CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
Once I’d recovered from the initial shock, the wonder set in.
There were two Kiestral oranges, two Prevere blues and two golds, one with bright yellow gold scales and the other with a rosy tint – his Volitant Forge Victrolia and Adviant metallic dragons.
These dragons went back at least ten years, some of the oldest on record – if anyone knew they were here.
I itched to say something, to reel off the history, but doing my usual excited spiel to Bach himself didn’t seem like a good idea.
I craned my neck for a better look at them all. Some of these remaining dragons could be championship winners. One of the Prevere blues and possibly the Adviant rose. Not only that, but the Prevere could well be the winner of the Decennial held eight years ago.
I exhaled slowly. My Lotiere obsessed brain was going fast, too fast while in the presence of Bach himself.
‘So,’ I said, breaking the silence I hadn’t been paying attention to. ‘Which one am I flying?’
Bach’s stubble creased as he smiled. ‘None of them.’
He pointed to a human-sized doorway I hadn’t noticed to the side. A section of the aviary had been cut into to form a single-storey room. Through the open door I could see an all too familiar sight.
‘Keeper gear,’ I muttered to myself, but Bach answered anyway.
‘No one flies until they’ve done their time looking after the dragons.’
I bit my tongue.
I’d done my time. I’d spent years doing my time, more than I ever should.
Sure, I loved Gottyk and looking after him, but I thought I’d been invited here to train.
There were five weeks of summer break before the last race of the season and the thought of shovelling more shit than I ever had before brought a heavy melancholy crashing down on me.
Not that I could say that though. Not to him.
Bach watched me as I stared at the racks of brushes, brooms, shovels and sacks. Even from my peripheral vision I could tell those famous all-seeing blue eyes were seeing more than just my outward reaction.
So I sucked it all in and swallowed my pride.
‘Okay.’ I swept my hair up and tied it out of my way. ‘Is there a list of specific care instructions in there?’
Dragons this mature were bound to have specific needs. The Victrolia had to be at least sixteen, older than any dragon I’d heard of, let alone seen.
Bach nodded. ‘And the schedule. I recommend making a copy to take with you to your room so you don’t forget.’
My heart sank. It wasn’t just today, then.
‘Sure, no problem.’ Lucky for me I’d had plenty of practice in pretending to be fine.
So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
I was seriously considering giving up my love of Bach Lotiere and picking some other rider as my hero. The aviary care schedule was tightly blocked out. I was used to caring for either one adult dragon or many baby ones, but caring for six adults was a whole other world of pain. Mostly back pain.
It didn’t stop there though. When I’d finally finished the work that first day and found my room – a comfy and spacious bed and bathroom not far from the long house – there was yet another schedule waiting for me.
Every morning – which was generous as it took place before the sun was up – I had to go on a run.
One hour of running laps around the ranch, then through the jungle to the aviary.
That’s when I started cleaning the dragons’ home.
Luckily with their free-roaming allowance there was a blessed absence of dragon dung to dispose of, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t mess to clean up.
Old bits of meat from the meals they didn’t finish. Copper chunks that had melted together over time that needed sifting out. Shed scales and talon splinters to find and remove. Balls of what I hoped were regurgitated bones from the meals and not the last keeper they’d had.
Then it was feeding time. These pampered dragons all had individual meal plans.
I set up the preferred meats, supplements and serving methods.
Vepari, the greatest Prevere blue from the past ten years, would only catch moving meals, so I had to haul her breakfast on to the roof via a system of pulleys and then launch it into the air with a slingshot.
Surquet, the Adviant gold I still hadn’t gotten over meeting, had to have his food cubed and hand-fed over the course of half an hour to prevent bloating.
The two young Kiestrals, Baknil and Vilmaren, were still ridiculously competitive and had to be fed at exactly the same time or a scuffle would break out.
The younger of the two Prevere blues, Abenon, had bonded with the old Victrolia gold, Aloux, and they would only eat together …
difficult since Aloux was asleep for most of the day.
By that time I was ready to have my own breakfast. So after a quick shower I reported to the long house kitchen where, thankfully, a wonderful breakfast was supplied.
As much as I hated Bach between the crack of dawn and dragon breakfast, it vanished as I ate my own food.
It had everything I needed. Fruits for an immediate replenishment of energy.
Some carbs to get me through to lunch and the choice of a variety of smoothies that, when I asked what they contained, was told ‘protein’.
I figured follow-up questions would only make them less appetizing.
After breakfast was personal training. After breakfast I started to hate Bach again.
Behind the dorm building was a vegetable plot and manicured garden, cut away in a circle from the vast jungle around us. Every morning Bach waited for me on the patio bench, a timer augment in hand, as if he’d been tracking my breakfast.
That augment became my nemesis. It was the arbiter of interval training. One minute each of squats, lunges, bicep curls, push-ups, planks … then five minutes, then ten.
The exercises were nothing I hadn’t done before, but the quantity of them every morning … I was definitely being pushed past what I had ever done alone. Not only was the quantity being upped, but the quality too. The squats had to be lower, the lunges longer, the breaths deeper.
By the end of the first week my body was all but ready to give up on me and my mind wasn’t far behind.
I rolled on to the grass and stared up at the sky.
One of the dragons soared over. The bright orange scales and slight cleft in the tail fin meant it was Baknil, the troublesome but loveable Kiestral orange.
My heart pinged for Gottyk. The blue of the sky filled my whole vision as I missed my dragon, letting my muscles cry uninterrupted.
Bach’s big hairy face entered my field of vision.
‘We’re done. Go study.’
This was an evil tactic, combining physical and mental torture.
Every afternoon Josie lectured me on everything she could possibly think of to do with race strategy, which – given that she was a genius – was a lot.
Doing it in the airy and bright library of the long house was at least an improvement from the tiny train cabins. Plus, I got to eat again.
Then, of course, it was back to the aviary to see to the dragons before sundown.
I took my frustration out on Aloux’s golden scales with the toughest wire brush available. The pretty northern dragon had proven multiple times he could sleep through anything.
‘I’d accepted Volitant was a faraway dream again, but wanting to fly during a training programme for racing dragons seemed reasonable,’ I vented to the slumbering giant.
I angled the bristles to get to the awkward gap between his back spines.
‘It’s not like I asked to be brought here.’ My voice echoed off the stone walls. ‘Well, I kind of did, but only after he offered. My point is that it’s pointless! I can learn infinite amounts of strategy, but it won’t do me any good on the ground.’
A stubborn copper pellet was lodged under the lip of one of Aloux’s large golden scales.
‘Mister, I have never met a dragon as big as you before.’ I got out the pick I kept in the keeper tool belt, perfect for such occasions. ‘I’ve raised hatchlings to adults for years, watched Volitant racing my whole life, so I can confirm you are by far the biggest boy on the continents.’
The stool I was using to reach his back started to give way as I leaned my bodyweight against the pellet. It shot out, sending me tumbling to the ground as the tension released.
‘Great. Not what I meant when I said I wanted to fly, but whatever.’ I sat on the millions of other bits of copper, staring at the ceiling where long slitted windows gave a view of the purple sky outside.
Vepari, the imperious Prevere blue, watched me from what I now knew was her favourite balcony. Her tail swung lazily, drifting in the open air. It was as thick as my body, matching the size of the rest of her.
‘You really do just keep growing, don’t you?’
It was a widely known fact about dragons – the older they got, the bigger they grew.
It was harder to tell when all the dragons in Volitant were of a similar age.
Each one was raised in the team headquarters for two years, from hatching to adulthood, then raced for two years before retirement, making all active dragons between two and five years old.
After that they were kept for breeding or training until they felt the Pull, which was usually after turning seven years old. Older dragons like Abenon, nine, weren’t unheard of, but his mother, Vepari … she’d flown with Bach in sixty-eight and sixty-nine, making her thirteen years old.
The two northern gold dragons were even older: fifteen and seventeen.
I patted the sleeping Aloux, oldest of the lot.
‘Do you know you’re a natural marvel? Is that why you stay here with grumpy Bach? To avoid the media circus if they all knew you were still alive?’
He snorted, sending copper pellets flying. A few made contact with me, stinging despite the thick overalls.
It made me miss Gottyk’s petulant huffs. That made me miss flying with him. It made me miss everything.
‘Well,’ I said to the old boy, ‘at least someone is happy to be here.’