He nodded, and held up the sling for Aket-ten to see. He didn’t have to ask if she had her bow, it was there, with her arrows, in the quiver at her hip.

But she waited, as a good Jouster should, for him to go up first. He was the wingleader, after all, even if today the wing consisted of two.

Re-eth-ke fell in slightly behind, a position that seemed to take less effort to hold, for the dragon who wasn’t in the lead didn’t have to cut through the air. All he could figure was that air acted like thin water, and the lead dragon cut a wake that the ones behind could ride. He decided that since there were two of them, he would try for a more challenging prey today: wild ox. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t go after one. They were tough, and even Kashet found them a challenge. As a consequence, they hadn’t been hunted much in his territory, so they were plentiful and unafraid. This might be the time to take down one or more. The dragons weren’t hungry yet and could probably be persuaded to cooperate in a joint hunt—

Especially since one of them was being flown by Aket-ten.

“Wild ox!” he shouted to her, over the flapping of the dragon’s wings and the wind in his ears.

She nodded. Her main Gift as a Winged One was that she could speak to animals. She—and to tell the truth, the priests and priestesses in charge of the Fledglings—had thought that a lesser Gift. But if it had not been for her ability, she would never have been able to save Re-eth-ke from mourning to death after the murder of Toreth, whose dragon she had been.

And, thanks to Aket-ten’s abilities, the training of the entire wing had been swift and smooth; much smoother than it would have been had she not been able to explain to the dragons exactly what their riders wanted.

He had a good idea that she was “speaking” to both dragons once he told her the quarry he planned to hunt, and when Avatre looked back over her shoulder at Aket-ten several times, he was sure of it.

“Stooping runs?” she called forward, over the steady whump, whump sound of the dragons’ wings. He nodded. That meant that he would dive in first, trying to stun the quarry with a stone, but not allowing Avatre to close and bind. Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke would follow, with Aket-ten using her bow. Then he would come in again, and this time, if they’d managed to do enough damage, he’d let fly with a second stone and allow Avatre to attack and bind. Meanwhile Aket-ten would be ready to come to his rescue if the ox turned on them.