The sun was only half above the horizon as Kiron gave Avatre signals with hand and legs that she was to gain height. She pumped her wide red wings as hard as she could, valiantly answering his direction. The only problem with flying this early was that there were no thermals to ride, and every wing-beat a dragon took came with heavy labor. A dragon’s preferred method of flight was to glide from thermal to thermal, spiraling up on the rising current of air, and gliding down to the next thermal, with as few wingbeats in between as possible. Such a flying style saved energy, and the one thing that a flying dragon needed a lot of was energy. It was Kiron’s preferred method too; riding dragon-back was hard work, though you’d never know that from the serene wall-paintings of Jousters in the sky in both Tia and Alta. With every downward stroke, he was flung back against the cantle of his saddle as Avatre surged forward, and with every upward sweep he hung weightless for just an unnerving moment, then fell forward against the pommel. Jousters learned to cope with this, of course; he felt what she was going to do with his legs and he had learned to shift his weight to make himself less of a burden, but it was hard work for both of them, and he always felt guilty about putting her to the extra effort of carrying him when she had to work this hard to get in the air.
Below them, Sanctuary dwindled to a child’s play-village made of sand, in the midst of a sea of sand, with the other dragons scattering in all directions, the only spots of color against the pale sweeps of the dunes. He sometimes wondered how the dragons felt about this new life; were they angry because food no longer was delivered to them? Or did they prefer to make kills on their own? He didn’t detect any new grumpiness in Avatre’s mood; the contrary, actually. He thought that she liked hunting, and he knew for certain that this dry, hot desert suited her. Even at sun’s zenith, when the dragons moved out of the direct rays, they stayed out of the heat for too very long.
Avatre knew “her” territory now, and headed for it without prompting. He squinted against the light of the rising sun, and sighted in on their goal, the far-off hills and wadis where the wild ass herd roamed. It was cold up here in the morning, but he shrugged the chill off; already the sun on his skin was warming him, and before very long he knew that it would stop being pleasant and start being uncomfortable, and he would be glad of the cool of the upper air. By the time they headed back, he would be wishing for just a breath of the chill of early morning.
He kept an eye on the ground beneath them, because it was always possible—not likely, but possible—that he would spot something worth chasing even before they got to the wadis.
Besides, every flight was different. You never knew what you were going to see. A desert horned lark singing his heart out as he soared into the blue bowl of the heavens, a viper sinuously leaving “s” marks in the sand of a dune below—or a wild dragon. There were more of those about than he would have thought. He wondered how many of them had been Tian Jousting dragons. Once Heklatis had discovered the way to neutralize tala and render it ineffective at drugging dragons into submission, there was no way, short of love alone, that a dragon could be induced to remain with a Jouster. And the dragons that had escaped from Tian Jousters would probably not have gone back to their old territories. They would have been wary even if they had been inclined to fly all that way back; after all, that was where they had been captured as fledglings.
Avatre reached a height she found comfortable—somehow, he had not been able yet to understand how—dragons could “read” the invisible currents of the sky, and knew by that where their flight would come with the least effort. She settled into the longer, slower wingbeats that moved her forwards rather than upwards, and he leaned down over her shoulder to make himself less of a drag on her progress.
The sands seemed empty of life this morning, but with Kaleth’s prediction of a sandstorm, it could be that the wildlife sensed the thing coming, and had taken to shelter early.
Only when they reached the wadis, and the landscape beneath them turned from undulating waves to the hard earth and rock, cut by the occasional dry wash, and punctuated with wind-eroded mastabas, did he start to see signs of life. Birds flitted from on bit of scrub to another; he saw a desert hare loping away as fast as its legs could take it, and finally, in the distance—the only cloud he’d seen today, a cloud of dust.
The sort of dust raised by a herd or a group of animals.
Avatre spotted it at the same time that he did, and reacted to it sooner, changing her course and heading as straight as the flight of an arrow for the sign of game on the horizon. If Aket-ten was right, the dragons understood a fair amount of what she tried to tell them, and Avatre would know that something bad was coming and there would be no afternoon hunt.
Or, if her instincts were as good as those of the wild animals, she would feel the urge to get under cover warring with her hunger, and that should also add to her eagerness. Now, as long as she didn’t get too eager. . . .
He noticed after a moment that she was angling slightly upwards again, which meant she was going to try for an attack from high above, which would add to her speed. Good for a quick kill, but not so good for him! He would have to get his stone off at the last moment, and wouldn’t have a second chance. Then if he missed, and she missed, and the herd stood at bay, or got into a wadi there might not be a second chance.
He freed one hand from the saddle, felt for the biggest stone in his ammunition pouch, and, with his eyes still on the approaching dust-cloud, slipped it one-handed into the sling in his lap. He wouldn’t drop the sling into the ready-position until he was almost onto the target, otherwise he risked losing the stone before he could throw it.
Avatre’s eyes were better than his; he felt her putting more effort into her wingbeats. She must have seen the animals in the dust-cloud. Beneath his legs and the hand on her shoulder, her skin was hot as a kiln, a sign that she was excited. Even if she could not yet see the prey, she knew where it was.
The amount of dust being kicked up increased; the herd was in a canter now. They must have been seen. The creatures of this part of the desert had not known an aerial predator before the dragons came, but they surely knew one when they saw it now.
A pity, that. No more easy hunts.
Three hard wingbeats that bucked Kiron back against the cantle of the saddle, and they were directly overhead of the herd. He looked down on the brown backs, through a haze of dust as they ran, weaving back and forth to elude the shape above them. He smelled them; hot dust, animal sweat, even as far above them as Avatre was. Three wingbeats more, and they were pulling ahead of the lead ass. And that was when Avatre stalled, giving him just enough warning to brace himself, and did a wingover, plunging down towards the herd of asses with wings folded and Kiron pressed tight against her neck.
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 saddle-pommel 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 sunset-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 small 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 re-formed and sped off to the shelter of the wadis, Kiron eyed the sun. The Sun-Disk 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 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 dragon-back.
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.
“Very good.” Aket-ten threw up her hands in exasperation. “I would have thought you might feel strongly about losing Orest’s allegiance.”
“I’m still his wingleader. He’s still my friend, and besides, Ari’s older and a lot better leader than I am.” He looked under Avatre’s neck at her. “Aket-ten, let’s not bring the game of nation and politics from Alta to Sanctuary. It’s a good thing that the others are looking to Ari for guidance. He has more experience with a hand-raised dragon than anyone, he’s older and a better fighter than I am, and he’s a good man. So what if he’s Tian? If the Magi really are moving into Tia, I bet we’ll start getting more Tians here in Sanctuary before long. You’ll just have to learn to live with them, Aket-ten.”
She hunched her shoulders; he couldn’t see her face, but he imagined from her posture that she was frowning. “All my life, they’ve been the enemy,” she said. “And everyone knew about the rider of the big blue dragon that was so devastating to our side. Now everybody seems to be fussing over Ari as if he’d never killed any of our people!”
“Probably fewer than you think,” Kiron said, slowly, thinking about all those times that Ari had returned from a patrol to brood unhappily all alone. “And he regrets every single one. You know how people exaggerate; I doubt he’s done a quarter as much as rumor would have it.” Her shoulders were still hunched stubbornly, and he gave up. “Look, if you can’t be nice to him, just don’t be rude.”
“I am never rude,” came the untruthful reply, but he had the feeling that was all he was going to get out of it.
Why is it that my friends just can’t all get along?
He supposed he could thank the Magi for that as well.
Possibly she was irritated because it wasn’t just Orest that was accepting Ari without question—it was most of the others in the wing, and Nofret and Marit and Kaleth.
You’d think that if Kaleth has no issues. . . .
Well, perhaps she was feeling neglected.
Certainly ever since they’d come here it had been nothing but nonstop work for everyone. And Aket-ten was another of those who was not at all used to doing her own work.
“When the storm comes and shuts us all in, do you want to try and teach me to play hare-and-hounds again?” he asked.
She turned around, looking rather surprised. “Yes!” she said. “I would! It’ll probably be too dark for mending.”
“It will be very dark,” was all Kiron could say. “I only went through one Midnight Khamiseen in Tia and the ones in the desert proper are supposed to be a lot worse. I think most people are planning on going all the way down to the river-cave for as long as the storm goes.”
“But we can’t take the dragons down there,” Aket-ten observed. “It will be too cold for them.”
He nodded. “We’ll move them in there—the winter-quarters.” he pointed at the end building of their court, which might have been a stable, or something of the sort. They’d decided that would be the winter “cave” once things got too cold. Heklatis had not yet worked out how the Ghed priests transferred heat into the Tian dragon-pens, although he was certain that between them, he and Ari could puzzle the magic out. At least the dragons would actually fit into this building, and it could probably be heated conventionally.
“I don’t want to leave Re-eth-ke,” she replied after a moment.
“I don’t think any of us plan on leaving our dragons,” he said truthfully. “They’ll probably be all right, but you never know. So it won’t be as comfortable as being down by the river, and we might have our hands full if they get restive or frightened.”
“I can think of too many bad things that could happen if we leave them alone,” she told him.
At just that moment, the rest of the wing started to straggle in. Pe-atep and scarlet-and-sand Deoth were the first of the lot, with Deoth looking more nervous than usual. “I think he senses something,” Pe-atep called in his booming voice as Deoth landed on the sand, and immediately went to a sheltered corner. Kiron nodded; having been a keeper of hunting cats, even lions before becoming a Jouster, tall Pe-atep was perhaps the most sensitive of any of them to his dragon’s moods except, perhaps, the former falcon-trainer Kalen.
“Kaleth’s prediction is holding true, then.” Kiron did not even bother to voice the question if the scarlet-and-sand dragon was picking up his nerves from his rider. Pe-atep was not only more sensitive to his dragon’s moods, he was outstanding at dealing with them; he knew better than anyone in the wing except perhaps Kalen how to keep his own nerves from being communicated to his dragon.
“I think he knows it’s something he’s never seen, too,” Pe-atep dismounted, but didn’t bother to take off Deoth’s burdens. The dragon craned his neck around, showing the sand-colored throat. “I’m going to take him straight into the shelter; no point in letting his nerves get any more worked up.”
“I’ll come with you,” Aket-ten said instantly. “It’ll leave more room in the court for the others, and Re-eth-ke’s starting to fidget too.”
“So’s Wastet and Apetma,” Orest called down from above.
Ari leaned over the edge. “The only two dragons that aren’t fussing are Kaleth and Avatre—and they’ve both lived in the desert. I expect all of your Altan-born dragons that have never seen a real sandstorm, much less a Midnight Khamiseen, are going to be restless and on edge; they sense something coming, their instincts tell them that it’s dangerous, but they don’t know what it is. Getting them into the shelter now is a good idea.”
Aket-ten made a little face, but said nothing, she only led Re-eth-ke behind Deoth as they took to the staircase to the building roof. On the other side would be a matching stair to bring them to the street-side of the shelter. Orest led Wastet out of sight, presumably to take Wastet down to the street as well. Ari raised an eyebrow at Kiron, who shrugged.
“She’s seen everything but a Midnight Khamiseen, so she probably is just thinking it’s another sandstorm. I think she’s more interested in getting groomed, so I’ll finish oiling her before I take her in.” Kiron looked up, as Gan and his green dragon Khaleph winged in to a landing.
Gan threw his leg of the saddle and slid down from Khaleph’s back with a flourish. But then, Gan did everything with a flourish. “I saw the others going inside as we came down; Khaleph isn’t too bad, but I might as well take him below anyway. He’ll help the others calm down.” Gan was the oldest of Kiron’s wing; despite his theatrical nature, he’d be something of a calming influence himself. And if that wasn’t enough, his exceedingly sharp wits would have them laughing.
Huras and the heart-stoppingly beautiful Tathulan swooped in, a blue-purple-and-scarlet blur coming to a dead stop in the pit by using the sand itself as a brake. “It’s coming,” said Huras, shortly. His eyes were wide and it was clear from his expression that he was alarmed. But even though he was “only” a baker’s son and had never even been off his ring in Alta before becoming a Jouster, he was intelligent and steady, as steady by nature as his big dragon, the largest of the hatch. She trusted him, and he trusted in Ari and Kiron’s knowledge of the desert; they wouldn’t panic unless it was clear that panic was called for . “We were at the edge of our range, and saw it when we got height. She caught breakfast, but has anyone got spare for her second meal?”
“I do,” Ari volunteered, as Kalen and bronze-and-gold Se-atmen and Menet-ka and indigo-purple Bethlan landed on opposite buildings at almost the same moment. “Huras saw it coming!” he called, as they dismounted. “Don’t bother to unharness, just get into the shelter!”
By the time Kiron and Avatre got up to the rooftop themselves, it was clear that everyone else in Sanctuary was under cover and probably had been as soon as morning chores were done. The very few windows were already covered with wooden shutters, and the city might as well have been as empty as when they had arrived.
Avatre seemed perfectly calm, even now, but when Kiron looked to the east, he saw a brownish haze just at the horizon that made him hurry his steps. Ari was right behind him, with Kashet on his heels.
When the double-doors of the stable were shut and barred behind them both, Kiron turned to look the situation over.
This was not the most ideal place for the dragons. The largest of them had to crouch to keep from knocking their heads on the ceiling. In the bars of light that filtered in through the closed shutters, it was barely possible to see, and the air seemed a bit stuffy.
It was also quite crowded. Mealtime for the dragons was going to be interesting.
Outside, there was a sound— —a high-pitched whine at first, then a deep rumble, like the sound of hundreds of chariots approaching and then— Then the light vanished, and the walls and shutters shook as the Midnight Khamiseen struck Sanctuary.
The wind—the wind did not howl. It roared, it thundered, it tore angrily at the walls and shutters. It made the walls vibrate. It filled the air with a dust as fine as flour. In that moment when the light was gone, Kiron felt himself groping for Avatre’s comforting presence.
This storm felt like a living thing, like a great beast—like a lion, that roared defiance of all the world, that seized entire buildings in its jaws and shook them until their contents entire buildings in its jaws and shook them until their contents rattled like seeds in a dry latas pod. Yet there was nothing inimical in this fury. It didn’t care if the building was empty, or full of people and dragons. There was nothing malicious there—not like the storms the Magi had created.
That didn’t stop Kiron from feeling like a mouse sitting in a hole with a hawk in the air above him—but at least he knew that the hawk had no plans to torture him if it caught him.
Thanks to Kaleth’s warning, they had planned ahead for this; no sooner had the light gone, than someone near the back held up a lit oil-lamp. The flame wavered and flickered in the conflicting air-currents. Whoever it was quickly sheltered the flame with his hand, and a moment later, others clustered around him with lamps of their own.
It wasn’t stuffy anymore; wind whined through all the cracks in the shutters and around the door that a moment ago had let in light. Wind wasn’t the only thing coming in. So was the sand. It was some measure of the force of the wind that the sand was spraying in through cracks hardly wider than a hair.
All the dragons, Avatre and Kashet included, inched towards the back wall until they were huddled together. Their pupils were as wide as they could go, making their eyes look like black plates rimmed with ruby or gold, and every time an especially fierce blast shook one or another of the shutters, all their heads swiveled as one to face the source of the noise.
“I doubt they’re going to panic,” Ari said over the scream of the wind. “And if we all settle down and act normally, they’ll relax.”
Gan cleared his throat, then tossed his head as if dismissing the storm as a trivial inconvenience. “These walls and shutters have withstood centuries of storms, and this one has nothing of magic in it. I doubt they’re going to fail now. So, who’s for a game of hounds and hares?”
They had made the stable ready long before the storm arrived, and at Gan’s prompting, the others unpacked game-boards, jack-stones and dice. Kiron arranged a couple of flat cushions next to Avatre and Aket-ten brought over her game-board. They settled in, Kiron to learn the game and Aket-ten to teach it, within the circle of light cast by an alabaster oil-lamp found here in the ruins. Shaped like latas-buds, one of its three cups was broken, but the other two cast a fine light, sheltered from the weird breezes whipping through the stable. Gradually, as nothing worse happened than drifts of sand forming at the windows and door, and the howls of the wind shaking the shutters, the dragons relaxed. Eventually, they put their heads down on their forelegs, or draped head and neck over a neighbor’s back. They still showed no signs of relaxing their vigilance enough to nap, but they weren’t ready to bolt at the first alarm anymore.
There was no way to gauge the passage of time, but the Altans had known that would be the case. The artificial darkness was a lot like the darkness cast by the storms the Magi conjured in order to drive the Tian Jousters out of the sky, and they were as used to such conditions as anyone could be.
However. . . .
“I think we should feed the dragons at the first sign of hunger,” Kiron said, looking up from a game at which he was (predictably) losing. “If we wait until they get really hungry, there might be fights.”
“I can keep track of that,” said Aket-ten. He nodded; with her Gift of Silent Speech with animals, she should have plenty of warning when they began to complain.
When the first dragons began getting hunger-pangs, she alerted their riders. As the meat was distributed, there was some minor squabbling, but not much, and quickly sorted out before it escalated beyond a nip and a hiss. This could never haven been done with the wild-caught dragons; there would have been bloody fights over the food in no time, and woe betide whatever human got in the way.
The storm continued to howl long after sunset, only dying around the middle of the night. By that time, as the oil-lamps burned out one by one, everyone had gone to sleep; Kiron only woke because a beam of moonlight penetrated the shutter and shone directly into his eyes.
He got up and opened the door. He expected a flood of sand to pour into the room, but instead, it appeared that the storm had scoured the street clean. There was no real sign that such fury had lately raged out here; the air was still, cold, and calm, and the streets peaceful. He wondered what the storm had buried—or revealed.
But that would have to wait until morning.