Standing at Isla Weyr
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Jerram caught eyes with Ansen, who shrugged.
"Of course there's something watching us." Ansen shouldered his massive frame to nervous Nil's side, clapping a heavy hand on the smaller boy's neck. "Keep quiet so the wrong something's don't notice us."
Nil shrank against Ansen, lips drawn into such a thin line they were nearly bloodless white. The whole group liked it when Nil played lord, he listened better than the rest of them. Not that keeping quiet mattered much under the downpour. Rain thundered across the stone walls and turned the herdbeast trails slick with mud. The cold bit Jerram's skin and numbed his legs, but he pushed on. They'd been slinking through the dead of night for too sharding long and he was ready for this exercise to be over. If the lot of them didn't catch fever from this, he'd eat his own shoes.
Lightning slashed blinding white across the hill crest.
"Stop!" Jerram tossed out an arm, fist clenched. Thunder swallowed his voice and Nil tumbled into him before skidding to a stop in the slick mud.
"Jer?" Ansen growled.
No one stirred.
The cacophony of the storm was a double edged knife. No one could hear Jerram's team mucking about, but it meant they were just as deaf, and someone had used that to their advantage. Not more than a few yards ahead lay a massive cairn of stones, blocking the path back to the cothold. The hillside was steep and treacherous without the addition of rain, and heading off the path would double their time to reach shelter. Jerram chose the hill path because it was difficult, counting on its disfavor to leave their party unmolested for their return home.
"Smart," Ansen grunted behind him. "Think they doubled back behind us?"
If Jerram had laid this trap, he'd assign a scout to the area, someone quick and quiet who could trail them without being noticed. While the herdbeast path was the best option up the hill, Jerram and his team were left with multiple routes to continue. None of them any good, but they weren't penned in. They could backtrack and go around the hill, it would be the easiest path and therefore the hardest to defend if they were attacked. If Jerram asked the rest of his team, especially Nil, he had no doubt it's what they'd choose. If they continued up the hill off the path, their footing would be treacherous especially in the rain, but they wouldn't be blindsided by an attack. If there was a scout, Jerram couldn't out think his opponent, all he could do is get his team as close to the cothold as possible before the others caught up with them.
"I think waiting ahead would be too much of a risk if we chose to take another route." Jerram's throat burned, his voice drowned by the rain.
Ansen shoved closer to hear him better. Venteen and Cussan took up his position without a work, flanking Nil and glaring out into the muddy dark.
Jerram liked this team.
"So we go ahead?" Ansen frowned. "One of us is gonna have to carry Nil if we do that, he's ready to call it quits as it is."
"Then we carry him."
Ansen groaned. As the largest of the group, he was often given most of the heavy lifting duties. But not this time.
"We'll be slower, so I want you to take up the rear guard. Head back down the hill a few paces and see if you can't spot Gren's team." Jerram hated losing Ansen, but he was their best bet at taking out Gren's scout one on one. Ansen wasn't fast by any stretch of the imagination, but he could pack a mean punch and knew how to incapacitate a man quickly and efficiently.
Ansen's face twisted, lip curled. He wasn't big on the idea either.
"Just go." Jerram nudged him with an elbow. "I'm tired of standing out in the rain."
Ansen growled - affirmation? annoyance? Jerram couldn't tell - but nodded anyway. He slicked his mop of sopping hair out of his eyes and turned back down the trail. Jerram waited until he was around the bend, nearly out of sight, before motioning the rest of his team to follow.
There was no choice but to backtrack a little. They couldn't scale the cairn and to the east of it was a drop that could break a wherry's leg, so the only way to go forward was to push back and around. Jerram led them through the freezing muck, rain like ice on his exposed face. Nil huddled close behind him with Venteen and Cussan taking up the rear. They moved without speaking, almost on all fours as they struggled up the slick rocky wilderness off the hill's path. Mud sloughed between stones as rain pelted and thundered cried out around them. It was a miserable trek and Jerram's legs cramped and stung.
"I don't think I can go much longer," Nil wailed.
Jerram turned to watch the younger boy slip on the slick surface of a black stone and careen to the ground. Cussan grabbed for him, but Nil hit the ground and scuffed his chin on a rock. Blood poured from the gash in long, pink rivulets. He'd lasted longer than Jerram thought he would.
"Keep quiet." Jerram helped pull Nil to his feet and slung an arm under the boy's pits to keep him upright. "We're not that far now."
Nil swiped furiously at his chin, eyes swollen with tears, but he nodded resolutely, shifting some of his own weight back to his feet.
Lightning flashed. Black shapes jutted out of the dirt.
Jerram jerked to his right and thrust a hand out for his team to stop. Thunder boomed, muting the pour of rain and the clack of stones. Jerram squinted through the dark, hand sliding to the hilt of his sword. The wood warped under his fingers, sodden through. He held his breath. The darker black of something solid swam into view, slinking circular around them.
"Close up around Nil!" Jerram shouted. "Draw swords!"
Venteen and Cussan followed without a sound until their small team formed a protective triangle around a whimpering Nil. No sooner did Venteen's shoulder knock into Jerram did one of those heavy shapes surge toward them. Gren's team. How had they snuck up on him? Ansen was smart enough not to tousle with the whole gang if he came across them, he should've been able to make it back to warn them. Jerram threw his sword up in time to catch a splintering blow. Gren's face flashed briefly in his field of view, pale specks of skin visible beneath a mask of black mud. They'd camouflaged themselves.
Ansen might not have seen them at all! He could be wandering down the hill with no clue the rest of his team was caught.
Cussan yelped to Jerram's right. He felt the other boy drop, but didn't dare take the time to turn around for it. He reached back and gripped Nil's sleeve with one hand, thrusting his sword blindly in the dark to hold Gren off.
"Looks like this is a point to me," Gren laughed. He danced forward and smacked Jerram's arm with the blunt edge of his sword.
Jerram whirled, lashing out. His sword raked across Gren's chest, cutting his chortle short. The boy stumbled and Jerram backed away, reaching for Nil again. His hand closed on empty air.
"Jerram, they've got him!" Venteen shrieked.
Jerram kicked, connecting hard with something blunt, and turned before he could take in what he'd done. In the distance, barely visible in the dim moonlight, one of Gren's teammates had Nil by the scruff and was dragging him up the last leg of the hill. Just below, Venteen clashed swords with another boy. Cussan sat, clutching his leg, only a few yards away, his teeth gritted moonlight bright against pain. Jerram rushed by him and squeezed his shoulder.
"Sorry." Cussan grimaced.
No time to worry about it, Jerram only hoped his ankle hadn't broke. They'd have a horrible time trying to get him back down the hill on these slippery ass rocks with a gimped leg.
Something large bowled up the western crest of the hill, straight toward Nil and his attacker. It let out a gutteral snarl and leapt, grabbing Gren's teammate and knocking him to the rocks in a fury of soaking limbs. Nil stumbled away from them, mouth agape.
It was Ansen.
"Run, Nil!" Jerram screamed.
Nil turned tail and raced away.
"Shit- Shit, help! Jerram!"
That voice was behind him. Jerram skidded to a halt and turned to see Gren's face peering over the steep edge of the hill, his hands swallowed by mud, clinging to rocks. Wood cracked and splintered up ahead. Venteen cursed. Footsteps sucked through the muck, growing dimmer.
"He's after Nil!" Venteen cried.
Jerram shot forward to his belly and wrenched himself toward Gren, closing his fingers tight around the boy's wrist. "I've got you."
Gren grimaced, teeth bared. "You're going to lose."
"Not yet I'm not." Nil was running free and Ansen had half Gren's team incapacitated. Venteen would catch his feet under him again. They were doing fine.
Gren slid inches backward, down. Jerram felt him tense, scrambling for a sturdy surface to hook his boots into, but everything was slick rain water and muck. Jerram felt himself slipping forward after Gren, the weight of the other boy pulling him toward the edge. Gren's eyes snapped to his, wide and white with terror. Jerram wrenched himself backward, , thighs under his belly, trying to get his feet back under him. His knee scraped against a sharp rock and pain blossomed red across his vision.
He sank forward again.
"Jerram!" Gren lost his grip on the edge and yanked Jerram forward, dangling over the sheer drop, his chest scraping against mud and rocks.
Jerram squeezed his eyes shut. It was too slick. He was slipping too fast.
"Ansen!" he bellowed through the thunder. "Ansen, help!"
Now they really were going to lose.
A loss would tarnish Jerram's record, he was already worlds behind the older boys and one more failure might strip him of his position as team captain, and as much as that loss ached, he wasn't going to let Gren break his neck falling down the hill. He'd make up for the loss. He'd work twice as hard. It didn't matter, he'd figure something out.
A curse cut through the deluge like a roar and in seconds a heavy shape dropped next to Jerram's side. Wide hands grabbed for Gren's wrists.
"Y'got him?" Ansen grunted.
Jerram nodded. "On three."
Jerram muttered the count and on the last syllable the two of them yanked back, grunting and huffing. Gren slid over the edge and onto solid muck. Ansen immediately shot to his feet and Jerram followed suit a breath behind him, twisting around to watch...
To watch as Gren's remaining two teammates grappled Nil and carried him off over the last rise of the hill, with Venteen limping determinedly after them, leagues behind.
Ansen caught Jerram's gaze, his own expression determined beneath the mud and grime streaking his face. If Jerram gave the order, he'd run after them and throw himself into the fray again. Two against one - and somewhere along the way Ansen lost his sword. They were too far off already, and too close to the finish line to catch up to them in time. Jerram shook his head.
Gren wobbled to his feet and slapped a trembling hand on Jerram's elbow. "Thanks..."
"I'm gonna kick your ass in hand to hand," Ansen snarled.
Gren laughed. Jerram was too certain Ansen meant what he said to join in.
---
They were a sorry looking bunch when the last of them made it to the safe embrace of the cothold. Ansen's ordinarily sun blond hair was a matted mess of black mud that splattered haphazardly across his face every time he blinked, and Jerram's typically crisp uniform was torn and pleated with muck. Half their lot was limping and Nil had blood crusted to his chin like bad face paint. Ansen wanted a wash and a sleep, but they weren't getting either of those soon. At least the rain helped slough off a share of the muck.
Guard master Fashmel stood in front of the two teams, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression stern as stone as he glowered down the length of his considerable nose.
Ansen felt his lip twitch. He wanted to snarl right back at the guy. Jerram was stiff as dragon bone next to him, his chin held up out of reflex only. Ansen knew he was sitting on the edge of a meltdown. Losing a training exercise always hit Jerram hardest, but this was a messed up situation. Sure, in a real world scenario you'd leave the asshole kidnapper to fall to his death while you ran to save your lord holder. But this was training. Fashmel couldn't possibly expect any one of them to leave a guy behind to get seriously injured.
Or die.
If Fashmel said one wrong word, Ansel was going to snap in his smug face. His muscles were so tense he quivered, shaking water off like a hound. He bit down the urge to step in front of Jerram, shield him from whatever half-baked reprimand Fashmel was cooking up for them.
Fashmel took a step forward.
Ansel jerked his chin higher, readying himself.
"During tonight's training exercise, we had an unexpected guest arrive." Fashmel turned away from the trainees, marching a perpendicular line to them. No one twitched a muscle.
It was a shitty time for anyone to be travelling to the cothold and they didn't get visitors often. A few traders passed through once or twice a turn, but the cothold was mostly self-sufficient out here. Nothing much to trade anyway. Maybe someone got lost on the road to somewhere bigger? Why did it even matter? Every one of Ansen's muscles ached. All he wanted was to wash, scarf down enough food to satisfy a dragon, and hit his bed so hard he wouldn't wake for a seven day.
"Our guest took an interest in the training exercise and watched the proceedings," Fashmel continued. "While I am not happy with the results of tonight's training exercise - teams splitting apart, your lord being captured - the guest had... better comments for some of you."
Fashmel's flinty gaze landed on Jerram. Ansen bristled.
"It appears..." Fashmel paused, disdain dripping from his tongue." We've been visited by a search rider."
The words hit Ansen like a sheet of ice. He jerked his gaze to Jerram, but the other boy remained stock still, skin pebbled from the freezing rain. Jerram's jaw worked, belying his discomfort. The cothold hadn't seen more than a passing glimpse of dragons in Ansen's entire life and he'd never seen one up close. Once, a few turns back, he'd watched some thread scoring from a distance with Jerram. They'd snuck out of the hold and climbed to the top of Oath Hill, eating sweetmeats while red death sizzled from the sky. The dragons were so far off they were hardly more than streaks of bold color, illuminated crimson. They'd watched for hours, cheering as dragons twisted and danced, shooting orange flame in a blaze of heat against a pale blue sky.
Their mothers had boxed them about the ears when they returned home, worried sick.
"If a lick of thread touched you, you'd both be dead! Stupid boys!"
Ansen's ears rang with the memory.
"Does... does this mean some of us are going to be taken away?" Nil's voice warbled under the rain, barely audible. He'd probably be happy with the cozy life of a candidate, but Ansen couldn't imagine he'd be much use fighting thread. A dragon might make him braver, though, and the only real reason Nil volunteered for the guard was because he had a soft touch with the local watchwhers.
"Yes," said Fashmel.
The trainees erupted into murmurs of excitement and dismay.
"A chance to get out of this mud pit," Gren hissed. Several of his companions nodded in agreement.
Ansen watched Jerram's face. He hadn't said a word, but the color in his cheeks turned grey and the skin around his eyes was tight with worry.
Ansen nudged him with an elbow. "You don't want a dragon?"
"I don't want to leave." Jerram frowned.
"Quiet!" Fashmel barked. "No one is obligated to go with the search rider, but I suggest you seriously consider his offer before accepting or declining. J'kem."
Fashmel stepped to the side and for the first time Ansen noticed the short, blond stranger standing behind him in the partially sheltered alcove of the training barracks. As the man - presumably J'kem - stepped forward, a pair of firelizards shot out from around him in a dazzling dance of blue and gold. Ansen's heart raced. Only a couple people in the cothold managed to bond firelizards and they were flighty, skittish things that kept out sight and hissed when strangers came near. These two dashed off away from their bond and swirled around the group of trainees with wild little trills. The rain made their hides glitter.
"I'm sure you all want to hurry on inside out of this rain, so I'll be quick." J'kem hiked his hood up over his ears as he stepped into the rain. He raked his gaze across the trainees, landing heavily on Jerram first, and then lingering on Ansen.
Ansen straightened his posture, shoulders square, and held the stranger's gaze.
"My dragon tells me a few of you would make good candidates." He pointed to Ansen and the boy felt the gesture like a dart. "You." And then to Jerram. "And you."
Ansen wanted to grin, to shout, to take Jerram's shoulders and shake him. If they were going off to some weyr at least they'd be going together. A quick glance in Jerram's direction let him know his enthusiasm wasn't shared and that dampened Ansen's moon considerably.
"Can we have a day to think about it?" Ansen resisted the urge to grimace.
"Keemnth and I have a lot further to go, but we can all get dried off and maybe have some dinner." J'kem turned to Fashmel, questioning.
The guard master nodded. "Get your asses inside, boys. Clean and ready for dinner in half a candlemark."
No one wasted time scrambling for door.
----
"I think I forgot what it felt like to be dry." Ansen wrung the water from his hair, letting it splatter to the bathing room floor.
The training barracks weren't fancy, plain wood walls with a cold stone floor that made his feet numb. It was small enough that the trainees took turns and were still pressed almost shoulder to shoulder, crouched over washing buckets and smearing mud and goop from their arms and legs. Cussan and Winfort, one of Gren's teammates, had been sent straight off to the infirmary where the lucky bastards would get proper warm water and some cozy bedding.
"I forgot what it's like to be clean," Nil groaned, scrubbing hard at his fingernails.
Gren slapped him on the shoulder. "Be glad you didn't have to roll around in the mud like the rest of us."
Nil sniffed, coloring.
The post-exercise banter continued between the lot of them, Gren's team and Jerram's team washing away their rival animosity like the rain water. Only Jerram stayed quiet, and that made Ansen's hair stand on end. Jerram wasn't as boisterous as Venteen or Gren... or even Ansen himself, but he was never quiet. Not unless he was razor focused on a training exercise, even then he never wore the dour expression he currently had plastered over his face.
Jerram dawdled in cleaning himself, so Ansen slowed down too, until it was only the pair of them left in the bathing room. Gren slung an arm around Nil's shoulder, laughing and pestering as the boys headed out to change and fill their bellies.
Ansen dropped all pretense once they were out of earshot. "What's wrong with you?"
Jerram jerked his gaze to Ansen, flickering surprise as if he'd forgotten the other boy was present. He frowned, lip wobbling, and looked away. "Why us?"
"Faranth knows." Ansen shrugged. "I don't know how dragons work, but I know we haven't had a single kid searched in this cothold before and I think it's pretty awesome."
"We failed, Ansen. We lost the game. Nil got taken. Is this some kind of punishment?"
"I think prioritizing the real danger over the pretend one is a point in our favor, Jer." Ansen laughed. "Besides, I don't think Fashmel gets any say in who gets searched."
Jerram stalked across the room, grabbed a ratty towel from the hangar, and scrubbed himself with such ferocity it reddened his skin. "I don't want to be a dragon rider, I want to be a guard. I've always wanted to be a guard."
They'd played watch together since they were old enough to stand, with sticks they'd fashioned into swords and beautifully sown dolls in place of whers. When they were old enough, their play fights turned into scuffles meant to build stamina. It was Jerram's dream, but Ansen, as always, followed at his heels. Not that Ansen didn't want to join the guard for his own reasons, but he couldn't disentangle his own memories from Jerram's. Ansen wanted to protect people, but he reveled in the attention he got and was hungry for what would come when he finally made the watch. It made him important to the community, desirable, and if Ansen didn't enjoy showing off his hard earned muscles at every opportunity, he didn't know what he liked.
But this was serious of Jerram, more than just an opportunity to showboat and catch the eye of some pretty gal or guy.
Jerram was like his father, he wanted to do good.
"Why?" Ansen grabbed his own towel and wrapped it around his hips before coming to stand in front of Jerram, arms crossed.
Jerram's nose wrinkled. "What do you mean why? Because I want to help people! I want to keep my family safe."
And he wanted to make his father proud, but that was too raw a thought, so Ansen kept it to himself.
"What do you think dragonriders do? They protect people from threadfall, probably the worst sharding thing we'll ever face. We can't do that on the watch."
Jerram fell quiet.
"I know we've spent our whole lives wanting to be guards, but this is just as important. Maybe more important. It's not as if we won't have the chance to come back here if we don't manage to bond a dragon."
"I don't know anything about dragons!" Jerram shoved passed Ansen. "I've studied so hard for the watch. I know everything I could possibly get out of a book or my father or... or anyone half willing to listen to me prattle off questions, but I don't know one single thing about dragons."
"And I do?" Ansen stepped out of Jerram's path, but he grinned. "We might not know much about dragons, but we know how to work as a team. We can fight, we can maneuver, we know how to trust the people at our flanks. That's gotta be half the stuff they teach you to fight thread anyway. We can do this." He paused, then stepped up to Jerram to lay a hand on his shoulder. "You can do this."
Jerram's dark eyes brimmed with uncertainty, but something wavered there. He was scared and Ansen didn't blame him for it.
"I won't go unless you do too." Ansen squeezed his shoulder, then stepped away.
---
Dinner was always a noisy affair in the trainee barracks. Cramping a dozen hungry teenage boys in a tiny hold with the world's blandest food was bound to create a ruckus anywhere, but deep inside the dingy guard barracks the cacophony became legendary. Talk of a dragon rider, a search rider, no less had the tables abuzz with gossip and excitement. Several boys gaped openly at J'kem, seated with the masters and journeymen at the head of the eating room.
"He's got a great big bronze, big as the sun!" Venteen exclaimed, having returned from the infirmary with a splint on his leg and nothing but air in his belly. "I saw him myself!"
"No he doesn't," said Nil with a sniff. "His dragon's blue... I think."
Jerram had caught a glimpse of the beast before they ducked in the hold, but his color was impossible to discern with the storm guzzling. Keemnth had crouched under a rocky ledge under the side of the cothold to avoid the worst of the rain, the shadow and maelstrom made him look nearly black. Jerram had only seen a handful of dragons at a great distance but he'd never even heard of a black one. Whatever the color, Keemnth was magnificent. He tried to picture himself sitting on the back of a dragon, stern and commanding in wher leathers instead of a guardsman's uniform. Wind raking his face as he dipped and dove in perfect harmony with a gigantic beast, swerving between silver spears of thread and gusts of scorching flame.
He'd leave his family behind and all his friends he'd made in the guards barracks. His training, his learning, all his time spent studying and practicing sword forms would be for absolutely nothing. Jerram's hands clenched into tight fists and his dinner of mashed gruel and hard bread seemed impossible to eat.
Dragon riders were heroes, though. Almost all of them, even the queens that couldn't (or wouldn't) fight thread. None of Jerram's training would protect anyone from thread.
A heavy hand settled on his shoulder and Jerram looked up to see Ansen giving him a worried look. After an exercise as vigorous as tonight's, Jerram should be ravenous, but his indecision turned his guts to churning tunnel snakes.
Ansen ducked his head, lowering his voice to a rumble. "Whatever you choose, I'm with you."
And that was it. The worry trickled away like rain water leaving behind clarity. It wasn't just going to be Jerram sitting astride a dragon, it was going to be Ansen too, always at his back, always watching out for both of them. Ready to follow Jerram into any battle, no matter how bleak. They'd learn how to be dragon riders together, attend the hatching at each other's sides, and when all was said and done they'd fight together, no matter if the opponent was brigands or the red star.
Jerram turned, tossed a leg over the bench, and ignored the look of stark confusion washing over Ansen's face. Jerram straightened the lines of his fresh uniform and headed toward the master's table where J'kem laughed brightly at something Fashmel said. They quieted as Jerram approached, Fashmel wearing a stern expression and J'kem's bright with expectation.
"We'll go with you to your weyr," said Jerram, his heart pounding so hard he feared his voice would crack. "We'd like to stand as candidates."