As she walked across the Long Bridge one last time, gauging the weather, she saw Santeel waiting with a little bundle at the other side. Preece wished her good morning, Galia just nodded and said “Apprentice,” and Ileth was about to say that she’d miss dancing with her when Santeel thrust forward the bundle. It was heavy.
“You forgot your music box. How are you going to dragon dance if you don’t have your music?”
Ileth would have kicked herself. Dax had checked the mechanism to make sure it was sturdy enough to travel, and after he gave it his approval she’d put it in the little alcove by her bed where the monks or whatever had put their religious icons, so she’d be sure to see it and not forget, and she hadn’t seen it and had forgotten.
Gratitude tumbled out of her mouth in its usual stop-start fashion, overlain with emotion. She’d miss Santeel. She was like a mirror or a measuring stick that told the truth about you whether you liked it or not.
“Oh, get in the air, Ileth. Good flying. I’ll miss having to dodge those clothes-tree arms of yours.” Santeel blinked quickly and her smile trembled, but just a little.
The three jointly inspected their dragons, saddles, emergency food and water, and each other’s flying rigs before climbing into the saddle. “The more thorough you are on the ground, the better it goes in the air,” Preece said.
They also took two wheel-cocked crossbows that could be aimed from a support stuck into the saddle. Ileth hadn’t had any weapons training yet, just a single lecture where they learned the names of both small and large weapons, but understood that the missiles fired by the devices flew with enough force to pierce a dragon’s scale if it hit at the proper angle. There was often talk among the dragoneers about crossbow bolts and meteors and how best to thwart them or reduce the chances of a hit.
Galia said a quick farewell to Yael Duskirk in the flight cave as Preece, Ileth, and an experienced apprentice inspected the gear on the dragons. Duskirk had been hanging around at the edge of the cave attempting to look busy, waiting like a faithful hound. Ileth got the impression the farewell was too long for Galia and far too quick for Yael, but neither of them was particularly easy to read. They did exchange an embrace. Yael might have kissed her on the ear; Ileth did not have the best angle on the farewell and was standing by her dragon.
Charge Heem Deklamp popped his head in just long enough to give Ileth and Galia a quick flying salute and sent the embarrassed Duskirk back to his duties.
“Anyone want to burn a feather?” Preece asked once Galia returned. It was an old superstition to bring good flying weather.
Ileth wasn’t particularly superstitious. At the Captain’s Lodge you knew when your luck was going to turn by the rattle of knocked-over bottles and drunken oaths. Galia just said, “I’d rather be off.” She muttered something about the sooner they got to Dun Huss, the better.
Ileth was happy that the copper Cunescious didn’t care for Vithleen’s alarming takeoff method. He spread his wings wide, angling them to catch wind like a sail, and did a quick jump into the air, flapping hard up behind the huge Mnasmanus.
They followed the great river south, past the spectacular Antonine Falls, roaring beneath them like a chorus of dragons, and on into lands new to Ileth. Cunescious bore his riders and their small bag-rolls and bundles attached to cargo fittings along his back to the border without complaint or apparent difficulty, but the dragon did stretch out his wings and limbs a great deal after they landed and asked for some wine to warm his chilled wings.
The border post where they alighted wasn’t much: a watchtower overlooking a road that crossed a creek that was called a river only because it served as the border between the Vales and the Galantine Baronies in this part of the foothills. A few cavalry scouts kept an eye on the creek and road, mostly watching out for smugglers and, according to them, on entirely friendly terms with the Galantines opposite, trading salutes now instead of meteor-shot and crossbow bolts. The only indicators that it might have once been an army camp were some stone foundations, a large empty corral, and a vast supply of firewood, former cavalry obstacles that had been broken down when they started to rot and collapse. There were comfortable huts for them. The dragons stretched out on the woodpile and ignited a bonfire with the plentiful wood. Preece warned them to prepare for a predawn rise the next morning. They would have a long day’s flight to reach Dun Huss on something called Ves Verdus (which Ileth translated as “the Green Crossing” or possibly “Greenbridge”). They all, even the dragons, recited and memorized a new set of landmarks.
The scouts overheard that Ileth was a dancer. They produced an impeller, a fife, and a drum and asked if Ileth would dance. Though she was tired and sore and had no costume, she did her best in a loaned set of Galia’s woolen longhose.
The dance succeeded. The scouts stamped, applauded, and whistled. The dragons, ostensibly the beneficiaries of the performance, complained that they could hardly smell her over the sharp wood smoke.
In return for the dance, the scouts tended their fires, fetched them water, and cooked their meal. The meal was rough camp biscuit—flour, water, and salt cooked in grease—but it filled one up.
“They’ll be talking about you for weeks, young dragoneer,” the scouts’ grizzled chief said.
Ileth glanced over at Galia, wondering if she should correct his promotion of several levels of Serpentine distinction, but she just smiled in return and gave a quick shake of the head. “No need to point out his ignorance,” she said later, in their hut, and they chatted about the scouts and what they might see on the flight tomorrow. Ileth was glad she was her old self again. Maybe the responsibility of her first real commission as a wingman had weighed on her.
Early the next morning they tied white streamers, strips of sailcloth about the size of a bedsheet torn in two, to their dragons’ wings. It was a traditional symbol of peaceful intent or a mercy commission. The dragons grumbled that since it was the humans who were actually fighting each other, it would make more sense for the humans to wear the signals, but a grumble that was hundreds of years old had earned its right to be said through repetition.
As the day before, they ate a light breakfast. Preece discoursed about “concentrated” foods to them. He was interested in meals not as a gourmet looking for new tastes but as a rationalist who had studied physikers who believed you could avoid disease and swiftly heal an injury by eating foods that concentrated vital elements; the more concentrated the food, the better it was for you and the less you had to eat, reducing digestive difficulties. Neither Ileth nor Galia had much opportunity in their lives to pick and choose what to eat, but they listened politely to his talk of the livers of cold-water fish and vegetables drawn fresh from volcanic or otherwise improved soil and fermented milk.
His enthusiasm for the subject carried them along until it was time to depart.
The dragons, with red-painted wingtips to identify their origins from the Republic (Ileth thought it contrasted nicely with the white streamers), warmed their wings and then launched themselves down the hill, brushing the gorse-bushes with their claws before rising again. It would be a long day flying, so they conserved energy on the ascent, following the hills until they found an updraft, and then turned east across arid grasslands toward their first landmark, the ruins of an old castle on a lake that had belonged to both sides over the years. Now it flew the orange-and-blue Galantine flag. Some wooden buildings and shelters made of rubble and tenting among the ruined walls with campfire smoke showed that it was occupied, and they circled the place until a signal sheet was rolled out, a long white carpet of fabric. Preece had told them that if the ground signal was parallel to the border, they needed to stop and explain themselves; if it ran perpendicular, they could fly on. With the truce being of long standing, and perhaps the Galantines’ recognizing Mnasmanus, the signal pointed toward the heart of the Galantine Baronies and they flew on.