Aerie

it had been of prime importance to understand their moods and behavior. And working in the hot sun, butchering a smelly camel, was good punishment for the young man. This was a form of discipline that they strongly approved of.

For his part, that made Kiron feel a little more like a proper leader. Maybe I can make this work, he thought, as he mounted Avatre and sent her up, the rest of his greenie wing (but one) straggling after him.

There was a cloud of dust on the far horizon; from here, like a tiny smudge against the blue bowl of the sky, as if the “glaze” on the rim was not quite perfect. He signaled to one of his greenies and sent him on ahead to find out what it was, but since it was on the road, it was a good bet that it was a caravan of some sort.

A caravan . . .

There was a particular spot on this trade route that they’d already chased off one group of ambushers a day or so ago. Could it be that this had been no accident? Were the bandits actually expecting this caravan?

He signaled to Orest, who flew Wastet to within shouting distance. “I have a hunch!” he called, and gestured at the dust smudge. “We might just get some action—”

Orest grinned, teeth gleaming whitely in his dusty face. “We’re ready for it!” he shouted back. “Lead us in, Captain!”

As Orest returned to his wing, Kiron signaled the rest of the greenies, and got them in rough formation behind him. Their riders were lighter, the dragons themselves a little smaller, and hence, just a little faster than the older ones, at least in straight flight. There was always a trade-off of weight, power, and speed. Lighter meant faster in racing flight, but not in a dive. A small dragon could never be a powerful one. But a powerful one might not be able to catch him.

A powerful one might not be able to dodge an arrow.

Kiron had memorized this stretch of the road, and now led the group straight to the ambush point. For now, he doubted very much whether bandits were looking up for trouble. They had no real reason to. And even if they did, seeing the dragons in the sky would probably make them scatter, which was the point anyway—

The others might not see it that way, he realized after a moment. They might be spoiling for a fight. He made a mental note to remind them that they weren’t soldiers anymore, they were police, and preventing something from happening was just as good, if not better, than flying to the rescue.

He’d just have to convince them of that.

But not, it seemed, today. For ahead of them, in the ambush point, there were little dots that he didn’t recall being there. And Avatre began to strain forward, which told him that her superior eyesight had made out those specks to be animals or people or both. He took a chance, based on the fact that the dots weren’t moving, and waved his hand over his head in the signal for “Enemy sighted.”

And none too soon either, for the greenie he’d sent out was racing back toward him signaling “Caravan,” and he could see the dark streak against the desert floor beneath that dust cloud that told him the same.

He sent the greenies up higher, moved Avatre into a middle-height position, and signaled to Orest to bring the seasoned wing in to the forefront of the formation.

By that point, the dots had resolved themselves into riders, waiting to swoop down over the crest of the hill as soon as the caravan came within reach.

They were not looking up.

Although, a moment later, as Orest’s wing came diving down out of the sky, and their camels began to bolt, they were.

By the standards of the war it was a short, and very much one-sided, battle. Kiron even allowed his greenies to dive down and herd riderless mounts off into the desert as far as they could be chased, while the seasoned fighters concentrated on the bandits themselves. This was plenty of excitement for them.

The bandits, however, were enough of a menace that the seasoned fighters, individually, had their hands full. Some of them must have dealt with Jousters before this, for a handful of them went back-to-back in a circle, roughly half with spears, and half with bows.

The bowmen were good shots.

A deep maroon dragon bellowed in outrage as an arrow pierced his wing web, and as his rider cursed and ducked, an arrow bouncing off his helm, Kiron was glad he’d ordered the experienced Jousters into their scavenged armor today.

But rather than making them back down, the successful attack on their fellow Jouster infuriated the rest. The angry cry from their injured wingmate ignited the ire of the dragons, and as if they had been given orders from Aket-ten, Kiron watched in astonishment as they did something he had never seen Jousting dragons do before.

They ignored the commands of their riders and landed, clustering all on one side of the knot of bandits. Then, as one, they half-reared and began furiously fanning the air with their wings.

A landing dragon had always kicked up a miniature kamiseen. This was eight dragons all blowing up sand and dust and purposefully aiming it at the humans, who were not expecting it.

Blinded, uttering cries of pain of their own as they dropped weapons and tried to shield their eyes, or clapped their hands over eyes full of sand, they stumbled backward, turning away from their attackers.

Only to be felled by arrows, javelins, and slung stones and lead bullets. Accustomed now to hitting running game at long range, the cluster of incapacitated bandits at short range was no challenge. They were armored— armor that, it appeared, had been salvaged from Tian and Altan officers—but nothing covered their throats, the backs of their legs, or their eyes.

The Jousters were ruthless. When they were finished, there were none of that group left standing. It left Kiron feeling a bit sick, but—

This was war, another sort of war, and this time he had not a lot of sympathy for the enemy. They preyed on the people who were only trying to make an honest copper, who already had to contend with wind and sandstorm and all the other hazards of trade. They stole and killed without provocation. He clenched his jaw and said nothing. The bandits could have surrendered, and the gods only knew what they were guilty of precisely, but they were—at the least—guilty of trying to rob people who had never harmed them.

It was a short, hot fight, but in the end, it was one-sided.

It took longer to round up the survivors. Some lay where they had fallen, wounded, or having thrown themselves to the ground, but others—

“We have runners, Captain,” said Kelet-mat, rider of a bronze-and-yellow beast of placid nature, when a half-dozen brigands waited, trussed hand and foot, in the sun. “What should we do about them?”

Kiron pondered that for a moment. “Do you think they’ll get anywhere?”

Kelet-mat grimaced, and raked his black hair out of his eyes with one hand. “I would have said ‘no,’ since there’s nothing but sand and scrub as far as the eye can see—but these rats aren’t soldiers. They have the luck of Seft himself, and it would be just our luck that one of them would go telling what had happened in some scummy tavern and the next lot we have to deal with will be ready for us.”

“Eventually someone will tell—” Kiron pointed out reluctantly. “But it would be good if we could keep the advantage of surprise for a while longer.” He scratched his head and looked out over the horizon. “All right. You senior riders track them down and round them up. And don’t take unnecessary chances.”

It wasn’t until the caravan itself arrived that they finished, and as the astonished merchants halted their beasts to stare, Kiron was pondering the second problem; what to do with twenty-some bound captives.

It was an interesting tableau, actually. On the road, the line of laden camels, blowing and looking nervously at the dragons. The dragons, ignoring them, all lounging happily, basking in the sun. The merchants, torn between apprehension and curiosity, The Jousters in their armor, some of which had already been removed because it was so cursed hot. And the captives.

Finally, curiosity won, and one of the merchants swung his leg over his saddle, slid down the side of his camel, and headed straight for Kiron.

The merchant was nothing if not bold. “So, Captain,” he said as soon as he came within earshot. “I can see you’re Jousters, but for which side? And why’ve you trussed up these men like chicken going to market?”

Kiron smiled. “We’re Jousters for Great King Ari and Great Queen Nofret, which makes us royal police of a