Page 98 of Tailwind

‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with imitating a flying style. In fact,’ – I was getting louder the faster I went. – ‘I would say it’s been a benefit. Not many riders can pull it off, you know.

‘Maybe you’re not aware of the impact you’ve had on racing, but it’s impossible to look at the past three decades of Volitant without seeing the trail you’ve blazed. I won’t be ashamed of flying in your slipstream. If it means I only get five championships instead of six and only break ten records instead of twenty, then that’s fine with me. I’ll live with it!’

I blew a hot breath out through my nose, my chest rising and falling rapidly as my frustration spilled out. The irony of me defending my choice to fly like Bach to Bach himself wasn’t lost on me, but it was lagging far enough behind that yelling at him had seemed like a good idea.

Now that I’d stopped and silence had fallen, the irony caught up and made my cheeks flush.

‘Is that why you use the battleaxe?’ he asked.

I flinched, surprised at receiving a follow-up question.

‘Uh … yes.’

Slowly, but surely, a smile crept across his face. ‘Okay, I see now.’

There was no part of me that understood what was now clear to him. So I stayed still, and more importantly, quiet.

‘First of all,’ he said, still absently keeping a hand on his dragon, ‘when I said that you copying me was a problem, I meant it literally. When in a one-to-one chase, you’ll never catch up if you’re copying the rider in front. You need to be doing something more, something different, to be able to overtake. Or in our case, get close enough to hit.’

Ah. So maybe I’d gone a little overboard in my defence.

‘You were flying a dragon wholly different to mine. You needed to figure out what Ascil’s strengths were and apply them in the chase. Using the same directions on a four-winged dragon that’s over a third bigger isn’t going to get the same results. Even if it did, you needed better results to close the gap.’

I nodded, avoiding his gaze and instead watched Ascil whose eyes darted between me and Bach.

‘I will admit to not realizing the imitation hadn’t started and ended there,’ he continued. ‘It makes more sense now, the way you were flying in the races. You never once spoke to me in the years you’ve been working for Kiestral, so I wouldn’t have assumed you were a fan.’

My muscles had seized up, not from the lack of stretching post-flight but from the sheer shock that Bach might ever have thought I would be the one to not like him.

‘This is helpful though. Training someone is new to me, but if you’re happy to end up like me … well, I can work on that.’

Happy to end up like Bach? I was unsure in what world any rider would be unhappy.

‘Yeah,’ my voice was hoarse. ‘Yeah, that would be fine with me.’

‘In that case,’ he said, a strange glint in his eye, ‘there are going to be some changes to your schedule.’

I had been wrong about Bach not having his own sets of Volitant armour.

My lungs contracted, sending air gasping out of me as the force feedback thumped on my chest. The cause of this was Bach and the business end of his battleaxe, currently watching me through the eye slits of his helmet as I hit the dirt. I groaned through my helmet. It was becoming increasingly clear how he’d become such a force of nature on dragonback – he never stopped.

The promised schedule changes had lightened my keeper duties. Josie and the other ranch staff were helping me in the mornings which was a pleasant change. However, the workout routine had not only become harsher, but longer. On top of the running, the body workouts and flight training for two hours, weapon training had been introduced.

I scrambled back up, feeling heavy in the armour. As well as flying in it, I was getting thrown around the jungle floor in it too. The shock absorption did plenty to stop it hurting, but my ego was still badly bruised.

‘You need to recover faster.’ Bach’s voice came through the helmet comms. ‘I could have hit you while you were down three times over.’

‘Ah,’ I panted, brandishing my own arcanite axe at him. ‘But you didn’t! Josie’s been telling me to study my opponents’ weaknesses and I knew you wouldn’t attack me while I was down.’

I couldn’t see his face through his helmet, but I recognized from the way his hand tightened around his own weapon that I’d hit a nerve. It was, apparently, the only way I could strike him, since I’d not managed to get a hit in on dragonback nor in sparring. At first I’d been awed, then it had quickly morphed into frustration and now full-on competition.

Revealing my Bach fanaticism had unlocked a big leap in training. He knew what to teach me and I knew I couldn’t possibly be more embarrassed than I already was.

Bach didn’t bother replying to my comment. He’d caught on faster than most that the only way to end a conversation with me was to stop talking all together.

Instead he closed the gap between us in two strides, spinning into a strike at my ribs. I brought my own axe up to block, hooking one of my blades through his and yanking it to the side. My arms strained at the resistance. It wasn’t like training with Theo where we – as I would never admit out loud – were matched on speed and strength. Bach was made of bulkier muscle, with a wide stance that, coupled with his shorter height, made his centre of gravity lower than Theo’s.

The heavier build should have made him slower, yet before I could swing my weapon back up to strike at him, my head rang as his axe clipped my helmet. The augments took the impact and spread it out, but all that energy still buzzed around my skull making my eyeballs vibrate.