He stood there with his mouth wide open for a bit, then it suddenly came home to him that this was going to be no ordinary storm.
He wasn't the only servant to have realized what was happening; a moment later Haraket ran through the compound shouting for the boys to run for the landing court, slaves to cover the pens, and cursing everyone in his path. Dragon boys and every other servant that happened to be free ran for the landing court, for there was no way that most of the dragons were going to be able to land in their pens with that wind behind them. In fact, they'd be lucky to get down without any injuries.
Vetch was right behind Haraket, and the Overseer thrust chained collars into his hands without regard for who he was or which dragon he served. Well enough; Kashet and Ari wouldn't need him, but Seftu and Coresan, and perhaps another half-dozen other dragons he'd gotten to know, and which probably would trust him, certainly would.
The first of the dragons came plunging down into the courtyard just as Haraket, Vetch, and the others got there themselves; already wind, chill as the winds of midwinter, whipped through the open space, sending dragons skewing sideways as they tried to get down to the ground. This wasn't the wind of the Dry, the kamiseen, that always blew in the same direction—no, this was a nasty wind, a demon wind, that twisted and writhed unpredictably. The landings were chaotic; with the exception of Kashet, the dragons were clearly fighting their Jousters. They wanted, more than anything, to get back to safety on the ground before the storm struck, and if they'd had a choice they would have landed anywhere they thought they could find shelter rather than take the chance on speeding for home. There were near collisions in the air above the landing court, actual collisions on the ground, as hard gusts blew dragons aside and into each others' paths. If it hadn't been that their eyes were on the coming storm and not on each other, there might have been fights among the dragons as they competed for the limited landing space; Vetch and two or three of the braver boys dashed in with chains and collars to fasten around their throats. They found themselves scrambling among the fearsome claws, to snap the collars around the first throat that presented itself, then drop the end of the chain in the hands of one of the servants or slaves. Coresan recognized him as he ducked under her nose, and actually pulled back her claws in mid-lash so that they skimmed along his back, barely stinging; he handed off the chain to Fisk, who had been behind him. He helped Seftu's boy get the leads on Seftu, but they didn't need them; Seftu was so grateful to be down that he was actually whimpering, and was crouching so low that his belly dragged the ground. The rest of the boys spread out along the walls and shouted to attract the attention of their Jousters, so that the dragons could get separated and steered over to the proper handler, and taken back to their pens.
The chaos began to sort itself out, so Vetch stayed where he was, knowing Ari and Kashet, knowing that they would come in as they always did, as if the sun god stood high in the sky, untroubled by storms. And sure enough, he saw them, Kashet's powerful wing beats holding course against the wicked winds, coming in last of them all. He saw then that Kashet, secure and nothing near as nervous as the rest, was going to land in his own pen as always. That was when Vetch abandoned the mess in the landing court and headed for his proper place—
He got there just as they landed, and it was clear from Ari's wet hair and the rain streaks on Kashet's flanks that the rain wasn't far behind. At that point, no one cared about duty or protocol (not that Ari ever truly did); Ari helped Vetch to strip Kashet of his saddle and harness and pull the canvas canopy over the sand pit just as the first warning drops of the torrent to come splattered into it. Then Ari raced for his own quarters, as splatters turned to downpour.
The canopies were clever devices, just like the awnings that shaded the human inhabitants of the compound from the rays of the sun, fastened to fat bronze rings which were strung on two ropes of wire, running along two opposite walls of a pen. You grasped two hanging straps and pulled the canopy on its wires across to the other side of the pit, where you fastened the straps to rings at the other end. Then you had a 'roof' over the sand pit that protected it from rain. This was the only way to keep the sand pits from turning into hot sand soup during the rainy season—or now.
Kashet burrowed down into the sand as the rain poured down onto the canvas, sheeting down along the sides and into the drains along the edges of his pit.
And Vetch sprinted for the next pen.
He thanked his gods that he had pulled the canvas over the tops of the 'unused' pens. No one had barged into his pen to protect it. And his egg was safe from the downpour.
But so close to hatching as it was—he had to see.
It was almost not worth it. In the brief time it took to get from one pen to the other, he was soaked to the skin. He peered through the murk from his vantage point in the doorway—and thought that his egg was rocking, but it was hard to tell. Without getting into the pen, all he could see was that it was all right, that the canopy was keeping it and the sand-pit dry.
Back he ran to Kashet's pen. He peeled off his sodden kilt and changed to a new one in the shelter of his own little awning. The edges of the awnings had become waterfalls, and the sky was so dark it seemed to be dusk, not mid-afternoon. Lightning flickered constantly, seeming to freeze droplets in midair for a moment, and thunder drowned out every other sound.
He was just grateful that the gust front had been the only wind. A good blow could rip the canvas from its moorings, soaking and cooling the sands, and that might have spelled an end to his hopes. If a chicken egg got chilled as it was about to hatch, the chick died before it could be born. Would the same be true of a dragon? He rather thought so—
The storm would have terrified him, if he hadn't been so preoccupied with thoughts of his egg. Fortunately, such fury couldn't last long; before he became too impatient to wait any longer before returning to his egg, the sky lightened, the torrent lessened, the lightning and thunder passed into the distance, leaving behind only a steady, heavy rain, interrupted by brief surges of a real pelting.
