The others laughed knowingly, and Vetch gathered from that comment that "Seles-teri's wine shop" was one of those where the dancing girls performed horizontally as well as vertically.
"But ladies," the boy continued, shaking his head. "Ladies might as well throw their silver down a well as waste it on paying us to take love poems to Ari. Married or not, it doesn't matter. He won't so much as look at them, no matter how they fling themselves at him."
"So they might as well give their silver to us as not," a third put in, impudently. "It doesn't hurt Ari, and a foolish woman can't hold onto money anyway. I'll carry love poems for them, aye, and even put them in his bed!"
A fourth snorted. "No more chance of that with the new boy around. It's him who'll get the silver now."
But the second shook his head. "Na, na, the silver will stay in their purses, worse luck. You know they won't trouble to bribe a serf, they'll just order him to do what they want. Not that it'll make any difference. Four years, I've served Jouster Kelandek, and he says that Ari's the smartest of the whole pack of Jousters. That Ari prefers paid women, because he can send them off when his pleasures are over, and no jealousies and weeping, after, and that if he had any sense, he'd follow Ari's example, instead of getting entangled with spoiled cats."
They seemed to have forgotten Vetch's presence entirely—or else, because he was a serf, they paid no more heed to him than if he'd been a piece of furniture. Which was fine by Vetch. The more he could overhear about his new master, the better.
And the boys continued on in that vein, each one with another tidbit or two, about the ladies who had tried to attract Ari's attentions, about the dancing girls and pleasure women (the higher-class ones, called "night blossoms") that Ari had brought back to his rooms after an evening spent outside the compound or when a troupe was sent in by the Great King or the Vizier to entertain the Jousters as a reward. It was very soon apparent to Vetch, though, that despite all the innuendoes and sly hints, the other dragon boys knew little more about what happened in Ari's quarters then than did the ladies who sought in vain for the Jouster's favors. There was much speculation and very little substance in what they said.
It was also quite clear that this—the carrying of messages from ladies who sought the company of a Jouster—was the easiest source of some, if not all, of the dragon boys' ready money. The messages were clandestine, of course. Those ladies that were married needed to take care that their lords and husbands didn't find out that they fancied a Jouster. Those that were concubines needed to be nearly as careful, for though they might not have the position of wife, their lords would take it very much amiss to discover they were offering those favors to another which should have been reserved to their lord and master. Only the unmarried and unmated ladies could distribute their favors freely, and even then, care had to be taken that a jealous suitor or wrathful father did not get wind of a romance. The Jousters were a class apart, but that didn't mean that parents of rank wanted a love affair going on with one. Jousters had no real wealth of their own unless it came to them from their fathers, no land, no property, nothing of substance to offer a wife and her family in the way of an alliance. Everything they enjoyed was provided by the King, and came back to the King if they died. They might, if they were notable fighters, survive long enough to get the Gold of Favor as well as the Gold of Honor, and perhaps be ennobled and be given a house and land. But given the nature of the way that they fought, defeat was usually fatal, and few lived to retire with honor.
All this, Vetch had already known; the Jousters were famous across the length and breadth of Tia, and if they weren't individually public heroes, lionized and lauded whenever they set foot outside the compound, it was because the Great King wished them to be thought of as his personal force, much like the King's Regiment, not as individuals. In the rigid hierarchy of Tian society, the Jousters were unique and occupied a niche that was only just short of ennobilization, had many of the material privileges of being noble, yet were utterly dependent on the King for those privileges.
It slowly dawned on Vetch that the Jousters were, in their way, no freer than he was. If he was tied to a piece of land, they were tied to the dragons. They could serve only the Great King, and all that they had, they owed to him. They actually owned very little, for most of what they had was also the Great King's. And if they lived in great luxury, well, they paid for that in the risking of their lives every day.
As the others nattered on, Vetch gleaned some idea of just what that meant.
A lucky shot from below, or a particularly skilled marksman could bring a rider down. When dragons ventured too near the ground, they could be hurt, and when injured, not all the tala in the world would control them—and usually the first thing to go was the saddle and rider. Riders simply fell from the backs of their dragons all the time; sometimes in combat with the Jousters of Alta, but just as often in simple practice. The dragons did not always cooperate with their riders; sometimes riders were thrown, and sometimes there were midair collisions, in the course of which a Jouster could be thrown from his saddle.
He gathered that there were nets of some sort intended to catch a downed Jouster if he fell in practice, but sometimes the accidents happened when the Jousters weren't over the nets.
And of course, there were the clashes with the Jousters of Alta, as each rider attempted to deliberately unseat the other with his lance.
"Is Lesoth still trying to find a way to use a bow?" asked the round-headed boy.
"No. He gave that up yesterday when he finally got tired of Nem-teth snapping at his arrows when he loosed them," the other answered. "Jouster Ari finally took him aside and warned him that he could choose between Nem-teth catching all of his arrows, or breaking Nem-teth of catching all arrows."
"Ouch." The round-headed boy winced. "That would be bad."
"Believe it," the boy nodded. "As it is, it takes a lucky shot to hit a Jouster. If his dragon stopped snapping at arrows, though— He made a strangling noise, evidently intending to convey— quietly—the desired effect.
So—that was why they didn't try to use bows themselves, and why they weren't being shot out of the sky on a regular basis!
He was learning an awful lot just by sitting here, cleaning leather.
Thinking it over, it seemed as if a lance was the only really practical weapon since a bow was out of the question. A club— well, you couldn't get close enough to use a club. You couldn't throw a spear, not with the dragon's wings flailing away on either side of you. A sling—well, that took a lot of skill. A sword presented the same problems as a club. Which left the lance…
In the case of a lance strike in a real Joust, a fall in that case was invariably fatal; the dragon, if not captured by another Jouster, might or might not return to its pen. Other than Kashet, the dragons' only loyalty lay in that they were fed regularly, and that was not necessarily enough to bring a riderless dragon back to his pen when they were far from home and the mountains so temptingly near.
Though, in fact, one had returned from combat this very day. Its dragon boy was not envied; a dragon without a Jouster didn't get regular exercise, and it was prone to get irritated or sluggish under such circumstances. If the former, well, it was the boy that the dragon took his ill temper out on. And if the latter, when the dragon did get a new Jouster, it would become irritable when forced to exercise and lose the fat that it had gained in the interim.
The boys' talk concentrated on the dragon that had returned, and commiseration with its boy, not the rider that had fallen. In fact, they didn't even once mention his name. That was not callousness on their part, in fact, Vetch considered such caution very wise; too much talk of him might bring his spirit here, instead of it staying properly in his tomb.
Night-walking spirits were not known for their gentleness. A hungry ghost might remember old grievances, or feel jealous of the living. There were a hundred ways such a ghost could revenge himself on the living. He could bring fever spirits, or the demons of ill luck; he
could plague the sleep with nightmares. He could even lead stronger spirits to the sleeping victim, or drive one mad.
So the fallen Jouster would be remembered, oh my yes—with proper offerings and sacrifices in the Jousters' little Temple, tonight; the Temple was consecrated ground, and the Priest of Haras knew how to propitiate a spirit and give it a resting place it would be content with while it waited for proper housing.
Then all that was right and proper would be accomplished at the Tomb of the Jousters when his body was finished with the forty days of embalming. But that would be across the Great Mother River, in the Vale of the Noble Dead, and was the duty of the mortuary priests. The Tians believed that to enter into the Summer Country, the deceased must have a proper anchoring in an embalmed body, and proper offerings for at least forty days, and more offerings to take with it when it crossed the Sky River. If this was not done, it wandered. If it was not done properly, it wandered, and the longer it wandered, the angrier it became.
That was why it was not a good idea for the living to walk about at night, for fear of encountering angry or hungry spirits, the more especially if someone who actively hated you had ever died. Khefti, for instance, had made so many enemies that he hardly dared stir at night, and on the few occasions that he did leave the safety of his house after sundown, he was so hung about with charms and amulets that he looked like an amulet hawker, and he rattled with every step.
Vetch had no experience one way or another with spirits; with Khefti for a master, by the time he was let go for the day, he was so weary he always fell dead asleep. He had tried to set up a tiny shrine for his father, but it kept getting swept away when he was at his labors, and anyway, he didn't have anything to spare for offerings but the clay loaves and beer jars and other goods he molded in miniature and left there.
Certainly his father's spirit had never returned to give him any signs… there were tales of that, as well, of spirits that returned to help the living. Though in truth, those tales were fewer than the tales of vengeful ghosts.
But then, how would his father even know how to get here, or even where Vetch was? In all of his lifetime, his father had never been farther from his farm than the village.
"Haraket ordered her fed up and given a double dose of tola," the boy who was in charge of that returned dragon said. "So she won't be much of a handful for a while. And I heard straight from him that he's got a new Jouster for her, so she won't get a chance to go sour. I can handle her."
"There's a lot of new Jousters coming, I heard," one of the younger boys ventured cautiously.
"You heard right. The Great King, may he live a thousand years, wants the number increased," replied the boy who seemed to know everything—or at least wanted the others to think he did. "There's more hunters out looking for fledglings, and more Jousters being trained. And more of us, of course. That's probably why Ari came in with a serf on his own so he could free up Haraket from tending Kashet; Haraket's not going to have the time to tend Kashet pretty soon, what with all of that going on."
Now a glance of speculation was cast in his direction, but when he saw the way the conversation was going, Vetch had quickly dropped his gaze to his work.
"Think they'll put more serfs in as dragon boys if this one does all right?" asked a new voice.
The leader sounded as if he wasn't opposed to that idea. "Probably. I'll tell you what, though, that might be a good thing. I mean, think about it, new Jousters have to come from somewhere, so why not us, on a regular basis, instead of only now and again? After all, we know as much about the dragons as the Jousters, and we spend more time with them. Ari was a dragon boy, they say, or maybe a scribe, before he tamed Kashet. In fact, that was why they made him a Jouster."
"So why don't all the dragon boys tame dragons?" someone else asked. "Then we could all be Jousters instead of shoveling dung!"
But the knowing one laughed. "Tame a dragon? Are you mad? You think tending the old ones is work—try taming one from the shell! It's too much work, much too much work! If you think you work hard now, just think what it would be like to tend two dragons instead of one, and spend all of your free time with the baby so he thought of you as his mama, and help him with his fledging, and train him to saddle before he actually flew! You'd be so busy you'd meet yourself coming and going! Don't think they'd let you off of tending your Jouster's dragon, because they wouldn't!"
"Yes, but—Kashet's so tame, so easy to work with—wouldn't it be worth it?" the other persisted.
"Not if the King wants Jousters, and wants them now," replied another of the older boys. "Training takes long enough as it is, and the only people that really benefit from a tame dragon are the dragon boys. While the tala makes dragons tractable, why bother?"
The talk turned to other things, then—mostly about girls outside the compound—and Vetch lost interest. But what he'd heard had been very useful.
Now he knew why both Ari and Kashet were different. Why Ari was so particular about his dragon boy, and why, at the same time, he was surprisingly considerate to Vetch.
So, the Jouster had been in Vetch's shoes before he'd tamed his dragon. And he hadn't just gotten a fledgling from the hunters, he'd somehow raised one from the egg!
Vetch had been allowed to make a single goose into a particular pet when he'd been deemed old enough; a goose that was guaranteed never to go into the pot (or at least, not until it had died of an honorable old age or accident). He had been given a hatching egg, so that the first thing that the baby had seen was him. It hadn't been a case of taming the gosling so much as raising it.
And Ari had done that. With a dragon. Which must, based on how much food the young gosling ate, and all the care and brooding it required, have been a phenomenal amount of work!
Small wonder the King wasn't willing to train dragons for the Jousters that way…
For not just anyone could train the young hatchlings that way. The gosling hadn't followed any human as its mother, it had only followed Vetch. No, that task would have to be taken on by the Jouster who meant to fly that particular dragon. Which meant that the Jouster could not be fighting at the same time, because bringing in regular meals to keep a baby dragon's belly full would be a full-time job. As well as the cleanup, afterward.
Not that Vetch particularly wanted to see more Jousters in the air; not when they were leading the fight against his people…
It made him feel very queasy inside, to be reminded of that. Here he was, serving the enemy—
—not that he had a choice.
Not if he wanted to live, eat—not, in particular, if he wanted to do more than eke out a miserable existence.
He shook his head a little. Too many complicated things! he told himself fiercely, redoubling his efforts on the saddles. And what was the point of thinking about it, for what could he do? He was only a little boy. No matter what he did, no matter what became of him, nothing in the greater world would change. The war would still go on, and Ari would just find another boy for Kashet.
Shobek came over at that moment to inspect what he'd done, and grunted his satisfaction with the work.
Vetch noticed then that the other boys were putting their work aside for Shobek to inspect and gather up. Some he nodded over, some he scolded for shoddy workmanship. "You'll only get it to do over again tomorrow," he said crossly, as one of the boys looked sullen. "Haven't you gotten that through your thick skull yet? Well?"
"Yes, Shobek," the boy replied.
"Then if you don't want to keep seeing the same job on the same saddle again, over and over for the rest of your life, do it right tomorrow!" He looked around at the rest of the boys, whose attitude had changed, and who all looked eager to be gone from there. "Well, off with you."
They were off, like a shot. Vetch didn't know what to do, but he was saved from having to ask by the arrival of Haraket.
"You, Kashet's boy—remember that you are to come here right after pen cleaning after the noon meal," the old man said, as Haraket to
ok possession of him. "Remember! Every day!"
"Yes, sir—" he called back over his shoulder, though he wasn't certain the old man heard him, for a new crop of six or eight boys came crowding in to fill the small room.
"Now," Haraket said, as he led Vetch down a corridor decorated with royal hawks, the token of the god Haras. "You will learn what it means to serve your Jouster as well as your dragon."
Chapter Four
VERY shortly, Vetch had a good idea where he was. They had gone this way earlier, in Vetch's whirlwind tour of the compound. This corridor, where the Temple of Haras also stood, marked, in fact, by the images of the god Haras, led to the Jousters' private quarters. This place wasn't so difficult to find his way around in after all!
The Jousters' importance would have been evident even to someone who didn't know what they were, just by virtue of the wall decorations on this corridor. Rather than simple carved images at the intersections of other corridors, the walls here were adorned with stunning, brilliantly colored paintings of the god Haras, in his falcon-headed human form, in his falcon form, in his form of Haras-re, the falcon of the sun. These paintings were huge, covering the entire wall, from top to bottom, and Vetch had never seen anything like them for sheer beauty. Certainly nothing could compare to them, even in the Temples he had been in. If this was what the corridor outside the Jousters' quarters looked like, what must the palace of the Great King be like? Were his paintings not paintings at all, but inlaid with precious materials?
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