He suddenly had a very clear vision of a tree limb in his face. Shortly after the Fall he had been one of the people chosen, because he had some limited riding experience, to “help out” with a round-up of feral animals. While he had been trying to keep a boar from killing a female friend, Diablo had jumped over the spitted boar and Herzer’s forehead had impacted a tree limb at nearly a full gallop.
The recovery had been slow and painful. But if he screwed up this ride, he was looking at a several-thousand-meter fall. That was not even vaguely survivable.
But he really needed to catch up to the formation.
“Up, Chauncey,” he yelled. “Go! Forward! Hut! Hut!” There didn’t seem to be any way to beat at him. He’d never really seen the riders make any motions except small rein movements.
But. His boot was actually over skin, not on the saddle. He doubted that was unintentional.
“Hi, Chauncey,” he yelled, digging his boot into the side of the dragon as hard as he could.
The startled wyvern began flapping its wings, rapidly gaining speed. So rapidly that the formation was coming up much too quickly. And he was still slightly below it.
“Up!” he called, pulling back on the reins. At the last moment he checked his instinctive reaction to yank back and instead applied a gentle pressure, as if he was trying to get Diablo to go to a moderately slower gallop.
The control worked, Chauncey adjusted his angle of flight and went upward, losing some forward speed at the same time, but when they returned to level flight, by simply letting out on the reins, they were above and past the formation. Also slightly farther out to the left and he had no idea how that had happened.
“What the hell are you doing?” Joanna bellowed. “I told you to just go along for the ride!”
“He was in your slipstream!” Herzer yelled back. “I didn’t think you should have to tow him!”
“If it had been a problem I would have told you!” Joanna raged back. “Now what are you going to do, hotshot?”
He had to go backwards, down and to the right. The “slot” he was trying to get to was about ten or twenty meters to his right and about the same back. About sixty meters down. He seemed to be in a slightly less efficient glide than the other dragons, probably because he wasn’t coasting in the same vortexes.
Well, he’d tried the up reins, and the up and down. And turned left and right.
“I guess I’ll try the down reins,” he muttered and pushed back, lightly, on the right down rein.
Rachel had been watching Herzer’s fumbling entry into flight with some amusement but she gasped in horror as the dragon turned over on its right wing and plummeted towards the ground.
“Oh, my God!” she shouted.
Joanna turned her head slightly to the side and tisked. “That’s what we call a stoop.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Well, the reason we call it a stoop is that it’s fisking stoopid.”
Herzer grabbed at the straps as the dragon seemed to turn, briefly, upside down. He had a very clear view of the underside of Vickie’s dragon as he passed and he realized he was screaming, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to do at the moment.
However, he was only briefly inverted, if he ever actually had been, and he quickly gained control of the beast, taking the climb straps and pulling back on them slightly less gently than he had been.
The dragon pulled out of its dive in a strong swoop upward and to the left, pushing upward with strong strokes of its wings and Herzer let out a bellow of joy at the incredible feeling of having that power at his control.
“Yes!” he shouted, as the dragon pulled up to the level of the formation. More confident now he let it rise to slightly above the formation then angled it into the slot at a downward glide. At the last Chauncey seemed to sense the vortex and entered the slot of his own accord.
“Oh, my God!” Herzer shouted over to Vickie, a smile plastered on his face.
“You’re fisking crazy!” Vickie shouted back. “You could have killed yourself.”
“That’s what’s so great!” Herzer yelled back, still grinning. “Normally it’s human beings trying to kill me. This time it was just physics!”
“Give him a break, Vickie,” the next rider over shouted. “The first time she stooped she pissed herself.”
“Thank you so very much, Jerry!” Vickie shouted back. “You’d better check your straps well for that!”
“It was great!” Herzer yelled. “Let’s do it again!”
“Not a chance,” Jerry yelled. “The reason we’re flying like this is it’s a long flight today. You’ve already pushed him harder than was a good idea. Just let it be. Time for aerobatics on the trip.”
“He’s not a dragon-rider!” Vickie yelled back.
“Dragon. Rider. Dragon-rider!” Jerry pointed then laughed.
“How long are we flying today?” Herzer yelled.
“Long time, four or five hours,” Vickie replied. “That’s pretty close to the limit of a dragon’s endurance.”
“Oh,” Herzer muttered. “I didn’t know,” he added in a yell.
“It should be fine,” Vickie yelled. “It’s not that they wear out, they just need to feed by then. And full dragons don’t fly very well. We usually fly a couple of hours, then feed them, then fly again. This way we’ll fly four or five hours, then they’ll have to gorge. And once they gorge they won’t be any good for hours.”
“What if they don’t get fed?” Herzer yelled.
“You don’t want to be around a hungry dragon,” Jerry replied. “You really don’t.”
The dragons hissed like giant tea kettles, swinging their heads angrily from side to side. But the chains they were attached to kept them far enough apart that even their tails couldn’t strike at the ones to either side.
On the other hand, to get the large platters to them would require getting close enough to get bitten.
The destination of the group had been Newfell Naval Base, a growing facility near the mouth of the Gem River. It was at the very tip of a massive bay that marked the joining of the Gem and Poma rivers, the latter of which was fed by, among others, the Shenan that ran by Raven’s Mill.
The base had been formed in response to the apparent intended invasion from Ropasa and it was a scene of remarkable industry.
There were twelve large piers, each of which was in use by a veritable fleet of small vessels. Most of the vessels seemed to be barges and lighters that were carrying material from the interior, but a few were larger sailing vessels that had probably reached the base by sailing up or down the coast. Herzer recalled that to the north were the growing cities of Balmoran and Manan, either of which might have sent the ships.
The material being unloaded from the ships made its way to a set of warehouses lining the waterways. From the warehouses some of it spread to support the rest of the base. There were foundries that provided the iron-work for the ships, saw mills that roughed the trees that were rapidly being turned into hulls and masts, rope manufactories that took the rough hemp from the interior and made it into strong manila lines, and sail-factories where heavy cosilk bolts were sewn into the vast sails needed for the growing ships.
But all of it paled to the efforts of the shipyards themselves.
The wyverns had been parked at the edge of the shipyards along the Gem River. On every side ship hulls lying on ways were in the process of being built, surrounded by scaffolding. From every direction came the sound of sawing and hammering, and besides the smell of tidal marshes there was an overpowering smell of curing wood and sawdust.