Then, in the middle of afternoon patrol time, he noticed that the sky on the horizon seemed unusually cloudy out to the north. The clouds themselves were thick and tall, or at least they looked like it from inside the walls of the compound. He congratulated himself on taking the precaution of pulling those canvas coverings early. It looked as if there was going to be a good solid rain rather than a mere sprinkle.
He thought no more about it, except to wonder if the rain would be bad enough to bring the Jousters back early, so he reckoned that he had better see to it that Kashet's pen was done as early as possible. Haraket and the other Overseers, even Te-Velethat, trusted him to get his work done in whatever order he happened to do it, and not necessarily on a set schedule anymore. He could always do his quota of leather work later, and if he really needed to clean Ari's rooms, Ari had no problem these days with having Vetch in to see to it whether or not the Jouster himself was in the suite.
So Vetch was in the middle of cleaning out Kashet's pen and he didn't think anything more about rain, until he heard something that sounded like the rumbling of a thousand chariot wheels, and looked up again sharply, into the north.
The clouds were boiling up before his very eyes, and with bottoms as black as the soil the floods laid on the fields. As if the hand of a god was shoving them along, they were speeding toward Mefis in a way that boded no good for anything caught in their path.
What was more, he could see the colorful specks that were the Jousters on their dragons, running along ahead of the storm front. For that storm was powerful enough to send the dragons back on the gust front itself, frantic to get out of the sky before the lightnings and winds caught them, winging ahead of the fury lashing the ground behind them, as fast as their muscles could send them.
He stood there with his mouth wide open for a bit, then it suddenly came home to him that this was going to be no ordinary storm.
He wasn't the only servant to have realized what was happening; a moment later Haraket ran through the compound shouting for the boys to run for the landing court, slaves to cover the pens, and cursing everyone in his path. Dragon boys and every other servant that happened to be free ran for the landing court, for there was no way that most of the dragons were going to be able to land in their pens with that wind behind them. In fact, they'd be lucky to get down without any injuries.
Vetch was right behind Haraket, and the Overseer thrust chained collars into his hands without regard for who he was or which dragon he served. Well enough; Kashet and Ari wouldn't need him, but Seftu and Coresan, and perhaps another half-dozen other dragons he'd gotten to know, and which probably would trust him, certainly would.
The first of the dragons came plunging down into the courtyard just as Haraket, Vetch, and the others got there themselves; already wind, chill as the winds of midwinter, whipped through the open space, sending dragons skewing sideways as they tried to get down to the ground. This wasn't the wind of the Dry, the kamiseen, that always blew in the same direction—no, this was a nasty wind, a demon wind, that twisted and writhed unpredictably. The landings were chaotic; with the exception of Kashet, the dragons were clearly fighting their Jousters. They wanted, more than anything, to get back to safety on the ground before the storm struck, and if they'd had a choice they would have landed anywhere they thought they could find shelter rather than take the chance on speeding for home. There were near collisions in the air above the landing court, actual collisions on the ground, as hard gusts blew dragons aside and into each others' paths. If it hadn't been that their eyes were on the coming storm and not on each other, there might have been fights among the dragons as they competed for the limited landing space; Vetch and two or three of the braver boys dashed in with chains and collars to fasten around their throats. They found themselves scrambling among the fearsome claws, to snap the collars around the first throat that presented itself, then drop the end of the chain in the hands of one of the servants or slaves. Coresan recognized him as he ducked under her nose, and actually pulled back her claws in mid-lash so that they skimmed along his back, barely stinging; he handed off the chain to Fisk, who had been behind him. He helped Seftu's boy get the leads on Seftu, but they didn't need them; Seftu was so grateful to be down that he was actually whimpering, and was crouching so low that his belly dragged the ground. The rest of the boys spread out along the walls and shouted to attract the attention of their Jousters, so that the dragons could get separated and steered over to the proper handler, and taken back to their pens.
The chaos began to sort itself out, so Vetch stayed where he was, knowing Ari and Kashet, knowing that they would come in as they always did, as if the sun god stood high in the sky, untroubled by storms. And sure enough, he saw them, Kashet's powerful wing beats holding course against the wicked winds, coming in last of them all. He saw then that Kashet, secure and nothing near as nervous as the rest, was going to land in his own pen as always. That was when Vetch abandoned the mess in the landing court and headed for his proper place—
He got there just as they landed, and it was clear from Ari's wet hair and the rain streaks on Kashet's flanks that the rain wasn't far behind. At that point, no one cared about duty or protocol (not that Ari ever truly did); Ari helped Vetch to strip Kashet of his saddle and harness and pull the canvas canopy over the sand pit just as the first warning drops of the torrent to come splattered into it. Then Ari raced for his own quarters, as splatters turned to downpour.
The canopies were clever devices, just like the awnings that shaded the human inhabitants of the compound from the rays of the sun, fastened to fat bronze rings which were strung on two ropes of wire, running along two opposite walls of a pen. You grasped two hanging straps and pulled the canopy on its wires across to the other side of the pit, where you fastened the straps to rings at the other end. Then you had a "roof" over the sand pit that protected it from rain. This was the only way to keep the sand pits from turning into hot sand soup during the rainy season—or now.
Kashet burrowed down into the sand as the rain poured down onto the canvas, sheeting down along the sides and into the drains along the edges of his pit.
And Vetch sprinted for the next pen.
He thanked his gods that he had pulled the canvas over the tops of the "unused" pens. No one had barged into his pen to protect it. And his egg was safe from the downpour.
But so close to hatching as it was—he had to see.
It was almost not worth it. In the brief time it took to get from one pen to the other, he was soaked to the skin. He peered through the murk from his vantage point in the doorway—and thought that his egg was rocking, but it was hard to tell. Without getting into the pen, all he could see was that it was all right, that the canopy was keeping it and the sand-pit dry.
Back he ran to Kashet's pen. He peeled off his sodden kilt and changed to a new one in the shelter of his own little awning. The edges of the awnings had become waterfalls, and the sky was so dark it seemed to be dusk, not mid-afternoon. Lightning flickered constantly, seeming to freeze droplets in midair for a moment, and thunder drowned out every other sound.
He was just grateful that the gust front had been the only wind. A good blow could rip the canvas from its moorings, soaking and cooling the sands, and that might have spelled an end to his hopes. If a chicken egg got chilled as it was about to hatch, the chick died before it could be born. Would the same be true of a dragon? He rather thought so—
The storm would have terrified him, if he hadn't been so preoccupied with thoughts of his egg. Fortunately, such fury couldn't last long; before he became too impatient to wait any longer before returning to his egg, the sky lightened, the torrent lessened, the lightning and thunder passed into the distance, leaving behind only a steady, heavy rain, interrupted by brief surges of a real pelting.
But his first concern had to be for his primary charge; Kashet could have gotten injuries that neither he nor Ari saw in their haste to get him unharnessed before the storm burst. Vetch d
ashed across to the sand pit in Kashet's pen, the edges of which steamed from the rainwater that had escaped the drains to soak into the sand along the perimeter.
Kashet was fine. He was securely wallowed in the middle, buried up to his flanks, his neck stretched along the top of the sand with his eyes closed. Vetch knew that pose. Nothing was going to get Kashet out of his warm wallow; not the sweetest bit of meat, not the coaxing of Ari, not the promise of a grooming and burnishing and oiling. Nothing. And at the moment, every other dragon in the compound was probably taking the same pose as Kashet.
No one would interfere with him or come looking for him. Not until the rain let up, anyway.
Back he ran to his egg.
It was rocking! In fact, it had rocked itself right up out of the sand! It must be hatching!
No one was going anywhere in this mess; the dragons wouldn't stir, and the Jousters and dragon boys were all in their respective quarters at this point. Vetch waded out into the hot sand to the egg, which now was rocking madly. He steadied it with his hands, and murmured to the dragonet inside. It paused for a moment, then he heard the dragonet inside knocking furiously at the shell. He passed his hands over the outside, and after examining it carefully, he spotted a place where it was cracking.
Ari had said that mother dragons had to help their little ones hatch; a shell hard enough to protect something as big as a developing dragonet was too thick and hard for them to break by themselves. Ari had helped Kashet; now it was Vetch's turn to help his baby.
He'd heard the story from Ari a dozen times; he knew what to do, and he didn't stop to think about it, he just did what he'd been planning in his mind for weeks, now.
He took the hilt of his tiny work knife and pounded at the cracking spot from his side of the shell. This seemed to encourage the dragonet, and it redoubled its efforts to crack through.
He pounded, the dragonet pounded, and it was a good thing that the steady growl of thunder drowned out most sounds, or they would surely have been caught by all the noise they made together. To his ears, it sounded like a pair of carpenters or stone-masons at work, and if it hadn't been for the storm, so much banging and tapping would certainly have attracted anyone within earshot.
Finally, just when he thought that the egg was never going to actually break, the dragonet punched through!
Two big flakes of shell fell away. A bronze-gold nostril poked up through the new breathing hole, and the dragonet rested for a while. Vetch let it be, just picking bits of broken shell away from the hole and snapping the jagged edges off to enlarge it. That was harder than it sounded; the shell was like stone and the edges of the bits of shell were sharp. But the more he opened the hole, the more of the dragonet's muzzle protruded out, the nostrils flaring as it pulled in its first breaths of fresh air. The egg-tooth, a hard little knob between the nostrils on top of the nose, like a flattened cone, was clearly visible. The dragonet would slough that within a day of hatching, but it was needed in order to break out.
When the muzzle withdrew from the breathing hole, the rocking and hammering started again from within the egg. Vetch watched to see where the cracks were appearing, and helped again, pounding with the hilt of his knife, and grateful that the thunder and rain didn't look as if they were going to stop any time soon. Despite the cold, damp wind, Vetch was sweating, and he kept up a steady murmur of encouragement to the baby within the shell.
Vetch confined himself to helping cracks along and chipping bits away from the air hole. He wasn't certain how much—beyond that little—he could help the dragonet without hurting it by forcing the hatch; this wasn't one of his mother's chickens, after all, and even she had been careful with hatching eggs. There was a difference between assisting a hatch, and forcing it, a difference which could mean a dead chick or a live one.
He had to run off at one point to feed Kashet—the dragon's appetite wasn't diminished by the rain. The entire time he watched Kashet, he worried; what if the dragonet got into trouble? What if the egg fell over, and the breathing hole was blocked by the sand? What if it hatched, and floundered out of the sand and got chilled?
But this was also an opportunity. He loaded his barrow with more meat than Kashet could eat now that he was out of that growth spurt. The top was the usual big chunks, but on the bottom was a thick layer of the smaller scraps and chopped bits that he got from troughs near where the butchers worked. They called this stuff "porridge." When a dragon needed a heavier dose of tala than you could get into it just by dusting the big pieces with the powder, the other dragon boys would mix it with the chopped pieces and blood—
Well, that wasn't what he needed the "porridge" for, and the butchers weren't curious enough to notice what he loaded his barrow with. They were too busy listening to the rain and thunder outside, and talking about it in nervous voices. Under any other circumstances, he'd have stayed to listen.
But not today.
He fed Kashet to satiation, while the rain drummed on the canvas awning; it didn't take long, the dragon wanted to go back into his wallow and didn't dawdle over his food. Kashet yawned and dug himself back into his hot sand when he was done, and was asleep in moments. Vetch quickly checked the corridor for the presence of anyone else before he whisked the barrow out of Kas-het's pen through the cold rain, and into the one next door.
And found himself looking at a limp and exhausted scarlet dragonet, sprawled on the sand, limbs and damp wings going in all directions in an awkward mirror of Kashet's pose. The damp wings were half under the poor thing, and at his entrance, the dragonet looked up at him and meeped pathetically. It could barely raise its rounded, big-eyed head on its long neck; the bronzy-gold and scarlet head wavered back and forth like a heavy flower on a slender stalk, the huge old-bronze eyes barely open, as if the lids were too heavy to lift. To either side, the halves of the egg lay, red-veined on the inside, with a membrane still clinging to them.
Vetch parked the barrow under the awning and floundered out into the sand to the dragonet's side. It was bigger than he was, and heavier—twice his size and weighing about as much as a young child, he thought, though it was hard to tell for certain. It was going to get a lot bigger before it was finished growing, though. He dug a trench in the hot sand and helped it to slide in, tucking the clumsy, weak limbs into comfortable positions, and spreading the wings out to dry on the surface.
It sighed, as it lowered its head down onto its foreclaws; already the anxiety it had shown when it realized that it was alone was ebbing. It was going to be a crimson red, like both its parents, but unlike Coresan, the extremities were going to be some shade of gold or bronze; until it got a little older, its delicate skin was going to tear and bruise easily if he wasn't careful with it. Right now, the skin was as delicate as his own—more so, in places—and soft as the thinnest lambskin. He petted the dragonet's head and neck for a moment, marveling at the softness of the skin. Then he left the dragonet to bask in the heat and rest from the effort of hatching, heaped a bucket with the chopped meat, and returned to its side.
It opened its eyes when he returned to it, and its nostrils twitched as it caught the scent of the meat. Its head wavered up; the poor thing looked so weak! But the mouth opened, and the thin hiss that emerged was anything but weak, and had a great deal of demand in it. The mouth gaped wide. It had a formidable set of teeth already, no surprise in such a carnivore. Open-mouthed, it hissed again, and whined at him, red tongue flicking out in entreaty.
He laughed. "All right, baby—don't be impatient!" he whispered, and dropped a piece the size of his palm in the open mouth.
He'd worried about whether the dragonet would be difficult to feed—in the next several minutes, he knew that this, at least, was not going to be a problem. The little one snapped its jaws shut on the meat and swallowed; he watched the lump going down its throat with remarkable speed. Then the jaws opened up again.
They quickly fell into a rhythm. The baby gaped, he dropped meat and bone in, the jaws snapped shut and the th
roat worked, and the mouth gaped. It was so easy to feed the little one that literally anyone could have done it. In fact, before it was sated, it had eaten nearly its own weight in meat! It ate until its belly was round, the skin tight, and Vetch could not imagine how it could cram another morsel in.
That was when it stopped; it closed its mouth and looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since it had hatched. The big, dark eyes seemed all pupil—he could see that they weren't, though, that the ins was simply so dark a color that it was nearly black, but the huge, dark eyes seemed to draw him in and hold him. He couldn't look away, and didn't want to, for those eyes seemed to him to be the most wonderful things he had ever gazed into. And then it sighed, laid its head in his lap with complete and utter trust, and closed its eyes and went immediately to sleep, without a care or a worry in the world.
He was here, and he was now the center of the dragonet's world. So long as he was here, there could be nothing wrong.
He thought his heart was going to melt. A pent-up flood of emotion threatened to overwhelm him; he squeezed his eyes shut to keep from crying, and just whispered tender nonsense into the ruby and bronze shells that were the dragonet's ears, while he stroked the soft skin of the head and neck with a hand that shook.
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