need your report about your flight yesterday,” he said, not looking at her.
Neeru swallowed to moisten her throat and told him what had happened, from when the enemy attacked to when she landed back at the camp. He showed no interest in the site she’d discovered, nor any concern for her welfare, and she got the impression he’d come only because the rules said he had to. He spent most of the time writing, looking at her only when she paused in her speech, as though he wondered whether she was still there. When she’d finished her report, he asked her why she hadn’t seen the enemy coming.
Her voice trembled as she answered, “Sir, you told me to watch the desert—the west. The enemy infantry that I saw came from the northeast. By the time I spotted them, they were already inside the camp.”
Brakh made another note on the slate. He read over what he’d written, nodded to himself a couple of times, then looked her in the eye.
“Dismissed,” he said.
Neeru returned to her pallet and lay down. This time, sleep eluded her. Had it been her fault that the enemy took them by surprise? She’d only been doing what Brakh ordered. She could’ve watched all points of the compass, but turning was tricky in a tethered kite—they tended to slide out of the wind, risking a crash unless you reacted quickly. And why had no one else spotted the enemy until it was too late?
She must have dozed off eventually, as she was woken by the bugler sounding the summons to the evening meal. She stood up. Someone had brought in her kit bag while she was asleep. She rummaged in it for her bowl and eating utensils, then made for the exit. Halfway there, Grodhel blocked her path and asked where she was going. When she told him, he replied, “If you’re well enough to get your own dinner, you’re well enough to be discharged. But remember—you’re excused duties until this time tomorrow, and stay out of the sun.”
Neeru headed to the mess tent. She was one of the first in line, and took her meal to a nearby empty bench. Soon after, the rest of her squad came in. Squad Leader Andoyar clapped her on the back.
“Look what the wind blew in,” he said, and sat down opposite her. He was a big, heavy fellow, several years older than her, with scruffy hair and beard. Neeru often wondered how his kite managed to get into the air, never mind stay up.
“We were worried about you,” said Shoinath, who sat next to Neeru. At twenty-one, she was the oldest of the squad, and had been an aunt in the Nest until last year.
Yentan, thinner than Neeru and younger by a couple of months, sat next to Andoyar. He’d been in the Nest with her, but she’d had little to do with him until they joined the Dragonriders. He tended not to make eye contact with anyone unless ordered to, but now he gazed at Neeru as though not quite able to believe she was here.
“Glad you’re back safe,” he said.
“I’m glad to be back,” Neeru said.
“You’ve reported to Brakh, yes?” Andoyar asked.
“Yes. A couple of hours ago.”
“A few people have asked me why you didn’t see the enemy coming.”
Neeru gulped. “My orders were to watch the west. The enemy came from the northeast.”
“Your standing orders from me are to watch all points if you’re the only kite on duty.”
“I know, Sir. But the Captain gave me those orders just before I launched.”
“Did you tell him that contradicted my orders?”
“No, Sir. I was already strapped in, ready to launch.”
“And did you not notice there were no other kites in the air?”
“I did, Sir, but I didn’t want to disobey the Captain.”
“You didn’t see or hear the enemy approaching?”
“Not until they were already inside the camp, Sir.”
“They must’ve been very sneaky to get past all the army guards.”
Was he asking her opinion or inviting agreement? She gave an uncertain nod.
“You’d better stick to that story if anyone else asks. Wouldn’t want the Marshal thinking you’re unfit for duty.”
Why would anyone else ask, now that she’d reported to Brakh? “I will, Sir.”
Andoyar smiled brightly. “So. Now that’s out of the way, tell us about your, ah, unplanned mission.”
Neeru gave them an abbreviated version of what she’d told Captain Brakh.
“You must’ve been terrified,” said Shoinath. “You’d not been on a solo flight before, had you?”
“No, that was my first,” said Neeru. “But it all happened too fast for me to be frightened. I remembered the lessons—the kite wants to fly straight and level, so give it the chance to do that. My biggest worry was having to walk back, if I couldn’t find anywhere to launch from.”
Andoyar grinned and raised a hand, as if he wanted to slap her back again. “I must admit, I had my doubts about you when you joined the Dragonriders. But look at you now. Kept your kite aloft in a gale. Found somewhere safe to land in a place you’d never seen. Launched without groundmen. Came back without a scratch on you. Should I be worried for my rank?”
Neeru blushed. “I thought it takes years of experience to be a squad leader.”
“It does, usually.”
“I’ve only been a Rider for a year. Do you think I could be a squad leader?”
He laughed. “No.”
Shoinath tutted. “Andoyar, don’t be cruel.”
“War is cruel,” Andoyar said.
“To the enemy, yes. Don’t go raising a sister’s hopes like that, if you’re just going to dash them.”
Andoyar smirked. “She could be a squad leader. Not yet, obviously. Like she said, it takes years.” He leaned back on the bench, tucking his hands behind his head. Neeru felt his foot brush against her shin, as he raised his legs to balance himself. “But I think we’ll have to keep a close eye on Rider Neeru. A very close eye indeed…”
An uncomfortable silence followed. Neeru pushed her food around her plate.
“So,” said Shoinath, “you missed most of the excitement yesterday.”
Neeru nodded carefully. Were they going to return to the matter of why she hadn’t seen the enemy?
“The infantry managed to hold them off,” said Andoyar. “They didn’t reach the dragon pen, so all the kites are safe. Some of us joined in the scrap—”
Shoinath interrupted. “He means some of the other companies joined in the scrap. We just lobbed arrows from the pen.”
Andoyar scowled at her. “I nailed a couple of the enemy.”
She raised her eyebrows. “From two hundred yards?”
“Did we launch any kites?” Neeru asked.
“No, we were cut off from the slope,” said Shoinath.
“But we won, right? That’s the important thing.”
“Killed about thirty of them before they ran away,” Andoyar replied.
That didn’t sound like many, compared to the numbers she’d seen yesterday. “And how many did we lose?”
No one answered for a moment. Then Yentan, still not looking at anyone, said, “Sixty-two infantry and one dragonrider dead. Twenty-four still in the medical tent this morning.”
“Dagoreth,” Neeru whispered. Nearly a quarter of the infantry killed.
“We can’t afford many more victories like that,” said Shoinath.
The next morning, Captain Brakh gathered the company outside their tent before breakfast.
“We’re breaking camp today, and I don’t want us to be the ones holding everyone else up. You all have your assignments. You’ve done this dozens of times before. Eat, then get on with it.”
As the company began to separate, Neeru raised a hand.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Sir, Medic Grodhel said I’m excused duty today.”
Brakh scowled, then glanced at his slate and tapped its edge. “He did mention something about that.” He gave her a hard stare, as though this had thrown the entire plan into disarray. “Go and check on your kite and its ground fittings. See if anything needs to be mended before they go on the wagon.”
She saluted, then hurried to catch up with the others on the way to the mess tent.
“Where are we moving to?” Shoinath asked Andoyar as Neeru sat down.
Andoyar laughed. “You think Brakh tells me that kind of thing?”
There was a good chance Brakh and the other captains didn’t know yet. The Marshal might not tell them until it was time to leave.
“Somewhere easier to defend than this place,” Yentan muttered. “Better sight lines.”
Andoyar grunted. “So you’re going to be promoted too, huh? Captain, or straight to marshal?”
Yentan flinched.
“Leave him alone,” Shoinath said. “It’s been obvious for weeks that we should move—ever since the river dried up.”
After breakfast, Neeru went to the dragon pen to check on her kite, as Brakh had ordered. The pen was surrounded by a palisade of stakes that sloped inwards. Someone had told her it was built that way to keep the dragons in, rather than the enemy out. Ridiculous, given that it had been seven hundred years since anyone had even seen a dragon. But if the dragons had to be forced to stay in the pen, maybe there was some truth to the pictures she’d seen in the temple.
The only damage to her kite was a tear in the left wing, about the length of her hand. She vaguely recalled tilting to that side as she landed. She must’ve hit a rock or a piece of wood sticking out of the ground. Someone had glued a patch over it. The glue was still drying, so she wouldn’t be able to fold the kite for transport for at least another couple of hours.
The winch was nearby, with the apparently intact tether wound around it, but the half of the communication cord that she’d left behind was nowhere to be seen. She asked around, and discovered it had been stowed with her kit bag, which was already on one of the wagons. She found the cord, along with her shoes, which she’d almost forgotten about. She brushed the worst of the dirt from her feet and put the shoes on.
On her return to the kite, she started splicing together the two halves of the communication cord. Strictly speaking, this was part of her duty, so she shouldn’t be doing it today. But there was nothing else to do while she waited for the repair to the wing to dry. Besides, it wasn’t strenuous work.
She’d scarcely finished when the bugler sounded one long blast followed by three short ones, the signal to form up. Wagons, soldiers and labourers began to organise into two long lines. A couple of groundmen heaved the winch onto the vehicle, then one of them told her to fold the kite so they could put that on too. The glue on the patch wasn’t quite dry, but it would have to do.
Move on sounded, a long blast and a short one, repeated three times. At first the wagon train followed the river bed, but soon left for higher ground with less vegetation. That made them more visible to the enemy, but would make it harder for the enemy to sneak up on them. She kept an eye out for Solastim, not seeing him.
The snatches of conversation she overheard painted a confusing picture of what had happened during the battle and what might happen next, but the broad outline was clear enough. The battle had been a rout, and the army battalion had been lucky to have any survivors. As Yentan had guessed, the unit was retreating to a more defensible position. This was part of a general pattern of the enemy advancing and their side retreating, so the war wasn’t going well for them. But the front had moved back and forth many times already. Who would eventually win was anyone’s guess.
High above, a kite circled, keeping watch. Guilt tugged at Neeru. She should’ve ignored Brakh’s order and watched all points. But what was done was done. All she could do now was pray for forgiveness and do everything in her power to make sure it never happened again.
They reached the new campsite in the middle of the afternoon: a large hill, a few hundred feet high, with one side much steeper than the other. Bushes and small trees surrounded the base. They set up camp on the gentler slope, with plenty of clearance between the camp and the trees. Someone said this was the southern end of the Andirak Hills, which had been a significant front in the last war. Neeru hoped history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
Near the top of the hill was a long narrow strip of stone. It sloped down slightly, and its surface was unnaturally smooth. The edges were rounded, and here and there, rivulets ran out from the main bulk along the bare ground, like candle wax that had melted and cooled.
“Dragon fire,” one of the squad leaders told Neeru when she asked about it. “Stone melts if you can get it hot enough. This must’ve been a landing site for dragons, before the Asdanunders chased them all away.”
Dragons must’ve been much bigger than Neeru had imagined. The strip was hundreds of feet long, easily three or four times what a kite needed. When she saw kites launching to patrol the skies, they started their run near the end of the strip.
On the way back to her company’s tent, Neeru noticed two tethered kites watching the surroundings. Someone had worked out that having just one kite doing this job wasn’t enough.
Solastim was waiting outside the entrance to the tent. When she greeted him, he gestured, Why you leave?
She gulped. “On the kite, you mean?”
He nodded.
“It was an accident. The enemy overran the ground position. I thought they’d winch me down, so I unclipped the tether. Then the wind carried me off.”
Afraid?
“At first, but we’re trained for this kind of thing.”
Wrestle?
“Yes, it was quite difficult to control the kite at first.”
He frowned and pointed to himself, then to her.
She chuckled. “Oh, you want to wrestle?” Dragonriders were supposed to do that regularly, to help their strength and agility. She let him win the odd bout, though his skill was advancing to the point where she suspected he was letting her win. Before they could begin, from somewhere in the deepening gloom, the bugler sounded curfew.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” she said.
The next morning, Andoyar assigned Neeru to weapons maintenance, checking all the cadre’s arrows to remove any that had become warped and wouldn’t fly straight. She was disappointed not to be on watch duty, but at least it wouldn’t be her fault if the enemy sneaked up on them again. And she still felt weak and shivery after her time in the desert. It was only fair for riders less experienced than her to be given some time on the wind. She was young, yes, but far from the youngest in the cadre. Brakh had told her that before the war, a twelve-year-old like her wouldn’t have been allowed to join for another couple of years, never mind have a year’s experience in the air.
The day after that, a solitary kite circled over the camp, well above the tethered ones. Shouts from farther up the hill told Neeru it was an enemy. The fact it was on its own meant it was probably doing reconnaissance. Someone shot a few arrows at it, which fell far short. A couple of kites launched, but by the time they were in the air, the wind had carried the enemy away.
“They know we’re here now,” said Shoinath. “That means another battle soon.”
“But this time, we’re ready for them,” Neeru replied.
“I hope you’re right.”
On the fourth day when Neeru hadn’t been assigned watch duty, she began to wonder if Andoyar had forgotten that she knew how to handle a kite. On the seventh day, she thought he might be doing it deliberately. On the eighth day, she asked him what was going on with the roster.
He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, I thought the Captain had told you.”
“Told me what?”
“You’re off watch duty until further notice.”
Neeru’s fists clenched, and her jaw tightened. “Why?” she asked, though she had a good idea.
“He didn’t say. You’d better ask him.”
She took a deep breath. “I will.” She marched in the direction of the dragon pen, where she thought she’d seen Brakh earlier. This was so unfair! And Andoyar was probably lying about assuming it was Brakh’s responsibility to tell her…
“Oh, there she is. That’s convenient.”
Neeru stopped and turned towards the sound of Brakh’s voice. He stood a few yards to her left, facing a taller man in a plain grey uniform. This man, middle-aged with a full beard, had the dark skin and sharp features of a dragonrider, but Neeru didn’t recall seeing him, either in the Nest or at the front. He smiled at her. Brakh smiled too, a rare and unnerving sight. Hoping she hadn’t left it too late, Neeru saluted.
“Rider Neeru,” the tall man said. “I’m Adjunct Vikarsh. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”
What was an Adjunct, and why was he asking her permission? She glanced at Brakh, who gave a small nod.
“Um, yes. Sir.”
“Good. Follow me, please.”
Neeru followed Adjunct Vikarsh out of the dragon pen and into the infantry’s part of the camp. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere. They changed direction at almost every junction as they strolled among soldiers and labourers, all hard at work. A few people stared at her, but quickly looked away when they realised she’d seen them.
Nobody seemed to pay any attention to Vikarsh, except for a Captain who stopped suddenly and saluted him. Vikarsh nodded to him, not breaking his stride. Did that mean he outranked the Captain? Or only that the Captain thought he did?
“How old are you, Neeru?” Vikarsh asked.
“Twelve, Sir.”
He nodded, as though he’d expected this answer. They came to an unmarked tent with a guard outside. Vikarsh said to the guard, “I’m not to be disturbed except for emergencies.” She saluted and stood aside.
Inside the tent were a large bed, a table covered in maps, and a couple of folding chairs. Vikarsh stopped by the bed and pulled off the blankets, revealing a near-naked sleeping woman. He shook her, then when that produced no reaction, grabbed her legs and swung them off the bed.
The woman stirred and, with a lazy smile, planted her forearms on Vikarsh’s shoulders. He gently lifted them and put her hands in her lap. She wasn’t a dragonrider—the centuries had given Neeru’s people a very distinctive look. Why was she in bed at this time of the day? Perhaps she was ill, but then shouldn’t she be in the medical tent?
“Go and amuse yourself for an hour,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow in Neeru’s direction as she walked towards the entrance. She was beautiful—much too beautiful to be a soldier. His wife? Dragonriders weren’t allowed to marry.
Vikarsh motioned Neeru to sit in one of the chairs. She wasn’t supposed to do that while a superior was still standing, but so much was different lately that she obeyed without hesitation. He produced a bottle and a pair of cups from somewhere behind the bed. He put the cups on the table and filled them with dark red liquid, then offered one to Neeru.
As Neeru picked up her cup, Vikarsh looked past her. “I told you to leave.”
“Did you also tell me to cause a riot?” The woman’s voice was like thick smoke, full of mystery and promise. “No? Then I’ll leave when I’m fit to be seen by the troops, not before.”
Neeru couldn’t resist a glance over her shoulder. The woman was dressing herself in layer upon layer of clothing so fine that it was almost transparent. Every piece had to be adjusted and fastened just so. Then her long black hair had to be combed, piled high on her head, and fastened in place with copper pins.
“No need to stare, child. I’m not a dragon.”
Neeru snapped her mouth shut, hard enough to hurt her teeth, and turned back to Vikarsh.
“You know,” the woman said, “this would be a lot faster if I had a mirror.”
“And you know,” Vikarsh replied, “I can’t afford one until we capture a few enemy officers to ransom.”
She sniffed. “Not much danger of that at the moment, is there? Oh, this’ll have to do. Just follow the screams. And child—don’t let him push you into agreeing to do anything for him. Talk to your own Captain first. Good day.” With a breath of wind from the tent flap, she was gone.
Vikarsh gave Neeru a brittle smile. “Well, that’s awkward. I wasn’t planning to ask you to do anything for me. But now she’s gone and put your guard up.” He sat, drank from his cup and gestured to hers.
She took a sip, finding the wine smoother and stronger than she was used to. She’d have to pace herself if she wanted to keep her wits about her.
“So,” he said, smiling again, more genuinely this time. “Rider Neeru. Kite number thirty-five. I expect you’re wondering what an adjunct is, and why he’s interested in you.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said timidly.
“Simply put, I’m a retired marshal. Outside the chain of command. I go where there are problems that the officers can’t solve. Advise and suggest answers. It’s their choice to listen, but they usually do. My meetings are confidential. If I have to report something you say to someone else, I do it in such a way that it can’t be traced back to you.” He stroked his moustache. “I heard about your unplanned flight into the desert. I’d like you to tell me about it.”
“Sir, I already gave a report about that to Captain Brakh.”
“That’s how I know about it. But everyone reports what they think is important.” He gave her a knowing look. “Or what they think their superior will think is important. I find it much better to get the story from the dragon’s mouth.” He sipped from his cup. “So. Tell me everything. From when you went on observation duty to when you came back to camp.”
Neeru took a deep breath and began to speak. He showed little reaction to anything she said, except a grimace when she mentioned the statue of the fish god. Every so often, he drank some wine, and instinctively, she drank whenever he did. When she got to the part about her dream and its apparent confirmation in the mosaics, she hesitated, but Vikarsh seemed to know something about the mosaics already, and he easily got the truth out of her.
When she’d finished, he said, “I will have to ask you to do something for me after all.”
Her heart sank. In spite of the woman’s advice, duty would make it impossible for her to refuse.
“Don’t mention the room with the mosaics to anyone else. Not even your Captain or your Marshal. Don’t say anything that might give anyone a clue that the mosaics are there. As far as anyone else is concerned, that site is one of K’nesh-Thul’s ruins, nothing more.”
Her face tingled. Too much wine too quickly. She’d already disobeyed his order, by mentioning the room in her report to Captain Brakh. The Captain hadn’t seemed very interested. Did that matter? Hoping to divert the conversation, she asked, “Who’s K’nesh-Thul, Sir?”
He frowned, as though surprised she didn’t know. “The old god. The big… ah, fish.” He looked aside. “Or was K’nesh-Thul the tiger?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Do you give me your word not to say anything?”
She didn’t answer. Something wasn’t right here.
He leaned forward and stared at her. “Do you give me your word?”
“Sir, why are you not ordering me to keep quiet?”
“Because I can’t give you orders. Outside the chain of command, remember?” He lifted the bottle. “More wine?”
“Um, just a little, please. Sir.”
He poured out more than she would’ve considered a little, and the same for himself. “One other thing to ask you about. The battle. I’m hearing different accounts of how the enemy got inside the camp.”
Neeru almost choked on her wine. “Sir, I was on watch duty that day, but my orders were to watch the desert, to the west, and the enemy came from the forest, to the east or northeast.”
“So you didn’t see them.”
“Not until it was too late, Sir, no.”
“How many kites were on watch duty that morning?”
“Just me, Sir,” said Neeru.
“And were your orders the ones you were usually given?” Vikarsh asked.
“No, Sir. My usual orders were to watch all points.”
“When were those orders changed?”
“The day of the attack, Sir.”
“Do you know why they changed?”
As her instructors had said when she joined the Dragonriders, why wasn’t her responsibility. “I don’t, Sir.”
“Why do you think they were changed?”
Those same instructors had said that thinking was even less her responsibility than why. “I haven’t thought about it, Sir.”
He gave a wry grin. “Well, think about it now, then.” When she still hadn’t answered after a few moments, he added, “I’m not interested in punishing you, or anyone else. I’m interested in the truth.”
That wasn’t to say he wouldn’t punish her anyway, once he had the truth. She took another gulp of wine. “Sir, I’m not very good at turning when my kite is tethered.”
“You tend to lose height?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He nodded. “Common enough problem, and a good reason to change your orders. So who did it?”
She took a mouthful of wine.
“Answer me.”
She looked down. “Captain Brakh, Sir.”
He nodded. Had he expected that answer? “Does he often give you orders?”
“No, Sir. Once or twice a week, perhaps.”
“Orders normally come from your squad leader?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“That’s Andoyar, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And did he tell you to watch all points on the day of the attack?”
“Not…” She searched for the right word. “Not specifically, Sir. He just told me I was on watch duty. I assumed it would be the same as before. As I was about to launch, the Captain came up to me and told me to just watch the desert.”
“And did Andoyar query this?”
“He wasn’t there, Sir.”
“Did Brakh say why he was changing your orders?”
She clenched her teeth to hold in a laugh. Did the Adjunct know anything about how the Dragonriders worked? “No, Sir.”
Vikarsh glanced past her at the tent flap, as though someone had just come in, but she heard nobody. “The hour I asked for is almost past. This has been very helpful. Thank you. Finish the wine, if you like, then return to your duties. Don’t tell anyone what we’ve discussed. If anyone asks, I’m here to… what was the official story… look for opportunities for make improvements in the command structure. Vague enough to cover everything.”
“Understood, Sir,” said Neeru. “Thank you.” She drained her cup. Her legs wobbled as she stood up.
Vikarsh gave her a toothy grin. “I hope our paths won’t have to cross again.”
Neeru walked back to her company’s tent, unsure of what to make of her meeting with Adjunct Vikarsh. Officially, it seemed, he was here to find out why the battle had gone so badly, and what could be done to make sure the next one went better. It wasn’t only because she hadn’t seen the enemy coming, though that had to be a big part of it. And why had Brakh changed her orders without sending someone else aloft to watch the east? It could’ve been a simple oversight. Captains were busy people, after all. But Brakh hadn’t struck her as the sort of person who’d make that sort of mistake.
In spite of all that, the Adjunct had been much more interested in the temple in the desert. They’d spent most of the meeting talking about that, not the battle. How would an ancient building help them to win the war? Too remote and too hard to defend, even if it had pictures of dragons on its walls.
Could she believe the Adjunct’s promise that he wouldn’t repeat anything she’d told him—or not in a way that could come back to her? She hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.
In the evening, before the meal, the cadre—everybody who wasn’t on patrol—gathered in the dragon pen for prayers to Dagoreth. As was traditional, the oldest person present led the ceremony. There was a standing order not to use pine resin, on the grounds that the enemy might smell it and learn their position. Everybody knew that was ridiculous, as the camp was visible for miles, but orders were orders. At the end, Marshal Enthrakh, the cadre’s leader, addressed the gathering. She was a gruff middle-aged woman who’d lost her left hand in the previous war.
“As I expect you all know,” Enthrakh said, “I make regular reports about our deeds and situation to His Majesty the King. He has instructed me to say this to you about our most recent battle.” She accepted a slate from an aide and rested it on her left forearm. Reading from it, she continued, “‘We share your grief at your losses, and your anger at the underhanded way in which the enemy caused them. We are confident that this misfortune is but a temporary setback. We wish to remind our troops of paragraph twelve of the Book of Blessings. Rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to bring the war to a swift and decisive end.’” She passed the slate back to the aide and gazed at the ground for a moment, seemingly collecting her thoughts. “I expect some of you know this already. The Book of Blessings is part of the Gospel of Mazor. Lately, paragraph twelve has been interpreted as a prophecy about the war that means His Majesty will smash the enemy at Yaenglar. Our cause is just and noble. Whatever our losses in the next few days, weeks and months, our eventual victory is certain.” She punched the air. “Fiery death to all enemies of the King!”
The cadre repeated this traditional ending to the ceremony, then cheered. Enthrakh dismissed them to the mess tent. Once Neeru’s squad had settled at a table, Andoyar asked, “So, has anybody read the Book of Blessings? Or heard a preacher read from it?”
“No,” said Shoinath. “I’m just wondering, if this glorious battle that’ll win the war is supposed to happen at the capital, what are so many of us doing on the other side of the mountains?”
Andoyar shrugged. “Maybe it’ll take a long time to reach the point where the battle can be fought. Or maybe…” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Maybe His Majesty wants all the glory for his personal regiment.”
“Dangerous talk,” said Shoinath.
Andoyar waved her remark away. “I’ve heard a preacher talk about the book. Not actually reading from it, but explaining what was in it. This was in Lower Hageth. Not long after the start of the war. In those days, we were still allowed to go back to the Nest occasionally. The fighting wasn’t all over the country like it is now. I don’t remember a lot of what he said. But the core of it was that most of the book is what you’d expect—blessings for when you’re doing all sorts of things, to help them succeed. And the rest is about how Mazor loves us all, and wants us to be happy, and the way to do that is to follow the rules in all the other books. So I’m wondering how the King’s priests went from that to a prophecy about how he’s going to win a brutal civil war.”
Nobody spoke for a few moments. Then Yentan said, almost too quietly to hear, “Even if it’s true, Mazor doesn’t watch over the Dragonriders.”
Soon after that, the bugler sounded curfew, and the cadre went to their tents. As the last of the daylight drained from the sky, the tent flap waved, and Captain Brakh called, “Company?”
One of the squad leaders stood and saluted. Everybody was supposed to do that when he said Company, but in the darkness, there was too much risk of tripping over something or someone. The most senior person stood in for the rest of them.
“Marshal Enthrakh has just announced a wrestling tournament for tomorrow evening. I’ve to pick two champions to represent my company. Anyone who fancies a try, see me in the morning.”
That was something Neeru could do—she stood a fair chance against most people her own size. But the champions would be much bigger than her. She’d need to be clever as well as fast.
“Oh, and Rider Neeru?” said Brakh.
Her stomach flipped. Had he already picked her? She stood and saluted, not that he’d see that in the near darkness. “Over here, Sir.”
“Report to Adjunct Vikarsh’s tent at dawn. You’re under his command until he returns you to mine. Bring your kite. That’s all.”
“Yes, Sir.” Her legs shook as she waited for Brakh’s footsteps to fade. As she lay down, she nearly slipped.
“What’s all that about, then?” Andoyar asked.
“I-I don’t know, Sir,” Neeru replied.
“The Adjunct saw you earlier, didn’t he?”
“He did, Sir.”
“Can you tell us anything about it?”
“He said he’s here to… to…” She reached for the phrase he’d given her. “Look for opportunities for improvements in the command structure.”
Andoyar sniggered. “That bad, eh?”
“Quiet over there!” said one of the other squad leaders. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Neeru’s mind whirled as the tent fell silent. Vikarsh had said he couldn’t give her orders, so who had this come from?
As soon as the first hints of pre-dawn light appeared in the ventilation flaps, Neeru bade farewell to Solastim and her squad, and left the tent. She’d been awake most of the night, trying to work out what Vikarsh could possibly want with her. It involved flight, obviously, but beyond that, she had no idea. She carried the folded kite on her back.
She stopped at the mess tent, where she gulped down a bowl of not-yet-warm-enough porridge and a mug of water. Finding Vikarsh’s tent didn’t take long. He stood outside it, shielding his eyes from the sun, obviously waiting for her. She saluted him, and he acknowledged with a little nod. He reached into the kit bag beside him and offered her an arrangement of leather straps, held together with metal rings and buckles.
“See whether it fits,” he said.
She took an involuntary step backwards. “Sir, I haven’t earned the right to wear a rider’s belt yet.”
“Based on what you told me yesterday, I think you have. A solo flight into unfamiliar territory and back, with no damage to yourself or your kite? I know of people twice your age who couldn’t do that, even with a week to prepare. Dagoreth threw you into that situation with no warning, and you handled it magnificently.”
Her face grew warm. “Thank you, Sir.”
The rider’s belt was, in effect, two belts, one worn over each shoulder across the torso and linked in the middle. The front part had a variety of loops and pouches for holding small items. The leather had worn smooth, but had been well-cared-for, with no signs of fraying or cracking. Some of the stitching and metalwork looked new. Vikarsh helped Neeru to put it on and adjust it.
“A good fit,” he said. “Plenty of room to grow into. It belonged to Sha-Kynan.”
She stared at him, wondering if she’d misheard. Then she fumbled with one of the buckles, desperate to unfasten it. He put his hand over hers, and she stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“Sir, I’m not worthy to wear this.”
A smile flickered across his face. “Correct. But I believe you will be.”
From his kit bag, he handed her two packs of battle rations, each containing a day’s worth of food. She tucked these into pouches in her shirt. Then he gave her a set of tools to stow in the belt. Some she recognised—candles, a tinderbox, a trowel, a little hammer—but more she didn’t. The last thing he gave her was a long piece of thin rope, similar to a communication cord, but without the bells at either end. This she wrapped around her waist. He put some other tools from the bag into his own belt, then opened the flap of his tent and slung the bag inside. To someone inside the tent, he said, “I’m going now.”
The woman whom Neeru had seen on Vikarsh’s bed answered. “Come back safely.” There was the sound of a kiss, and Neeru looked away. Vikarsh withdrew, but the woman followed, her lips seemingly fastened to his. Neeru felt an odd warm tingle in her belly. She knew it was rude to stare, but couldn’t help herself. If they hadn’t wanted her to see this, they’d have stayed in the tent. Wouldn’t they?
When they finally separated, the woman said to Neeru, “Didn’t I tell you not to let him push you into anything?”
Before Neeru could think whether it was wise to answer, Vikarsh told the woman, “You know it doesn’t work like that.”
She pouted. “Maybe it should.”
Vikarsh and the woman bade one another farewell, and Neeru thought they might start kissing again. But Vikarsh told Neeru to pick up her kite and follow him.
“Sir, if we’re taking food, shouldn’t we take water too?”
He gave a knowing smile. “Very observant. Where we’re going has water.”
“Will we be back in time for the wrestling tournament?”
He frowned. “Tournament? Oh—that.” He rolled his eyes, as though he thought it pointless. “I can’t answer that yet.”
They went uphill through the bustle of the camp getting ready for the day’s activities. Every few yards, someone saluted Vikarsh. He acknowledged each with a nod, or occasionally a “Carry on.”
Why had Vikarsh said he couldn’t answer her question, rather than saying he didn’t know the answer? They came to an open space at the edge of the dragon pen. In the middle of this, a couple of groundmen were helping a rider into a tethered kite. As soon as they saw Vikarsh, they left the rider to attend to him. His kite was in a wagon, under a tarpaulin. The groundmen carried it out of the pen and farther up the hill. Neeru and Vikarsh followed them.
The groundmen didn’t offer to carry her kite, but then, nobody ever did. A dragonrider was supposed to be able to bear the weight of her kite on the ground. Maybe the rules were different for adjuncts. And Vikarsh hadn’t told them to carry his kite. They’d done it right away.
They stopped near the top of the hill. One of the groundmen helped Vikarsh into his kite and ran through the checks with him, while the other went through Neeru’s. Vikarsh’s kite had the number one painted on both wings, which meant it properly belonged to the Marshal. But she didn’t fly much these days. She must’ve let him borrow it.
When the groundmen were satisfied that both kites were ready, they stood aside.
“We’ll launch separately,” said Vikarsh. “The clearest path is quite narrow. Danger of collision if we go together. I’ll go first.” He faced downhill, into the wind. He flexed his wings a couple of times, then leaned forward and charged.
Neeru felt his footsteps through the stone. He’d surely crash. As soon as she thought that, he was airborne. Her gaze followed him, heading northeast and climbing rapidly, until he was almost too small to see.
“Did you come up here for the view, girl?” said one of the groundmen.
She scowled. He wasn’t supposed to talk to her like that, but he had a point. She needed to get into the sky before Vikarsh was too far away for her to catch up. She bent over, kicked the tail into the launch position, spread her wings, tested the wind, and charged downhill.
With every step, she seemed to grow lighter as the wind lifted her. She feared she’d miss her footing, and send herself and the kite tumbling helplessly into the rocks and trees on either side. No—this was how a launch was meant to be. Her foot didn’t land, and the ground fell away. She lowered the tail, hooked her feet into it, and soared into the sky.
Vikarsh had been circling overhead, gaining height. He waited as Neeru climbed level with him. She shivered in the crisp breeze. She hoped they wouldn’t stay this far up for long—she wasn’t dressed for these conditions. And why hadn’t he advised her to do that? He was still some way off, small enough that she could cover him with the thumb of her outstretched hand, but in this clear sky, he was easy to see.
They headed southeast, deeper into their own territory. What lay in that direction that had some military value?
They made a slow turn to the right, so that they were now flying south. Why had they not gone that way to start with? After a few minutes, another turn right, to go southwest. Then another turn, to fly west. Was this just a training exercise? Were they going to land back at the camp? Why bring food, then? Should she be paying attention to the ground, so she could answer questions about where the enemy might be?
Sand dunes appeared on the horizon. Vikarsh came closer to Neeru and gestured to her in the Dragonriders’ battle language. It couldn’t say much, but at this distance, it was more effective than shouting. He pointed to her, then moved his hand level with his waist, then forward to just past his head. You lead, he meant. In line with tradition, he repeated the signs twice to be sure she’d seen them.
Lead where?
She let go of the controls. That was perfectly safe at the moment, though it always made her a little nervous. She stretched her arms below her, then raised them as though lifting something. I don’t understand.
Before she’d finished repeating the sign, he’d slid over to her, his kite seeming close enough to touch.
“Was it not obvious?” he shouted. “We’re going to the temple!”
Neeru wanted to slap herself. Their destination was obvious, given the interest that Vikarsh had shown in the site. They’d flown away from it to start with in case the enemy had any spies in their camp. All she had to do now was find it… in a landscape where everything looked the same.
Well… not entirely the same. Some dunes were bigger and longer than others, or faced in different directions. And there was the hill behind the temple, of course. That should be visible from a long way off. Now that she thought about her flights to and from the temple, she recalled it was in a wide, shallow valley, running roughly northwest to southeast. As well as all that, the flight back to the camp had taken a couple of hours, which gave her a fair idea of how far away the temple had to be. She made a small turn to the right, to change her heading to west-northwest. Vikarsh followed.
Soon, a dip became visible on the horizon. That had to be the valley. They turned towards it. The wind grew steadier and stronger, carrying them along the valley, as if confirming that Neeru had made the right decision. Sure enough, there was the top of the hill, now the dome of the temple, now the wall.
She pointed to the site and made the sign for land—lower one hand and move it forward. Vikarsh agreed by repeating the sign.
As they neared the temple, they circled to lose height, then landed near to where Neeru had landed on her first visit. They folded their kites. The fact that Neeru was wearing shoes today made her folding less fraught than the last time, but she was still glad to get into the shade of the wall.
“Definitely a temple to one of the old gods,” Vikarsh said as soon as he saw the round building. “It’s on some of the old maps, but nobody was sure where it was. Everyone assumed the desert buried it. Lately, the wind must’ve… unburied it.”
They entered the temple and laid their kites just inside the door. Neeru stretched to try to work the kinks out of her back. Vikarsh pointed to the statue of the fish god. “K’nesh-Thul, I’m sure of it.”
“Sir,” said Neeru, “why is a temple to a fish god so far from the sea?”
He rubbed his chin, as though unsure whether to trust her with the truth. “The world is old. This wasn’t always a desert. On very old maps, the temple is on an island in the middle of a big lake.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Then why are there pictures of dragons here? I thought dragons can’t fly over water.”
“Can’t fly out of sight of land. Not quite the same thing.” He strolled over to the statue of the fish god and the grateful people, and studied it for a few minutes. “Twelfth or thirteenth century. Maybe fourteenth. Hard to be sure. The styles didn’t change much.”
If he was right, then the statue—and presumably the rest of the site—could be over a thousand years old. She felt suddenly insignificant.
Vikarsh headed for the back of the room, motioning Neeru to follow. They passed into the room with the well. He pointed to the gutter. “The place must’ve been inhabited for a while after the desert came. When it was on a lake, they wouldn’t have needed to gather every drop of rain. Anyway—tie your rope to the bucket and draw some water for us.”
Neeru uncoiled the rope from around her waist and did as he ordered. He let her drink first—“Seeing as you did the work,” he said. Once they’d both had enough, they left the bucket, still half-full, next to the well. They took a few battle rations—strips of preserved meat—from their pockets and put them in the bucket to soak, so they’d be edible later.
“Now,” said Vikarsh, “the room with the dragons is that one, yes?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Light me a candle. Then stand watch by the doorway.”
As she obeyed his first instruction, she didn’t know whether to be offended that she wasn’t to be allowed a proper look at the mosaics, or worried that he thought there might be someone or something to guard against out here. She passed him the lit candle and took up her position next to the doorway.
She heard him moving about, occasionally muttering, though she couldn’t tell what he said. Sometimes the sound of chalk on slate accompanied the muttering.
Neeru scanned the windows and each of the doorways, except for the one leading to the mosaic room. Vikarsh would see any threat there before she did. Or maybe he wouldn’t, if he was studying the mosaics. But the room had only this one door, and no windows. Someone could get in through the chimney hole. Did he know about that? He must’ve noticed light coming from it when he went in.
And yet… many of her unit were dead because she’d done what she was told to do, not what she should’ve done.
“Sir?”
No answer. The muttering and writing continued.
“Sir?” A little louder.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Sir, there’s a hole in the roof.”
“I’d noticed. What about it?”
“Sir, the enemy might come through it. Shouldn’t I be watching it, as well as this doorway?”
Vikarsh chuckled. “I didn’t tell you to stay there because I was worried about an attack. And two dragonriders should be a match for anyone who can fit through that hole.”
“Yes, Sir.”
So Neeru carried on watching, while the patches of light from the windows crept across the floor. Vikarsh emerged to light a new candle from the stump of the old one, then returned to the room.
A few minutes later, Vikarsh came back out. “When you were last here, did you notice what condition the loose bricks were in?”
“I don’t understand, Sir.”
“Some of the buildings have partly collapsed, yes? And some of the bricks they were made from are still here, yes?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want to know are those loose bricks still in one piece, with straight edges? Or broken, with the edges worn down?”
“I’m sorry, Sir, I didn’t notice.”
“Go and look. Don’t bring any of them here yet. Find out where the good ones are. And how many.”
“Yes, Sir.” She marched out of the temple and began exploring. Why was the Adjunct interested in bricks all of a sudden? And why had he felt the need to tell her not to bring any of them to him? If he just wanted some privacy, he could’ve given her any other menial task, like going up on the wall to watch for the enemy approaching. Still, he’d given her an order, and she’d carry it out.
Sha-Kynan’s belt—she couldn’t bring herself to think of it as hers—tugged and chaffed at her as she walked to the nearest building, stepping over gutters. She couldn’t be worthy to wear it. Vikarsh couldn’t think she was worthy to wear it. He was just playing a cruel joke. When they got back to camp, he’d tell everyone how he’d fooled her, and they’d all laugh at her.
Her foot caught on something, and she staggered forwards, stopping herself just in time from falling. It was a brick. Of course—that was what she was supposed to be looking for. This one was so worn that she could’ve taken it for a small loaf. It might’ve been there, in that very spot, ever since the desert came.
A ruined building stood in front of her. Bigger than she expected. She’d been so lost in thought that she’d gone past the smaller one, nearer the temple, without realising.
The smaller building consisted of only the front wall and a bit of one side. At the back of the wall was a pile of rubble, with nothing bigger than her fist, as far as she could tell.
The next building, the one she’d stopped in front of, had three walls more or less intact. The bricks of the fourth wall were scattered across what had been the floor, as though someone had pushed the wall over. Those bricks farther away from the rest of the building were more worn than those nearer to it. They must’ve been more exposed to the wind and sand.
“Neeru? Where are you?” Vikarsh’s voice echoed from the stones.
She turned to see him outside the temple, and waved to him.
“Come back inside. We’ll take a meal break.”
That got no argument from her. In the room with the well, they sat down and chewed on their battle rations. Being soaked in water had made them flexible, but it was still like trying to eat a shoe.
Once they’d finished eating, they threw away the water the rations had been in and drank some more from the well. Vikarsh said, “You did very well seeing the mosaics in such poor light. You missed some details, but they’re almost exactly as you told me.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“There’s a lot of writing at the top and bottom of the pictures. It’s Middle Nuhysean, which I’ll need to have translated. That’s what took me so long. Copying it all down.”
“Why do that, Sir? I mean, the pictures aren’t true.” It was impertinent to question an officer like that, but he’d shown kindness, and she wanted to know why she’d dreamed the pictures before seeing them.
Vikarsh grimaced. Had she made a mistake?
“They might be,” he said.
The silence stretched between them. At last, Vikarsh continued, “I have an interest in the history of the Dragonriders. Some might say an unhealthy interest.”
“What do you mean by unhealthy, Sir?”
“I mean it might get me killed.”
“How can history do that, Sir?”
He laughed. “Some people like history the way it is. They don’t take kindly to other people telling them it’s wrong.”
“Isn’t it better to know the truth, though, Sir? Decisions based on wrong information are likely to be wrong.”
“Yes, but—” He covered his mouth, then sighed. “I believe the story in the mosaics is true. Or closer to the truth than what we teach in the Nest. And if so, it’s long past time to accept the dragons aren’t coming back. Which means we should disband the order.”
Neeru gasped. She could hardly believe what Vikarsh had just said. Disband the Dragonriders?
“Or just stop pretending we’re still special,” he continued. “Kites are useful. Keep them. But let anyone ride them who can show the skill. No need to be a child of dragonriders. Get rid of that ridiculous mating ritual. Have mothers and fathers, the same as everyone else. Fewer stillbirths and deformities.”
There it was. That hateful word. Deformity. Never far from any conversation about dragonriders. Her dismay must have registered on her face.
“I’m not suggesting we kill any imperfect baby. Nothing drastic like that. Dagoreth’s bargain affects me, just like everyone else. My burdens aren’t as visible as yours. Six toes on my left foot. Scaly skin on my back—so thick it hurts to bend over. Worse, when I exert myself, I get out of breath faster than most people. I passed all the tests to join a cadre, obviously, but only just. And yet I became a Marshal, and then an Adjunct, which not every Marshal does. I don’t want more people like me to be born, but if that’s Dagoreth’s will, who am I to go against it?”
“What if it’s Dagoreth’s will that the Dragonriders continue to exist, Sir?” Neeru asked.
Vikarsh shrugged. “Then my plan will fail.”
“Do you have a plan, Sir?”
“That.” He wagged a finger. “Is something you are definitely better off not knowing.” He jumped to his feet. Neeru hastily followed him. “How many good bricks do we have?”
“I… I’m not sure exactly, Sir.”
“Then I’ll be exact.” He pointed to the doorway of the room with the mosaics. “Are there enough to cover that? Two bricks deep?”
“Um, yes, I believe so, Sir.”
“Then start bringing them here. A couple at first, so I can see what counts as intact. Try to match the colour of the bricks in here.”
Neeru did as he asked. The bricks were heavier than they looked. He hefted them, squinted along their edges, tapped them with the hilt of a knife, and said, “Bring me more like that until I tell you to stop. You should be able to manage six at a time if you rest them against your chest.”
She had to lean backwards to stop the bricks from falling, and walk slowly to stop herself from toppling over. She felt as though she was climbing a hill, and her knees agreed. After she’d brought the second batch of bricks to him, he said, “Leave your belt here. No point risking damage to it.”
Her fear that she wasn’t worthy to wear the belt resurfaced, but she obeyed. When she returned with the next batch of bricks, he was piling sand into the bucket from the well. On the next batch, he’d emptied the sand near the doorway and was poking it with the trowel she’d carried in her belt. In the top of the pile, he’d made a hollow, into which he’d poured some water. He stopped stirring and scooped up some of the wet sand. To Neeru’s surprise, it wasn’t dark brown, but light grey. He smeared it on the floor under the doorway and put a brick on top of it. Then he smeared some on the end of the brick and some more on the floor, and put another brick next to the first. An officer on his hands and knees, performing manual work? That might be the strangest thing she’d seen all month.
Vikarsh added bricks to his wall much faster than Neeru could bring them, so when he was about halfway to the top, he helped her to bring more.
“I think we’ve got enough now,” he said after they’d made a few trips. He took something from a pouch on his belt, small enough to conceal in his palm. “This is where it gets tricky.” He put his other hand over the object and made a twisting motion.
The back of Neeru’s neck prickled, as if an insect was crawling there. She brushed it, but felt nothing.
Vikarsh inserted the object into a gap in the last row of bricks that he’d laid. A fan of colours shimmered across the wall and the doorway, like oil on a puddle. Then Vikarsh’s wall changed to resemble the wall on either side, as though the doorway had never existed.
Neeru gasped. Vikarsh chuckled.
“A magical device,” he said. “I won’t pretend I understand it.”
“So anyone who comes in here won’t know there’s another room behind there?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why are we building a wall, Sir? Could you not just leave the device on the threshold?”
“Good question.” He started mixing more sand and water. She saw now that he added a grey powder to the mixture. As he mixed, the grey spread, and the sand stuck together, gaining a consistency like porridge that had been over the fire too long. “The fellow who sold me this device said it works best when all it has to do is smooth out small differences. If I just put it on the threshold, it might make the doorway look smaller, instead of hiding it altogether. Or even make it look bigger.”
He took some of the mixture on the trowel, picked up a brick with his other hand, and stood up. He slowly moved the brick towards the part of the doorway covered by the illusion. Instead of stopping when it met the illusion, it—of course—went straight through. He lowered the brick, and colours swirled where it passed. It stopped with a faint plink when it met the real bricks. He spread the mixture and tapped the brick into place.
Neeru had been brought up to believe magic was unnatural, not something a dragonrider should be involved with. But now that she’d seen it—or perhaps, not seen it—she couldn’t have said what was wrong with Vikarsh using it.
“I’ll tell you how to make yourself useful for a while,” Vikarsh said after placing a couple more bricks. “Just put your hand on top of where the bricks need to go, so I don’t lose my place.”
Neeru obeyed, trying not to squirm when her fingers disappeared inside the illusion. She felt nothing, not even the tingling that had told her magic was at work here when she entered the temple. With her help, Vikarsh added bricks to the wall almost as quickly as he’d done before he created the illusion. The last couple of rows were too high for her to reach, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Vikarsh patted the new wall and smiled. The colours fringed around his hand, though not as noticeably as before. He scooped up what remained of the mortar and threw it down the well.
“Meal break, rest, then back to camp,” he said.
They sat against the wall by the entrance to the room and ate in silence. The effort needed to chew the rations left little opportunity for speech. Once they’d washed them down, Vikarsh said,
“I hope that’ll last until the end of the war.”
“How long will that be, Sir?”
He gave a harsh laugh, like the bark of a dog. “If I knew that, I’d be an adviser to the King. It’s been going four years—no, five now. I’ve lost count of how many times the generals thought the end was a few months away. Predicting the course of a war is a fool’s game, even when the sides aren’t as closely matched as in this one.”
“What if one side suddenly gained an advantage?”
“Like a cadre of friendly dragons appearing in the courtyard of the royal palace?”
She shrank from him and bowed her head. “I was thinking more like, what if we used the temple as a staging post to launch an attack on the enemy’s central provinces? Someone told me they don’t defend that border, because a large force can’t cross the desert.”
He nodded. “Very observant. That’s the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said you’re worthy to wear that belt. If it wasn’t for the mosaics, I’d recommend using the temple in a heartbeat.”
“Because then the people who, ah, like history the way it is might find out about them.”
“Correct.”
“But we’ve hidden them.”
“From one or two people who blow in on the wind and want to leave as soon as possible. Not from hundreds of people who stay for weeks or months. In that situation, someone would surely notice something odd about the wall in here. Or see the room from the outside and wonder why there’s no way into it.”
“Sir, there’s only one well here.”
He tilted his head. “One that we know of.”
“It won’t support hundreds of people.”
“It won’t. But the generals will think they have to turn the place into a fortress before they can attack the enemy from it.”
“And… do they need to do that?” Questioning the competence of the leaders was unwise, but he’d been the one to bring it up.
He sighed, as if realising he’d said too much, and started packing away the things he’d taken from his belt. She followed his lead.
Halfway through packing, he replied, “Depends what their goal is. What kinds of troops they want to bring. How many. But they like big, glorious battles. They’ll want to turn the western edge of the desert into a new front line. That means bringing half the Army through here. The enemy will soon work out where our base is. They’ll attack it if they can, so it’ll have to be fortified. That’s when our lot will notice the mosaic room, if they haven’t already.”
“And how would you use this place, Sir?”
“A force that’s as small and light as possible. Carry out sneak attacks. Avoid pitched battles. Disappear before the enemy knows where we are. Make them afraid. Weaken their resolve, so the Army has an easier job fighting them. Not very honourable, but there’s precious little honour in fighting your own countrymen over who should be king.”
“So the enemy wouldn’t know we’re using the temple.”
“They’d work it out eventually,” said Vikarsh. “But we’d be long gone by then.”
Neeru followed Vikarsh into the main room, where they’d left their kites.
“You ask the right questions,” he said over his shoulder. “One question I thought you’d ask that you haven’t.”
She frowned as they shouldered their kites and walked out of the temple. The sun was almost touching the western wall. They didn’t have much time if they wanted to reach their camp before dark.
“The question is, why do you want the mosaics to stay hidden until after the war? But I think I know the answer, Sir.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
“They’ll help to prove that the Dragonriders should—should be disbanded.” Her mind stumbled over that concept. Like saying she should cut off her feet because she didn’t need them in the air. “If the story in the mosaics is true, then the dragons will never come back. But the Dragonriders shouldn’t be—can’t be—disbanded while they’re fighting in the war. You can’t take the wheels off a wagon while it’s rolling down the road.” She looked at him expectantly.
“Good. Broadly correct. Quite impressive, really.”
Was he praising her or insulting her? They came to the stairs that led up the hill. As he put his foot on the first step, he said, “Of course, you won’t tell anyone else about the mosaics, or what we did to hide them. All that’s here are some old ruins and a well that’s almost dried up. Not worth the bother of using as a base. Too remote, needs too much work.”
They came to the first turn in the stairs, and carried on without the rest she’d allowed herself the last time she was here.
“That’s not an order, by the way,” Vikarsh added. “Just some friendly advice you’d do well to follow.”
“Nobody would take my word over yours, Sir.”
“No. But if they did… As the King apparently likes to say when haggling, I have ways to make my displeasure obvious.”
That sounded like a threat. So perhaps he was giving her an order. He marched them to the top of the hill in half the time Neeru had taken when she was here on her own. After an all-too-brief rest, they launched from the strip and soared into the evening sky.
In the east, it was hard to tell the difference between sky and ground. Landing would be a challenge. For that matter, just knowing where the ground was, so she wouldn’t hit it, might be difficult.
Vikarsh was ordering—advising—her to lie for him. Well—probably not lie. Whenever a party of soldiers reported their actions or observations to another party, the most senior member of the first party always spoke to the most senior member of the second. Vikarsh would tell Captain Brakh, or Enthrakh, her cadre’s Marshal, what he and Neeru had seen and done here. All she had to do was not contradict him when he lied. That wasn’t the same as lying herself. Was it?
The stars came out, and her eyes gradually adjusted. The desert became a flat, grey plain, all differences in height and texture erased by the stars’ dim, even light.
She probably wouldn’t even be in the tent when Vikarsh reported to Brakh or Enthrakh. They’d be discussing a lot of things she wasn’t authorised to know. If Vikarsh was right that the generals would want to use the temple for a purpose it wasn’t suited for, perhaps it was better for them to believe it had no military value. But how could he be sure what they’d want? And what right did he have to deny them the information they needed to make a good decision? He was doing exactly what he’d accused the people who liked history the way it was of doing—concealing or distorting the truth to further his own ideas of how the world should be.
She should tell someone about this. Who? And how? Vikarsh would know it was her who’d done it. She didn’t know what he meant by make my displeasure obvious, but if it was something the King often said, it was likely to be painful.
A shout tugged her out of her thoughts. “Climb, you stupid pigeon!”
Almost too late, she realised that what she’d thought was a cloud up ahead was really a sand dune. She raised her forearms and feet, twisting the wings and tail in an effort to push the kite upwards. Her knees skimmed the top of the dune, but the kite stayed aloft.
Gasping, her hands shaking, she circled a few times to gain some height. She had to stop letting her mind wander when she was flying. One of these days, she was going to get herself killed.
Vikarsh drew level with her. “How much experience of night flying do you have?”
“J-just the training in the Nest, Sir.”
“Not enough out here. Stay close and do what I do.”
So he didn’t think it was her fault. That was something. Unless that wasn’t the first time he’d shouted at her.
“At night, it’s hard to tell where the horizon is. Not so much warm air for climbing. You need to stay as high as you can.”
“Yes, Sir.”
They circled a few more times. The view didn’t change, bearing out what he’d said about the difficulty of seeing the horizon. Neeru shivered. She was used to being cold when she flew, but this was something else. She hoped it was just Vikarsh’s remark about the lack of warm air making her aware of it, but she knew it wasn’t.
There you go again, girl, thinking about anything but the flight. But most of the time, flight was boring. How much more enjoyable it would be on the back of a dragon, which would take care of all the dull details. But if the dragons were—had become—intelligent enough to plan an escape, presumably they could experience boredom too. They might argue with their riders about where to fly, or even whether to fly at all.
Stop it! she told herself. Vikarsh had drifted away from her—a slow rightwards turn to correct his course. She tilted towards him. An odd fluttering sound came from her left.
The kite lurched, then dropped, then began to tumble. Neeru screamed and fought to regain control. Nothing worked. She hit something, bounced, rolled a few times. At last she came to a halt upside down with her limbs twisted at painful angles and hard edges digging into her.
What in Dagoreth’s name had happened? No—worry about that later. Now, she needed to get out of the kite before it collapsed under her weight and part of it stabbed her. This was a simple job when she was standing up and could see what she was doing. On her back, in near-darkness, was another matter.
She extracted one foot from the tail, but the other was pinned down by something pressing on her ankle. She tried to lift her right hand to unfasten the strap holding the left wing to her left upper arm. A heavy weight on the right wing stopped her from lifting that arm, so she undid its strap first, then the left’s. As she felt around below her to see how far off the ground she was, something snapped, and she dropped a few inches. She squealed and opened the straps across her chest. The ground had been only a foot away, so she should be able to roll off the kite’s frame and twist her leg out of the tail.
She rolled as intended, but the tail came with her, then broke. She sat up, seeing that one of the two hooks that her feet fitted into during flight had been crushed. She removed that shoe and wiggled the hook off her foot.
Standing up, she put her shoe back on. The kite was a wreck. It was only thanks to landing on soft sand that she hadn’t been injured or killed.
What now? Her teachers had said nothing about this. They’d assumed that a landing hard enough to wreck the kite would be hard enough to kill the rider. Even if the kite could be repaired, she didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to do it.
Could she make it back to her side’s territory on foot? No other choice. It wasn’t really that far—an hour in the air was roughly a day on the ground. Hiding from the enemy might be difficult, and she’d have to do something about her uniform.
“Neeru! Where are you? Are you hurt?” Vikarsh’s voice, high above her, held an edge of fear. What did it matter to him if she didn’t make it back to camp? Safer if she didn’t—no one to expose his lies about the temple.
Did he mean to make sure she was dead? She should run. But then he’d see her, and easily catch her.
“Look out!” The call came from behind her, and she instinctively ducked. He swept over her with a gust of wind and landed heavily ten or twenty yards ahead. He shrugged off his kite without bothering to stow everything properly. He rushed over to her and wrapped her in a fierce hug.
“Praise Dagoreth,” he gasped. “When I saw you drop out of the sky, I knew something was wrong with your kite. I thought you’d gone to join the dragons for sure.”
“Sir,” she began, “I’m afraid my kite is…”
He pulled away from her, then clasped her shoulders with shaking hands. In the starlight, tears glistened on his cheeks. “Never mind the kite. Are you hurt?”
“No, Sir.”
He let go of her and dabbed at his eyes. “Sorry. You don’t need to see that.”
She stared at him, lost for words.
He shook his head. “We need to get back to our lines. The moon should rise soon. Let’s see what we can salvage from your kite. Then we can walk until it gets too cold.”
“Walk? Now?”
“That’s how you’re supposed to travel in a desert. Move at night, when it’s cool. Maybe in the early morning as well, before it gets too hot. Shelter in the day. The canvas from your kite should keep the worst of the sun off us.” He walked over to the wreckage. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? This is one of the worst I’ve seen. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I’m not hurt, Sir.”
He drew a knife and crouched by the wreck, hacking at it. The canvas came away easily, fluttering in a gentle breeze. He swore. “No wonder you came down so hard. I’ll have someone flogged for this. Use his skin for your next pair of wings.” He held up one of the kite’s wings and slid his hand through a tear that ran across almost its entire width.
“Dagoreth,” she whispered.
He flipped the wing over and pointed to the middle of the tear. “Shoddy repair.”
“That might be my fault, Sir. Partly mine. The wing was damaged in my last landing at the camp. Someone repaired it, but when we broke camp, the glue hadn’t fully dried.”
“So you folded the wings with it still tacky.”
She nodded. All her fretting over why Vikarsh had wanted to see her that morning had made her forget about the patch.
“Why didn’t it fail sooner?”
“I haven’t been allowed to fly since… since the enemy attacked our camp.”
“Really?” he said. “I’ll have to speak to your Captain about that. You should’ve spotted the fault in pre-flight checks. But since it held for several hours in the air, it was almost good enough, so you might not have noticed.” He finished cutting the canvas from the frame. He took some of the spars and ribs that had survived the crash, wrapped them in the fabric, and handed the bundle to her.
“This way,” he said, walking east towards where he’d landed. He folded his kite and hoisted it onto his back.
Neeru adjusted her burden to balance it as well as possible, then followed Vikarsh. She soon caught up with him and fell into place alongside him.
He pointed to a pale white glow on the eastern horizon. “Moon. We’ll walk for a couple of hours, then make camp.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Neeru. She wasn’t sure she could walk for that long over this terrain. Every time she put a foot down, it sank a couple of inches into the sand. She could lift her feet out of the sand or kick through it; both were equally tiring.
“I should thank you, Sir,” Neeru said after a few minutes.
“For what?”
“Giving me the belt. I think it might have saved my life.”
He laughed. “You don’t really believe that superstitious nonsense, do you?”
Neeru blushed.
“What saved your life was your skill and training, and the fact you had a soft landing from a low height.”
There hadn’t been much skill on her part. Everything had happened so quickly.
“I met Sha-Kynan a few times,” Vikarsh continued.
Neeru gasped. She’d thought of him as more than human, only a couple of steps below Dagoreth himself. “What was he like, Sir?”
Vikarsh laughed again, a kinder sound than before. “Old and grumpy, like a lot of dragonriders back then. He was already a hero from the first civil war—or just the civil war, as we called it. But that was long before my time. When it became obvious another war was likely, he tried to convince the King to make peace. Told my generation we shouldn’t join the cadres. That didn’t make him popular with the marshals. But when the war started, he went straight to the front line. He was nearly seventy. Volunteered for every dangerous mission. Second year of the war, he got separated from his company somewhere near Nandeem.”
Vikarsh fell silent, and Neeru guessed what must have happened. “How did we get his belt back, Sir?”
“The enemy returned it after the war. Said one of their officers recognised him.”
“They did him a great honour.”
“They did.”
They carried on walking—stumbling—staggering—until Vikarsh pointed to a large, low outcrop of rock ahead. “We’ll rest there.”
He clambered onto a ledge a few feet off the ground, then helped her up beside him. Parts of the rock had been worn smooth by the wind, while others were still rough. It felt warmer than the sand. Maybe that was why Vikarsh had picked it.
Finding somewhere they could lie down took longer than Neeru would’ve liked, but eventually they came to a smooth dip, big enough for both of them. They lay close together, a technique familiar from many winter nights when the cadre had camped outdoors, and she covered them as best she could with the canvas from her kite.
She felt a cold spot on her arm where the hole was. Might the repairer have deliberately done a bad job? Or delayed making the repair, so the glue wouldn’t have finished drying when she had to fold the wings? They couldn’t have known when that was going to happen. Could they?
Neeru awoke, shivering. Reddening of the horizon told her dawn wasn’t far off. She’d slept longer than she thought she would. She started to get up, then found that Vikarsh had an arm around her waist. It seemed… right, somehow. She wished she could stay here, but there was a war to be fought.
She shook Vikarsh’s arm. “Sir, wake up.” No response. She shook him more firmly. “Adjunct Vikarsh, Sir. Wake up.”
“I am awake,” he mumbled. He sat up and stretched. “No breakfast, I’m afraid, unless there’s water nearby.”
They had some battle rations left over, but these were too tough to chew without being soaked in water first.
“How far from our lines are we, Sir?”
He gazed east. “Hard to say, but I think I see clouds over there. That means we must be near the edge of the desert.”
He gave her the canvas from the tail of the kite and showed her how to drape it over her head and torso, like a cloak, to keep the worst of the sun off her. She fastened it with lengths of the cord she’d brought with her. He made his own cloak with the canvas from the wings, and together they set off.
They took turns carrying his kite, though it was a little too long for her, and its tail kept dragging in the sand. Eventually, they figured out how to carry it between them. The hardest part was matching their paces. After the third or fourth time when one of them had nearly fallen over, Vikarsh said, “If we were infantry, we’d have had this drummed into us until we couldn’t walk at any other speed.” He let go of the kite and bent down to touch the sand. “We’ll rest a while. The sand isn’t too hot to sit on yet.”
That got no argument from Neeru. After a minute of sitting, she lay on her back, wishing she could stay here for the rest of the day. She thought Vikarsh might tell her to sit up straight, but he didn’t.
As she debated whether to close her eyes against the bright blue sky, a small dark shape heading northwest caught her attention. At first, she thought it might be a bird, but it had too many straight lines for that.
“Sir? There’s a kite overhead.”
He lay down, the better to see it. By now it had turned to go south. “Probably one of ours. The enemy have straighter wings and a rounder tail. Ah, he’s seen us.” The rider made some gestures. “Yes, of course we’ll keep going that way, you tadpole.” Vikarsh pointed east three times, then stood up. The kite started circling—gaining height, or keeping watch?
“We’d better let him see that we’ve understood,” said Vikarsh. “Start walking. We’ll rest again once he goes out of sight.”
They’d taken less than ten steps when the kite broke its circle and headed east. Soon enough, it was over the horizon, and they sat down once more.
“So we might get to ride in a wagon part of the way home,” Vikarsh said. “I wasn’t looking forward to having to lug this beast all the way back to camp.”
“How did they know where to look, Sir, so soon after we went missing?” Neeru asked. “And after we flew the opposite way from camp?”
“Good question. We’re not even really missing yet. I told my deputy I might be back last night, more likely this morning.”
“So they should be starting to wonder where we are about now?”
“Yes. And if someone launched now, we wouldn’t see him for another hour.”
“A routine patrol, then?” she asked.
“Perhaps. But they don’t come this far west.” He sighed and stood up. “No point fretting about it now.” He helped her to her feet, and they picked up his kite.
They walked on, resting more frequently, using his kite for shade. Gradually, bands of different colours came into view on the horizon, a relief from all the yellows and browns of the desert.
“Not far now,” Vikarsh said. The ground began to rise, slowly at first, then more rapidly. “I told you this used to be a lake.” Rocks appeared, and with them, plants—small ones at first, close to the ground, but becoming bigger and taller. The sand gave way to gravel, then dirt. At last, little clumps of trees were visible in the distance.
“Adjunct Vikarsh!” a woman called.
Vikarsh stopped, looking for the voice’s source. Neeru, who was carrying the kite’s tail, jolted and nearly fell over. A group of men and women in their side’s uniforms ran towards them. They came from the direction of a large boulder, and Neeru guessed they’d been behind it. Vikarsh and Neeru put the kite down.
The woman at the front of the group, who wore a sergeant’s hat, saluted Vikarsh. “Sergeant Ilang, Queen’s Light Infantry Regiment. Sir, I have orders to find you and escort you back to our lines.”
“I’ll let you do it as long as you can carry my kite safely,” Vikarsh replied.
Ilang frowned, obviously not expecting this response. She studied the kite for a moment. “We have a handcart, Sir. It should fit on that, if we move a few things out of it.”
“Then I accept. How did you know where to find us?”
“Orders said march north along the edge of the desert, Sir.”
“Then you got lucky, finding us so soon after we went missing.”
Ilang gave him a curious look, perhaps wondering if the heat had got to him. “Sir, orders said you were reported missing about this time yesterday morning.”
The journey back to camp took longer than Vikarsh expected, as they had to detour around territory that the enemy had recently captured. There was little conversation beyond what was needed for the practical aspects of travelling. In the evening, they pitched their tents in a small wood near a village. There wasn’t much food, but it tasted a lot better than the Dragonriders’ rations. Neeru was aware of some of the soldiers staring at her and Vikarsh. She wanted to ask them if they’d never seen a dragonrider before. Probably they hadn’t. There were only a few thousand in the whole world, and most were at the Nest, too old or too young or too weak to fight.
Once they’d eaten, and the sun was beginning to set, Vikarsh asked Sergeant Ilang, “So, who reported us missing?”
“I don’t know, Sir. My Captain said the message came from your cadre, through the mirror net, but he didn’t say who sent it.”
“You said we were reported missing yesterday morning, yes?”
“Yes, Sir. About nine of the clock.”
Vikarsh shook his head. “Doesn’t make any sense. We left at dawn. We’d only been gone three hours.”
Ilang gave him a curious look. She turned to another soldier—her corporal, if Neeru was right about the stripes on his shoulders. “See if the slates in my pouch still have my copy of the message.”
The corporal ducked into one of the tents and emerged a minute or two later with a small slate, which he passed to Ilang. She nodded and passed it to Vikarsh. He read it, then held it out to Neeru.
“Tell me I’m not going mad,” he said.
Neeru carefully accepted the slate, holding it by the edges, as though she might be whipped if she smudged the chalk.
Request help finding Adjunct Vikarsh and Rider Neeru, Cadre Three, missing since yesterday morning. Thought to be flying kites over Ang-Lienthe desert. Report sightings to mirror net node 14/5 and assist personnel to return to cadre. The descriptions of herself and Vikarsh were accurate, if rather unflattering.
“Sir, this doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Neeru. “If the Sergeant received this order yesterday, but it… it uses the word yesterday to say when we went missing, then… then it’s saying we disappeared a day before we left our camp.”
Beyond the glow of the fire, one of the soldiers laughed nervously.
“Check the date,” Vikarsh said through clenched teeth.
Neeru squinted at the slate’s top left corner. “Three Day. But that’s today…”
“Is it?” Vikarsh asked Ilang.
“No, Sir. Today’s Four Day.”
“What about the rest of you?” Vikarsh said to the other soldiers.
In the near-dark, Neeru couldn’t be sure if everyone replied, but all who spoke agreed with Ilang.
“So we’ve lost a day somewhere,” said Vikarsh. “Sergeant, I trust you won’t mention this misunderstanding to anyone else.”
Ilang gave an embarrassed cough. “Sir, my orders are to find you, not to ask what you were doing out there.”
They went into the tents soon after that. Vikarsh and Neeru had to share with two of the soldiers, who loaned them a couple of spare bedrolls. There were no pillows, but Neeru folded the end of her bedroll over to make it just thick enough to rest her head on.
Neeru lay awake for a while. She wanted to discuss the missing day with Vikarsh, but he’d shut down the possibility of talking about it in the soldiers’ hearing.
When had it happened? Why had neither of them realised? Might it have some connection with the strange dream she’d had the first time she visited the temple? Why had she not missed a day then? Or maybe she had, and nobody had bothered to tell her. She’d have to ask Solastim when she got back to the cadre.
More than any of that, how had the person who ordered the search known where to look? The mission was supposed to be secret.
They broke camp soon after dawn and carried on heading east. As they walked, Vikarsh gradually nudged himself and Neeru away from the soldiers, while staying in their sight.
“I won’t mention this missing day in my report,” he murmured. “Unless anyone asks about it. We flew out on the morning of Two Day. Left the temple on Two Day evening. You crashed that night. We walked through the desert until the morning of Four Day, when the soldiers met us. Walked in the night and early morning, while it’s cool, slept in the day. Got all that?”
“Yes, Sir.” More lies. Or more not contradicting him when he lied. Was there a difference?
Towards noon, they reached the cadre’s camp. Ilang’s soldiers handed Vikarsh’s kite and the wreckage of Neeru’s over to the groundmen, who took them away. Vikarsh wrote out a slate authorising Ilang’s squad to camp with the battalion until the following morning, and told her to show it to the army quartermaster. She saluted him and led her soldiers towards the Army’s tents.
Solastim was waiting at the entrance to the dragon pen, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, as though he wanted to give Neeru a big hug.
“We need to report to Marshal Enthrakh,” Vikarsh said to the guards. They directed him to the right tent.
When Vikarsh told the guards at Enthrakh’s tent that he wanted to see her, one of them ducked inside. Moments later, the cadre’s captains came out, and the other guard motioned Vikarsh and Neeru in. Enthrakh had obviously interrupted a meeting for them.
Neeru had never been inside Enthrakh’s tent, but it was the same size as Vikarsh’s, with similar furnishings. The Marshal sat at a table covered with papers and scrolls. A map lay in the centre. A younger man, presumably Enthrakh’s secretary, stood by her side, frantically writing on a slate.
Vikarsh saluted Enthrakh. “Thank you for letting me borrow Rider Neeru and your kite,” he said. “I return both to your command.”
The salute meant Enthrakh was superior to Vikarsh, but speaking without being spoken to first, and not addressing her as Lady, meant he was superior to her. Or was that just how things were between marshals and adjuncts?
“I don’t recall much ‘letting’ on my part,” Enthrakh said. “Did you confirm her story?”
Neeru tried not to show any offence at the implication that she’d been lying.
“Definitely the temple of K’nesh-Thul on the old maps. It’s a ruin. Hill behind it. Steps to the top. We launched from there. Might make a good base for reconnaissance, but nothing more. Only one well, no obvious place to sink another.”
Enthrakh nodded, seemingly weighing Vikarsh’s words. “You’re back a day later than you expected. What kept you?”
“Had to walk most of the way back. Neeru crashed. Shoddy repair by a groundman.”
Enthrakh tutted. “What’s the state of her kite?”
“Brought back most of the canvas. Not worth repairing.”
Enthrakh glanced at her secretary’s slate, then gazed at Neeru as though seeking any hint of dishonesty. “Why is she wearing a belt?”
Neeru wished a dragon would burn her to ash. What was she supposed to say?
“I gave it to her,” said Vikarsh.
Enthrakh turned to Vikarsh, eyebrows raised. “Why’d you do that?”
“She’s earned it.”
“That’s my decision, even if you were ‘borrowing’ her when she did whatever you think makes her fit for it.”
Vikarsh cleared his throat. “Then I recommend you move her to the front of the list for promotion.”
Neeru gasped and covered her mouth.
With a faint smile, Enthrakh said, “I’ll consider it.” To Neeru, she said, “Don’t get your hopes up, though. Vikarsh, come back at…” She turned to her secretary. “When am I next free?”
“Six of the clock, Lady.”
“Dinner time. Of course. Would you care to join me?”
“Gladly,” said Vikarsh.
“Then you’re dismissed. Send the others back in.”
Vikarsh saluted, and he and Neeru left. The captains were still outside, at a distance to make it plain they hadn’t been eavesdropping. Padar, the most senior of them, saluted Vikarsh, who told them they could resume their meeting. She thought Brakh glowered as Vikarsh looked away, or perhaps that was just her imagination.
“Well,” said Vikarsh, surveying the camp, “I released you back to her command, but all her captains are in there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the tent. “So it’ll be a while before anyone gives you any orders. I suggest you eat, then get some rest, if you can.”
“Yes, Sir.” Her voice sounded as though she hadn’t spoken for a week. “And… thank you for recommending me for promotion.”
“Like I said, you’ve earned it. But like she said, don’t get your hopes up. Probably at least a dozen people ahead of you on the list. She won’t want to annoy them by letting you fly over them. But she might move you up the list a bit faster than otherwise.”
“Understood, Sir. Thank you.”
“Dismissed.”
Neeru went to her company’s tent, which was unoccupied, and retrieved her food bowl and spoon from her kit bag. Then she headed for the mess tent. A few of the people she passed stared at her—because of Sha-Kynan’s belt, or because this was the second time she’d come back to camp after an unexpected absence?
The cook was serving the dregs of a lamb stew as Neeru arrived. At least there was no queue. He filled her bowl and gave her the end of a loaf. She looked for somewhere to sit.
“Nee-woo!” Solastim waved to her from a nearby table. Once she’d put the bowl and bread down, he threw his arms around her.
“I’ve only been gone a couple of days,” she said, her voice muffled by having his shoulder across her face.
He let go of her and signed, Worried.
They sat down, and she started tearing the bread into small pieces, which she dropped into the stew. She looked around. Nobody near. She leaned towards him and whispered, “We went to the same place I went on my own, but I can’t really say much about it.” His eyes widened. She finished with the bread and started eating. Without the bread, the stew would have been little more than gravy.
She looked around again, seeing no one who might’ve been listening. “Don’t tell anyone I asked this, but… what day is it?”
Solastim tilted his head and held up his right hand with the thumb and all the fingers spread out. So Ilang and her soldiers had been right. Of course they had. Where had the missing day gone?
“And… when I went away the last time, I came back the day after, didn’t I?”
He nodded. Then maybe the absence wasn’t connected to that strange dream of the dragons and the mosaics.
Solastim finished his bowl, then curiously touched the belt. In between mouthfuls of stew, she told him how Vikarsh had given the belt to her, then told him as much as she thought she was allowed about the mission. He asked a lot of questions, mainly about the crash, and she answered the ones she thought she could. She reassured him she wasn’t hurt—she hadn’t fallen far, and she’d had a soft landing. “The kite came off much worse than I did.”
Bowls scraped clean, they stood. Wrestle? Solastim signed hopefully.
“Oh! The tournament.” She’d forgotten about it in all the excitement and fear of the last couple of days. “Who won?”
He pouted, then signed, Company, and croaked, “Padar.” That wasn’t especially surprising. They had a couple of groundmen who were too big for almost anyone to get a grip on, never mind take down. He signed, You wrestle me.
She laughed. She’d forgotten that, too. “I owe you one, don’t I? Vikarsh told me to get some rest, but I guess we can have one bout.”
He grinned and led her to their company’s tent. No one else was here. They stood next to her pallet, facing one another. He dropped into a defensive crouch, one foot forward, the other behind him. Since he’d challenged her, she was allowed first attack. She studied his posture for weaknesses, trying not to move her head and give him any clues as to where she might strike.
Arms outstretched, Neeru lowered her head and charged. Her shoulder collided with Solastim’s stomach. Air whooshed out of him. He staggered backwards but stayed upright. He grabbed her upper arms and tried to twist them apart. Before he could break her grip, she hooked her foot behind his back leg and tugged. His leg didn’t budge. He shoved her, and she fell backwards, bringing him with her. They landed heavily on the hard, dusty ground.
He gazed into her eyes as if he’d never seen anything so interesting. His breath hot on her cheek, he asked, “Yield?”
She started to say, “Best of three?” Then something pressed against her lips. His head jerked towards the tent’s entrance, and he jumped off her. She rose unsteadily to her feet. From the corner of her eye, she saw him salute.
Captain Brakh stood a few paces inside the tent. Neeru saluted him, hoping he wouldn’t find them something unpleasant to do.
“Rider Neeru. I won’t delay you by asking you to explain what you were doing. Report to the Marshal immediately.”
Neeru saluted Captain Brakh again, then, as quickly as she dared, marched past him out of the tent. As soon as she was out of his sight, she ran to Marshal Enthrakh’s tent. She ducked and weaved to avoid colliding with people. It seemed as though the entire camp had decided to come out and wander around aimlessly. She skidded to a halt, just out of reach of the guards’ spears. Heart hammering, she bent over, resting her hands on her thighs.
“What do you want?” one of the guards asked.
She lifted her head. “Rider Neeru.” She gulped down a breath. “Reporting to the Marshal, as ordered.”
The guard nodded to his comrade, who entered the tent.
“Stand up straight,” the remaining guard said. “And stop panting. You’re not a dog.”
How dare he talk to her like that? She outranked him. But he’d probably tell Enthrakh if she was rude to him. She shouldn’t be this winded after running such a short distance. She did as he said.
What did Enthrakh want with her? To question her about what had happened in the desert, almost certainly. Why? She tried to straighten her memories of those events, but a more recent one kept intruding. Solastim had just kissed her.
The guard who’d gone into the tent came out and nodded. “She’ll see you now.”
Neeru took a deep breath, lifted the flap of the entrance and went in. After a couple of paces, she stopped and saluted.
The Marshal sat at her desk. A pile of slates rested on one corner, next to some large rolled-up pieces of paper—maps, probably. A tall, thin man with a close-trimmed beard stood where the secretary had been the first time Neeru was here. He wore a well-tailored army uniform. It had no insignia of rank, though its quality meant he had to be someone important. There was no sign of the secretary.
“Rider Neeru,” said the Marshal. “At ease.”
Neeru relaxed, just a little. Some officers would keep you at attention the whole time you were in their presence, just because they could.
“Thank you for coming,” Enthrakh continued. “This shouldn’t take long. First of all, I have to tell you that this meeting is confidential. You’re not to tell anyone outside this tent about what we discuss, particularly not Adjunct Vikarsh. Is that clear?”
What had she got herself into? She swallowed carefully. “Yes, Lady.”
“If anyone asks why I wanted to see you, tell them I wanted to know about your crash in the desert.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Good. We have a few questions about the mission you went on with Adjunct Vikarsh. Firstly, had you ever met him before the mission?”
“Once, Lady.” Someone—Andoyar, maybe—had told Neeru that if she ever faced this kind of interrogation, she should answer exactly the questions asked. Never volunteer information. The officers might not be looking for what they said they were. Anything she said might be used against a comrade—or against her.
“When was that?”
“Two weeks before the mission.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“He took me to his tent, Lady.”
“What happened at this meeting?”
“He asked me about the temple in the desert, and whether I thought I could find it again.”
The army man spoke. “Why did he think you might not be able to do that?” She’d heard many accents from the Army’s men and women, but this one was unfamiliar to her.
“The first time I found it, Sir, my kite had been blown off-course.”
The man nodded. “Did he ask you about anything else?”
“He asked me about the… the most recent enemy attack on the camp.” Her mouth had gone dry, and she swallowed.
“What did he want to know about it?”
“He asked what my orders were that morning, and whether anyone had changed them from the usual ones.”
With a sharp glance at the army man, Enthrakh said, “We know what we need to about that. This temple. You said it’s in Ang-Lienthe—the desert to the west—yes?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“The groundmen said you flew southeast after launch, correct?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“So this was to be a secret mission.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Did he say why it was secret?” the army man asked.
“He wanted to find out whether the site could be used as a base to attack the enemy’s western provinces, Sir.”
“And can it?”
“I… I don’t know enough to answer that question, Sir.”
“Can you read?” he asked.
“Um, yes, Sir. Fairly well, anyway.”
“Was there anything written at the site?”
“I didn’t see any writing, Sir.” Which was true, in a way—when she went into the mosaic room, it had been too dark for her to read anything.
“A temple with no writing?”
“I’m told it was common in temples to the old gods,” Enthrakh remarked. “Not as many people could read back then.”
“On the way back here, you crashed in the desert,” the man said. “Is that right?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The man stroked his beard. “How soon after the crash did Vikarsh land next to you?”
“I don’t know exactly, Sir, but it can’t have been long. I’d just got out of the wreck, and was thinking about how I’d return to camp, when I heard him call my name.”
“Why didn’t he launch again after confirming you were safe?”
“To launch a kite, Sir, you need a winch, or else high ground that you can run on. We didn’t have either.”
“Did you ever have any doubts about Vikarsh’s leadership?”
What an odd question. “No, Sir.”
“Did you ever think you might not make it back to our lines?”
“No, Sir. Well—once, when I crashed, before I knew Vikarsh had landed.”
“So you trusted him to lead you out of the desert.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Even though deserts are dangerous, and everywhere looks the same.”
“That’s true, Sir, but we were only two hours’ flight from the edge, and it was obvious which way to go.”
“Did Vikarsh ever give you an order that you hesitated to obey?”
“No, Sir.” Hesitation would have been unwise, even without anyone else to witness it.
“Did he ever give you an order that you thought exceeded his authority?”
“No, Sir.”
“Did he ever give you an order and tell you not to tell anyone else about it?”
“No, Sir.” He’d told her she’d be unwise to repeat certain things, but those weren’t orders as such.
The man sighed and glanced at Enthrakh, who shrugged. “Did he give you any reason to doubt his loyalty to the Dragonriders, or to the King?”
“No, Sir.” She hoped they didn’t notice she was sweating. Were they some of the people Vikarsh had told her about—the ones who liked history the way it was?
The man looked Neeru up and down, then folded his arms, as though waiting for her to say something.
Enthrakh cleared her throat and gave the man a questioning look. He nodded.
“Rider Neeru. As you no doubt recall, Vikarsh recommended that I move you to the front of the list for promotion.”
“Yes, Lady.” Was she going to say she rejected the recommendation?
“Why do you think he did that?”
“I don’t know, Lady. You’d have to ask him.”
“He must’ve said something. We don’t promote people for no reason.”
“When… when he gave me the belt, he praised the way I handled the first flight to the temple. A solo flight with no notice over unfamiliar territory, and I came back safely.”
“Mm. How old are you?”
“Twelve, Lady.”
“That’s very young for promotion from your rank. You wouldn’t normally be eligible to be considered for another two years.”
“Understood, Lady. Vikarsh also said he knows of people twice my age who couldn’t do what I did.”
“Did he now? I’m sure he knows they’re not eligible for promotion, either.” Enthrakh drummed her fingers on the desk and rested her chin on her other hand. “Do you want to be promoted?”
“It would be a great honour, Lady.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Neeru cleared her throat. “I took an oath to serve the King, Lady. I want to do everything I can to help win the war. If I was promoted, I could do more. But if you think I’m not ready yet, then I’ll accept that.”
“Of course. I’ve no further questions.” She turned to the man, who shook his head. Facing Neeru again, she said, “You’ll need to hand over that belt until such time as you’re promoted.”
Neeru involuntarily gripped the ring over her chest.
Enthrakh’s expression softened, just a little. “I’ll take good care of it.”
“Vikarsh said it belonged to Sha-Kynan.”
Enthrakh tilted her head. “Did he now? Maybe I’ll have to let the other riders touch it for luck before I put it away.”
Neeru emptied the belt’s pouches and unbuckled it. Enthrakh picked it up and gazed at it reverently, as though not quite believing it was real. As Neeru gathered the objects that had been in the belt and tried to figure out how she was going to carry them back to her tent in one trip, the Marshal smirked and said, “I’ll excuse you not saluting this once. And remember—not a word about this meeting to anyone. Dismissed.”
Neeru tried not to sag with relief that neither of them had asked about the missing day.
After leaving Enthrakh, Neeru headed back to the company’s tent. The Marshal hadn’t given her any orders for what to do next, so she thought she’d follow Vikarsh’s suggestion to get some rest.
How could she rest after what had just happened? They’d cast doubt on Vikarsh’s competence, then practically asked her if she thought he was a traitor. If they were some of the people who liked history the way it was, he might be in danger. She had to warn him. But if she did, and he ran, they’d know she’d done it.
Was he a traitor? Wanting to disband the Dragonriders sounded like treason, but he’d agreed with her that it couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done before the war was over. Or at least, he hadn’t disagreed with her. And he’d said the kingdom could keep using kites, just remove the requirement that you had to be a child of dragonriders to fly one.
Was it treason to believe the dragons would never come back?
“Rider Neeru.” Captain Brakh’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. He stood by the tent, a slate in his hand. Had he been waiting for her ever since he sent her to Enthrakh?
“Get rid of the rubbish you’re carrying, then report to the work party under Captain Padar on the other side of the hill.”
“Yes, Sir.” She stowed the objects in her kit bag and went to find the party. They were digging a ditch to divert a stream to somewhere more militarily useful. So the officers planned to keep the camp here for some time. Digging was work for infantry, not dragonriders, but pointing that out would get her nowhere.
Solastim was here already, shovelling away. They nodded to one another. You weren’t supposed to talk unnecessarily while you were on a work party, and besides, what they needed to talk about wasn’t for anyone else’s ears.
She reported to Padar, who told her to relieve one of the soldiers near the front of the line. A couple of the infantry who were staying on the line sniggered, doubtless not believing that someone as short as her could keep up with them. She ignored them. She was used to proving their sort wrong.
It was exhausting work, but was ideal for Neeru, as most of her strength was in her arms and back. She had no difficulty keeping pace with the line, though with everybody close together, she needed a lot of concentration to avoid hitting someone else’s tool with hers, or worse, hitting someone else. She had to keep reminding herself not to become distracted with thoughts of Vikarsh and Enthrakh—or Solastim.
After a while, Padar called a halt for water. The troops stood straight, rubbing their backs and shaking their limbs. A canteen was passed up the line. Neeru drank as slowly as she could, not wanting to overwhelm herself. The woman next to her snatched the canteen out of her hands when she lowered it. Neeru clenched her teeth and chose not to yell at this inconsiderate tadpole.
Solastim caught Neeru’s eye, and drew a finger from one shoulder to the opposite hip, then from the other shoulder to the other hip. He’d noticed Sha-Kynan’s belt had gone.
Later, she signed.
The party resumed digging, and worked until it was time for the evening meal, with a couple more breaks in the meantime. They’d dug about a third of the ditch, so there was probably another two days’ work here.
Padar dismissed the party with an order to come back after breakfast tomorrow. Neeru, Solastim, and a few other dragonriders collected their eating utensils from their tent, then went to the mess tent.
The rest of Neeru’s squad was already eating, but they’d saved her a place. They were eager for details of the mission, but she explained she couldn’t tell them anything.
Andoyar asked, “Not even why you came back with the Army, instead of under your kite?”
She told them about the crash and how Vikarsh had helped her.
“This was at night?” Andoyar said.
“Yes.”
He pursed his lips. “A lot of officers would’ve left you for dead in a situation like that. If they even noticed you weren’t with them any more.” He smirked. “You want to hold on to that one, if you can.”
After the meal, Neeru and Solastim wandered around the pen, looking for somewhere relatively private. They settled on a steep piece of ground at the back of the pen, just outside the palisade.
“The Marshal ordered me not to say anything about what we discussed,” Neeru said.
Trouble? Solastim signed.
She shook her head. “Not for me, I think.”
His mouth formed a silent Oh. He made the new sign that she’d decided meant belt, then tilted his head and shrugged, which meant he was asking a question.
“She took it. Vikarsh said I should be promoted—”
Solastim threw his arms around her. She patted his back and tried to wriggle out of the embrace. “It’s not his decision. There’s a list. At least a dozen people on it already. She said I’ll get the belt back if I’m promoted.”
He let go of her and grinned. “When,” he croaked.
“I hope you’re right.” She looked down and shifted from one foot to the other. “When we wrestled earlier, and you won…” She raised her head, not quite meeting his gaze. “Did you kiss me?”
For a moment, he didn’t answer. Then he gave a small nod.
Her heart thumped, and her mouth went dry. “Would… would you like to kiss me again?”
Another small nod, and a smile to go with it. He took half a pace towards her.
“Well… before Brakh walked in, I was going to say, best of three. So—if you can beat me at wrestling, then you can kiss me.”
A bigger nod. You beat me? he signed.
She shrugged. “Then I guess I kiss you.”
They headed downhill to a small, flat piece of ground, and stood a few feet apart, facing one another. She had the first move, as he’d won the previous bout. She charged, but dodged to one side and kicked one of his legs from under him. He dropped to the ground like a sack of yams. As he started to get up, she lay across him, her hands pinning his arms to the ground. One of his legs was trapped between hers.
“Yield?” she asked.
He nodded. His breathing was steady, and she guessed he’d let her win. He stared at her, unblinking. She lowered her body a fraction. Could she do this? Should she do this?
“Come on,” he grunted.
She gulped down a breath and touched her lips to his. She felt… nothing, really, only a soft pressure. No wonder she hadn’t been sure if he’d kissed her in the tent.
She started to get off him, and then he stretched and kissed her.
“Hey!” she whispered. “You didn’t win that.”
He grabbed her shoulders and rolled their bodies together, so that he now lay on top of her. He kissed her again.
She started to protest that he’d cheated, then lifted her head to meet his lips. Warmth spread from her stomach—unfamiliar but not unpleasant. She wrapped her arms around him. He stroked her cheeks, ran his fingers through her hair. They carried on kissing. Now it felt good.
From a great distance, curfew sounded. Solastim jolted, then lifted himself off her. Neeru shivered and reached for him, before lowering her arm and sitting up. Staying out after curfew had serious consequences. It couldn’t be that time already. They’d only been lying here a few minutes. But the sun had set, and when they climbed back up the hill, she saw torches burning throughout the camp.
Neeru followed Solastim back to their company’s tent. Some of their comrades were still settling down, and she heard sniggers as she passed them.
As she lay on her bed, a couple of places over from Solastim, something brushed her face. She squirmed and snatched at it—a twig, tangled in her hair. She patted her head and clothes, finding more twigs, as well as leaves and blades of grass. Solastim must look the same, and the sniggerers had drawn the obvious conclusion. They’d have to be more subtle next time.
Neeru woke to the bugler blaring alarm, and sounds of people rushing about outside the tent. Half the company was already standing at attention by their beds, fully dressed and weapons strapped on. Panic washed through her as she pulled on her shoes. Oh, Dagoreth, where was her knife? There. She grabbed it and fastened it round her waist.
Captain Brakh strutted among the company, as though inspecting them on parade. As he neared the end of the last row, a messenger arrived at the tent’s entrance.
“Sir! Orders from Marshal Enthrakh! Enemy approaching from southeast by land and air! Company is to defend launch strip with archery!”
“Acknowledged!” Brakh barked back. He turned to the dragonriders and started shouting orders to the squad leaders.
Andoyar took Neeru, Shoinath and Yentan out of the tent. The people she’d heard outside had gone now, mostly heading uphill to the launch strip.
“First stop—the armoury,” Andoyar said.
That was obvious, seeing as Brakh’s company had only two bows among them. Neeru yawned as they hurried downhill towards the armoury, dodging soldiers who were gathering weapons and equipment.
When they reached the armoury, a queue snaked out of the entrance. Raised voices from inside suggested that the officer in charge was arguing with someone over whether to let them take everything they wanted.
Andoyar swore under his breath, and said to Yentan, “Go tell Brakh we’ll be delayed here, and ask if he wants to change our orders.” Yentan saluted and ran back up the hill.
Neeru scanned the sky to the southeast, holding up a hand to block the sun. Three—no, four dots near the horizon. Coming this way? Hard to tell.
Shoinath looked in the same direction and murmured, “At least they’re not trying to sneak up on us this time.”
The queue had barely moved by the time Yentan returned, saying, “Orders unchanged.”
A company of infantry marched out of the tent, each with a bow and quiver slung over their shoulders. Andoyar called after them, “Did you leave any for us?” They ignored him.
The queue moved quickly after that, and Andoyar asked the armourer to give them each a bow, wrist and finger guards, and a quiver of glass-edged arrows. These had been dipped in glue, then rolled in ground glass. If they hit the wing of a kite, they would make a long tear in it, instead of a small hole.
The armourer reluctantly handed the weapons over. “The arrows are expensive. Try not to waste them.”
Neeru’s knees were in agony by the time they climbed the hill back up to the launch strip. She sat on a tuft of grass, rubbing them.
“You there!” someone shouted behind her. “Stand up, girl!”
“She means you,” Andoyar said unnecessarily. He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet.
Neeru shifted her weight from one leg to the other as discreetly as possible. She strapped on the wrist guard, then slid the finger guard onto her other hand.
“You’ve all trained with bows, right?” Andoyar said.
They had.
“Like the armourer said—don’t waste arrows. These quivers only have four each, not a dozen like the standard issue. Distances and angles are hard to judge when you’re shooting at something in the sky. Don’t take a shot unless you’re confident of it. Our job is to keep the enemy away from here, so our brothers and sisters can launch and land safely. We’ve got to be where the enemy can see us, so they know to stay away. If we bring an enemy kite down, that’s good, but it’s not our main objective.”
The woman who’d shouted at Neeru to stand up, one of the captains, ordered them to the western end of the launch strip, a dozen yards downhill, out of the way of any friendly kites coming in to land. From behind came the sound of someone running. Neeru’s stomach lurched when the footsteps stopped, but the silence told her the kite had launched successfully. Several more were already in the air.
By now, the enemy infantry had reached the wall of the camp and had clashed with the defenders. Arrows rained down on the enemy, but they seemed undeterred. They outnumbered the defenders by at least two to one. The enemy brought up ladders to try to scale the walls. The defenders pushed them back, but they kept trying. The defenders might hold them off, but at what cost?
“Come on and fight, you cowards!” Andoyar shouted.
What? Neeru glanced at him and saw he was looking into the sky, shaking a fist. The enemy kites were circling well out of bowshot, avoiding any friendly ones that came near. So they were just observing or directing the battle.
“We’d do more good if we were on the barricades,” Shoinath said.
“We have our orders,” said Andoyar.
The barricades held for now, but every time Neeru looked, there seemed to be fewer defenders on them. If the enemy kites were passing information to the ground, their soldiers weren’t making much use of it. They just kept hurling themselves at the defenders. A symbol of the bigger struggle. Bad enough that the enemy outnumbered them, but that Lord Brahan would throw away the lives of his soldiers needlessly…
A scream came from the sky, faint but unmistakably the sound of someone in agony. Neeru looked up, trying to identify the wounded rider—theirs or the enemy’s? One was heading away from the battle, losing height, one wing ragged.
“They’ve got a magical weapon!” someone shouted.
What? Why hadn’t they used it sooner? That would’ve quickly tipped the odds in their favour.
“All archers!” the Captain shouted. “Aim at the enemy kite on the south side of their formation!”
Neeru and her comrades nocked arrows, but didn’t draw their strings yet. The arrows’ shafts glittered in the sun.
“Wind is blowing north-west, steady breeze!”
The archers adjusted their aim.
“Draw!”
They pulled the strings level with their ears. Neeru’s string dug into her fingers, even through the guard.
“Loose!”
Strings thrummed, and a dozen arrows rose into the sky. They became too small to see before anyone could tell whether any had found their target. The enemy kites didn’t change course.
“All archers—same target!” said the Captain. “Draw! Loose!”
This volley also failed to find its target. Were the enemy even in range?
Behind them, someone said, “Are you sure this is wise, Sir?”
The answer came, “They’re going to be slaughtered up there.” Was that Vikarsh? Neeru resisted the urge to look.
Another faint scream. The wing of a friendly kite was on fire. The rider fought bravely to bring the kite down safely, but the task was hopeless.
Vikarsh—if that was who it was—ran down the launch strip and into the air.
Some of the archers shouted obscenities at the enemy. Some of the friendly kites manoeuvred as though trying to get behind the enemy rider who had the magical weapon—hoping to shoot arrows at him? Would they stand a chance once they were within his range?
Another friendly kite approached the battle, then turned away. It approached again, then retreated again.
“The Adjunct’s trying to lure the enemy away from our kites,” someone said.
“They’ll kill him, then get back to killing the rest of us,” someone else replied.
The Captain ordered another volley. What was the use?
“Sir, we’re down to our last arrows over here,” Andoyar said.
“Two of you, go fetch some more from the armoury. Whatever they’ll give you.”
“Neeru, Yentan—go,” said Andoyar.
Yentan was halfway down the hill before Neeru had even put down her bow and taken off her quiver. She hobbled after him, knees jarring at every step. It would be quicker to lie down and roll.
Near the bottom of the hill, Neeru had to avoid a crowd of wounded around the medical tent. She met Yentan on his way back, four quivers over his shoulders and four more cradled in his arms.
“I told him you were coming,” he called to her.
The armoury was deserted, except for a groundman standing by a rack of swords.
“I need—” Neeru began.
“Help yourself,” the man said, waving an arm at the other racks.
About a dozen quivers remained, spread across two racks. How to tell which were the right ones? Then she remembered the glass-edged arrows came in fours, while the standard ones were in twelves. Only two quivers of glass-edged remained. She slung those over one shoulder, two standard over the other shoulder and picked up four more to carry in her arms.
Neeru was a third of the way up the hill when she noticed smoke rising from the launch strip. Knees screaming, she picked up her pace.
Halfway up, she met a party of half a dozen riders and groundmen bringing wounded down. Andoyar and another rider were carrying Yentan, whose leg and flank had been blackened with burns. He screamed and whimpered with every bump.
“What happened?” Neeru asked, though she could make a good guess.
“Enemy swooped low, shot at us, skipped off,” Andoyar replied, not looking back as the party passed her. He was limping, which had to mean…
“Where’s Shoinath?” she called after him.
“Caught right in the middle.”
But they hadn’t brought her down… Neeru ran to the launch strip, heedless of her pain.
Kites landed, one after another. No replacements launching. So the battle was over. Or the Marshal thought it was.
Bodies were strewn across the western end of the strip, where the archers had been stationed. Many were too mangled to be recognisable. Shoinath lay in the middle of the group, most of her chest missing, bow still clutched in her hand, glassy eyes staring into the empty sky.
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Last update: 4/12/2025 22:51