Rhiannon - Dragonrider

Chapter Fourteen - Zalibar's School of Dragonology

I was about to hurry after him but he turned and stared at me. "Spurs!" he said with this menacing sort of sigh thing.

So I shuffled the things round so I wouldn't slice myself up then hurried after him.

"Armenclethyfur," he yelled at one of the older boys, "give that halberd here."

The boy stepped forward with this dirty great hooked spear... about twelve feet long. Zalibar casually took the thing off him... using just one hand... and put it on the ground in front of me.

"Right," he barked, "Pick it up!"

I reached down and put my hands around the handle and lifted the near end. But the far end just didn't want to budge off the floor. So I flexed my back and strained my arms and...

Basically nothing happened.

Like nothing

I mean... I didn't think I'd ever be able to shift the thing.

So I adjusted my grip. A circle of spectators had gathered. Most of them were laughing at me but there were a few encouraging smiles and one, a bedraggled young man, seemed to be sharing my suffering. "Go on!" his mind was shouting at me. "You can do it!"

"I told you to pick it up!" Zalibar reminded me. His tone was still calm but I could feel the menace smouldering not very far from the surface of his mind cloud.

The sand slipped under my feet as I strained my arms and shoulders to move the thing. It was just impossibly frustrating. I mean... the rage that would normally give my strength was being blocked by Rhiannas's horrible implanted node so I just couldn't do anything.

Frantically, I thought back to what Psion had said, "Your puny body is never going to be up to it... you're going to have to hope there's enough between your ears..." I guess now was the time to find out.

So I took a couple of slow breaths to calm myself then reached out from the cloud world towards the thing. I tried to feed strength through to my arms and... lift.

The halberd leapt into the air and flew out of my hands. I overbalanced at the sudden loss of weight and stumbled to the floor. And, before I could move, I felt a foot on the top of my head, pushing my face into the sand.

A ripple of laughter from the circle was again silenced by a vicious look.

"Others might be amused by the sight of you groveling in the dirt," Zalibar snarled, stressing his words with extra pressure from his foot. "But I don't like the idea that important people," he glanced around the circle again, "might see you there and that..." he paused... "would reflect badly on me. Don't let me ever see it again."

"Now stand up!" he said with a kick as he released the pressure. "Do it again. This time I expect control."

I staggered to my feet, blinking tears from my eyes and spitting sand from my mouth. For the first time I was almost grateful I had that vile lump in my head as it was blocking out the rage and humiliation that I knew I should have been feeling. I just shut everything out and reached down to the halberd with my arms and mind.

With massive concentration, I managed to get the thing off the floor and hold it in front of me, swaying a bit.

"Better!" Zalibar barked. "Now I want to see a figure of eight with the tip."

Trembling with the strain, I began to move the thing. After just a few moments, sweat was streaming from my forehead and into my eyes.

Time seemed to stand still as I struggled to keep the tip moving. My muscles and mind were screaming. I would have looked up to beg him to let me stop but I didn't dare move my eyes from the metal tip of the halberd.