On the first morning of the new training, Kiron had the dragon boys bring Jatel and Orthele to the landing courtyard after they had been saddled. There was no other way to get both boys up into the air under supervision at the same time. Both dragons were heartily displeased with this change in routine, and hissed and whined at each other when they were led into the courtyard. But Kiron had strong slaves standing by to help the dragon boys if needed, and though the two dragons grumbled, they didn’t actually do anything, thus being true to their essentially lazy natures.

Kiron and Avatre took off as soon as Toreth and Huras were in their saddles. Avatre watched the two dragons below her with great interest as he put her into a little circle above the court. As soon as he thought their position was good, he waved to the dragon boys below; they unhitched the chains, and the two riders gave their dragons the signal to fly.

And nothing happened.

Now this was not entirely unexpected. Their regular riders knew what to do, but both of the desert dragons had probably assessed these inexperienced boys within moments as being riders that they could afford to ignore, and they were not going to move unless they were forced. It was hard to force a dragon to do something it didn’t want to do—and they held grudges when you did.

So Kiron did the forcing.

He had considered stinging them with clay pellets from his sling and had thought better of the idea. He didn’t want these dragons to associate his boys with being “bitten” by a clay pellet. So instead, he had laid another plan to get the dragons to fly.

He gave a second signal—and on the other side of the wall, one of the local pigeon keepers flung open his portable coop, and several dozen rock doves burst into the air with a whirring explosion of wings.

As Kiron very well knew, when one winged thing suddenly explodes into the sky, virtually every other winged thing nearby will do the same. The instinct to flee the unexpected is a powerful one, and in general, winged creatures are uniquely vulnerable when grounded, so when the eyes and ears took in the signal Fly!, it was likely that they would do so without hesitation.

The dragons were no exception.

Even Avatre started at the explosion of wings; Jatel and Orthele leaped for the sky, their muscles and wings moving before their heads had a chance to interfere. Toreth and Huras hung on for dear life as the dragons climbed, each surging wingbeat throwing them back, then forward, in their saddles.