She plummeted for a point well ahead and to one side of them of them, and did a quick turn, still halfway above them and still diving, to face them without losing any significant speed. With frantic brays, the ass herd broke right down the middle as she pulled up out of her dive with a snap of opening wings and raced straight at them, head outstretched. Roughly half went left, the other half right, but as there always is, there was one individual who couldn’t make up her mind to go in either direction. Kiron pulled the sling out of his lap in a practiced movement as Avatre made straight for the indecisive one, whirled it, and let the stone fly as Avatre pulled up, skimming just above the tops of the mare’s ears.
The stone struck her full in the forehead, and she went down. Kiron crouched down in the saddle again and held on for dear life.
As the straps holding him in cut into his flesh, Avatre did a second wingover and plunged back down, all four sets of talons extended. Even as the ass was trying to struggle to its feet, Avatre struck it from above and behind, killing it instantly with a jolt that sent Kiron into the pommel of the saddle again.
The rush of wind stopped; dust began to settle around them. The only sounds were of Avatre settling herself and the hoofbeats and braying of the retreating asses.
She mantled her sunrise-colored wings over her prey and began tearing into it before the dust had even settled. The rest of the herd, sensing that the chosen victim had fallen, stopped dead and turned their heads to look. The air was full of the smell of hot sweat, dust, and blood.
Sometimes Kiron felt sorry for the prey, but today had been a quick, clean kill. And he was used to seeing Avatre killing and eating now; it was with no sense of revulsion that he slid down out of her saddle and left her to her feeding. No, his thought was just to make sure that the mare they’d taken down hadn’t had a foal at heel. Such indecisiveness sometimes meant the prey was guarding a little one.
There was no sign of a loose or abandoned foal in the herd. In a way, that was a pity; he would have caught it and brought it back alive, to be tamed and added to the Sanctuary animals. So far, all they had was a few donkeys, goats, and camels. Granted, keeping them fed was a chore. Sand did not make good pasturage for anything.
Still, the original inhabitants must have managed in some way. They just needed to find out how. And there was no doubt that having working animals made life easier for the humans. If they had enough asses or donkeys for instance, they could operate a water wheel to bring water to the surface to irrigate small gardens.
Another day, perhaps. As the ass herd formed up again and sped off to the shelter of the wadis, Kiron eyed the sun. The sun-disk of Re-Haket had not yet approached the point that marked “danger,” but it was time to get on with his part of the work.
With the edge taken off Avatre’s hunger, it was possible to approach her and work side by side with her on her kill without her bristling or even snapping at him. She might love him past all understanding, and he, her in return, but love does not trump a growling stomach for a dragon. She’d already cleaned out the viscera, which was actually helpful, as it made the butchering go easier and a lot cleaner.
He butchered the hindquarters for packing up, while she tore into the front. By this time she had eaten the head, so it wasn’t so bad . . . there was nothing quite as unnerving as watching a dragon take apart a skull, unless it was to have the reproachful (albeit dead) gaze of the prey seemingly focused on you. That was one problem the butchers at the Jousters’ Courts of both Alta and Tia had never been forced to deal with.
He had sacks that he tried to make of equal weight when she had finally eaten her fill. He wasn’t going to leave anything behind; this was a little more than Avatre would eat right now, since her growth had stalled out and she wouldn’t be flying this afternoon, but one of the others might not be as lucky in the hunt as he and Avatre had been. As it was, with the burden of four bags of animal parts and himself, when Avatre lumbered into the air again, it was a good thing that the sands had heated up enough to give them some thermal lift. She labored hard the entire way home, and by the time they reached the city, she was as tired as if she had flown a full patrol with a fight at the end of it.
The flight back to Sanctuary was unexceptional; Avatre was soon back in the pen, ready for a buffing and oiling, waiting patiently for Kiron to haul the sacks of meat into temporary storage. They were the first back, despite having taken the longest flight out (or so he guessed), but he had just begun scouring Avatre’s ruby-scaled hide with sand when Ari and Kashet came in to land on the rooftop above. Kashet’s landing was, as ever, a thing of precision. There was no better flier than Ari’s big blue.
“How went the hunt?” he called up, since he couldn’t see anything of Kashet but the dragon’s head from his vantage point below.
“Three gazelles. Kashet had one, and I brought the other two back, one for Kashet later and one in case someone didn’t do so well,” Ari replied, and grunted with the effort of taking sacks from his dragon. “You won’t hear me say this often, but days like this make me wish for the old times in the Jousters’ Compound and the butchery. I don’t mind not having a dragon boy, but being my own servant and my own hunter to boot is a bit of a hardship.”
Kiron grimaced. Not that he didn’t sympathize in principle, but he’d never really gotten used to servants—having been a serf and as such, less than a slave, most of his life. For him, life in Sanctuary just meant going back to old patterns of hard work.
For Ari and some of the others, however, it was a new and unpleasant experience. But there were no serfs, no slaves, and precious few servants here. There just weren’t enough people to spare for anyone to devote his time to waiting on someone else. The only servants that Kiron knew of were the two that served Kaleth and the other escaped Healers and priests, and they were more in the nature of being acolytes than servants.
In fact, the very nature of the city meant that there were several classes that were entirely missing. No serfs, no slaves, no servants—and no farmers. All foodstuffs had to be brought in from across the desert or hunted on dragonback.
Avatre squirmed and twisted to help him reach every inch of her hide, and grunted with pleasure when he got a particularly itchy spot. While he was working, Orest and Wastet came in with a flash of ruby and sapphire, followed by Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke, like a silver-edged shadow. Both were laden, so that was four in with good kills. Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke joined him in the sand pit, while Orest stayed up on the roof with Ari. A moment later, Oset-re and copper-colored Apetma landed next to them.
“Orest.” Aket-ten shook her head and made a faint sound of disapproval.
“What about him?” Kiron replied, rubbing oil into Avatre’s wing webs.
“Hadn’t you noticed? You’re no longer Orest’s hero. Ari is.” She shook her head again. “Not that he’d ever disobey you, but he’s transferred all that hero worship he used to have for you over to Ari.”
Kiron thought about that for a moment. “Huh!” he said. “I think you’re right!” He pondered the altered state of things for a little more. “Well, good.”
“ ‘Well, good’?” Aket-ten replied incredulously. “Is that all?”
“Actually, it’s very good.” The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He had to be wingleader for right now, but with more people, and more dragons, eventually Orest would be a wingleader in his own right. There was only just so much of a leadership role that Kiron was comfortable with. Let Ari be the Commander of Dragons; he was suited to such things.