by Aerie (lit)
There was a cloud of dust on the far horizon; from here, like a tiny smudge against the blue bowl of the sky, as if the "glaze" on the rim was not quite perfect. He signaled to one of his greenies and sent him on ahead to find out what it was, but since it was on the road, it was a good bet that it was a caravan of some sort.
A caravan…
There was a particular spot on this trade route that they'd already chased off one group of ambushers a day or so ago. Could it be that this had been no accident? Were the bandits actually expecting this caravan?
He signaled to Orest, who flew Wastet to within shouting distance. "I have a hunch!" he called, and gestured at the dust smudge. "We might just get some action—"
Orest grinned, teeth gleaming whitely in his dusty face. "We're ready for it!" he shouted back. "Lead us in, Captain!"
As Orest returned to his wing, Kiron signaled the rest of the greenies, and got them in rough formation behind him. Their riders were lighter, the dragons themselves a little smaller, and hence, just a little faster than the older ones, at least in straight flight. There was always a trade-off of weight, power, and speed. Lighter meant faster in racing flight, but not in a dive. A small dragon could never be a powerful one. But a powerful one might not be able to catch him.
A powerful one might not be able to dodge an arrow.
Kiron had memorized this stretch of the road, and now led the group straight to the ambush point. For now he doubted very much whether bandits were looking up for trouble. They had no real reason to. And even if they did, seeing the dragons in the sky would probably make them scatter, which was the point anyway—
The others might not see it that way, he realized after a moment. They might be spoiling for a fight. He made a mental note to remind them that they weren't soldiers anymore, they were police, and preventing something from happening was just as good, if not better, than flying to the rescue.
He'd just have to convince them of that.
But not, it seemed, today. For ahead of them, in the ambush point, there were little dots that he didn't recall being there. And Avatre began to strain forward, which told him that her superior eyesight had made out those specks to be animals or people or both. He took a chance, based on the fact that the dots weren't moving, and waved his hand over his head in the signal for "Enemy sighted."
And none too soon either, for the greenie he'd sent out was racing back toward him signaling "Caravan," and he could see the dark streak against the desert floor beneath that dust cloud that told him the same.
He sent the greenies up higher, moved Avatre into a middle-height position, and signaled to Orest to bring the seasoned wing in to the forefront of the formation.
By that point, the dots had resolved themselves into riders, waiting to swoop down over the crest of the hill as soon as the caravan came within reach.
They were not looking up.
Although, a moment later, as Orest's wing came diving down out of the sky, and their camels began to bolt, they were.
By the standards of the war it was a short, and very much one-sided, battle. Kiron even allowed his greenies to dive down and herd riderless mounts off into the desert as far as they could be chased, while the seasoned fighters concentrated on the bandits themselves. This was plenty of excitement for them.
The bandits, however, were enough of a menace that the seasoned fighters, individually, had their hands full. Some of them must have dealt with Jousters before this, for a handful of them went back-to-back in a circle, roughly half with spears, and half with bows.
The bowmen were good shots.
A deep maroon dragon bellowed in outrage as an arrow pierced his wing web, and as his rider cursed and ducked, an arrow bouncing off his helm, Kiron was glad he'd ordered the experienced Jousters into their scavenged armor today.
But rather than making them back down, the successful attack on their fellow Jouster infuriated the rest. The angry cry from their injured wingmate ignited the ire of the dragons, and as if they had been given orders from Aket-ten, Kiron watched in astonishment as they did something he had never seen Jousting dragons do before.
They ignored the commands of their riders and landed, clustering all on one side of the knot of bandits. Then, as one, they half-reared and began furiously fanning the air with their wings.
A landing dragon had always kicked up a miniature kamiseen. This was eight dragons all blowing up sand and dust and purposefully aiming it at the humans, who were not expecting it.
Blinded, uttering cries of pain of their own as they dropped weapons and tried to shield their eyes, or clapped their hands over eyes full of sand, they stumbled backward, turning away from their attackers.
Only to be felled by arrows, javelins, and slung stones and lead bullets. Accustomed now to hitting running game at long range, the cluster of incapacitated bandits at short range was no challenge. They were armored—armor that, it appeared, had been salvaged from Tian and Altan officers—but nothing covered their throats, the backs of their legs, or their eyes.
The Jousters were ruthless. When they were finished, there were none of that group left standing. It left Kiron feeling a bit sick, but—
This was war, another sort of war, and this time he had not a lot of sympathy for the enemy. They preyed on the people who were only trying to make an honest copper, who already had to contend with wind and sandstorm and all the other hazards of trade. They stole and killed without provocation. He clenched his jaw and said nothing. The bandits could have surrendered, and the gods only knew what they were guilty of precisely, but they were—at the least—guilty of trying to rob people who had never harmed them.
It was a short, hot fight, but in the end, it was one-sided.
It took longer to round up the survivors. Some lay where they had fallen, wounded, or having thrown themselves to the ground, but others—
"We have runners, Captain," said Kelet-mat, rider of a bronze-and-yellow beast of placid nature, when a half-dozen brigands waited, trussed hand and foot, in the sun. "What should we do about them?"
Kiron pondered that for a moment. "Do you think they'll get anywhere?"
Kelet-mat grimaced, and raked his black hair out of his eyes with one hand. "I would have said 'no,' since there's nothing but sand and scrub as far as the eye can see—but these rats aren't soldiers. They have the luck of Seft himself and it would be just our luck that one of them would go telling what had happened in some scummy tavern and the next lot we have to deal with will be ready for us."
"Eventually someone will tell—" Kiron pointed out reluctantly. "But it would be good if we could keep the advantage of surprise for a while longer." He scratched his head and looked out over the horizon. "All right. You senior riders track them down and round them up. And don't take unnecessary chances."
It wasn't until the caravan itself arrived that they finished, and as the astonished merchants halted their beasts to stare, Kiron was pondering the second problem; what to do with twenty-some bound captives.
It was an interesting tableau, actually. On the road, the line of laden camels, blowing and looking nervously at the dragons. The dragons, ignoring them, all lounging happily, basking in the sun. The merchants, torn between apprehension and curiosity, The Jousters in their armor, some of which had already been removed because it was so cursed hot. And the captives.
Finally, curiosity won, and one of the merchants swung his leg over his saddle, slid down the side of his camel, and headed straight for Kiron.
The merchant was nothing if not bold. "So, Captain," he said as soon as he came within earshot. "I can see you're Jousters, but for which side? And why've you trussed up these men like chicken going to market?"
Kiron smiled. "We're Jousters for Great King Ari and Great Queen Nofret, which makes us royal police of a sort. You could say we're on your side, come to that. As for why these fellows are trussed up—if we hadn't been patrolling when we were, they'd have ambushed you on this very spot."
The merch
ant nodded. "Then you surely have our thanks. But this isn't the sort of thing that Jousters do—"
"It is now," Orest interrupted, with pride written in his very posture. "The Great Royals have given us our orders. We serve the people. We'll watch the borders, and we'll guard the roads."
The merchant's eyes started to light up; it was clear he saw all of the implications of this. "Are you police, or army?" he asked carefully.
Kiron thought that over. And felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Orest had just kicked him.
His startled glance won him a grimace from his friend, and the silently mouthed word "nomarchs."
What—he thought, and then it struck him. The army answered only to its Captains, and the captains only to the generals and the generals only to the Great King himself. But the police, Royal servants though they were, answered to the nomarchs, the governors of provinces, and their line of command ended at the Royal Vizier, not the King. Their services could be commanded at any point by almost anyone in authority down to the headman of a small village.
So the Jousters, few as they were now, could find themselves spread thin over too much territory, and dependent for the keep and the care of their dragons on people who would think that the three-day-old stinking leavings from the butcher were "good enough" food for something like a dragon.
"The army," he said quickly, earning a nod and a flash of grin from Orest.
"Ah," the merchant looked a bit disappointed, but then his eye fell again on the bandits, and he brightened. "Then that makes these men war captives, true?"
Kiron nodded. The merchant grinned toothily "Well, Captain, in that case, I am authorized to take them off your hands." He fished inside the neck of his tunic and brought out a medallion on a cord. "I am an authorized dealer in war captives."
"Tian, I presume?" Kiron asked, peering at the circle of stamped faience. He couldn't make heads nor tails of it—
But Kelet-mat was Tian, and Kiron waved him over. He glanced at the medallion and grinned. "Looks like our problem of how to transport this scum is solved, Captain," he said. The faces of the captives fell.
Kiron decided that some scare tactics might be in order.
"Well, it's a good thing this fellow came along," he said gruffly, loud enough for the captives to hear. "The Great King gave me field authority. I was going to try and execute them right here." He paused. "I don't know, I still might. The dragons are hungry."
For one moment the merchant looked horrified, but as Kiron gave him a broad wink that the captives couldn't see, his eyes narrowed and a ghost of a smile appeared.
"That's a waste of good workers, Captain," the merchant protested. "You can easily hunt down their camels to feed your dragons—"
"He's right," Orest chimed in. "Besides, there's more meat on a camel."
"All right, then," Kiron said, sounding as if he had been persuaded, but was still a bit reluctant. "What's the procedure here?"
The procedure proved to be fully as bureaucratic as he had suspected it would. Two copies of the list of captives with names and general condition had to be written up on the spot, with Kiron taking one to turn over to whatever Royal Scribe was in charge of such things. From there, he had no idea what would become of list or captives—
But, presumably, the lists would be checked against each other and against the actual captives before they went into the market. Kiron had heard that Ari had made a few changes to that procedure, to make sure that serfs weren't treated as Kiron—then called Vetch—had been treated. These men had no notion just how much better their lives were going to be than his own had been.
Pity they didn't deserve it.
FIVE
« ^ »
"A FEMALE Jouster group?" Great Queen Nofret asked, astonished.
Mind she didn't look like a Great Queen at the moment; she was in the same sort of linen tunic that Aket-ten was wearing, with her hair held only by a simple headband. She wore no jewelry at all, much less a crown, and she groomed and saddled her dragon, the magnificent purple-and-scarlet The-on, as well as a dragon boy.
But this was the one time of the day when she was able to relax and not be Great Queen Nofret, when she could become something she had never actually been before: something other than royal. Merely herself. In many ways, Aket-ten did not envy her at all. As she helped to wipe The-on down with oiled cloths, Aket-ten stole glances at Nofret's serene profile and considered the Queen who was also her friend.
All her life she had been groomed to be on a throne. First, she had been one half of the female pair of Royal twins that would share the thrones of Alta with the male pair of Royals; that was the way of things in Alta, as the Great Kings and Queens of Alta were always two sets of Royal twins. As the only female pair in the bloodline of reasonable age, she and Marit had always been in the Court, schooled and trained as the probable heirs, and very well aware that their choice of mate and life had been taken out of their hands by the gods.
But Nofret and Marit had accepted it; well, it wasn't as if they had any other course of action before them. And they had liked Kaleth and Toreth quite well—
Now here, Aket-ten wiped down the purple flank of Nofret's dragon with a feeling of uncertainty. Marit had quite been in love with her destined mate. But Nofret?
Nofret was hard to read and always had been. Much more phlegmatic than her twin, much more practical, Nofret had clearly enjoyed Prince Toreth's company and had not shown any sign of discontent with her prospective life. But… when Toreth was murdered by the Magi of Alta in the next stage of their bid to take over governance of the entire Kingdom, Nofret's distress had not been… as intense as Aket-ten would have thought it would be, had Nofret loved him as anything other than a friend.
Now, coercion into a marriage with a pair of faux-Royal twins the Magi had cobbled up in order to take those thrones—that had gotten an intense reaction.
And still Nofret had been Royal, and not able to escape the ever-increasing restrictions. Until she and Marit had escaped Alta into the desert, and the lost city they called Sanctuary. And there, for a brief moment of escape, she had been something other than Nofret, heir to the throne, Royal twin.
After all, they were all too busy scraping out life in Sanctuary to think about relative trivialities like royal birth.
But with only that brief time, things returned to what was "normal" for Nofret; she was a Royal again, this time selected to marry the only other Royal—if illegitimate Royal—left of the Tian bloodline. And that had been Ari-en-anethet, who had until that moment been perfectly content to live his life as plain Jouster Ari. It was just a good thing for both of them that they were very fond of each other, very fond indeed, and fond quite quickly became loving. But it still meant that Nofret had had only brief moments of being herself, and not a title and responsibilities.
Aket-ten sighed in sympathy; Nofret had gotten a short taste of freedom, and without a doubt she treasured the few moments of freedom she still was able to garner.
No one troubled her when she was with her dragon, even though, aside from exercise, the only flying she ever got to do anymore was when she and Ari made a Royal Appearance on dragonback.
Perhaps that was why she looked askance at Aket-ten, and repeated, "A female Jouster group? What would they do? We have not got work for the wings we have—"
"Yet," Aket-ten replied, and tried not to smirk. "Kiron is testing his idea of sending out every dragon he has to guard the trails soon, if he has not already begun. Every wing in Aerie will be flying guard on a trade road. I suspect that it will not be long before the traders and the merchants who depend on them for goods will be petitioning Your Highnesses to find more Jousters for the same duty."
"Knee," Nofret said absently, and her dragon obediently lifted a purple-to-scarlet leg for her to use as a stepping place to mount up to the saddle over her shoulders. Once securely in the saddle, Nofret looked down at Aket-ten. "But why a group of female Jousters? Not that I object," the Great Queen added quickl
y, "but what can they do that the Jousters we have cannot?"
Aket-ten opened her mouth to answer hotly, shut it without saying anything, then opened it again. Frustrated, she finally answered," Nothing."
Nofret sighed, and looked down at her. "And you will incur much displeasure," she pointed out. "Not that women should not be Jousters, though there will be some grumbling of that nature, but there will be many more complaints that you are taking dragons that should have gone to those waiting for them. And adding more hungry draconic mouths to fill."
Aket-ten set her jaw mulishly and squinted up at her, purple and scarlet and glorious against the hot blue bowl of the sky. "I know all this. And we will not be taking dragons that should have gone to those waiting for them. We will find our own eggs, our own baby dragons. We will not be pretty priestesses flying about for no good reason except to be ornamental. We will work. We will find work."
Nofret shook her head, then laughed. "I am the Great Queen. If I want a wing of dragons, rather than, say, a temple, I may have it," she said at last. "All right, Aket-ten. Find your eggs and your girls. Find your work. Make me a wing of female Jousters. If nothing else, I can claim I need you to escort me on temple duties, or," she made a face, "to escort me when I am flying at any time. You may have to play the part of pretty priestess flying about to be ornamental, at least for a while, but if you can find real work for your wing, then… I will release you to do it."
Since Aket-ten had been steeling herself for more reasons why this was a bad idea, she beamed with happiness. But the next thing that Nofret said was sobering.
"I shall require you to give up courier duty, of course," she said. "Not even the most accommodating of the old Jousters will be willing to act as the leader and administrator of this group. I can give you the full use of the old Dragon Courts, and I can lend you an overseer, but only you have the knowledge of what the dragons will need and how to train them. I doubt very much that any of the current trainers will help you. You will have to do this all yourself. And the only place besides Aerie that has the right resources for dragons is here. Mefis. You will have to remain here for the foreseeable future."