Jorn-o’s words snapped me back to reality and I looked to see what he was talking about.
I looked where he was pointing on the parchment and my stomach dropped to my new uniform boots.
Chud Larson was listed in Dorm A. I hadn’t seen his name before because it was at the very bottom of the list, as though it had been added last.
“Wow, he must have failed the entrance exam,” Jorn-o remarked.
“I heard he flunked all his First-year final exams too,” Leaper murmured. “So now he has to repeat the First-year classes.” He looked at me. “What about you, Runt? You taking classes with us or not?”
“I don’t think so,” I hedged. “Except for the Flight Simulator, I was told I was going to be in Second-year classes.”
“Good luck with that.” Jorn-o shook his head. “I’ve heard that Advanced Aeronautical Mathematics is a killer.”
“Not to mention Battlefield Signaling,” Leaper pointed out. “How can you participate in that class when you don’t have a dragon yet?”
“I don’t know.” I felt my stomach tying in knots again, but I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. Jorn-o must have heard it, though.
“I guess they’ll find a way to make it work,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “After all, they’ve had cadets skip ahead before.”
“Yeah, but Runt’s too small to ride a dragon and signal at the same time,” Leaper protested. “Unless he’s strapped to another rider or something.”
“Signal?” I asked, frowning.
“Oh, it’s the way that Wings communicate with each other in the field,” Jorn-o explained. “See, a Wing Leader gives his dragon orders, and his dragon transmits them to the rest of the wing through mind-speak. You know dragons can talk to each other with their minds, right?”
I had read as much in the books my brother and I studied from our father’s library.
“I did, but I didn’t know they communicated that way in battle,” I said. “So why does the rider need to signal to the other Wings?”
“Because a dragon’s mind-speak had a limit. Gold-wings have the strongest mental voices, followed by Silver-wings, then Bronze-wings. Common blues, greens, and browns have very soft voices—not good for battlefield communication,” Leaper said.
“But no matter how strong a dragon’s voice, it doesn’t go far enough outside his Wing formation to reach other dragons in other Wings,” Jorn-o said. “Some people say there used to be a way to coordinate all the Wings at once—some dragons supposedly had a voice that could reach them all. But they’re gone now.”
“They are? What kind were they and where did they go?” I asked curiously.
He shrugged.
“Nobody knows. They just kind of died out, I guess. And none of the female dragons has laid anymore like them since. That’s why we use flags for signaling during battles.”
“Not that we have any battles anymore, now that the Madlings are all gone.” Leaper sounded glum. “We go out on patrol, but there’s nothing to fight—nothing to do but train and flame the Burn Pits when everyone knows we’ll never actually get to go to battle again.”
“Hey, the Madlings being gone is a good thing,” Jorn-o said seriously. “Don’t you know what they did to people? A single bite could make a man crazy. My father told me stories—there were men who killed their whole family after getting bitten. And some others who just killed themselves,” he added and then looked at me. “Oh, sorry, Auri.”
I shook my head, refusing to talk about my father’s suicide. I was sure that they probably knew he’d claimed to have been bitten by a Madling and that he’d ranted and raved before sinking into a deep depression when he and his dragon dived to their deaths. But I refused to feed any rumors or speak of his untimely ending. It had only been a year ago—the wound was still too fresh.
“Well, guess we’d better get to our new dorms,” Jorn-o said lamely, trying to change the subject. “Come on—I know the way to Dorm A.”
16
AURORA
Dorm A was much smaller than The Great Dorm with only twenty-two beds—eleven on each long wall. The room was shaped like a long rectangle with the necessary room on one end and the entrance on the other.
To my horror, the necessary room here was different and offered much less privacy than the Great Dorm. There were only two private stalls for one thing and their wooden doors didn’t come all the way down to the floor. This didn’t seem nearly enough stalls to me, but—as if to compensate—there was also a row of five stone urinals on the other wall.
How am I going to manage this? I wondered bleakly, looking at the two stalls, one of which was already occupied by one of our dorm-mates who was passing gas loudly while the other boys laughed about it.
I couldn’t understand why this was so amusing, but every time another “trumpet blast” of flatulence echoed in the stone room, a shout went up and they all roared with laughter. What was so amusing about the whole smelly process? And how difficult was it going to be for me to secure one of the two stalls to get dressed in every morning?
