Sanctuary

another male.

“Peace, little one!” he told her, as she shoved him a little off balance and tried to look up at him in adoration with one eye while she glared at Kashet out of the other. “You are first in my heart, always—and Ari will be here any moment and Kashet will cease to remember that I live.”

“Ari is here now,” called a voice from above, and Kashet reared up to his full height at the sound of that voice, which put his head well above the level of the roof. Ari looked down over the parapet of the building next to the one that Kiron, Orest, and the other members of Kiron’s wing (except Aket-ten) shared, waved to his protege, then reached up to scratch the bony eye ridges of his own dragon as Kashet rested his chin on the parapet and sighed gustily. As Kiron had predicted, Kashet was now quite oblivious to the fact that the younger man even existed, which made Avatre perfectly pleased.

Ari alone stood out from among the Altan inhabitants of Sanctuary as noticeably different. He was much darker, to begin with; here in the desert, he had tanned to the color of old leather, while the Altans had gone the same golden brown as a properly baked loaf of barley bread. His face was broader than the Altan “type,” his chin stronger, his eyes a shade of brown that was very near to black.

Kiron would have liked to remain there, giving Avatre the caresses and affection she lived for, but there was no leisure for that this morning. The cramped quarters of the sand pit made it necessary for almost everyone to leave in order to get saddled, which would mean another delay in taking to the air, and this was a day when no one could afford much in the way of a delay.

Kashet was the first to get out—by virtue of his size and strength, he simply hooked his front talons into the parapet and climbed out over the roof. The first time he’d done that, Kiron hadn’t been the only one who’d gasped and shrunk back, expecting the wall to come down. But either they were all very lucky, or Kashet was a shrewd judge of construction; he hadn’t left more than a scratch or two on the top of the wall. Kiron still didn’t know what the walls of Sanctuary were made of. It looked like hard- packed sand, or sandstone, but it wasn’t, and it was tougher and stronger than anything Kiron had ever seen before. The walls weren’t made of stone blocks either; the entire city could have been carved from single pieces of stone. There were no signs of seams or block lines, and although the corners and edges were all rounded as if scoured that way, at a guess Kiron would have said that they had been carved or sculpted that way on purpose from the beginning, given that nothing much seemed to mark them. Whatever material those walls were made of, it was something that stood up to the abuse of dragons climbing all over them.

Nor could Kiron have put an original purpose to this courtyard that now served as the dragons’ sand wallow. When the wing had come to Sanctuary, the space had been filled with sand still, left that way on purpose for the dragons’ use, and the doors and windows that had once looked into the yard had been blocked up at Kaleth’s orders. It was about the size of the landing courtyard at the Jousters’ Compound in Tia, which made it just about big enough for ten dragons. Now—if somehow, there should be more dragons one day—

I will leave that in the hands of the gods, Kiron told himself. The gods had provided for these ten; he would have faith that they would provide in the future. Or else he and Ari would come up with some clever plan to create more wallows and shelters somehow.

Though the sands were not heated, as were the sands of the pens back in the Compounds, they didn’t yet need to be. The stone of the buildings and the sand itself stored enough heat over the course of the day to keep the dragons comfortable all night. And as for heating the sands in the winter—Well, the eccentric Akkadian Healer and Magus Heklatis had some ideas on that score, and Kiron was content to leave it at that. Certainly the wild dragons managed; theirs could, too. At least there would be no cold rains to contend with.

“Time to go, my son,” Ari told his dragon. “No one else can move until you do.” With a grunt, Kashet heaved himself up; first getting his forequarters up to the parapet, then carefully planting hindclaws in the blocked-up window-slits and slithering the rest of himself over the edge.

Avatre uttered what sounded like a sigh of relief. She was still small enough that she could use the open staircase as a climbing aid, and that was what she did, leaving the rest of the dragonets the room to shake themselves free of the sand and follow her lead. She and Kashet shared the roof of Ari’s building as their harnessing stop; six of the eight dragonets made use of the other three roofs, two apiece, leaving the pit to Re-eth-ke and Orest’s striking blue Wastet.

Harnessing these days was a far cry from the complicated affair it had been back when the dragons were part of Alta’s (and Tia’s) fighting forces. The saddles were the same, but there was no armor, no helmets, and no Jousting lances.

Not that they were unarmed. Especially not when hunting. Aristocratic Gan had trained his gentle green dragonet Khaleph to tolerate a light hunting spear flying past his head, so his saddle had a quiver of javelins attached to it. Orest, Ari, Pe-atep, and Aket-ten could get their mounts to put up with arrows. The rest of them used slings and stones—not much good at bringing down game of the size a dragon needed, but good enough to distract, irritate, or with luck, stun, and that was all the opening a dragon could ask for.

No making formations for this task; dragons needed a big hunting territory, and each of them had his (or her) preferred ground. By common consent, Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke got what was nearest Sanctuary, and the rest of them simply let their dragons define the hunting ranges as they saw fit.

They were up and into the air as soon as they were strapped into their saddles, scattering to the four directions. Much as Kiron would have liked to hunt alongside Aket-ten, the plain fact was that it was impossible. Neither dragon would have tolerated another in her hunting grounds.

So he and Avatre launched themselves into the soft blue eye of the cloudless morning sky, and headed for their allotment without a backward glance at Aket-ten and Re-eth-he. Later, perhaps, if they both got in well ahead of the storm, they could fly together. First things first.

Kiron was minded to chase wild ass this morning; they hadn’t preyed on those herds in a while, and if they were going to have anything left to bring back for Avatre’s evening meal after Avatre ate her fill, it would have to be a substantial kill. That meant flying to the farthest extent of Avatre’s hunting range, where the sand gave way to scrubby hills and wadis, but she was fresh and strong, and the wind was in their favor. Provided that they made a kill quickly, they would beat the storm back in plenty of time.

So with a quick prayer to Besh, the pot-bellied, bandy-legged luck god, Kiron began to scan the horizon and, pragmatically, made sure he had a heavy stone for his sling.

TWO

THE sun was only halfway above the horizon as Kiron gave Avatre signals with hand and legs that she was to gain height. She pumped her wide red wings as hard as she could, valiantly answering his direction. The only problem with flying this early was that there were no thermals to ride, and every wingbeat a dragon took came with heavy labor. A dragon’s preferred method of flight was to glide from thermal to thermal, spiraling up on the rising current of air, and gliding down to the next thermal, with as few wingbeats in between as possible. Such a flying style saved energy, and the one thing that a flying dragon needed a lot of was energy. It was Kiron’s preferred method too; riding dragonback was hard work, though you’d never know that from the serene wall paintings of Jousters in the sky in both Tia and Alta. With every downward stroke, he was flung back against the cantle of his saddle as Avatre surged forward, and with every upward sweep he hung weightless for just an unnerving moment, then fell forward against the pommel. Jousters learned to cope with this, of course; he felt what she was going to do with his legs and he had learned to shift his weight to make himself less of a burden, but it was hard work for both of them, and he always felt guilty about putting her to the extra effort of carrying him when she had to work this hard to get in the air.

Below them, Sanctuary dwindled to a child’s play village made of sand, in the midst of a sea of sand, with the other dragons scattering in all directions, the only spots of color against the pale sweeps of the dunes. He sometimes wondered how the dragons felt about this new life; were they angry because food no longer was delivered to them? Or did they prefer to make kills on their own? He didn’t detect any new grumpiness in Avatre’s mood; the contrary, actually. He thought that she liked hunting, and he knew for certain that this dry, hot desert suited her. Even at sun’s zenith, when the dragons moved out of the direct rays, they didn’t stay out of the heat for too very long.

Avatre knew “her” territory now, and headed for it without prompting. He squinted against the light of the rising sun, and sighted in on their goal, the far-off hills and wadis where the wild ass herd roamed. It was cold up here in the morning, but he shrugged off the chill; already the sun on his skin was warming him, and before very long he knew that it would stop being pleasant and start being uncomfortable, and he would be glad of the coolness