The First Test

 

If they were all being honest, it was a shock something like this hadn’t happened sooner. It had been too quiet for too long; even knowing this, they’d let their guard down, and so the crumpled bit of parchment, when it arrived in the fist of a pale, panting scout with a fist-shaped bruise on his face, still landed like a gut-punch.

It had been written in Continental, their language, though the grammar was a little off: that of a translator and not an Aquitainian citizen, the handwriting loopy and flourishing in a way that brough to mind the musical language of Seles.

 

Your men are clumsy, slow, and breathe too loud. You send children to do the job of a man. One we return to you as a show of goodwill, the rest we keep, until you surrender.

 

A map had been included, startlingly detailed and accurate. A place west of their current location had been circled, at the very edge of the duchy. A crumbling old tower surrounded by flat fields: impossible to approach with anything like caution. They would be forced to ride up with white flags waving, unarmed, and even then it seemed likelier they’d all be slaughtered than allowed to sue for peace.

Night had just fallen, and Reggie had entered the manor – ablaze with candles and warm from the many fires burning – sweaty, sore, fresh from his own fruitless patrol, to find everyone gathered in the dining room, faces grave. His stomach had twisted painfully when Edward read the brief missive aloud. The scout – the lone one of his party allowed to return – sat against the wall, nursing a brimming cup of wine that someone had pressed into his hand and which he nearly spilled thanks to his shaking.

Amelia stood at the head of the table, hands gripping the back of a chair, head bowed. She appeared to be taking it the hardest. The room was quiet, now, save the crackle of the fire and her harsh, open-mouthed breathing.

Halfway down the table, seated sideways in a chair with her legs crossed to the side, in a gown of clinging peach velvet, Lady Leda asked, “How many boys were in the party?”

“Fifteen,” Connor said, unusually sober from his place leaning against the mantelpiece. “They have fourteen hostages.”

Amelia's drakes saved her before they were even "hers," when they appeared at the outskirts of the Sel camp at Inglewood Manor and roasted their hostage-takers. But in Fortunes of War - out now! - she's going to test them in an organized, intentional way for the first time.

I wanted the chance, in this book, to start things slowly. Rather than throw Amelia and Alpha and the girls into a full-scale pitched battle, I wanted them to have a chance to test themselves against more manageable - if startling - obstacles. From an emotional standpoint, the slower progress toward the Final Battle gives us plenty of time for character development, which is the main reason for the current speed of the plot, but it also allows our dragon riders to gain skills and experience. 

There's lots more action to come!