Mercedes Lackey - Joust

The dragon, ignoring both of them, plunged past them into the center of the room to wallow into the hot sand. Vetch heaved the saddle up onto the rack as he'd been told to do. Under Haraket's watchful eye, he arranged the saddle straps over the bars of the rack, untangling them as he did so. Something told him that the straps shouldn't touch the ground, so he took care that they did not do so. The kamiseen did not venture down here, for a wonder, though he could hear it whining above the walls. Not that it was cooler here; not with those hot sands contributing to the fire of the sun overhead.

When he turned to face his instructor, he thought that the man was not displeased. He looked up into Haraket's face, and waited for more instruction. It was not long in coming.

"The first thing you need to get into your mind is this: Kashet and his Jouster will be your sole concern from morning to night," Haraket told him, crossing his muscular arms over his chest, and looking down at him, examining, weighing, assessing. "A dragon boy not only tends to his dragon, he tends to the Jouster that rides him. No one can give you orders but your Jouster and me, unless Ari or I tell you otherwise."

Vetch bobbed his head. "Yes, Overseer," he replied.

Haraket grunted. "Here is the next thing; your Jouster can probably find plenty of other servants if he needs them, but you are the only one who is to tend to his dragon. If you have to choose between tending the dragon or the Jouster, there is no choice for you: tend the dragon."

Vetch blinked, but again nodded obediently.

"Now, the first thing you must do, this very moment, is to feed Kashet so that he knows you. Only a dragon boy, or at need, the Overseer or the Jouster will feed a dragon. They are too valuable to let anyone else meddle with them—" Haraket hesitated, then added, "—and other than Kashet, a dragon sharp-set with hunger might—savage—anyone he didn't know who came to feed him. They're wild beasts, very large and very powerful. Don't ever forget that, not for a moment."

Other than Kashet… Well, that was some comfort. But the thought still made Vetch gulp nervously. And the way that Haraket had hesitated over his choice of words made him wonder if the man had substituted "savage" for "devour."

Not a comfortable thought at all. What had he fallen into?

"But you'll never need worry about Kashet." That was said with a certainty that quelled a little of Vetch's unease. "Now, come with me. The only way to learn how to feed him is to do so."

Haraket turned and went out the doorway, and Vetch followed. Shortly the man was leading him at a trot down the corridors; Vetch was hard-put to keep up with the Overseer's long legs. But those words worried him. Only the Jouster or the Overseer or the dragon boy feed a dragon. So now, he was probably going to be in competition with another boy—who, from the sound of it, would be freeborn—to take care of Ari and his dragon. That could spell nothing but trouble.

"Sir?" he panted, literally the first question he had asked of anyone since the Jouster arrived at the cistern. He had to cough to clear his dry throat, for he still had gotten nothing to drink. "Sir, who is Kashet's dragon boy?"

The Overseer looked down at him, his lips tightening; Vetch flinched. He couldn't imagine how a simple question had made the Overseer so annoyed. "Imbecile," Haraket muttered, and answered more loudly, "You are Kashet's boy. Haven't you been listening to me?"

He almost dared to hope. Was it possible? Did this mean that Kashet's care was going to depend entirely on him? And if so—

—surely not. Surely, there was someone else, a rival, who would be very angry when he saw that Vetch was a serf. And it could be worse than that, much worse, given what the Jouster had said about "boys getting airs." Perhaps he had selected Vetch in order to humiliate this other boy—who would, of course, take out his humiliation on Vetch whenever the masters' backs were turned. When Khefti beat his apprentices, the apprentices pulled evil tricks on Vetch, it followed as surely as the sun rose. And that was without Vetch being a rival!

"Sir—I meant—who is Kashet's other dragon boy?" In his heart was the dread he would have to face a rival who would share his duties and, without a doubt, attempt to make sure that everything that went right reflected to his credit, and all the blame for whatever went wrong landed on Vetch. Some of that must have shown in his expression, as the Overseer's face cleared, and he grunted.

"There is no other dragon boy for Kashet. Jouster Ari and I have been caring for him of late." He grunted again, this time with a distinct tone of disdain. "Jouster Ari's previous boy elected to accept a position in the King's army without notice, and left us cursed shorthanded."

Now all that business about serfs and free boys made sense…

Soldiers had higher status than mere servants… and certainly fewer menial duties. So that's what he meant by "getting airs. …" It would make sense that the Jouster would now prefer to find a boy who had no choice, who could not go elsewhere, except, perhaps, back to Khefti. Which of course, was no choice at all.

"Here—down this way is where the servants from all of the temples bring the sacrifices," Haraket said, making another abrupt turn. This was an alley that looked like a street in the village in a way, though the walls were much taller than any village structures, and the unbroken stretches of wall argued for something the size of a major temple! But the walls along this stretch had doorways and clerestory windows, so it seemed that here the walls were part of huge buildings.

Haraket stopped in front of a real, closed door rather than an open archway or simple gap in the walls. He opened it, and with his hand on Vetch's shoulders, shoved him through.

On the other side—

Vetch almost broke and ran at the vision of carnage that met his eyes.

The air was full of the metallic scent of blood, so thick he could practically taste it, and everywhere he looked there were dead animals… hundreds of dead animals. Working here were butchers, a dozen of them, naked to the waist, smeared in drying blood, dismembering the corpses and throwing the pieces into bins or barrows beside them.

He was no stranger to the slaughter of farm stock but never on a scale like this, and never anything bigger than a goat.

There were carcasses of enormous cattle, goats, sheep, stacked up as casually as mud bricks, being hacked up by the butchers into hand-sized and head-sized chunks, and the sight made him feel sick and dizzy.

And for a moment, all he could think of was the last sight of his father, covered with his own blood—and the anger surged, but the fear and sickness that followed buried it, and he had to clutch the wall and put his burning back up against it to keep from fainting.

But curiously, as the shock wore off, he saw there was no blood, or very little. "This is all fresh from the Temple sacrifices," Haraket was saying, quite as if he had not noticed Vetch's reaction, as the nearest of the butchers tossed chunks of meat, bone-in, skin-on, into a barrow parked next to his chopping block. "It's a nice piece of economy when you think about it. Every day, hundreds of animals are sacrificed to the gods or cut up for divination ceremonies, but there's no use for the bodies when the blood and spirit have drained away."

As Haraket spoke, Vetch began to get control of himself again. It was only meat. No animals were being killed here. It was only meat.

Of course, the Tians believed that the gods required only the blood and the mana of the creatures sacrificed on the altars. There were so many gods, and so many people who needed their favor—he had never actually been to the Avenue of Temples in Mefis, but he had heard tales, heard that there were a hundred gods or more, and almost as many temples, and all of them got sacrifices daily. Not just the bread and beer and honey, the flowers, and the occasional fowl of the little Temple of Hamun, Sins, and Iris in the village, but live beasts, and entire herds of them.