Haraket, leaving Vetch gaping at them from the dust of the corridor.
After a moment he scrambled to his feet, realizing that his initial errand was discharged.
Serve your Jouster. Serve your dragon.
He had to know what they were doing, first.
Will they be all right? Will Seftu or Coresan try to attack them? The thought put a shiver up his back. Surely not. Ari knew dragons as no one else in the compound did. Surely he would never do something that would cause the mating dragons to turn on him and Kashet.
He ran on, his side beginning to ache now, to the landing court where he could see the dragons in the sky clearly, without the interference of walls. They were still wheeling and whirling around each other in a complicated ritual that was the equal of anything a bird could do. They soared and plunged, they twined around each other and broke apart.
Mostly, Seftu chased Coresan, and she evaded him only enough to make it clear she was going to see just what he was made of before she let him mate with her. Then, finally, after a series of three heart-stopping lunges, as Seftu herded the scarlet female higher and higher in the sky, they began an ever-tightening spiral that took them still higher, up into the cloud-studded sky, until they were scarcely larger than ants.
Then—then they lunged for one another with a ferocity indistinguishable from rage.
The lunge ended in a tangle of locked claws and a plunge to earth that must have terrified Seftu's rider out of a dozen years of life. How he stayed in the saddle, Vetch could not even begin to guess.
Caught together, neither willing to let go, paralyzed by the rapture of mating, they spun around a common center, whirling, wings held half outspread at a peculiar angle. They plunged, on and on, down to the unforgiving earth, while Vetch and everyone else in the court held their breath. And just behind them plunged a blue-green streak that was Kashet, paralleling their fall.
At the very last moment, just before the impact, they broke their hold on each other.
Their wings snapped open completely at the same moment, and the vertical plunge suddenly became horizontal as they tumbled from the fall into a ground-brushing flight, and streaked off in opposite directions, parallel to the ground.
Vetch wasn't interested in what happened to Seftu; presumably his Jouster would get him back under control and bring him in without help. He had eyes only for Ari and Kashet, who had followed the entwined dragons down in their deadly plunge, and now deftly herded Coresan away from the eastern hills across the river, above the King's Valley where all the Great Kings had their tombs—where she wanted to go—and towards the compound. And she didn't want to go there; she kept snaking her head back and trying to snap at them. But Ari and Kashet were more clever than she.
They managed to keep their 'superior' position in the air, staying above her all the time. Kashet didn't even have to do more than threaten; a dragon's one vulnerability was his wings, and Kashet could slash Coresan's with his claws very easily from where he was. Coresan didn't dare chance it, and was herded where Ari wanted to go as Kashet feinted strikes at her wings.
At that point, a dragon landed in the court; it was Seftu, and his rider looked as if he must have been near to soiling himself with fear. Vetch ignored Seftu and the Jouster; some other dragon boys did run to help the man lead a reluctant Seftu away, but Vetch's charges were still in the sky, and he was not going to leave the court until they were safely down.
Haraket had arrived without him noticing, and stood just behind Vetch. He grunted when he saw Seftu land. 'The priests lifted the bone; the fool will be well enough, idiot that he is,' Haraket to said to no one in particular, though Vetch knew his words were meant for Ari's ears, via Vetch. 'A few weeks, and he'll be healed up, though if he hadn't been seen right away—well, he'd not have had a chance.'
Coresan was coming back now, in the direction of the compound. Once she was turned, they started forcing her down. By getting and staying above her, they forced her to fly lower and lower, and slower and slower as well, until she couldn't stay in the air any longer. And at that very moment, they were above the landing court, and her training took over and she came in to ground.
The moment Coresan touched the earth, Haraket was there with two of the strongest slaves in the compound and three leading chains. Vetch started to help them, but Haraket waved him off.
'Keep off, boy! This is not work for you!' he shouted, and then turned his attention back to the angry dragon. He needed to; that tail was whipping back and forth with deadly force until a third slave came up and flung himself bodily on it, pinning it to the earth. She hissed and tossed her head—but she was also tired, and probably hungry, and unlike a wild dragon, did not think of humans as food but as those who brought food. Haraket and one of the other slaves plunged under her snapping jaws and grabbed her harness and hung on it until she stopped tossing her head and lunging. She didn't surrender, then, but she did stop fighting. With Ari and Kashet hovering above to keep her from taking off again, Haraket hooked his chain into the ring on the front of her harness and the two slaves hooked theirs into the foot loops on either side of the saddle. Then, last of all, Haraket whipped a choke collar around her neck, and that was that.
Serve your dragon. Serve your Jouster.
