Joust Read online

  It wasn’t easy work, cleaning these filthy saddles and harnesses, but compared to hauling water in the full sun and the kamiseen wind to nourish the tala, it was practically like having a holiday. For once, he wasn’t concentrating on the curse on Khefti, nor on not spilling a bucket. He found himself half entranced while he worked, thinking of nothing at all, merely listening to the other dragon boys chatter softly to one another. Evidently, so long as they got their quota of mending done and didn’t talk too loudly, their Overseer didn’t care if they gabbled away.

  But then, they were all freeborn. Freeborn boys obviously had fewer constraints on their behavior, even when working at a task, than serfs. There were limits on how much they could be punished, and for what infractions; freeborn boys could leave an apprenticeship if their parents agreed, so a Master had better not beat them more often than their fathers did if he wanted to keep them. The more difficult the job they were apprenticed to, the more freedom they tended to have, so given how difficult the dragons were to work with, the dragon boys probably got away with a great deal.

  Of Khefti’s apprentices, two were learning the skilled trade of the potter, the other four, the far-less-skilled task of the brick maker. The pottery apprentices lorded it over the other four, who got no relief even when Khefti took his daily nap. They had a canopy to work under; Khefti deemed that sufficient for their needs.

  Vetch wondered, though, whether dragon boy counted as being an apprentice, or being a real job. Or were there degrees within the task—that you were the equivalent of an apprentice until you became an Overseer, or even a Jouster? There certainly weren’t any dragon boys over the age of fifteen or sixteen, not if he was any judge of ages.

  This lot ignored his presence altogether, which suited him. They spoke of other boys, of their families, of what they planned to do this evening when the dragons slept and their duties were over. It astonished him, a little, to hear how very much they were allowed to do in their free time, for Khefti’s apprentices were permitted to leave their Master’s home only to go straight back to their own.

  But the dragons didn’t fly by night. Perhaps they couldn’t. When the sun-god descended, and it grew cold, perhaps they slept. That would mean that there wasn’t much in the way of duties for a dragon-boy after sundown.

  Certainly all of them had plans to enjoy themselves. Some of them planned to bathe in certain pools in the complex, some to fish by moonlight, and a favored few, older, and who actually had real money to spend, intended to visit a wine house outside the complex.

  Then some of the talk turned to certain dragons and Jousters, and the nobles of the King’s court who had an interest in them.

  “The next time Lord Seftu invites Kest-eman for a feast, I’m to come along,” boasted one, to the apparent envy of his peers.

  “Lord Seftu!” exclaimed a boy with who should not have adopted the shaved-head style, for it made his exceedingly round head look like a grape on a slender stem. “They say he has acrobats and dancers and musicians at all of his feasts! And river horse, and bustard and sturgeon and honeyed dates stuffed with nuts—”

  “And boating on his pleasure lake by moonlight,” chimed in another, enviously. “And every guest has a serving maid of his own.”

  “He’s been to every practice,” the first boy said smugly. “And he’s won a great deal of money on Besere, thanks to what I told him. He told Besere that he wants to reward both of us.”

  “On top of what he’s given you already?” exclaimed the round-headed boy. “Shekabis, when we’re done, can I touch you? Maybe some of that luck will rub off!”

  Vetch learned massive amounts about the Jousters and their lives just by listening. The nobles, it seemed—some of them, anyway—found it entertaining to watch the jousting practices. They would wager on the Jousters as they practiced the skills that made them what they were, sometimes tipping the dragon boys for information on the health and temper of dragons and their riders. Now Vetch had at least one minor question answered. So that was where the boys were getting their money!

  And—as he stretched his ears shamelessly to listen—he soon found that wasn’t the only way they got money to spend.

  “Lady Heetah’s getting desperate. She gave me a whole silver piece to carry a message to Ari this morning,” one of the older boys said, with a sly grin for the others. Even Vetch knew what that meant. Ladies didn’t ask boys to carry messages to men unless they were in the midst of (or wanted to instigate) a love affair. It sounded as if this Lady Heetah was in the latter position.

  “And did you?” asked the round-headed boy, with a lift of his lip that suggested that Lady Heetah was throwing away good money on a hopeless cause.

  “I left it in his rooms, when I went to clean Abatnam’s.” The first boy shrugged. “Who’s to say if he even looked at it? Or cared, if he saw it. She should have learned better by now; she sent me on a fool’s errand, that one. But she pays well.”

  “Besotted.” The second shook his head. “Stupid women. As well court the image of Ta-Roketh in the Temple of Kernak as Ari. Actually, you’d be better off courting the statue. You might get a miracle and the image might fill with the god and respond to your invitation.”

  “That’s what Lesoth says,” another of the older boys nodded wisely. “Ari’s never paid attention to court ladies. Oh, he likes his women, well enough—he’s never even looked at a pretty boy—but the court ladies haven’t a chance with him. Paid night blossoms, yes; Ari is like any other man with them.”

  One who had been silent until then rolled his eyes. “Like any other man? Like a Bull of Hamun, you mean! Lesoth says that Ari’s got a mighty reputation in Seles-teri’s wine shop! The dancing girls there all know him well!”

  The others laughed knowingly, and Vetch gathered from that comment that “Seles-teri’s wine shop” was one of those where the dancing girls performed horizontally as well as vertically.

  “But ladies,” the boy continued, shaking his head. “Ladies might as well throw their silver down a well as waste it on paying us to take love poems to Ari. Married or not, it doesn’t matter. He won’t so much as look at them, no matter how they fling themselves at him.”

  “So they might as well give their silver to us as not,” a third put in, impudently. “It doesn’t hurt Ari, and a foolish woman can’t hold onto money anyway. I’ll carry love poems for them, aye, and even put them in his bed!”

  A fourth snorted. “No more chance of that with the new boy around. It’s him who’ll get the silver now.”

  But the second shook his head. “Na, na, the silver will stay in their purses, worse luck. You know they won’t trouble to bribe a serf, they’ll just order him to do what they want. Not that it’ll make any difference. Four years I’ve served Jouster Kelandek, and he says that Ari’s the smartest of the whole pack of Jousters. That Ari prefers paid women, because he can send them off when his pleasures are over, and no jealousies and weeping, after, and that if he had any sense, he’d follow Ari’s example, instead of getting entangled with spoiled cats.”

  They seemed to have forgotten Vetch’s presence entirely—or else, because he was a serf, they paid no more heed to him than if he’d been a piece of furniture. Which was fine by Vetch. The more he could overhear about his new master, the better.

  And the boys continued on in that vein, each one with another tidbit or two, about the ladies who had tried to attract Ari’s attentions, about the dancing girls and pleasure women (the higher-class ones, called “night blossoms”) that Ari had brought back to his rooms after an evening spent outside the compound or when a troupe was sent in by the Great King or the Vizier to entertain the Jousters as a reward. It was very soon apparent to Vetch, though, that despite all the innuendoes and sly hints, the other dragon boys knew little more about what happened in Ari’s quarters then than did the ladies who sought in vain for the Jouster’s favors. There was much speculation and very little substance in what they said.

  It was also quit
e clear that this—the carrying of messages from ladies who sought the company of a Jouster—was the easiest source of some, if not all, of the dragon boys’ ready money. The messages were clandestine, of course. Those ladies that were married needed to take care that their lords and husbands didn’t find out that they fancied a Jouster. Those that were concubines needed to be nearly as careful, for though they might not have the position of wife, their lords would take it very much amiss to discover they were offering those favors to another which should have been reserved to their lord and master. Only the unmarried and unmated ladies could distribute their favors freely, and even then, care had to be taken that a jealous suitor or wrathful father did not get wind of a romance. The Jousters were a class apart, but that didn’t mean that parents of rank wanted a love affair going on with one. Jousters had no real wealth of their own unless it came to them from their fathers, no land, no property, nothing of substance to offer a wife and her family in the way of an alliance. Everything they enjoyed was provided by the King, and came back to the King if they died. They might, if they were notable fighters, survive long enough to get the Gold of Favor as well as the Gold of Honor, and perhaps be ennobled and be given a house and land. But given the nature of the way that they fought, defeat was usually fatal, and few lived to retire with honor.

  All this, Vetch had already known; the Jousters were famous across the length and breadth of Tia, and if they weren’t individually public heroes, lionized and lauded whenever they set foot outside the compound, it was because the Great King wished them to be thought of as his personal force, much like the King’s Regiment, not as individuals. In the rigid hierarchy of Tian society, the Jousters were unique and occupied a niche that was only just short of ennobilization, had many of the material privileges of being noble, yet were utterly dependent on the King for those privileges.

  It slowly dawned on Vetch that the Jousters were, in their way, no freer than he was. If he was tied to a piece of land, they were tied to the dragons. They could serve only the Great King, and all that they had, they owed to him. They actually owned very little, for most of what they had was also the Great King’s. And if they lived in great luxury, well, they paid for that in the risking of their lives every day.

  As the others nattered on, Vetch gleaned some idea of just what that meant.

  A lucky shot from below, or a particularly skilled marksman could bring a rider down. When dragons ventured too near the ground, they could be hurt, and when injured, not all the tala in the world would control them—and usually the first thing to go was the saddle and rider. Riders simply fell from the backs of their dragons all the time; sometimes in combat with the Jousters of Alta, but just as often in simple practice. The dragons did not always cooperate with their riders; sometimes riders were thrown, and sometimes there were midair collisions, in the course of which a Jouster could be thrown from his saddle.

  He gathered that there were nets of some sort intended to catch a downed Jouster if he fell in practice, but sometimes the accidents happened when the Jousters weren’t over the nets.

  And of course, there were the clashes with the Jousters of Alta, as each rider attempted to deliberately unseat the other with his lance.

  “Is Lesoth still trying to find a way to use a bow?” asked the round-headed boy.

  “No. He gave that up yesterday when he finally got tired of Nem-teth snapping at his arrows when he loosed them,” the other answered. “Jouster Ari finally took him aside and warned him that he could choose between Nem-teth catching all of his arrows, or breaking Nem-teth of catching all arrows.”

  “Ouch.” The round-headed boy winced. “That would be bad.”

  “Believe it,” the boy nodded. “As it is, it takes a lucky shot to hit a Jouster. If his dragon stopped snapping at arrows, though—” He made a strangling noise, evidently intending to convey—quietly—the desired effect.

  So—that was why they didn’t try to use bows themselves, and why they weren’t being shot out of the sky on a regular basis!

  He was learning an awful lot just by sitting here, cleaning leather.

  Thinking it over, it seemed as if a lance was the only really practical weapon since a bow was out of the question. A club—well, you couldn’t get close enough to use a club. You couldn’t throw a spear, not with the dragon’s wings flailing away on either side of you. A sling—well, that took a lot of skill. A sword presented the same problems as a club. Which left the lance. . . .

  In the case of a lance strike in a real Joust, a fall in that case was invariably fatal; the dragon, if not captured by another Jouster, might or might not return to its pen. Other than Kashet, the dragons’ only loyalty lay in that they were fed regularly, and that was not necessarily enough to bring a riderless dragon back to his pen when they were far from home and the mountains so temptingly near.

  Though, in fact, one had returned from combat this very day. Its dragon boy was not envied; a dragon without a Jouster didn’t get regular exercise, and it was prone to get irritated or sluggish under such circumstances. If the former, well, it was the boy that the dragon took his ill temper out on. And if the latter, when the dragon did get a new Jouster, it would become irritable when forced to exercise and lose the fat that it had gained in the interim.

  The boys’ talk concentrated on the dragon that had returned, and commiseration with its boy, not the rider that had fallen. In fact, they didn’t even once mention his name. That was not callousness on their part, in fact, Vetch considered such caution very wise; too much talk of him might bring his spirit here, instead of it staying properly in his tomb.

  Night-walking spirits were not known for their gentleness. A hungry ghost might remember old grievances, or feel jealous of the living. There were a hundred ways such a ghost could revenge himself on the living. He could bring fever spirits, or the demons of ill luck; he could plague the sleep with nightmares. He could even lead stronger spirits to the sleeping victim, or drive one mad.

  So the fallen Jouster would be remembered, oh my yes—with proper offerings and sacrifices in the Jousters’ little Temple, tonight; the Temple was consecrated ground, and the Priest of Haras knew how to propitiate a spirit and give it a resting place it would be content with while it waited for proper housing.

  Then all that was right and proper would be accomplished at the Tomb of the Jousters when his body was finished with the forty days of embalming. But that would be across the Great Mother River, in the Vale of the Noble Dead, and was the duty of the mortuary priests. The Tians believed that to enter into the Summer Country, the deceased must have a proper anchoring in an embalmed body, and proper offerings for at least forty days, and more offerings to take with it when it crossed the Sky River. If this was not done, it wandered. If it was not done properly, it wandered, and the longer it wandered, the angrier it became.

  That was why it was not a good idea for the living to walk about at night, for fear of encountering angry or hungry spirits, the more especially if someone who actively hated you had ever died. Khefti, for instance, had made so many enemies that he hardly dared stir at night, and on the few occasions that he did leave the safety of his house after sundown, he was so hung about with charms and amulets that he looked like an amulet hawker, and he rattled with every step.

  Vetch had no experience one way or another with spirits; with Khefti for a master, by the time he was let go for the day, he was so weary he always fell dead asleep. He had tried to set up a tiny shrine for his father, but it kept getting swept away when he was at his labors, and anyway, he didn’t have anything to spare for offerings but the clay loaves and beer jars and other goods he molded in miniature and left there.

  Certainly his father’s spirit had never returned to give him any signs . . . there were tales of that, as well, of spirits that returned to help the living. Though in truth, those tales were fewer than the tales of vengeful ghosts.

  But then, how would his father even know how to get here, or even where Vetch was
? In all of his lifetime, his father had never been farther from his farm than the village.

  “Haraket ordered her fed up and given a double dose of tala,” the boy who was in charge of that returned dragon said. “So she won’t be much of a handful for a while. And I heard straight from him that he’s got a new Jouster for her, so she won’t get a chance to go sour. I can handle her.”

  “There’s a lot of new Jousters coming, I heard,” one of the younger boys ventured cautiously.

  “You heard right. The Great King, may he live a thousand years, wants the number increased,” replied the boy who seemed to know everything—or at least wanted the others to think he did. “There’s more hunters out looking for fledglings, and more Jousters being trained. And more of us, of course. That’s probably why Ari came in with a serf on his own so he could free up Haraket from tending Kashet; Haraket’s not going to have the time to tend Kashet pretty soon, what with all of that going on.”

  Now a glance of speculation was cast in his direction, but when he saw the way the conversation was going, Vetch had quickly dropped his gaze to his work.

  “Think they’ll put more serfs in as dragon boys if this one does all right?” asked a new voice.

  The leader sounded as if he wasn’t opposed to that idea. “Probably. I’ll tell you what, though, that might be a good thing. I mean, think about it, new Jousters have to come from somewhere, so why not us, on a regular basis, instead of only now and again? After all, we know as much about the dragons as the Jousters, and we spend more time with them. Ari was a dragon boy, they say, or maybe a scribe, before he tamed Kashet. In fact, that was why they made him a Jouster.”

  “So why don’t all the dragon boys tame dragons?” someone else asked. “Then we could all be Jousters instead of shoveling dung!”