Joust dj-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  Have they found Avatre?

  He broke the paralysis in the next instant—he had to know! With the others who were more slow to react, he shoved his way to the door, just as the procession of two of the younger Jousters and a small army of slaves came triumphantly by. They were, indeed, hauling a squalling, protesting, blue dragonet, encased in a net and bundled onto a palanquin carried on the shoulders of a team of eight or ten slaves. This was a much, much older dragonet than Avatre; it was easily the size of one of the huge, sacrificial bulls of Hamun. Its claws had been encased in padding and bags, its legs tied together, its mouth trussed shut. It looked absolutely furious, and Vetch did not want to be the person who cut it loose.

  "Where are they going?" he blurted, not thinking, not really expecting an answer.

  "Oh, they'll put the beast in one of the open pens and one of the trainers will come care for it until it's tame," came the answer from above and behind him. "Tame enough for a dragon boy to look after, anyway. Haraket won't be pleased! He'll be the fellow who will have to find a boy, and all out-of-season."

  Vetch looked quickly around behind him, and saw that the speaker was one of the slaves, one that had been reasonably civil to him from the time he arrived. "Why?" he asked, feeling bewildered. "1 mean, I don't mean why are they doing that, I mean why did the Jousters go out after a dragonet, and why go after one that isn't even fledged yet?"

  The slave grinned down at him and winked. "You've been keeping yourself to yourself these few days, or you'd have heard. The Great King sent down a decree to the Jousters. If Alta is going to try to ground our Jousters, then the Great King wants more of them—too many to keep on the ground, no matter how many storms the sea witches raise! So." He nodded after the mob, which had turned a corner, leaving only the noise behind. "Now the most restless of the Jousters are going to help the trackers and trappers out, as they used to when there were fewer of them."

  Vetch blinked. "More dragons?" he asked.

  "More dragonets, more Jousters in training, both," the slave corrected. "And the King's Vizier made the little suggestion that since the Jousters are grounded, perhaps they ought to be the ones hunting the new dragonets."

  "But—" Vetch thought about the fury in that young thing's eyes, and pictured to himself the fury of the mother if she happened to return while her babies were being abducted. "Isn't that dangerous?"

  "Entirely," the slave replied callously. "And so long as no one tells me to go along on one of these hunts, I care not. Whatever it takes to get the young hotheads' minds off making trouble around here is perfectly fine. You would not believe what they've been getting up to in their quarters. The wrestling matches that end in broken furniture are bad enough, and the drunken parties, and the wild adventures with all of the dancing girls, but there are four very angry nobles who had to drag their daughters out of rooms in the compound that they should never have been in, and several more who've been asking pointed questions about where their wives have been, and with whom." The slave snickered.

  "Which is probably why the King's 'suggestion' was phrased so near to an order."

  Vetch could certainly agree with that, but he had to know more, and he decided to go in search of Haraket.

  Haraket, it seemed, was already in search of him. He spotted Vetch coming around a corner, and shouted his name. Vetch hurried toward him.

  "I've three—gods save us, three!—spitting and yowling dragonets, and more to come, and I need you and Fisk to help train new serf boys," he growled, as soon as Vetch came within earshot. He was accompanied by a tall, aristocratic man in a fine kilt, striped headdress, and a simple, but very rich, neckpiece and armlets. "Gods help us! If we don't have some of them killed before this is over—" He shook his head. "Well, it'll be the stupid ones, or the ones with more bravado than sense, so, small loss, I suppose."

  "No loss," said the stranger, who had the deep-set eyes, the beaky nose, and the stern look of one of the statues of the Great King. He looked down at Vetch. "So, this is your little serf boy, Haraket? The one who makes dragons love him?"

  "The very one," Haraket replied, with a hint of a smile.

  Vetch, meanwhile, felt himself held in the man's powerful gaze. Whoever this was, Vetch felt like a mouse between the paws of a cat. He knew he should avert his gaze and stare at the ground in respect, but he couldn't look away! He was fascinated and terrified at the same time by this man—a powerful man, an important man—

  A man who could order my death and be obeyed on the spot—

  How he knew that, he didn't know, but he knew instantly that it was nothing less than the truth.

  It felt as if his mind was being rummaged through. Desperately, he kept his thoughts on Kashet, on Coresan, on all of the dragons he had been making friends with, a little at a time…

  "So, boy," the man said, speaking directly to Vetch, as no Tian noble had ever done before, "How do you make dragons love you? Is it some witchery?"

  Vetch gulped. Witchery! Oh, gods, that was the last thing he wanted anyone to think! "I'm—good to them—lord," he whispered. "Patient. Careful. I—give them treats—show them the pleasures of being obedient—let them become my friend—I coax them to be good—" He fumbled for the words to describe what he was doing, and failed. "I—like them," he said desperately.

  To his shock, the man tossed back his head in a bellow of laughter, freeing him from that paralyzing gaze. The stranger slapped Haraket's back; Haraket actually staggered.

  "A good answer! A true answer!" the man said, still laughing. "So speaks any good tamer of animals! Well enough, Haraket, find me more such as this boy, and I authorize you to take as many boys, be they free, slave or serf, as you need for the new Jouster Hundred. You undertake that—I will find you Jousters who are neither too bold nor too foolish, even if I have to take them from the fields and the quarries to find sensible men of courage to fill those saddles. And if our nobles are offended by this, and feel I have demeaned their feckless sons by allowing peasants and laborers to serve alongside them—well, they can come and quarrel with me."

  With that, the man strode away through the mist and rain, paying so little heed to the weather that it might as well have been bone dry.

  "That, young Vetch," Haraket said with satisfaction, "is the Commander of Dragons, who just happens to also be the Great King's seventh son by one of his Lesser Wives. And if our young hotheads can actually manage to steal so many dragonets from the nest—and I am forbidding them to take more than one from any one nest—then we are about to double our strength to a full Hundred, and perhaps more. Though—where I'm to find so many dragon boys—boys who have experience—boys who are not intimidated or afraid of dragons—

  "Shouldn't they just love animals and understand them?" Vetch said, without thinking.

  "What?" Haraket said, startled.

  "Someone like Fisk—" Once again, he knew what he wanted to say, but didn't have the words for it. "He loved his goats—he knew how to see what they were going to do by the way they acted—" He floundered, but Haraket's eyes lit up. "It's not like dragonets are as big as grown dragons. Even one the size of an ox is still just a baby, after all! And he said you could take serfs or slaves—and serfs and slaves are always doing the dirty work around animals."

  "You could be right, boy," Haraket mused aloud. "Perhaps— dog boys, the ones that tend the hunting packs. They live, sleep, even eat with their packs. Dog boys will know how to care for a young thing, even a dragon. By the gods, I see what you mean. They're out there, invisible, because none of us ever look at them!" Haraket exclaimed. "The boys that tend camels, the ones that care for the sacred animals in the Temples, or the Great King's menagerie! Good gods, all those slaves and serfs we never even look at, living under our very noses! The boys that tend the Khephis bulls are surely no strangers to big, dangerous beasts, and Hamun can spare us a few of them, 1 should think!" He nodded with satisfaction. "Good! I'll find the boys. You get back to your duties, and when I've gotten a clut
ch, you and Fisk can pick out the ones that are any good."

  Vetch went back to his duties with most of his questions answered, and as he went to get meat for Kashet and Avatre, he encountered a harried-looking adult in the doorway of the butchery. The man was pushing a barrow filled with small chunks, none bigger than his hand, and Vetch realized that this must be one of the dragon trainers, men he had not yet actually seen, the ones who were to tend to the dragonets until Haraket could find boys to take over the job. He did not look happy. Vetch could well imagine why. This was, more-or-less, his season of leisure and it had been seriously curtailed.

  At least this was more confusion to hide what he was doing.

  Provided, of course, that someone didn't try to put a dragonet in the pen that Avatre was already in, and find her, and start to ask questions. So—subtract one worry, add another—

  By nightfall, there were five dragonets in pens in the compound, none of them nearly as young as Avatre, but not near fledging yet either. Vetch didn't have to time to look at any of them, though he heard that they were all about the size of the first one, as wild as lion cubs and as ready to take off limbs before their first taste of tala calmed them.

  Coresan must have mated late in the season, if these were the size of the dragonets out in the wild. By nightfall too, Haraket had found a round dozen new dragon boys, and to Vetch's great relief, he and Fisk were not going to have to train all of them. Half, in fact, were freeborn, and Haraket deemed it more appropriate that they be trained by their peers instead. The ones that Fisk and Vetch met with the next day were all from the Great King's Palace, and the households of one or two of his nobles, and all were dog boys but one, who tended the Great King's falcons.

  This was a much, much older boy, not even a boy, really, for he must have been at least seventeen or eighteen. And he proved to be a great surprise to all concerned.

  Haraket brought them all to the pen containing a young dragonet of a rich golden-brown color, again roughly the size of a fully-grown bull, that had been chained in place and was ignoring the barrow full of meat within his reach. His eyes were furious, and even Vetch was taken aback by the intelligent rage that was in them.

  But the older boy wasn't in the least fearful.

  "So, this's a dragonet?" he asked, looking at the young beast measuringly. "My lord Haraket, I asked to come here. I had some thoughts, you see, and I wanted to see if I was right. If you would let me?"

  Much to everyone's shock, including Haraket's, he had come prepared with a novel approach to taming a young dragonet, and he was fully prepared to test it. When Haraket nodded, speechlessly, he looked immensely satisfied.

  "Thank you, my lord," he said. Then he simply walked into the pen with the young dragonet with great steadiness and aplomb, fixing it with a challenging gaze. This clearly took the young thing aback; as it fanned its wings wide in confusion, and backed away from him, the boy took three swift steps and a lunge, and popped a bag with a hole in it over the surprised creature's head. While it went rigid in surprise, he worked the hole around to where the dragonet's muzzle was, got the golden-brown muzzle poking out of the bag so the dragonet could breathe, and tied the bag's mouth around the dragonet's neck to keep it in place.

  It went suddenly still, and Vetch and the others could see its muscles relaxing.

  "Good," the boy said with satisfaction. "They are like falcons, then. My lord, falcons rely on sight, and I guess these beasts do, too. If they can't see, they don't fight you." And he picked up a piece of tala-dusted meat and slid it along the dragonet's mouth, teasing the corner of the mouth until the jaws opened a little, then popped the juicy chunk inside.

  There was a sound of surprise, then the mouth snapped shut and the throat worked.

  By now, even the trainer was watching in shock. "He hasn't eaten all day!" the man exclaimed.

  The boy just shrugged. "No more do some falcons, taken from the nest too old to decide that a man's just a funny sort of mother. This works with them, though we use a leather thing that we call a hood instead of a bag; 'tween the bag and tala, they'll tame in a week, I guess, and maybe sooner."

  The trainer shook his head, though in amazement rather than disbelief. "Let me get the others," he said, and when he returned, it was with at least ten trainers. By that time, the rest of the boys had gathered around this older one, who was slowly feeding the dragon bits of meat, talking all the while in a calm voice.

  "The falcons haven't the mind of these fellows," he said, "They just go straight into a trance when the hood's on their heads. Look! He's figured out already that I've got food, and now that he can't see me, he isn't afraid anymore, and his gut's telling him how hungry he is."

  Sure enough, the dragonet no longer had his jaws clamped shut; as soon as he swallowed the last bit, he gaped again for the next one to come.

  "He's not in a trance, but as long as he can't see me, it's not so bad for him," the young man continued. "He's hungry enough that he'll put up with my voice so long as he keeps getting fed. Now, if I were the one in charge, that's what I'd say to do; treat them like young eyases, keep them hooded for the next couple of days, only feed them when they're in the hood, and after a couple of feedings, start to handle them all over between each bite so they get used to hands as well as voices."

  "And then?" Haraket's voice boomed from behind Vetch.

  "Then I'd make him skip a meal so he's good and hungry, then take the hood off, and make it pretty clear that if he doesn't take the food from me, he won't get any." The young man seemed pretty sure of his course of action, and Vetch was quite impressed. "Never had tala to use on falcons, but if it works like you say, lord, he may tame down in a day or two, not a week."

  "Try it, Baken," Haraket ordered instantly. "And if he tames as well as you say, you will be in charge of training these others. What's more, at the end of the year, if the training of dragonets and boys works out properly, I'll free you and you'll begin serving here at a freedman's pay."

  The young man's eyes gleamed in a way that Vetch understood perfectly well, and a wave of raw envy came over him that nearly made him sick. Freed! Haraket was going to free this boy! How much would Vetch do if only he could have freedom at the end of it—

  But of course, he never would, never could.

  "You won't get any Kashets out of this," Baken warned. "I've heard about that Kashet. At best, these dragons will be proper-tamed, like the best of the ones you've got."

  "That will do," the Overseer replied. "That will certainly do.

  Now, explain to the boys and the trainers how you handle the young falcons, and how you think it should apply to the dragonets. Vetch, Fisk, you can go back to your duties."

  Vetch was not sorry to go back, for he was already worried about Avatre again—but mingled with relief was such bitter envy at Baken's good fortune that it tasted like bile in his throat. That wasn't fair to Baken. He didn't know the young man, and Baken was clearly kind to the falcons in his charge, competent, and eager to tame the dragonets in the most humane way possible. But it was so cruel, to see freedom offered to someone so nearly in his own circumstances, and know it would never be offered to him!

  But he won't have Avatre, he reminded himself, as he took a quick peek into her pen and assured himself that she was still asleep. He doesn't have her. And I have to make sure he never shall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  OVER the next half moon, as the sea witches sent storms about every four or five days, Avatre grew at a rate that would have been alarming if Vetch hadn't expected it. Dragons flew for the first time at the end of the dry season, for they absolutely required heat, and the nests that lay in the full sunlight during the dry season would be fully exposed to the rains and cold winds of the winter wet. They were by no means able to hunt and kill for themselves; indeed, their mothers and fathers fed them for the next two years, but they had to be mobile by that time. A young dragon had to be up and out of his nest before the rain and wind came, so that he could fo
llow his mother down into the warm volcanic caves for the winter.

  Then he would spend the next two years reaching his adult size—or at least, that was how long it took in the pens. In the wild it often took even longer than that, for his growth depended on how well he ate. Here in the compound, of course, a dragonet never lacked for food, so he would achieve his full size in the minimum possible time.

  And as a consequence of all that good food, Avatre doubled her weight nearly every day. Vetch oiled and buffed her morning and evening now, not only to keep her from itching too much, but to keep her skin supple and prevent it from tearing as she grew. There was never enough time, yet somehow he managed to squeeze everything in, by running everywhere, doing everything at full speed. Ari had always been easy to clean up after, now he was so seldom in his quarters that there was almost nothing to do. Vetch did his leather work by lantern light, and only needed to turn up on time for the inspection of the weapons, but the Jousters were going out so seldom, and then never seeing combat, that the inspection hardly took any time at all. It wasn't easy, but at least, it wasn't impossible.