Joust Read online

  If, if, if. There were a lot of “ifs” standing between him and a fragile hope of success. . . .

  One thing at a time. One day at a time. There was no point in thinking past the next obstacle, which was how to slip away to turn the egg in the morning. . . .

  One small step at a time, on the path to what was nothing more than a hope at this point. That was all he dared to do for now. There were sixty mornings, sixty evenings, one hundred and twenty egg turnings to get through before he had to worry about a nestling. If there was a nestling. If the egg was fertile, if the sand was hot enough but not too hot, if no one discovered it. . . .

  There were a very great many “ifs” between him and a dragonet, and most of them he had no control over.

  But he had the will. And as Ari said, “Enough will, is will enough.” He had to hope that in this, as in so many other things, Ari was right.

  ELEVEN

  WITH his precious egg tucked cozily in the hot sand in the empty pen, Vetch went back to his pallet in Kashet’s pen. There was nothing more he could do for the egg at this point. It was hidden, it was warm, and if Ari was right, dragons themselves didn’t take too much care about keeping their eggs perfectly warm until they actually started brooding them. Still, after he curled up on his pallet, listening to Kashet breathe, the egg lay heavily in his thoughts. He had to keep reminding himself that there really was not anything he could do right now. Nevertheless, he kept trying to think of some way he could hide the egg better, how he could manage to get extra meat to feed the dragonet, how he could keep the youngster quiet—

  And training. I need to know how to train it. I need to get a saddle, guiding straps, harness—

  Perhaps it was just as well that Kashet and Coresan together kept him running, because eventually the need to sleep caught up with him, and he dozed off in mid-thought.

  Vetch woke just as dawn was coloring the sky to the east. A desert thrush was singing somewhere overhead, and the breeze from the direction of the Great Mother River smelled of wet mud and algae, with a hint of fish. The Flood was definitely over now, and the river was pulling in the hem of her robe. And he was just in time to slip over to the next pen and turn the egg before anyone else was awake.

  He flung off his blanket and sprang up out of his pallet, not bothering to twist on a kilt. In the dim light, everything seemed painted in shades of blue, and the damp air was clammy and cool on his skin. He scuttled over to the next pen, feeling fairly secure that no one else would be awake at this hour.

  He waded out into the hot sand, which felt exceptionally good on his chilled skin, and carefully dug around one side of the egg until he had uncovered enough to enable him to give it a half turn. Then he covered it back up again, except for a very small area at the very top, the merest curve of shell.

  Then he sprinted back to Kashet’s pen, and his pallet. Kashet had not moved a muscle, and until Kashet woke, there was no reason for him to get up either.

  In fact, he managed to doze a little, before the rustling sound of sand moving against dragon scales warned him that he had better start his working day.

  He was actually feeding Coresan four times daily now, giving her a final meal just before she went to sleep for the night. This meant that she would sleep longer in the morning than Kashet, and he could feed his primary charge first, get him saddled and ready for Ari by the time most of the other dragon boys were still queuing up for meat. This meant that when he came around with a barrow for Coresan, most of them were gone already.

  When he reached her pen, she was scratching in an absent-minded way at the sand in the corner where her egg had been, but the moment that he appeared with her breakfast, she lost interest in that corner in favor of food. He went about the usual routine as though she had never laid an egg, and after another cursory search for it when she’d eaten, Coresan soon settled. She didn’t so much give up, as lose interest in looking for it. A good sign, Vetch thought.

  In fact, at noon she wolfed down meat until Vetch thought she was going to pop, then stretched herself out in the sun for a long doze, quite as if the egg had never existed.

  Kashet came in that afternoon looking marginally better, and so did Ari, who took a look around the pen as Vetch divested the dragon of his saddle and harness. “I was afraid, doing double duty as you are, that all the work was going to be too much for you, Vetch,” the Jouster said, with just the faintest overtones of surprise. “But I swear, if anything Kashet’s pen is cleaner and neater than it was before. Are there two of you? Have you spawned a twin brother you haven’t told me about?”

  Vetch smiled to himself. “I’m used to doing more than my share,” he said boldly. “It gets put on me, often as not. And don’t think it’s your fault, because it isn’t! But so are you and Kashet, used to doing more than your share. And you don’t have anyone to take the boring part of your work off your hands; at least I got that much advantage.”

  “Huh. You’ve certainly hit that target in the heart ring,” Ari replied, with a raised eyebrow. “I suppose, though, it’s always been true that those of us who are outsiders have to work twice as hard just to prove ourselves the equals of those on the inside. How’s Coresan?”

  “Fat and lazy, and getting fatter,” he replied truthfully. “I figure, the fatter I get her, the less trouble she’ll be, because she’ll be too lazy to make trouble.”

  “The fat part is probably the eggs she’s about to lay,” Ari corrected. “And the lazy part because she’s preoccupied with nesting and saving her energy for the eggs she’ll lay. Has she been digging in her wallow?”

  “All the time,” Vetch said instantly, glad that now he needn’t conceal anything in Coresan’s pen. “One corner in particular, the one that gets sun all day.”

  Ari nodded. “Then she’s about to lay. Good! Otherwise, is she behaving for you?”

  “Better every day, by a little,” Vetch said, feeling very proud of himself. “And I’ve been saving back the best meat from her meals to tidbit her with when she behaves herself.”

  “Then, once she’s finished laying, I don’t think it would be out of the question to reinforce that by making her meals of the shanks and inferior meat, and save the things she likes for tidbits only,” Ari replied, squinting thoughtfully. “You don’t want to starve her, but if you make it clear that she gets the finer things only when she’s on good behavior, she’ll come completely around. She was trained properly originally—well, as ‘properly’ as you can, when you’re starting out to break a dragon, rather than really tame it.”

  “She’ll never be a Kashet,” Vetch stated, as he removed the last of the dragon’s harness, and the great beast gave himself a shake and stepped down into his wallow.

  Ari laughed. “No. You’re right there. I’m afraid there will never be another Kashet.”

  And with that, the Jouster gave Vetch a wink, and left.

  Vetch hid his smile. There would never be another Kashet? Well, that remained to be seen.

  Perhaps for once Ari will be wrong, so long as the gods are with me.

  And two days later, Coresan’s second egg appeared in the same corner as the first, though this time Vetch found it in the afternoon rather than the morning. Actually, the appearance of the egg surprised him; he would have thought that it would be more of an effort for her to lay such enormous objects.

  With great relief, Vetch went straight to Haraket and reported it. Finally he was not going to have to worry about evading Haraket’s questions. Nor would he have to worry that the Overseer might begin to wonder why there weren’t any eggs. Mind, Haraket hadn’t shown any evidence of suspicion, but—well, Haraket wouldn’t necessarily show anything. The Overseer was very good at keeping his ideas to himself when he chose. Vetch would never want to play the stone game against him, for there would be no reading anything in Haraket’s face.

  It took Vetch some time to actually track Haraket down; he wasn’t with the butchers, inspecting occupied pens, discussing the work of the boys
with the harness maker, or any other place where Vetch expected to find him. Finally, after asking everyone he met, Vetch discovered the Overseer in a little room just off the kitchen. He was sequestered with the Steward of the Household, who was in charge of supplying all of the food and clothing needs for the Jousters and the considerable staff it took to support them. Te-Velethat, apparently, was not in charge of this most vital of duties. Te-Velethat, from a remark that Vetch overheard before he made his presence known, considered the procurement of supplies to be entirely beneath him as an Overseer, and left it all up to Haraket. Haraket, who was already handling the procurement of everything associated with the dragons, got saddled with this job as well.

  And as a consequence, it seemed, Te-Velethat had a great deal less power and influence within the compound than he thought he had . . . which was a bit of information that Vetch filed away, just in case he needed it at some time in the future.

  “An egg! Finally!” the Overseer grunted, once Vetch had apprised him of the situation. “I was beginning to worry that she might be egg-bound.”

  “What would you like me to do, sir?” Vetch asked diffidently.

  “Don’t do anything; I’ll handle this,” Haraket said firmly. “Now, go back to her, and don’t act any differently. Don’t pay any attention to that egg, because we don’t want her to have a go at you. She might, she might not, there’s no telling at the moment. You’ll have to leave her be, and if she acts possessive, leave her alone with it, just lengthen her chain and take a barrow of meat in to her and don’t bother any further with her. As a first-time breeder, chances are she won’t know what to do with it, but don’t take any chances if she shows the least little sign of getting protective.”

  Vetch ducked his head. “Yes, sir,” he said obediently. “I’ll do that, but she didn’t even act as if she cared about it at all. The way she acted, it could just as well have been one of her droppings.”

  “That could be a ruse, the way a plover plays broken-wing to lure you away,” Haraket warned, “But as long as she doesn’t think you know about it, she won’t do anything to draw attention to it. You’re too valuable for us to risk you getting injured by a broody she-dragon. I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vetch repeated, knowing already that Coresan wasn’t going to do anything about the second egg, since she hadn’t been at all possessive about the first. He was safe enough with her, and given her indifference, perhaps it was just as well that they weren’t going to give her the chance to be a mother.

  Perhaps, though, he was doing her a disservice. Chickens didn’t pay any attention to their eggs until after the full clutch had been laid. There was no telling but what, once her instincts awoke, she wouldn’t have been a good mother after all.

  And for a moment, he felt horribly guilty; here they were, taking her eggs from her, never giving her a chance to raise them. It didn’t seem at all fair.

  If the gods had meant her to breed, he told himself, she’d have gotten away from Ari and Kashet and gone off into the hills. And she’d have found herself a handsome male and set herself right up, no doubt. What healthy dragon could have resisted such a scarlet beauty? And he went back to his split duties, leaving Haraket and the Steward poring over tallies of wheat and barley.

  He fed Coresan, then made sure that Coresan’s pen was as spotless and tidy as Kashet’s. If Haraket was going to arrive with a picked crew to purloin the egg, he wanted the pen to show just how diligent a worker he was. By the time he finished Coresan’s pen, it was time for Kashet and Ari to come back from their second patrol, so it was on to the next round, feeding Kashet, buffing and oiling him, then giving Coresan the same treatment, and that fourth little meal that would hold her overnight until late morning. In all that time, there was no sign of Haraket, and the egg was still in the corner of Coresan’s pen.

  Then, just before going to bed himself, he slipped into the empty pen to turn his egg, as he had been doing for the past two mornings and nights.

  When he went to feed Coresan the next morning, the egg was gone, so he guessed that Haraket had duplicated what he himself had done—taken the egg in the night, when Coresan was least likely to see and react to the theft of her potential progeny.

  Ari lingered while Vetch unharnessed Kashet after the morning patrol, as if he was uncertain about something. Finally, though he made up his mind. “I thought you might like to know, Seftu’s rider, Horeb, is back on his patrols.”

  “Ah?” Vetch said noncommittally. “So what came of his side of the mess, then?”

  “First, a good long dressing-down from Haraket that practically pinned his ears back,” Ari said, with a grim little smile. “I suspect that didn’t impress him too much past the moment, but then he had an intense session with the Captain of Jousters, which of a certainty did. The Captain ordered an official inquiry and when that was over, he had an interview—” (Ari’s tone and expression put a certain decided emphasis on the word) “—with the Commander of Dragons. I saw him leave, actually; he looked like a whipped cur.”

  “Is the Commander so fearsome?” Vetch asked wonderingly. This was the first time that he had heard of the Commander actually doing anything with the Jousters other than issuing orders.

  “Oh, he’s worse, I do pledge you,” Ari said, “He does not hear excuses; we are weapons in his hand, and woe betide the weapon that fails. As a Commander of Hundreds expects each man to tend to his equipment and see that it is in top condition, the Commander of Dragons expects that we are to do the same with our beasts. It’s bad enough to face him when he’s giving you a commendation; it’s got to be a thousand times worse when he’s about take you apart. But the inquiry proved that Horeb was not as much to blame for the incident as Reaten was. Apparently Coresan had been proddy for the last week; Seftu only got interested when she went up in the air and he saw her start to display instead of obeying her rider.”

  “Huh.” Sobek, of course, was just as guilty, but he’d already been punished to the extent that the arm of the Jousters reached, Vetch had to suppose. “So what’s to do with Reaten, then?”

  Ari cleared his throat, and it sounded embarrassed. “Well, here, you see, I have a dilemma. What happened to Horeb is very much public knowledge. Plenty of underlings knew about the interviews, and plenty more saw him going into and out of all three of them. The result of the inquiry is also public knowledge. However, the same cannot be said of what’s to happen with Reaten. If I tell you, it’s gossip that the—ah—”

  “Serfs, slaves, and servants aren’t supposed to know,” Vetch supplied, the words leaving a bitter taste behind as he spoke them.

  But this was Ari—and Ari was not like anyone else. “True. This is not the sort of thing that should be gossiped about—”

  He winked. It was a very sly wink. “Well, as you know, I could just be talking to myself, or to my dragon. In fact, I believe I will talk to my dragon,” was Ari’s response, and he looked up at Kashet, who craned his neck around to stare into his Jouster’s eyes, looking for all the world as if he wanted to hear this gossip himself. “Now, as for Reaten, when he recovers, it’s rumored—just rumored, mind—that his interview will be at the hands of the Royal Commander himself. Isn’t that fascinating, Kashet?”

  The dragon snorted, as if he was skeptical of how much good a mere dressing-down would change Reaten’s ways.

  “Really? On the whole, I would tend to agree with you, Kashet, given what I know about Reaten.” Oh, now Ari did look sly. “You see, Kashet, Reaten is noble, himself, and he seems to be under the impression that anyone of noble blood need not concern himself with orders and instructions. Fortunately I have it on more substantial authority that Reaten is going to be demoted back down to merest apprentice, no longer permitted to fly or fight until the end of the Floods. And that if the Great King didn’t need Jousters so badly, he’d be sent packing after his dragon boy. And furthermore, since the Royal Commander is of sufficient rank to cow anyone other than the Great King,
he has decided that Reaten’s father is going to sit in on the dressing-down, just to give a bit of familial emphasis to it all.”

  While Ari didn’t sound gleeful, there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice. “If you were to ask me, Kashet, I would say that the punishment is certainly fitting.”

  And serve him right, too, was Vetch’s conclusion. Anyone who hadn’t noticed that his dragon was looking to mate didn’t deserve to be a Jouster, and if he’d been depending on his dragon boy to tell him what Coresan’s condition was, he’d been completely a fool. He should have seen she was too thin, he should have immediately seen how restless she was and checked her over himself. Noble or not, when he undertook to become a Jouster, he took the same oaths to obey his superiors as any warrior or officer, and that meant every order, every rule, not just the ones that suited him. If he felt taking proper care of his dragon was beneath him, well, he should have just resigned and gone off to serve as an officer or something in the regular army.

  And through his foolishness and Horeb’s—the latter not having the good sense to notice when his he-dragon had begun a courtship flight!—Tia had nearly lost two Jousters and two dragons. That they hadn’t, had been a miracle, due in no small part to Ari—who had been “rewarded” for his wisdom and skill by taking on the duties of Reaten and himself combined.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true, as he learned that very afternoon.

  “Well,” Haraket said very quietly as Vetch obtained Coresan’s dinner, “Your Jouster’s done it again.”

  “Done what again?” Vetch asked, his eyebrows puckering in confusion. Surely Haraket didn’t know how much about Horeb and Reaten that Ari had told him. . . .

  “He didn’t tell you? Huh. Well, I’m not surprised.” Haraket sighed. “He’s been given quite a bit of recognition, in a ceremony last night. He’s attracted the attention and the notice of the greatest and most powerful in the land, Vetch, and not for the first time. Ari was awarded the Gold of Honor at the hands of the Great King himself, two armlets and a full broad collar.”