Mercedes Lackey - Joust

But even so, for the first time in a very, very long time, he was able to eat as much as he wanted. In fact, he had not really eaten like this very often back when his father was alive, for even a farmer did not have the means to produce a seemingly never-ending stream of food and drink at a meal. Only a great village feast would bring forth this sort of abundance. Kitchen girls—slaves, he thought by their neck rings, though they were the sleekest and best-looking such slaves he had ever seen—kept coming out of the kitchen with more food, more beer; no matter how much the boys ate, there was always more. One of the older girls seemed to have taken a liking to him; she made certain that there were platters within his reach, and replaced the empty jar at his hand with a full one. He thanked her shyly, and she winked at him and hurried back into the kitchen.

Haraket came for him about the time that he had decided he couldn't safely eat another morsel. That was long before the other boys finished—but then, he'd had a head start on them, and they were lingering over their food.

The boys hushed their chatter when Haraket appeared in the doorway, and watched as Vetch scrambled to his feet in response to the beckoning hand. The chatter began again as soon as Vetch cleared the doorframe, following Haraket, and his ears burned with embarrassment and resentment, imagining what they were saying about him. Making fun of his looks, his intelligence, his imagined habits. Comparing him to the brutes of the desert, the beasts of the fields.

It doesn't matter, he told himself, though in truth, it did. They were no better born than he! Tians were by no means morally or mentally superior to Altans! The Altans were the older race, and were dwelling in civilized surroundings when the Tians were grubbing latas roots with pointed sticks!

But—"Don't pay any attention to those idle lizards," Haraket said dismissively. "There are three creatures here you have to please; Jouster Ari, myself, and Kashet. No one else matters."

Easy for him to say, Vetch thought, recalling all the nasty tricks that used to be played on him by Khefti's apprentices and the freeborn boys of the village. He was surely in for more of the same from this lot.

But Haraket might have had the mind-reading power of a Clear-Sighted Priestess, for he seemed to pluck that thought right out of Vetch's skull. "Freeborn, serf, or slave, a dragon boy is a dragon boy, and if they try any tricks with you, you come to me," Haraket said, with some little force. "Remember what I said; your duty is your Jouster and Kashet, first to last. Anything, anything, that interferes with you doing that duty is an offense against your Jouster and his dragon, and believe me, boy, we take that very seriously. Beating is the least of what I'll deal out to a troublemaker."

"What?" he blurted, so taken aback that he spoke the word aloud. And winced involuntarily, expecting a buffet for his insubordination.

But Haraket didn't cuff him. "You please me, your Jouster, and your dragon," he repeated once again. "And that is all you need to concern yourself with. But don't antagonize the brats," Haraket added. "Have the proper attitude. They are freeborn, and you're not."

"Yes, sir," he murmured. That was more like what he'd expected to hear…

"But if you're keeping your proper place, and they interfere with you, I'll give them something to weep about," Haraket said, and it sounded to Vetch as if a tinge of grim satisfaction colored the words. "They'll be cherishing stripes for a week, if they harm you. But enough of that; you'd best be sure you're pleasing me and Ari and Kashet," Haraket continued. "And believe me, there's a lot to do to please us."

Of that, at least, he had no doubt.

BACKand forth Haraket led him, showing him where the Jousters' quarters were, the armory, the little Temple of the god Haras, the Jousters' particular patron. Vetch was beginning to get the sense of how to navigate around the complex; really, once he got over his bedazzlement at the size and scale and luxury of this place, it wasn't any more difficult than negotiating the tangle of streets and houses of Khefti's village. It had, at first blush, seemed a maze, but now he realized that the dragon pens, at least, were all at the eastern end of the compound, with the great landing court right in the middle of them. Everything else was west of the pens and court, and the area closest to the pens was devoted to the butchery. So long as he kept going east from wherever he started, he'd come into the area where the dragons were housed, so even though the complex was the size of several villages, he couldn't get entirely lost.

And the walls were not bare and featureless either; he hadn't paid much attention before because he had been concentrating on Haraket, but now he saw that at every intersection of corridors, on the walls at the corners, there were engraved images of gods, all different. Nearest to Kashet's pen, where there was an intersection of two corridors, the gods upon the east-running corridor were the fat little dwarf god of good fortune and fertility, Khas, and on the north-running one the charming little goddess of the dawn, Noshet, with her beautifully plumed wings spread wide against the sand-colored wall. It wasn't lost on him, when he realized each corridor was marked by a god, that he could navigate among this maze of corridors by means of these carvings.

The dragons were not peering over their walls now; in fact, there was no sign of them at all, and when Haraket beckoned to him to follow into his own dragon's pen, he saw that Kashet was still drowsing in his sand wallow. "It will shortly be time for the Jousters to take their second patrols of the day, since there is not, at the moment, any actual war taking place."

Tell that to my people, Vetch thought, the anger that was always with him sullenly flaring. But Haraket was still speaking—ordering him, rather.

"Now, you come saddle Kashet again," Haraket told him, as Vetch stood gingerly on the edge of the sand wallow. Kashet was already easing himself up out of the hot sand, slowly and reluctantly, making little grunting sounds. "Go over to the saddle stand and call him. Say, 'Kashet, stand,' and make it sound like you mean it."

Vetch took his place beside the wooden rack holding the saddle and harness. He glanced at Haraket, but got no clues from the overseer's expression. Make it sound like you mean it. Well, ordering an ox around, or a goat, you had to sound firm. But it had been very, very long since he had been permitted to give orders even to an animal. He wasn't even used to raising his voice…

Finally, he tried to imagine how he would feel if he were the master, and it was one of those boys who had sneered at him back at the kitchen who was the serf. He tried to think of himself ordering the boy to fetch something. "Kashet!" he called, his voice sounding shrill in his own ears. But at least it didn't sound uncertain. "Stand!"

Kashet snorted; the snort sounded amused. But the dragon came readily enough, and stood towering above him, neck craned over, head looking curiously down at him. Again, he was struck by the heat of the dragon's body; it was as if he stood beside a clay bread oven during the baking.

Kashet looked even taller than he recalled. He couldn't have touched the dragon's shoulder even if he'd stood on tiptoe.

Now, how was he going to get the saddle on the beast when Kashet's shoulder was higher than Haraket's head?

Haraket watched him, eyes narrowed, waiting—for what? The overseer passed a hand over the top of his shaved head, and Vetch knew that he was waiting for Vetch to do something.

Was Haraket waiting for him to deduce how to handle the dragon from the clues he'd been given?