Novice Dragoneer by E E Knight

Author:E E Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

A presence loomed up behind, large, much bigger than a horse, but quiet.

“I am Aurue,” the dragon said.

She couldn’t answer him. The sobs wouldn’t stop.

“This noble one is dead.” His Montangyan was terrible, thick and utterly flat, but he could get his point across.

The gray nudged her with his snout.

“Be back on your way, Ileth,” he said. “You are wet. You are cold. Go, take our gratitude. We will finish.”

“I’ll stay.”

“Jizara and I, we are of his connected line, through my sire and sire-sire. Jizara is away. The vigil starts.”

“Don’t cut-cut him up,” she managed. “He made me promise.” She cast about at the boats and broke off an old tiller handle. It had an evil-looking pair of nails like fangs. “I’m not moving.”

“When stop the vigil, we burn him. Until then, none will touch at him.”

“Then,” she said, feeling half-dead herself, “I sh-shall wait until he is bu-burned.”

“Have your will,” Aurue said.

So she sat by the body, with her improvised club across her lap. She dragged over one of the smaller overturned flat-bottomed boats that had once been the border of the dueling ground and set it by the Lodger’s head and sat. The sun came up. She vaguely sensed that some dragoneers came down to the beach, milled about, spoke with Aurue or one of the other dragons, and left. Eventually, the sun went down. Galia came out with a blanket and some soup in a crock. She accepted the blanket and thanked her for the soup but didn’t eat any. After two futile attempts at conversation, Galia gave up and returned to the Serpentine.

Three days she sat, not eating, taking a mouthful of lake water when the thirst became too awful, hurling rocks at scavenging birds who came to worry at the tender flesh reachable to their hooked beaks. Were the dragons not bothered by birds trying to eat their kin?

Two dragons were always with her, but they changed at dawn and dusk. They neither ate nor drank nor spoke when they were on duty. Now and then a few of the humans of the Serpentine visited. They threw braided brambles or green lake plants in place of flowers since it was not the season for them. Ottavia came, said she was sorry.

“You’re only flesh, you know,” Dath Amrits said, when he and his dragon visited. Dath left an old scroll-tube filled with some blank paper and a full ink bottle by the corpse. “Come up and have a meal and a night in a bed. They won’t send him on until tomorrow night anyway. We have to fly out by sundown. Use my bed. Had the bedding washed for you. I know that drafty ruin that passes for the dragoneers’ hall is like getting the warmest room in an icehouse, but it has to be better than the shoreline.”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir,” she said.

The third night turned cold, dreadfully cold, and she shivered under her blanket. She would fall asleep for a few minutes, but discomfort would soon wake her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.