Ari laughed, and took off his belt—which wasn't a belt at all, but a sling.
'Maybe other people have trouble using missile weapons on dragonback,' he said, with something as close to a smug look as Ari ever got, 'but 1 don't. Then again, our Noble Warriors do think that a sling is beneath them to use…'
'The more fools, they,' Vetch replied, with scorn.
Ari smiled. 'And I strongly suggest that if you haven't already got skill with a sling, you acquire it. Well, that takes care of your little girl. Are you starving?'
He shook his head; curiously, he wasn't even hungry. Then again, his stomach was still roiling from all he'd been through and the gamut of emotional states he'd run.
'That's just as well; wild goat broiled on a knifetip over a scrap of fire bears a close family resemblance to burned sandal, and that's all I have to offer you,' Ari told him, with a raised eyebrow, inviting his reaction.
Vetch blinked at him for a moment, then managed a smile.
'You just let her eat and doze in the sun; you drink plenty of water, and wait for us to get back,' Ari ordered. 'Rest, if you can, because it will be the last uninterrupted rest you'll get for a long while. Your journey is going to be long and hard, even with my help.'
Vetch couldn't imagine what Ari was going to do, but he nodded, and helped Ari drag the corpses of the other two goats over to Avatre, who was nearly finished with the first.
Once again, Ari and Kashet vanished down that tall crack in the earth. Avatre was busy with her meal—the first she'd ever eaten that hadn't been cut up neatly for her, but she was doing perfectly well, and didn't need his help. Evidently there would be no need for a 'how to eat whole wild goat' lesson.
Vetch lay back down on the ground to watch her with his back against the crevice wall, and pillowed his head on his arms for just a moment. He really didn't intend to sleep, but his eyes were still sore, and he still felt as drained as a wineskin of the first vintage at the end of a festival. No, he really didn't intend to sleep…
When he woke, the pool of sun was all the way across the floor, and what woke him was the sound of voices overhead.
His heart leaped in his chest with fear. Voices! Can anyone see down here?
He pressed himself back against overhanging wall of the pocket, and peered up. He couldn't see anything, but some peculiarity of the shape of the pocket brought the voices clearly down to him.
'… saw him fall about there,' came Ari's voice.
The terror of discovery held him pinned against the wall.
And his first thought was that Ari had betrayed him, betrayed them both—
He should have lied! He should have told Ari that he was going west, east, south—anything but admitting he was going to try to make it to Altai Now Ari had brought people from the compound, guards or soldiers—
But before he could move a strange voice answered.
'Not a sign of him. Not that the jackals would leave anything, and they probably dragged the body off to a den, anyway,' came that other voice. 'And the dragonet flew off?'
Ari again. 'That way.'
'Towards the breeding valleys. Well, she'll be back with her mother by now, and we won't see her again. By now, the other dragons will have chewed the harness and saddle off her, and no captured dragonet ever gets caught twice. You're right, Ari. It had to have been an accident, poor boy, and we jumped to an unwarranted conclusion. If he'd been planning to steal a dragon, he'd have taken one of the older ones, not an unflighted dragonet.'
'Of course he would have; of what use is a first-year dragonet to the Altans? They can't carry a man for at least another two years,' Ari replied, sounding mournful. 'My Kashet would have carried him. I wouldn't be the least surprised to find that Coresan would have, or a half dozen others. What's more, you saw for yourself that there was nothing about his gear that looked as if he was getting ready to run away. There were no provisions, nothing packed, and he didn't even have a firestarter or a waterskin. He didn't even take the funerary shrine.'
'No, he didn't—and if nothing else, that's a pretty convincing argument for pure accident. Poor child. He must have underestimated how close that dragonet was to First Flight. Baken is shattered; he thinks it's his fault, showing the youngster how to train the dragonets to carry a man. He thinks Vetch was trying to find a way to prove to Haraket that he deserved the same sort of reward that Baken had been promised.'
