Aerie Read online

  Right now, the tactics were simple: dive out of the sky and spook the animals. The riders would either be carried off with the panicking mounts, or dismount—or be thrown. Once on the ground, they were easier prey. And that was where the first difficulty came in.

  No one had any compunctions about killing these brigands. The question was what to do with them if they surrendered.

  If there was a caravan about, the law was clear, and Great King Ari had repeated it. Bandits were war captives, and as such, became serfs. The caravans could take them and sell them to the highest bidder, or use them as labor. With all of the Altan serfs freed, there was a bit of a shortage of that sort of labor now. More strong captives would be welcome.

  The problem came if there were no caravans about. What to do then? There was no good way to transport them back to the nearest settlement. They certainly couldn’t be brought back by the Jousters; there was no way to do so safely. They couldn’t be released. That was utterly out of the question. So what to do with them? Killing them out of hand was utterly repugnant to Kiron. So was leaving them trussed up in the sunlight to die.

  He still hadn’t solved that problem on the day that the first official patrols began.

  But it was still a relief to lift into the sky on Avatre’s back, in charge of a flight of the “greenies,” Jousters who had never actually seen combat. He wasn’t worried about them; they were merely flying support for Orest’s wing, which was composed of very experienced Altan Jousters, survivors of those terrible days when the Magi had sent them into combat with the ruthless intention of getting rid of them through battlefield attrition. Anyone who had come through that was not going to find a few bandits at all intimidating.

  Kiron’s greenies, all sporting ribbons of his signature color of scarlet, striped in colors picked randomly, were acting as scouts. They ranged ahead and to either side of the trade road in pairs, taking it in turn to fly back to Kiron and the fighting wing to report. He really, truly, did not expect any fighting this day, something he had even warned the others about. It wouldn’t do for them to become disappointed and disillusioned the very first day.

  For the first half of the morning, the most exciting thing that happened was that one of the green youngsters spooked up a lone camel and decided it looked tasty. Green dragon, green rider, and a prey much bigger and tougher than even some experienced hunters would try; it was a good thing that they were flying support, for they were in trouble in moments, and it hadn’t taken the sight of the youngster’s partner flying back in a panic to let most of both wings know something was amiss.

  There was a sudden cloud of dust on the ground where no dust should be rising, and most of the dragons in both wings suddenly turned their heads in that direction, as if they sensed something wrong.

  Avatre did a wingover and headed in that direction on her own, but by the time they arrived, the situation was already well in hand. The camel was down, with Orest’s blue atop it, tearing at the prey, while the youngsters stood off, the dragon’s posture one of chagrin and envy. It wanted the meat. It also knew it was only going to get what Wastet left behind.

  A pointed lesson for both dragon and rider.

  But Wastet had eaten, and eaten well, before he flew. And Orest had no real difficulty pulling him off after he’d had the choicest bits. Not that—in Kiron’s opinion, at least—there was anything particularly choice about a camel.

  This meant a delay as the rider of the offending dragon was dealt with. Finally Kiron decided that the best possible punishment would be to leave him behind.

  The dragon, oblivious and greedy, gorged himself, while the rider stood unhappily by and nodded at Kiron’s orders. “Clearly, either you are not gauging how much to feed him, shirking your hunting duties, or not paying enough attention to his behavior,” Kiron said severely. “You are the human, and you have to think for two. He is a dragon and only knows what he wants to do in the next few moments. So when he is finished eating, you will butcher up what is left and fly back to Aerie. Tell Kalen that I am assigning you to his wing for more training in understanding your dragon.”

  The older riders in Orest’s wing looked pleased at this. Even in the old days, when the dragons were drugged, it had been of prime importance to understand their moods and behavior. And working in the hot sun, butchering a smelly camel, was good punishment for the young man. This was a form of discipline that they strongly approved of.

  For his part, that made Kiron feel a little more like a proper leader. Maybe I can make this work, he thought, as he mounted Avatre and sent her up, the rest of his greenie wing (but one) straggling after him.

  There was a cloud of dust on the far horizon; from here, like a tiny smudge against the blue bowl of the sky, as if the “glaze” on the rim was not quite perfect. He signaled to one of his greenies and sent him on ahead to find out what it was, but since it was on the road, it was a good bet that it was a caravan of some sort.

  A caravan . . .

  There was a particular spot on this trade route that they’d already chased off one group of ambushers a day or so ago. Could it be that this had been no accident? Were the bandits actually expecting this caravan?

  He signaled to Orest, who flew Wastet to within shouting distance. “I have a hunch!” he called, and gestured at the dust smudge. “We might just get some action—”

  Orest grinned, teeth gleaming whitely in his dusty face. “We’re ready for it!” he shouted back. “Lead us in, Captain!”

  As Orest returned to his wing, Kiron signaled the rest of the greenies, and got them in rough formation behind him. Their riders were lighter, the dragons themselves a little smaller, and hence, just a little faster than the older ones, at least in straight flight. There was always a trade-off of weight, power, and speed. Lighter meant faster in racing flight, but not in a dive. A small dragon could never be a powerful one. But a powerful one might not be able to catch him.

  A powerful one might not be able to dodge an arrow.

  Kiron had memorized this stretch of the road, and now led the group straight to the ambush point. For now, he doubted very much whether bandits were looking up for trouble. They had no real reason to. And even if they did, seeing the dragons in the sky would probably make them scatter, which was the point anyway—

  The others might not see it that way, he realized after a moment. They might be spoiling for a fight. He made a mental note to remind them that they weren’t soldiers anymore, they were police, and preventing something from happening was just as good, if not better, than flying to the rescue.

  He’d just have to convince them of that.

  But not, it seemed, today. For ahead of them, in the ambush point, there were little dots that he didn’t recall being there. And Avatre began to strain forward, which told him that her superior eyesight had made out those specks to be animals or people or both. He took a chance, based on the fact that the dots weren’t moving, and waved his hand over his head in the signal for “Enemy sighted.”

  And none too soon either, for the greenie he’d sent out was racing back toward him signaling “Caravan,” and he could see the dark streak against the desert floor beneath that dust cloud that told him the same.

  He sent the greenies up higher, moved Avatre into a middle-height position, and signaled to Orest to bring the seasoned wing in to the forefront of the formation.

  By that point, the dots had resolved themselves into riders, waiting to swoop down over the crest of the hill as soon as the caravan came within reach.

  They were not looking up.

  Although, a moment later, as Orest’s wing came diving down out of the sky, and their camels began to bolt, they were.

  By the standards of the war it was a short, and very much one-sided, battle. Kiron even allowed his greenies to dive down and herd riderless mounts off into the desert as far as they could be chased, while the seasoned fighters concentrated on the bandits themselves. This was plenty of excitement for them.

  The ba
ndits, however, were enough of a menace that the seasoned fighters, individually, had their hands full. Some of them must have dealt with Jousters before this, for a handful of them went back-to-back in a circle, roughly half with spears, and half with bows.

  The bowmen were good shots.

  A deep maroon dragon bellowed in outrage as an arrow pierced his wing web, and as his rider cursed and ducked, an arrow bouncing off his helm, Kiron was glad he’d ordered the experienced Jousters into their scavenged armor today.

  But rather than making them back down, the successful attack on their fellow Jouster infuriated the rest. The angry cry from their injured wingmate ignited the ire of the dragons, and as if they had been given orders from Aket-ten, Kiron watched in astonishment as they did something he had never seen Jousting dragons do before.

  They ignored the commands of their riders and landed, clustering all on one side of the knot of bandits. Then, as one, they half-reared and began furiously fanning the air with their wings.

  A landing dragon had always kicked up a miniature kamiseen. This was eight dragons all blowing up sand and dust and purposefully aiming it at the humans, who were not expecting it.

  Blinded, uttering cries of pain of their own as they dropped weapons and tried to shield their eyes, or clapped their hands over eyes full of sand, they stumbled backward, turning away from their attackers.

  Only to be felled by arrows, javelins, and slung stones and lead bullets. Accustomed now to hitting running game at long range, the cluster of incapacitated bandits at short range was no challenge. They were armored—armor that, it appeared, had been salvaged from Tian and Altan officers—but nothing covered their throats, the backs of their legs, or their eyes.

  The Jousters were ruthless. When they were finished, there were none of that group left standing. It left Kiron feeling a bit sick, but—

  This was war, another sort of war, and this time he had not a lot of sympathy for the enemy. They preyed on the people who were only trying to make an honest copper, who already had to contend with wind and sandstorm and all the other hazards of trade. They stole and killed without provocation. He clenched his jaw and said nothing. The bandits could have surrendered, and the gods only knew what they were guilty of precisely, but they were—at the least—guilty of trying to rob people who had never harmed them.

  It was a short, hot fight, but in the end, it was one-sided.

  It took longer to round up the survivors. Some lay where they had fallen, wounded, or having thrown themselves to the ground, but others—

  “We have runners, Captain,” said Kelet-mat, rider of a bronze-and-yellow beast of placid nature, when a half-dozen brigands waited, trussed hand and foot, in the sun. “What should we do about them?”

  Kiron pondered that for a moment. “Do you think they’ll get anywhere?”

  Kelet-mat grimaced, and raked his black hair out of his eyes with one hand. “I would have said ‘no,’ since there’s nothing but sand and scrub as far as the eye can see—but these rats aren’t soldiers. They have the luck of Seft himself, and it would be just our luck that one of them would go telling what had happened in some scummy tavern and the next lot we have to deal with will be ready for us.”

  “Eventually someone will tell—” Kiron pointed out reluctantly. “But it would be good if we could keep the advantage of surprise for a while longer.” He scratched his head and looked out over the horizon. “All right. You senior riders track them down and round them up. And don’t take unnecessary chances.”

  It wasn’t until the caravan itself arrived that they finished, and as the astonished merchants halted their beasts to stare, Kiron was pondering the second problem; what to do with twenty-some bound captives.

  It was an interesting tableau, actually. On the road, the line of laden camels, blowing and looking nervously at the dragons. The dragons, ignoring them, all lounging happily, basking in the sun. The merchants, torn between apprehension and curiosity, The Jousters in their armor, some of which had already been removed because it was so cursed hot. And the captives.

  Finally, curiosity won, and one of the merchants swung his leg over his saddle, slid down the side of his camel, and headed straight for Kiron.

  The merchant was nothing if not bold. “So, Captain,” he said as soon as he came within earshot. “I can see you’re Jousters, but for which side? And why’ve you trussed up these men like chicken going to market?”

  Kiron smiled. “We’re Jousters for Great King Ari and Great Queen Nofret, which makes us royal police of a sort. You could say we’re on your side, come to that. As for why these fellows are trussed up—if we hadn’t been patrolling when we were, they’d have ambushed you on this very spot.”

  The merchant nodded. “Then you surely have our thanks. But this isn’t the sort of thing that Jousters do—”

  “It is now,” Orest interrupted, with pride written in his very posture. “The Great Royals have given us our orders. We serve the people. We’ll watch the borders, and we’ll guard the roads.”

  The merchant’s eyes started to light up; it was clear he saw all of the implications of this. “Are you police, or army?” he asked carefully.

  Kiron thought that over. And felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Orest had just kicked him.

  His startled glance won him a grimace from his friend, and the silently mouthed word “nomarchs.”

  What—he thought, and then it struck him. The army answered only to its Captains, and the captains only to the generals and the generals only to the Great King himself. But the police, Royal servants though they were, answered to the nomarchs, the governors of provinces, and their line of command ended at the Royal Vizier, not the King. Their services could be commanded at any point by almost anyone in authority down to the headman of a small village.

  So the Jousters, few as they were now, could find themselves spread thin over too much territory, and dependent for the keep and the care of their dragons on people who would think that the three-day-old stinking leavings from the butcher were “good enough” food for something like a dragon.

  “The army,” he said quickly, earning a nod and a flash of grin from Orest.

  “Ah,” the merchant looked a bit disappointed, but then his eye fell again on the bandits, and he brightened. “Then that makes these men war captives, true?”

  Kiron nodded. The merchant grinned toothily. “Well, Captain, in that case, I am authorized to take them off your hands.” He fished inside the neck of his tunic and brought out a medallion on a cord. “I am an authorized dealer in war captives.”

  “Tian, I presume?” Kiron asked, peering at the circle of stamped faience. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of it—

  But Kelet-mat was Tian, and Kiron waved him over. He glanced at the medallion and grinned. “Looks like our problem of how to transport this scum is solved, Captain,” he said. The faces of the captives fell.

  Kiron decided that some scare tactics might be in order.

  “Well, it’s a good thing this fellow came along,” he said gruffly, loud enough for the captives to hear. “The Great King gave me field authority. I was going to try and execute them right here.” He paused. “I don’t know, I still might. The dragons are hungry.”

  For one moment the merchant looked horrified, but as Kiron gave him a broad wink that the captives couldn’t see, his eyes narrowed and a ghost of a smile appeared.

  “That’s a waste of good workers, Captain,” the merchant protested. “You can easily hunt down their camels to feed your dragons—”

  “He’s right,” Orest chimed in. “Besides, there’s more meat on a camel.”

  “All right, then,” Kiron said, sounding as if he had been persuaded, but was still a bit reluctant. “What’s the procedure here?”

  The procedure proved to be fully as bureaucratic as he had suspected it would. Two copies of the list of captives with names and general condition had to be written up on the spot, with Kiron taking one to turn over to whatever Royal Scrib
e was in charge of such things. From there, he had no idea what would become of list or captives—

  But, presumably, the lists would be checked against each other and against the actual captives before they went into the market. Kiron had heard that Ari had made a few changes to that procedure, to make sure that serfs weren’t treated as Kiron—then called Vetch—had been treated. These men had no notion just how much better their lives were going to be than his own had been.

  Pity they didn’t deserve it.

  FIVE

  “A FEMALE Jouster group?” Great Queen Nofret asked, astonished.

  Mind she didn’t look like a Great Queen at the moment; she was in the same sort of linen tunic that Aket-ten was wearing, with her hair held only by a simple headband. She wore no jewelry at all, much less a crown, and she groomed and saddled her dragon, the magnificent purple-and-scarlet The-on, as well as a dragon boy.

  But this was the one time of the day when she was able to relax and not be Great Queen Nofret, when she could become something she had never actually been before: something other than royal. Merely herself. In many ways, Aket-ten did not envy her at all. As she helped to wipe The-on down with oiled cloths, Aket-ten stole glances at Nofret’s serene profile and considered the Queen who was also her friend.

  All her life she had been groomed to be on a throne. First, she had been one half of the female pair of Royal twins that would share the thrones of Alta with the male pair of Royals; that was the way of things in Alta, as the Great Kings and Queens of Alta were always two sets of Royal twins. As the only female pair in the bloodline of reasonable age, she and Marit had always been in the Court, schooled and trained as the probable heirs, and very well aware that their choice of mate and life had been taken out of their hands by the gods.

  But Nofret and Marit had accepted it; well, it wasn’t as if they had any other course of action before them. And they had liked Kaleth and Toreth quite well—