It did not howl, for it had no need to howl and rage for its power to be felt. It only needed to be what it was, relentless, inescapable, implacable, and ceaseless. This was the dry season, the season when the wind called kamiseen was king. It swept out of the sea of sand, bearing with it the furnace-heat that drove man and beast into shelter if they were wise, and sucked the moisture and life out of everything. The earth was baked as hard as bricks, as hot beneath a bare foot as the inside of an oven. Add to that the hammer of the sun, which joined with the kamiseen in a conspiracy to dry up all life; nothing moved during the kamiseen at midday, not even slaves.
Except serfs, like Vetch. Altan serfs, the spoils of war, who were less valuable than slaves.
Little Vetch hunched his shoulders against the pitiless glare of the sun above him, and licked lips gone dry and cracked in the heat, as dry and cracked as the earth under his feet.
The walls of his master’s compound offered some protection from the wind, but none from the sun. To his left, the back wall of tan mud-brick around Khefti-the-Fat’s workshop and house cast no shade at all on the path upon which he trudged. To his right, lower walls of the same material surrounded his master’s tala field.
Though calling it a “field” was something of an exaggeration. It could not have held more than five hundred tala plants, a single green oasis in the sand and baked earth, all of them heavy with unripe berries. It was here, only a few steps from the village where Khefti had his workshop, for two reasons. The first was that tala had to be irrigated during the dry season if it was to bear any amount of fruit at all. The second was that Khefti would never have let anything as valuable as a tala plant grow where he could not put his eye upon it on a regular basis. Vetch was fairly certain that Khefti counted the berries themselves twice daily. Fortunately, the husbandry of the precious tala was not his concern, for Khefti would never have entrusted anything so important to a serf. He was not even allowed to set foot inside the enclosure.
He kept his head bent down as he heaved his heavy leather water-bucket along. His arms and shoulders ached and burned with fatigue, and his stomach with hunger; his eyes stung with the sweat that dripped and the dust that blew into them, his mouth was dry, full of kamiseen grit, yet he dared not take a mouthful of the water in his bucket or use it to wash the sand from his eyes. That water was for the tala plants, not to quench the burning thirst of a mere serf.
He kept his eyes fastened on the hard-packed, sandy clay of the path under his dirty, bare feet. This was not because he was afraid to look up, and possibly incur the wrath of any freeborn Tian who might happen by for showing “insolence.” He was watching for a particular little spot on the path that led from Khefti-the-Fat’s well inside his compound, to the cistern that irrigated his tala field. This spot was marked only by the fact that the soil there was a slightly different color than the rest. He wanted so badly to put the bucket down; the rope handle cut into his hands cruelly. It was all that kept him going, knowing that spot was there, marked by the dirt he’d dug up and replaced last night.
Ah. There it was. He fastened his gaze on it, and labored towards it, trying not to pant, which would only dry his mouth further.
He made no outward sign that he had noted the place, for the last thing he wanted anyone to think was that there was anything unusual about the spot. He couldn’t have sped up if he’d had to, actually. The water-bucket that had been tossed at him by his master this morning was unwieldy, and quite full. If he wasn’t careful, most of what was in it would slosh out before he got to the cistern.
The bucket was far too big and heavy when full for someone as small as he was to carry easily. Not that he had a choice. Serfs made do with the tools they were given, and kept silent about any complaints they might have in the presence of their masters, or they suffered whatever consequences the master chose to mete out. A man might hesitate to scar a slave who had cost him money to buy, and might earn him more money when sold. He would have no such compunctions about a serf, who only cost him money in the housing and feeding, who could not be sold unless the land to which the serf was attached was sold also. How many times had Khefti told Vetch that? “You’re of cursed little use to me alive, insect!” he would say. “Your death would mean nothing, except that I need not waste my bread in the mouth of one so useless as you!” He sometimes wondered why Khefti kept him alive at all, except that Khefti-the-Fat was so grasping that he never willingly let go of anything he owned, no matter how useless or worn-out it was. Every scrap, every bone, even the ashes from his fires were used until there was nothing left. So that was probably it; Khefti was determined to use Vetch up, as he did everything else.
There were laws regarding the treatment of slaves. There were no such laws protecting serfs, for serfs were Altan, and the enemy, spoils of war, prisoners of war.
Even when they were only little boys.
And in Vetch’s case, very little boys indeed.
He had never been big, but now he hardly seemed to grow anymore, on the poor fare that Khefti-the-Fat allotted him. A weedy little boy he was, named for a weedy little plant the Tians judged not even fit for fodder. Not fit for anything, as his master would say. And never mind that it was Altan custom to give their boy-children unpleasant names while they were young to mislead the night-walking ghosts that into thinking they were worthless rather than snatching them up in the darkness. “Vetch” he was on the Tian inventory-rolls, and “Vetch” he would now remain for as long as he lived. And properly named, too, according to Khefti-the-Fat.
“What have you done to earn your bread?” the master would say, his fat belly shaking with rage, his pendulous jowls trembling, as he delivered another blow to a back already scarred. “You steal from me, you are a thief, who takes my food and gives me nothing in return!” This was usually right after Vetch had attempted and failed at some task, and Khefti was beating him to teach him to do better.
This was, often as not, some chore that should have been given to a man, or at least, a larger boy—but that was never an excuse for failure, and took not so much as a single stripe from Vetch’s chastisement.
Teach with the rod, for stripes improve the memory, said one proverb, A boy’s ears are on his back, he hears better when beaten ran another These were Khefti’s mottoes, and he lived by them. He even beat his apprentices just as much as the law and their parents permitted, though them, he dared not starve. But he saved the heaviest punishments for Vetch.
Vetch deviated from the center of the path just a little, and shortened his steps so that he was able to come down—hard—on the off-color spot.
Upon Khefti-the-Fat, every misfortune will fall. My sandal to grind his head into the dust, he chanted to himself, just as he had chanted over the finger-long abshati-figure he’d made out of river-clay yesterday in the image of his master. My foot to break his back. The thorns of the acacia to pierce his belly, and the food turn to thistle in his mouth. Cursing a master was a thing absolutely forbidden; if he were caught doing so, any beating he’d had before this would seem as nothing. He knew that, but if he could not curse Khefti, there would be nothing in his life worth the getting up in the morning.
Not that he had any real faith that his curses would come to pass. Khefti-the-Fat had too many charms hung about his person and his house for the curses of one small serf-boy to fly past them and strike home. But it was something to curse the master, a small blow, if only a symbolic one, something more than merely enduring. And there was always the chance that Vetch would, by sheer dint of repetition, or the chance that he contrived a curse that Khefti didn’t have a charm against, get some small crumb of discomfort to plague his master past all the protections.
That one small hope was really all that Vetch had, and it was what he lived for.
Yesterday, when Khefti had gone to sleep for his afternoon nap without assigning Vetch a task to follow filling the cistern, Vetch had seized the opportunity to run down to the river and dig raw latas-roots to hide under his pallet to eat later. Now, in the dry season, the Great Mother River had shrunk from a fruitful matron to the slimmest of dancing-girls, and a languid one at that. The latas was easier to reach, the roots now buried in the mud-flats rather than waist-deep in the river-water, and crocodiles disinclined to pursue potential prey over the mud-flats when so many fish were stranded in ever-shallower pools left behind by the Great Mother River. While the latas had been in bloom, the glorious blue flowers rising on their waving stems above the surface of the river, Vetch had mentally noted every patch, so he knew where even the smallest and least accessible clumps were. He had to; he was in competition with every other hungry mouth in the village. Perhaps none were as starved as he, but unlike onions and barley, the roots were free for the digging, and all it took was a stick and determination to get them.
In digging up the roots, he had come across a generous lump of nearly-pure clay, of the sort that Khefti would have been very pleased to see. To Vetch, it had been a treasure as fine as the roots he carried home, for any time that Vetch got his hands on clay, he would make an abshati-figure to use to curse Khefti-the-Fat. He certainly knew most of what there was to know about molding abshati-figures, for he heard the instructions bellowed in the ears of Khefti’s apprentices, day in, day out. The making of such figures was usually for funerary purposes, not cursing—there was a good living in the making of abshatis to represent the deceased or to supply the spirit with servants in the next life. A good half of Khefti’s pottery income came from funerary wares, or replacing such items as went into the tomb from the household stores. Vetch probably could have made abshatis as good as any of those turned out by the apprentices, had Khefti allowed him. But no one would purchase an abshati made by a serf, an Altan, the enemy, lest it carry some sort of subtle curse against Tians that would render the magic the priests would say over it ineffective.
Ordinary mud would not hold the detail he needed to make a good figure, nor would it shatter the way a well-dried statue of clay would. But although his master was a potter, there was no way for Vetch to purloin his clay, for he guarded it as jealously as his tala. Good clay was valuable, and a careful accounting was made of every weighable scrap of it.
This time, through some quirk of good fortune, the figure Vetch had modeled was a particularly good one. He had managed to get the limbs all in the right proportions, and Khefti’s bulging belly, ugly frown and perpetually-creased brows just right. Perhaps it was crude, and the face a bit blobby, but anyone who looked at it would surely recognize who it was meant to be. While it was still wet, he had filled the mouth with bits of thistle, and shoved acacia-thorns deep into the belly. Then he had set it up on top of the wall in a hidden corner to dry hard in the sun and the kamiseen, and when all of the work was done for the day, because it was such a good likeness, he decided that instead of merely grinding the thing under his heel while chanting his curses, he would try something different.
He had dug a hole in the path in the moonlight and put the figure in it. That way he could tred on it with every bucket hauled to and from the well, reciting the curses in his head. Maybe if he did that enough, one of them would fly home and strike true. Knowing he would put his foot on his master each time he traveled the path kept him going, even in this heat.
The dust that flew up in a puff from under his bare foot as he planted it on the burial spot was nearly the same no-color as his foot itself, coated with dried clay and dust as it was. All the better; cursing was earth-magic, and maybe this time the links would be strong enough to make the curse stick. Vetch had tried, and more than once, to get something of his master’s person to put into the figures he made. But Khefti was a coward, always afraid of magic and curses, and was so careful of such things that he never pared his nails without counting all the bits before burning them, and even made his barber burn the hair he’d scraped off the master’s misshapen head before Khefti would leave the shop. Well, Khefti was not well-beloved among his neighbors, so perhaps he was right to be so concerned.
Vetch reluctantly took his heel from the spot where the figure lay buried, and heaved the bucket forward another step. His arms ached so much, and his legs were so wobbly from exhaustion that it was all he could do to keep from dropping to his knees in the dust, but he dared not set the bucket down for an actual rest. At any moment, Khefti might awaken from his nap and look out to see if Vetch was working.
Every morning and every afternoon, as long as the kamiseen blew, he filled the drip-cistern that fed the fragile pottery pipes that in turn watered his Tian master’s tala plants. The only source of water for the cistern was the Great Mother River or the master’s well, and neither was easier than the other to get water out of.
If he fetched water from the well, it meant pulling up the water one bucket at a time, bringing up the rope, hand over hand, with the bucket feeling as if it was getting heavier all the time. And the well was (of course) nearly as far from the cistern as the River, though in the opposite direction. The River was marginally further away, though he would not have to drag the weighty bucket up its rope. But the clear water from the well wouldn’t clog the pottery pipes the way that muddy water from the River would, unless Vetch was very careful when he filled the bucket. Being “very careful” meant wading out into the River, up to his knees—which put him in the way of the crocodiles, who would not turn down prey that came so obligingly within their reach.
Vetch hated this bucket, too heavy, too big, too awkward, and if he’d dared, he’d have put a hole in the bottom of it. But if he did, Khefti would probably find something worse for him to use—bigger and heavier, or so small as to be nearly useless.
Tala could only be grown during the dry season, after the Great Mother River had shrunk to a shadow of her wet-season greatness. It only set its berries after the sun-baked fields of wheat and barley were harvested and reduced to bleached stubble and the earth beneath the stubble was riddled with cracks as wide as a man’s hand. But tala-fruits were worth their weight in electrum, for tala-fruits gave the Jousters their ability to control their great dragons.
Dragons...dragons and tala were inseparable. The only reason to grow the tala was because of the dragons, the creatures that were the greatest weapons that the Tians had. Vetch had only ever seen the dragons at a far distance, overhead, flying out from the city of Mefis a little up the river, gold, and scarlet, blue and green against the hard, bright blue of the sky. They would have been beautiful, if they were not so terrible.
Dragons—well, in part, they were responsible for his being a serf. The war would not have gone so badly for Alta if the Tians hadn’t had so many more dragons and Jousters. He supposed, dully, that he should be cursing them, too—but he could only focus his hate on one target at a time, and at the moment, that target was Khefti.
Vetch stumbled over a clod and trod down hard on a stone, saving the bucket from going over at the last moment. “Night-demons take you!” he cursed the clod and stone alike, and thought, resentfully, that if Khefti were to allow him the clothing that were allotted to a slave, he would have straw sandals, and he would be saved stone-bruises, saved the burning heat that came up through his hardened soles. Khefti’s paths were like Khefti’s heart; hard and uncaring. What could it possibly cost to permit his one serf a simple pair of sandals?
That was the moment when a revelation, and a sickening one, came to him. And he realized that one of his errors in cursing Khefti might have been in the phrasing of the first part of the curse. He had specifically said My sandal to grind his head into the dust. But Vetch wasn’t wearing sandals, didn’t own sandals (not even the cheapest, woven-straw kind every slave got) and likely never would own sandals. Granted, that was the way that the magician Vetch had spied on had phrased his curse for his customer, but the customer had worn sandals.
Vetch ground his teeth in frustration, and jerked at the rope handle of the bucket. Well, he would continue the cursing for the entire three days, but how could he have overlooked something so simple?
Better he should have cursed the tala-fields—
But that would be a dangerous thing to do as well as an audacious one, potentially more dangerous than cursing his master. Granted, the mud-brick wall held little shrines to every god that could be invoked, and plenty of talismans for growth and plenty, which should have prevented any harm whatsoever from coming to the fields, but if Khefti even thought that Vetch was cursing the fields, his stick would be out and drumming a beat on Vetch’s back for days.
Besides, Vetch wanted to hurt Khefti directly, not indirectly. And anyway, as the son of a farmer, someone who loved and served the land, something within Vetch shrank from wishing harm even on a tiny plot of tala plants.
Vetch’s master was not a farmer; he was a potter and the master of a brick-yard. Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money from his little tala field; his workshops were for his daily bread, but his tala bought him luxuries that his neighbors envied. A harvest like this one would bring more than enough to pay for a rock-carved tomb in the Valley of Artisans, a tomb he could not otherwise have afforded, and for which his apprentices were making a veritable army of abshati servants and pottery funerary-wares fit for a man far above Khefti’s station. It also paid for all manner of luxuries; fine linen kilts, many jars of good date-wine every day, melons, honey-cakes, and roast duck on his table on a regular basis. Khefti even had a melon cooling in his well at this moment, a true luxury in the dry season. Oh, melon....
Just the thought of a melon made Vetch’s stomach cry out with hunger. He hadn’t even tasted a melon rind in an age. Khefti thriftily had his cook pickle the rinds from his melons, in keeping with his parsimonious nature.
And that thought led down the well-worn path of food. Good bread and beer, melon and dates and pomegranate, honey and fish; all the things that Vetch had not tasted since he became a serf. For that matter, he had not had enough to fill his belly since the last of the great Temple Festivals at the beginning of the growing season, and that was only because it was the Temple of Hamun that provided the bounty. The raw latas-roots Vetch had eaten this morning (in addition to his allotted stale loaf-end) had helped with the never-ending hunger, but nothing would ever make it stop altogether.
From the moment Vetch had entered Khefti’s service, he was always hungry; as the savory aromas from Khefti’s kitchen tantalized his nose, he would be making a scanty meal of whatever Khefti allotted him. Breakfast, a palm-sized loaf of yesterday’s dark barley-bread (he could have eaten half a dozen of the same size), or supper, a tiny bowl of pottage his family wouldn’t have fed to a pig and another little loaf of stale bread. Sometimes the fare was varied by the addition of an onion beginning to go bad. Lunch was whatever he could find, in the hour when Khefti slept—a handful of wild lettuce, latas-roots grubbed out of the river-bank and eaten raw, wild onions so strong they made the eyes water. Sometimes he found wild duck-eggs in season; sometimes there were berries or palm-fruits, or dates fallen to the ground. Mostly, he got only what Khefti gave him. He hadn’t seen cheese or meat or honey-cakes since the farm was taken. He dreamed about food all the time, and there was never a moment when his stomach wasn’t empty. He went to sleep, curled around his hunger, and woke with it gnawing at his spine.
The only thing that ever really competed with the hunger was anger.
And anger was as constant a companion as hunger. Not that he could do anything about his anger, but at least when he was angry, sometimes he’d get so worked up that he’d upset his stomach, and then the hunger went away for a little.
And when he was angry he could make the loneliness and the pain and the fear recede for a little. When he was angry, he wasn’t on the verge of the tears that often threatened to overwhelm him. Sometimes, anger was the only defense he had—when the village boys plagued him and threw stones at him, when Khefti beat him. He couldn’t strike back, but at least he could keep from weeping, giving them the satisfaction of knowing that they hurt him. Crying would make him into a greater target for torment than he already was; tears were a sign of weakness he couldn’t afford.
But he was truly the most miserable of boys, and sometimes he thought that anger was the only possession he had that could not be taken from him.
And anger was, perhaps, the only thing that kept him alive, in the midst of a life hardly worth living.
He slept on a pile of reeds he had cut, under the same awning that sheltered the wood for the bread-oven from rain, in the outer back-court, beyond the kitchen-court. His clothing was a loin-wrap of whatever rags deemed unsuitable even for household use, and only when it was little more than a collection of holes held together by dirt and threads like spider-silk was it ever replaced. Thus Khefti gave lip-service to the provision of “food and shelter” for his serf. Under Khefti, Vetch had nothing that was not scant, except for anger and hunger.
Well, one thing more, perhaps. He had hatred.
He hated Khefti with a despairing, dull hatred that was as constant as the anger and hunger and was surpassed only by the fear that Khefti inspired.
His stomach growled again, and grated painfully. Sweat prickled Vetch’s scalp, and a drop of sweat trickled down his temple, down his face, and down his neck, leaving behind a trail of mud in the dust that coated him. But the hot, dry wind swiftly dried it before he could free a hand to wipe it away, adding one more itch to all of the insect-bites and healing scratches he was always plagued with. His stomach pressed urgently against his backbone, and he was tired, so tired—even that anger that never left him was not enough to overcome how tired he was.
What had he done that the gods should treat him so?
How was it fair, that Khefti claimed him and could work him like a mangy donkey because he had bought the house and a thin strip of the land that had once belonged to Vetch’s father? How was it right, that the Tian thieves had taken the farm that had been Vetch’s home from those who had lived and worked it for generations? What justified what had been done to Vetch’s family, to a man who had not so much as raised a hand in self-defense against the Tians?
Anger lived in his belly, waking and sleeping, but it was an impotent anger with nowhere to go. And at times like this, it was a weary anger, that had worn itself out on the unyielding stone of his life.
A few steps more, and he made it to the side of the above-ground, stone cistern. With a sigh of relief, he eased the bucket to the ground, and went up the two steps that allowed a little fellow like him to reach the cistern-lid. He slid the wooden cover aside, pausing for just a second to savor the momentary breath of cool damp that escaped, then groped behind him for the bucket-handle, ready to haul it up again.
It wasn’t there.
The anger in him roused, and gave him a flare of energy. Vetch whirled, expecting to find that one of the Tian boys who apprenticed with his master had tilted the bucket on its side, allowing it to spill its precious burden into the thirsty, hard-packed earth. Or worse, had stolen the bucket—which would force him to go to Khefti, who would beat him for losing it. Then he would have to fill the cistern with whatever Khefti gave him, crippled by a back aching and raw.
Someone had taken the bucket, all right, but it wasn’t an apprentice.
Behind him, a tall, muscular Tian—a warrior, by his build, and one of the elite Jousters, by the heavy linen kilt, the wide brown leather belt, and the empty leather lance-socket hanging from it—held the heavy bucket to his lips, gulping down the master’s well-water with the fervor of one who was perishing of thirst. Vetch stared at him, the surge of anger he’d felt at having his bucket stolen by yet another Tian, overcome with sheer astonishment at seeing one of the Jousters here. He had never seen a Jouster so close before, not even an Altan Jouster.
Where there was a Jouster, could his dragon be far away? Vetch looked wildly about, then a snort made him look up, to the roof of the pottery-drying shed inside Khefti’s walls, and there was the great dragon itself, looking down at him with an aloof gaze remarkably like that of one of the pampered cats that swarmed the Temple of Pashet.
Vetch gaped; the dragon was a thing of multi-colored, jeweled beauty, slim and supple, and quite as large as the shed it perched upon. A narrow, golden, large-eyed head oddly reminiscent of a well-bred horse’s, with the same slim muzzle, dished nose, and broad forehead was surmounted by a bony crest that shaded from deep gold into a pale electrum, as pale and translucent as the finest alabaster. That elegant golden head rose on a long, flexible neck that shaded from emerald to blue. The wings, of blue, shading into purple, rising from muscular shoulders twice the bulk of the hindquarters, were spread to catch the sun. The long, whiplike tail, which reversed the shading of the neck, going from green into gold, was curled around the cruel golden talons of the forefeet, as the dragon lounged comfortably on the flat roof of the shed. The eyes, though, that was what caught you and held you—slit-pupiled and the deep crimson of the finest rubies—
Not that Vetch had ever seen the finest rubies, or indeed, any rubies. But that was what people said, and certainly the colors sported by this beast were every bit as gorgeous as the magnificent wall-paintings in even the poorest Tian temples depicting the jewels worn by gods and kings.
Such beauty—it was hard to look at the dragon and remember that he should hate it.
The Jouster finished his drink and dumped the rest of the bucket of water over his head, and the anger awoke again, at the wanton wastage of what had taken Vetch so long to haul. Vetch made an involuntary whimper of suppressed rage in the back of his throat as the man tossed the bucket aside, as if it was something of no account, to be discarded.
Which meant, of course, that if Khefti came out at this moment and saw him without the bucket in his hands—
Now anger turned to panic. Vetch scrambled after the bucket—just as his master, the last creature he wanted to see at this moment, appeared in the door of his courtyard. Khefti was huge, and terrifying; his size alone was intimidating, for he must have weighed twice as much as this Jouster. His gut bulged over his dingy, grease-stained linen kilt, his fat hands were quick with a blow, and his doughy face wore a perpetual scowl beneath his striped headdress.
He could not have chosen a worse moment to wake up from his nap and come a-prowling—exactly as Vetch had feared.
Khefti-the-Fat was the worst master Vetch had ever had, for though most of them had regarded their serfs as of less importance than a donkey, none had been cruel. Vetch was the only one of his family left with Khefti; the Tian who had originally taken control of their land along with that of their neighbors, had sold it in turn to another prosperous Tian, who in his turn broke it up into smaller portions and sold them. Each time it was sold, Vetch’s family got a new set of masters, but at least they had been allowed to remain together, working the earth still—for the owners had all agreed that it would be in their best interest to farm it communally, using the combined labor of Vetch and his family, which after all, cost nothing. This went on for several years, until at last, came the purchasers that included Khefti. Khefti had specifically bought the house itself, and the family vegetable garden. And Khefti was not inclined to farm the land communally with the others, as every other owner had been; in fact, he was not inclined to farm at all. He wished to enlarge his fortunes by becoming an absentee landlord.
This had resulted in the actual dispersal of all of the remaining members of Vetch’s family—his three sisters, mother, and grandmother. Khefti kept only Vetch. What happened to the rest of them then, Vetch had no idea; Khefti had taken him to his own house in this village on the outskirts of Mefis, and had rented out Vetch’s home and its tiny garden to yet another Tian. Taken was perhaps too mild a word; Vetch had been dragged away from his family, literally kicking and screaming, as the girls were led away weeping by their new masters. Grandmother had given him a last look that told Vetch she knew that she would never see him again, then shuffled off after her new master, head bowed, with every fiber of her registering defeat,
The last Vetch saw of his mother was a final glimpse of her collapsing to the earth. Then Khefti had begun beating him to make him stop screaming, which was the last thing that Vetch remembered before waking up to a bucket of water poured on his head and being tied to the back of Khefti’s cart to follow along as he could.
Why Khefti had kept Vetch at all, the boy had no idea. Perhaps it had only been for the sake of the records; certainly a man with the look of a tax-collector came every so often and Vetch was trotted out for his inspection. Perhaps in order to hold any land, you had to have at least one of the serfs that came with it.
If that was true—then what would happen when he and his family were all dead? Vetch didn’t know that, either. He didn’t really want to think about the alternative—that his sisters and his mother would become “breeding stock,” producing a bloodline linked to the property, to allow the new owners to hold it, giving them more hands to work it....
But why Khefti had decided to keep Vetch, rather than one of the girls or Vetch’s mother—that was something only Khefti knew. Not that Vetch would have wanted to see his sisters or mother or grandmother under Khefti’s untender care. No, better it was him, not them.
Better that Khefti hadn’t gotten the idea to produce the bloodline....
Best of all that the need to keep a serf ended when the serf was dead. And perhaps that was why Khefti had kept Vetch; smallest of the lot, cheapest to keep, and likely the quickest to die of ill-treatment. Too bad for Khefti, Vetch was tougher than he looked; he was never sick, no matter what trash Khefti fed him.
Vetch had never thought he would ever envy the lot of a slave, but he had learned better, under Khefti. For slaves, there was always the possibility of freedom; a master might free them at his death, or a slave might earn his freedom in some way. Not so for a serf; tied to the land they were from birth to death, and tied to the master that owned the land. As property that could be bought and sold readily, slaves were as valuable as any other livestock. Not so for serfs; they came with the land, and one could not sell them without selling the land. Khefti could never realize a profit by having Vetch trained to some skill or great strength and selling him at a profit.
Khefti had no reason to do more than keep Vetch alive, and work him as hard as possible. Vetch would never be worth more to him than he was at this moment. And from the look on Khefti’s face as he glared at a Vetch who was not at this moment working, his value had just dropped again. Khefti had not seen the Jouster; he certainly hadn’t seen the dragon. All he saw was Vetch, standing on the steps of the cistern with empty hands and no bucket in sight.
With an inarticulate roar, Khefti snatched up the little whip that never left his side, and descended on Vetch. For all his bulk, Khefti-the-fat moved surprisingly fast; Vetch only had time enough to crouch down and cover his head with his hands when the quirt descended on his shoulders, leaving a stripe of fire across his back that made him gasp with pain.
Once. Twice. Vetch squeezed his eyes shut, ducked his head further, stuffed both hands in his mouth and bit his knuckles, strangling his cries with his hands. Khefti never delivered fewer than a dozen blows even at the best of times, but sooner or later he had to see the Jouster, and then he would stop, if only to gape in shock. If Vetch could just hold on without fainting until his master realized they were not alone—
But the third blow never came.
Vetch risked a glance backward over his shoulder, and saw, with astonishment, that the Jouster had caught the wrist of Khefti’s whip-hand and was holding it effortlessly at shoulder-height. Never quick-witted, Khefti’s expression was frozen between the moment of rage when his hand had been caught and the dawning realization of just who and what had stopped him from beating his property.
The Jouster’s helmet concealed most of his face. Vetch could not see enough to read his expression.
But why had he stopped Khefti from striking?
“The boy is not at fault,” the Jouster said, in a mild voice, “I took his bucket to quench my thirst. He could hardly take it away from me.”
Vetch’s mouth dropped open with astonishment so great that the pain of his two stripes seemed to fade. The most he had hoped for was that Khefti would be too embarrassed to beat him in front of the Jouster, which would give Vetch a chance to explain himself. He had hardly thought the Jouster would take his part!
Khefti went red-faced and spluttering, but what could he say? Nothing, of course; the Jousters were a kind of nobility, and certainly outranked a mere tala-farmer, potter and brick-maker. Nor would he dare do anything further to Vetch while the Jouster was there, since the Jouster had so forcibly expressed his disapproval.
Once he was gone, however, he would certainly extract a double-dose of punishment out of Vetch, for having looked a fool in front of a Jouster. Unless—
Unless the Jouster continued to speak with his master. Then, perhaps Vetch could slip away, get the bucket, and go back to his task again while Khefti was talking to the Jouster. If Khefti saw that Vetch had run back to his appointed labors at the very first moment possible, he might feel the beating he’d already given Vetch was enough. Vetch kept one eye on them both, and eased one foot down the stair.
The dragon snorted again, and the Jouster looked up at it, then down at Khefti. “From the look of things,” he continued, in that same mild voice, “You’ve been abusing and neglecting the Great King’s property. This boy looks half starved, half beaten, and treated like a masterless cur. You do remember, don’t you, that serfs are the Great King’s property, and not yours? Or is it possible you had forgotten that little detail?”
Khefti went from red to white, all the blood draining from his skin until he looked like an enormous damp, white grub.
The Jouster turned his gaze from Khefti to Vetch. “I need a boy,” he said casually, as if it were no great importance to him. “And if you’re getting any amount of work from one that starved, he must be remarkable. I’ll have him.”
Khefti’s jaw dropped. “But!” he protested. “But—but—”
“As you know, a Jouster can requisition any of the Great King’s property within reason, if it is to serve him and his dragon.” The Jouster shrugged. “One small boy—three-quarters starved—is certainly within reason. You will speak to the King’s assessor when he comes to see if the King will permit you to continue holding the land to which the boy was tied. Or, of course, you could see if there is some other member of his family available—but if there is, I suggest that you treat the new acquisition better than this one. The assessor’s eye will certainly be on you now.”
He let go of Khefti’s wrist, and Khefti dropped to the ground, to lie there like a quivering, misshapen, unbaked loaf. “But—” Khefti burbled. “B-b-b-but—”
The Jouster ignored him. Instead, he looked up at his dragon again, which uncoiled itself and stepped carefully down into the yard. The roof of the drying-shed creaked as the dragon removed its weight from the structure. The dragon stretched a wing lazily out to its fullest extent, then pulled it in, and yawned. It moved up beside the Jouster just as a faithful dog would come to heel, then bent its forequarters so that its shoulders were even with the Jouster’s chest. The Jouster grabbed the back of Vetch’s loincloth as if he was a parcel, and heaved him up over the dragon’s shoulder.
The band of his loincloth cut painfully into his stomach, though Vetch more than half expected it to give way and tear. Vetch landed stomach-down on the dragon’s neck, but the Jouster had not thrown him hard, and his breath was not driven out of him. He’d landed on a sort of carry-pad of stuffed leather in front of the Jouster’s saddle, and he clung to it like a lizard on a ceiling as the Jouster leapt into the saddle itself.
Then the dragon tensed himself all over, stretched his wings wide, and with a leap and a tremendous beat of those wings, took to the sky with a frightening lurch. The sudden upward movement pressed Vetch into the carry-pad, and he felt the Jouster seize the band of his loincloth again, and for the second time in his life, fear replaced every other sensation; the fear that he was falling, falling!
But he fought back the fear, and clung to the pad. A second wing-beat drove them higher—through a storm of dust kicked up by the wind of those wings, Vetch watched Khefti’s striped canvas awnings over the woodpile, the kitchen-court, and the summer pavilion on the roof go ripping loose and flying off.
Below them, Khefti lifted his arms to the sky and began to howl like a jackal. A third wing-beat, a third tremendous gust, and half the thatch of the drying-shed tore loose as well, and the furnishings from the rooftop tumbled over the edge into the street. Fashionable light wicker-work chairs and tables, palm-frond mats and pillows stuffed with duck and goose-down came off the roof like a shower of gifts from a generous noble; passers-by scrambled after the bounty and carried off everything they could seize. Khefti was not well-beloved...he could count on never seeing so much as a stray feather again. His howls were mingled with curses and entreaties to the gods—who, with luck, were deaf to his pleas.
And the last of Vetch’s fear evaporated in half-mad glee at the sight.
A fourth wing-beat, and Vetch could no longer see the house of his former master, only hear his thin wailing from below as he lamented his losses and called upon the gods to witness his ruin.
The ground whirled away as the dragon wheeled, the fear returned, redoubled, and Vetch closed his eyes and hung on with all his might.
He had no illusion that this was rescue; he had merely traded one master for another. But this one, at least, had chided Khefti for starving and mistreating him. So perhaps this master would be better than Khefti.
At least he would be different.
At least, life would be different.
And to that thought, he clung, as he clung to the saddle-pad, and with much of the same desperation.