Most of the inhabitants of Fort Hold turned out to greet them, waving impromptu banners of bright cloth and shouting tumultuously as the dragons backwinged to land on the open field, where here and there ground crews had gotten rid of what Thread had escaped the dragons’ fire. The crowd surged forward, mobbing the individual riders, everyone eager to touch a dragon, ignoring at first the riders’ strident appeals for something to ease Thread-pierced wings and scored hide.

Gratefully Sean saw a skimmer hovering, and heard the loud-spoken orders to give the dragons room, and let the medics in.

The hubbub subsided a decibel or two. The crowds parted, allowing the medical teams access, giving the dragonriders space to dismount, and whispering sympathetically when the cheering had died down enough so that the dragons could be heard whimpering in pain. Some of those gathered around Carenath eagerly helped Sean doctor him.

Is everyone here to see us? Carenath asked shyly. The bronze turned his left wing so that Sean could reach a particularly wide score and sighed in audible relief as anesthetic cream was slathered on.

“I don’t know how we got so lucky,” Sean muttered to himself when he was certain that all Carenath’s injuries had been attended to. He looked around him, checking to see that all the other dragons had been treated. Sorka gave him a thumbs-up signal and grinned at him, her face smeared with blood and soot. He returned her sign with both fists. “Sheer fluke we got out of that with just sears and scores. We didn’t even know what we were doing. Blind luck!” His mind roiled with ways to avoid any sort of scoring and ideas for drills to improve how much Thread a single breath could char. Their fight had been, after all, only the first, brief skirmish in a long, long war.

“Hey, Sean, you need some, too,” one of the medics said pulling off his helmet to anoint his cheeks. “Got to get you looking spruce. The admiral’s waiting!”

As if her words were a cue, a murmurous silence fell over the plain. The riders converged together and moved forward to the foot of the ramp where Paul Benden, in full uniform of a fleet admiral, with Ongola and Ezra Keroon similarly attired flanking him, awaited the seventeen young heroes.

In step, the dragonriders walked forward, past people grinning foolishly in their pride. Sean recognized many faces: Pol and Bay looking about to burst with pride; Telgar, tears streaming down his cheeks, Ozzie and Cobber on either side of him; Cherry Duff upheld by two sons, her black eyes gleaming with joy. He caught sight of the Hanrahans, Mairi holding up his small son to see the pageantry. There was no sign of Governor Emily Boll, and Sean felt his heart contract. What Peter Chernoff had said was true, then. This moment would not be the same without her.