Page 29 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 29

I found out quickly, walking into a hall filled with about thirty young men, who, if I had to guess, were between the ages of fifteen and twenty. And every single one of them had a dragon perched on their shoulders. Its why cadet uniforms were padded in the shoulder area, I quickly realised. Initially I thought it a vanity thing, giving young men the look of grown ones, but we needed some kind of buffer between our skin and our beast’s claws. Beasts who all turned to take a look at the two of us.

I heard Glimmer make a little chirrup, then felt her straighten up, her wings fluttering as she reordered them, then stared the lot of them down. This was intimidating, that was plain, because the boys stared just as intently, but the dragons broke the silence. Every single one of them let out a low hum, a sound I’d heard Glimmer make plenty of times, but she was quiet right now, perched like the queen she was on my shoulder, taking their homage as her due. Then Soren stepped forward.

“You’ve no doubt heard that we have a new recruit joining us,” he said in a gruff voice, eyeing off every single cadet there. “And that instead of another callow lad, we have a lady in our presence.” He nodded to me, just a small bending of his neck and ostensibly not bent far enough to acknowledge my rank, but I didn’t care. “Lady Pippa Wentworth joins us with her dragon, Glimmer.”

“A queen…?” one of the older boys said with a frown.

“A dragon,” Soren corrected. “A female dragon, something we’ve not often seen in here, but it shouldn’t make no difference. You’ll be trying to put your teammates on their arses, no matter what’s between their legs, so let’s get started. A lap around the room to get you warmed up.” A chorus of groans at that. “Move it, or I’ll make it five!”

I followed the crowd of boys as they walked over to what looked like falcon mews. A long line of perches, each with a bowl of food, was set up against the wall. Each boy drew his dragon off his shoulder to the sounds of their beasts’ squawks and growls of protest. I listened to the susurrus of their softly voiced reassurances.

“C’mon, lads. Don’t use your bondmates as a means to slack off.”

And so I was forced to step up and do the same with Glimmer.

“I’ll just be out there, going for a run.”

She stared back at me, flapping her wings and looking askance at the keening dragon beside her before nodding her head, as if in agreement with that plan. I frowned slightly, unsure if I was projecting a human consciousness on an animal, but I knew I would have plenty of time to ponder that as I ran.

Running was always something that I found easy. Probably because I had ‘long legs and snake hips’ as my mother always said. I jogged around the room at a comfortable pace, feeling that animal satisfaction which came from moving my muscles.

“Faster than that! Imagine it’s the great Stone Breath on your heels, chasing you down. If his breath catches you, you’ll be petrified, made into a lump of rock, just like all the others in his lair! Faster, lads, faster!”

So I picked up the pace, feeling my stride lengthening, my boots slamming down onto the wooden floor before I was springing off again, getting faster and faster. Boys watched me pass them by, then grit their teeth, pushing themselves, to catch or at least keep pace with me.

“So the new recruit has already got you beat?” Soren said when he finally relented, calling us to the front of the room. “She’s missed the first few weeks of induction, but we’ll catch her up, won’t we? Lance.”

A tall lad, taller than me, and perhaps around the same age, nodded to the rider.

“I want you partnering with Pippin today…” His words faded away as the boys began to snicker and make little comments as Lance came over to stand by my side. He seemed stiff with it, standing with his eyes trained on Soren, not sparing me even a sidelong look. “That’ll be enough of that. If you’re going to carry on like little boys, none of the lasses will touch you when you come of age.”

Soren was met by still more snickers, something I would never have dared, his brows drawing down into a ferocious frown. He stopped and crossed his arms and waited them out. When they were finally quiet, he continued.

“That’s if you make it to adulthood.” He let the implied threat hang there, then turned to the left hand side of the room. “We’ll be working with training swords again today. Practising our thrusts.” A small hiss of disappointment. “And if you do that well, we’ll have a little bout at the end, let you expend some of that youthful bloody energy.”

Soren shook his head in mock disgust, but the boys all streamed over to the wall, picking up shields and sliding them onto their arms before grabbing wooden swords that they swung back and forth, duelling with imaginary enemies, until they took their place in pairs across the floor. I picked up one of the remaining shields, but saw the strap was broken.

“That one’s shit,” Lance said, sorting through what was left and holding a better one out for me. I nodded, then slid it onto my arm, having to tighten the straps to fit my more slender forearms. “Grab a sword. We’re over here.”

His instructions were as monosyllabic as he could make them, and he turned without waiting for a reply, taking up position in an empty space at the front of the room. But when I joined him, Soren was standing there waiting.

“You’ve shown great promise, Lance. Time to see if you can teach someone else what you’ve learned.” He nodded to me and Lance frowned slightly, then stepped forward, raising my shield up and inspecting it, then reaching down and loosening the strap a little.

“Too tight,” he told me. “This is probably too loose. You need a shield made just for you to fit properly.”

“We’ll see. Work with what you’ve got right now,” Soren prompted.

“If it's too tight, the straps will bite into your flesh when you move,” Lance continued. “Too loose and it’ll fall off. The shield needs to be an extension of your arm.” He rapped his knuckle on the hard surface. “A part that will protect you from blows. Ever wielded a sword before?”

I shook my head. “Just a knife.”

His eyes slid down to my belt and he nodded when he saw the blade strapped there.

“Show me how you think you should hold a sword.”

I moved then, holding out the sword the way I’d seen duellers in the plays do so, straight out from my body, my wrist locked. I thought, felt, I looked very formidable but Lance put paid to that, shaking his head.

“It’s not about having a dramatic stance. That’s good for intimidating young fellas who have no bloody idea what they’re doing.”

“That’s right, lad,” Soren said with an approving nod.

“You need to be able to move your wrist.” Lance used only his fingertips to show me, as if not wanting to touch me anymore than he needed to. He pinched the muscles slightly, then moved my hand so I could feel the way I could rotate the sword in different directions with just a twist of my wrist. “That’s what we’re going to practise.”

“Lance here doesn’t really need the practice, that’s why I put him with you,” Soren said, readying himself to move away. “His father’s a friend of mine and the best damn swordmaster I’ve ever seen. He’s had his son here performing these drills since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Lance’ll show you what to do.”

He clapped the lad on the shoulder, Lance nodding in recognition.

“Stand with your shield raised. Higher.” I jerked it up until it was almost to my chin, something that had him snorting. “Alright, you’re going to take a step forward and when you do, you’ll thrust your sword. The momentum will carry you through and put power behind your strike.”

It all sounded very sensible. I raised the sword. That had Lance frowning slightly, then shuffling my feet to make following his instructions easier. The frown got deeper. Then I stepped forward, belatedly stabbing my sword into the air. The frown had well and truly formed now as he shook his head.

“Watch me.”

He went from being a lad to a warrior in a split second and I felt a strange hunger curdle in my guts as he moved. His body snapped to attention, shield raised, sword held up in front of him before he stepped forward, his arm perfectly synchronised with his leg. His sword cut through the air with an audible whoosh and I knew then I needed to have mine make that same sound.

Lance was an attentive, if a not particularly communicative teacher. I practised the movement over and over, messing it up every time, which reduced him to taking my sword away and forcing me to just perform the step over and over.

“You need to teach your muscles to remember these motions, practising them over and over until it's as natural as breathing,” he told me. “Before and after class. In your room…”

When his voice trailed away, I looked up at him quizzically.

“What?”

“Will they let you?”

“Will who let me do what?” I asked.

“Will the riders let you do extra training?”

“Of course, they…” My spluttering retort trailed away as I stared into his too serious eyes. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“No reason.”

His reply was too quick, all of that quiet confidence evaporating, revealing a boy nervous he’d overstepped.

“Why wouldn’t they?” I asked in a deadly tone, stepping forward now without any problems.

Lance stared down at me, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he did so.

“They say you’re the rider’s doxy. A special one. One they keep just to themselves.”

“A what?”

But I knew what the term meant. I blinked, having been called many things, but never that. Usually Arabella and George focussed on how undesirable I was, not the opposite.

The lad stiffened then met my gaze head on.

“You stay in their room, away from all of the other cadets. You’ve got a queen dragon, but you’re not the prince’s queen-in-waiting.” His chin jerked up. “Everyone talks. That’s how this place works. The talk about you is that you dishonoured the prince with the riders and he was forced to give you to them.”

I moved then without thought, raising my sword and stepping forward, the momentum resulting in the blade settling against his throat, something that had him swallowing frantically.

“I’m untouched, thanks for asking. I’ve not even kissed a man.” I blinked then, feeling like I was revealing far too much. “The queen thought my dragon not fit to be mother of the next generation of dragons. She’s too small apparently, didn’t break herself out of her egg with teeth and claws, like a good royal dragon should.” I lowered my sword. “The riders who found me took me in.” My eyes slid to where Soren was barking orders at other boys. “And gave me a place in their suite, giving me a room of my own, to preserve my reputation.”

I snorted at that, then shook my head.

“Not that it worked.”

“So you don’t belong to them?” Lance asked, looking down at me much more earnestly. What I had assumed was an aversion to me was actually a wariness around what he thought was his drill sergeant’s mistress. I shook my head again. “Well, then. I’ve got a proposal for you that’ll help you learn the sword.”

Lance’s offer reverberated around in my head as we all clustered into the centre of the room. Hours had gone by and my arms felt like rubber from the simple act of lunging and stabbing over and over. He told me I’d be in some pain afterwards, once my muscles cooled, but I didn’t care. Anything to drop this damn shield and sword.

I’d thought the sword relatively light when I picked it up, but somehow it seemed to have transformed into lead. And that shield? I was forced to carry it over with me as we all formed a circle with Soren at the centre.

“Now you get a chance to show us what you’ve learned,” he told the crowd. “Volunteers first…” Boys all bustled forward, full of youthful energy I wasn’t feeling right now despite the fact I was still young. “Then those chosen get to select their opponent.”

And that’s when I realised why the boys were so keen. If they pushed themselves forward, they could then challenge someone of lesser skill than them, or greater, if they were truly brave. I slunk back then, rounding my shoulders, trying to make myself smaller in the back of the crowd, something that had Lance look at me in confusion. Because he didn’t realise what I did.

That there was no more perfect opponent right now than a tall, gawky noblewoman who’d been taught to arrange flowers and balance the estate books, not wield a sword.

“Jenkins, come forward,” Soren said. “Now, who do you challenge?”

The plucky lad stood tall when he took his place at the centre of the ring, a broad grin on his face, but he found my eyes quickly enough, his smile widening.

“Pippin, sir. I challenge Pippin.”