Joust Read online

  But the knowing one laughed. “Tame a dragon? Are you mad? You think tending the old ones is work—try taming one from the shell! It’s too much work, much too much work! If you think you work hard now, just think what it would be like to tend two dragons instead of one, and spend all of your free time with the baby so he thought of you as his mama, and help him with his fledging, and train him to saddle before he actually flew! You’d be so busy you’d meet yourself coming and going! Don’t think they’d let you off of tending your Jouster’s dragon, because they wouldn’t!”

  “Yes, but—Kashet’s so tame, so easy to work with—wouldn’t it be worth it?” the other persisted.

  “Not if the King wants Jousters, and wants them now,” replied another of the older boys. “Training takes long enough as it is, and the only people that really benefit from a tame dragon are the dragon boys. While the tala makes dragons tractable, why bother?”

  The talk turned to other things, then—mostly about girls outside the compound—and Vetch lost interest. But what he’d heard had been very useful.

  Now he knew why both Ari and Kashet were different. Why Ari was so particular about his dragon boy, and why, at the same time, he was surprisingly considerate to Vetch.

  So, the Jouster had been in Vetch’s shoes before he’d tamed his dragon. And he hadn’t just gotten a fledgling from the hunters, he’d somehow raised one from the egg!

  Vetch had been allowed to make a single goose into a particular pet when he’d been deemed old enough; a goose that was guaranteed never to go into the pot (or at least, not until it had died of an honorable old age or accident). He had been given a hatching egg, so that the first thing that the baby had seen was him. It hadn’t been a case of taming the gosling so much as raising it.

  And Ari had done that. With a dragon. Which must, based on how much food the young gosling ate, and all the care and brooding it required, have been a phenomenal amount of work!

  Small wonder the King wasn’t willing to train dragons for the Jousters that way. . . .

  For not just anyone could train the young hatchlings that way. The gosling hadn’t followed any human as its mother, it had only followed Vetch. No, that task would have to be taken on by the Jouster who meant to fly that particular dragon. Which meant that the Jouster could not be fighting at the same time, because bringing in regular meals to keep a baby dragon’s belly full would be a full-time job. As well as the cleanup, afterward.

  Not that Vetch particularly wanted to see more Jousters in the air; not when they were leading the fight against his people. . . .

  It made him feel very queasy inside, to be reminded of that. Here he was, serving the enemy—

  —not that he had a choice.

  Not if he wanted to live, eat—not, in particular, if he wanted to do more than eke out a miserable existence.

  He shook his head a little. Too many complicated things! he told himself fiercely, redoubling his efforts on the saddles. And what was the point of thinking about it, for what could he do? He was only a little boy. No matter what he did, no matter what became of him, nothing in the greater world would change. The war would still go on, and Ari would just find another boy for Kashet.

  Shobek came over at that moment to inspect what he’d done, and grunted his satisfaction with the work.

  Vetch noticed then that the other boys were putting their work aside for Shobek to inspect and gather up. Some he nodded over, some he scolded for shoddy workmanship. “You’ll only get it to do over again tomorrow,” he said crossly, as one of the boys looked sullen. “Haven’t you gotten that through your thick skull yet? Well?”

  “Yes, Shobek,” the boy replied.

  “Then if you don’t want to keep seeing the same job on the same saddle again, over and over for the rest of your life, do it right tomorrow!” He looked around at the rest of the boys, whose attitude had changed, and who all looked eager to be gone from there. “Well, off with you.”

  They were off, like a shot. Vetch didn’t know what to do, but he was saved from having to ask by the arrival of Haraket.

  “You, Kashet’s boy—remember that you are to come here right after pen cleaning after the noon meal,” the old man said, as Haraket took possession of him. “Remember! Every day!”

  “Yes, sir—” he called back over his shoulder, though he wasn’t certain the old man heard him, for a new crop of six or eight boys came crowding in to fill the small room.

  “Now,” Haraket said, as he led Vetch down a corridor decorated with royal hawks, the token of the god Haras. “You will learn what it means to serve your Jouster as well as your dragon.”

  FOUR

  VERY shortly, Vetch had a good idea where he was. They had gone this way earlier, in Vetch’s whirlwind tour of the compound. This corridor, where the Temple of Haras also stood, marked, in fact, by the images of the god Haras, led to the Jousters’ private quarters. This place wasn’t so difficult to find his way around in after all!

  The Jousters’ importance would have been evident even to someone who didn’t know what they were, just by virtue of the wall decorations on this corridor. Rather than simple carved images at the intersections of other corridors, the walls here were adorned with stunning, brilliantly colored paintings of the god Haras, in his falcon-headed human form, in his falcon form, in his form of Haras-re, the falcon of the sun. These paintings were huge, covering the entire wall, from top to bottom, and Vetch had never seen anything like them for sheer beauty. Certainly nothing could compare to them, even in the Temples he had been in. If this was what the corridor outside the Jousters’ quarters looked like, what must the palace of the Great King be like? Were his paintings not paintings at all, but inlaid with precious materials?

  They ended up at the doorway arch leading to the Jouster’s quarters. This was a very large opening, with the royal hawks carved into the limestone wall in basrelief on either side, and a third hawk with wings spread wide carved over the lintel, all so incredibly painted he expected them to spring to life at any moment.

  Why not a dragon? he wondered. But this was not the time to ask. “Here,” Haraket said, but not to Vetch, “This is Ari’s new boy. His name is Vetch. Ari chose him himself.”

  “So I’ve heard,” replied the resplendent personage at the door. The person to whom Haraket was speaking was in every possible way the opposite of Haraket. Where Haraket was muscular, this man was thin as a reed; where Haraket was bald and apparently disdained the use of a head covering altogether, this man wore an elaborately braided and beaded wig—though truth to tell, beneath the wig, he was likely shaved bald as well. This was no coarse horse-hair or linen-thread wig. This was a wig made of human hair, dark and lustrous, each tiny braid no thicker than the cords of a snare, and ending in a turquoise, gold, or carnelian bead. It made Vetch’s head spin to think how much it must have cost—and this Overseer was wearing it as an everyday ornament!

  Haraket was brisk, but not entirely unfriendly; this fellow was haughty and cold. Haraket’s clothing was simple; this man had an ornately pleated kilt of fine linen and a belt, armbands, and collar of faience and woven beads, as well as ornamented sandals. His collar featured the royal hawk with outstretched wings, rather than merely a faience ornament of the hawk’s eye, and he clutched a gilded, carnelian-tipped wand of office as if he feared to permit it to leave his hand.

  The man looked down at Vetch with a thinly veiled sneer. “And this—is to tend to Jouster Ari.”

  Haraket shrugged; he looked indifferent, but Vetch sensed an undercurrent of disdain and dislike—not for him, but aimed at the other man. He also had the feeling that Haraket understood this haughty fellow much better than the fellow understood Haraket. “He may surprise you; they tell me he’s surprised everyone else today with how diligent a worker he is.”

  “A serf?” the other man’s eyebrow raised.

  Haraket made a noncommittal sound. “We all know how phenomenally lucky Ari is, maybe he’s the kind that can look into t
he muck of a newly flooded field and find the Gold of Honor.”

  The other Overseer looked pained. Haraket ignored him, and tapped Vetch on the shoulder.

  “Vetch, this is Te-Velethat, the Overseer in charge of the Jousters’ personal quarters. You do what he tells you, until he sends you back to me or I come to fetch you.” Haraket still sounded indifferent, but Vetch read the warning in his words. Haraket had no power here; this was Te-Velethat’s realm, not his. It was up to Vetch to keep himself out of trouble and satisfy the Overseer of the Jousters’ quarters.

  Well, this was familiar territory. There was only one way to satisfy someone like Te-Velethat.

  Grovel and work. Grovel a very great deal, with such subservience that he might just as well offer his head to the Overseer’s sandal, and work as hard as ever he had for Khefti. Well, he could do that. He had a great deal of practice at both by now.

  Vetch bowed, as low and as well as he possibly could, noticing as he did so that the skin of his back felt tight, but not sore. Whatever Haraket had rubbed on the whip cuts had worked a wonder!

  Te-Velethat sighed theatrically, but didn’t seem displeased by the exaggerated display of subservience.

  Haraket took that as a signal to depart, and did so; he turned on his heel and stalked off as quickly as he could without it looking like a retreat. Vetch didn’t blame him.

  But at least he knew exactly where he was with Te-Velethat. The man was probably a freed slave; he was certainly desperate that his status be noted and acknowledged by anyone he considered to be his inferior. And that was precisely how to get along with such a man; Te-Velethat was far less of an enigma to Vetch than Haraket and Jouster Ari were.

  In that, he was, thus far, a typical, arrogant Tian.

  Vetch hated him, of course.

  Vetch also knew better than to show that hatred. Like Khefti, the man would not hesitate to punish the least sign of insubordination. And Haraket would not defend Vetch in such a case, for the welfare of Kashet was not at stake here, and obeying this Overseer was. Though Haraket might dislike Te-Velethat, Vetch expected that he would certainly feel Te-Velethat was justified in punishing the rebellion of an Altan serf.

  So Vetch kept his eyes down and his hatred to himself. He reminded himself that all he had to do was obey orders, which would not, could not, be as onerous as the tasks Khefti routinely set him. When he’d served Khefti, he’d come to regard cleaning as almost a holiday. He would not be slaving in the hot sun at midday, and Te-Velethat could only claim his time until Kashet returned.

  The Overseer waved impatiently at him. “All right—boy. Come along.” Te-Velethat might look an indolent sort, but he wasted no time; he turned abruptly and strode off with the fast, jerky pace of a stork in a hurry, and obviously expected Vetch to follow. Vetch did, running to keep up; he had the feeling that there was no way that he could appear to be too subservient.

  The plan of the Jousters’ section of this maze was clear once they passed that doorway. It consisted of a series of courtyards, each centered by a pool for bathing or with ornamental fish and latas in it, with the Jousters’ personal rooms arranged around the courtyards. Each courtyard was linked to the next by a covered hallway that pierced each room-ringed court like a needle so that the squares of courtyard and rooms lay along the hall like beads on a string. At this hour, evidently, all the quarters were deserted by their tenants, though there were several boys to be seen, busy cleaning rooms.

  The haughty fellow eventually stopped at one of the quietest of the courtyards. The pool here, although there were blue latas growing at one end, was clearly used both for swimming and as an ornament; the latas were planted in their own section, separated from the swimming portion of the pool by a raised wall just under the surface of the water, and the rest was tiled in white and green. A canvas shade had been stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other at one end, giving some relief from the heat of the sun. The courtyard was paved with stone, and there were small date palms, some bearing fruit, planted in enormous terracotta pots arranged at intervals around the central pool. There seemed to be four suites of rooms in this court. The Overseer stopped at the entrance to one of those suites, and looked down at Vetch as if expecting him to stand there like an idiot.

  Or, perhaps, waiting for an excuse to use the little whip that was fastened to the beaded belt at his side. That too-familiar smoldering in the pit of his belly warned Vetch; he must not give the Overseer an excuse, not only to beat him, but to dismiss him altogether.

  He was not anxious to lose a place where he was being fed as much as he could eat, he had clean clothing and baths, and there was no Khefti.

  Especially not over something as ridiculous as not being able to do a little cleaning properly.

  Khefti had been too miserly to hire many servants or purchase slaves, so Vetch had done just about every task in the household that didn’t require special training. Including a great deal of cleaning.

  Vetch took a step or two inside the doorway, and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. This was a simple enough set of rooms; that was something of a surprise. Vetch would have expected a great deal more in the way of luxury, but there was nothing elaborate but the wall paintings, really. There were three rooms in a row across this side of the courtyard, with a small storage room to the left of the central one in which Vetch now stood, and what was probably the bedroom to the right. Only the outer wall facing the pool was faced with limestone; the rest was sensibly constructed of mud brick with a layer of thick sand-colored plaster covering the brickwork, leaving a smooth surface for the wall paintings. The walls themselves were as thick as Vetch’s forearm, with horizontal slit-windows up near the ceiling. Every Tian house, other than the simplest mud-brick huts, had those, meant to provide means for a cooling breeze to flow through, though at the moment, what was whining through them was the kamiseen.

  Te-Velethat waited, just as Haraket had waited, presumably to see if Vetch would act on his own initiative. Without being ordered, Vetch entered the main room and immediately began picking up discarded clothing, tidying away scrolls and rolls of reed paper, capping a bottle of ink left open—after all, that was what those other boys had been doing, in other rooms in this same complex. If Te-Velethat thought he was a stupid barbarian who had to be explicitly ordered what to do, he was going to be surprised.

  With a look of relief, the Overseer left him alone without another word to him, either of instruction or of warning. Now that, in its way, was something of a trap. Vetch had no doubt that Te-Velethat would be back to check on his work—and would also be looking sharp for anything missing that Vetch might have tried to steal. That was fine; the day Vetch couldn’t manage a little simple cleaning was a day when crocodiles would turn to latas roots for their sustenance. And Te-Velethat could look in vain for signs that Vetch had stolen anything. Stealing from Ari, besides being just plain wrong, would also be stupid; Vetch would be willing to bet that the Jousters’ property had plenty of precautionary curses on it, and anyone who stole anything of theirs would live just long enough to regret it.

  This was a curious set of rooms. Vetch was acquainted with farmhouse comfort, and Khefti’s idea of luxury; this didn’t match either of those models. With Te-Velethat out of the way, he spent a little time exploring it.

  Ari not only had his set of three rooms, on the other side of the bedroom, in what would be a corner room, he had a bathing room shared with another set of rooms. Presumably those rooms were just now empty, since when Vetch poked his nose curiously in there, he saw there were no personal possessions in them. The storeroom was just that; it contained chests, boxes and jars, two bolts of linen, rolls of paper, a few oddments, all on wooden shelves. The room that opened out into the courtyard held a charcoal brazier, a writing desk and a flat cushion to sit on, stools, a low table and chair beside it, a couch with another little table and an alabaster lamp, and a large chest of scrolls. The lamp was a simple, thin cup, meant to hold oil and a floating wick
. Spare furnishings, to Vetch’s mind, and the furnishings themselves were plain and virtually unornamented. The plastered walls, however, were covered with beautiful paintings; in the central room, these paintings featured scenes from court life. On the first wall, lithe little dancers wearing nothing more than jewelry; on the second, musicians, a harper, a woman with a drum, a flute player, and two girls with sistrums. A set of shaven-headed acrobats cavorted on the third, and a group of men with the hawk-eye amulets were lounging at a feast on the fourth. The paintings were life-sized and wonderfully done, in fine, clear colors.

  The sleeping chamber held Ari’s bed and headrest, two chests that held clothing, an armor stand (now empty), a rack for the lances that gave the Jouster his title, and a rack that held both the short and the long bow, and quivers of arrows for each. The last was interesting, given what Vetch had learned today about why Jousters didn’t use bows. Did Ari hunt? If so, what, and when?

  The bed was a simple, elegant frame with a woven lattice for maximum coolness; the headrest an elegant, but unadorned curve of wood. There was a table beside the bed with an oil lamp on it, another with a round mirror and a pot of kohl for lining the eyes as well as a razor. No Tian would do without kohl; it protected the eyes from the glare of the sun. There were some cushions and some good rugs on the floor, but not a great deal else. In the sleeping chamber, scenes of nature adorned the walls; the river, with blossoming reeds and latas, horses racing across the desert, birds flying above a field—and on the wall most visible to the bed, a great dragon, wings spread. There was no doubt that the dragon was meant to be Kashet, for it had his coloring.

  These were paintings that, if Vetch was any judge, were worthy of a palace. Yet there were few other signs of luxury; in the main chamber, nothing much ornamental but that truly handsome alabaster lamp made in the shape of three latas flowers, each of which would hold oil and a floating wick. In the bedchamber, only what Vetch had found, no jewelry chest, only another fine lamp. There wasn’t even a board for hounds and hares, or the pebble game, which adorned nearly every other home Vetch had ever seen.