Reflexively, she found the strength to snatch him up out of the water. It was part accident, part intent that when her strength failed her, she managed to dash him against the fallen log in the river. For an instant, he hung loose in her grip. When he suddenly began to struggle and squeal again, she slammed him against the snag hard. She braced his momentarily still body against the log, and in the fraction of a second she gained opened her jaws wide and then closed them again. He gave one final spasm and then her kill hung limp from her jaws.

She’d killed! She’d made her first kill!

She pinned the meat against the snag with one front foot while she tore into it. She had never tasted anything so delicious. The blood was liquid and warm, the meat flopping fresh. She gulped and tore mouthfuls of guts, and crunched bones. When pieces of the pig dropped into the river, she plunged her head in to retrieve them.

It was only when every last bit of the animal had been devoured that she became cognizant of the scene around her. Many of the dragons had caught prey. Veras had pursued her pig up onto the bank and killed it there. Two of the smallest dragons had a squealing pig stretched between them, tugging at it until the creature’s body suddenly gave way. Kalo was gulping the last of one pig while he had another pinned under his great clawed foot. That sight sent her looking for more pigs.

“The herd scattered,” Mercor said quietly. She found the golden dragon cleaning his claws. He licked them and then nibbled a scrap of meat from under one. He had obviously hunted successfully. As she had. The memory rocked her again. She had killed! She, Sintara, had killed her own meat. And eaten it. How could she not have known how important it was to do this? It suddenly changed everything. She looked around at the river and the other dragons. Why was she mindlessly following the others, like a cow in a herd? This was not what dragons did. Dragons didn’t have keepers or depend on humans to kill for them. Dragons hunted alone and killed for themselves!

Instinctively she flexed her shoulders and raised her wings. The drive to fly away from here, to return to hunting, to make another kill and devour it and then find a sunny hillside or a good rocky ledge and take a long nap filled her. It wasn’t the meat that had awakened this in her, though the meat had been very good. It had been the struggle to kill, and above all, the triumph of killing and eating the riverpig. She couldn’t wait to do it again.

But her spread wings were pathetic things that slapped wetly against her back. There was no strength in them. Angrily, she recalled how hard it had been to battle even such stupid prey as a riverpig. Killing it hadn’t felt the way it should have, hadn’t matched any of her dragon memories of a kill. She was a weakling, not fit to live. She’d been kept like a cow in a pen. It was time to end that life.

“And that,” said Mercor, as calmly as if he had heard and followed all her thoughts, “is exactly why we had to leave that place. It is why we have to travel together, upriver to find Kelsingra. So that we can become dragons along the way. Or die trying.”

He lifted his head and gave a trumpeting cry. “Time to move on!” Then, without waiting to see if the others followed him or not, he moved out into the depths of the river and around the long snag.

Sintara followed him.

Day the 7th of the Grain Moon

Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

To Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Enclosed, in a doubly sealed scroll case dipped in wax, a missive from Jess to Merchants Begasti Cored and Sinad Arich at the Sailpoint Inn, Bingtown. Fees paid for prompt and confidential delivery, with a bonus to be paid if the message is delivered in less than four days from the sending date.

Erek,

I have chosen Kingsly for this task! If any bird can earn us the bonus money, he can!

Detozi

P.S. Any chance of a squab or two from Kingsly’s line? I would trade you some of my Speckle’s offspring. She is not as fast as Kingsly, but has flown through many a storm for me.

Chapter Sixteen Community

Nightfall found all the keepers sleeping in a row on the deck of the Tarman. Thymara had chosen a spot by the ship’s railing. She pillowed her head on her arms and stared toward the riverbank. Except for their dying campfire on shore and the single light from the barge window, the darkness was absolute and hard to get used to. Every time they stopped for the night, it was the same. They had left Cassarick far behind them. There were no friendly lights from a tree-built city to pierce the blackness of night under the great trees, no sounds from neighboring houses. Thymara skirted the edges of sleep but could not seem to enter. Too much had happened too fast in the last few days. She swatted at a mosquito buzzing near her ear and asked the darkness, “Why are we doing this? It’s crazy. We don’t know where we’re going or what to expect. There’s no end in sight. Why are we doing this?”