“Last one in, first out, eh, Sharp?”
Thamlin Sharpier looked up from tightening one of the jesses on his overboots, and a quick smile broke over his face as he recognized the speaker. “Barrens’ bones, Jacob Wainwright!” he barked before clasping the arm of his hulking countryman. “What’s got you out in these forsaken lands?”
“Coin an’ Crown, same’s you.” Wain grinned. “Where's your beast?”
Sharp shook his head. “Secret location, ‘salways. How ya been?”
“Shiny,” the other said, flashing his new, iron, harp-shaped rank insignia, level with Sharp's eyes. “And you?”
“Dull,” he said, sobering slightly, not bothering to flick his lapel, pinned by a golden bar.
“They’ll harp you yet,” Wain decided. Then he gestured casually. “So, they told you it’s all let up then?”
“That’s how it always is, isn’t it?” Sharp conceded, not trying to hide his bitterness. “We train all year ‘round, get deployed, then arrive after the battle’s already decided.”
“Such is the way,” the berserker said gruffly.
“Judging by your bloody brocade, at least you saw something.”
Wain fingered some of his garb, which was the furthest thing from brocade, and shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the assumption. “Saw it, maybe. But touching it’s a deadman’s tale. You hear? We lost a couple tractors yesterday. Mortars had them flipped like toys, right on top of a line of rifles—Not ours. Coasters."
Sharp remembered seeing it on the wing, but he didn't say so. Instead he shrugged as well. “Shame for them… But it's better to have served than be served in my eyes. Maybe I’m just sick of all the nothing we riders get.”
“I can imagine,” Wain conceded. “So, they’re havin’ you out?”
“Overmorrow… Funny, running into you though.”
“Same as Lashela, six months back. But you left minutes after, back then.”
“Minutes,” Sharp agreed quietly. “Like ships in the dark.”
Wain, looking to brighten up the younger Dornborn's spirit, suddenly patted the other’s arm. “Listen well Friend, my companions and I are getting up to some carousing about the publics later tonight. You should come. Be a mighty fine thing, having a dragon rider about us for once! Might be the right flame to attract all the right moths.” He winked.
Sharp looked dubious, but Wain already won him over before ‘Listen’, and so he played coy as he said, “Oh, I dunno, Wain. Been a while for me. You know how it is?”
“Are all the other riders such haughty, falootin’ ponces like you?”
Sharp chuckled. “Well, I have my eastern pride! Where and when?”
Wain smacked him in the shoulder again. “I’ll find you, Sharpier.”
Sharp went to rider lodgings where he readied himself among his own set. The distinct smells of leather oil and reptile pervaded the cramped inn, made all the more repugnant as more and more of the riders returned from their duty assignments and proceeded to get drunk.
Frost, Sharp’s left-wing and partner, wasn’t long behind him, and the other’s face screwed up in distaste when her pale eyes fell on Sharp’s shed uniform items.
“Saw you near the berserker encampment,” Frost stated.
“Was only passing. Got called on by an old hometown friend,” Sharp stated just as neutrally, unlacing his second overboot and slapping the leather against one of the mudroom’s benches to shake the snow off. “Wainwright's his name. We both tested together. Hey—Where’d you go off to after we grounded? See your doctor again? Ol' what's'isname?”
Frost scowled at him in answer, then proceeded to ignore him while she finished doffing her own overs.
Couples quarrel, no doubt, he thought. Keeping a smirk to himself, Sharp finished putting away his cold weather gear and finally entered the larger space of their temporary quarters.
The riders had commandeered an inn called Peaksend House. The common room was packed with his flightmates and their personal associates. Most of them were still wearing their uniforms, disheveled or half-undone in some way. There wasn't a Dornborn among them besides Sharp himself, given that the average weight of an Easterner was around 300 lbs of slab-like muscle and bone, but Sharp's own tonnage was remarkably below that threshold, allowing him the privilege of riding with the small number of Coasters and innumerable Helians within the corp. He knew he could have passed for either at first glance though, given that his black hair and brown eyes weren't uncommon among the people of both the north and west. He certainly didn't fit in with the rest of his kith, what with everyone from Dorn having red or brassy hair, and deeply tanned skin.
Most riders within UFD's corp shared the gray-cast skin and dark hair of the folk from Helhandr—or the place “Above the Lady’s Mountain”, as most were fond of reminding foreigners. All besides Frost of course. She supposedly hailed from a clan of Helian hatchers, and everyone assumed she was illegitimately born, but from where or by whom, no one had the balls to openly speculate—not even Sharp, who was notorious for vocally making such wild speculations, and notably unafraid of the Frost's hair-trigger pique.
As Sharp saw it, the two of them were oddballs even among the elite, but at least then they had each other, once thinking, I could poke a paddle at Frost Drakidautr to see how she ticks, but it's probably a good idea not to rock the only boat I'm in.
Going up to the taptable, Sharp motioned at Peaksend’s lonely bartender and the keeper slid him a glass of something local without a word. Sharp lit a roll of blackleaf and rested with his back against the table to survey his surroundings while he warmed up.
It wasn’t long before Frost got along to finally joining him, fixing her own glass of whatever with a look that bordered on offense. The left-wing said offhand, “You shouldn’t fraternize with the fodder so casually. People look at us, Thamlin. What would Flightmeister say if he’d seen you getting on with that brute?”
Sharp had been told that Frost had been the youngest of her generation, and the only girl out of twelve. He'd never heard Frost bragging about being the one to come out on top, not like some of the other Helians he’d met over the years. Maybe it was because Frost had been genuinely close to her brothers before she’d been forced to kill them in her clan's arena. Or maybe it was because she just wasn’t a typical Helian specimen in every sense of the phrase. She was tall, blonde, gray eyed, deceptively flexible, and had a weak constitution when it came to subpar foods. Within their flight, she was called Ice Princess, but never to her face. People who said it to her face often lived to regret it.
Her face reminded Sharp of a glass doll’s, with pretty features forever stuck in placid disinterest (or mild contempt). But Sharp and she had only ever fought side-by-side, and he had seen that look of wicked glee stretched across her skull that so mirrored his own. Even if he didn’t like Frost's chilly attitude much of the time, he didn’t trust anyone else to cover his back. At least he’d know where a knife came from if it ever did.
Sharp let his earlier smirk show again. “Oh, ho! You sound jealous that I have friends,” he said, blowing smoke into Frost’s face.
Frost rolled her eyes, taking a drink of her own tankard. “Why do I even bother? You don’t care about your reputation. Why I would expect you to care about mine is foolish."
"Why should I when you already care twice as much as you should?" Sharp grinned.
His partner grimaced. “Your callous disregard for protocol will get you killed one day. Pray I'm not caught in the cross when you do."
“Mm. One day,” Sharp readily agreed. “But not today.”
“How’s Rath?” Frost asked after a moment’s silence, playing with a string coming off one of her pockets.
“Meh. You saw him earlier. He’s a nasty, ill-behaved drake. Always will be.” He offered the cherry of his smoke to burn off the thread and Frost took it, returning it without fuss.
“Hadn’t noticed,” the Helian muttered, finding another string, but only sighing at it in resignation.
Sharp finally regarded her, noting the other’s uncharacteristic fidgeting. “You never drink. There an occasion?”
“No,” she answered shortly, finishing off her tankard with a wince. She faced the table and slid her vessel across for disposal. She said too casually, “But it seems like you’ll enjoy a ruck later. When and where’s your evening gathering with your brutish frat?”
“Dunno,” Sharp said suspiciously. “Why?”
“I’ll accompany you.”
“You weren’t invited. It's a Dornborn berserker affair. You'll get crushed by our men, or worse. And who will write the incident report if you're suffocated under monster meat? Not I! I'll have to raise you from the dead! Inconvenient, necromancy is."
“I was invited when my right-wing was invited, Thamlin," Frost said neutrally.
“Pfft! Kiss my scaly backside and forget it. You’re on night’s watch later tonight anyway!"
“Which means I’ll be sober and I can watch your back until my midnight shift.”
Sharp laughed, bewildered. “Don’t try to logic your way into my private, illogical circles! I hate drinking with other riders. I especially hate drinking with you.” When a sheepish look took Frost's features for a ride, but only for a second, Sharp made a frustrated sound through his nose. “What’s gotten into you? Is there something wrong with your doctor after all? Or is it your other, more agreeable, reptilian ride that’s got your tits in a knot?”
Frost gave him a chilly look that promised violence. “Oliver took a mortar to the chest in the fighting this morning, so you can piss off. My dragon, on the other hand, is suffering on my behalf. She’s not nearly as acclimated to loss as I am.” She said the words with no emotion, like she could have been discussing the weather, but her face was stuck somewhere between mildly perplexed and enraged.
Sharp let his leafroll go out as he stared at his partner. Then he fumbled for the matches in his shirtfront pocket before relighting and sucking at the stub. The burned plant set his lungs on fire and he saw in his mind’s eye a convoy of wind-up tractors caught aflame, their Rifler passengers launching themselves from the open seats onto dry fields of shorn wheat… bodies rolling in the snow like cloaked infernos. As they’d reduced to meat, they’d given off a very particular smell: pork and ragweed; a smell akin to dried, blackleaf cigarillos and musk.
He loved that smell. He’d never told anyone.
"Dorn’s Bones, Frost. What will you do?” Sharp asked in a low voice.
“What can I do?” she demanded of no one.
“Did he have any family?”
His partner shook her head. “None. He was from Coastlande. He had a sister who drowned when she was little. Parents were killed in the Second Dunhr War. I… thought I told someone that.”
“You didn't tell me.”
“Meant to, I think,” she said airily.
“Were you two serious?”
“I… don't know. Perhaps I was a novelty to him in the end.”
Sharp felt sorry for her, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he turned to face the table and slapped the Helian on the back roughly. “Well, what you need is a quick kick in your litter maker and a knife in your guts. If you want to watch my back on the ground, I make no guarantees for your safety! You in, Lefty?”
Frost slowly faced him, her expression going sheepish again.
“Gonna cry?” Sharp prodded her in the gold harp insignia.
“No…” Frost poked the gold bar on Sharp’s lapel, pushing him back slightly. “But I may end up stabbing you by night’s end.”
“Just make it quick, eh?” Sharpier laughed.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
