Chapter 68: Flog The Mother & The Daughter
Reynold slowed down as he was close the practice field.
There was already a crowd.
He could see them from a distance, Wyrmwood cadets were packed in a wide ring around the raised stone platform at the center of the field.
Then Noble-High cadets stood on the platform. Two of them were holding the Noble-High flag between them.
Callum was the one talking.
"Who in Wyrmwood Academy dares to answer us?" His voice sounded. "Step forward. Or does Wyrmwood not have anyone worth the trouble?"
Reynold looked at them for a moment.
Then he looked away and kept walking.
A few Wyrmwood cadets near the edge of the crowd spotted Reynold. They wanted him to stop and challenge the Noble-High cadets but he did not stop.
Reynold had somewhere to be, and it was more important than whatever was happening on that platform.
The cadets could only watch him walk past without saying a word. One of them exhaled slowly. Another dropped his shoulders and another one third just shook his head in disappointment.
....
Reynold got to the administrative block.
Reynold pushed the door open and walked in.
A woman was sitting behind the front desk. She was middle aged, with reading glasses balanced on the end of her nose and a stack of papers in front of her.
She looked up when he came in.
"Cadet."
"I need to apply for a student leave," Reynold said.
Without saying a word, she reached under her desk and brought out a form. She set it flat on the counter and slid a pen across to him.
Reynold picked up the pen and the form.
He wrote his name, his cadet number, and his dorm block.
When he got to the reason field, he paused for half a second, then wrote it down.
Family property dispute requiring physical presence. No family member available to act on my behalf. Matter is time sensitive.
He filled the second part of the form after it. He was requesting permission to leave the academy grounds with one of his bonded dragons for the duration of the leave.
He set the pen down and pushed the form back across the counter.
The woman looked it over without picking it up. Then she picked it up, stood, and disappeared through the door behind her.
Reynold waited for her as he stood stood with his hands loose at his sides and looked at the wall behind the desk.
There were framed documents on it. Academy seals. A map of the northern region with Wyrmwood’s location marked at the top.
After a few minutes the woman came back out.
"The administrator will see you now."
...
The administrative officer was a broad-shouldered woman with short grey hair and reading glasses was pushed low on her nose.
She had the forms Reynold filled flat on the desk in front of her and she was reading through them slowly.
Reynold stood across from her and said nothing.
After a moment she raised her head.
"The leave is approved," she said.
Reynold nodded.
"However." Then she looked back down and picked up a small stamp plate from the side of the desk. She started writing something onto it.
"The dragon request," she said without looking up, "is not."
Reynold went still.
"May I ask why, Ma?" he asked.
She raised her head.
"The last practice assessment, shows you can not fully control a dragon yet" she said. "The academy cannot authorise a cadet to leave the premises unsupervised with a bonded dragon when they can not control it."
Reynold opened his mouth.
Then he closed it.
He knew arguing would not change anything. She was not being cruel about it. She was reading from his performance in the last practice.
"Understood," he said.
She stare at Reynold for another second, then looked back down at the plate. Her hand moved across it twice. Then she pressed her palm flat against the surface and the academy seal appeared in the center.
She slid it across the desk toward him.
"Present that at the main gate," she said. "The security detail will clear your exit. Safe travel, Cadet Starweaver."
"Thank you.." Reynold nodded as he picked it up.
It was a leave notice. He would need to hand it to the security post at the main gate before they would let him through.
He put it in his front pocket and left.
....
The security officer stationed at the gate has a dragon beside him, a stocky brown with scarred shoulders and calm eyes.
The dragon was making low sounds in its throat.
Reynold walked up and passed the plate to the man.
The officer took it, read it top to bottom, then handed it back.
He said nothing. He just turned and pulled the gate open.
Reynold walked through.
He made his way to the train station.
The station was not large but it was busy.
Reynold bought his ticket at the front window, then he found the right platform, and stood near the back of the line.
When the train came, he boarded, found a seat by the window, and set his backpack on his lap.
The train pulled out of the station slowly.
He was on his way to Aldenmoor City.
....
Location: Capital City!
The field was wide.
The grass was short and dry from the week’s sun.
Elara, Sael, and Power were standing together near the left side in an open field. The lock around their neck was not there.
Three dragons were behind them. Their riders was also beside them, holding the reins loose.
One of the dragons, the grey one on the far left, kept turning its head and snapping lightly at the air.
Across the field, standing before a formation that stretched wide in both directions, were Professor Valerius and Magnus, the personal representative of the Royal King.
Valerius stood beside him with his hands clasped behind his back.
In front of them, the dragon commander was listening to them without moving. He was tall and lean, in full rider armour, with his helmet under his arm. Behind him were hundreds of dragon riders arranged in loose columns. Beside each rider, was a dragon. Then at the corner were magic users.
"Stay low," Valerius said. "You do not make any move or make any sound not until the signal goes out."
"And if the signal does not come?" the commander asked.
"Then the meeting went well and you come back clean," Magnus said. "But we are not counting on that."
"Understood," the commander said again.
He turned, said something short to the formation behind him.
When the commander finished talking, the magic users moved. They pairs with a a rider, and climbed up on the dragon.
The low grunt of dragons adjusting to weight, the slow beat of massive wings beginning to open was now echoing in the open field.
Then the first dragon lifted.
It rose straight up, with wings spreading wide. The second dragon followed, then the third, and then they were all going up, one after another.
Dust rushed outward from the field in every direction
Valerius turned.
He and Magnus walked to where Elara, Sael, and Power were standing..
The three dragons had already been saddled. Three riders were waiting beside them, holding the reins out and ready.
Valerius and Sael climbed onto the first dragon. The rider settled forward and gave the dragon a short signal with his knee.
Magnus and Elara took the second one.
Power took the third...
The rider then pulled the reins and the three dragons moved together.
The hundreds of dragons ahead of them were already gone from sight.
Valerius and his group were heading to the neutral meeting ground.
The Forsaken Lords will be there.
They could not be trusted. That was why the preparation had been made. If the meeting go smoothly, the riders in the trees would come home. But if it did not, the signal would go out and they would make the move.
....
Location: Aldenmoor City
Reynold stepped down from the train and stopped for a moment.
He adjusted the strap of his backpack and started walking.
Reynold had grown up here until he was ten when his parents were transferred to Terraverde City for military work and they had to leave. He still remembered the streets. Not all of them, but some.
The Starweaver mansion was built by his grandfather.
His grandfather had passed it to his father. His father and mother had there, and Reynold was born there and had spent the first ten years of his life there.
When his parents left for Terraverde, they put a man named Harven in charge of the property. Someone they trusted to look after it while they were gone.
That had been a mistake.
After Reynold’s parents died in the war, Harven had not sent a word to Reynold, he did not even reached out to the academy, he did nothing except took the mansion as his own and start treating the servants who has once worked for Reynold’s family as though they belonged to him.
.....
Inside the mansion, Harven was in the main sitting room with a cup of ale.
His belly was pressed against his shirt as he sat.
The sitting room was large and well furnished. Most of the furniture belonged to Reynold’s parents.
On the mantelpiece above the fireplace was a framed portrait. It was a painting of a girl, five years old, with a yellow ribbon in her hair.
Harven had lost his daughter to a fever when she was at that age and the portrait was the only image he had of her. He kept it there because seeing it every day was the only grief he still allowed himself.
He was on his second cup of ale when the woman cleaning the far end of the room caught his eye.
She was one of the older servants, the ones who had been here since the Starweaver days. She was working along the shelves, wiping each one down with a cloth.
Then her elbow suddenly caught the mantelpiece and the framed portrait tipped.
It fell.
Harven went still when he heard the sound.
He looked at the frame on the floor. The glass had cracked clean down the middle, splitting the painted face of his daughter in two.
The woman had already dropped to her knees. She was picking up the pieces of glass with shaking hands.
"I am sorry," she said. Her voice was barely sound. "Master Harven, I am so sorry, I did not mean..."
"Get your hands off it."
She froze.
Harven drop his cup down on the side table as he stood up.
"You clumsy and useless can you be" He stopped. His jaw was tight. He looked at the cracked frame on the floor and then he looked at the woman
"Guards," he said.
Two guards appeared in the doorway.
"Take her to the yard," Harven said. "Twenty lashes," He said. "So she remembers next time to pay attention to what her hands are doing."
The woman pressed her forehead to the floor.
"Please," she said. "Please, I will pay for it, I will replace the glass, please.."
Harven did not answer her. He picked his ale back up and sat down.
....
In the kitchen, a group of servants were working in silence.
A girl was scrubbing the large pot by the back counter. She was young, perhaps fifteen, thin across the shoulders, with her hair pulled back in a rough knot.
The door to the kitchen opened.
One of the other servant girls came in fast, carrying an empty tray, her eyes wide.
"Gift." Her voice was low. "Harven has called for the guard. He is ordering them to flog your mother."
Gift stopped scrubbing.
She dropped the cloth down on the edge of the pot and was out of the kitchen before the girl finished speaking.
"Please stop...."
Gift ran fast and threw herself down in front of her mother, spreading her arms out wide.
The guard who was reaching for the woman’s arm stopped. The second guard stopped too.
They both looked back at Harven.
Harven looked down at Gift from across the courtyard.
His expression did not change.
"What are you waiting for?" he said. His voice was almost bored. "Flog the mother and flog the daughter too since she wants to join her."