'The very one,' Haraket replied, with a hint of a smile.
Vetch, meanwhile, felt himself held in the man's powerful gaze. Whoever this was, Vetch felt like a mouse between the paws of a cat. He knew he should avert his gaze and stare at the ground in respect, but he couldn't look away! He was fascinated and terrified at the same time by this man—a powerful man, an important man—
A man who could order my death and be obeyed on the spot—
How he knew that, he didn't know, but he knew instantly that it was nothing less than the truth.
It felt as if his mind was being rummaged through. Desperately, he kept his thoughts on Kashet, on Coresan, on all of the dragons he had been making friends with, a little at a time…
'So, boy,' the man said, speaking directly to Vetch, as no Tian noble had ever done before, 'How do you make dragons love you? Is it some witchery?'
Vetch gulped. Witchery! Oh, gods, that was the last thing he wanted anyone to think! 'I'm—good to them— lord,' he whispered. 'Patient. Careful. I—give them treats—show them the pleasures of being obedient—let them become my friend—I coax them to be good—' He fumbled for the words to describe what he was doing, and failed. 'I—like them,' he said desperately.
To his shock, the man tossed back his head in a bellow of laughter, freeing him from that paralyzing gaze. The stranger slapped Haraket's back; Haraket actually staggered.
'A good answer! A true answer!' the man said, still laughing. 'So speaks any good tamer of animals! Well enough, Haraket, find me more such as this boy, and I authorize you to take as many boys, be they free, slave or serf, as you need for the new Jouster Hundred. You undertake that—I will find you Jousters who are neither too bold nor too foolish, even if I have to take them from the fields and the quarries to find sensible men of courage to fill those saddles. And if our nobles are offended by this, and feel I have demeaned their feckless sons by allowing peasants and laborers to serve alongside them—well, they can come and quarrel with me.'
With that, the man strode away through the mist and rain, paying so little heed to the weather that it might as well have been bone dry.
'That, young Vetch,' Haraket said with satisfaction, 'is the Commander of Dragons, who just happens to also be the Great King's seventh son by one of his Lesser Wives. And if our young hotheads can actually manage to steal so many dragonets from the nest—and I am forbidding them to take more than one from any one nest—then we are about to double our strength to a full Hundred, and perhaps more. Though—where I'm to find so many dragon boys—boys who have experience—boys who are not intimidated or afraid of dragons—
'Shouldn't they just love animals and understand them?' Vetch said, without thinking.
'What?' Haraket said, startled.
'Someone like Fisk—' Once again, he knew what he wanted to say, but didn't have the words for it. 'He loved his goats—he knew how to see what they were going to do by the way they acted—' He floundered, but Haraket's eyes lit up. 'It's not like dragonets are as big as grown dragons. Even one the size of an ox is still just a baby, after all! And he said you could take serfs or slaves—and serfs and slaves are always doing the dirty work around animals.'
'You could be right, boy,' Haraket mused aloud. 'Perhaps— dog boys, the ones that tend the hunting packs. They live, sleep, even eat with their packs. Dog boys will know how to care for a young thing, even a dragon. By the gods, I see what you mean. They're out there, invisible, because none of us ever look at them!' Haraket exclaimed. 'The boys that tend camels, the ones that care for the sacred animals in the Temples, or the Great King's menagerie! Good gods, all those slaves and serfs we never even look at, living under our very noses! The boys that tend the Khephis bulls are surely no strangers to big, dangerous beasts, and Hamun can spare us a few of them, 1 should think!' He nodded with satisfaction. 'Good! I'll find the boys. You get back to your duties, and when I've gotten a clutch, you and Fisk can pick out the ones that are any good.'
Vetch went back to his duties with most of his questions answered, and as he went to get meat for Kashet and Avatre, he encountered a harried-looking adult in the doorway of the butchery. The man was pushing a barrow filled with small chunks, none bigger than his hand, and Vetch realized that this must be one of the dragon trainers, men he had not yet actually seen, the ones who were to tend to the dragonets until Haraket could find boys to take over the job. He did not look happy. Vetch could well imagine why. This was, more-or-less, his season of leisure and it had been seriously curtailed.
At least this was more confusion to hide what he was doing.
Provided, of course, that someone didn't try to put a dragonet in the pen that Avatre was already in, and find her, and start to ask questions. So—subtract one worry, add another—
By nightfall, there were five dragonets in pens in the compound, none of them nearly as young as Avatre, but not near fledging yet either. Vetch didn't have to time to look at any of them, though he heard that they were all about the size of the first one, as wild as lion cubs and as ready to take off limbs before their first taste of tala calmed them.
Coresan must have mated late in the season, if these were the size of the dragonets out in the wild. By nightfall too, Haraket had found a round dozen new dragon boys, and to Vetch's great relief, he and Fisk were not going to have to train all of them. Half, in fact, were freeborn, and Haraket deemed it more appropriate that they be
