"You will all be tested soon," he continued. "Our order has to few knights. For a few years, we must speed up the progression in order to fill our ranks. You will finish your training on the fields of battle."
"Lord Ariakan would not approve," Sara said softly.
Cadrel clenched his maimed hand on his sword grip, "I am aware of that, Conby. But he is dead and we are nearly so. The knighthood must be adaptable to survive these dark days."
"By needlessly risking the lives of its recruits?" she demanded.
"If need be," he grated. "Be at the fields beside the Blue Quarter with your dragons at dawn on Soldai. This will not be a drill." He turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving behind a mingling of confusion and excitement.
As soon as he disappeared from view, the squires began talking at once.
"Where do you think we're going?" Marika asked everyone.
"Somewhere warm, I hope," Jacson threw in.
Treb snorted. "If we take the dragons, it will be very warm for someone."
Sara sat down on her stool and let them talk. She did not know whether to be relieved that the date for the squires' tests had been postponed or worried about what the lord knights were sending them into. It could not be pleasant.
She found out two mornings later.
A day of rest and the natural resilience of youth had brought the squires' vitality surging back. They came out of their tents at dawn joking and talking among themselves. They wore simple battle armor and carried their helms and a full complement of weapons. The black armor of the Knights of the Lily would not be theirs until their knighting.
Sara envied them for their enthusiasm and energy. She was still trying to recover from her concussion and her injuries from the duel with Massard. Thirty years ago, she too, would have bounced back to normal after only a day or two, but five decades had taken their toll on her resiliency.
She was not excited about this day either. She had spent a long night dreading the coming of dawn and an assignment that could not bode well. Then, to rub salt into the wounds of her anxiety, she had to don the hated black armor Governor-General Abrena had sent to her.
Feeling irritable, she led the talon to their practice fields, summoned the dragons, and took them around the perimeter of the ring to the Blue Quarter on the south side of the city.
Five talons had gathered in the open fields, forty-five knights and about twenty dragons, mostly blues. Sara realized their talon was the only one made up entirely of squires.
She was puzzling over that when an officer broke away from a group and strode to meet her. It was Knight Officer Targonne, looking fresh-faced and pleased about the morning. His armor, adorned with jewels and over-lapping layers of dragon scales, gleamed with iridescent hues in the dawn's pale light. He greeted Sara cordially.
"Conby, come this way. Subcommander Torceth is briefing us now."
She walked with him and forced a smile for his benefit. "I did not have a chance to thank you for the sword you sent."
He waved it off. "It was a spare. I secretly hoped you would blood it on Massard. I was glad to see him go. He was unfit to be a Knight of Takhisis."
A shiver ran down Sara's back at the cold disregard in the young man's tone. Charming he could be, but Sara also sensed a calculating cruelty lurking just beneath the urbane surface of this well-dressed young man. She guesses that he had probably pulled her out of the ruin on a whim, not for any eagerness to help.
They reached the group of talon leaders clustered around Subcommander Torceth. The others nodded to her, and Torceth shot a glance at her. "Ah, the squires. Lord Knight Cadrel told me to expect your talon. You're late." Of medium height and barrel build, Torceth made an imposing figure in his armor. He was a swarthy man with a heavy beard, thick lips, and a tendency to scowl.
Sara said nothing. She watched Torceth unroll a map and begin to explain their objective, punctuating his instructions with short jabs of his finger. Her heart sank, It was what she feared the most, a surprise attack on a strategic position that just happened to be at the site of an innocent village.
"The junction is south of here, about fifty miles along the Kortal Road," Torceth was saying. "There is a small troop of mercenaries stationed there by the Galiard family They will be of little consequence. We will take the village and set up our own command post. We are to hold the area until further notice. Our wing will encircle the village from here and here."
He turned to Sara. "Conby, you will take your talon to this point on the road and hold it to protect our flank. I do not want to be surprised by a patrol from Kortal or a raiding party from the Galiards. Other than that, watch and learn. Is that understood?"
Sara could only nod. She returned to Cobalt and climbed to a seat in the two-rider saddle in front of Marika. Jacson clung to the back of the wooden frame.
The dragon craned his neck around to look at her mute face. "Well?" he demanded. "Where do we go?"
"Follow the talons. We are to stay to the rear," Sara answered shortly.
"So what are we going to do?" Jacson insisted on an answer.
Sara refused to turn around. She watched the wing dragons leap into the air one after another. "We are going to attack a small band of mercenaries and a village that has the misfortune to sit at the junction of the trails from Neraka, Kortal, and Sanction."
Jacson looked quizzically at the wing that was now aloft. "They need all those knights just for that?"
"They seem to think they do," Sara said between clenched teeth.
Squall, Howl, and Tumult quickly followed the other dragons. Only Cobalt was left on the ground. Sara instinctively tightened her thigh muscles and wrapped her hands around the leather-wrapped pommel.
The dragon bunched his powerful leg muscles and sprang into the wind, the rush of his leap forcing his riders deep into their seats. The rising breeze caught his wing vanes and lifted him higher into the morning sky. He stretched out his neck and trumpeted his delight, huffing his breath out in great clouds of steam. He flew low over the windswept ground, then flapped his wings and rose to a higher altitude to join the Wing.
In a tight group, the heavily laden dragons turned south toward the mountains. Guided by an experienced scout, they found the trail leading through the snow-clad barren peaks. A volcano steamed gently to their right as they left the valley, its brown flanks the only bare rock in the vast panorama of snow and ice. The trail had been snowed over for more than a month now and, due to the danger of avalanches, had been closed to foot travel. Snowslides were certainly not an inconvenience for dragons, but keeping track of the narrow path through the mountainous wasteland wasn't easy.
Thin clouds obscured the sky and turned the day dull and spiritless. The air above the mountains was frigid and laden with plumes of tiny ice crystals.
The riders huddled close together for warmth. No one spoke. They wore their helms to keep their heads warm and wrapped wool mufflers around their faces to protect their skin from frostbite. Sara kept her gloved hands tucked under her heavy cloak.
Fortunately fifty miles, level as the dragon flies, does not take long on dragonback. Before the winter sun reached its zenith in the southern sky, the wing of dragons reached a particular humpbacked mountain that was a recognizable landmark along the Kortal trail.
Subcommander Torceth, on his blue, signaled to the six talons to split off and take their positions in preparation for the attack.
In groups of four or five, the great creatures separated and spread out along both sides of the trail. They tipped their wings and glided quietly upward, closer to the ice-bound mountain summits where they would be more difficult to see.
Sara glanced down. The trail had dropped down into a rocky valley dotted with pines and a few leafless groves of aspen. It curved in a broad sweep to the southeast between high walls of weathering granite. The dragons did not need their guide now to follow the trail. It lay below them like a long, unbroken white ribbon delineated by cliffs of gray stone and copses of gray-green evergreens.