Dragon's Blood (18 page)

It held its head high and measured the size of the pit, the height of the walls. It looked over the bettors as if to count them, and an appreciative chuckle ran through the crowd. The red scratched in the sawdust several times, testing its depth. And still Bottle O'Rum had not appeared.

Then with an explosion Bottle O'Rum came through the dragonlock and landed with all four feet planted well beneath the level of the sawdust, his claws fastened immovably to the boards.

"Good stance," shouted someone in the crowd, and the betting began anew.

The red gave a little flutter with its wings, a flapping that might indicate nervousness, and Jakkin thought at it,
He is a naught. A stander. But thy nails and wings are fresh. Do not be afraid. Remember thy training.
At that the little red's head went high and its neck
scales glittered in the artificial sun of the pit.

"Watch that neck," shouted a heckler. "There's one that'll be blooded soon."

"Too soon," shouted another from across the stands at him.

Bottle O'Rum charged the inviting neck.

It was just as Jakkin hoped, for charging from the fighting stance is a clumsy maneuver at best. The claws must all be retracted simultaneously, or one will catch in the boards. And the younger the dragon, the more brittle its claws. The orange might have been seven fights older than the red, but it was not yet fully mature. As Rum charged, one of the nails on his front right foot, probably the unum, Jakkin thought, did catch in the floorboards, and it splintered, causing him to falter for a second. The red shifted its position slightly. Instead of blooding the red on the vulnerable neck, Rum's charge brought him headlong onto the younger dragon's chest plates, the hardest and slipperiest part of a fighting dragon's armor. The screech of tooth on scale sent winces through the crowd. Only Jakkin was ready, for it was a maneuver he had taught his dragon out in the sands.

"
Now!
" he cried out and thought at once.

The young red needed no urging. It bent its neck around in a fast, vicious slash, and blood spurted from behind the ears of Mekkle's Rum.

"First blood!" cried the crowd.

Now the betting will change,
Jakkin thought with a certain pleasure, and he touched the bond bag through the thin cloth of his shirt. Ear bites bled profusely but were not important. It would hurt the orange dragon a little, like a pinprick or a splinter does a man. It would make the dragon mad and—more important—a bit more cautious. But first blood! It looked good to the bettors.

Bottle O'Rum roared with the bite, loud and piercing. It was too high up in the throat yet, but surprisingly strong. Jakkin listened carefully, trying to judge. He had heard dragons roar at the nursery in anger or fear or when Likkarn had blooded one of them for a customer intent on hearing the timbre before buying. To him the roar sounded as if it had all its power in the top tones and none that resonated. Perhaps he was wrong, but if his red could make this a long fight with the orange, it might impress this crowd.

In his eagerness to help his dragon, Jakkin
moved to the pit rail, elbowing his way through some older men.

"Here, boy, what do you think you're doing?" A man in a gray leather coverall spoke. He was obviously familiar with the pits. Anyone in all leather knew his way around. And his face, what could be seen behind the gray beard, was scored with dragon-blood scars.

"Get back up in the stands. Leave ringside to the masters and money men," said his companion, taking in Jakkin's patched, food-spotted shirt and short bonder's pants with a dismissing look. He ostentatiously jounced a full bag that hung from his wrist on a leather thong; an ex-bonder often wore his old bag on his wrist.

Jakkin ignored them, fingering his badge with the facs picture of the red on it. He leaned over the rail.
Away, away, good Red,
he thought at his dragon, and smiled when the red immediately wheeled and winged up from its blooded foe. Only then did he turn and address the two scowling bettors. "Pit right, good sirs," he said with deference, pointing at the same time to his badge.

They mumbled, but moved aside for him.
A trainer, even though he had no money, had precedence at the pit.

The orange dragon in the pit shook its head and the blood beaded its ears like a crown. A few drops spattered over the walls and into the stands. Each place a drop touched burned with that glow peculiar to the acidic dragon's blood. The onlookers ducked. One watcher in the third row of the stands was not quick enough and was seared on the cheek. He reached up a hand to the wound but did not move from his place.

The orange Rum stood up tall again and dug back into the dust.

"Another stand," said the gray-leather man to Jakkin's right.

"Pah, that's all it knows," said a dark-skinned offworlder beside him. "That's how it won its three fights. Good stance, but that's it. I wonder why I bet it at all. Let's go and get something to drink. This fight's a bore."

Jakkin watched them leave from the corner of his eye, but he absorbed their information. If the orange were a stander, if the information were true, it would help him with the fight.

The red dragon's leap back had taken it to the north side of the pit. When it saw that Bottle O'Rum had chosen to stand, it circled closer warily.

Jakkin thought at it,
He's good in the stance. Do not force him there. Make him come to thee.

The dragon's thoughts, as always, came back clearly to Jakkin, wordless but full of color and emotion. The red wanted to charge; the dragon it had blooded was waiting. The overwhelming urge was to carry the fight to the foe.

No, my Red. Trust me. Be eager, but not foolish,
cautioned Jakkin, looking for an opening.

But the crowd, as eager as the young dragon, was communicating with it, too. The yells of the men, their thoughts of charging, overpowered Jakkin's single line of calm. The red started to move.

When he saw the red bunching for a charge, Rum solidified his stance. His shoulders went rigid with the strain.

Jakkin knew that if his red dived at that standing rock, it could quite easily break a
small bone in its neck. And he knew from Akki's lessons in anatomy that a dragon rarely came back to the pit once its neck bones had been reset. Then it was good only for the breeding nurseries—if it had a fine pit record—or the stews.

"Steady, steady," Jakkin said aloud. Then he shouted and waved a hand. "
No!
"

The red had already started its dive, but the movement of Jakkin's hand and his shout were signals too powerful for it to ignore, and at the last possible minute it pulled to one side. As it passed, Rum slashed at it with a gaping mouth and shredded its wing rip.

"Blood," the crowd roared, and waited for the red dragon to roar back.

Jakkin felt its confusion, and his head swam with the red of dragon's blood as his dragon's thoughts came to him. He watched as it soared to the top of the building and scorched its wing tip on the artificial sun, cauterizing the wound. Then, still hovering, it opened its mouth for its first blooded roar.

There was no sound.

"A mute!" called a man from the stands.
He spit angrily to one side. "Never saw one before."

A wit near him shouted back, "Never heard one, either."

The crowd laughed at this and passed the quip around the stands.

But Jakkin only stared up at his red.
A mute,
he thought at it.
Oh, my poor Red. You are as powerless as I.

His use of the distancing pronoun
you
further confused the young dragon, and it began to circle downward in a disconsolate spiral, closer and closer to the waiting Rum, its mind a maelstrom of blacks and grays.

Jakkin realized his mistake in time.
It does not matter,
he cried out in his mind.
Even with no roar, even voiceless, thou wilt be great.
He thought it with more conviction than he really felt. But it was enough for the red. It broke out of its spiral and hovered, wings working evenly.

The maneuver, however, was so unexpected that the pit-wise Bottle O'Rum was bewildered. He came out of his stance with a splattering of dust and fewmets, stopped, then charged again. The red avoided him easily,
landing on his back and raking the orange scales with its claws. That drew no blood, but it frightened the older dragon into a hindfoot rise. Balancing on his tail, Rum towered nearly three meters high, his front claws scoring the air, a single shot of fire streaking from his slits.

The red backwinged away from the flames and waited.

Steady, steady,
thought Jakkin, in control again. He let his mind recall for them both the quiet sands and the cool nights when they had practiced against the reed shelter a game of charges and clawing. Then he repeated out loud, "Steady, steady."

A hard hand on his shoulder broke through his thoughts and the sweet-strong smell of blisterweed assailed him. Jakkin turned.

"Not so steady yourself," came a familiar voice.

Jakkin stared up at the ravaged face, pocked with blood scores and stained with tear lines.

"Likkarn," breathed Jakkin, suddenly panic-stricken. He tried to turn back to the
pit, where his red waited. The hand on his shoulder was too firm, the fingers like claws through his shirt.

"And when did
you
become a dragon trainer?" the man asked.

At first Jakkin thought to bluff. The old stallboy was too sunk in his smoke dreams to really listen. Bluff and run, for the wild anger that came after blister dreams never gave a smoker time to reason. "I found ... found an egg, Likkarn," he said. And it could be true. There were a few wild dragons, bred from escapees that had gone feral. Sometimes a lucky bonder came upon a dragon-egg cache out in the sand.

The man said nothing but shook his head.

Jakkin stared at him. This was a new Likkarn—harder, full of purpose. Then Jakkin noticed. Likkarn's eyes were clearer than he had ever seen them, no longer the furious pink of the weeder's, but a softer rose. Obviously he had not smoked for several days. This end of the season, Jakkin had been so intent on his own dragon that the workdays at the nursery, monitoring the mating flights, had slipped by. But Likkarn was too alert. It
was useless to bluff—or to run. "I took it from the nursery, Likkarn. I raised it in the sands. I trained it at night, by the moons."

"That's better, boy. Much better. Liars are an abomination," the man said with a bitter laugh. "And you fed it what? Goods stolen from the master, I wager. You born-bonders know nothing. Nothing."

Jakkin's cheeks were burning now. "I am no born-bonder. My father and his father were born free. That's two times." He did not mention the great-grandfather after whom he was named, the reason for the double
k.
"And I would never steal from the master's stores. I planted swamp seeds in the sands last year and grew blisterweed and burnwort. And bought new seeds with my drakk bounty.
On my own time.
" He added that fiercely.

"Bonders have no time of their own," Likkarn muttered savagely. "Or supplements."

"The master says adding supplements to the food is bad for a fighter. They make a fighter fast in the beginning, but they dilute the blood." Jakkin looked into Likkarn's eyes more boldly now. "The master said that. To
a buyer." He did not add that it was Akki who had told him.

Likkarn's smile was wry and twisted. "And you eavesdrop as well." He gave Jakkin's shoulder a particularly vicious wrench.

Jakkin gasped and closed his eyes with the pain. He wanted to cry out, and he thought he had, when he realized it was not his own voice he heard but a scream from the pit. He pulled away from Likkarn and stared. The scream was Bottle O'Rum's, a triumphant roar as he stood over the red, whose injured wing was pinioned beneath Rum's right front claw.

"
Jakkin
..." came Likkarn's voice behind him, full of warning. How often Jakkin had heard that tone right before Likkarn had roused from a weed dream to the fury that always followed. Likkarn was old, but his fist was still solid.

Jakkin trembled, but he willed his focus onto the red, whose thoughts came tumbling back into his head now in a tangle of muted colors and whines. He touched his hand to the small lump under his shirt where the limp
bond bag hung. He could feel his own heart beating through the leather shield.
Never mind, my Red,
soothed Jakkin.
Never mind the pain. Recall the time I stood upon thy wing and we played at the Great Upset. Recall it well, thou mighty fighter. Remember. Remember.

The red stirred only slightly and made a flutter with its free wing. The. crowd saw this as a gesture of submission. So did Rum, and through him, his master, Mekkle. But Jakkin did not. He knew the red had listened well and understood. The game was not over yet. Pit fighting was not all brawn; how often the books had said that. The best fighters, the ones who lasted for years, did not have to be big. They did not have to be overly strong. But they did have to be cunning gamesters, and it was this he had known about his red from the first—its love of play.

The fluttering of the unpinioned wing caught Bottle O'Rum's eye and the orange dragon turned toward it, relaxing his hold by a single nail.

The red fluttered its free wing again. Flutter and feint. Flutter and feint. It needed the
orange's attention totally on that wing. Then its tail could do the silent stalking it had learned in the sands with Jakkin.

Bottle O'Rum followed the fluttering as though laughing for his own coming triumph. His dragon jaws opened slightly in a deadly grin. If Mekkle had been in the stands instead of below in the stalls, the trick might not have worked. But the orange dragon, intent on the fluttering wing, leaned his head way back and fully opened his jaws, readying for the winning stroke. He was unaware of what was going on behind him.

Now!
shouted Jakkin in his mind, later realizing that the entire stands had roared the words with him. Only the crowd had been roaring for the wrong dragon.