the area the senior Jousters had begun to call “the Nursery.” Not that anyone really minded the name—the place was full of baby dragons, after all, and though the senior Jousters might have looked on Kiron’s wing with a certain level of patronization, it was paternal patronization. And all they had to do was to look at Avatre and the things she could do to know what the future held for the rest of the babies in the Nursery.
The others all knew what he was going to ask, of course. They’d all been talking about the idea for the last several days. They were too wise to wait for him anywhere near Lord Khumun’s quarters, but they pounced on him as a group the moment he entered the corridor nearest the Nursery.
Before they could start chattering at him, he held up his hands in the victory sign, and the corridor echoed with their cheers. He had to smile at that. Oh, they were so eager to get into the sky, even the ones who’d been sick on the mock dragon. How easily they forgot!
“Oh, don’t start cheering until after you’ve had a taste of what those two beasts I’m going to start you on can think up in the way of torment for a new flyer!” he warned them, laughing. “Don’t forget for a moment that these are mean old cows who would much rather be in their sand wallows being treated like princesses than have to work for their meat. It’s going to be especially bad for the first two to ride them, in the morning. They
“But you and Avatre will be there to teach them better manners,” said Gan gaily. “There’s nothing to worry about, is there, lads?”
Kiron sighed. Enough enthusiasm to build a palace and not a brick of common sense among them. Well, they would see soon enough for themselves that he hadn’t been joking. The first few days were going to be— interesting.
He had to wonder, though. Were all young riders such overconfident idiots?
Sut-ke-re, rider of Jatel, laughed when he asked that question aloud. “Ah, Kiron,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Are not most young men in general overconfident idiots? I think that is the essence of a young man.”
“Well—” he said, and flushed when he thought of what he had done to win Avatre for himself. It had been insane. He should never have been able to pull it off. At least he hadn’t been overconfident—he’d been terrified every moment of every day that he would be caught—but he’d been a fool to even try it in the first place. “I suppose so. If not overconfident, then—at least, we are all foolhardy. And as for idiots—well, I suppose we are that, too.”
“I think it is in the nature of young men,” Sut-ke-re said, pulling off his short wig and rubbing his shaved head as he squinted up at the sun. “Young men are willing to take risks that older men would not even think of trying. Young men believe they are immortal, I do think. I know that they are impatient with tradition. If they were not, they would never attempt the half of what they do, and no new thing would ever be tried.”
“Such as growing dragons from the egg?” Kiron hazarded.
“Such as growing dragons from the egg,” Sut-ke-re confirmed. “Now, here is my dilemma. On the one hand, I would rather that your wing did traditional training. On the other hand, there are no dragons to spare for traditional training, and even if there were, there are young men two or three years older than your boys are, who have had other sorts of military training, who are waiting for a dragon. There are always more trained warriors wanting to be Jousters than there are dragons. And I agree with you that putting two fledgling flyers into the air at the same time is foolhardy. So I agreed, and so did Ke-shuth.”
“Jouster,” said Kiron, trying to put as much gratitude as he could muster into his voice, “Thank you.”
Sut-ke-re shrugged. “I can see no reason to object to your borrowing Jatel before I am ready to ride out, for she is a lazy cow and could surely stand to be ridden far more in a day than I ride her. And Keshuth will be pleased to have his slug Orthele warmed up and more inclined to move when he comes to take her out as well.”
So, he had gotten past the second hurdle with not so much as a single objection! “Thank you, Jouster Sut- ke-re,” Kiron said again, with relief as well as gratitude. He bowed slightly, and turned to go give the boys the good news.
“Just you keep them out of trouble!” Sut-ke-re called after him, though there was amusement in his voice. “If ever I turn up and there’s a sprained foot or a strained wing, a broken strap or an exhausted dragon, there will be a reckoning!”
This made for a change in the babies’ routine. The dragonets were no longer clamoring for food constantly; they were content with several large meals every day now, which made it possible for the boys to get away long enough to train in between feedings. But for the two on the morning flights of the new stage of training, the dragonets had to be fed by someone else, otherwise the two boys in question would not have time to fly before the wings went up.
That “someone” was Aket-ten.
She had, in fact, volunteered for the duty, and Kiron had been concerned that she would not be up to it. Feeding the babies was still a messy, bloody job, and he would not have blamed her for taking one look and deciding it was not for her.
In fact, she took to it without a flinch or a word of complaint, and by the time Toreth and Huras were ready for their first real flights, she had fed every one of the babies, under the supervision of its “mother,” at least twice.
As for the babies, once they got over the surprise of seeing someone different from their “mother” with food in hand, they accepted her without question or pause. In fact, they began to obey her nearly as well as they obeyed their “mothers,” which meant that she could take a turn at the baby minding when they played together.
“If I’m going to be Speaking with them, and possibly helping them when they’re sick or hurt, I’d better be prepared to feed them, now, hadn’t I?” she replied, when Kiron had suggested that she might find it unpleasant. “If I have to help hand feed a very sick or injured dragon, it’s not going to be much different from what I’m doing now except in terms of scale.” Since she was exactly right, there hadn’t been anything he could do except to thank her and turn her over to the boys to be shown what to do.
By this point, the dragonets were bonded strongly enough with their riders that having someone else feed them once every couple of days wasn’t going to make a difference. And Aket-ten was right; better to have them associate her with a very pleasant experience now, so that when she had to help them under
On the first morning of the new training, Kiron had the dragon boys bring Jatel and Orthele to the landing courtyard after they had been saddled. There was no other way to get both boys up into the air under supervision at the same time. Both dragons were heartily displeased with this change in routine, and hissed and whined at each other when they were led into the courtyard. But Kiron had strong slaves standing by to help the dragon boys if needed, and though the two dragons grumbled, they didn’t actually do anything, thus being true to their essentially lazy natures.
Kiron and Avatre took off as soon as Toreth and Huras were in their saddles. Avatre watched the two dragons below her with great interest as he put her into a little circle above the court. As soon as he thought their position was good, he waved to the dragon boys below; they unhitched the chains, and the two riders gave their dragons the signal to fly.
And nothing happened.
Now this was not entirely unexpected. Their regular riders knew what to do, but both of the desert dragons had probably assessed these inexperienced boys within moments as being riders that they could afford to ignore, and they were not going to move unless they were forced. It was hard to force a dragon to do something it didn’t want to do—and they held grudges when you did.
So Kiron did the forcing.
He had considered stinging them with clay pellets from his sling and had thought better of the idea. He didn’t want these dragons to associate his boys with being “bitten” by a clay pellet. So instead, he had laid another plan to get the dragons to fly.
He gave a second signal—and on the other side of the wall, one of the local pigeon keepers flung open his portable coop, and several dozen rock doves burst into the air with a whirring explosion of wings.
As Kiron very well knew, when one winged thing suddenly explodes into the sky, virtually every other winged thing nearby will do the same. The instinct to flee the unexpected is a powerful one, and in general, winged creatures are uniquely vulnerable when grounded, so when the eyes and ears took in the signal
