Joust

by Mercedes Lackey

  “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, I should think!” He nodded with satisfaction. “Good! I’ll find the boys. You get back to your duties, and when I’ve gotten a clutch, 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 taladusted 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 s
o 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.

  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 follow 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.

  There were twenty new dragonets in the compound now, and he was learning an enormous amount by eavesdropping on the trainers. Sometimes he even eavesdropped on the former falcon keeper, Baken, but although what the young man had to say was interesting, it didn’t really apply to Avatre, since everything he knew pertained to wild or half-wild beasts, not one being hand-raised like Avatre.

  He breathed a little easier with every new dragonet that came into the compound, especially when another of the new ones was also a red—and he felt more at ease with every new doubling of Avatre’s weight, for she looked more and more like the other new ones.

  Another factor was working in his favor. It was getting impossible for anyone but Haraket to know which new dragonet belonged with which new dragon boy, or in which pen, and Haraket was so busy that unless something actually went wrong, he left the new boys and dragonets to Baken and the trainers.

  He was not doing triple duty, after all, which would have been impossible. It was Baken, not Vetch and Fisk, who weeded out the unsuitable boys from the ones that would take proper care of their dragonets. It was Baken who taught them what to do, and was turning into Haraket’s right-hand assistant. Suddenly, the soon-to-be-former slave’s star was very high indeed, and Vetch’s was quite eclipsed. Not that he went back to being the outcast. There were far too many new people thronging the compound now for the freeborn boys to single him out—far, far too many serfs and slaves being made into dragon boys for them to say or do much about his status anymore. But there was no doubt that the admiring glances followed Baken now, and it seemed that every other sentence he overheard these days started with “Baken says. . . .”

  And Vetch couldn’t hate him, though it would have been easy to. Baken was genuinely good with beasts; he tried to understand how they thought and why they did the things that they did. Before he’d been assigned to the falcons, he’d handled both dogs and horses, and once had been given a sick lion cub to nurse. He was both firm and gentle with the creatures under his care. He tried to puzzle out what he called their “language”—what was important to them, what made them what they were, what poses and calls they used to communicate with each other—and he used that “language” to win their trust and cooperation. If he’d wanted to, Vetch had no doubt whatsoever that he could raise another Kashet and become a Jouster as good as Ari.

  If he’d wanted to. But if Vetch was any judge, that was absolutely the last thing that Baket wanted. To be free, certainly! To become the Overseer of the entire compound, possibly. To become a Jouster—never. There was a look in his eyes whenever a Jouster was about, a bland look that spoke more of scorn than respect. . . .

  Well, that was none of Vetch’s business. Nor was it any of Vetch’s concern. He had enough to worry about without concerning himself with Baken and his plans, when he had plans of his own. Maybe that was the reason why he couldn’t hate Baken; he didn’t have time or energy to spare to hate anyone.

  First and foremost of his concerns was Avatre, and she was his last thought at night, the first every morning. It was true enough that the older she got, the more she blended in with the growing number of dragonets. But growing older and bigger meant becoming more and more active as well. By the end of that half moon, she was no longer just eating and sleeping. Whenever he cleaned her pen, she watched him alertly, bobbing her head in a way that made him laugh. When he buffed her, she stretched and crooned and bumped her head against his hand, begging for further caresses. She was moving a little around the sand—not much, but it was a portent of things to come as she took tentative, wobbling steps. With every day, she showed more personality, and with every day, he loved her more.

  He thanked the gods whenever he had a moment to spare, for surely they were protecting her. Between the storms and the influx of dragonets, there was too much going on in the compound for anyone to be paying any attention to Vetch’s activities as long as he went out of his way to draw no attention to himself, in any way, for any reason. Perhaps, given his reputation of being able to handle most dragons, people assumed he was spending his free time making friends with the new dragonets and those boys that were serfs, like him. Actually, he wished that he could.

  But he didn’t dare; for one thing, Avatre needed every spare moment, and for another, if he made friends, he increased the possibility that a new friend would come looking for him and discover him with her, and he was Kashet’s boy, not the keeper of a dragonet. It was something of a torment, actually. He’d been so lonely up until now, with the others shutting him out. If this had happened before he’d hatched Avatre—

  I could have had friends. I probably would never even consider trying to run.

  Well, that was how the gods had decided things. And he could put up with a great deal of loneliness if it meant having her.

  Everything conspired to help him, it seemed. The butchers kept plenty of small-chopped meat on hand now, and no one seemed to notice that Vetch was taking some at each feeding, even though Kashet was long past needing anything that small.

  And, luckily, no one was keeping track of the sheer amount of meat he was taking. Even Haraket was too busy to supervise the dispensing of dragon meat; he left it to the butchers to make sure that the boys were leaving with completely filled barrows. Nobody ever asked about overfilled ones.

  Ari wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what he was doing either. The Jouster was working so hard of late that when he turned up at night to spend time with Kashet, he seldom spoke, just sat there, wearily, caressing the dragon’s head in the silence. He had been recruited by Haraket to help train the new Jousters that the Commander of Dragons was bringing in, and when that duty was added to his own training and patrols, Vetch reckoned that Ari was stretched nearly as thin as his dragon boy was. That was all to the good; it kept him from noticing that Vetch was in and out of the pen next to Kashet’s all the time.

  Excitement kept him from feeling too exhausted. And if his day was crowded from dawn to dusk, well, it was crowd
ed with good things rather than miseries.

  The only bad thing was that now, instead of enjoying his meals, he had to bolt two of the three as fast as he could in order to keep on his frantic schedule. Since he’d taken to delaying his evening meal until after he’d given Avatre her last feeding for the day, that was the only one where he could actually sit down and taste what he ate. It wasn’t too difficult to arrange for that either. With so many new dragon boys and additional servants and slaves to support them in the compound, it wasn’t possible to feed them all at once, and there was more competition for getting your meals first than last.

  The influx of servants and boys and trainers—and, eventually, it must be presumed, Jousters and yet more servants—had yet another effect on the compound. New slaves and servants meant more slaves and servants that needed training, monitoring, housing, feeding. Te-Velethat was absolutely frantic, for his charge was the domestic side of the compound, and although the Great King’s Vizier had made ample provision for wages and slave purchases, the new staff still had to be acquired, fitted in, and trained. And provisions needed to be gotten for them, which meant more work in the stores and record keeping. He couldn’t put all of that on Haraket anymore, not when the Vizier was looking over his shoulder to be sure his accounts were honest.

  Vetch almost felt sorry for the man. But he was getting his own “come-uppance,” as Vetch’s mother used to say. If he hadn’t been so concerned with his own status and lording it over all of his underlings, he would have had plenty of cooperation from people who were already trained and knew their business. Look at Haraket, for instance! Though the Overseer had a wicked temper, and never hesitated to use his tongue, fist, and very rarely, his whip where it was warranted, he was fair, honest, and never lorded it over anyone. And once you’d proved yourself to Haraket, he was perfectly ready to make allowances for your honest mistakes, or when you were just having a bad day. As a consequence, Haraket’s people were falling over themselves to take on extra duties and train the new people.