Joust (6 page)

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 feeds 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, Siris, and Iris in the village, but live beasts, and entire herds of them.

“There aren’t enough priests in the world to consume all that flesh,” Haraket continued, “Even if they were as fat as houses. So it comes to us, who can certainly use it. That’s why they built the Jouster’s Compound on the Temple Road. So—ah, he’s filled that barrow, now you take it.”

The barrow was heavy and hard to push, but Vetch was accustomed to be ordered to do things that were difficult. Haraket watched critically as he grabbed the handles and started shoving, then took the lead. Vetch kept the barrow rolling, following Haraket back to Kashet’s pen at a much slower pace than they had taken to get to the butchers’ place. Haraket kept his strides short, although he did not bother to look at Vetch more than once or twice.

Already, though, things were profoundly different than they had been under Khefti. The Overseer was not chiding him nor punishing him for taking too long with the barrow. Not once had he been cuffed for stupidity, or had his ears boxed for asking a question. Once again, Vetch dared to hope.

Kashet was watching for them; Vetch saw the now-familiar head peering over the walls long before they got to the opening of the pen. Kashet didn’t wait for him to bring the food all the way into the pen either; no sooner had Vetch gotten to the part of the corridor immediately outside the entrance than the dragon snaked his neck out of the doorway and snatched a chunk of meat from the barrow in his powerful jaws, startling Vetch so that he jumped and squeaked involuntarily.

But Haraket gave him a long and measuring look, and after a pause while his heart pounded, Vetch continued pushing the barrow forward, telling himself that if Kashet had wanted to eat
him,
he’d have gone down that long throat while he was still struggling with the saddle.

Kashet plucked chunks from the barrow three more times before Vetch parked it where Haraket pointed. He ate neatly, if voraciously, snatching up a chunk of meat, tossing back his head, and swallowing it whole. Vetch could even see it traveling down his long neck by the bulge it caused.

But he never so much as gave Vetch a threatening or speculative look. Haraket stood at the side of the sand pit with his arms crossed casually over his massive chest, completely relaxed. Vetch tried to copy his example, though his heart raced in his chest.

But Kashet was not in the least interested in Vetch, only what was in the barrow. And in fact, the dragon began to remind Vetch of a falcon, a little, in the neat single-mindedness with which he filled his belly.

“He’s an easy charge, so long as you do well by him,” Haraket said, speaking quietly. “The only time he’s even offered a snap at someone was when the idiot boy forgot his evening feed and he didn’t get a meal until morning. By the God Haras,
I’d
have snapped, too! And the fool blubbed at me after, and thought I’d feel sorry for him!” Haraket snorted. “I pitched
that
one out on his ear myself.”

Vetch vowed never to be so much as a moment late with one of Kashet’s meals.

Haraket frowned, though not at Vetch. “That was Kashet’s first boy; two dragon boys we’ve lost now, and Kashet’s the easiest beast in the compound! He takes a bit more time in tending perhaps, but by the gods, it isn’t the kind of time you waste with one who’s hell-bent on not going where you want him to!” The Overseer sighed. “Maybe it’s Ari. He doesn’t pet and praise his boys, take them along to feasts, the way some of the others do. And there’s no profit to be made out of him. . . .” Haraket turned, ever so slightly, and looked out of the corner of his eye at Vetch.

Vetch kept his mouth shut. Haraket was telling him this for a reason, and if he didn’t yet know what the reason was, soon or late he’d find out about it.

Besides,
that angry little voice inside him reminded him,
it isn’t as if you have a choice. It’s here, or Khefti.

When the barrow was empty, Kashet heaved an enormous sigh, and returned to the hot sand. This time he dug himself a depression in the middle of it, and stretched his entire length within it. Within moments, he was, to Vetch’s astonishment, deeply asleep.

“He’ll sleep like that until it’s time to go out again this afternoon,” Haraket said, with a little noise that
sounded
like a fond chuckle. “You couldn’t wake him now if you tried. Ari was back early from his patrol—so we’ve just enough time to get you kitted up and clean and fed before I show you the afternoon jobs.” He paused, and raised an eyebrow. “And I believe we should do something about those stripes of yours, too.”

Vetch almost gaped at him in shock. Never, ever, had one of his masters offered to do anything about the marks of a beating!

With that, they left Kashet wallowing in the sand, sleeping off his meal in the noontime sun that beat straight down on him, met by the heat radiating up from the sand. Haraket hustled Vetch off again, again to a room, and not an open-air courtyard, though it was not nearly as huge as the butchery. This was a very fine room indeed, with plain, honey-colored limestone walls, narrow openings near the ceiling to bring in air and light while excluding the full cruelty of the sun and the
kamiseen.
It even had a stone floor. The only buildings that Vetch had ever seen that were made of stone like this were temples, and he found himself trying not to gape. Along one side of this room were ranged full terra-cotta jars of water as tall as Vetch was, with wooden or horn ladles hung on their sides. There were also neatly-folded piles of fabric on shelves above the jars, what looked like smaller pottery jars of unguents and possibly soap. And to clinch that this room was for bathing, there was a drain in the center of the floor.

Haraket shoved him inside as he stood hesitantly on the threshold. “Strip,” he ordered Vetch, abruptly. “I hope you know how to wash.”

He sounded dubious, which woke some smoldering resentment, but Vetch didn’t have to be told what to do twice. The last proper bath he’d had was—

He cut off the unwanted memory—of washing off blood. His father’s blood. . . .

It was enough that he would have a proper bath
now.

He pulled off the rope belt and the rags, and hesitated with them in one hand. Surely he should wash them?

“Feh, boy, you don’t think that’s worth
saving,
do you?” Haraket barked with distaste. “Throw it there, and get on with it!”

He pointed to a rubbish pile, and not at all loath to rid himself of the rags, Vetch tossed them aside. He headed straight for the water jars and ladled dipperfuls of water over himself, scrubbing himself down with a handful of lye soap and a loofah sponge. And he scrubbed every inch of himself as well, fingernails, toenails, even his back, though the soap got in the cuts and stung until he had to bite his lip, trying to get stains off his legs, wishing he had a razor so he could shave his skull bare as his father had used to do for him. . . .

He scrubbed himself twice over, rinsing himself with more water from the jars, and was about to start on a third round when Haraket grunted. “That’ll do, boy. Any more, and you’ll have the skin off. I want you clean, not raw.”

Haraket tossed him a folded piece of cloth to dry himself with, then another bundle of fabric when he’d done with that; he caught it, and unfolded it to find, not just a loincloth, but a proper linen kilt, such as he had not worn in—

—in too long. Not since the moment he had been made a serf.