Chapter Two
My fist collided with Stable Master Eustace’s jaw so hard I heard the tooth crack.
I didn’t care about the shouts of the people behind me.
I grabbed Eustace back to me, deflected his wild swing, punched him again.
His nose sprouted with blood and swear words.
My vision was already red when he came back, swinging wildly, this time with the length of a dragon whip.
Only a fool used one of those on a dragon.
He wouldn’t get away with trying to use the metal chain and spiked ball on me.
The chain screamed through the air. I reared back.
The spikes missed my face by a hair. I caught the links and yanked the weapon towards me using my full weight.
Eustace was spitting blood and curses as I pulled him off his feet and kicked up, my heavy boot connecting with his bollocks, dragging another scream from him as he lunged for me, the movement truncated by the three men pulling him back.
Roaring my own fury, I shifted to swing my legs and lever myself back to my own feet, but strong, heavy hands landed on my shoulders, pulling me away from the bastard who had definitely come out worst for the encounter.
“What is going on?” Flight Captain Shi roared.
The pulse in my ears nearly drowned the words out. My vision was all on Eustace and the desire to kill. I knew my knuckles were damaged from the punches, but I didn’t care, didn’t feel them yet. The only thing that mattered was making Eustace pay.
“Ask that mad bastard!” Eustace shouted. “He just walked in and punched me.”
“Should have done worse!” I screamed at him. I could feel my lips peeled back as I spat the words and pulled against the restraints of my colleagues. “You rodding bastard, you near killed my boy!”
At that, the whole room froze. No one moved but Eustace.
“I’ve told you to keep that little shit out of my stables.” Eustace pulled against his own captors. Blood poured from his face, coloured his teeth, and spat with his words. “He deserved what he got.”
“No kid deserves that!” I spat back, ignoring the copper I tasted.
“Enough!” No one was listening to Shi.
“These are my stables and I won’t have him here!”
“Why? Because at five years old he’s better than you’ll ever be with dragons?” I demanded.
“He’s in the way!”
“He tried to stop you whipping Salvadora, so you whipped him instead!”
“Enough!” This time Shi’s roar reached me.
I blinked and the red mist cleared. Eustace was still hanging from the hold of others, but so was I.
My breathing was faster than it should have been and while my hate was no less incandescent, my need to kill was abating.
The exhaustion from having to work so hard to mend Fin’s back was also catching up with me.
I stopped resisting the hold on me and managed to find my balance on my knees.
“What happened?” Shi demanded of Eustace.
In rank that rodder was above me. It was his place to speak first, and I knew he’d lie.
“He came in like a madman and tried to beat me.”
Fair enough, that wasn’t a lie.
“Did you take a whip to Salvadora?” Shi’s voice was low and controlled.
“Another one who can’t obey an order.”
“Did you use a dragon whip on Salvadora?”
“What else would I use?” Eustace snapped up at him.
Shi looked to one of the other men around us, sent him to check on my dragon. I reached out with my mind, but Salvadora was more concerned about how Fin was. Reassurances didn’t push through enough to calm her fear.
Rider Jimny returned. “Sir, the blue is chained down, muzzled.”
That rodder! Chaining my dragon! I pulled against my captors but was held back. The anger was hot, but the adrenaline was gone, as was most of my energy. Instead blood pumped pain through me, from everywhere.
“Injuries?” Shi asked.
“I can’t be sure, sir. She shied away from me and doesn’t look calm enough to release at this point.”
Shi nodded once in acknowledgement. Then turned back to Eustace. “What happened with Fin?”
“I said,” Eustace growled up at Shi. “He got in the way too often. I’ve told the rodding shit not to come into my domain, and he won’t listen. So I made him listen.”
“You—”
A hand covered my mouth. The sting of the touch on my cheek and nose stopped me more than the coverage.
“What did you do?” Shi demanded of Eustace.
Eustace ground his teeth, glared at me and snarled. “What he deserved. What his useless father can’t teach him. I taught that rod a lesson.”
“How?” Shi demanded again.
“I beat him!”
“What with?”
“My belt.”
That would explain the darker stains I was only now calm enough to notice.
“How many lashes?” Shi asked, more calmly.
“Enough.”
“How many?”
“I didn’t count.”
“How many?” Shi barked.
“Enough to make him scream a few times!”
This time I struggled against the hand, but whoever it was held on tight.
Shi stood straight and turned on his heel to face me.
“What is the state of the boy?” he asked.
The hand moved away. I was surprised to see blood on it. That must have come from Eustace.
“I healed his back as best I could.” Because I was the only healer at the Fortress. “But there wasn’t much skin left to work with. How he didn’t bleed to death before he got to me is anyone’s guess.”
Seeing my son crawling on his hands and knees, a mass of blood and pulped skin, was the most terrifying sight I had ever seen.
He only had the strength to whimper when I picked him up.
I laid him flat on his stomach and, as carefully as I could, I folded back the few remaining tatters of skin and focused my power on making it grow back.
It had taken a lot of energy to heal him, and there would still be scarring.
But my absolute revulsion as Fin told me what had happened overrode all else.
I dared to hug my son, and I put him to bed, told him to sleep, then I charged down here.
Shi’s eyes moved over my head. His hands were fists at his sides as he stared at the wall, and the rest of us wondered what he would do. Then at last he turned and faced the riders crowded around Eustace.
“Chain him on the seaward side.”
Eustace screamed as he was hauled away. Fighting every inch as he was dragged out of my sight, begging for mercy. Shi showed no signs of owning any. Shi turned to Jimny.
“Return to the blue. Do what you can to calm her. If she calms, remove the muzzle. But do not unchain her yet. Allow one hour before she can go free.”
Jimny saluted and ran back to the nests.
Then Shi turned back to me. “Attacking another officer, most particularly a senior officer, is an offence.”
My rational brain was starting to return. Rod it. I hadn’t thought about offences or punishments when I charged. I just thought about hurting the man who had hurt my son.
“The punishment would usually be five lashes of a nine length.”
A nine length was a whip of leather with nine lengths free, each knotted at the end and each knot coated in iron. One whip of that was bad. Five could cause permanent damage. Ten had been known to kill.
“However, it would seem that the Segast family has received such punishments already today. That will be recorded as sufficient.” He nodded to the men still holding me. They pulled me to my feet.
At the flick of Shi’s head, they moved away, disappearing up the stairs to the fortress itself.
Shi stepped up in front of me. He held himself upright, which was more than I felt able to do, though I forced my body to attention. His dark eyes roamed over me. A tiny frown flickered at what he saw.
“Sir?” I asked. “May I ask something?”
He nodded.
“What will happen to Eustace after this chaining?”
His head tilted. “Nothing.”
I closed my eyes, locked my jaw and dragged in what breath I could. The bastard was getting away with it.
“Flight Sergeant Segast,” he said at last, “are you aware of what chaining to the seaward side means?”
I opened my eyes and looked into his eyes. “No, sir.”
“No, sir,” he repeated. Then he took a breath.
“The subject will be chained, bound hand and foot, and lowered on other chains over the side of the cliffs on the seaward side of the island. Lowered to below high tide level. The incoming waves will crash over him. Grinding him into the island bedrock. That alone will break a number of bones. If he is lucky, it might knock him unconscious. Whether it does or not, the seas will rise, and he will drown. The fish will have a meaty supper this evening. Alternatively, when Salvadora is released, she may decide to fly alone and pay him a visit. Dragons are free to act as they see fit in such cases. When the chain is pulled back on the morrow, it is unlikely that anything but chain will come back.”
His voice was calm and measured. He had ordered a torturous execution, and he didn’t turn a hair. Discipline in the Riders had always been brutal, but this was a new level in my experience of it. I swallowed. A tiny iota of sympathy for Eustace arose.
It didn’t live long.
“Thank you, sir.”
He didn’t acknowledge my thanks, but he didn’t move either, simply looked me dead in the eyes. If only I understood what that meant.
“I am assuming,” he said softly, “that the adrenaline has hidden the truth from you, Flight Sergeant Segast, but that whip did not miss your face.”
The automatic frown failed, the muscle twitch too painful to sustain the expression. My hand rose to my face as I realised that part of the difficulty I was having breathing was that my nose was broken. Sliced by the spikes of the whip end. My check was hanging open.
“Can you heal yourself?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure that I had the strength left, but I nodded.
“Then do so before you return to your rooms.” His voice was low and considerate. “I wouldn’t want you to frighten your son. He has been through enough.”