Chapter Nine: Silver Wings

Joseph was awake and alert well before sunrise the next morning, several hours before they were due to leave. He couldn’t fall back asleep, and laying in bed fidgeting was doing nothing for his nerves, so he got up and showered and dressed. He fingered the enchanted leather armour his grandfather had given him, admiring it. Then he put it on.

To his surprise, Bobbie was up before him, lounging on one of the couches. He greeted her, and got no reply save a small nod. She was wearing a breastplate made of some sort of light-looking, fine steel. She had a hauberk of tiny steel ringlets, too. He began chopping his usual bowl of fruit.

“Careful you don’t eat too much,” she told him as he was filling his bowl. “If you’re not used to flying, your stomach will thank you for it.”

He silently scooped some of his fruit back into the serving bowl. The last thing he wanted was to tarnish the day he got an egg by throwing up in front of a Royal Flight.

He offered Bobbie a bowl, which she declined, so he sat opposite her and began to eat. They shared a slightly uncomfortable silence until Lauren and Genn joined them.

Lauren was fidgety in the extreme, her dainty hands never still for more than a few moments. She looked pale and clammy. Genn was his usual self, perhaps even more boisterous with the excitement. He was also wearing leather armour, though it was unenchanted.

He could see Lauren getting more and more wound up by Genn’s grand declarations and hypothesising, and Bobbie hadn’t spoken more than two words since the others had joined them. There was a lot of tension in their little group, but Joseph still had high hopes for them becoming a good team. He couldn’t hope for anything less.

White arrived not long after they’d finished breakfast to collect them. She wore her usual stern expression. She had two lances and one sword with her, which she distributed to Lauren and Genn. Then she bid them to get their own equipment.

Joseph ran to fetch his sword and lance, and returned to find Genn buckling on a sword he hadn’t seen before. It made sense that a soldier’s son would have his own.

Bobbie joined them a minute later, her sword buckled to her hip, and her lance over her shoulder on its strap. Even at a glance, Joseph could tell they were both exceedingly well-made weapons. He supposed anything made for royalty would be. They were probably Forged, as well as enchanted.

He caught Bobbie staring at his lance as he threw it over his shoulder. Her expression was surprised, and he took no small amount of satisfaction in it. The lance was given to his mother for exceptional duty in service to her country, from the Queen’s predecessor, King Warren. It would be close to, if not as good, as Bobbie’s lance. Perhaps even better. The thought made him smile.

“Now, you don’t use those lances unless you have to. They’re incredibly dangerous. But, if you do need to, you just channel mana into it just like you would with a strike.” They nodded, all of them various degrees of nervous.

“Right? Ready to go?” White said. “Follow me then!”

She led them on a circuitous route back through austere hallways and enchanted doors, down winding stairs, and back to the landing bay where they’d arrived. The side of the bay was wide open to the elements, showcasing the elegant spires of Skyseat, and a pink dawn beyond.

Joseph barely noticed the view. He was too busy gawking at the dragons.

There were seven of them, White’s Mico, and six newcomers. Up so close, they seemed enormous, cramped into the space, though realistically there was probably room for a few more.

At least three of them were Air dragons, Joseph thought. He could tell by their smaller frames, though that was not always a good indicator, but their slimmer snouts and finer features were a dead giveaway.

Two of the three three smaller dragons were dark grey, with lighter grey edging to their scales, and black roots. Their tails were long and lithe, and their wings larger proportionately to their bodies than the other dragons. It was part of the reason that Air dragons were so fast. Those two greys looked almost, almost too large to be Airs though, which is what made him unsure.

The third of the smallest was a ruddy white, verging on light grey, with a darker grey underbelly. Unlike Mico, with his flatter snout, this dragon had the more common, blockier snout, though it was still long. Like Mico, though, the whiter dragon had a small white mane. It was the smallest of the dragons present by a decent margin. Joseph was certain it was Air.

None of these lighter dragons had any horns, or spines, or tusks, or any other of the odder appendages dragons sometimes grew. The smaller white had tufts of trailing white fur on each of its four ankles, and at the tip of its tail, but two larger greys were about the most standard looking dragons you could get, aside from their far greater than average wingspans.

Two of the other dragons almost looked to be a matched pair. Both had gleaming blue scales, incredibly light in colour, and so reflective that they almost hurt to look at. The root of their scales was a deeper blue.

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Each of them had a single row of stubby, thick spines extending down their backs, and a matching, smaller row running down each flank, downwards facing. They had spikes at their leg joints as well. The only difference between the two was that one, slightly larger overall, had a tail ending in a mace-like ball of spikes, and the other, smaller, had a single, thinner spine tipping theirs.

The last dragon was the largest. It was a pale red, and each of its scales had a fine gradation through to white. Its underbelly was light grey. It had two horns curling forward from the base of its skull down each side of its long, angular head. It had a double row of thin spines running proudly down its back, all the way to the tip of its tail.

Joseph was mesmerised. It was his first time seeing such a variety of dragons so close. Genn ended up breaking him from his reverie.

“Come on, Joe! You’ll make us late!”

“Coming!” he said, hurrying to catch up with the group. They were approaching six dragonriders, all decked out in resplendent silvery armour.

“Officer White. Good to see you.” This from the obvious leader of the flight. He wore a half mantle shoulder cape in white over his silver armour.

“Captain Ellis. Good to see you too. I trust everything is in order?”

“It is, ma’am. Silver Three is ready to go. Is this the cargo?”

White gave a sharp nod. “Take care of them, now. I want them back in one piece.”

“We’ll do our level best. Silver Three hasn’t failed yet.”

White saluted the man, and the flight saluted her in return. She turned back to them.

“Remember your training. You’ll be in and out, and back before you know it.”

The group huddled together, perhaps a little unconsciously. Now that the time had arrived, they were all anxious. Genn’s bravado had deserted him, and Joseph’s excitement had been dampened. The stress was even showing through Bobbie’s usual disinterested demeanour.

“I leave them in your capable hands, Captain. Good luck, everyone.”

“Thank you, Officer. We’ll take good care of them.”

White strode away, towards Mico. The captain stepped up.

“I’m Paladin-Captain Gregor Ellis,” he said with a kind smile. He looked to be about forty years old, not a big man, but he gave off an air of dependable solidness. “And we are Her Majesty’s Third Silver Wings.”

Captain Ellis gestured to his flight. One and all, they looked like veteran riders. Joseph could see it in their scars and burns, the way they held themselves with casual readiness. He could even feel their mana, not surging, but poised, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. They were professionals.

“Impact site is just over a day’s flight out. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but it is in reaver territory. Of course, they don’t have any mathematicians to speak of, so we should reach the shard and be long gone before they’re anywhere close.”

“Reavers!” Lauren squeaked. “They didn’t tell us that!”

“It’s alright, lass. We’ll be heading almost to the eastern edge of their territory, but they have few dragons, and they wouldn’t risk a tussle with one of our full flights.” Lauren still seemed unsure.

“Besides, you’ll be in a HALT pod; you’ll be even safer than us riders, inside them.” He gestured over to their dragons, where a swarm of attendants were making last minute adjustments.

Joseph could see them fastening tacks, ensuring the great, enchanted leather straps securing the saddles to the dragons were on correctly. Beside each dragon, and connected to their tack by enchanted chains, were the pods the captain spoke of.

Each of them was a sleek, black capsule, sitting on a little wooden stand so that their pointed bottoms wouldn’t tip them over. Long and thin, each had enchanted glass fixed into their frames at each of the cardinal compass points.

They had small doors, which stood open. Joseph could see the interior of the closest, enough to see that it held a small, cushioned seat, and the rest filled with all manner of padding and straps. The shell of the pod was reassuringly thick.

High Altitude Landed Transport pods, or HALT pods, came in a variety of designs, from single person ones like these, to ones large enough to carry full squadrons, that could only be carried by the most powerful dragons.

They were a necessity due to dragons refusing to let anyone ride them but the awakened that they bonded to. They provided a means of rapidly carrying Landed troops to distant conflicts.

Only awakened could be carried in them. The benefits of awakening were many, but one of the side effects of using aspected mana was that it slowly strengthened the body over time, extending one’s lifespan, making them more resistant to disease and poison, and making them stronger, more durable, and faster.

Joseph hadn’t been awakened long enough to reap any of those benefits, but HALT pods would still be by far the most practical way to transport them.

The attendants around the room finished their prep, and the dragons began to fidget impatiently. Joseph took the time to study the beasts in great detail. Before he knew it, he was being ushered into a HALT pod by one of the dragonflight.

His pod was connected to one of the light blue dragons with the stubby spikes. As he climbed in, and let an attendant secure him, he noted that the two grey Air dragons had no pod connected to their harnesses.

The attendant finished buckling him in, giving him a brief rundown of how to buckle and unbuckle himself for future reference. Joseph tried to pay attention, but there was so much going on. He thought he caught half of the explanation.

The attendant shut the door to his pod and sealed the enchantments. Joseph watched through the glass windows as the dragonflight mounted up. Their dragons assisted each of them in climbing into their saddles, a small, half-backed chair just in front of the dragons’ wing joints. They pulled goggles from their pockets, donning them. He could see the captain calling out to each of them in turn.

All of a sudden, his pod shifted slightly as the dragon connected to it stood, and shuffled to stand above him. He watched as the two grey Air dragons launched themselves out of the tower and into the sky. Flying, their wingspans seemed even more impressively large.

His pod jolted again, though he barely felt it through all the cushioning. A second later, a pit yawned in his stomach, and empty air showed through all the windows.

And just like that, they were away.