“I may well be a lightweight before this is over and she is fully grown,” groaned Huras. “It seems all I do is run back and forth with her food!”
“Well,” Menet-ka said in his quiet voice, “according to Kiron, they’ll be doing more sleeping and be less demanding now. Since they’re bigger, they’ll be able to hold more food and can go longer between meals, I suppose.” He looked at Kiron, who nodded. “So we’ll have some freer time to read and plan what’s coming next?”
“More to the point, I think we need to begin Jousting training on the ground,” Kiron told them. “That was why I asked you to come here tonight. If the dragonets are up to flying by the time of the kamiseen, then once they get their skills, we must be ready to train them. You, Huras—there is something in particular I want you and Tathulan to train in—or to be more precise, there is a particular task I want you to train for.”
They way he said that got all of their attention. “Oh?” said Huras.
“You’re thinking of your mentor, Jouster Ari, and his Kashet, aren’t you,” said Toreth shrewdly. “You know we’re going to have to face him and I have the feeling that you don’t want him hurt.”
Kiron nodded. “Ari is honorable, and he has a conscience, and I know for a fact he has never harmed anyone who was not fighting him,” he replied. “And he is my friend. In fact—he is more than my friend.” He looked around the little group. “It is time that I told the true tale of my escape from Tia.”
As all of them hung upon his words, he softly related how Avatre had unexpectedly fledged, and how he had been pursued by Tian Jousters—how they managed to outdistance all but Ari—and how, seeing Ari, he had tried to fall to his death rather than be captured and see Avatre taken from him. It had been long enough now that all of them were as besotted with their dragonets as he was; he could see it in their faces that they understood when he told them that he would rather have died than lose her, and rather die than see her torn from him and given over into the care of someone who saw her only as another weapon of war.
He told them how Ari and Kashet caught and saved him—and then how Ari became the co-conspirator in his escape, even to giving his own Gold of Honor to the Bedu to pay for their help.
When he was done, he saw a change in their faces. Until today, even Jouster Ari had been just another faceless Tian enemy. Now, though they did not know Ari as he did, they did know that none of them could kill him.
“There was not a dragon alive that could best Kashet, until now,” he continued. “But Huras, when she’s full grown, your Tathulan can. She’ll outweigh Kashet for certain. I want to work out some way that we can drive Kashet to the ground and take Ari out of the combat without killing him.”
“All well and good,” said Toreth, “But then what?”
“If he’s grounded, it won’t matter,” Kiron said firmly. “And if, every time he flies to combat, he finds himself grounded, either he will stop flying combats and start doing something else, or the Captain of Jousters will find another job for him.” He shrugged. “The point is, he’s the equivalent of three Jousters; take him out, and we take out a third of a wing.”
Toreth nodded slowly. “I’d like to capture him, actually. If he’s as honorable as you say, we might be able to get him to swear to take himself and Kashet out of Tia altogether until the war is over.”
Kiron heaved a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you would suggest that,” he said. “I don’t want either of them to suffer.”
“Honestly, neither do I,” Toreth admitted with a smile. “I had much rather meet him, and one day learn from him. The first man to raise a tame dragon! I want to hear his story from his own lips.”
Kiron thought of Ari—how very lonely he had seemed to be, and how well he would fit in with this group. If only fate had not placed them on opposite sides of the conflict. It wasn’t fair.
Well, now, at least, he had the wing on his side. It would not be hard to persuade Lord Khumun that Huras should devote himself to taking the infamous Jouster Ari out of the sky. And after that—well, he very much doubted that the Lord of the Jousters would care what happened, so long as Ari and Kashet were no longer a factor in the fighting.
“The rest of us need to learn some new techniques, too,” he continued. “It seems to me that we ought to be able to outfly the Tians; I’m not entirely sure that we need to engage in close combat with them if we can find some other way of dealing with them. And it ought to be possible to train our dragons to put up with missiles going past their ears, too—Avatre has certainly learned.”
“You’re thinking of using bows?” Orest said, looking nervous.
He shook his head. “No. I was thinking of slings and clay pellets. Dragons have an instinct to snap at things going by their heads, and they tend to catch arrows in mid-flight—and the truth is, I would rather not interfere with that instinct. It might save our lives. But Avatre ignores clay pellets. You wouldn’t have to hit a man hard enough in the head to knock him out or kill him—all it would take would be a hit; he’d be distracted, or you might get a good hit on the arm and he’d lose his lance. Avatre learned to tolerate the sling whirling around quite quickly out in the desert. New techniques are going to make us ten times more effective than the Jousters who are not going to be ready for them.”
“For a while, at least,” Can said thoughtfully. “A Jouster being pelted could start to carry a shield. . . .”
“So you sting his dragon’s rump!” countered Oset-re. “No wild-caught dragon, no matter how much tala is in her, is going to react well to that!”
“As tough as their hide is, it would have to be a stone rather than a clay pellet,” mused Menet-ka. “Still. It’s a good idea, and it will nullify their numerical advantage faster than just getting equal numbers out there. Without the dragons giving the Tians the advantage, our casualty rate is going to drop, on the ground as well as in the sky.”
Toreth raised an eyebrow, and exchanged a significant look with Kiron. Kiron thought he knew what Toreth was thinking.
If the casualty rate drops, what happens to the Magi who are counting on a certain number of deaths to prolong their lives? Who will they allow to run short first? Themselves? Ha!
If the Great Ones were depending on magic to keep them going, and the magic ran out—well, they could very well die. And that could mean that Toreth and Kaleth would be on the Twin Thrones—and in a position to stop the war altogether—a lot faster than they had thought.
“That can only be good,” was all he said, and Toreth nodded.
The talk might have gone on long into the night if they had no one to think about but themselves—
—but of course, they didn’t.
“I have a hungry dragonet to feed in the morning,” Orest said, getting to his feet and stretching.
“As if the rest of us didn’t?” retorted Gan. “You’re right, though; morning is going to come far too quickly.”
The rest of them said their good nights and went back to their pens. All but Toreth, who lingered for a moment.
“Were you thinking about the Magi?” he asked, coming straight to the point.
Kiron nodded. “But don’t forget, they aren’t to be trusted,” he warned. “They could find some other means of gathering years. They haven’t resorted to outright, cold-blooded murder yet—”
“—that we know of—” corrected Toreth.
Kiron shivered involuntarily. “That we know of,” he agreed. “Still. If they were desperate—”
“Then we have to deal with them before they realize they are that desperate,” Toreth replied grimly. “Just so you know.”