Page 47 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 47
“Pippin!”
Lance hissed my name as I entered the room, he and Jenkins and the other boys who’d been in on the prank clustering closer as we all put our dragons on the mews. I showed Glimmer the extra container of meat I’d put aside for her.
“They let you come?” Jenkins said in an excited whisper.
“Word is the riders were going to keep you side-tracked while Draven tries to reconnect with the cadets,” Lance said, to them as well as me.
“Draven…?” Not Prince Draven, I noted that, but my jaw locked tight as I reconsidered Flynn’s outing yesterday in yet another light. Not just to avoid his father, but to avoid… My thought was interrupted by the appearance of yet more cadets coming streaming in through the door.
“You’re here? How the hell did you get them to let you back in?” The one speaking was with a few other much bigger lads. No, young men. He looked like he was my age or close to it. “I’m Jimmy.” I shook the hand thrust my way. “This is Caulder, Nick and Billy.”
The names all blurred in my head, especially when they all started to talk.
“What he did was fucking bullshit. The treacle gloves trick has been a prank that cadets have been pulling for bloody years.”
“My dad did it to his old drill sergeant.”
“My grandsire did it to his! And now it’s a punishable offence?” The older cadet shook his head. “Before this, the riders gave as good as they got, Draven included. Remember last year when he filled all of our salt shakers with sugar?”
“Or when we woke up to every fucking pair of boots being filled with treacle? Then made us clean them up with toothbrushes. Why is it always toothbrushes? We must keep the sellers down in the markets well-heeled with how many we go through.”
“Draven participated in pranks as well?” I said with a frown, but my question went unanswered because the man himself strode in the door with Soren in tow.
I blanched when the drill sergeant fixed me with his gaze, taking a long look before nodding.
“Alright, front and centre.” Soren’s voice echoed out through the room, making clear what we were to do. “And Caulder and Billy, as far as I’m aware, you’re due in with the third years. Nick, you’re supposed to be in second, or have the lot of you senior cadets acknowledged that there are some deficits in your skills that could warrant my attention?”
“No, sir.” The senior cadets all saluted the drill sergeant, but not Draven. Before they moved away they quietly delivered one last piece of information. “We’re not giving up, not after what he did to you, Lady Pippin. Putting a woman through that.” Jimmy shook his head sharply. “We meet at midnight. Need to be more careful, make sure it can’t be tracked back to any individual. I’ve already started passing some coin around the serving women to buy their loyalty.”
“Midnight,” Lance said with a sharp nod, then turned to me. “You don’t have to come, Pippin. Not after?—”
“Stop twittering over your dragons like a bunch of mothers with new-born babes,” Draven barked, making every boy in the room jump. “Laps, now, fast as you can. Let’s see those knees start moving, not your lips.”
“I’m in,” I said, as Glimmer letting out a low growl. “Just tell me where we meet.”
“Faster!”
Draven stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed, feet square apart as he watched us run around and around the room, as he had been for some time. We’d started strong, all that youthful muscle full of fuel to expend. He watched us, seeming to note who slowed first, who was out of breath, who struggled on.
But his orders gave no ground to whether or not someone might be struggling.
Running was something I could do; my body just knew how to do this. My heart was pumping, my muscles starting to feel the burn, but they move onwards endlessly.
This is like flying for humans , Glimmer noted, and I caught her eye as I passed her by, yet again. Of course you are made for it.
But others weren’t. One of the smaller lads stumbled and fell flat on his face and I went to slow to help him, but Lance shook his head, hauling me onwards. To my surprise, Soren barked at the boy to get up and on his feet and keep running. I glanced back, catching the tears in the boy’s eyes, then the squaring of his jaw as he did just that, stumbling rather than running.
“What is this?” I asked Lance between breaths, he and the other boys looking up at me grimly. “We didn’t run this much the last time I trained with you.”
“Sometimes we do,” Lance replied. “It’s conditioning, helps develop your lungs, but… Some of the lads have little experience with it and the drill sergeant was easing us into the situation, building condition, not force marching us through it.”
“Draven,” Jenkins said with a dark look at the prince.
So around we went, lap after lap, until some collapsed and were helped out of the way, Draven’s expression not changing a bit, if he even noticed the fallen at all. Mostly he watched the main group of us with steely fascination, something that didn’t falter until one of us did.
Jenkins jerked himself out of the group and went over to the waste bin set up in one corner, then heaved up his breakfast.
“Don’t!” Lance hissed when I pulled away from the group, but I went anyway.
My own guts lurched at the smell, but I moved over anyway, putting my hand on the boy’s back.
“Are you alright?”
“What are you two doing?” Draven snapped out the question, somehow appearing at our shoulders. “Did I say stop?”
“The boy is vomiting, Your Highness,” I shot back.
“And he doesn’t need your bloody assistance in doing it, does he?” I straightened up, meeting his ire head on, knowing it had been going to come, but not expecting it to come so quickly. “You’ll get your chance to mother your own lads quickly enough.” His eyes dragged down my body with insulting slowness. “You might be a slight thing, but those hips look plenty wide enough to bear children and then you’ll have your arms full of the babes Drill Sergeant Soren will give you. But Jenkins will remain one of us, needing to complete the physical exam if he is to graduate into a fully-fledged rider. Get. Out. On. The. Floor.”
Jenkins jerked himself away from the bin and nodded to the prince, mumbling a polite response before going back to join the group and Draven went with him.
“Pippin, you don’t have to do this,” Soren said, approaching me slowly. “This is the way of things with men.”
“Yes, I do.”
My muscles ached now, the pain signals finally able to bleed through once I’d stopped running and they didn’t fade when I started again. I moved and kept on moving, in a haze of sweat, panting breaths and aches, until finally Draven called us to a stop.
“Walk it off,” he instructed. “I know you want to just stop, but it’ll cool your muscles too fast and cause injuries. Just slow steps, one after the other until your heart rate slows.” His voice was strangely gentle now, not that it mattered. But once we’d done as he requested, we were instructed to retrieve weapons and shields.
I faced down the rack with a growing sense of alarm. My muscles felt like rubber, wobbly and utterly stripped of their strength, and we were going to practise fighting? I furiously reprimanded the version of myself that had so cockily signed up for this.
I could’ve spent the morning seated at Brom’s desk, writing down notes for him, or bringing him his mid-morning coffee, or followed Ged around like a lost lamb, one he’d pull close and then push up against the wall to deliver another salacious lesson. Instead, I’d chosen this. Why had I chosen this?
“Stick with me,” Lance said, shooting me a sidelong look and then handing over a shield and sword. “We looked at what we have and we think that will be the best fit for you.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak and fitted the shield to my arm, giving the boys my thanks when I found it did indeed fit well.
A tiny smile curled at the corners of Draven’s mouth as he saw the lot of us line up in front of him, armed and ready.
“You must be wondering why you’re being pushed so hard.” We all heard his boots click across the floor. “Why I push you so hard. You are royal riders, blessed to have bonded with some of the most miraculous creatures in the world.” Everyone’s eyes went to the dragons that waited for the class to end. “It’s for them that I push you.”
He finally came to a stop in the centre of the space in the front of the room, Soren just off his left side.
“There are no breaks in the saddle as a contingent of outlanders approach our shores, looking for a means to set up a surreptitious outpost, or worse, go looking for wild dragon eggs. You might vomit, piss or shit yourself during an engagement. I’ve done all three.”
The boys all murmured at that.
“But I clung to Darkspire’s back; I redirected him back towards the enemy, for Nevermere.” He smacked his gloves, those damn gloves , against his thigh to punctuate his point. “I did it for Nevermere. For our families, that trust us to keep them safe. For our dragons, that the outlanders so covet, wanting to use them to lay waste to the mainland. For the king and queen that seek to ensure peace and prosperity for all of us.”
It was all very stirring, right up until that last bit, because as he said the words, I could see those two. The king, indolent and somewhat bored, on the throne. Or was it that his gaze was focused elsewhere? His disinterest, in my mind, could have easily become a daze, one that the queen instigated. And then there was her, false queen. My teeth locked together. I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.
On fire, yes. Glimmer’s bloodthirsty agreement made me want to smile, but it was neither the time nor the place.
“Tomorrow the lot of you will go up in the air and start your flying training with the adult riders.” Draven smiled at the excited twitters from the other cadets. “You need to see what you’re working towards. But today, we fight. Whether you become a soldier or not, every rider is expected to be able to fight for his country.” A small glance my way. “So let’s see what you’ve learned.”