“Furthermore—” and here Aëlorix suddenly ceased looking rather pontifical, and exceedingly grim, “furthermore, these other items of game (if so you call them), what are they to those that hunt them? Nothing, really. Trophies. Mere sport. Nothing more. Whereas, the dragons,” his mouth curled down, “we hate them. Don’t be in any error about that. We hate them!”
This came as completely surprising to Jon-Joras, for nothing he had heard previously and nothing in Aëlorix’s voice as he had discussed them earlier, had prepared him for this sudden emotion. It was as though the man had just remembered… and remembered a most unpleasant memory, too.
“Why?” he asked, astonished.
With a grimace and an abrupt gesture, the Master said, “It was the Kar-chee… They were the Kar-chee’s dogs. They hunted us. Now we hunt them.” Then the mask dropped again and he said, pleasantly, “Come and see how the training’s coming on.”
Jon-Joras, wondering mightily but saying nothing, yielded to the friendly hand upon his back, and walked on as desired.
On one side of the wide place a group of young, naked-chested archers were shooting at training targets. An elderly bowmaster with stained white moustachios walked up and down behind them, a switch in his hand. The targets hung high in the air and swayed in the wind; whenever a cadet made what was deemed too bad a shot—whisshh! — the switch came down across the lower part of the back. “Mm—hm,” the Gentleman signified his approval. “Nothing better for the aim. Notice how careful old Fae is never to catch the shoulder-muscles. Ah… I see my boy’s had one miss already this morning. Let’s see if he has another.”
They paused. Aëlorix’s younger son, a chestnut-haired boy in his middle-teens, stood in his place at line, a thin red wheal marking his skin just above his belt. The old man barked, the boy whipped out an arrow, raised his bow, let fly. Jon-Joras could not even see where the shot landed, but his host made a satisfied noise. The bowmaster paced his slow way down the line, said not a word of praise.
On the other side of the field several squads of bannermen danced about with bare poles. A sudden thought entered Jon-Joras’s mind, passed his lips before he had time to consider if it were polite to mention it. “Isn’t this sort of an establishment expensive to maintain?”
“In my case, yes, because I like to see my people here at home, not hired out for Hunts all over the place. And I don’t take Hunt contracts, myself. Don’t have to. My older boy won’t have to, either. But I suppose the younger will, unless I divide Aëlor’ in my will, and I won’t. Don’t believe in it. Keep estates in one piece. I’ve got a smaller place up the river and he shall have that, and I’ll start him off with a small establishment of his own. The Company will see that he gets a few good contracts until his reputation firms up. (That’s where most of your best Hunt Masters come from: younger sons, you know.) The Company knows me, I know the Company. Hate to think if we had to depend on Confederation.”
He did not elaborate, but added, a trifle defensively, “Not that we, not that I, have to depend on the Company, either. Far back as memory goes, this family has never had to buy a haunch of venison, a peck of potatoes, or an ell of common cloth. Show me a Gentleman that does and I’ll show you a family going down hill,” he rambled on, proudly. “That’s how Roedeskant got his estate, you know. Family that had it, never mind their name, extinct in the male line, anyway; they went down and he went up. Well, he earned it, I credit him, yes. Council of Syndics shall change his name to Roedorix at the next Session, or I’ve lost all my influence and shall engage myself as a Doghunter.”
They paused for him to watch the fletchers at work and to test a new batch of arrowheads with his thumbnail along the edges. He poked into a pile of potatoes and satisfied himself that the ones underneath were as good as those on top. He sampled the cheeses and sausages and the apples to see that they were being properly stored, and was en route to the armory to show Jon-Joras his huntguns, when a party of several coming towards them through a grove of trees sighted them and called out.
“Chick-boys… what are they doing back so soon?”
The boys — some of them actually were boys, shock-headed imps with gaptoothed grins, never having known a day’s school or a pair of shoes; others were all ages up to gray-beards who had been boys forty years ago — beckoned their lord and set down what they were carrying. These, as Jon-Joras came up, proved to be wicker baskets, covers tied on with ropes of grass; from within them came a shrill twittering sound.
“What’s up, boys.”
All talking at once, they undid the baskets. “Ah, now, Nasce‘, looka here at these beauties—” “Isn’t they a fine lot, Nasce’?” “Have a eye on’m, won’t y‘, Nasce’—” They held up about a dozen young dragons, deep yellow with just a faintest tinge of green along the upper body in some of them.
“Very nice, very nice,” Aëlorix said, brusquely. “But if you’ve slacked off searching just to show me a batch of chicks — No. You wouldn’t. What’s up?”
They fell silent, eyes all turning to one man who stood by the sole unopened basket. He opened it now, reached in gingerly, winced, lunged, and drew out something which brought a roar from his lord. “What in blethers are you dragging that back for? It’s not a chick, it’s a cockerel — do you have six fingers and want to lose one? — and a marked cockerel too! What—?”
The man with the gawky dragon-child needed both of his hands to hold it, but another man pointed to the mark, the gray X on the underside which would grow whiter with age. Aëlorix bent over, silently, to examine it as the chick-boy nudged the scaly under-hide with his scarred thumb, and the dragon-cockerel chittered and snapped at him.
The Gentlemen snapped up straight, his face red and ugly, criss-crossed with white lines Jon-Joras had not noticed before. “What son of a dirty crone marked that?” he cried. His rage did not surprise his men.
“Marky? Marky?”
An old — a shambling old chick-boy — whose incredibly acid-scarred hands testified to the contents of the ugly can he carried, shook his head slowly and sadly, eyes cast down. It might have been over the sorrow of a ruined grand-daughter.
“Not my stuff, Master Ae,” he said. “Nope. That’s a coarse, karchen stuff, very coarse, y’ see.” He prodded it with a caricature of a finger. “See how deep it’s cut? I dunno a marky ’round here, ’r north, ’r south, who makes ’r uses stuff like such. And look where he put ’n, too, the dirty son of a kar-chee’s egg—”
“Yes,” his master said, bitterly, “Yes, look. Cut its throat,” he ordered, abruptly, and stalked away with quick, angry steps. Suddenly he stopped and turned back. “Not a word to any one! The Ma’am is not to hear of this.” It was a long few minutes before his breathing calmed enough for him to say to his mute guest, “Young man, you must amuse yourself for a while. I must counsel with my neighbors on something. Pray pardon and excuse.”
But the Ma’am had already heard. Her weeping was loud as Jon-Joras came into the house. He thought it was best to make excuses of demanding duties, and to depart. It was not urged that he change his mind.
Peramis was not much different from other of the city-states of Prime World, that ancient planet from which the race of Man had begun its spread across the galaxies. It had stripped itself bare, exhausting its peoples and minerals, in launching and maintaining that spread. So it was that, population dwindled and resources next to nil, at a time when the son-and daughter-worlds were occupied in their own burgeoning imperialisms, old Earth had had to stand alone when the Kar-chee — the black, gaunt, mantis-like Kar-chee — came swooping down from their lairs around the Ring Stars. Alone and almost defenseless. And, defenseless (in all save their native wit) and alone, what remained of her people had had to fight their way up. Small wonder the very name of the conquerors had, in its corrupted but still recognizable form, become a common curse.