Joust Read online

  But the Tians believed that a dead man’s body must be preserved in order for him to enjoy his life across the Star River, and that grave goods here meant possessions there. For the Altans, even if the body was not preserved, nor given a proper funeral, all could still be well if one of the family or friends saw to it that there was a shrine, a sebti figure properly named, representations of offerings, and the proper prayers. All of which, of course, had been denied to Kiron.

  Until now, that is.

  Vetch stared at the beautifully made object with his mouth dropping open. Step by step, he ventured to his corner and squatted beside the little shrine. It was basically a box, with a hinged lid, and a series of compartments inside. One held a sarcophagus to put the sebti in, another a set of farming implements in miniature, then came a pair of oxen, an entire herd of goats, a flock of geese, another of chickens, tiny beer jars, minuscule bread loaves, cheeses, bunches of onions, sacks of grain, even a pair of blank-faced nameless shapti-figures to serve as servants. It was perfectly appointed in every way for a farmer’s life in the Summer Country; in fact, it must have cost more than a cow in milk or a herd of goats to purchase such fine workmanship. On the top of the shrine when it was closed, there was a niche for the sebti, a bowl for offerings, and best of all, since Vetch didn’t know most of the prayers for the dead, the prayers were graven into every surface of the shrine itself.

  With hands that shook, Vetch picked up the figurine, and named it; placed it in the niche, and began reciting as much of the proper prayers as he could remember. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done all of this before—but the mud figures he made would crumble, or melt in the rains, and worst of all, he simply didn’t know the vast majority of the all-important prayers. He couldn’t have been older than five or six when his father died; how could he have memorized the prayers?

  But it didn’t matter now if he recalled them imperfectly or not at all, for the prayers were there, carved into the shrine, perfect and magical, and anything that Vetch did would only reinforce what had already been set in motion once the figure was in its niche, or tucked away in the sarcophagus inside. In his mind’s eye, he could see the bridge across the Star River being formed of the magical words, see the Silver Road stretching out from Kiron’s feet to the bridge and over it, see his father wake as from a nightmare of wandering, look down and see his way to that paradise in the stars made clear. . . .

  And if he wept as he tried to chant, and found the mist mingling with tears that choked his voice, well, there was no one to see him or mock him for his womanish behavior.

  Ari said absolutely nothing about the shrine, nor did Haraket; in fact, they paid no more attention to the shrine and to the offerings that Vetch laid fresh in the bowl every morning, than they did to the pallet. But with the shrine and the sebti, even without the proper funeral and tomb, Vetch’s father would no longer be a hungry, homeless ghost, wandering the world, unnamed, impotent, alone.

  It was impossible to hate Ari after that. Absolutely impossible.

  Vetch’s hatred of all things Tian began to shrink and chill. Not that it went away, far from it. It was still there, but it was no longer quite so all-encompassing and all-consuming. He no longer began and ended his days in hate; he woke thinking of other things—some special duty, or some possible amusement—and he went to sleep with the prayers for the dead on his lips, instead of curses. And with those prayers, there was generally one for Ari.

  Keep him safe, he would plead with the Altan gods. Defeat him, but don’t hurt him, don’t hurt Kashet. Make them dizzy, make them ill, but don’t hurt them.

  He included Kashet in his prayers because he knew that if anything were to happen to Kashet, Ari would be shattered. For that matter, so would Vetch himself.

  There was no doubt that there was a real bond now between Kashet and his dragon boy, a mutual bond. Kashet would often solicit attention from him, and even became playful around him, engaging in a tug-of-war with a spare leather strap he liked to toy with, or throwing it into the air with a toss of his head for Vetch to catch. These days of relative peace, with more leisure time, meant that he and Kashet spent more time together—and he had more time and opportunity to learn about his charge from Ari. The more he learned about dragons, the more he found himself wanting to learn—and it was certainly a subject that Ari never got tired of talking about.

  But the rains couldn’t last forever, much as he would have liked them to. Two days after Ari left the shrine for him, the compound was a-buzz with the word that the waters of the Great Mother River were rising at last. The Flood had begun, that would cover all of the arable land—if the gods were kind—with the silt that made Tian land so fertile. The same Floods would proceed downriver toward Alta, isolating it, and making it impossible for any fighting to take place until the waters receded.

  “Patrols will begin very soon,” Ari said absently, when Vetch gave him the news that morning.

  Vetch didn’t want to think about that, so he changed the subject.

  “Haraket said before the rains that he thought Kashet was putting on a growth spurt, but he’s fully grown now,” Vetch said, as Ari scratched just under Kashet’s chin. “How can it be that he’s growing, if he’s already adult?”

  “They never do actually stop growing,” Ari replied. “In fact, I’m pleased to hear that; Kashet’s a bit leaner than some of the others, and I’ve been concerned about that. Is he eating more?”

  “A lot more,” Vetch said ruefully—since he was the one who had to haul the extra, twice daily. “And I’ve had to let out his chest straps.”

  “Good; he’s putting on the muscle I think he needs, then.” There was clear satisfaction in Ari’s voice.

  What Ari didn’t know about dragons wasn’t worth knowing, and Vetch wanted to know it all, too. It wasn’t enough for him, as it seemed to be for the other dragon boys, just to feed and groom Kashet. And today, with the resumption of Ari’s duties looming ahead, he threw caution to the wind and piled question atop question, for when patrols began, who knew when Ari would be available to answer those questions again?

  What did the tala do to the other dragons? What was a starving dragon likely to do? How long did dragons live? If they kept on growing, were there bigger dragons out there than the ones that the Jousters flew?

  “Tala acts a little like beer, and a little like poppy, but most like khat. It makes a dragon quiet without putting them to sleep, unless you give them too much. It wears off quickly, though, which is why the boys have to dose each meal with it. A starving dragon will go hunting, and nothing a rider can do will turn him back to his pen. He’s likely to throw off his Jouster because if he’s that hungry, the tala wears off quickly, and it will occur to him that he can be rid of the rider. And since he’ll do that when he’s flying and not when he’s on the ground—well—” Ari shook his head. “Then he’ll escape back to the wild dragons, and eventually be rid of his saddle and harness as well. And yes, there are bigger dragons out there, much bigger. To tell the truth, I suspect most of them are escapees, because a dragon that’s been ridden knows about arrows, javelins, spears—and knows that humans are to be avoided. Such a dragon will grow to be old and wise and very large indeed.”

  Ari answered every question he had, with patience and interest of his own. It was the longest actual conversation that Vetch had ever had with the Jouster, and it seemed as if Ari was actually enjoying it. He only called a halt when his own stomach rumbled, a growl that made both of them laugh.

  If he had to be a serf, then this was the best place he could have found himself. Now he just had to keep Ari and Kashet safe, so he could continue to stay here, even if it meant laying siege to the gods with his prayers.

  Jousters were called by that name because they were not utterly unopposed in the air—because they did, in fact, joust with other dragon warriors. The Altans had dragon riders just as Tia did—in fact, more than once, Ari had said that it was supposedly the Altans who had taught the trick of
capturing and taming dragons to ride to the Tians.

  Unfortunately for Alta, the number of Jousters that the Altans could field was much fewer than the Tians, and their training didn’t seem as good. That might have had something to do with the dragons themselves; they were desert creatures, and Alta was mostly swamp, river delta, and island. Perhaps it was harder to find them, and harder to keep them under such conditions.

  When two Jousters met in the air above a battle, they dueled for supremacy with the same short lances that Vetch spent so much time inspecting for flaws; weapons that were blunt rather than pointed, made to knock the rider from his saddle, or at least to knock him unconscious.

  Ari was, presumably, very good at this. That had not changed. What had changed was that now Vetch had gradually stopped praying that he be defeated—in any way. Now he was torn between wanting him to be better than anyone else, and wanting his own people to start winning against the Tians. Jousting was deadly; an unseated Jouster was generally a dead Jouster. Every Jouster that Ari defeated was probably a severe loss to the Altans. But for Ari to be defeated did not bear thinking about.

  By the time Ari went back to his patrols, Vetch was trusted to leave the compound itself alone and unsupervised, which meant that if his duties took him there, he could go out to the training ground beyond the walls.

  And one bright, warm, humid day, when Vetch had been serving Ari and Kashet for a little more than half a year, Haraket sent him to the training grounds with a message, and Vetch got to see precisely what Jousting really looked like—and how very dangerous it could be, even in practice.

  The Floods had peaked. It would be a good year, for the waters covered all of the arable land, but had not ventured where they were not wanted. Although in Khefti’s village and many others there was water up to the very doorsteps and people waded ankle- and knee-deep in the streets, the only houses or store-houses that had flooded were ones built by incredibly foolish folk who had not the sense to listen to the priests. The compound and the training ground, of course, were built on land that could not be farmed, and hence, flooded only in years of a disaster. In fact, other than the green-water smell in the air, there was no sign of flooding as Vetch stepped outside the walls.

  He’d never been to the practice grounds before during training; he’d always been kept busy at his assigned tasks when the Jousters were practicing. He’d never even seen the empty grounds, actually, and he’d had to ask what gate to leave by to find them. To tell the truth, he had not really wanted to see the Jousters in action; it would only remind him of his divided loyalties and make his stomach hurt.

  The practice grounds stood well outside the final wall of the Jousters’ compound. The first—and very odd—sight that marked them for what they were was the nets. Fishing nets were strung between strong poles or palm trees, so that they hung parallel to the ground and well above it. He had not expected that; it had honestly never occurred to him that the Jousters would have something in place that would let them practice aerial combat without fatal consequences. He’d somehow assumed that they didn’t practice actual fighting while aloft, only flying maneuvers, and the passes that would allow them to get close enough for blows.

  Several dragons and riders were on the ground, watching those that were in the air. Vetch scanned those grounded first for Ari and Kashet, and didn’t find them. Then he looked up, and saw that they were hovering in place high in the air above the middle of one of these nets, as Ari shouted directions to two more Jousters who were sparring above the net next to his with the blunted lances. To Vetch’s surprise, there were a lot of onlookers off to one side, and many of them seemed to be wealthy or of noble birth. They had their servants with them, holding colored sunshades above their heads, fanning them, offering them cooling drinks, whisking insects away. They looked like a garden of pampered flowers.

  He hadn’t expected that either. The world of the Jousters within the compound was as isolated as that of any Temple—he had never seen anyone who wasn’t associated with the Jousters, and although he had overheard plenty from the other boys about the many feasts, entertainments, and gatherings at which there were outsiders, he hadn’t attended any himself. He’d heard them, in the distance, some nights, particularly during the rains—music and laughter, sometimes raucous, sometimes drunken and quarrelsome. For whatever reason, Ari kept him away from such things, though other boys were sometimes permitted to attend as auxiliary servants or hangers-on to their Jousters.

  Now here were spectators who were clearly of the elite of the Tians of Mefis. They glittered in the sun, all of them sporting armbands and wrist cuffs of gold, and collars of gemstone beads, fine wigs or elaborate headcloths, and linen kilts of the best fabric with sashes and belts richly embroidered. There was even a woman among them, dressed in a tightly-pleated, transparent linen dress with a sheath made of a net of turquoise-colored beads over it, holding the folds of the linen close to her body. She was attended by no less than four servants, one with a sunshade, one with a fan, one to carry a chair for her, and one to supply her with cooling drinks.

  These, then, were the people that the boys had spoken of, who gave them money to carry letters to the Jousters, who bet upon the outcome of their combats, who desired their presence at their entertainments, as if the Jousters were themselves some form of entertainer. And something else occurred to Vetch at that moment, as he watched their avid faces. They did not go to war themselves, but they certainly profited from it; they did no fighting, yet when the fighting was over, it was they who had gained—more land,more goods, more money in their coffers.

  He found himself suddenly filled with such hatred that he had to look away from them lest by his expression he betray himself. Not that he cared if they knew he hated them, but he might get Ari into endless trouble.

  So he looked back up at the dueling Jousters being instructed by Ari. This practice session didn’t look very dangerous, for even Vetch could tell that these two weren’t very good at the Jousting. Their dragons would not come close enough to permit any real combat, and although they heaved at the guiding reins, the dragons stubbornly fought their riders.

  When they did “close in,” they got nowhere near enough to actually make an exchange of blows. The dragons made very clumsy passes at each other, one high, the other low, while the Jousters were flailing at the air yards away from one another.

  It was partly the fault of the dragons, and partly of the riders, who (he suspected) were afraid of getting close enough to be hit themselves.

  Vetch knew all the dragons by sight now, and it wasn’t hard to tell which the two Jousters rode, even if he didn’t know the names of the men themselves. That was a failing among the dragon boys, to know the dragon and refer to the Jouster as “So-and-so’s rider.” One of the dragons was Seftu, a handsome, if irritable crimson male, and the other was Coresan, a female of a deeper hue and notoriously whippy tail. Coresan was usually mild-mannered in nature, or at least, she didn’t give any more trouble than any other dragon, excepting only that she was known to leave her dragon boy with black-and-blue calves and thighs with that unpredictable tail. But something had her on edge the last week; from what Vetch had been hearing, her dragon boy was half afraid to go in her pen of a morning, and kept her chained as short as he dared. He’d been tempted to go look in on her himself, but his own duties had kept him so busy that he hadn’t had the time.

  Their Jousters were the newest of the group, barely out of ground training, and certainly it was going to be a very long time before they were the masters of either their weapons or their dragons. Ari was getting very frustrated, and no wonder; the dragons were giving most of their attention to each other and very little of it to their riders now—and were circling each other in a peculiar fashion that reminded Vetch of something. . . .

  And just when he realized what it reminded him of, Seftu’s rider finally got close enough to deliver a sideswipe with his lance to Coresan’s Jouster. The latter was momentarily distracte
d from the job at hand, since Coresan chose that moment to curvet sideways in the air, toward Seftu.

  Close enough to actually land a blow, for the first time since Vetch had started watching. Only this was a blow for which neither the attacker nor the defender were prepared.

  The lance connected—hard—

  With a terrible crack, it connected with the Jouster’s skull; the lance bent in the middle, the sign that it had hit with enough impact to be ruined, all of the fibers pulped.

  And that was nothing to what must have happened to the rider’s head. Not even the Jousting helmet could have saved him from that blow.

  Vetch caught his breath, and his heart stopped.

  As if a god had waved his hand to slow time itself, everything froze for a horrible moment.

  The Jouster hung in his saddle—hung there, balanced only because he hadn’t yet unbalanced. Then his lance dropped from a hand gone limp; the broken lance followed it, falling down . . . down. . . .

  Vetch’s mind hadn’t caught up with what was happening, but his gut felt that crack, and knew exactly what it meant before his thoughts could form.

  Then, in painfully slow motion, Coresan’s Jouster bent over the saddle.

  Then went over the saddle, in a slow forward somersault.

  And continued to roll, tumbling right out of his saddle.

  As Vetch’s heart clenched, he plunged toward the net below. But he wasn’t falling right, there was something horribly wrong. He was limp, limbs sagging, and Vetch felt his stomach lurch as he realized that not only was the man not conscious, but that he was going to miss the net entirely.