Chapter 52 Evander
Chapter fifty-two
Evander
The camp was lively, nervous soldiers moving between the tents, receiving final battle plans, checking their shotfires, buckling on dragonscale vests.
Plate armor was suicide when riding a dragon to battle.
It heated too easily, broiling the body inside like a partridge in an oven.
But dragon hide was strong enough to withstand shotfire balls at long range, so most soldiers wore vests made of the close-fitting scales.
Dragon hide was also durable, flexible, and most soldiers kept the same vest for years until it conformed to their body like a second skin.
In Ashkendor, Evander owned a vest the color of coal, the most coveted shade for mounted soldiers. He wished he had it still.
The vests came in an array of colors from ice blue to tar black to bruise purple.
Red was cheap because it was so visible in the sky or on the ground, like wearing a target.
Soldiers sometimes tried to paint over their vests, but dragon scales didn’t like to be altered, and so the paint would flake off in hours.
When Evander returned to his tent, he found Samara sitting on the cot, sharpening his cutlass. She was biting her lower lip, the shing, shing, shing of the steel on whetstone staccato under her trembling hands. A package lay beside her, wrapped in brown paper.
She looked up grimly. “It’s red,” she said.
“What is?” he asked, dropping his coat on a chest by the tent opening.
“My armor, your armor, the whole crew’s armor. It’s all bright red.”
Evander crossed the space between them and tore open the package. Inside, he found a neatly folded vest made of brilliant scarlet dragon scale.
He swore, tossing it onto the cot. “Everyone’s? The whole crew?”
She nodded.
“Cadmus, you old bastard,” he growled, whirling around and kicking a bucket stowed in the corner.
It sailed across the tent, hit the canvas, then fell to the ground with a hollow clang.
“It’s alright. It’s alright.” He raked his fingers through his hair.
“They’ll be wearing their jackets over them anyway. Have them button up to their chins.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, setting down the cutlass and standing. “Only, I left my jacket behind in Barrimore.”
“Get another.”
“There are no others. I asked.”
Evander snapped his head up; his lips parted. She would glow like an ember on black velvet—the first soldier the Ashkendors saw, the first they shot. He couldn’t give her his jacket; it was far too large. Her range of motion would be hindered, her hands covered by the heavy sleeves.
“Alright, then,” he said. “Take my shirt.”
Samara’s eyes widened. “What?”
He pulled his magic shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed, trading it for a tight black undershirt.
“I can’t take it!” Samara protested. “It’s yours.”
“It’s yours now.”
“But it won’t fit me.”
“Try it.”
“It’s too big!”
“Try it.”
Looking petulant, Samara snatched up the shirt and yanked it over her head. It shrank instantly, the shoulders narrowing, the sleeves shortening. She glared at Evander. “Captain, I am not wearing your magic shirt.”
“You are, and that’s an order. Now get out of here so I can get ready.”
“If you are killed and I survive, your wife will murder me anyway, so it won’t make any difference.”
Buckling the red vest over his chest, Evander huffed a laugh. “That may be true.”
“Please, please, Captain,” she pleaded, her eyes shining with tears. “I can’t let you give me this. I can’t deal with the guilt …”
“Samara!” he barked. She shut her mouth; a tear dropped off her eyelashes.
“You are a child,” he said gently. “You do not need to feel guilt when a grown person protects you. I am a man. You are a little girl. Wear the shirt.”
“Yes, sir,” Samara said quietly. She set the cutlass down and ran out of the tent.
The second she was gone, Evander collapsed onto the cot and covered his face with his hands.
He took all his emotions and pulled them into one tight knot in his chest, then shoved them aside.
He had faced worse battles than this and survived them all.
There was no reason he wouldn’t survive a minor skirmish tomorrow. No reason.
He marveled that, just weeks ago, he’d sworn he would never go to battle again. Yet here he was, not only flying into the hail of scattershot, but doing so with a Sennalaith insignia on his sleeve.
Love could drive a man, smiling, into insanity.
Once dressed, he shrugged on his jacket and meandered through the humming camp toward the dragon paddocks. Hera was asleep, curled on the ground, her heads snoring in harmony.
“Hello, my darling,” Evander said, crouching and scratching her brow.
Her right head perked up first, then nudged her left head awake.
She jumped up, dragging her still sleeping middle head along the ground, and pounced on him like a gigantic terrier whose master has just returned from work.
Evander tumbled onto the grass, smiling, as Hera planted her huge clawed foot on his chest and sniffed him.
The middle head roused drowsily, hissing. It blinked at him, then gave him a small nudge of affection before bending its neck around and falling asleep again.
“You need to be very good tomorrow, and very brave. Can you do that for me?”
Hera tilted her heads.
“I can’t go with you into the battle. You’ll need to trust me. When it’s over, you can come home with me, or, if you’d rather, you can return to the sea. Would you like that? To go home, to the sea?”
She tore up a clump of dandelions and chewed them lazily.
“It’s going to be loud and frightening. I will come for you when it’s over. If you have to throw the man off your back, then you do that. But you need to be calm.”
Evander sat up and leaned against Hera’s chest, felt her breathing. In the tumult of the past five years, she had been his one constant. How could he let her go to battle? His lovely little pet, his companion, who he knew better than he knew himself.
An untamed phoenix soared over the stars, its orange feathers glowing like sparks—beautiful in its wild innocence.
How many phoenixes had been defiled by this war? How many youths burned, dragons dashed to pieces, lovers left to bleed out on the roots of a dragon willow?
He watched the clouds wheeling over the moon and then, between the clouds and the ground, he saw the silhouette of a great, dark bird.
Raska again.
She circled him and landed in the grass, eyeing Hera nervously.
“If I see you at the battle tomorrow,” he said, “I will mount your head in the sitting room in my house someday.”
Raska was silent.
“You are not to come near me, no matter what happens. You are not to return me to my mother.”
Raska shook her head and lifted her wing to show a patch of raw skin on her shoulder where the feathers had fallen out.
They were odd—golden at the roots, white at the shaft.
He stared at them, his brow furrowed. He’d never noticed before, but the black in her feathers wasn’t natural. It was tar-like, a grime.
“You haven’t much time left, have you?”
Raska chuffed.
Did he feel sorry for the miserable creature? She’d haunted his steps for weeks now, threatening him, frightening him. But she was trapped, the same as he. So, perhaps, he couldn’t fault her for wanting to buy a few more weeks of life.
“I’m sorry, Raska. I can’t go with you.”
She shook her head and met his eyes, urgent. Tentatively, she reached out her beak and nipped his wrist.
“What?”
She nipped it again, harder this time. He pulled his hand away.
“I don’t understand.”
Raska dropped her head, and her shoulders drooped. Then she flapped her mangy wings and melded into the inky sky.