Joust (14 page)

Well, Vetch didn’t doubt
that
one bit.

Haraket left him in the next moment, to go and scold yet another boy for loading his barrow too lightly. Vetch could still hear him roaring at the other lad as he pushed his barrow away down the corridor. “How dare you short your dragon because you’re too lazy to carry him a full meal! How dare you over-season with
tala
to make up for it! You young bastard, are you trying to kill your Jouster? Don’t you know what will happen? If his dragon—”

The sense of the words was lost as Vetch pushed his barrow around another corner, but he wondered what would happen to an underfed, overdrugged dragon. Would it be so weakened that it couldn’t fly properly? Would it just not have enough energy to fly a combat? Would too much
tala
make it drunk, or stupid? Or if it got really hungry, would it turn on its Jouster? Wild dragons could and did eat humans. . . .

He shuddered a little, and hurried on. The east was getting brighter, with long streaks of light shining up across the blue sky, the hands of the God reaching out to touch the land. He found himself humming the morning hymn to Re-Haket for the first time in so very long . . . perhaps for as long as it had been since the last time he remembered smiling. He was smiling now as he whispered the words of the hymn to himself.
How beautiful art Thou, bringer of life, shining-winged one . . . how beautiful with morning’s banners, streaming forth in glory.

Kashet was restive and a little waspish after the long night without food, but in the other pens, Vetch heard hisses and whines, the snapping of jaws, and the curses of the dragon boys. He knew then that he was very lucky to have Kashet as his dragon. All Kashet did was to play his favorite trick for snatching meat from the barrow, snaking his head around the corner again once he spotted Vetch coming from his vantage point over the wall. Vetch been more than half expecting it, so this time he didn’t jump. In fact—the dragon gave him such an amusing sidelong glance as he grabbed his treat that Vetch had to laugh.

So that was three things he hadn’t done . . . forever. He had smiled, sung, and laughed, all in the same morning, before breakfast. He felt a little dizzy with amazement. Yesterday, he had nothing to look forward to but misery. Today—

Kashet ate faster than he had at the two previous meals, probably because he was so hungry. He tossed the meat chunks down his throat as fast as he could without choking, and the barrow was already half empty.

Watching how much Kashet was eating, Vetch made a decision; he dumped what was left in the barrow on the ledge beside the sand wallow, and went back for another half a load. Haraket was still there, and gave him a surprised look and a raised eyebrow when he saw Vetch again. “Kashet’s really hungry,” Vetch said diffidently to the Overseer. “I thought—should I bring him extra?”

“Not just before a flight—but feed him extra when he comes back in, as much as he’ll take,” Haraket decreed, with a thoughtful nod. Then he muttered, as if to himself, “Huh. He may be putting on a growth spurt; they never actually stop growing, after all.”

Vetch waited; he had the feeling that Haraket was making up his mind about something.

“Hmm,” Haraket mused, then did make up his mind. “Wait a moment, boy—Notan!”

The Overseer waved at one of the butchers. “Bring me a basket of hearts for this boy!”

The butcher nodded, and brought over what had been requested, dumping the organs into Vetch’s barrow.

“Now, you go give those to Kashet,” Haraket ordered. “If he’s really putting on a growth spurt—that’s not impossible, even though he’s mature—even though he’s going to be flying shortly, we need to do something about it. So whenever he starts eating like a pig, but he’s going to be going straight out, you ask for a basket of hearts. That’s dense meat; it’ll give him strength without weighing him down. Now, off with you—and Vetch?”

Vetch was already halfway to the door, but he turned obediently at that. “Sir?” he asked.

Haraket was actually smiling, broadly. It quite transformed his face. “Good lad. You’re thinking. Keep it up.
Ask
me first, before you do anything with Kashet, but keep thinking.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling a flush of pride warming his cheeks and ears. He all but ran back to the pen, pushing the much-lighter barrow before him.

Kashet dove on the hearts as if he hadn’t just eaten a full barrow-load of meat. Clearly, they were a great treat for the dragon. Vetch had to laugh, though, at the playful way he would pick one out of the barrow, toss it into the air, and catch it before it hit the ground; Kashet seemed to enjoy the sound of his laughter, too, for he curved his neck and regarded his dragon boy with a sparkling eye that seemed, at least to Vetch, to have a great deal of good-natured humor in it.

Kashet ate every scrap of meat that Vetch had brought, but the last few hearts he ate daintily, taking time to enjoy them. Vetch saddled the now-sated dragon, and the Jouster arrived just as he finished tightening the last of the straps. Kashet cooperated beautifully, dropping and rising on Vetch’s commands as if he had been doing so for years. Once again, Vetch could overhear what was going on in the nearer pens, and it seemed that the other dragons were finally being less obstinate, but only just. Presumably the
tala
made them more obedient. But the other dragon boys had to shout their orders over and over before the dragons obeyed, so Vetch was quite finished long before they got their dragons all buckled and cinched down.

Ari didn’t say anything, but he did give Vetch an abstracted nod when he arrived; after a brief and approving inspection of the harness, Ari patted Vetch on the back in an absentminded way and climbed into his saddle, and a moment later, he and Kashet were hardly more than a little dot in the sky.

By now, the sun was well up and it was beginning to get warm; not all the heat was coming from the sand in Kashet’s wallow. The
kamiseen
whined around the tops of the walls, bringing with it the scent of the desert, and overhead, a vulture circled. And Vetch was beginning to get hungry, despite the packet of bread and meat and honey cake he’d been given last night.

Well, the sooner he got the pen clean, the sooner he could get something to eat.

He got to work, not only cleaning out the droppings, but giving everything a good stir about with a rake that he found. Yesterday at this time, he’d been hauling water and clay and river mud for Khefti’s pottery and the brick yard, with nothing more than a loaf end in his stomach. He’d have done ten times the work he’d done this morning, with more in front of him, and the promise of no reward at all.

This—well,
he
got to judge the size of his loads, the tools were the right size for someone as little as he, and the raking was no work at all compared with anything Khefti set him to do.

At last, with the sun now well above the walls of the compound, and casting long slants of golden light on the sand of the pen, he put the rake away. The light had not yet made its way down into the corridors between the pens, but certainly he had done enough by now to justify getting his breakfast.

Had no trouble finding his way to the kitchen court this time. Just as he got there, one of the girls was pulling the awning across the courtyard and he watched with curiosity.
Now
he realized what that bunched canvas was across the top of one of the walls of Kashet’s pen—it was a similar awning! But it couldn’t be to shelter the dragon from the sun, not when they needed and craved heat so much. . . .

Maybe it’s to keep the rain off?
That actually made sense. It wouldn’t be dry season forever. Soon enough the winter rains would start; however the sands were heated, rain wouldn’t do them any good.

When the serving girl was done, he sat down at what was beginning to be his usual seat at the farthest end of the farthest table, and got his breakfast of hot bread and barley broth with the other boys. Once again, there were others besides the dragon boys eating there, and they were the ones who sat at his table. Many appeared to be servants or craftsmen of one sort or another.

There were a great many of them; more people than lived in both his old village and Khefti’s combined.

He thought about that as he ate, watching the others at the tables around him. He finally decided that it probably took a lot of people to keep this place running: servants for the Jousters and Overseers; leather craftsmen for the saddles and harnesses; wood workers to supply furniture and do repairs; weapons makers to make the lances and clubs that the Jousters used; laundry women; cooks and bakers; seamstresses; stonemasons and brickmakers . . . this place was a little world unto itself.

The other dragon boys, however, had not softened their attitude toward him. Free and Tian, and so far above him that he might as well be a beetle for all of the attention they were carefully not paying him, they were very blatantly excluding him from their company.

Except that they kept looking at him out of the corners of their eyes, and whispering to each other as they did so. It made the wonderful, soft bread form a lump in his throat. He could tell that they would neither forget nor forgive his inferior race and status.

He was an interloper among them, unwelcome. There would be no friends here.

Once again, he got that hollow feeling as he watched them chatting and laughing with each other, and pointedly closing him out of their circle.

He should not have expected anything else, and in his heart, he knew that.

Not even slaving for Khefti had he felt quite so alone. It was worse than having tricks pulled on him. They were all doing the same job, after all, he and they. It wasn’t as if he was going to be doing less than any of them. It wasn’t as if he was going to be especially favored by any of the Overseers. If anything, he could count on Te-Velethat being harder on him than on anyone else!
Why
couldn’t they at least be willing to talk to him, a little? He hadn’t had a real friend in so long. . . .

Small wonder Haraket wanted him to sleep with Kashet. At least the dragon was willing to be his friend.

He clenched his jaw, and turned to his surest defense.

Anger.

What makes
them
the lords of the world, anyway? Just the luck of being born Tian, that’s all! If the war was going differently—any of
them
could be serfs, now, this moment. They don’t deserve their good luck.

He filled the hollow with anger, but it was a slim bulwark against the loneliness. The bread turned as dry as old reeds in his mouth, the broth might as well have been water. It was very hard to swallow, and he stared down into his bowl to avoid their smug glances.

It had been so long since he’d had a friend . . . bleakness made his eyes sting and he closed them, lest he betray himself with a tear.

But perhaps—

A thought occurred to him, and his eyes stopped stinging, and the lump in his throat diminished.

Perhaps, given Haraket’s tirade against one of them this morning—he might not be the only serf as a dragon boy for long. Boys could be dismissed; Haraket had made that abundantly clear. So if he did well, maybe one or more of the other Jousters would follow Ari’s example?

Boys “got airs,” and left of their own accord as well. Who was to say that a Jouster who’d been left in the lurch would not decide it would be much better to have a boy who could not leave?

That made him feel a little better; in fact, it made him feel a bit more courageous. Good enough that, although he did not trade hauteur for hauteur, he lifted his head and straightened his back, concentrating on his hands. Let them pretend they were better than he was!
Haraket
had shown that he approved of how Vetch was doing. It was Haraket and Ari he had to please, not them. He would do better than they; no matter what they did, he would be better at it. He would tend to Kashet until he glowed with health; he would labor at the leather work and do twice as much as any of them. He would show all of them up for the lazy louts they were, and shame them all!

And damned if he would ask anything of any of them. But by the time he was settled here, their Jousters would be asking them, “Why can’t you be like Kashet’s boy?”

After breakfast, he trailed behind the others, having gathered from what he overheard that it was time to get a bath and a new kilt. They all went straight to the same bathing room where Haraket had taken him when he first arrived. He debated loitering until the others were done, then decided to edge inside and hope they ignored him.

They did; and despite some horseplay and a little shoving amongst themselves, the presence of another adult Overseer who was handing out clean, white-linen kilts and inspecting the boys for cleanliness must have kept them on good behavior. He did loiter just long enough for the greater part of them to clear out, taking the opportunity to scrub himself really well, much to the evident satisfaction of the watching Overseer. “Very good,” the man said, as he handed Vetch a loincloth, a kilt and a leather thong with the glazed-faience talisman of a hawk eye on it that he had seen around everyone else’s neck here. “Kashet’s boy, aren’t you? Jouster Ari is a stickler for cleanliness; I’m pleased to see that you are, as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Vetch replied, and ventured, “Could someone cut my hair, sir?” He didn’t mean to cut it
off,
of course, but he hoped it might be trimmed up a bit. . . .

Evidently he wasn’t even to be allowed that much. “You’re not freeborn, boy,” the Overseer rebuked him. “But—here—” He handed Vetch a coarse shell comb and another bit of leather thong, and at least Vetch was able to get the knots out of his hair for the first time in months and months, and braid it.

He handed the comb back to the Overseer, who stowed it away, wishing he could shave his head altogether. But only a free-born boy could shave his head and wear a wig; a serf was branded as such by his own hair, long and uncut. It was the easiest and cheapest way to mark a serf. Shaving took time, the resource of a good, sharp razor, and had to be done every day.