CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
The criticism didn’t come though. I hauled Ascil’s kit back into storage and began brushing her down – no small feat given the scale of her – and I did so in the ambient quiet of the aviary.
Dragons snorted, sifted through the copper and yawned in the late morning sunlight …
and that was all. No mention of where I needed to improve, of what I was doing wrong.
Bach was doing the same as I was for Vepari, cleaning any debris from her scales, checking the wing membranes for missed scratches and injury – all the tasks keepers were charged with after a race. He busied himself enough that I wondered if he was avoiding telling me I was a lost cause.
Unsurprisingly, he was finished first. After disappearing into the kit room he emerged in his regular clothes – tan linen trousers, boots and a shirt – and made to leave.
I frowned at the back of his head. I’d worked myself up to be berated, or at least to feel ashamed at my performance. Him not even bothering was starting to feel like an even bigger insult.
‘Is that it?’
He stopped in the giant entryway. Ascil bent her long neck to look back at me too.
‘Excuse me?’
‘No you need to try harder, or you’re not rider material?
Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of lesson in this?
Or is the lack of a debrief the lesson?’ The words I’d been rolling around in my head for the past hour were tumbling out with no sign of stopping.
‘Honestly I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do when racing against the greatest rider in Volitant on his home turf.
How am I supposed to get better if you won’t even tell me how bad I am?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I actually flew really well, but in comparison to you, I’m always going to be a pale imitation. ’
He pointed at me.
Ascil huffed.
I looked between them, mouth flapping. My words dried up.
‘You found the problem yourself.’ Bach came back over, patting Ascil’s snout before looking at me.
A shiver went down my spine.
‘You were copying me,’ he said.
So he’d noticed, just like he had at the Victrolia circuit. Of course he had – he was Bach Lotiere. I wrung the brush handle, trying to throttle it as if it would also kill feelings at the same time.
The problem was, other than it being embarrassing, that I didn’t see a problem with what I’d done. So I did what I always did when I disagreed.
‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with imitating a flying style. In fact,’ – I was getting louder the faster I went. – ‘I would say it’s been a benefit. Not many riders can pull it off, you know.
‘Maybe you’re not aware of the impact you’ve had on racing, but it’s impossible to look at the past three decades of Volitant without seeing the trail you’ve blazed.
I won’t be ashamed of flying in your slipstream.
If it means I only get five championships instead of six and only break ten records instead of twenty, then that’s fine with me. I’ll live with it!’
I blew a hot breath out through my nose, my chest rising and falling rapidly as my frustration spilled out. The irony of me defending my choice to fly like Bach to Bach himself wasn’t lost on me, but it was lagging far enough behind that yelling at him had seemed like a good idea.
Now that I’d stopped and silence had fallen, the irony caught up and made my cheeks flush.
‘Is that why you use the battleaxe?’ he asked.
I flinched, surprised at receiving a follow-up question.
‘Uh … yes.’
Slowly, but surely, a smile crept across his face. ‘Okay, I see now.’
There was no part of me that understood what was now clear to him. So I stayed still, and more importantly, quiet.
‘First of all,’ he said, still absently keeping a hand on his dragon, ‘when I said that you copying me was a problem, I meant it literally. When in a one-to-one chase, you’ll never catch up if you’re copying the rider in front.
You need to be doing something more, something different, to be able to overtake.
Or in our case, get close enough to hit. ’
Ah. So maybe I’d gone a little overboard in my defence.
‘You were flying a dragon wholly different to mine. You needed to figure out what Ascil’s strengths were and apply them in the chase.
Using the same directions on a four-winged dragon that’s over a third bigger isn’t going to get the same results.
Even if it did, you needed better results to close the gap. ’
I nodded, avoiding his gaze and instead watched Ascil whose eyes darted between me and Bach.
‘I will admit to not realizing the imitation hadn’t started and ended there,’ he continued. ‘It makes more sense now, the way you were flying in the races. You never once spoke to me in the years you’ve been working for Kiestral, so I wouldn’t have assumed you were a fan.’
My muscles had seized up, not from the lack of stretching post-flight but from the sheer shock that Bach might ever have thought I would be the one to not like him.
‘This is helpful though. Training someone is new to me, but if you’re happy to end up like me … well, I can work on that.’
Happy to end up like Bach? I was unsure in what world any rider would be unhappy.
‘Yeah,’ my voice was hoarse. ‘Yeah, that would be fine with me.’
‘In that case,’ he said, a strange glint in his eye, ‘there are going to be some changes to your schedule.’
I had been wrong about Bach not having his own sets of Volitant armour.
My lungs contracted, sending air gasping out of me as the force feedback thumped on my chest. The cause of this was Bach and the business end of his battleaxe, currently watching me through the eye slits of his helmet as I hit the dirt.
I groaned through my helmet. It was becoming increasingly clear how he’d become such a force of nature on dragonback – he never stopped.
The promised schedule changes had lightened my keeper duties.
Josie and the other ranch staff were helping me in the mornings which was a pleasant change.
However, the workout routine had not only become harsher, but longer.
On top of the running, the body workouts and flight training for two hours, weapon training had been introduced.
I scrambled back up, feeling heavy in the armour. As well as flying in it, I was getting thrown around the jungle floor in it too. The shock absorption did plenty to stop it hurting, but my ego was still badly bruised.
‘You need to recover faster.’ Bach’s voice came through the helmet comms. ‘I could have hit you while you were down three times over.’
‘Ah,’ I panted, brandishing my own arcanite axe at him. ‘But you didn’t! Josie’s been telling me to study my opponents’ weaknesses and I knew you wouldn’t attack me while I was down.’
I couldn’t see his face through his helmet, but I recognized from the way his hand tightened around his own weapon that I’d hit a nerve.
It was, apparently, the only way I could strike him, since I’d not managed to get a hit in on dragonback nor in sparring.
At first I’d been awed, then it had quickly morphed into frustration and now full-on competition.
Revealing my Bach fanaticism had unlocked a big leap in training. He knew what to teach me and I knew I couldn’t possibly be more embarrassed than I already was.
Bach didn’t bother replying to my comment. He’d caught on faster than most that the only way to end a conversation with me was to stop talking all together.
Instead he closed the gap between us in two strides, spinning into a strike at my ribs.
I brought my own axe up to block, hooking one of my blades through his and yanking it to the side.
My arms strained at the resistance. It wasn’t like training with Theo where we – as I would never admit out loud – were matched on speed and strength.
Bach was made of bulkier muscle, with a wide stance that, coupled with his shorter height, made his centre of gravity lower than Theo’s.
The heavier build should have made him slower, yet before I could swing my weapon back up to strike at him, my head rang as his axe clipped my helmet. The augments took the impact and spread it out, but all that energy still buzzed around my skull making my eyeballs vibrate.
I staggered back a step and felt a tree root on my heel. I let myself fall, hoping Bach would fall into my trap.
He did. The moment I hit the ground he stood above me, about to strike down, teaching me not to rely on a friendly fight. So I rolled, kicking out at his leg as I scrambled by.