Joust Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Raves for Joust:

  “In Vetch’s world, Lackey gives us a wonderfully visualized society, similar in terrain, climate, religion and differing circumstances of slave, serf, and free person to ancient Egypt. Moreover, she fills the book with welllimned characterizations and convincing, detailed dragon lore to make up a whole in which Vetch’s coming-of-age becomes an integral part. Fans of McCaffrey’s Pern will love it, but they won’t be the only ones that do.”

  —Booklist (Starred Review)

  “In this elegant, compelling fantasy, Lackey combines meticulously detailed dragon lore with emotionally intense, realistic human characters. This uplifting tale, which contains a valuable lesson or two on the virtues of hard work, is a must-read for dragons lovers in particular and for fantasy fans in general.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It’s fun to see a different spin on dragons and the usual abused-child-makes-good story, and as usual Lackey makes it all compelling.”

  —Locus “As always, the incomparable Mercedes Lackey offers readers memorable characters, both human and animal, in exotix settings. She’s created a new fantasy world that begs to be explored and savored.”

  —Romantic Times

  “I like her (Lackey) more with evey book I read. This new book—and it needs to become a series, because even though the story ends, people will be clamoring to find out what happens next—has a dynamic setting, lush with possibility. An interesting, well conceived concept and a nice set of characters makes Joust an easy, wonderful read.”

  —SF Site

  NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY available from DAW Books:

  THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  KEROWYN’S TALE

  BY THE SWORD

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  Written with LARRY DIXON:

  THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS:

  JOUST

  ALTA

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES*

  DARKOVER

  Written with Marion

  Zimmer Bradley

  REDISCOVERY

  And don’t miss:

  The VALDEMAR COMPANION

  Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  *Forthcoming in hardcover from DAW Books

  Copyright © 2003 by Mercedes R. Lackey. All rights reserved.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1249

  DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, March

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11836-8

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF AND FOREING COUNTRIES

  ‒MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Dedicated to the memory of those lost NYFD Ladder Companies: 9/11/01

  LADDER 2

  Frederick Ill, Jr.

  Michael Clarke

  George DiPasquale

  Denis Germain

  Daniel Harlin

  Carl Molinaro

  Dennis Mulligan

  LADDER 3

  Patrick Brown

  Kevin Donnelly

  James Coyle

  Gerald Dewan

  Jeffrey Giordano

  Joseph Maloney

  John McAvoy

  Timothy McSweeney

  Joseph Ogren

  Steven Olsen

  LADDER 4

  David Wooley

  Michael Brennan

  Joseph Angelini, Jr.

  Michael Haub

  Michael Lynch

  Samuel Oitice

  John Tipping II

  LADDER 5

  Michael Warcholala

  Vincent Giammona

  Louis Arena

  Andrew Brunn

  Thomas Hannafin

  Paul Keating

  John Santore

  Gregory Saucedo

  LADDER 7

  Vernon Richard

  George Cain

  Charles Mendez

  Richard Muldowney, Jr.

  Vincent Princiotta

  LADDER 8

  Vincent Halloran

  LADDER 9

  Gerald Baptiste

  John Tierney

  Jeffery Walz

  LADDER 10

  Sean Tallon

  LADDER 11

  Michael Quilty

  Michael Cammarata

  John Heffernan

  Richard Kelly, Jr.

  Matthew Rogan

  LADDER 12

  Angel Juarbe, Jr.

  Michael Mullan

  LADDER 13

  Walter Hynes

  Thomas Hetzel

  Dennis McHugh

  Thomas Sabella

  Gregory Stajk

  LADDER 15

  Joseph Leavey

  Richard Allen

  Arthur Barry

  Thomas Kelly

  Scott Kopytko

  Scott Larsen

  Douglas Oelschlager

  Eric Olsen

  LADDER 16

  Raymond Murphy

  Robert Curatolo

  LADDER 20

  John Fischer

  John Burnside

  James Gray

  Sean Hanley

  Robert Linnane

  David LaForge

  Robert McMahon

  LADDER 21

  Gerald Atwood

  Gerald Duffy

  Keith Glascoe

  Joseph Henry

  William Krukowski

  Benjamin Suarez

  LADDER 24

  Stephen Belson

  Daniel Brethel

  LADDER 25

  Matthew Barnes

  John Collins

  Kenneth Kumpel

  Ro
bert Minara

  Joseph Rivelli, Jr.

  Paul Ruback

  Glenn Perry

  LADDER 27

  John Marshall

  LADDER 35

  James Giberson

  Vincent Morello

  Michael Otten

  Michael Roberts

  Frank Callahan

  LADDER 38

  Joseph Spor

  LADDER 42

  Peter Bielfield

  LADDER 101

  Joseph Gullickson

  Patrick Byrne

  Salvatore Calabro

  Brian Cannizzaro

  Thomas Kennedy

  Joseph Maffeo

  Terence McShane

  LADDER 105

  Vincent Brunton

  Thomas Kelly

  Henry Miller, Jr.

  Denis Oberg

  Frank Palombo

  LADDER 111

  Christopher Sullivan

  LADDER 118

  Joseph Agnello

  Vernon Cherry

  Scott Davidson

  Leon Smith, Jr.

  Peter Vega

  Robert Regan

  LADDER 131

  Christian Regenhard

  LADDER 132

  Andrew Jordan

  Michael Kiefer

  Thomas Mingione

  John Vigiano II

  Sergio Villanueva

  LADDER 136

  Michael Cawley

  LADDER 166

  William X. Wren,

  Retired

  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 be
tter 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.