Fugitive's Flight (Dragon Castaway Book 2)

Chapter 12

"Well, here's to another one of my brilliant and well thought out plans which is probably going to wind up with me burning something to the ground or blowing something up!" Jake thought sarcastically as Valkyrie silently touched down in shallow valley. From the distant light of the fort he estimated that they were approximately half a mile away.

Breathing a sigh of relief that the terrain was still rugged enough to hide the dragons Jake moved swiftly. Valkyrie's claws had barely touched the ground when he vaulted off her back and took off towards the light of the fort in the distance as fast as he could manage while remaining silent, Wyena hot on his heels.

Jake felt his heart sing out with a feral cry of joy as he felt the brush and tall grass parting before him as he went. Despite everything he'd been through, this land made his blood race with the nostalgia, reminding him vividly of the Texas Hill country that had played host to his final hunt on Earth. The hunt that now felt like it had been so long ago and literally a world away.

Burying his feelings before he risked losing himself in the sensations of his nostalgia rush, Jake forced himself to stay focused on the task at hand as the flickering light from the torches mounted on the fort's tall mudbrick walls came closer and closer.

Pausing for a moment in a shallow ditch, Jake went prone before motioning for Wyena to do the same. She nodded before silently going prone on the ground next to him.

Moving as carefully as they could the pair slowly crawled up the shallow slope of the final hill rise that separated them from the walls.

Peering over the tall grass on the hill's crest, Jake sighed in relief as he realized that the hill gave him an elevated position that overlooked a good portion of the fort's walls. Wary of being spotted Jake took in the obstacles in front of him before ducking back into cover.

"Anything particularly daunting?" Wyena whispered as Jake went prone beside her.

"Seems pretty standard, mostly rectangular shape, about sixteen-foot-high walls with interspersed guard towers, occasional roving patrols and a multi-story citadel that looks kind of like a ziggurat rising above it all." Jake replied quietly as he yanked out a patch of grass and began etching a crude layout of fort walls that he had been able to observe. "On the plus side, the place doesn't seem to be on high alert, I haven't seen any dragons circling above at least."

"I doubt that you would" Wyena said with a shake of her head.

"All riders are supposed to be high nobles remember? So, most would view simple guard duty as beneath them" she explained as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "There also wouldn't be many in a single fort. The border is too long to concentrate too many in one place and it's not as if they couldn't mass and respond quickly in the event of an attack. So, as a result they only station a few in each fort and if an alarm is sounded typically the riders retreat to spread the word and more are quickly gathered for a counter attack. Border forts are only for delaying invasions, they aren't expected to stop them completely."

Jake nodded his head in agreement. It made a certain kind of sense after all, dragon flight gave a select few on this world a mobility that hadn't existed in his own before the modern age so it stood to reason that in a medieval technological age the dragons would be the fastest alert and response system.

"I'm just concerned about one thing" Wyena interjected breaking Jake out of his inner thoughts. "How do we know Teekus isn't trying to set us up after all? It's obvious that he's not the most honorable of individuals."

"That is a fair point" Jake conceded as he screwed up his eyes reached out through the bond, looking for a familiar presence. "Fortunately for us, I have a fairly straightforward solution to that problem."