Alta

think that putting an inexperienced rider on a fledgling dragon is going to get someone hurt or killed, and there are people who have the ears of the Great Ones who would be pleased if that happened.”

He did not come out and say that the Magi would be just as glad if the Jousters began having a bout of trouble, but they both knew who he was talking about. For once, the Magi were not getting the credit for victory. Their storms might be keeping the Tian Jousters on the ground, but it was the Altan Jousters, not some storms too far away to be seen, that were being lauded as the force that was turning the tide in this war.

So Kiron had intercepted Lord Khumun just after his daily inspection of the dragon pens, for Lord Khumun did not leave the running of the compound up to his Overseer—or rather, Lord Khumun was the Overseer, in the sense that he personally inspected everything, every day, and knew the names of every inhabitant of the compound right down to the dragon boys.

The Lord of the Jousters regarded him steadily, arms crossed over his chest. “All right. I can see where that might be true enough. And it is true that the failure of one of us reflects badly on all of us. What did you have in mind, bearing in mind that all of the dragons we have are out fighting or flying patrols every day?”

Kiron cleared his throat, and began his carefully prepared argument, reminding himself that the worst that could happen would be that Lord Khumun would say “no.” “Simply flying—taking off, doing simple maneuvers over the compound, and landing—isn’t going to task a dragon at all, especially not if it’s only enough to get their muscles warmed up. I want my boys to start taking the beasts up and warming them up before their assigned rider takes them out, and that is how they will learn to fly before their own dragonets fledge. To start with, I want to use only the two desert dragons that laid our eggs. They’re both Tian dragons, so they were caught in Tia as fledglings rather than adults and they’re tamer. And frankly, they’re lazier. A lazy dragon is what I want for a new rider.”

Lord Khumun nodded thoughtfully, and pursed his lips. “And I can also see where having your boys warm up a lazy dragon might actually be to our advantage. I’ve noticed that those two lose some of their lethargy once they’ve been moving for a while. Go on.”

Yes indeed, Lord Khumun knew everything having to do with the Jousters and their beasts. There could be no equivalent to “Vetch and Avatre” here; had anyone hidden an egg or a growing dragonet in an empty pen, Lord Khumun would have known within the day. Not that Kiron could fault Haraket, the Overseer of the Tian Compound —the Altan Compound was less than half the size of the Tian equivalent. It wasn’t that Haraket was careless; no, it was that Lord Khumun was an absolute fanatic about all things having to do with his Jousters.

On the other hand, there would be no equivalent to the dreadful accident that allowed Avatre to be hatched either.

“I’ll go up on Avatre at the same time, keeping the height advantage above them, so that if the dragon tries any tricks, we can herd them down again. Two dragons doing two runs each day means that my boys will each get a practice ride every other day.” Now he made a face. “I’d put them up on Avatre, too, but there’d be no one up there with them as a safeguard.”

“That assumes she could be gotten into the air with you still on the ground,” Lord Khumun pointed out. “I think it unlikely that at this stage she would accept another rider. Perhaps when she is older, but not now.”

He’s talking as if he is in favor of this already. Actually, I suppose if he wasn’t he would have said no from the beginning. And he’s not going to ask me to put the others on Avatre to teach them either. Thanks be to the gods! Kiron relaxed a little at passing one hurdle—and the truth was, though he could think of other excuses why he didn’t want his friends to train on Avatre’s back, the real reason was that he didn’t want to share her. The mere thought of someone else in her saddle made him acutely unhappy. “With the training I’ve been giving them on the mock dragon, I think they’ll be comfortable in the air pretty quickly.” He waited to see what Lord Khumun would have to say about this, for Lord Khumun had been remarkably silent on the subject of Kiron’s unorthodox training methods. But what was he to do? Traditionally, the Jousters of Alta had been presented with fully-grown, trained, tala-drugged dragons, and taught to fly on them from the beginning. The dragonets were nowhere near big enough to ride.

The mock dragon had been an idea of his own. He had racked his brain for weeks to come up with a way to simulate flying, and finally, watching a new awning being put up over a pen gave him the idea. Some training was done by putting a saddle at one end of a lever with a weight at the other, but that only gave the rider up-and-down motion. And it wasn’t very far off the ground.

The training of the Tian dragons, with the dragons tethered within their pens, would be part of the training, but it wouldn’t bring the boys along nearly as fast as Kiron wanted—and what was more, both rider and dragonet would be beginners. As he had said, putting two beginning flyers into the air at once was trouble waiting to happen.

Look what had happened to him, and he had some experience at flying by then!

Then, somehow, watching that awning being re-strung, combined with the tethered fledgling, cascaded in his mind into the mock dragon.

A tightly packed bundle of reeds the size of a dragon’s chest had been put in the center of a courtyard. Ropes had been strung through enormous eye bolts driven into the stone in each corner of the yard at the top of the wall. The ropes were then brought to the center of the yard and tied to the bundle. A dragon saddle was put on it, one of the boys strapped himself into the saddle, and then eight muscular slaves pulled on the ropes to heave the whole contraption into the air until it was suspended above the court, and the boy with it. A thick pile of loose straw with straw-filled mattresses atop that was positioned beneath the bundle.

And then the games began.

The object of the boy in the saddle was to remain in the saddle and relatively in control of the situation, which translated as keeping his balance no matter what happened. The object of the slaves was to unseat him. At first, this had been limited to imitating the sorts of movements that a dragon would make while flying—the swooping up and down of wing-beat flying, pitches to the right or left. Once those were mastered, though, all bets were off, and the slaves were given leave to make the mock dragon do anything they could manage, whether or not a real dragon would be capable of the motion. And although Kiron had done his best to make sure the mock dragon wouldn’t actually flip upside down, the slaves had managed to find a way to make it do what it wasn’t supposed to.

The boys came off at first, of course, restraining straps or no restraining straps. They had plenty of bruises to show for it. And they got sick at first. Not anymore.

As a consequence, he was reasonably certain that the two desert dragons would not be able to do anything to rid themselves of their brand-new riders.

“I think that’s a reasonable idea,” said Lord Khumun. “It doesn’t tax the dragons, you’ve got safeguards in mind. And then what will you follow this with, once your wing is comfortable with the two desert dragons?”

“I want them to all take the same sort of warm-up flights on the swamp dragons, so that all of them go up, twice a day, every day.” This wasn’t as dangerous as it might have been before the swamp dragons had been retrained. And there was a big advantage that the swamp dragons had over the desert dragons in this case; they were smaller, so they were less inclined to try violent maneuvers to rid themselves of an unwanted rider.

Once again, Lord Khumun nodded. “I like that. If anything, the swamp dragons need warming up more than the desert dragons do, especially in the morning.

Do you think that once your riders have mastered the swamp dragons, their own will be near fledging?”

“I don’t know, my Lord,” Kiron said honestly. “But if they are not, I propose sending one or two out with a senior Jouster on border-patrol flights, once a day. Not fighting, but simply patrolling. If you choose to replace injured or exhausted Jousters in this way—well, just because the rider is injured or exhausted, that doesn’t mean the dragon is, and there is no reason to let the dragon laze about his pen and get out of condition.”

“I see your point, and although I would like to consult with the senior Jousters on that idea, even this last phase of your plan has its merits,” Lord Khumun acknowledged. “Very well. You can put the first stage of your plan into action, and the second as well. We will then see if we actually need to proceed to the third stage when the time comes.”

Kiron bowed deeply out of overwhelming gratitude. “Thank you, my Lord. I do not believe you will be less than happy with the results.”

When he rose again, Lord Khumun was smiling. “I can see why you made a poor serf,” he said softly. “It was the same reason why you make an excellent leader. Go on with you. I’m sure your wing is waiting to hear the results of your request to me.”

Kiron bowed again, and—well, he didn’t run, but he wanted to. He satisfied dignity with a very brisk walk to