Alta

by Mercedes Lackey

Aket-ten stood up, slowly and carefully, her eyes still never leaving the dragon’s. She moved toward the pool.

  As Kiron held his breath and got ready to pull her to safety, the dragon slid his way through the water toward her.

  She held out her hand, fearlessly—but palm down, not up.

  With infinite care, the dragon moved forward until the chain was stretched tight—and pushed the tip of his nose beneath her hand.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. And waited.

  What does that mean to a dragon? he wondered. The nose was the most sensitive part. You couldn’t kill a dragon by slashing at its nose, but—

  But—they’re like crocodiles, he realized at that moment. He’d seen the dragonets immobilize each other briefly in play by grabbing the muzzle. You could make it impossible for him to attack you by holding his mouth closed. And if you were a dragon, and you seized your rival by the nose, and you clamped down on it and closed off the nostrils as well—your rival would be dead. You’d smother him.

  So that was what it meant to a dragon! Total, complete surrender. . . .

  For the moment, anyway. Like all wild things, the hierarchy within a flight of dragons was always changing. One was always challenging another. Mostly staring contests though, and perhaps Aket-ten was right, perhaps they did some shoving about, invisibly, will-to-will as well.

  She rubbed the sensitive skin around the dragon’s nostrils. “Give me a brush,” she demanded, without looking away.

  “What?” he asked.

  “A brush,” she said patiently. “I’m getting into the pool with him to give him a scrub. It’s the equivalent of a sand rubbing. This is what they do—the one who wins grooms the one who lost.”

  Kiron looked around and saw that, sure enough, there were several brushes with heavy, stiff bristles hanging on the wall. He got one and brought it to Aket-ten. She held out her hand without looking at him, and he put the brush into it. Only then did she wade into the dragon’s pool, handsome yellow sheath dress and all, hissing a little at the heat as she got in.

  Had this been anyone other than Aket-ten, he never would have allowed it. In the same pool, as a dragon on a half-ration of tala, well within his grabbing distance?

  But it was Aket-ten, and if there was anyone who knew what she was doing at this moment, it was Aket-ten.

  She didn’t give the swamp dragon a full grooming; that would have taken all afternoon. But she did get some of the worst, and apparently itchiest, spots. The dragon moaned and sighed and leaned into her strokes until she patted him on the shoulder and climbed out, her dress streaming—and leaving nothing at all to the imagination.

  He flushed; she didn’t seem to notice. Then again, she was being very careful around an unsedated dragon; a little thing like having a dress that was now so transparent you might as well be wearing nothing at all was not going to trouble her.

  Whatever she was putting into the dragon’s mind worked. He didn’t even snap at her. When she was out of reach, Kiron wordlessly handed her a towel.

  “Now is the point when I ask you what you thought you were accomplishing when you started this, rather than what you were doing,” he said, after a moment, as she dried herself off as best she could. “Since you seem to have worked out how to be the king dragon in a flight. Or queen,” he added, as an afterthought. “I think Ari said the dominant dragon can be male or female.”

  She shrugged. “Finding things out. And I have; we need to drop the dose of tala that the swamp dragons get by about a double handful. Mostly though, I found out how we can get swamp dragon eggs without getting the collectors killed. So when your wing has proven itself, we can also raise swamp dragons from the egg for the next lot to fly.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Think about a wing of dragons who are tame like Avatre who not only can fly in the rain, but like it.”

  “Huh.” There was no doubt that it would be an incredible advantage. “So, how do we get eggs without someone getting killed?” he asked.

  “The same way we’ve been dosing him.” She stared at him now, waiting. And he could have hit himself for not thinking of it himself.

  “Ducks and geese, I suppose?” he hazarded. She nodded. “And when whichever dragon is watching the nest is drugged enough, we move in. I assume you’d be watching the dragon’s mind to make sure the nest watcher wasn’t going to wake up.”

  “Don’t take more than two of the four eggs, though,” she warned. “That’s reasonable. Only one in four is going to get past its first year anyway, but you’d better give them two chances at it, or you’ll start depleting the population.”

  She went off to her quarters then, to change into something drier. He went to find Lord Khumun to report on what she had learned—though he did not tell Lord Khumun that she had gotten into the pool to groom her subject. He left that part out, saying only that she had established herself as that particular dragon’s superior, using her powers. Then he described how swamp dragon nests could be raided for eggs.

  The Lord of the Jousters looked at him askance. “That would be useful knowledge if we wanted swamp dragons,” he said reluctantly. “But—swamp dragons?”

  “Which can be flown in the storms?” he countered. “My Lord, look at your current riders! Every day during the magic-made rains they have flown out, and every day have brought back one form of victory or another! And consider that tame swamp dragons could probably be persuaded to fly even during the whole season of Rains!” He surprised himself with his passion. Compared with Avatre, the swamp-dragons were so—

  —hmm. Maybe they aren’t. He thought about the intent gaze, the feeling of challenge. Aket-ten was right. It was the tala that made them seem so dull. He said as much.

  “What is more, my Lord, though the swamp dragons are smaller, a Jouster on a desert dragon is going to have some difficulty in defending against two attackers.” He saw the puzzlement in Lord Khumun’s eyes, and elaborated. “What if we got enough swamp dragons to outnumber them?”

  The gleam in Lord Khumun’s eyes told him that he had won.

  When they met at dinner, he told the rest of the boys what had happened, and how Aket-ten had discovered the means to get swamp dragon eggs to augment the desert dragon eggs that they could get from mating Jatel and Orthele. And initially they all had the same reaction as Lord Khumun at the suggestion. But Gan said suddenly, “You know, I believe I have seen some old wall texts in a temple somewhere, all about the first dragon Jousters. I do believe that they used swamp dragons, not desert dragons. So Aket-ten is right; they must be just as smart as the desert ones, they’re just smaller.”

  “And if the odds are two-to-one in our favor, it won’t matter how small the dragons are,” Toreth put in quietly.

  “No,” said Kiron into the silence. “It won’t, will it?”

  “So that’s the way the wind blows. . . .” Huras nodded. “Clever little Aket-ten! Do you suppose she figured that out?”

  “Yes she did, and all by herself, thank you very much,” said Aket-ten tartly from the doorway. “It will be up to you layabouts to work out how to train yourselves, so we can prove to every doubter in Alta that the tame dragons are superior, and that we can train Jousters to go with the tame dragons.”

  She strolled into the kitchen courtyard and took her usual place at their table. “There are some things you’ll just have to do for yourselves,” she continued, with deceptive sweetness. “Now that I’ve done the hard part.”

  “The hard part?” Orest said, and Kiron winced to himself, seeing exactly how Aket-ten’s brother had set himself up for a clever retort on her part. And there was nothing he could do about it because—

  “Of course,” she replied, with a disarming smile. “I’ve done all the thinking.”

  —too late. Kiron sighed and intervened. “She’s just teasing you, Orest.”

  But the explosion he had expected didn’t come. Orest just shrugged. “I’m not much good at thinking,” he said with complete candor. “She can do all the thinkin
g for both of us, if she wants. I like the swam-pie idea, though. Be one in their eye if just as they think they have us outnumbered, we show up with a two-to-one advantage and dragons that can fly rings around theirs.”

  “That it would,” said Toreth smoothly, as Aket-ten gaped at her brother. “So, Aket-ten, tell us more about how you approached this dragon today—”

  By the gods, he thought, listening to the boys question her closely. Aket-ten isn’t the only one growing up. So is her brother.

  Indeed; they were all growing up. And none too soon. Because by the end of the Dry season, if his own calculations were correct, they were all going to face the enemy in the field for the first time. And the advantage, numerically at least, was still with the enemy.

  If they weren’t grown up by then, it would be too late.

  The dragonets were being fitted for their first saddles and harnesses, using Avatre’s outgrown harness as a model. And for once, there were servants here in the dragonet pens who didn’t have to be persuaded that the babies were tame.

  The old harness maker and his assistant swarmed all over Wastet like a pair of cleaner birds on a river horse. Wastet regarded them with bright curiosity, while Orest stood by.

  “And your colors are blue and scarlet, young lord?” asked the assistant, taking notes on a potsherd. “May I ask why you have colors at all?”

  “To differentiate us, not only from our fellow Altan Jousters, but more importantly, from the Tian ones,” Kiron replied for Orest. “We don’t want someone from our own side seeing a desert dragon and thinking it’s ridden by a Tian.”

  “And we want to be able to keep track of the others in our wing,” Orest added. “So we can do things that we’ve practiced together.”

  “But why different colors for each of you?” the assistant persisted. “I should think you could make out who is who by the colors of your dragons. No one is going to mistake this beetle-colored beauty for any of the others.”

  “First of all, we didn’t know they would all hatch out different colors,” Kiron replied. “Second, from a distance they can still be confused—take Avatre, she’s scarlet and gold, which is awfully close to Pe-atep’s Deoth, who’s red and sand colored. Or Kalen’s Se-atmen, brown and gold, who could be taken for Oset-re’s copper-red Apetma. And third, we’re only the first wing of tame desert dragons. There are two female desert dragons that can provide us with more eggs every two years. Eventually there are going to be Jousters with the same color dragons; we need ways to tell them apart in the air, and we might as well start now and get our eyes used to looking for the combination of dragon colors and rider and harness colors.”

  “Ah,” the assistant said, contented now. “You see, I like to know why one is asked to do something unusual—”

  “And thus, you are too damned curious and prying, you young whelp,” the old man growled. “If you worked as well as you jabbered, we’d have the harnesses done by now.”

  “Yes, master,” the assistant said, sounding not at all subservient. He turned back to Kiron. “And you are wanting streamers that can be easily torn away in the same colors as well?”

  Kiron nodded. “We’ll be using them in training, to teach the dragons to get in close for harassment, but I don’t want something that is going interfere with flying—”

  The assistant dismissed that with a shrug. “Colored grass, loosely woven,” he replied. “Fastened to the back of the saddle. Easily done.”

  “As easily as I am going to beat you if we don’t get these dragons measured!” scolded the old man. “Get on with you!”

  The two of them moved on to Apetma’s pen. Orest and Kiron exchanged grins.

  “What were those extra straps you ordered for?” Orest asked when they had gone. “He didn’t ask about those.”

  “Probably because they seem perfectly logical to someone who has never been a Jouster,” Kiron replied, sobering. “I don’t want any accidents. Avatre and I still haven’t mastered the ‘falling-man’ catch. Maybe the senior Jousters will think this is effete, but I want all of you belted down into your saddles when we begin training.”

  Orest nodded slowly. “I’ve no objection,” he replied, slowly. “Now that I’ve been up on dragons—it’s a long way down to the ground. I wouldn’t like to fall—”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about falling. The Tian Jousters used to say that it isn’t the fall that kills you,” Kiron replied with a straight face.

  “Oh? So what is it?” Once again, Orest walked straight into the joke.

  “It’s the hitting the ground that kills you,” Kiron replied, and ran out of Wastet’s pen with a brush following him.

  He particularly wanted to catch up with the harness makers before they left Oset-re’s Apetma. By now, he half suspected that the boys had forgotten that their dragons were to be harnessed up in the riders’ colors—but Kiron remembered Oset-re’s fuss about having colors that didn’t clash with a dragon’s colors. He’d gotten black and white; was that sufficiently neutral for him to be content? The last thing he wanted was for Oset-re to be unhappy about a little thing like the colors of his harness when it was so easy to fix—

  But he found Oset-re perfectly at ease as the harness makers nattered on about what color should be where to avoid soiling the white parts.

  “Are you still all right with black and white?” he asked Oset-re cautiously. “It’s not to late to change—”

  “Oh, Apetma is going to look amazing,” Oset-re said breezily, holding her head and gazing into her coppery eyes. “Aren’t you, my love? There won’t be another dragon out there as striking as you—” And as he crooned to her, she butted his head gently with her copper-red nose and crooned back at him. And at that moment, Kiron realized that it would not have mattered to the formerly vain Oset-re if Apetma had been dun and his colors green and gray, he would still have been sure she was the most beautiful of the lot. He was just as besotted with Apetma as any of them, and nothing was half as important anymore as his dragon.

  Kiron left the pen feeling, although he was not sure why, as if he had just won a war.

  THIRTEEN

  FROM below, the view was fascinating, as brilliantly colored dragons soared and dove in the cloudless sky. Watching the dragons practice and train had always been a popular pastime for those who could afford to take the time away from their proper jobs—but now people were snatching a few moments just to come and gape.

  The boys were now “safe” to be up on their own during some games, thanks to the many days of going up to warm up other Jousters’ dragons. When they were paired off in noncombat exercises, Kiron liked to leave Avatre in the pen once in a while and just go out to the practice field to watch as if he was one of the spectators. At the moment, the fledglings were ribbon chasing in sets of two, one with the ribbon, one trying to get it. They were over their “clumsy” stage at last, and now he was allowing all eight of them up in the sky at the same time. Since they weren’t very fast at this yet, they were able to avoid collisions that lack of practice and skill would have made inevitable at an adult speed.

  The spectators, however, were not aware of the fledglings’ imperfections. They were here to watch and wonder, and marvel. The boys weren’t heroes yet—but the next set of Jousters, waiting their turn to go up and go through the same games, were. And if the swamp dragons weren’t as pretty up in the sky, they were a lot more exciting; they could double back on their own paths in the blink of an eye, and even literally fly rings around each other. None of them could match Avatre, however. She was able to tumble and wingover in a way that none of the others would, because none of the others were as alert and aware as she was, nor were they anywhere near as cooperative. She would try anything he asked her to, which was why he was very, very careful about what he asked her to do.

  There were quite a few brand new game exercises, and new forms of combat being practiced up there—and down near ground level as well—these days. At night, Kiron and his wing thrashed out new ide
as, and tried to come up with better plans all the time. Some of the things that they had tried worked, some didn’t, and some were useful only as agility training.

  Take the ribbon chasing, for instance. One dragon would have a ribbon tied to his harness, and a second dragon would be sent up to take it. It was the job of the first rider to keep the second from snatching that ribbon. It had no application to combat whatsoever, but it certainly trained the dragons and riders in evasive maneuvering.

  It was hot and very humid down here on the ground with the green, rank scent of the canals everywhere; in Alta, the dry season wasn’t actually dry, not with all of the canals around. Kiron felt sweat tricking down the back of his neck and making his scalp prickle, and wished he was up there. The layer of humid air stopped about halfway to where the dragons were playing now and that was where the dry kamiseen wind began. He listened to the spectators with half of his attention; they found the ribbon chasing to be absolutely enthralling. He couldn’t blame them; the game was fun to watch, and even more fun to participate in.

  On the other hand, one of the near-ground tactics was a combat-trick, and was going to be extremely useful. One of the things that Tian dragons did was to dive down on an Altan army and snatch a commander right out of the midst of his men, rising in the air to drop him to his death. The swamp dragons weren’t big enough to pull that off.

  Neither were the fledglings, nor would they be for at least another year. But they would try to do anything that their riders asked them to, once Aket-ten put it into their heads. And one of those things was a new, and potentially deadlier equivalent to what the Tians did. It, too, was intended to serve the purpose of eliminating important enemy commanders.

  The fledglings took to it immediately, for it fit in so well with their natural hunting skills that they hardly had anything to learn.

  They would rise to the top of a thermal, and their rider would pick a target and signal the general area where it was. Since Tian commanders wore blue war helmets, the fledglings themselves were able to tell exactly who the target was now. They would fix their eyes on the target, then fold their wings and dive. At the last possible moment, they would snap their wings open and turn the dive into a blindingly fast aerial dash at just out of spear reach from the ground. If they had been hunting, that would have ended in them smashing into their prey, knocking it over, and soaring up again to come down a second time on the now-unconscious prey to kill it.