Joust

In the case of a lance strike in a real Joust, a fall in that case was invariably fatal; the dragon, if not captured by another Jouster, might or might not return to its pen. Other than Kashet, the dragons' only loyalty lay in that they were fed regularly, and that was not necessarily enough to bring a riderless dragon back to his pen when they were far from home and the mountains so temptingly near.

Though, in fact, one had returned from combat this very day. Its dragon boy was not envied; a dragon without a Jouster didn't get regular exercise, and it was prone to get irritated or sluggish under such circumstances. If the former, well, it was the boy that the dragon took his ill temper out on. And if the latter, when the dragon did get a new Jouster, it would become irritable when forced to exercise and lose the fat that it had gained in the interim.

The boys' talk concentrated on the dragon that had returned, and commiseration with its boy, not the rider that had fallen. In fact, they didn't even once mention his name. That was not callousness on their part, in fact, Vetch considered such caution very wise; too much talk of him might bring his spirit here, instead of it staying properly in his tomb.

Night-walking spirits were not known for their gentleness. A hungry ghost might remember old grievances, or feel jealous of the living. There were a hundred ways such a ghost could revenge himself on the living. He could bring fever spirits, or the demons of ill luck; he could plague the sleep with nightmares. He could even lead stronger spirits to the sleeping victim, or drive one mad.

So the fallen Jouster would be remembered, oh my yes—with proper offerings and sacrifices in the Jousters' little Temple, tonight; the Temple was consecrated ground, and the Priest of Haras knew how to propitiate a spirit and give it a resting place it would be content with while it waited for proper housing.

Then all that was right and proper would be accomplished at the Tomb of the Jousters when his body was finished with the forty days of embalming. But that would be across the Great Mother River, in the Vale of the Noble Dead, and was the duty of the mortuary priests. The Tians believed that to enter into the Summer Country, the deceased must have a proper anchoring in an embalmed body, and proper offerings for at least forty days, and more offerings to take with it when it crossed the Sky River. If this was not done, it wandered. If it was not done properly, it wandered, and the longer it wandered, the angrier it became.

That was why it was not a good idea for the living to walk about at night, for fear of encountering angry or hungry spirits, the more especially if someone who actively hated you had ever died. Khefti, for instance, had made so many enemies that he hardly dared stir at night, and on the few occasions that he did leave the safety of his house after sundown, he was so hung about with charms and amulets that he looked like an amulet hawker, and he rattled with every step.

Vetch had no experience one way or another with spirits; with Khefti for a master, by the time he was let go for the day, he was so weary he always fell dead asleep. He had tried to set up a tiny shrine for his father, but it kept getting swept away when he was at his labors, and anyway, he didn't have anything to spare for offerings but the clay loaves and beer jars and other goods he molded in miniature and left there.

Certainly his father's spirit had never returned to give him any signs… there were tales of that, as well, of spirits that returned to help the living. Though in truth, those tales were fewer than the tales of vengeful ghosts.

But then, how would his father even know how to get here, or even where Vetch was? In all of his lifetime, his father had never been farther from his farm than the village.

"Haraket ordered her fed up and given a double dose of tola," the boy who was in charge of that returned dragon said. "So she won't be much of a handful for a while. And I heard straight from him that he's got a new Jouster for her, so she won't get a chance to go sour. I can handle her."

"There's a lot of new Jousters coming, I heard," one of the younger boys ventured cautiously.

"You heard right. The Great King, may he live a thousand years, wants the number increased," replied the boy who seemed to know everything—or at least wanted the others to think he did. "There's more hunters out looking for fledglings, and more Jousters being trained. And more of us, of course. That's probably why Ari came in with a serf on his own so he could free up Haraket from tending Kashet; Haraket's not going to have the time to tend Kashet pretty soon, what with all of that going on."

Now a glance of speculation was cast in his direction, but when he saw the way the conversation was going, Vetch had quickly dropped his gaze to his work.

"Think they'll put more serfs in as dragon boys if this one does all right?" asked a new voice.

The leader sounded as if he wasn't opposed to that idea. "Probably. I'll tell you what, though, that might be a good thing. I mean, think about it, new Jousters have to come from somewhere, so why not us, on a regular basis, instead of only now and again? After all, we know as much about the dragons as the Jousters, and we spend more time with them. Ari was a dragon boy, they say, or maybe a scribe, before he tamed Kashet. In fact, that was why they made him a Jouster."

"So why don't all the dragon boys tame dragons?" someone else asked. "Then we could all be Jousters instead of shoveling dung!"

But the knowing one laughed. "Tame a dragon? Are you mad? You think tending the old ones is work—try taming one from the shell! It's too much work, much too much work! If you think you work hard now, just think what it would be like to tend two dragons instead of one, and spend all of your free time with the baby so he thought of you as his mama, and help him with his fledging, and train him to saddle before he actually flew! You'd be so busy you'd meet yourself coming and going! Don't think they'd let you off of tending your Jouster's dragon, because they wouldn't!"

"Yes, but—Kashet's so tame, so easy to work with—wouldn't it be worth it?" the other persisted.

"Not if the King wants Jousters, and wants them now," replied another of the older boys. "Training takes long enough as it is, and the only people that really benefit from a tame dragon are the dragon boys. While the tala makes dragons tractable, why bother?"

The talk turned to other things, then—mostly about girls outside the compound—and Vetch lost interest. But what he'd heard had been very useful.

Now he knew why both Ari and Kashet were different. Why Ari was so particular about his dragon boy, and why, at the same time, he was surprisingly considerate to Vetch.

So, the Jouster had been in Vetch's shoes before he'd tamed his dragon. And he hadn't just gotten a fledgling from the hunters, he'd somehow raised one from the egg!

Vetch had been allowed to make a single goose into a particular pet when he'd been deemed old enough; a goose that was guaranteed never to go into the pot (or at least, not until it had died of an honorable old age or accident). He had been given a hatching egg, so that the first thing that the baby had seen was him. It hadn't been a case of taming the gosling so much as raising it.

And Ari had done that. With a dragon. Which must, based on how much food the young gosling ate, and all the care and brooding it required, have been a phenomenal amount of work!