Anza sat the bow down, looking satisfied and smug.
'I assume she'll be leading the archers,' Pet said.
'You assume wrong,' said Burke. 'She's the only one in this fort qualified to copilot Big Chief.'
'Big Chief?'
'My giant.'
'Your giant what?' asked Pet.
'Patience,' said Burke. 'You'll see it soon enough. For now, though, I do need someone to lead the archers. It's taken me three days to make three bows, but now we've got the process worked out and the machinery geared up. Tomorrow we'll have another dozen. The day after, fifty. I'm going to let you drill and train the men, Pet.'
'Me? I'm not the best shot in the world.'
'No, but you're a man who knows who the enemy is. Until someone rediscovers the formula for gunpowder, these are the most dangerous weapons any man will put his hands on. I want them aimed at dragons, not other men.'
Pet bit his lip, afraid to say the thought that instantly flashed through his mind.
'What?' Burke asked, reading the unasked question in Pet's face.
'You seemed willing to aim your weapons at your fellow men the other night. You had no problem with killing the gleaners.'
'We weren't killing them because we hated them; we were killing them out of strategic necessity.'
'They wound up dead all the same,' said Pet.
Burke reached out and put his hand on Pet's shoulder. 'The fact you feel this way makes me trust you all the more. I knew what you were made of the second you stepped to the defense of that poor gleaner. I told you, morality comes from the gut. I think you've got the guts to stand on this wall when the dragons come and, more importantly, after the dragons fall.'
Pet wasn't certain that Burke had the right man. However, Burke was a genius and Pet wasn't a genius, so his gut said to trust the man's judgment. He gave Burke a nod of acceptance, and then pulled another arrow from the quiver. He gave Anza the most charming smile his chapped lips could manage before taking aim once more at the distant tree.
'I'll split your arrow before the night's out,' he said.
She smirked.
He never even hit the branch. But he did eventually hit the tree.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
At Dawn, As the Dragons Came
The following day, Pet joined Burke in the task of auditioning archers. There were three thousand men inside the fort, but finding fifty with eyes sharp enough to meet Burke's criteria proved challenging. Burke had sent Anza out to a rust heap about 700 yards away. She stood atop it, holding a dinner plate over her head. A large letter was painted on the plate. The plate was nearly a foot tall, but Pet could only see the letter as a smudge. He was glad Burke was apparently satisfied enough with his performance the night before that he wasn't being asked to read the letter.
After they'd tested a hundred men and found only two with sufficiently sharp eyes, Pet said, 'Burke, I know you're a lot smarter than I am. But, isn't this test tougher than it needs to be? We're fighting dragons, not dinner plates.'
'True,' said Burke. 'But your arrows are going to be mere specks at killing range. And while dragons are big targets, they only have a few body areas were a single arrow is going to knock them from the sky. If you can't see where your arrow's going, you can't adjust your aim.'
Pet nodded. 'Makes sense.'
Another candidate stepped up, a young man, boyish except for a wispy blond mustache. He was five feet tall at most, but looked wiry and tough. Pet felt there was something eerily familiar about the boy. The youth gave Burke a crisp salute.
'What's your name, son?' Burke asked.
'Vance,' the young man answered.
'Where you from?'
'Stony Ford, sir.'
'Never heard of it. That one of the towns where Ragnar gave his 'join or die' speech?'
'No, sir,' said Vance. 'It's down the river a spell. My brother and I heard about the rebellion and came to take a stand, sir.'
Burke pointed toward Anza in the distance. 'You see my daughter out there?'
Vance shielded his eyes from the sun. 'Yes, sir.'
'What's she holding above her head?'
'Looks like a plate, sir.'
Burke gave an approving nod. 'And do you see something painted on the plate?'
'Yes, sir. Some kind of marking.'
'Good. It's a letter. Can you tell me which letter?'
The boy shook his head. Burke looked disappointed.
The boy said, apologetically, 'I don't know one letter from another. But it looks like this.' The boy traced a serpentine shape in the air.
Burke smiled. 'That's an 'S,' boy. And you're an archer now.'
The boy gave a wide smile.
'You won't regret it, sir. Me and my brother were the best shots for miles around.'
'Excellent. Where's your brother? What's his name? Let's get him to the front of the line.'
Vance looked solemn as he reported, 'His name was Vinton, and he's dead, sir. Vinton was charged with killing the disloyal gleaners the night we took the fort. We found him dead from an arrow shot. The two fellows he was running with were also killed. One had his head sliced clean off.'
Pet felt a chill run down his spine. Now he knew why the boy looked familiar. The rapist with the scratched cheek was a ringer for this boy if you added five years and thirty pounds.
'Sorry to hear it,' Burke said. 'I'm sure Vinton was a good man.'
'Yes, sir,' said Vance. 'One of the best.'
Burke gave a nod toward the ladder leading down the wall. 'Go down and join the others. You'll be given a bow. Later, we'll start target practice. Welcome to the sky-wall.'
Vance couldn't stop smiling as he climbed down the ladder.
Pet felt the need to say something about the boy's brother.
'Don't say anything,' Burke said, reading Pet's mind.
'But…'
'But the past is past. As of now, Vance is your brother-at-arms. What happened before this moment is of no importance.'
Pet knew that Burke was right, but he couldn't keep the scene from replaying in his mind. What could he have done differently? Would the world have been better if he'd just turned his back? If a dragon made it through the sky-wall, would he be haunted by the knowledge that Vinton might have fired the arrow that would have killed that dragon? He barely paid attention to the next candidate Burke tested. He was only broken out of his reverie by a sudden outcry from the eastern gate.
'Dragons!' someone was shouting.
'Four days,' Burke sighed. 'So much for my fantasy of doing this with a well-trained army.'
The dragons weren't attacking, not yet. Instead, they gathered at a large field a mile downriver. Pet listened quietly as spies reported back to Ragnar, Burke, and the other leaders. Pet, as commander of the archers, was now privy to these meetings.
The lead spy, it turned out, was Shanna, the woman who'd rescued Pet from the dungeon. She hadn't taken part in the raid on the Nest, but she had learned from her contacts that Blasphet had failed in his attempt at genocide. Only a handful of the sisters had managed to escape in the aftermath, but Shanna was confident there would be no valkyries joining in the attack on Dragon Forge. Blasphet hadn't been found; the matriarch wasn't
