Dragon's Blood (19 page)

The red's tail came around with a snap, as vicious and as accurate as a driver's whip. It caught the orange on its injured ear and across an eye.

Rum screamed instead of roaring and let go of the red's wing. The red was up in an instant and leapt for Bottle O'Rum's throat.

One, two, and the ritual slashes were made. The orange throat coruscated with
blood, and instantly Rum dropped to the ground.

Jakkin's dragon backed at once, slightly akilter because of the wound in its wing.

"Game to Jakkin's Red," said the disembodied voice over the speaker.

T
HE CROWD WAS
strangely silent. Then a loud whoop sounded from one voice buried in the stands, a bettor who had taken a chance on the First Fighter.

That single voice seemed to rouse Bottle O'Rum. He raised his head from the ground groggily. Only his head and half his neck cleared the dust. He strained to arch his neck over, exposing the underside to the light. The two red slashes glistened like thin, hungry mouths. Then Rum began a strange, horrible humming that changed to a high-pitched whine. His body began to shake, and the shaking became part of the sound as the dust eddied around him.

The red dragon swooped down and stood
before the fallen Rum, as still as stone. Then it, too, began to shake.

The sound of the orange's keening changed from a whine to a high roar. Jakkin had never heard anything like it before. He put his hands to the bond bag, then to his ears.

"What is it? What is happening?" he cried out, but the men on either side of him had moved away. Palms to ears, they backed toward the exits. Many in the crowd had already gone down the stairs, setting the thick wood walls between themselves and the noise.

Jakkin tried to reach the red dragon's mind, but all he felt were storms of orange winds, hot and blinding, and a shaft of burning white light. As he watched, the red rose up on its hind legs and raked the air frantically with its claws, as if getting ready for some last deadly blow.

"Fool's Pride," came Likkarn's defeated voice behind him, close enough to his ear to hear. "That damnable orange dragon wants death. He has been shamed, and he'll scream your red into it. Then you'll know. All you'll have left is a killer on your hands. I lost three that way.
Three.
Three dragons and three
fortunes. Fool's Pride." He shouted the last at Jakkin's back, for at his first words, Jakkin had thrown himself over the railing into the pit. He landed on all fours, but was up and running at once.

He had heard of Fool's Pride, that part of the fighting dragon's bloody past that was not always bred out. Fool's Pride that led some defeated dragons to demand death. It had nearly caused the dragons to become extinct. If men had not carefully watched the lines, trained the fighters to lose with grace, there would have been no dragons left on Austar IV.

He could not let his red kill. A good fighter should have a love of blooding, yes. But killing made dragons unmanageable, made them feral, made them wild. In his mind suddenly was the image of his father dying under the slashing claws of a wild orange worm. Jakkin heard a scream, thought it was an echo of his mother's voice, and realized at last it was his own.

He crashed into the red's side. "No, no," he called up at it, beating on its body with his fists. "Do not wet thy jaws in his death." He
reached as high as he could and held on to the red's neck. The scales slashed his left palm cruelly, but he did not let go.

It was his touch more than his voice or his thoughts that stopped the young red. It turned slowly, sluggishly, as if rousing from a dream. Jakkin fell from its neck to the ground.

The movement shattered Bottle O'Rum's concentration. He slipped from screaming to unconsciousness in an instant.

The red nuzzled Jakkin, its eyes unfathomable, its mind still clouded. The boy stood up. Without bothering to brush the pit dust from his clothes, he thought at it,
Thou mighty First.

The red suddenly crowded his mind with victorious sunbursts, turned, then streaked back through the open hole to its stall and the waiting burnwort supplied by the masters of the pit.

As Jakkin stood there, too weary to move, Mekkle and two friends came through the stands, glowering, and leapt into the pit. They wrestled the fainting orange onto a low-wheeled cart and dragged him over to the
open mecho hole by his tail. Then they shoved the beast through the hole.

Only then did Jakkin walk back to ringside, holding his cut hand palm up. It had just begun to sting.

Likkarn, still standing by the railing, was already smoking a short strand of blisterweed. He stared blankly as the red smoke circled his head.

"I owe you," Jakkin said slowly up to him, hating to admit it. "I did not know Fool's Pride when I saw it. Another minute and the red would have been good for nothing but the stews. If I ever get a Second Fight, I will give you some of the gold. Your bag is not yet full."

Jakkin meant the last phrase simply as ritual, but Likkarn's eyes suddenly roused to weed fury. His hand went to his bag. "You owe me nothing," said the old man. He held his head high and the age lines on his neck crisscrossed like old fight scars. "
Nothing.
You owe the master everything. I need no reminder that I am a bonder. A boy.
I fill my bag myself!
"

Jakkin bowed his head under the old
man's assault. "Let me tend the red's wounds. Then do with me as you will." He bowed and, without waiting for an answer, ducked through the mecho hole and slid down the shaft.

***

J
AKKIN CAME TO
the stall where the red was already at work grooming itself, polishing its scales with a combination of fire and spit. He slipped the ring around its neck and knelt down by its side. Briskly he put his hand out to touch its wounded wing, in a hurry to finish the examination before Likkarn came down. The red drew back at his touch, sending into his mind a mauve landscape dripping with gray tears.

"Hush, little flame-tongue," crooned Jakkin, using the lullaby sounds he had invented to soothe the hatchling of the sands. "I won't hurt thee. I want to help."

But the red continued to retreat from him, crouching against the wall.

Puzzled, Jakkin pulled his hand back. Yet still the red huddled away, and a spurt of yellow-red fire flamed from its slits. "Not
here, furnace lung," said Jakkin, annoyed. "That will set the stall on fire."

A rough hand pushed him aside. It was Likkarn, no longer in the weed dream but starting into the uncontrollable fury that capped a weed sequence. The dragon, its mind wide open with the pain of its wound and the finish of the fight, had picked up Likkarn's growing anger and reacted to it.

"You don't know wounds, boy," growled Likkarn. "How could you? I'll show you what a
real
trainer knows." He grabbed the dragon's torn wing and held it firmly, then with a quick motion, and before Jakkin could stop him, he set his mouth on the jagged tear.

The dragon reared back in alarm and pain and tried to whip its tail around, but the stalls were purposely built small to curb such motion. Its tail scraped along the wall and barely tapped the man. Jakkin grabbed at Likkarn's arm with both hands and furiously tore him from the red's wing.

"I'll kill you, you weeder," he screamed. "Can't you wait till a dragon is in the stews before you try to eat it? I'll kill you." He slammed at Likkarn with his fists and feet,
knowing as he did it that the man's weed anger would be turned on him and he might be killed by it, and not caring.

Suddenly Jakkin felt himself being lifted up from behind, his legs dangling, kicking uselessly at the air. A man's strong arm around his waist held him fast. At the same time, the man pushed Likkarn back against the wall.

"Hold off, boy. Hold off. He was a good trainer—once."

J
AKKIN TWISTED AROUND
as best he could and saw the man he had most feared seeing. It was Master Sarkkhan himself, dressed in a leather suit of the red and gold nursery colors. His red beard was brushed out, making it twice as bushy as normal. He looked grim.

"Hold off," Sarkkhan said again. "And hear me. Likkarn is right about the best way to deal with a wing wound. An open tear, filled with dragon's blood, will burn the tongue surely. But a man's tongue heals quickly, and there is something in human saliva that closes these small rips."

Sarkkhan put Jakkin down but held on to his shoulder with one large hand.

"It's the other way around, too," Jakkin
heard his voice saying in a rush. "The dragon licked my wound and it healed clean."

"Well, now, that I never saw myself, though it's been folk wisdom around here for a while." Sarkkhan brushed his hair back from a forehead that was pitted with blood scores as evenly spaced as a bonder's chain. "Now, promise me you will let this old man look to the red's wing."

"I will not," Jakkin said hotly. "He's a weeder and he's as likely to rip the wing as heal it. And the red hates him—just as I do." Suddenly realizing who he was talking to, Jakkin put his hand up before his mouth.

Likkarn turned toward him and raised a fist, aiming it at Jakkin's head. Before it could land, the dragon had pulled the ring chain free of the stall and nosed the trainer to the ground, putting a front foot on him to hold him still.

Master Sarkkhan let go of Jakkin's shoulder and considered the red for a moment. "Likkarn," he said at last, nodding his head at the old man, "I think the boy is right. The dragon won't have you. It's too closely linked. I had wondered at that, by its actions in the
pit. This confirms it. Wish I knew how Jakkin did it. That close a linkage is rare. I can control my dragons somewhat. But a fresh dragon and a trainer are never that close. It takes years to establish such a bond. Never mind now. Best leave this to the boy and me."

Jakkin nodded, saying, "Let him go, my worm."

At his words, the dragon lifted its foot slowly.

Likkarn got up clumsily and brushed off his clothes. One button of his shirt had been ripped off and the bond bag had slipped out in the scuffle. Jakkin was surprised to see that it was more than halfway plump, jangling with coins. How could he have filled his bag that way in less than a year? Betting? Perhaps he had spent his Bond-Offs not weeding but playing the dragons at Krakkow Pit.

Likkarn caught Jakkin's look and angrily stuffed that bag back inside his shirt, then jabbed at the outline of Jakkin's thin bag with a weed-reddened finger. "And how much have
you
got there? Not even a baby's portion, I warrant." He walked off with as much dignity as he could muster, then slumped by the stairwell to watch.

Sarkkhan, ignoring them both, was crouching down by the dragon, letting it get the smell of him. He caressed its jaws and under its neck with his large, scarred hands. Slowly the big man worked his way back toward the wings, crooning at the dragon in low tones, smoothing its scales, all the while staring into its eyes. Slowly the membranes, top and bottom, shuttered the red's eyes, and it relaxed. Only then did Sarkkhan let his hand close over the wounded wing. The dragon gave a small shudder but was otherwise quite still.

"Your Red did a good job searing its wound on the light. Did you teach it that?"

"No," the boy admitted.

"Of course not. Foolish of me. How could you? No lamps in the sands. Good breeding, then," said Sarkkhan with a small chuckle of appreciation. "And I should know. After all, your dragon's mother is my best—Heart O'Mine."

"You ... you knew all along, then." Jakkin suddenly felt as confused as a blooded First.

Sarkkhan stood up and stretched. In the confines of the stall he seemed enormous, a
red-gold giant. Jakkin suddenly felt smaller than his fifteen years.

"
Fewmets,
boy, of course I knew," Sarkkhan answered. "Even when I'm not around, I know
everything
that happens at my nursery. Everything. Make it my business to know."

Jakkin collapsed down next to his dragon and put his arm over its neck. Akki. It had to have been Akki, because who but Akki had known everything about him? She had sold him to Sarkkhan and this was the price he had to pay: the knowledge that all of his manhood was the gift of the girl with the mocking mouth and her red-bearded lover. What had she said? "I have kept my promise in substance—if not in words." And she lied then, too. He had believed each one of her lies, believed them because he wanted to, because it was dark-haired Akki who told them. Well, he would not think about it any longer. It was too shameful, too painful.

When Jakkin finally spoke again, it was in a very small voice. "Then why did you let me do it? Were you trying to get me in trouble? Do you want me in jail? Or did you just find it all terribly funny, your own private entertainment?"

The man threw back his head and roared, and the dragons in neighboring stalls stirred uneasily at the sound. Even Likkarn started at the laugh, and a trainer six stalls down growled in disapproval. Sarkkhan looked down at the boy. "I'm sorry, boy, I keep forgetting how young you are. Never known anyone quite that young to train a hatchling successfully. But everyone gets a chance to steal an egg. It's a kind of test, you might say. The only way to break out of bond. Some are meant to be bonders, some masters. How else can you tell which is which? Likkarn's tried it—endless times—but he just can't make it, eh, old boy?" The master glanced over at Likkarn with a look akin to affection, but Likkarn only glared back. "Steal an egg and try. The only things wrong to steal are a bad egg or your master's provisions." Sarkkhan stopped talking for a minute and mused. Idly he ran a hand over the red dragon's back as it chewed contentedly on its burnwort, little gray straggles of smoke easing from its slits. "Of course most
do
steal bad eggs or are too impatient to train what comes out, and instead they make a quick sale to the stews just for a few coins to jangle in their bags. Then it's
back to bond again before a month is out."

Jakkin interrupted. "I didn't steal an egg, sir."

"I know, boy. I always had high hopes for you. You kept yourself apart from the others. Had a kind of
dedication
about you. A dream you wouldn't dilute with cheap, boyish pleasures. Your coins went into your own bag, not into someone else's. You filled your bag yourself. I like that. I admire that. So I left one late hatcher uncounted, just in case. I knew you could read—and count. I had high hopes and you didn't let me down, even though you lay a week in the hospice. And didn't I give Likkarn a de-bagging for that, for killing Brother and nearly killing you. And you bounced back. Stole a hatchling from my best hen. Probably the best hatchling in the bunch. None of that false compassion—picking a runt or one with an injured wing. You went right to the best. I like that. I'd do it myself."