Chapter 65 — The Elder

Chapter 65: Chapter 65 — The Elder

Chapter 65 — The Elder

Thunder refused breakfast until Christopher opened the courtyard gate.

The deer meat lay untouched beside her nest. She stood before the iron bars with her wings half spread and sent him the same image three times: open sky, stone walls and the path leading deeper into the Knight castle.

"You have a courtyard here."

Her answer carried contempt for its size.

Christopher considered the meat. "Eat first."

Thunder sat down.

They remained that way until his patience began competing with hers. He finally cut a strip from the haunch and held it toward her. She ate without leaving the gate, then took a second piece.

"Half," Christopher said. "Then we walk."

She understood the promise through the bond, and the rest of the meal disappeared quickly.

Godfrey was more than a week south of Northgate. Christopher asked Walter to guard the passage while he took Thunder farther into the castle.

Walter waited beyond the nursery with a sword and a rolled leather screen.

"The route is clear," he said. "Owen’s people are out of the lower halls. Simon and Adam sealed the surface chamber."

Only Christopher would enter the courtyard with Thunder. Walter would remain two doors behind, close enough to respond and far enough that the hatchling did not feel surrounded.

Christopher opened the gate.

Thunder walked past him with deliberate calm, her excitement pressing against his thoughts strongly enough to make his own steps lighter. She smelled every doorway, scraped one claw across a faded floor mark and stopped whenever air moved through a side passage.

At the first stair, she tried her wings. Two beats carried her over four steps. She struck the wall with one shoulder, landed and looked back, blaming the wall rather than herself.

Christopher held his tongue. Pride warned him not to.

They continued upward.

The Knight castle reacted to her presence. Dead wall lines brightened faintly. Dust lifted from old grooves. A cracked lamp produced one blue spark and went dark again.

Thunder noticed every response.

The doors were wide enough for adult dragons. Scratches remained high on stone where claws larger than Thunder’s body had passed.

The final doors opened onto the central courtyard.

The dead Lightning Dragon lay beneath the pale small-plane sky.

Its body had survived through rank, dry air and the lingering strength held inside bone, scale and flesh. Time had drawn the hide tight in places, but it had not reduced the dragon to a skeleton. Folded wings covered part of the courtyard. One horn had broken near the tip. Ancient wounds crossed the chest and throat.

Thunder stopped.

The emotion reaching Christopher vanished so completely that he feared the contract had broken. Then pressure struck.

Not an attack. Recognition.

The hatchling lowered her body. Blue-white light moved between her horns, answering something too old and weak for Christopher to sense without her. Her inherited memories recognized a dragon from another bloodline.

But this was an elder: a Lightning Dragon who had lived long enough to reach Rank Eight, a being whose Dominion had shaped the valley before Thunder’s egg entered its seal.

Christopher crouched beside her.

"He fought with my ancestor."

Thunder did not look at him.

Christopher showed her the image from the damaged message stone: the last rider standing beside a living dragon, the retreat, the hidden eggs and the belief that their war had been lost. He could not send memory through the bond, so he sent impressions he had formed himself: stone halls, a dying rider and an elder guarding what remained.

Thunder moved forward.

Each step became slower as she approached the body. The residual Prestige pressed against her; it had driven stronger beasts away for centuries. To Christopher it felt like weight gathering in the air. To Thunder it was a voice without words.

She reached one foreclaw. The claw touched an old scale.

Lightning moved across the corpse. It was no larger than a thread, and it travelled beneath three scales and vanished into the stone.

Thunder jerked back. Her wings opened, and her own Prestige rolled across the courtyard.

Christopher’s knees weakened, but he remained beside her.

Fear came through the bond first. Pride buried it almost immediately.

"You don’t have to pretend with me," he said.

Thunder turned her head. The look was offended enough to be familiar.

Christopher placed his hand against the same scale. The surface was cold. He felt no memory, spell or hidden inheritance, only the remains of something that had once been powerful enough to change everything around it.

"I thought you should meet him."

Thunder questioned the word meet.

"Know that he existed, then."

That she accepted.

They walked along the elder’s side. Thunder examined the broken horn, the folded wing and the wounds. She paused near the chest, where several scales had been removed long ago; the last Dragon Knight might have used them for repairs or carried them into war.

Christopher did not touch the gaps.

Near the far wall stood the simple marker placed over the rider’s buried remains.

LAST RIDER OF DRAGONWATCH.

ANCESTOR OF HOUSE DRAKE.

Thunder sniffed the stone. Her impression of the grave was different: mortal, brief, important because the elder had chosen him.

Christopher sat beside the marker.

"He was family," he said.

The statement felt strange. The dead rider belonged to Christopher Drake’s blood, not to the university student who had awakened in his body, yet the bloodline had nearly killed him. The pendant had accepted him. Thunder had joined her soul to his.

Whatever he had been before, the consequences now belonged to him.

Thunder rested near the elder’s foreleg. She sat upright with her wings folded and her head raised. Respect came through the bond, joined by sharp ambition.

Someday she intended to become greater.

"Rank Eight," Christopher said. "You have time."

Thunder disliked the suggestion that growth required patience.

"You still hit walls when you fly."

Her tail struck the stone beside him.

Christopher laughed before he could stop himself. The sound echoed across the courtyard. Thunder released a low warning rumble, but amusement touched the bond beneath her pride.

They remained for most of the morning.

Christopher noticed pale blue veins in several courtyard stones. He assumed they were old formation lines or residue from the corpse and did not pry at them; Owen had already warned that removing unknown stone from an ancient structure was a good way to damage the structure.

When Christopher finally stood, Thunder did not follow.

"We have work."

She turned toward the elder.

"We can return."

That mattered. She rose and followed him toward the doors.

Walter waited in the second passage. His hand rested near his sword, though drawing it against Thunder while she was frightened would have achieved little.

"Trouble?" he asked.

"One spark. Nothing else."

Walter studied Thunder.

She met his gaze.

The Bronze Knight lowered his head slightly — not a bow to Christopher’s pet, but respect toward an intelligent creature whose kind had built the place around them.

Thunder approved.

Back at the nursery, she ate the remaining meat and slept. The bond did not become quiet. It carried a low awareness of the courtyard and the elder beyond the walls.

Christopher returned to the surface after midday.

Work on the wall arbalest’s base had begun near the main gate. Barlow had forged two new iron fittings. Owen complained that one did not match the old socket. Walter demonstrated the difference with a hammer and sent it back to the forge.

Christopher joined them at the arbalest base.

The frame was built from three seasoned beams recovered from a collapsed storehouse. Barlow rejected the first winding gear because two teeth had been repaired with soft iron. Owen wanted the base anchored directly into the wall. Walter wanted it set farther back so a ram at the gate could not reach the crew.

Christopher listened until all three began repeating themselves.

"Build the base where Walter marked it," he said. "Leave sockets for a forward position later. Use the good gear. The bad one becomes a pattern."

Owen still disliked the position, but he began measuring.

Christopher understood why the base needed firm stone and proper braces. He left the bow, trigger and draw weight to Barlow and Walter.

At midday, the first trigger assembly came up from the underground store. It was old but preserved, forged from dark Dragon Iron rather than ordinary steel. Barlow struck it lightly with a hammer and listened.

"No rust," he said.

"Can you copy it?" Christopher asked.

"Not in this metal. I can copy the shape in ours."

The Dragon-Iron piece could have served immediately, but Christopher ordered it kept as the pattern instead. If the first weapon failed, he preferred losing modern iron rather than an irreplaceable fitting from the hidden arsenal.

Walter approved without praising him.

They tested the platform with barrels of stone. The repaired floor held the first two. A crack appeared under the third.

Owen pointed at it with satisfaction. "Farther back."

Christopher rubbed dust from his hands. "Farther back."

The workers shifted the marked base by four feet.

Later, Christopher walked the eastern fields with Bennet. Barley moved in the wind, green heads still weeks from harvest. The farmers expected an adequate crop if rain continued, but none promised enough surplus for dozens of new mouths.

"Reduce the first purchase," Christopher said.

"Godfrey already left with the larger range."

"He knows food. He will adjust."

Bennet marked the ledger. "The merchant convoy must bring grain with the people."

"And enough for the northern road."

They checked two houses being repaired for future families. One needed a roof. The other had a sound roof and no door. Prisoners worked beside slaves under Peter’s watch, resetting stones and cutting rotten beams away.

The houses would be ready for any suitable people Godfrey found in the capital.

Near the kitchens, Meg carried two water pails through her balance course. She kept her shoulders level and finished without spilling more than a few drops. Bram’s absence left the heavy post unused.

"Again," Walter called.

Meg returned to the start.

Gates still opened. Nets came from the river. Hunters left at dawn. Children carried water when the bell rang.

Thunder disagreed through the bond. Her idea of leadership involved being strongest and receiving the best part of every meal.

"You’re three days old," Christopher murmured.

Bennet looked at him.

"It is nothing important."

Later, Bennet brought the week’s food count. The settlement could support the expected purchased families only if the first harvest succeeded and the merchant convoy brought grain with them. Christopher reduced the first target rather than gambling on perfect weather.

Godfrey would make the final choice in the capital.

At sunset, Christopher felt Thunder wake. No hunger came through the bond. She sent him the image of the elder, followed by the open courtyard.

"Tomorrow," he answered.

Thunder accepted the delay after only a brief argument. That was progress too.

Thunder woke him after midnight.

Christopher sat upright with the elder’s residual presence filling the bond. Thunder was dreaming in impressions too large and broken to be memories: storm clouds beneath wings, mountains far below and another heartbeat matching thunder.

The broken images carried no names or clear memories. They faded when Thunder woke.

Christopher pulled on his boots and went below. Simon opened the hidden chamber without asking why.

Thunder waited on the nursery stones with blue sparks moving between her claws. Christopher sat outside the nest.

"It wasn’t his memory," he said.

She climbed down and settled against his leg. Her scales were warm, and Christopher remained until the sparks stopped and her breathing slowed, staying beside her until dawn.

Near dawn, Thunder sent him one final image of the elder’s courtyard.

Christopher answered with tomorrow. This time she believed him without argument.