Joust Read online

  Such beauty—it was hard to look at the dragon and remember that he should hate it.

  The Jouster finished his drink and dumped the rest of the bucket of water over his head without even bothering to take off his helmet, and the anger awoke again, at the wanton wastage of what had taken Vetch so long to haul. Vetch made an involuntary whimper of suppressed rage in the back of his throat as the man tossed the bucket aside, as if it was something of no account, to be discarded.

  Which meant, of course, that if Khefti came out at this moment and saw him without the bucket in his hands—

  Now anger turned to panic. Vetch scrambled after the bucket just as his master, the last creature he wanted to see at this moment, appeared in the door of his courtyard. Khefti was huge and terrifying; his size alone was intimidating, for he must have weighed twice as much as this Jouster. His gut bulged over his dingy, grease-stained linen kilt, his fat hands were quick with a blow, and his doughy face wore a perpetual scowl beneath his striped headdress.

  He could not have chosen a worse moment to wake up from his nap and come a-prowling—exactly as Vetch had feared.

  Khefti-the-Fat was the worst master Vetch had ever had, for though most of them had regarded their serfs as of less importance than a donkey, none had been cruel. Vetch was the only one of his family left with Khefti; the Tian who had originally taken control of their land along with that of their neighbors, had sold it in turn to another prosperous Tian, who in his turn broke it up into smaller portions and sold them. Each time it was sold, Vetch’s family got a new set of masters, but at least they had been allowed to remain together, working the earth still—for the owners had all agreed that it would be in their best interest to farm it communally, using the combined labor of Vetch and his family, which after all, cost nothing. This went on for several years, until at last, came the purchasers that included Khefti. Khefti had specifically bought the house itself, and the family vegetable garden. And Khefti was not inclined to farm the land communally with the others, as every other owner had been; in fact, he was not inclined to farm at all. He wished to enlarge his fortunes by becoming an absentee landlord.

  This had resulted in the actual dispersal of all of the remaining members of Vetch’s family—his three sisters, mother, and grandmother. Khefti kept only Vetch. What happened to the rest of them, Vetch had no idea; Khefti had taken him to his own house in this village on the outskirts of Mefis, and had rented out Vetch’s home and its tiny garden to yet another Tian. Taken was perhaps too mild a word; Vetch had been dragged away from his family, literally kicking and screaming, as the girls were led away weeping by their new masters. Grandmother had given him a last look that told Vetch she knew that she would never see him again, then shuffled off after her new master, head bowed, with every fiber of her registering defeat. The last Vetch saw of his mother was a final glimpse of her collapsing to the earth. Then Khefti had begun beating him to make him stop screaming, which was the last thing that Vetch remembered before waking up to a bucket of water poured on his head and being tied to the back of Khefti’s cart to follow along as he could.

  Why Khefti had kept Vetch at all, the boy had no idea. Perhaps it had only been for the sake of the records; certainly a man with the look of a tax collector came every so often and Vetch was trotted out for his inspection. Perhaps in order to hold any land, you had to have at least one of the serfs that came with it.

  If that was true—then what would happen when he and his family were all dead? Vetch didn’t know that either. He didn’t really want to think about the alternative—that his sisters and his mother would become “breeding stock,” producing a bloodline linked to the property, to allow the new owners to hold it, giving them more hands to work it. . . .

  But why Khefti had decided to keep Vetch, rather than one of the girls or Vetch’s mother—that was something only Khefti knew. Not that Vetch would have wanted to see his sisters or mother or grandmother under Khefti’s untender care. No, better it was him, not them.

  Better that Khefti hadn’t gotten the idea to perpetuate the bloodline. . . .

  Best of all that the need to keep a serf ended when the serf was dead. And perhaps that was why Khefti had kept Vetch; smallest of the lot, cheapest to keep, and likely the quickest to die of ill treatment. Too bad for Khefti, Vetch was tougher than he looked; he was never sick, no matter what trash Khefti fed him.

  Vetch had never thought he would ever envy the lot of a slave, but he had learned better, under Khefti. For slaves, there was always the possibility of freedom; a master might free them at his death, or a slave might earn his freedom in some way. Not so for a serf; they were tied to the land, from birth to death, and tied to the master that owned the land. As property that could be bought and sold readily, slaves were as valuable as any other livestock. Not so for serfs; they came with the land, and one could not sell them without selling the land. Khefti could never realize a profit by having Vetch trained to some skill or great strength and selling him at a profit.

  Khefti had no reason to do more than keep Vetch alive, and work him as hard as possible. Vetch would never be worth more to him than he was at this moment. And from the look on Khefti’s face as he glared at a Vetch who was not at this moment working, his value had just dropped again.

  Khefti had not seen the Jouster; he certainly hadn’t seen the dragon. All he saw was Vetch, standing on the steps of the cistern with empty hands and no bucket in sight.

  With an inarticulate roar, Khefti snatched up the little whip that never left his side, and descended on Vetch. For all his bulk, Khefti-the-Fat moved surprisingly fast; Vetch only had time enough to crouch down and cover his head with his hands when the quirt descended on his shoulders, leaving a stripe of fire across his back that made him gasp with pain.

  Once. Twice. Vetch squeezed his eyes shut, ducked his head further, stuffed both hands in his mouth and bit his knuckles, strangling his cries with his hands. Khefti never delivered fewer than a dozen blows even at the best of times, but sooner or later he had to see the Jouster, and then he would stop, if only to gape in shock. If Vetch could just hold on without fainting until his master realized they were not alone—

  But the third blow never came.

  Vetch risked a glance backward over his shoulder, and saw, with astonishment, that the Jouster had caught the wrist of Khefti’s whip hand and was holding it effortlessly at shoulder height. Never quick-witted, Khefti’s expression was frozen between the moment of rage when his hand had been caught and the dawning realization of just who and what had stopped him from beating his property.

  The Jouster’s helmet concealed most of his face. Vetch could not see enough to read his expression.

  But why had he stopped Khefti from striking?

  “The boy is not at fault,” the Jouster said, in a mild voice, “I took his bucket to quench my thirst. He could hardly take it away from me.”

  Vetch’s mouth dropped open with astonishment so great that the pain of his two stripes seemed to fade. The most he had hoped for was that Khefti would be too embarrassed to beat him in front of the Jouster, which would give Vetch a chance to explain himself. He had hardly thought the Jouster would take his part!

  Khefti went red-faced and spluttering, but what could he say? Nothing, of course; the Jousters were a kind of nobility, and certainly outranked a mere tala farmer, potter, and brick maker. Nor would he dare do anything further to Vetch while the Jouster was there, since the Jouster had so forcibly expressed his disapproval.

  Once he was gone, however, he would certainly extract a double dose of punishment out of Vetch, for having looked a fool in front of a Jouster. Unless—

  Unless the Jouster continued to speak with his master. Then, perhaps Vetch could slip away, get the bucket, and go back to his task again while Khefti was talking to the Jouster. If Khefti saw that Vetch had run back to his appointed labors at the very first moment possible, he might feel the beating he’d already given Vetch was enough. Vetch kept one e
ye on them both, and eased one foot down the stair.

  The dragon snorted again, and the Jouster looked up at it, then down at Khefti. “From the look of things,” he continued, in that same mild voice, “you’ve been abusing and neglecting the Great King’s property. This boy looks half starved, half beaten, and treated like a masterless cur. You do remember, don’t you, that serfs are the Great King’s property, and not yours? Or is it possible you had forgotten that little detail?”

  Khefti went from red to white, all the blood draining from his skin until he looked like an enormous damp, white grub.

  The Jouster turned his gaze from Khefti to Vetch. “I need a boy,” he said casually, as if it were no great importance to him. “And if you’re getting any amount of work from one that starved, he must be remarkable. I’ll have him.”

  Khefti’s jaw dropped. “But!” he protested. “But—but—”

  “As you know, a Jouster can requisition any of the Great King’s property within reason, if it is to serve him and his dragon.” The Jouster shrugged. “One small boy—three-quarters starved—is certainly within reason. You will speak to the King’s assessor when he comes to see if the King will permit you to continue holding the land to which the boy was tied. Or, of course, you could see if there is some other member of his family available—but if there is, I suggest that you treat the new acquisition better than this one. The assessor’s eye will certainly be on you now.”

  He let go of Khefti’s wrist, and Khefti dropped to the ground, to lie there like a quivering, misshapen, unbaked loaf. “But—” Khefti burbled. “B-b-b-but—”

  The Jouster ignored him. Instead, he looked up at his dragon again, which uncoiled itself and stepped carefully down into the yard. The roof of the drying shed creaked as the dragon removed its weight from the structure. The dragon stretched a wing lazily out to its fullest extent, then pulled it in, and yawned. It moved up beside the Jouster just as a faithful dog would come to heel, then bent its forequarters so that its shoulders were even with the Jouster’s chest. The Jouster grabbed the back of Vetch’s loincloth as if he were a parcel, and heaved him up over the dragon’s shoulder.

  The band of his loincloth cut painfully into his stomach, though Vetch more than half expected it to give way and tear. Vetch landed stomach-down on the dragon’s neck, but the Jouster had not thrown him hard, and his breath was not driven out of him. He’d landed on a sort of carry pad of stuffed leather in front of the Jouster’s saddle, and he clung to it like a lizard on a ceiling as the Jouster leaped into the saddle itself.

  Then the dragon tensed himself all over, stretched his wings wide, and with a leap and a tremendous beat of those wings, took to the sky with a frightening lurch. The sudden upward movement pressed Vetch into the carry pad, and he felt the Jouster seize the band of his loincloth again, and for the second time in his life, fear replaced every other sensation; the fear that he was falling, falling!

  But he fought back the fear, and clung to the pad. A second wing beat drove them higher—through a storm of dust kicked up by the wind of those wings, Vetch watched Khefti’s striped canvas awnings over the woodpile, the kitchen court, and the summer pavilion on the roof go ripping loose and flying off.

  Below them, Khefti lifted his arms to the sky and began to howl like a jackal.

  A third wing beat, a third tremendous gust, and half the thatch of the drying shed tore loose as well, and the furnishings from the rooftop tumbled over the edge into the street. Fashionable light wickerwork chairs and tables, palm-frond mats and pillows stuffed with duck- and goosedown came off the roof like a shower of gifts from a generous noble; passersby scrambled after the bounty and carried off everything they could seize. Khefti was not well-beloved . . . he could count on never seeing so much as a stray feather again. His howls were mingled with curses and entreaties to the gods—who, with luck, were deaf to his pleas.

  And the last of Vetch’s fear evaporated in half-mad glee at the sight.

  A fourth wing beat, and Vetch could no longer see the house of his former master, only hear his thin wailing from below as he lamented his losses and called upon the gods to witness his ruin.

  The ground whirled away as the dragon wheeled, the fear returned, redoubled, and Vetch closed his eyes and hung on with all his might.

  He had no illusion that this was rescue; he had merely traded one master for another. But this one, at least, had chided Khefti for starving and mistreating him. So perhaps this master would be better than Khefti.

  At least he would be different.

  At least, life would be different.

  And to that thought, he clung, as he clung to the saddle-pad, and with much of the same desperation.

  TWO

  GLEE could not hold back the terror for long. In all of his life, Vetch had never been higher off the ground than the top of a wall; now he was so far above the earth that the tiniest glimpse of it getting farther and farther away made him feel sick and dizzy.

  And this, evidently was only the beginning.

  When he’d seen dragons passing overhead, it had never occurred to him how high they were. Now he knew—oh, how he knew!—and the knowledge was enough to scare him witless.

  The dragon continued to rise, surging upward and upward, so high that Vetch squeezed his eyes closed again, for he could not bear the sight of villagers reduced to the size of ants, and the mud-brick houses of the nameless hamlet on the outskirts of Mefis to the size of the pebbles that the ants swarmed around. This was bad enough, would have been bad enough had the flight been as smooth as those his spirit took in dreams.

  But no. With every wing beat, the dragon lurched skyward, then dropped back a little, convincing Vetch’s stomach that they were all about to plummet to the ground. If he’d had anything in his stomach, he would have lost it within the first few moments. As it was, his gorge rose, and there was a musty, sour taste in the back of his throat to accompany the nausea. Vetch kept his eyes squeezed shut.

  Finally, they stopped lurching and bounding, and Vetch cracked his right eye open a trifle to see that the dragon was gliding out in level flight. This was only relatively level; it still rose and fell again with each wing beat, except when it was gliding. When the dragon glided, his stomach was a hard, cold knot of agony, certain that they were about to fall out of the sky. When it beat its wings, his stomach turned over again.

  In the first moments of the flight, he vowed that if he ever set foot upon the ground again, he would never leave it . . . and once they reached the height that the Jouster wanted, he vowed that if he lived through this experience, he would dig a hole in the ground and live in it for the rest of his life. Eyes shut, or eyes open? Both states left him in a state of panic.

  When his mind unfroze enough for him to notice anything but fear, the first thing that struck him was the extraordinary heat of the dragon’s body, hot as the hottest sand at midday during the dry season, hotter than the furnace wind of the kamiseen, heat that came up through the pad he clung to. Which was just as well, as he was shivering in a cold sweat. The other was the feeling of the Jouster’s hard, strong hand in the small of his back, once again holding to the belt of his loincloth. Never once did that grip weaken; Khefti-the-Fat might have been strong beneath the blubber, but this man was ten times stronger. And after a few moments of “level flight,” Vetch began to believe that at least the Jouster wasn’t going to let him fall.

  Not that he was enjoying the experience. Given his face-down position, he couldn’t open his eyes without staring down—a very, very long way down—at the ground that was now so horribly far beneath them. And he couldn’t close his eyes without being horribly aware of every little lurch and lean of the dragon that carried him. His heart was pounding so hard with fear that he thought it might burst through his chest; the wind of the dragon’s wing beats drowned out every other sound, and now the pain of those two stripes burned all across the stretched skin of his back, adding to the ache of his fingers, arms, and legs as he clun
g to the pad.

  Of the two options, he finally decided that not looking was the lesser of the two evils. So he squeezed his eyes tight anyway and prayed; there wasn’t much else he could do. He prayed to Altan and Tian gods both, though the prayers were anything but articulate, and certainly not even close to the proper forms, consisting of all the gods’ names jumbled up together with get me down!

  But the gods were with him, it seemed; the flight wasn’t a long one. Just about the time when Vetch’s muscles were starting to cramp and hurt from the strain of holding on, he felt the dragon dropping, and this time, the falling sensation didn’t end in an upward lurch. He cracked open one eye, to see the ground rushing up at them, and squeezed both of them as tightly shut again as he could. If anything, seeing that they were hurtling back toward the ground was worse than seeing it so far below them. His heart seemed to stop as the fall went on, and on, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

  Now the great wings thundered all around him, fiercely beating the air, and Vetch redoubled his grip on the pad. He braced for the impact of hitting the ground—

  But it never came—

  Only sudden stillness, and the snap of wings folding, like canvas or leather snapping in a high wind.

  And no movement, no movement at all.

  Was it over?

  Vetch’s eyes flew open involuntarily.

  Face-down on the pad as he was, the first thing he saw was the dragon’s shoulder, the folded wing, and then, the ground, a proper distance away, with a beetle crawling across it that was a real beetle, not an ox reduced to the size of a beetle by distance.

  The ground! Never had he been so happy to see a stretch of earth!

  The Jouster’s hand loosened on Vetch’s belt, and without being prompted, Vetch let go of the pad and slid down the dragon’s hot, smooth shoulder to the earth. His feet hit the ground together, his legs buckled under him, and he landed on his rump, but he scrambled to his feet quickly, his eyes never leaving his new master, much though he wanted to just lie on the ground and embrace it. The Jouster tossed his leg over the saddle and the dragon’s neck, and jumped lightly down, giving his dragon a hearty slap on the shoulder. The dragon snorted, and tossed his head a little.