had gotten
It made sense, though, and it explained something that had been reported—one or more of the previous hatching’s females hanging about the nests and not being driven away. It occurred to Kiron, as Avatre spiraled up a thermal, that this was very like what common-born women did, appointing an older child as a tender for the toddlers and infant. The young female got to practice her baby tending under the careful eye of her mother, then just before fledging, which was the moment when the babies really were sturdiest, the mother could fly off, leaving her older daughter in sole command of the nest. In the next few years, this lesson might be repeated, so that when the young female matured enough to mate, she was not relying on instinct alone to guide her in rearing her first hatch—
Such philosophical thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sound of shouting and screaming below him.
Startled, his involuntary movement made Avatre go into a sideslip, and he looked down over her shoulder.
Below him, men on horseback, attacking a laden caravan. With a start, he realized he and Avatre had gone farther afield than he had planned. And that this caravan was taking the more dangerous short route between Sanctuary and Ten-hen-tes, the so-called City of Caravans.
Dangerous, not just because of the lions that roamed this area, but because of the bandits, sadly on the increase. Renegades and lawless men, and some merely desperate, but all deserters from the armies of both Tia and Alta, seeking to make their fortunes by taking the fortunes of others.
The fighter in him instinctively responded, and Avatre in her turn responded instantly to the little signals his muscles gave by going into a steep dive.
His mind was startled, but his body was already reacting, shifting and leaning forward, while his hands reached for his sling and stone bullets. As the defenders of the caravan milled in confusion, and one bandit darted in to cut lead reins of the rearmost camel and lead it off, no one looked up, until the dragon and her rider were literally on top of them.
Kiron slung a stone, but they were already past his target, what he took to be the leader, at the point where bandits and defenders alike suddenly became aware that something incredibly large, bright ruby in color, and possessed of more teeth and claws than anyone sane really wanted to confront, was rushing at them at a high rate of speed just above the ground.
The bandits scattered; so did the defenders. The camels knew this was a predator that could—and would— eat them and tried to bolt. Only the fact that their lead ropes were each tied to the pack saddle of the camel in front of them, and the fact that they all tried to flee in different directions at once, kept them from succeeding in vanishing over the horizon. The men of the caravan all went facedown in the sand, freezing in place like rabbits in hopes the dragon would overlook them.
Not so the bandits.
Some of them tried to rein in their horses to stand and fight, but the horses were having none of that. They also knew what was plunging down out of the sky at them, and were not at all willing to become dinner. Unlike the camels, they were not bound together; they could, and did, bolt in whatever direction seemed the most unobstructed. Not even the strongest bit, not the strongest rider, was going to hold back a horse in a state of panic.
Avatre pulled up, shooting straight up into the sky, as Kiron clung to her saddle and looked for the missing camel. He spotted it just under them. The rider that had tried to steal it was now on the ground, with no sign of his horse—
Unless his horse was the one currently heading north, riderless, at a high rate of speed.
Kiron sent Avatre in a wingover to make a second pass, scattering the riders further. By this point the horses were in full gallop and not likely to stop for miles.
At this point, there really was nothing more he could do to help—and in fact, landing Avatre would be rather counterproductive, given the reaction of the camels, so after that second pass he left the caravan workers to take care of the few remaining bandits themselves. He turned Avatre’s head homeward; she seemed content now to go.
But if he had needed it—there it was. The proof that there still was useful work for the Jousters.
THREE
“SO,” Kiron announced with glee to his wingleaders. “There’s still useful work for us.”
“Not just useful, I’d say it’s important,” replied Huras after a moment. “Uh—I hadn’t wanted to bring this up before, but . . . without an enemy army to fight, Jousters aren’t exactly a necessary sort of thing to have about.”
Orest snorted. “Neither are pet baboons, but no one complains about them.”
But some of the others looked thoughtful. It was Oset-re who spoke up for all of them. “The thing is,” he said reluctantly, “The pet baboons aren’t eating enough meat every day to feed an entire village. For a moon. It was one thing when we were protecting people from their enemies. Without someone to fight?” He shrugged. “Granted, the Great King and Queen are Jousters and want dragons, but . . .”
“But if we can’t prove ourselves useful, there will be all sorts of pressures brought to bear by nobles and common leaders and maybe even some of the priests,” Gan said bluntly. “We are quite visible, and quite costly and the things that go to support us could go to someplace else at a time when both Tia and Alta are trying to recover from terrible losses.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Granted, it is true that with the weather no longer in the control of the Magi, this year should be a normal one for crops. But there are fewer farmers in the fields as well, at least in what’s left of Alta. I don’t suppose Kaleth has had any revelations from the gods about how the harvest will be, has he?”
Orest raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that Kaleth hears about.”
“Well, a fellow can ask, can’t he?” Gan was not in the least abashed. “I doubt the gods would be offended by so simple a question.”
“I want to hear about what sort of tactics we should be using,” said Kalen firmly. “Driving off bandits is not the same as fighting trained soldiers. And what do we do with any that we might capture? We won’t have an army underneath us to act as our support in the field. We need to think of these things before we have problems, not after.”
“Should we be getting permission to do this?” Menet-ka worried aloud. “This is nothing we’ve been told to do.”
“But we also haven’t been told not to do it,” Kiron told them all. “And my thought is that if we wait for permission, we might be waiting for moons, but if we just go and
Gan grinned. “You’re learning,” he said smugly. “You are learning.”
Kiron just shrugged. In so many ways, the old order of things had been uprooted and they were all having to learn new paths. He looked around at them all, his friends, the young fellows he had fought beside and helped to train, and suddenly it was as if he was seeing them for the first time.
“We’ve—all changed,” he said aloud, feeling just a little stunned.
Because they really had changed, all of them, some out of all recognition. When he had first seen them, lining up before him to be told what being a raiser of dragons would be like, they had been an oddly assorted crew. There had been the commoners: quiet Huras, the baker’s son; tall Pe-atep of the booming voice, who had tended the great hunting cats for a noble; small, wiry Kalen, who had done the same with falcons. There they had stood, in their soft commoners’ kilts, no jewels, no eye paint, their hair, like Kiron’s, tied back in a tail. Common as street curs, all of them. Kiron could not boast any great bloodline, for before he had been a serf in the power of the Tians, he had been nothing more than an ordinary farmer’s son.
And the others. Orest, son of the great and wealthy Lord Ya-Tiren; Kiron’s friend, yes but under normal circumstances, they would never have met, much less become friends. So Kiron had met them because he had rescued Orest’s sister Aket-ten from a river horse—so they had become friends because Kiron had done so by flying in on the back of the first tame dragon that the Altans had ever seen. A simple farmer’s son would never have been a Jouster in Altan society; the notion was as outlandish as the reality—that a serf bound to the Tian Jousters had stolen a fertile dragon egg, hatched it, raised the hatchling to adulthood, and escaped with her. Impossible.
