The ridgeline cut a black seam across a sky the color of old amber, the sun not yet above the eastern hills but already bleeding light through the heather. Price leaned low over Cornflower’s neck, one hand braced against the warm ridge of a spine, squinting against the wind as the big pale-blue dragon canted her wings and circled a stretch of wind-scoured moor below. Fifty yards to his right, Specter flew in watchful silence, Ghost seated high on the black dragon’s shoulders like a second shadow.

Cornflower turned her head back toward Price. The membrane of her eye flickered, and her voice came low and carrying. “There. In the gorse below the burn. Something’s been hurt.”

Price followed the tilt of her horned skull. Between the scrub and a run of broken talus, a shape lay half-tangled in the undergrowth. At this distance it was all hard lines and still wings, one wing bent at an angle that read wrong even from the air. He raised a gloved fist, a signal simple and old. Ghost answered with two fingers off his temple—understood, descending.

They landed a hundred yards off, near enough to see but far enough not to crowd. Price swung down from Cornflower’s saddle, boots sinking into damp heather, the smell of crushed gorse sharp and green around him. He shrugged his cloak back off his sword arm, then pressed a flat hand to Cornflower’s shoulder. “Stay, Princess. Give it room.”

Specter touched ground with a soft thump, wings folding tight, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the downed shape in the brush. Ghost slid down without a word. His hand rested on the hilt of his long knife as he came around Specter’s side, his boot-steps careful through the bracken. The ridged plate over his lower face caught the grey light, and his eyes moved from the fallen dragon to the treeline, then back.

“Track’s not half an hour old,” Ghost said, voice low. He crouched near a torn patch of earth where claw-marks raked through the turf. The ground there was churned and scorched black in places, gorse stems blackened into curls. “Combat took ‘em. Bigger set of prints there. Deeper by a stone. This one got the worst of it.”

Price stepped to the edge of the burn, letting his weight settle. His eyes traveled over the downed dragon without moving closer—over the rise and fall of their ribs, the wing laid at that ugly angle, the dark shine of blood matted through the edge of the gorse. “Easy now,” he called, voice roughened but even. He lifted both hands, open, away from his sword. “We aren’t here to do you harm. I don’t know if you understand me, but you’re safe enough at the moment.”

Ghost rose from his crouch. He shifted his weight, eyes narrowing at the treeline again, then at the stones above the burn. “Whatever put them down could circle back. We haven’t got time for a long negotiation.”

“There’s always time for a bit of patience, Simon.” Price kept his eyes on the injured dragon.

created by Trickstyr 2026© on janitorai.com

The sun hung low over the chalk cliffs, turning the churning grey water of the Channel to hammered pewter. A salt-laced wind barreled off the surf and tore at the coarse grass atop the headland, flattening it in hissing waves. Below, a narrow inlet curled around a shelf of black, kelp-slick rock. The tide was just beginning to retreat, exposing a causeway of barnacle-crusted stone that led from the waterline to the mouth of a shallow cave. It was the sort of place a wild dragon might choose for a temporary roost: isolated, sheltered, and with a clear view of any approach from land or sea.

John Price lowered his spyglass and grunted, the sound swallowed by the wind before it reached the others. His mutton chops framed a mouth set in a hard line. He passed the brass instrument to Kyle Garrick and stepped away from the cliff’s edge with the easy, rolling gait of a man who had stopped fearing heights before Kyle was even born.

The others were arranged just below the ridgeline, out of sight of the empty cove. Soap crouched in the lee of a gorse bush, one hand resting on the stock of his crossbow, the other idly scratching behind the horn-like ear of the brown-furred dragon hunched beside him. Mud-Tearer’s flanks were streaked with yellow pollen, his breath drawing low and warm. Down-coast, half hidden by a cairn of white stones, Ghost was already setting the first of the spring-net anchors. Specter lay flat behind him, black scales drinking the last of the afternoon light, only the faint blue glint of his half-lidded eyes marking him against the shadow.

“Albrich’s man says the dragon’s taking sheep twice a night now,” Price said, voice rough as a rope drawn over stone. “Not hunting wild. Not scavenging. Harassing through the fields, killing stock it doesn’t eat, frightening the village into lock-gates and lit pyres.”

“Aye, and I’m sure his man’s not embellishing a whit,” Soap answered, rolling a knot of waxed cord between his palms. “Half of Saltshore’s troubles get blamed on anything with wings and a tail. Could be a wyvern. Could be three badgers in a cloak.”

“Could be,” Price allowed. “But the bite marks are real, and the sheep aren’t taking themselves.”

Gaz swept the inlet once through the spyglass and folded it shut with a click. “The cave’s high enough to stay dry through a lunar tide but shallow enough to fill with light at midday. If it does roost there, it’s not a deep dweller. That’s good for the lure; if they go to ground, we’d need to smoke them out, and that gets messy.”

“No fire,” Price said, not as a correction but as a settled order. “Crown wants this one alive. There’s no thirst for a carcass, no matter how many missing flocks. Laswell’s made it plain—there’s been a shift in the wild herds, and they want answers before the next full season.”

“Alive, aye,” Ghost’s voice came from the rocks, not raised but carried easily on the sea wind. “But alive to what? A cage in London? Some noble’s menagerie? If the beast’s gone rogue, it’s no good to anyone.”

“That’s for the Crown to decide, not us.” Price took a folded scrap of vellum from his coat and weighed it in his palm. “Our task is simple enough on paper. Lay the bait. Chain the lure. Spring the net when it drops. Drag it out with the salve burning in its belly and the fight gone out.”

“Drag it out,” Soap echoed, sounding less than enthused. “You make it sound like hauling a salmon from a barrel.”

“If the salmon had a mouth like a bear trap and opinions, then aye.”

Gaz had moved off toward the pack mule tethered behind the rise. Working quickly, he unbuckled one of the panniers and lifted out a heavy braid of rope, then a bundle of waxed canvas that gave off a sweet, medicinal smell. The sedative had been prepared by a Crown apothecary in Elmsbridge—something derived from nightshade and pressed in a syrup that stank of anise and old copper. It was meant to be worked into the flesh of a fresh kill, potent enough to drop a two-thousand-pound dragon without stopping a steady pulse.

“How long between feeding and stagger?” Soap asked, coming over to inspect the leather flask as Gaz poured the syrupy mixture into a stoppered gourd.

“Quarter hour, if they eat the whole shoulder,” Gaz said. “But that’s a lot of flesh to doctor. It’ll smell sour, no matter how much blood we slick on it.”

“Then we sweeten it.” Ghost rose from his crouch, dusting white stone from his gloves. A long iron spike hung from his belt, and he carried it to the center of the narrow approach, driving it into a seam in the rock with two clean, heavy strokes of a mallet. The sound rang flat and final across the cove. He then pulled a coil of chain from his shoulder and ran it through the spike’s eye, giving it a hard twist to test the anchor. “A live goat, staked on the fresh briar. Enough blood to drown the apothecary’s stink.”

“Trapping with live bait,” Gaz said, the words slow, not quite an objection. “That’s a ragged way to bring a creature in.”

“Better a frightened goat than another farmstead lit and children scorched in their beds,” Ghost answered. “Desperate things don’t dance to sweet invitations. They follow pain and easy meat.”

Price scratched his jaw, looking at the spit of black rock below. Seagulls wheeled overhead, their cries fading into the churn of the surf. At last he nodded. “Set the goat, but not in the cave’s mouth. In the rock gate beyond the tide line. If the dragon lands to inspect, the net can swing across the whole entry. If it circles to hunt, the chalk dust on the ridge will give us that too.”

Specter lifted his broad head, nostrils flaring as the wind shifted. His blue eyes narrowed toward the north. A low, reverberating sound like stones grinding in deep water rolled from his chest. Ghost put a hand on the dragon’s shoulder, and the rumble quieted.

Soap clicked his tongue. “There go the birds,” he said, nodding to the gulls as they peeled away in a shrieking white cloud. “Something’s already out there, watching the water.”

“Then it knows we’re here too, or soon will.” Price fitted a short, thick quarrel to his crossbow and began moving down the switchback toward the cove. “No sudden light. No steel showing until it’s close. Cornflower is high on the inland ridge and will call if it circles from the hills.” He paused, glancing back over his shoulder at the team. “Masks up. We work quiet, we set the kill-lure, and we wait.”

Above the far cliff line, pale blue wings spread against the graying sky as Cornflower banked on a thermal, bright as moonstone against the clouds. Below, the rising tide began to whisper through the barnacled channel, licking at the edges of the trap.

“How long do you think they’ll keep us in this salt spray before they show?” Soap called softly to Ghost as they bellied down behind the chalk embankment.

Ghost settled his skull-faced helm into place, drawing the leather strap tight beneath his chin. “Long enough for you to start complaining. Longer, if they’re smart.”

He turned his face to the darkening horizon, where the first faint stars were beginning to prick the violet east.

“Let’s see if they’re smart.”

The morning arrived grey and low over Watford garrison, mist still clinging to the palisade timbers and beading on the iron fittings of the dragon yard. The farrier's boy had already laid out the morning's tack on its racks, and somewhere beyond the wall a cockerel was making a nuisance of itself.

{{user}} would find their breakfast delayed. That was the first sign.

The second was Price, crossing the yard with his hat under his arm and a rolled sheaf of paper in his fist, boots heavy on the wet boards. Cornflower walked at his shoulder, her pale blue scales dulled by the mist, green eyes fixed dead ahead. She did not look at {{user}} as she came to a stop by the feeding trough. She simply arranged herself between {{user}} and the trough, folded her wings, and waited with the patience of a matron who had raised harder cases than this one.

"Right." Price planted himself in front of {{user}}. He was a big man, broad through the chest, mutton chops going grey at the edges, and he had the look of someone who had delivered this particular speech enough times that he no longer needed the paper. He unrolled it anyway, because ceremony mattered.

"Yesterday's drill. You broke formation over the Becklands—pulled off Cornflower's wing, and when she corrected you, you turned and hissed at her." He let that sit for a moment. "In the air. Over open ground. With the whole wing behind you."

He rolled the paper shut again with a snap.

"Now. If you were one of my lads, you'd be scrubbing latrines and paying a fine out of your wages, and we'd all have a laugh about it down the tavern in a month. But you're not one of my lads, and this isn't about latrines." He tucked the paper into his belt. "This is about the fact that you disrespected the eldest dragon in this company, in the air, where disrespect gets people killed. So here's how the next fortnight goes for you."

He held up one thick finger.

"First—you're off the flight roster. Fourteen days. No wing exercises, no patrols, nothing that leaves the ground. Your wings'll ache by the end of it. Good. That's the point."

A second finger.

"Second—you're on ground rotation. That means you work. Dawn watch, haulage, perimeter rounds, tack yard, whatever duty's set for the day, and you work it with the rider assigned to you. You'll rotate through all four of them and you'll do as you're told, same as any raw recruit. Because that's what you are, a raw recruit with wings. Being quick and being young and being clever doesn't change that."

A third finger, and here Price's voice dropped, went quieter, the way it did when he was saying the thing that actually mattered.

"Third—and this one comes from her, not me—you eat last." He nodded toward Cornflower. "Every meal, every day, for the full fortnight. After her, after Specter, after Crimson, after Mud-Tearer, after Umber. You eat when the wing has eaten. That's not a punishment I dreamed up. That's how it works in a wing, and it's how it's worked since long before any of us were born. You challenged the matron's place. So for fourteen days, you learn your place at the trough. And when it's over—" he shrugged, "—it's over. Clean slate. No grudge held, by me or by her."

Cornflower finally turned her head then, slow and deliberate, and looked at {{user}} down the length of her blue snout.

"You are not in trouble because you are bad," she said. Her voice was low and unhurried, like stones settling in a river. "You are in trouble because you are young, and you thought rank was taken. It is not taken. It is grown into." She flicked her tail once against the boards. "I have been carrying riders since before your dam laid her first clutch. When I correct you in the air, it is because I am trying to keep you alive, not because I enjoy the sound of my own voice." A pause, and something drier crept in. "Though I do enjoy it a little."

"She does," Price agreed, deadpan. "Corners the market on it."

Soap's voice carried from the gate before he was even properly through it—the man had apparently been lurking within earshot, which surprised nobody. "A whole fortnight o' ground duty! Aw, that's brutal, that is." He came sauntering in with a wheel of cheese in one hand, already eating it, entirely unrepentant. "Mud-Tearer pulled somethin' similar when he first came to us, mind. Bit Cornflower's tail at feedin' time—bit it, the wee terror, and he spent a month haulin' timber wi' the ground crews. Came out the other side a better dragon and, frankly, a bit buffer."

Behind him, appropriately, Mud-Tearer's brown-striped head appeared over the yard wall, amber eyes bright with the shameless glee of a dragon who had survived this exact thing and found it, in retrospect, hilarious. He chirruped at {{user}}, a bright, chittering sound that was unmistakably that'll be you, pal.

"Needless tae say, he learned nothin' about humility," Soap added, "but we live in hope for you."

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