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  Joust

  ( Dragon Jousters - 1 )

  Mercedes Lackey

  A young slave who dreams of becoming a jouster-one of the few warriors who can actually ride a flying dragon. And so, in secret, he begins to raise his own dragon...

  Joust

  by Mercedes Lackey

  Chapter One

  The hot wind out of the desert withered everything in its path—including anyone so foolish as to be out in the sun at midday. It carried reddish dust and sand on its wings, and used both to scour whatever it did not wither.

  It did not howl, for it had no need to howl and rage for its power to be felt. It only needed to be what it was: relentless, inescapable, implacable, and ceaseless. This was the dry season, the season when the wind called kamiseen was king. It swept out of the sea of sand, bearing with it the furnace heat that drove man and beast into shelter if they were wise, and sucked the moisture and life out of everything. The earth was baked as hard as bricks, as hot beneath a bare foot as the inside of an oven. Add to that the hammer of the sun, which joined with the kamiseen in a conspiracy to dry up all life; nothing moved during the kamiseen at midday, not even slaves.

  Except serfs, like Vetch. Altan serfs, the spoils of war, who were less valuable than slaves.

  Little Vetch hunched his shoulders against the pitiless glare of the sun above him, and licked lips gone dry and cracked in the heat, as dry and cracked as the earth under his feet.

  The walls of his master's compound offered some protection from the wind, but none from the sun. To his left, the back wall of tan mud brick around Khefti-the-Fat's workshop and house cast no shade at all on the path upon which he trudged. To his right, lower walls of the same material surrounded his master's tala field.

  Calling it a "field," however, was something of an exaggeration. It could not have held more than five hundred tala plants, a single green oasis in the sand and baked earth, all of them heavy with unripe berries. It was here, only a few steps from the village where Khefti had his workshop, for two reasons. The first was that tala had to be irrigated during the dry season if it was to bear any amount of fruit at all. The second was that Khefti would never have let anything as valuable as a tala plant grow where he could not put his eye upon it on a regular basis. Vetch was fairly certain that Khefti counted the berries themselves twice daily. Fortunately, the husbandry of the precious tala was not his concern, for Khefti would never have entrusted anything so important to a serf. He was not even allowed to set foot inside the enclosure.

  Vetch kept his head bent down as he heaved his heavy leather water bucket along. His arms and shoulders ached and burned with fatigue, and his stomach with hunger; his eyes stung with the sweat that dripped and the dust that blew into them, his mouth was dry, full of kamiseen grit, yet he dared not take a mouthful of the water in his bucket or use it to wash the sand from his eyes. That water was for the tala plants, not to quench the burning thirst of a mere serf.

  He kept his eyes fastened on the hard-packed, sandy clay of the path under his dirty, bare feet. This was not because he was afraid to look up, and possibly incur the wrath of any freeborn Tian who might happen by for showing "insolence." He was watching for a particular little spot on the path that led from Khefti-the-Fat's well inside his compound, to the cistern that irrigated his tala field. This spot was marked only by the fact that the soil there was a slightly different color than the rest.

  He wanted so badly to put the bucket down; the rope handle cut into his hands cruelly. It was all that kept him going, knowing that spot was there, marked by the dirt he'd dug up and replaced last night.

  Ah. There it was. He fastened his gaze on it, and labored toward it, trying not to pant, which would only dry his mouth further.

  Vetch made no outward sign that he had noted the place, for the last thing he wanted anyone to think was that there was anything unusual about the spot. He couldn't have sped up if he'd had to. The water bucket that had been tossed at him by his master this morning was unwieldy, and quite full. If he wasn't careful, most of what was in it would slosh out before he got to the cistern.

  The bucket was far too big and heavy when full for someone as small as he was to carry easily. Not that he had a choice. Serfs made do with the tools they were given, and kept silent about any complaints they might have in the presence of their masters, or they suffered whatever consequences the master chose to mete out. A man might hesitate to scar a slave who had cost him money to buy, and might earn him more money when sold. He would have no such compunctions about a serf, who only cost him money in the housing and feeding, who could not be sold unless the land to which the serf was attached was sold also. How many times had Khefti told Vetch that? "You're of cursed little use to me alive, insect!" he would say. "Your death would mean nothing, except that I need not waste my bread in the mouth of one so useless as you!" He sometimes wondered why Khefti kept him alive at all, except that Khefti-the-Fat was so grasping that he never willingly let go of anything he owned, no matter how useless or worn out it was. Every scrap, every bone, even the ashes from his fires were used until there was nothing left. So that was probably it; Khefti was determined to use Vetch up, as he did everything else.

  There were laws regarding the treatment of slaves. There were no such laws protecting serfs, for serfs were Altan, and the enemy: spoils of war, prisoners of war.

  Even when they were only little boys.

  And in Vetch's case, very little boys indeed.

  He had never been big, but now he hardly seemed to grow anymore, on the poor fare that Khefti-the-Fat allotted him. A weedy little boy he was, named for a weedy little plant the Tians judged not even fit for fodder. Not fit for anything, as his master would say. And never mind that it was Altan custom to give their boy children unpleasant names while they were young to mislead the night-walking ghosts into thinking they were worthless rather than snatching them up in the darkness. "Vetch" he was on the Tian inventory rolls, and "Vetch" he would now remain for as long as he lived. And properly named, too, according to Khefti-the-Fat.

  "What have you done to earn your bread?" the master would say, his fat belly shaking with rage, his pendulous jowls trembling, as he delivered another blow to a back already scarred. "You steal from me, you are a thief, who takes my food and gives me nothing in return!" This was usually right after Vetch had attempted and failed at some task, and Khefti was beating him to teach him to do better.

  This was, often as not, some chore that should have been given to a man, or at least, a larger boy—but that was never an excuse for failure, and took not so much as a single stripe from Vetch's chastisement.

  Teach with the rod, for stripes improve the memory, said one proverb, A boy's ears are on his back, he hears better when beaten ran another. These were Khefti's mottoes, and he lived by them. He even beat his apprentices just as much as the law and their parents permitted, though them, he dared not starve. But he saved the heaviest punishments for Vetch.

  Vetch deviated from the center of the path just a little, and shortened his steps so that he was able to come down—hard—on the off-color spot.

  Upon Khefti-the-Fat, every misfortune will fall. My sandal to grind his head into the dust, he chanted to himself, just as he had chanted over the finger-long abshati figure he'd made out of river clay yesterday in the image of his master. My foot to break his back. The thorns of the acacia to pierce his belly, and the food turn to thistle in his mouth. Cursing a master was a thing absolutely forbidden; if he were caught doing so, any beating he'd had before this would seem as nothing. He knew that, but if he could not curse Khefti, there would be nothing in his life worth getting up for in the morning.

  Not that he had any real faith that his curses would come to pass. Khefti-the-Fat had
too many charms hung about his person and his house for the curses of one small serf boy to fly past them and strike home. But it was something to curse the master, a small blow, if only a symbolic one, something more than merely enduring. And there was always the chance that Vetch would, by sheer dint of repetition, or the chance that he contrived a curse that Khefti didn't have a charm against, get some small crumb of discomfort to plague his master past all the protections.

  That one small hope was really all that Vetch had, and it was what he lived for.

  Yesterday, when Khefti had gone to sleep for his afternoon nap without assigning Vetch a task to follow filling the cistern, Vetch had seized the opportunity to run down to the river and dig raw latas roots to hide under his pallet to eat later. Now, in the dry season, the Great Mother River had shrunk from a fruitful matron to the slimmest of dancing girls, and a languid one at that. The latas was easier to reach, the roots now buried in the mud flats rather than waist-deep in the river water, and crocodiles disinclined to pursue potential prey over the mud flats when so many fish were stranded in ever-shallower pools left behind by the receding Great Mother River. While the latas had been in bloom, the glorious blue flowers rising on their waving stems above the surface of the river, Vetch had mentally noted every patch, so he knew where even the smallest and least accessible clumps were. He had to; he was in competition with every other hungry mouth in the village. Perhaps none were as starved as he, but unlike onions and barley, the roots were free for the digging, and all it took was a stick and determination to get them.

  In digging up the roots, he had come across a generous lump of nearly-pure clay, of the sort that Khefti would have been very pleased to see. To Vetch, it had been a treasure as fine as the roots he carried home, for any time that Vetch got his hands on clay, he would make an abshati figure to use to curse Khefti-the-Fat.

  He certainly knew most of what there was to know about molding abshati figures, for he heard the instructions bellowed in the ears of Khefti's apprentices, day in, day out. The making of such figures was usually for funerary purposes, not cursing—there was a good living in the making of abshatis to represent the deceased or to supply the spirit with servants in the next life. A good half of Khefti's pottery income came from funerary wares, or replacing such items as went into the tomb from the household stores. Vetch probably could have made abshatis as good as any of those turned out by the apprentices, had Khefti allowed him. But no one would purchase an abshati made by a serf, an Altan, the enemy, lest it carry some sort of subtle curse against Tians that would render the magic the priests would say over it ineffective.

  Ordinary mud would not hold the detail he needed to make a good figure, nor would it shatter the way a well-dried statue of clay would. But although his master was a potter, there was no way for Vetch to purloin his clay, for he guarded it as jealously as his tola. Good clay was valuable, and a careful accounting was made of every weighable scrap of it.

  This time, through some quirk of good fortune, the figure Vetch had modeled was a particularly good one. He had managed to get the limbs all in the right proportions, and Khefti's bulging belly, ugly frown and perpetually-creased brows just right. Perhaps it was crude, and the face a bit blobby, but anyone who looked at it would surely recognize who it was meant to be. While it was still wet, he had filled the mouth with bits of thistle, and shoved acacia thorns deep into the belly. Then he had set it up on top of the wall in a hidden corner to dry hard in the sun and the kamiseen, and when all of the work was done for the day, because it was such a good likeness, he decided that instead of merely grinding the thing under his heel while chanting his curses, he would try something different.

  He had dug a hole in the path in the moonlight and put the figure in it. That way he could tread on it with every bucket hauled to and from the well, reciting the curses in his head. Maybe if he did that enough, one of them would fly home and strike true. Knowing he would put his foot on his master each time he traveled the path kept him going, even in this heat.

  The dust that flew up in a puff from under his bare foot as he planted it on the burial spot was nearly the same no-color as his foot itself, coated with dried clay and dust as it was. All the better; cursing was earth-magic, and maybe this time the links would be strong enough to make the curse stick. Vetch had tried, and more than once, to get something of his master's person to put into the figures he made. But Khefti was a coward, always afraid of magic and curses, and was so careful of such things that he never pared his nails without counting all the bits before burning them, and even made his barber burn the hair he'd scraped off the master's misshapen head before Khefti would leave the shop. Well, Khefti was not well-beloved among his neighbors, so perhaps he was right to be so concerned.

  Vetch reluctantly took his heel from the spot where the figure lay buried, and heaved the bucket forward another step. His arms ached so much, and his legs were so wobbly from exhaustion that it was all he could do to keep from dropping to his knees in the dust, but he dared not set the bucket down for an actual rest. At any moment, Khefti might awaken from his nap and look out to see if Vetch was working.

  Every morning and every afternoon, as long as the kamiseen blew, he filled the drip-cistern that fed the fragile pottery pipes that in turn watered his Tian master's tala plants. The only source of water for the cistern was the Great Mother River or the master's well, and neither was easier than the other to get water from.

  If he fetched water from the well, it meant pulling up the water one bucket at a time, bringing up the rope, hand over hand, with the bucket feeling as though it was getting heavier all the time. And the well was (of course) nearly as far from the cistern as the river, though in the opposite direction. The river was marginally farther away, though he would not have to drag the weighty bucket up its rope. But the clear water from the well wouldn't clog the pottery pipes the way that muddy water from the river would, unless Vetch was very careful when he filled the bucket. Being "very careful" meant wading out into the river, up to his knees—which put him in the way of the crocodiles, who would not turn down prey that came so obligingly within their reach.

  Vetch hated this bucket, too heavy, too big, too awkward, and if he'd dared, he'd have put a hole in the bottom of it. But if he did, Khefti would probably find something worse for him to use— bigger and heavier, or so small as to be nearly useless.

  Tala could only be grown during the dry season, after the Great Mother River had shrunk to a shadow of her wet-season greatness. It only set its berries after the sun-baked fields of wheat and barley were harvested and reduced to bleached stubble and the earth beneath the stubble was riddled with cracks as wide as a man's hand. But tala fruits were worth their weight in electrum, for tala fruits gave the Jousters their ability to control their great dragons.

  Dragons… dragons and tala were inseparable. The only reason to grow the tala was because of the dragons, the creatures that were the greatest weapons that the Tians had. Vetch had only ever seen the dragons at a far distance, overhead, flying out from the city of Mefis a little up the river, gold and scarlet, blue and green against the hard, bright blue of the sky. They would have been beautiful, if they were not so terrible.

  Dragons—well, in part, they were responsible for his being a serf. The war would not have gone so badly for Alta if the Tians hadn't had so many more dragons and Jousters. He supposed, dully, that he should be cursing them, too—but he could only focus his hate on one target at a time, and at the moment, that target was Khefti.

  Vetch stumbled over a clod and trod down hard on a stone, saving the bucket from going over at the last moment. "Night-demons take you!" he cursed the clod and stone alike, and thought, resentfully, that if Khefti were to allow him the clothing that were allotted to a slave, he would have straw sandals, and he would be saved stone bruises, saved the burning heat that came up through his hardened soles. Khefti's paths were like Khefti's heart; hard and uncaring. What could it possibly cost to permit his one
serf a simple pair of sandals?

  That was the moment when a revelation, and a sickening one, came to him. And he realized that one of his errors in cursing Khefti might have been in the phrasing of the first part of the curse. He had specifically said my sandal to grind his head into the dust. But Vetch wasn't wearing sandals, didn't own sandals (not even the cheapest, woven-straw kind every slave got) and likely never would own sandals. Granted, that was the way that the magician Vetch had spied on had phrased his curse for his customer, but the customer had worn sandals.

  Vetch ground his teeth in frustration, and jerked at the rope handle of the bucket. Well, he would continue the cursing for the entire three days, but how could he have overlooked something so simple?

  Better he should have cursed the tala fields—

  But that would be a dangerous thing to do as well as an audacious one, potentially more dangerous than cursing his master.

  Granted, the mud-brick wall held little shrines to every god that could be invoked, and plenty of talismans for growth and plenty, which should have prevented any harm whatsoever from coming to the fields, but if Khefti even thought that Vetch was cursing the fields, his stick would be out and drumming a beat on Vetch's back for days.