Worm is the slightly smaller of the brothers, which is why I usually use Drekki for riding. However, today he is going to have to be large enough to carry this prisoner of mine because it is too far a flight for Drekki to take us both. I reach out, resting a hand on Worm’s scales, arranged in a black and red pattern before I reach past his horns to lift a satchel that I had tied to his back earlier. I take a length of rope from it and set to work binding the Imperial.
It takes longer than I would care to admit to lift him onto Worm’s back and tie him in place there. The sun is already setting behind the horizon of the frost coated mountains as I climb onto Drekki’s back. I pat him on his warmed neck and nod. “Let’s make haste, my friends,” I murmur leaning forward.
At this rate I’m going to miss my own coming of age ritual, and what will I do with my unconscious and bound prisoner then?
Chapter Two
Too Late For Second Guesses
Thejourneywasshortenedspent on the backs of dragons. Truly, I don’t know what I would do if it weren’t for my dragons. I smile to myself as Drekki stretches his wings out after the long flight before folding them against his side. I pat him on the neck before I slide down the thick membrane of his wings to the waiting ground.
A few of the clan children race up to me, laughing and pointing at my second dragon and the query on his back. The imperial boy.
“He’s awful skinny, isn’t he?” one of the boys asks, pointing at the young man bound to my dragon.
Another child snorts and shoves him. “And you’re one to talk, Toff?”
I step toward them, shooing them away before they start listening to the older kids in the back who are telling them to pick up a stick and poke the Imperial.
Many of the children are orphans, their parents having been killed in the many wars our clan is involved in, but those who are not are raised the same by the town as a whole. We work to provide for them all, after all they are our future. Without them it doesn’t matter how great of warriors we are if there is no one left to carry the clan name after we pass on to our forebearers.
We watch over them and guard them as a clan until the time for them to come of age. And then they too will become killers, just like I will soon be.
I step up to the Imperial, checking to make certain that he is still unconscious and tugging on his binds to see if he is still tied securely.
I came of age with two other girls from my village and for our first test we were sent into a dragon’s lair and told to bring back one thing from within. It was said that whatever we came out with would determine what our destiny would be.
Grimla, the eldest, came out with gold that she said would buy her the hand of a future chief she married a moon cycle ago to an outside clan. I suppose that makes us enemies now, but I hope that if we ever managed to meet, we could do so amicably despite the fact that she left our clan for another. After all, I do not fault her for doing so when she believes that she will one day rule. What is so wrong with wanting something more than what you were born into?
Tira, our chief’s daughter, came out with a sword with a deadly flame enchantment on it. It was said of her that she would live by the sword and then die by the sword. Her father was furious with that pronouncement, but Tira shrugged it off saying that she would rather die young than to become old and wrinkly like the Werma, the soothsayer of the hills who pronounced this doom.
I went in with the intention of taking the dragon’s heart from her chest, but as she slumbered, I found I couldn’t do it. Instead, my eyes fell on the egg near her. I took that and from it hatched my dragons.
The Werma said that meant I would be a leader amongst men. I’m fortunate that no one knows my original intent, or they might think me a coward for stealing away an egg instead of slaying a beast. Still, I would not undo what I did for my dragons mean more to me than anything else. I’ll just take it to mean that I’ll never be alone. Between my clan and my dragons, it hardly matters that I’ve had no real family to call my own or that at the end of the day my hut is empty save for my own cot.
There is a slight jingle. I look up to see Tira sauntering toward me, her face is painted up, and ornaments hang from her tightly coiled hair. She smiles, her bottom lip has a marking of dark paint on it making it seem almost as if blood is leaking from her lip.
“He’s handsome,” she says, tilting her head, her mouth pursed. “It’s almost a shame that he has to die tonight.”
“Almost?” I ask with a small laugh, arching my brow.
She raises a single dainty shoulder. “He’s still an Imperial. What good is a handsome imperial boy? You cannot wed him; you certainly couldn’t bed him. Any children you bear him would be Imperial like their father, and thus your own blood would become your enemy.”
I roll my eyes. “Children cannot be your enemy, Tira. They become only what you raise them to be.”
“And more often than not children are raised to be killers.” She bumps my arm as she saunters past. “Just look at you.”
“We’re both killers, Tira. I’m just the one who is honest about it.”
She raises her chin, a small smile pulling at her lips as she rests her hands on her hips. Her second coming of age test, the blood rite was only a few months ago, but I don’t think anyone would forget her unique way of…capturingher kill.
She went to a nearby clan and spent a few days there, getting a warrior to love her. He had been at the height of his fighting prime, but with a crook of her finger and the promise to become his third wife, she managed to lure him away from his own clan under the guise of meeting her father. Oh, he met her father all right, our own chieftain who said a last rite over him just before Tira split the man’s skull and shed her first blood. Just as I will do to the Imperial tonight.
The man she killed was certainly more impressive than this imperial scout and we both know it, but we also both know that she is jealous of my dragons, so I suppose we are even.
I personally would rather my kill be a weak imperial worm who I will carry no guilt over killing. While both the man I will kill and the man Tira killed were our clan’s enemies, there is just something that doesn’t sit right to me about shedding Negaltan blood. We are brothers and sisters of the north, united in our hate for the Imperials… at least we should be.
And yet it is the very infighting amongst our clans that cause us to be weakened enough that the Imperials now pose a threat to our existence.
