Tales of Wonder (27 page)

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 it 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 rarely did a dragon come back to the pit once its neckbones had been set. 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 was a signal 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 wingtip.

“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 wingtip 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 heard one before.”

A wit near him shouted back, “You won't hear this one, either.”

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

But Jakkin only stared up at his red bitterly. “A mute,” he thought at it. “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, thou wilt be great.” He said it with more conviction that 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 eight feet 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 with the wooden dragon form on charges and clawing. Then Jakkin 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 and terribly afraid.

Jakkin 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 how did
you
become a dragon trainer?” the man asked.

Jakkin thought to bluff. The old stallboy was often 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 escapes that had gone feral.

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, but a softer rose. He had not smoked for several days at least. It was useless to bluff or 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. 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. And I would never steal from the master's stores. I planted in the sands last year and grew blisterweed and burnwort. I gathered the rest in the swamps.
On my own time
.” He added that fiercely.

“Bonders have no time of their own,” Likkarn muttered savagely. “And supplements?”

“The master says supplements are 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. “I heard the master say that. To a buyer.”

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 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 old 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 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 Master Sarkkhan had said that. The best fighters, the ones who lasted for years, were cunning gamesters, and it was this he had guessed about his red from the first.

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 kill. He was unaware of what was going on behind him.

“Now!” shouted Jakkin in his mind and only later realized that the entire stands had roared the word with him. Only the crowd had been roaring for the wrong dragon.

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 leaped for Bottle O' Rum's throat.

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

The 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 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 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
. 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 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. A good fighter should have a love of blooding, yes. But killing made dragons unmanageable, made them feral, made them wild.

Jakkin crashed into the red's side. “No, no!” he screamed 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 one of his palms, 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 away 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 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 hole to its stall and the waiting burnwort.

Mekkle and two friends came up the stairs, glowering, leaped into the pit and dragged the fainting orange out through a mecho-hole by his tail.

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 throat. “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.
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 turned and, without waiting for an answer, ducked through the mecho-hole and slid down the shaft.

Jakkin 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 a mauve landscape into his mind, dripping with gray tears.

“Hush, little flametongue,” crooned Jakkin, slowing himself down and 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 open with the pain of its wound and the finish of the fight, had picked up Likkarn's growing anger and reacted to it.