Blood of Dragons

Their camps at night often seemed oddly festive to Reyn. He felt the old man among such youthful Elderlings. They quickly fell back into the routine they had obviously shared before. Every day, as afternoon began to approach evening, the dragons descended, demanding to be rid of riders and harness so they might hunt. Once they had dismounted and the dragons had been launched, the keepers commenced gathering firewood and setting up a camp. The dragons gave little thought to the comfort of the humans they were abandoning for the hunt. The keepers might find themselves in a hillside meadow one afternoon and on a rocky mountain ridge the next. Reyn watched in admiration as they quickly arranged their bedrolls and set out to look for water and meat. Sometimes they found neither, but as often as not, one of them would bring down a rabbit or a wild goat to share. They all carried hardtack, tea and dried fish, so even when the hunting was scarce they did not go hungry. Spring was upon the land, and at one stopping point, Sedric amazed them all by teaching them to gather dandelion greens and watercress from a stream. So they shared food and a fire and conversation every evening.

The first two nights there were jests and songs and some mock swordfights as some of the keepers experimented with their Elderling weapons. Rapskal tried to give them advice on stance and grip for their weapons, but soon gave up when it turned into good-natured rough-housing. Reyn watched the younger men measure themselves against one another, and was relieved when a shout that food was ready broke up their exercises.

Shared hot meat and cold water seemed to content all of them. They told him stories of their journey up the river and he recounted how Tintaglia had carried him in her claws to search for Malta, and dropped him into the sea when they found her. Pirates and rescued slaves and a Chalcedean fleet opposed by liveships seemed only a wonder-tale to them, and he feared that his small effort to convey the terror and horror of that war only made it seem a glorious adventure.

Sometimes Rapskal told stories, too. He spoke with a strange cadence, and sometimes he groped for words, as if the language of his birth did not allow for names of weapons and manoeuvres. He spoke of dragon wars, when Kelsingra had had to defend itself against raiding parties of dragons seeking to make a claim on the Silver seeps in the river. Reyn was heartsick to hear him speak of Elderlings battling one another on the ground as their dragons fought savagely in the air. Even worse was to know that the dragons’ and Elderlings’ enmity with Chalced reached back, not decades, but possibly centuries. The keepers sat in rapt silence when Tellator recounted stories of Elderlings captured and tortured by Chalcedeans, and the vengeance taken on their captors. There were times when Reyn thought that perhaps Elderlings were not so different from humans after all.

And times when he decided they emphatically were.

None of the keepers seemed to think it odd when Jerd chose a partner for the evening and they retired from the others, not even when she chose a different partner the second night. Davvie and Sylve shared blankets and a long night conversation that kept Reyn awake with their confidential murmuring. The lack of sexuality in their obviously intimate friendship puzzled him almost as much as Jerd’s casual promiscuity. He and Carson and Malta had had several long and philosophical conversations about how these new Elderlings might form their society. This was his first unveiled look at it, and he tried to conceal his surprise and dismay. He suddenly felt a stranger to their culture, as provincial as when he and Malta had been shocked by the hedonism of Old Jamaillia. He lay awake both nights, wondering if this was the world that Phron would grow up in, and how the influx of other Changed Rain Wilders that Tillamon would bring with her would view these new Elderlings. Those thoughts were almost more disturbing than pondering about the war that lay before them.