Vetch wanted to watch. But his time was not his own at the moment. As soon as Kashet came in, he and Ari would need taking care of. Vetch sprinted for the gate nearest Kashet's pen.
When Ari and Kashet landed, they'd need—and deserve—careful attention, and he was going to be the one to give it to them.
At the exact moment he began to run, Coresan resigned herself, and with a final hiss, allowed herself to be led away. The third slave freed her tail at Haraket's signal. Together Haraket and his two helpers led the dragon to her pen, while Ari and Kashet rose again, to hover a little higher for a moment while they picked a good landing spot. Then they landed, nearest to the gate that led to Kashet's enclosure.
By that time Vetch's last glimpse of them was as he sprinted through the gate in the wall, going for Kashet's pen himself. Seftu's dragon boy was in the corridor, laden with food and drink; Vetch snatched what he wanted from the provender over the other boy's vehement protests, which he ignored. After all, the novice rider didn't deserve it; wasn't he half responsible for the near disaster? Seftu's Jouster could bloody well wait for his wine. If Vetch were to have a choice, he'd get stale river water, thick with flood-time mud, and be grateful for that much.
When Ari and Kashet stumbled into Kashet's pen, Vetch was there ahead of them, waiting with a skin flask of palm wine for Ari and a bucket of water for Kashet. But Ari waved off the wine and took the bucket of water instead, drinking as he had that day that Vetch had first seen him, and pouring the rest over his head and shoulders. Kashet went straight to his trough, which, as always, was also full of clean water, and drank as deeply as his Jouster; Vetch was unharnessing him as soon as he reached the trough and stopped moving forward. The dragon not only felt as hot as a furnace, he smelted hot, and Ari smelled like his dragon. Both of them looked utterly spent; the kohl around Ari's eyes was smeared, making his eyes look like holes burned in his face, and Kashet's eyes were dull with fatigue.
Ari shook his head like a dog, sending droplets of water flying in the bright sunlight. Vetch cast a glance at him as his own fingers unfastened buckles and pulled away harness; he looked terrible.
Weary and ill, and not at all as triumphant as Vetch thought he should be—
'Etat save me from ever having to do that again,' he said, and sat down, right on the edge of the sand pit, head and shoulders sagging.
Vetch was torn between going to him and continuing to get the harness off of Kashet; he compromised by unbuckling the last strap and letting the saddle drop to the side, then going to Ari.
'Sir?' he ventured, not daring to touch the Jouster.
'I'll have that wine now, boy,' came the muffled reply.
Vetch put the skin in his hand; he fully expected Ari to drain it, but the Jouster again surprised him, taking only a single mouthful before handing it back.
'That's better.' He raised his head. 'How is Reaten?'
That was Coresan's Jouster; Vetch recalled it as soon as Ari spoke the name. And he had news, startled out of Seftu's dragon boy. 'He has a cracked skull, and it would have been very, very bad if he hadn't been seen to right away, but the priest is certain that he will be all right eventually,' Vetch told him. 'The trepanning priest is lifting the bone right now; he should be all right once the incision heals.'
'Teh and Teth be thanked,' Ari sighed, and Vetch had no doubt that the words were more than half prayer. 'And Haras, who puts the wind beneath our wings. The gods truly look after the fools of the world.' And he shook his head, slowly, and took another mouthful of wine. 'That so little permanent harm has come of this is more than either of those two deserve.'
Vetch couldn't help himself; he was bursting with curiosity, and with no little awe. 'Sir—how did you do that? One moment he was falling, the next, he was across your saddle! It looked like magic!'
'It's all Kashet's doing,' Ari replied, but he looked up, then, and behind the weariness, seemed very pleased at Vetch's wide-eyed admiration. 'I'll admit we've practiced just that move, in case something like this happened. This was the first time we've caught a man, though—it's always been bags of chaff before this. Have you ever seen a dragon take a goose in flight?'
He waited for Vetch to reply; Vetch shook his head.
'No? Well, it's something they do in the wild, pulling their head and neck back, then snapping it forward while flying, like a heron catching a fish. I've taught Kashet to do that, only to bring his head in under what we're trying to catch rather than snapping at it with his jaws, then to raise his head and fly up a little at the same time. If we've got the balance right, what we're aiming for slides right down his neck onto my saddle where I can steady it.' Ari shook his head, and Vetch gaped as he tried to imagine just how much control and coordination—and cooperation on Kas-het's part!—that would take. 'Needless to say, no one else can do it. Another of my little eccentricities that the others put up with in the past; none of them ever had the imagination to see that it could be used to rescue a falling rider. I suspect there won't be any more sniping remarks about it after this, though.'
Sniping remarks? Never had it even passed Vetch's mind that his own Jouster, so highly thought of by Haraket, might be on the receiving end of any criticism. After all, from what he had overheard, Ari was widely thought of to be the most skilled rider and Jouster in the compound. So why would anyone criticize him?
