Dragon's Blood (11 page)

The dragon looked over at his voice, but did not move.

"Come," said Jakkin, again, holding the bowl down so the dragon could see it.

The snatchling put its head to one side and lashed its ridged tail.

Jakkin thought at the dragon,
Come, thou hungry worm. Come.
The dragon trotted over to him.

"So, thou needest an official invitation," said Jakkin, laughing as the dragon settled on its haunches and opened its mouth. He spooned the juice onto its tongue, missing whenever the dragon moved its head. Soon the two of them were covered with the dark maroon juice.

"Aw, fewmets," Jakkin said when the bowl was finished. "Look at this mess." Quickly he stripped off his clothes and washed the shirt and pants in the warm stream. His bag, too, was spattered with spots as dark as blood. He tried to rinse it as best he could, bending over the stream. As he was bent over,
unbalanced, he felt a sharp nudge from behind, strong enough to thrust him forward. He tumbled head first into the water, went under, and came up spluttering to find the dragon in a hindfoot rise, its wings braced on the ground behind. It raked at the air with its soft claws. Jakkin could feel a rainbow laugh forming in his mind.

His moment of anger dissolved. The dragonling was so comical and fierce at once, he started to laugh instead. Then he realized what it was doing, and thought at it,
Steady. Steady.
Then, when he saw the dragon begin to falter, he cried out, "Good. Now."

The dragon lifted its overlarge wings and leaped into the river, landing next to him with a tremendous splash.

Jakkin laughed and splashed back.

At last they climbed out of the river together and flopped onto the sand. The sun on his back and shoulders and legs felt good. Jakkin lay on his stomach and thought about the dragon and about the possible fights ahead. "It will not be easy, little one," he said. "There is much I do not know. I was too young to learn much from my father. I am not old
enough yet to be apprenticed to a trainer. And watching badly trained dragons in the pits only teaches bad habits—I heard Master Sarkkhan say that once. He was talking to Likkarn, but I overheard him. Master Sarkkhan said there were only two ways to learn about dragons—from a good trainer or from a good dragon. Likkarn
is
a good trainer, even if he is an awful weeder. But he hates me, I know. He would never take me on, even though he knows I am the best of the bonders with dragons. Maybe I should try to smile and be nice to him, like Errikkin. Only, that's Errikkin's way, not mine. Or I could run away from dragons entirely, like Slakk. Only, how can I? Dragons are my life. If Likkarn will not teach me,
I will fill my bag myself.
"

Jakkin sat up and stared at the hatchling. "If I cannot learn from a good trainer, then I will learn it all from thee, who comes from a line of fighters, great fighters, from Heart O'Mine out of Heart Safe by Blood Type. Blood Brother was thy father and he was my special charge. And what I learn from thee, I will teach thee back. Together, heart of my heart, blood of my blood, we will be unbeatable. In time. In time." He lay back down and crooned the last words over and over and soon put the both of them to sleep.

***

J
AKKIN WOKE WHEN
the sun was high overhead. The dragon was standing guard beside him. He plucked some more leaves from the stalk and crushed out the juices, and only then took out his own lunch. It consisted of great hunks of brown bread spread liberally with the jellied protein that Kkarina made and a bottle of cold juice. There was cake for dessert.

Jakkin lay on his side eating and watched as the dragon ripped off the last shreds of its eggskin with its claws.

The claws were not as soft as they had been the day before, but were halfway between brittle and hard, and a strange yellow. They looked like the jingle shells found in Sukker's Marsh.

Jakkin loosened one particularly difficult piece of skin up behind the snatchling's hackle, and the dragon rewarded him by licking his hand with its tongue.

"Thy tongue is getting rougher each day," Jakkin commented. "Soon I will not find thy thanks such a pleasure." He remembered, suddenly, how Blood Brother had tried to groom him in the baths, lifting off skin with his rough tongue. And he remembered what had happened to Blood Brother after. He shuddered.

"No one shall do such a thing to thee, little wormling," Jakkin promised. "I will not allow it. Not ever."

The dragon turned its black eyes toward him and Jakkin felt as if he could see strange constellations being born in the endless night of its eyes. "Be thou ever my friend," he whispered.

The dragon answered him with a weak trickle of smoke through its nose slits. It was no more than a patch of light fog that for a moment obscured the dragon's mouth, then was gone. But that it
was
smoke, the first conjurings of the fire of a fighting dragon, Jakkin was sure.

He laughed, a loud eruption that startled the snatchling into backing up.

"No, no, thou fire breather, do it once again," said Jakkin, his voice alive with laughter. "A great pit dragon must breathe fire and smoke. I will give thee
more
juice to stoke thy furnace, for blisterweed and burnwort are the fuel for thy flames." He stood up and started for the weed patch, chattering at the dragon as he went. He continued his monologue down one row, looking for the healthiest, most mature plants, and up the next until he found the plant he wanted at the row's end.

He stopped abruptly. In the sand by the stalk, almost hidden by a leaf, was a single shoeprint. For a moment, Jakkin was ready to dismiss it. He himself had walked around the weed and wort patch in sandals. But the fact that there was only the tip of the print showing, as if the rest had been broomed away, puzzled him. He turned and ran back to the shelter and picked up his own sandals. Then, reluctantly, he walked back to the patch.

Kneeling down, he matched up the toe of his sandal with the print. The print was slightly smaller than his own.

Jakkin sat down in the sand to consider. Bigfoot was a name that the boys had often called him, for he had had enormous feet since he was very young. His mother, he remembered, used to say that someday he would
grow into his feet, and he was growing still. But if his own sandal had not made that print, then someone else's had.

He tried to think who it might be. Had any of the boys said anything to make him think they knew of the oasis and the snatchling? He recalled them teasing him about Akki. Had Slakk been a little less sarcastic than usual? Or Errikkin a little more willing to please? Or any of the younger boys too familiar? Perhaps ... yet he couldn't imagine them spying on him. He thought about the men, listing them in his mind. Balakk and his two were busy in the fields today. And Jo-Janekk was inventorying the store—or so he said. Frankkalin had been given the day as Bond-Off. Perhaps it had been Frankkalin. Or old Likkarn. What had he said before their march back? He had turned to Jakkin and spit out: "You'll have tomorrow as Bond-Off. I'm sure you'll
need
it, boy." At the time, Jakkin had thought old Likk-and-Spittle had meant he would need the time to recover from the bloody roundup. "But perhaps," Jakkin said aloud, "perhaps what Likkarn meant was that I would need the time for my dragon."

And Likkarn was a small man, small and
wiry. He would have a smallish foot. Jakkin thought about it, and the more he thought, the more it all fit. Likkarn must have followed him out and watched as he and the dragon slept. It all fit except for one piece. Why, if Likkarn knew about the dragon, had he not reported it? What subtle motives did the old man have in keeping such a thing secret?

Jakkin got back on his knees and held his sandal over the print again. There was no mistake. His sandal
was
bigger, though not by much. Likkarn must have been there at some point, all right, watching. Watching and waiting. Jakkin looked around the oasis. It was no longer as bright, as clean, as beautiful. Likkarn's presence there cast a long shadow.

Reluctantly, Jakkin stood up and went to the shelter. He dressed slowly, trying to think out his next steps. He would have to return to the nursery and see if he could find out what Likkarn was up to. He was not afraid for himself. After all, what could Likkarn do to him? He was already a bond boy. Though his bag might be emptied, he could not be broken further. But Jakkin worried what the old weeder might do to the hatchling. If he
could kill a great stud like Brother, how easy it would be for him to slaughter the defenseless dragonling. Kill it—or have it killed in the stews.

Jakkin walked to the top of a dune, escorted by the dragon. It ran around him, its legs having to work twice as fast to pull the weight of its wings.

"Stay," Jakkin told it sharply. Then he knelt down by its side. "Stay, my beauty, till I come to thee again." He touched its nose.

The dragon seemed to understand. It crouched down, head on its front legs, wings folded back along its sides.

Jakkin turned back only once to look at it, and by then it was fast asleep in the sand.

J
AKKIN SCRAMBLED ONTO
the road once he was sure it was free of dust clouds, and turned to broom away his final steps. As he walked briskly toward the nursery turnoff, the basket banging against his back, he tried again to sort out the possible meaning of the toeprint he had found. He was convinced it belonged to Likkarn. But what if it did not?

If it belonged to one of the young boys—Errikkin or Slakk or Trikko, for example—he could probably buy the boy off with the coins from his bag. He jangled the bag, listening to the clank and nodding his head at how full it seemed.

If the footprint belonged to an older bonder, things would be more difficult. Perhaps he would have to offer a half share in the dragon, besides the gold. But he would make it clear that he, Jakkin, was to be the trainer. After all, the dragon already responded to him, already knew
his
mind.

But if it was Likkarn spying on him, then that would be the worst of all. The old man already blamed Jakkin for his latest de-bagging. He had made that quite clear.

Shifting the basket on his back, Jakkin turned onto the road lined with spikka trees that led to the nursery. It was said that there were more spikka trees planted at Sarkkhan's Nursery than anywhere else on Austar. They were expensive, Jakkin knew, but they also helped make the ground fertile by drawing and holding water with their roots.

As Jakkin rounded the last turning, he saw the nursery buildings spread out before him and, to the right, the red haze of the wort and weed patches. He let out an involuntary sigh and stopped. Except for a few snatches of memory, Sarkkhan's Nursery was all he knew. It was his home. And yet
not
his home, for when he had filled his bag, when he had trained his dragon and won his fights, he
would leave and start the life of a master. On his own. Instinctively, his hand went first through his hair, then touched the dimple on his cheek, and at last rested on his bond bag, a habitual round he was not aware of.

He laughed out loud. "You can face drakk and dragons, but not your own waking dreams."

He had started up again, determined not to fall prey to such fears, when a strange cackling sounded from behind the incubarn to his right. For a moment Jakkin did not recognize the noise. It was a combination of a hen chuckle and the frantic peep-peeping of hatchlings. Then he remembered. Today was the day of the first airing, when the hens and their broods were let out of the barn into the corral.

Jakkin took off the basket and set it by the side of the barn, where he would pick it up later. He loved to watch the first airing. There was nothing funnier than the rush of hatchlings as they ran about, watched over by the mother dragons and the bond boys.

The henyard was an open corral surrounded by a fence of planed spikka wood. A
full-grown hen could easily step over or fly across the man-made border. But the mother dragons would not leave their broods, and the hatchlings would not be able to make more than a few wing-hops for several months yet. So they all stayed inside the enclosing arms of the fence. The hens crouched down like great stone statues, keeping their fathomless black eyes on the antics of the young. And bond boys scattered at intervals on the fence top made sure no injuries occurred, using long prod-sticks to separate overeager hatchlings, who were already establishing a pecking order that would last the rest of their brood lives.

Jakkin climbed up the fence and, holding on, peered over the top. He scanned the broods quickly. They were all out of their eggskins, the hens having helped remove the last patches. Jakkin knew that the bond girls had already collected the pieces of eggskin and begun the long task of sewing them together for clothes and coverlets and the hundred other items the soft, stretchable fragments could be used for. Jakkin looked in particular for the crippled hatchling in Heart O'Mine's brood, but he could not find it. It had
probably already been culled. There were one or two runts that would be culled soon as well: a nearly white one cowered by the barn gate, smaller than the rest by half; and a finely spotted yellow weakling lay covered with dust by the foot of its mother, Heart to Heart. There was little doubt those two hatchlings would be early culls.

Jakkin sighed. He hated the thought of the culling, when the weakest dragon hatchlings were taken from their hens, squealing and peeping, and thrown into the truck bound for the stews. He knew it had to be done, that such dragons would die before year's end anyway, stepped on or pecked into a stupor by their broodmates. If they were allowed to live long enough to stud or bear young, the resulting hatchlings would be even weaker than their parents. Jakkin knew all this, but it didn't make the terrible cries in the culling trucks any easier to bear.

He compared the hatchlings in the yard to his own dragon, and they all suffered by the comparison. These young dragons were spotted and marked with splotches of color. Not a dark red in the lot. One hatchling was all
orange, one deep mustard-colored, and two gray-browns with yellow paws. His dragon, with its dull brown skin, had the best markings of them all. Of course, he reminded himself, color was not the only clue to a dragon's worth. And first color was not last. But he could not stop himself from smiling when he thought of his own, as he had last seen it, a brown mound asleep on the sand.