enough to get the Gold of Favor as well as the Gold of Honor, and perhaps be ennobled and be given a house and land. But given the nature of the way that they fought, defeat was usually fatal, and few lived to retire with honor.
All this, Vetch had already known; the Jousters were famous across the length and breadth of Tia, and if they weren't individually public heroes, lionized and lauded whenever they set foot outside the compound, it was because the Great King wished them to be thought of as his personal force, much like the King's Regiment, not as individuals. In the rigid hierarchy of Tian society, the Jousters were unique and occupied a niche that was only just short of ennobilization, had many of the material privileges of being noble, yet were utterly dependent on the King for those privileges.
It slowly dawned on Vetch that the Jousters were, in their way, no freer than he was. If he was tied to a piece of land, they were tied to the dragons. They could serve only the Great King, and all that they had, they owed to him. They actually owned very little, for most of what they had was also the Great King's. And if they lived in great luxury, well, they paid for that in the risking of their lives every day.
As the others nattered on, Vetch gleaned some idea of just what that meant.
A lucky shot from below, or a particularly skilled marksman could bring a rider down. When dragons ventured too near the ground, they could be hurt, and when injured, not all the tala in the world would control them—and usually the first thing to go was the saddle and rider. Riders simply fell from the backs of their dragons all the time; sometimes in combat with the Jousters of Alta, but just as often in simple practice. The dragons did not always cooperate with their riders; sometimes riders were thrown, and sometimes there were midair collisions, in the course of which a Jouster could be thrown from his saddle.
He gathered that there were nets of some sort intended to catch a downed Jouster if he fell in practice, but sometimes the accidents happened when the Jousters weren't over the nets.
And of course, there were the clashes with the Jousters of Alta, as each rider attempted to deliberately unseat the other with his lance.
'Is Lesoth still trying to find a way to use a bow?' asked the round-headed boy.
'No. He gave that up yesterday when he finally got tired of Nem-teth snapping at his arrows when he loosed them,' the other answered. 'Jouster Ari finally took him aside and warned him that he could choose between Nem- teth catching all of his arrows, or breaking Nem-teth of catching all arrows.'
'Ouch.' The round-headed boy winced. 'That would be bad.'
'Believe it,' the boy nodded. 'As it is, it takes a lucky shot to hit a Jouster. If his dragon stopped snapping at arrows, though— He made a strangling noise, evidently intending to convey— quietly—the desired effect.
So—that was why they didn't try to use bows themselves, and why they weren't being shot out of the sky on a regular basis!
He was learning an awful lot just by sitting here, cleaning leather.
Thinking it over, it seemed as if a lance was the only really practical weapon since a bow was out of the question. A club— well, you couldn't get close enough to use a club. You couldn't throw a spear, not with the dragon's wings flailing away on either side of you. A sling—well, that took a lot of skill. A sword presented the same problems as a club. Which left the lance…
In the case of a lance strike in a real Joust, a fall in that case was invariably fatal; the dragon, if not captured by another Jouster, might or might not return to its pen. Other than Kashet, the dragons' only loyalty lay in that they were fed regularly, and that was not necessarily enough to bring a riderless dragon back to his pen when they were far from home and the mountains so temptingly near.
Though, in fact, one had returned from combat this very day. Its dragon boy was not envied; a dragon without a Jouster didn't get regular exercise, and it was prone to get irritated or sluggish under such circumstances. If the former, well, it was the boy that the dragon took his ill temper out on. And if the latter, when the dragon did get a new Jouster, it would become irritable when forced to exercise and lose the fat that it had gained in the interim.
The boys' talk concentrated on the dragon that had returned, and commiseration with its boy, not the rider that had fallen. In fact, they didn't even once mention his name. That was not callousness on their part, in fact, Vetch considered such caution very wise; too much talk of him might bring his spirit here, instead of it staying properly in his tomb.
Night-walking spirits were not known for their gentleness. A hungry ghost might remember old grievances, or feel jealous of the living. There were a hundred ways such a ghost could revenge himself on the living. He could bring fever spirits, or the demons of ill luck; he could plague the sleep with nightmares. He could even lead stronger spirits to the sleeping victim, or drive one mad.
So the fallen Jouster would be remembered, oh my yes—with proper offerings and sacrifices in the Jousters' little Temple, tonight; the Temple was consecrated ground, and the Priest of Haras knew how to propitiate a spirit and give it a resting place it would be content with while it waited for proper housing.
Then all that was right and proper would be accomplished at the Tomb of the Jousters when his body was finished with the forty days of embalming. But that would be across the Great Mother River, in the Vale of the Noble Dead, and was the duty of the mortuary priests. The Tians believed that to enter into the Summer Country, the
