Targan Fraser's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

By full daylight, all five hatchlings were out of the sand and loose in the hall. The black one stayed close to Targan's old dragon, quiet and watchful. The other four were not quiet. They snapped at the boy's heels, climbed the rafters, and tore strips from a hide bag of meal. The boy moved fast and kept his hands open, but he was one boy, fourteen years old, and the four older hatchlings already knew he was smaller than they would be by winter. One sank teeth into his forearm before he could pull back. Blood ran to his wrist. He did not cry out. He looked at Targan and waited. Targan put pressure on the boy's arm and shouted for the men outside. They came with leather and rope and drove the four hatchlings out through the wide doors into the yard. The clan had built a holding pen there for this season, a square of seamless stone walls bound with iron straps, taller than a man and sunk deep into the ground. They herded the four inside and shut the gate. The hatchlings threw themselves at the walls once, twice, and found no give. Then they turned on each other. Within an hour, two were bleeding from the snouts and one had a torn wing. Targan stood at the gate and watched. He could not put the boy in there alone. He could not put any grown man in there either. His old dragon was inside the hall with the black hatchling and would not leave it. He had four wild young dragons in a stone box, tearing themselves apart, and no way to reach them. The boy came up beside him with his arm bound in clean linen. He held out a slender wooden pipe carved with runes and set with a pale blue stone at its waist. He said a traveling druid had left it with his mother years ago and told her a rider would need it one day. He said he had tried it that morning on the black hatchling and the black hatchling had stopped chewing his boot. Targan told him to climb the wall and try it on the four. The boy went up the iron rungs and sat on the top course with his legs over the inside. He set the pipe to his mouth and blew. Targan heard nothing. The hatchlings heard. The biggest one froze with its jaws open. The other three turned their heads. The boy blew again, a longer breath, and the four sat down in the dirt like dogs. Targan let out the breath he had been holding. The boy could hold them. The boy alone could hold them, and only with the pipe, and only while he had wind in his lungs. Targan turned toward the carved poles his clan had raised at the edge of the field, five of them, each cut with a rider's mark. Four marks still waited. He had until the pipe failed to fill them.