Alta

TWO

BENEATH him was a green landscape, so green that after all his time in the desert, it dazzled his senses. Still, he was able to make out what the crops were, even while he adjusted to the change. Date palms. Barley fields. Onions? The closer they got to the compound and the lands around it, the more Kiron recognized, and the more certain he became that this was, indeed, a Great Estate, and not a village. Villagers each had their own little plots and usually grew mixed sets of crops, so that a field was a patchwork of little bits of this and that. The great estates had enormous fields of single crops. And now he could see people working in those fields, none of whom had the look of villagers, for all were men, and they worked in teams. A villager would work his own fields with his wife and those children who were old enough to help. No, these were servants, or, perhaps, slaves. And it gave him a moment of hot satisfaction to think that some of these slaves might be captured Tians, laboring as he had labored to the profit of someone other than themselves, owning nothing, not even the cloth wrapped around their loins. Altans did not have serfs, who were linked to the land they had once owned, for the oft-broken treaty with Tia that created the serf class applied only to those people who had once owned the captured land that they were now tied to. The Altans had been losing land, not taking it, for a very long time now. So there were no serfs inside Alta and any captured Tians became slaves, who could be bought and sold at will.
The air here smelled different; different from Tia, different from the desert. This was water-rich air, heavy with humidity, and with the scents of lushly growing plants, the scent of mud and the latas that was blooming profusely everywhere. And Kiron felt something strange stirring inside him, a feeling that made him clutch Avatre’s saddle and gulp back a lump in his throat.
This was the scent of home, of childhood. Except that his home was gone, his family divided.
No. No matter what that scent promised to his heart, his head knew that he was not coming home.
He shook off his melancholy; time enough for brooding later, when he wasn’t about to perpetrate a fraud. He clenched his jaw, and concentrated on the fields below. As Avatre’s shadow passed over them, the men looked up, shading their eyes with their hands. He wished he knew what they were thinking.
Not in the fields. Not near the cattle. Not too near the Great House either. He decided to send Avatre to land in a large yard near a herd of penned goats. Goats were not expensive, and Avatre was no longer spoiled with feeding on tender beef, sent to the altars of the gods. After her feed at their kill, she would need no more than one or two of those goats to satisfy her. He would not be greedy; he would demand animals that were easily replaced.
As she backwinged to a landing—an exceptionally good and graceful one, and he felt a thrill of pride in her—the goats milled and bleated in panic, and a man in a striped headcloth came out of a nearby building to see what was agitating them.
The striped headcloth, and the fact that he was wearing a kilt rather than a loincloth, marked him as someone with more authority than a field hand. As he approached, his face already creasing into a frown, Kiron slid down over Avatre’s shoulder and stood with one hand on her foreleg, waiting for him.
Stand like the new Jousters, he reminded himself. You are Kiron, son of Kiron, rider of Avatre. Raise your chin. Look down your nose. . . .
“What—” the man began, and Kiron interrupted him, hoping he could keep his voice from shaking or going shrill with nervousness. “Three goats for my beast, date wine and food for me,” he snapped. “Quickly! We have far to go.”
The man reddened at Kiron’s tone, and looked as if he was going to challenge Kiron’s right to anything, but at that moment, Avatre, sensing her rider’s nervousness, stretched out her neck and hissed at him. The man paled and took a step backward.
“You had better hurry,” Kiron said, narrowing his eyes, feigning annoyance, though what he really felt was a tight fear in his gut that the man would, even now, challenge them. “Or she might choose for herself. She is very hungry.”

With two goats inside of Avatre, and one slung behind Kiron’s saddle for her breakfast, together with a skin of wine and a bundle that presumably contained food, they launched into the air again, heading north and a little west, angling in toward Alta City. He was filled with elation at his success, almost dizzy with relief that he had actually managed to pull off the scam, and had to restrain himself to keep from shouting his triumph as she surged into the sky. Once in the air, Kiron picked up the river, the Red Daughter of Great Mother River, and they followed it until, just as the sun began to set, he spotted an island.
It was exactly what he wanted; mostly rock, and covered with the detritus of past floods. There was a lot of dead wood there, and that meant a lot of fuel for a fire to warm the rocks for Avatre’s bed. She was not at all loath to land, and waited with commendable patience while he picked out a hollow among the rocks for her, built the fire, lit it, tended it, let it die, and finally, with the stars bright overhead, tested the rocks to make sure they weren’t too warm for her.
Here along the river the night didn’t get nearly as cold as it did in the desert, anyway, and these rocks had been baking in the sun all day already. She settled right in and went to sleep, while he investigated his “loot.”
It wasn’t a princely feast by any means. In fact, it was basic laborer’s food of coarse barley bread, onions and goat cheese, and the wine was just short of becoming vinegar. Nevertheless, the man hadn’t shorted him, and it was entirely possible, given where he’d landed, that this was the best there was to be had without recourse to the Great Lord’s kitchens.
It was quite a change from the diet of the nomads, however, which was mostly stringy meat and unleavened flatbread, and on that basis alone, he made a good meal out of it. And perhaps, as he got better at demanding what he needed, what he got would also improve. He ate quickly and settled in at Avatre’s side, among her warm rocks. It had been a long, long day, and as he relaxed, he realized how tired he was.
Excitement, he decided. All the excitement. Making it as far as Alta, coming out of the desert, fooling that overseer. I feel as if I’ve been running all day. He yawned hugely, and felt his muscles going slack as the tension came out of them. He tried to keep his eyes open a little longer, but the warmth of the rocks was so good, and for the first time since he’d left the compound he had a completely full stomach, and before he knew it, his eyes closed of their own accord.

He was awakened before dawn, not by Avatre, but by a dead duck falling on his head.
He had always been in the habit of coming awake all at once; a good idea, since Khefti-the-Fat had enjoyed sneaking up and kicking the unwary awake in the morning. The habit had stood him in good stead in the desert; twice during their journey, lions had attempted to steal up on them in the night. Avatre had scented them in her sleep and he had driven them off with a burning brand from his fire. But a dead duck falling on him—that was different.
He jumped to his feet automatically, shaking the sleep from his eyes, and saw, all in the same moment, the duck at his feet with an arrow through it, a flight of more ducks overhead, and, coming up out of the mist, a small boat with two men in it, one paddling and one holding a bow.
They seemed surprised to see him; he was no less surprised to see them, and was not particularly happy to note that the one with the bow was sporting a pair of enameled armbands. “You!” the archer called, with the self-assured arrogance of someone of rank. “Have you seen—”
Avatre’s head came up behind him; she took one look at the men in the boat—she had never seen a boat before, after all, at least not one that was on the same level with her—and snorted in surprise.
The man with the armbands yelped with a surprise that equaled hers, and fell backward into the boat, and the man with the paddle had all he could do to keep it from capsizing.
Kiron bent and picked up the duck by the arrow. “I believe,” he said, neutrally, “this must be yours.”
“Ah. Yes,” the archer stammered.
Kiron tossed it; it fell at the rower’s feet. Neither man made any move to pick it up, and Avatre snorted again.
“You had probably better get what sport you can before the sun gets much higher,” Kiron went on, hoping he sounded less nervous than he felt. “When my dragon rises, she’ll probably frighten every duck in the marsh.”
“Ah. Indeed. Pardon us,” the archer said, and tapped the rower on the shoulder. The rower started, as if being wakened from a trance, and began digging at the water with his oars as if he could not get away from there fast enough. Soon they vanished into the mist again, and Kiron rubbed his head ruefully.
“Now I wish I hadn’t given back that duck,” he said wistfully. “It would have tasted fine for my breakfast.”
Then he remembered the fishing line in his gear; unused since it had been given to him (or rather, sent to become part of his grave goods!), it occurred to him that it was going to take Avatre some time to wake up properly, eat, and warm herself up enough to fly, and while she was doing so, he might just as well try his luck. He hadn’t had fish since the last Tian festival.
His luck, apparently, was in. With a bit of bread left over from his supper, he soon had several fish baking in the ashes of his fire, and both he and Avatre took off with full bellies that morning.
North and a little west; they followed the river while it meandered in that direction, lost it as he had expected, then picked up the Great Mother River’s second daughter shortly around noon. This was the branch known as the White Daughter, the middle of the three; for there were three, all told: Red, White, and Black, so named for the color of their water, tinted by the mud they carried. This time of year, the White Daughter was more of a pale green; she was shallow, shrunken within her banks, waiting for the rains to make her full again.
From the Red Daughter to the White, they flew over cultivated lands that were vastly better watered and more fertile looking than the corresponding properties in Tia, and between the fields was a lattice of irrigation ditches, some of them as wide as a cart and deeper than a man was tall. This fertility was no illusion, but Kiron knew it had come at a cost; every hand of farmland had been claimed from the swamp by someone, building the ditches to help drain the land, dredging up baskets of silt from the bottoms of the ditches and building fields, bringing in earth from the edge of the desert to do the same, or extending the reach of the river with a further network of irrigation ditches beyond the land that had been swamp.
He looked down on these fertile lands and their tenders, and it came to him that he had dared the bluff twice now. Twice he had passed himself off as an Altan Jouster, and twice he had succeeded; dared he try a third time? The nearer he drew to Alta City, the less likely it seemed that his ruse would pass muster, no matter what the Mouth said.
And there was that saying that his father used to use, “Third time pays for all,” that you might get away with something twice, but when you were caught the third time, the reckoning would be high.
Safer not to try again, perhaps.
And it seemed that his caution was appropriate when, as noon approached and he knew Avatre was getting hungry, he spotted the fresh carcass of a cow washed up on another of those rock islands. He knew it was fresh because it wasn’t at all bloated, and when he brought Avatre down on the island to investigate it, the gaping wound in its stomach told what it had died of.
That was a crocodile bite. Perhaps it had waded in too deep for a drink; perhaps it had been one of a herd that some farmer had sent across a ford. It could have been carried downstream by the beast that wounded it, and kicked free only to die and wash up here. For whatever reason it had gotten here, he was thankful; he let Avatre have her fill, then doze in the sun while he fished again, this time encasing the gutted fish in mud to bake in a fire until she had finished her nap. He ate one on the spot, and stowed the rest; when Avatre woke, they continued their journey.
He wished he had a map. He wished that he knew how far it was going to be before he reached Alta City. Going dragonback was infinitely faster than any other way to travel, but Alta was big; Tia was long, but it was narrow, with most of the population confined to either bank of the Great Mother River. Alta was wide; he had heard that if a man tried to walk it from the Eastern Desert to the Western Desert it would take him at least a full moon, depending on the time of year, and there were many flood-swollen streams and ditches he would have to cross.
And his goal was Alta City, which lay on the coast of the Great Salt Sea that bordered Alta on the north. He knew that he could reach it by following this, the White Daughter of Great Mother River, but how much farther would it be? Dragons flew fast—and far, in a day. Two days? Three?
His luck was out as sunset neared; there were no more islands, only sandbars, and the Great Estates were more numerous than he liked. But Avatre was hungry again. What was he to do?
It was the sight of a temple that decided him; it was a large one, and there were bulls penned for sacrifice nearby. Tian dragons were fed from the remains of Tian sacrifices; it was reasonable to think that the Altans might do the same. He signaled Avatre to land; he could hardly escape notice at a temple at sunset, and he was not at all surprised that not one, but several shaven-headed priests in their white linen kilts and enameled pectoral collars hurried up to him as he slid down from Avatre’s back. They looked nervous and apprehensive.
“Food for my lady-dragon and for me,” he said, shortly.
One of them brightened. “You are come auspiciously, Jouster,” he said, “For on this Feast of Abydesus, more sons of the Hare Nome have become men than usual, and many cattle have spilled their blood in His honor. Wait, and we will bring it, that your great lady may eat her fill.”
The Feast of Abydesus! He had completely lost track of time, out there in the desert. It had been one of his favorite feast days as a child, for the Ram God favored children, especially boy children, and those who could afford it sent bulls to be sacrificed when their sons had their child locks shaved and became men. That meant meat for a feast to which friends and relations were invited, while those who were still considered children got honey cakes and the priests’ blessings to carry them through another year toward manhood.
Though the god only required the blood, it was considered inauspicious to waste the meat of the bulls that were offered to him—and in the season of the kamiseen it could not be kept for long. Some went to the homes of those new-made men for their feasts, of course, and some to the larders of the priests. But the larders could only hold so much, and anything left outside the cold-magic could only be burned or dried. It was possible that such a small temple did not have anyone who could make cold-magic, and in such humid weather, he had the notion that beef would not necessarily dry well.
And while the scent of the burning might be sweet in the nostrils of the gods, it generally offended the neighbors downwind. The poor might get their share of the inferior cuts, but if enough bulls died on the altars, there could be a small problem with disposal.
Soon enough, several acolytes arrived trundling barrows, and at the sight of so familiar an object, Avatre actually began to dance with impatience. To the startlement of the acolyte bringing the first barrow, she shot her head out in the trick that Ari’s Kashet had used to pull on Kiron, and snatched the top piece before the poor, shocked acolyte could set the barrow down for Kiron to take.
With a yell, he jumped back, and the barrow thudded to the ground, overturning and spilling half its contents.
Avatre gave the boy a very hurt look.
“Peace!” Kiron said, holding back a laugh, and patting Avatre on the shoulder. “My lady is possessed of gentleness, if not good manners. She would not harm you for the world.”
The acolytes said nothing, though their looks of doubt told Kiron that they would rather err on the side of caution. So Kiron came and took the other two barrows while Avatre polished off the contents of the third, and brought them to her himself.
So she ate to her heart’s content, while the priests and acolytes gazed on her from a respectful distance.
“If you would care to stay the night at the sanctuary, young lord,” one of them called, “there is a room where your sky warrior may sleep warm. It is not often used, for we are a modest temple, but—”
“You make us feel welcome,” Kiron said immediately. “Our thanks, and we will stay.”
From the pleasure on the priests’ faces, although he could not recall the Ram God having any particular association with dragons, he got the feeling that the arrival of a Jouster on a feast day was considered to be a sign of great favor. If that was the case, he was going to take shameless advantage of the fact.
So he and Avatre were led to a roofless chamber where the floor was heated from below by fire, and although it was not the hot sands that she preferred, she settled down with a contented grunt. Then he was taken to a bathing chamber where he was able to give himself a good scrub for the first time in far too long, given a clean loincloth, and a proper, soft-wrapped Altan kilt (in contrast to the stiff, starched Tian variety that anyone of rank wore). His hands remembered how to wrap it, even if his mind didn’t; an acolyte braided his hair for him, Altan fashion, in a clubbed plait down the back of his neck. Then he was conducted to the feast that the priests themselves held.
And that was when he very nearly bolted; when he saw the couches arrayed around the dining chamber and realized that he was going to be a guest. And he was supposed to be an Altan Jouster!
Panic took him for a moment, and he sat down woodenly on his couch, expecting at any moment that someone would realize that he was a fraud—
But once again, his luck saved him, for the priests not only did not question him, they did not seem to expect him to be much of a conversationalist. Or, perhaps, they assumed that no Jouster would be conversant with what was, after all, merely local gossip. A few remarks were directed to him, which he answered cautiously and briefly—but most of the conversation went merrily on without him, and seemed to concern the intertemple political maneuvering here in the Nome of the Hare. In fact, the only significance his presence had was that his (and Avatre’s) appearance at this particular moment was going to put this temple up a notch or two in the ever-changing pecking order, at least for a while. Probably if he had come at a time when there was no overabundance of meat, he might have been less welcome.
And these men were truly only interested in what lay within the borders of this Nome; they were remarkably incurious about either Alta City or even their neighboring Nomes. All this worked to his advantage; all he needed to do was to be a courteous and agreeable guest.
Yet surely, before he left, he was going to be expected to make an offering to the god—and unlike a real Jouster, he didn’t have a lot to his name.
He cast his mind over his poor possessions, trying to decide if there was anything among them that was worth offering. And then it struck him.
“I have with me the captured amulets of enemy Jousters,” he said to the Chief Priest with great diffidence as the feast drew to a close. “If the God would deign to accept them as a worthy sacrifice and a sign of His power over the gods of the enemy—”
“Deign?” the Chief Priest said, throwing up pudgy little hands in delight (he was a small, round man who was clearly fonder of the pleasures of the table than he was of political machinations). “Good young Lord Kiron, it would be an honor to offer them for you! Let me send for your baggage, so that we can make the sacrifice before the midnight hour!”
It was with no small sense of irony that Kiron watched the Priest lay out the line of faience amulets upon the Ram God’s altar with a reverence more suited to objects of gold than simple glazed clay. All of those amulets, sent to be Kiron’s own grave offerings by the terrified dragon boys to prevent his haunting them. . . .
Still, most of them were Haras-hawk amulets, sign of the Jousters of Tia, and as such, were powerful symbols of an Altan victory over a Tian, if not valuable in themselves.
And, presumably, they were something no other temple within the Nome of the Hare could boast of having.
They wanted to send him to the guest quarters, but he was adamant about having a couch placed in the same chamber as Avatre. He had not slept a night away from her side since she was hatched, and he did not intend to start now.
He was escorted to his couch by yet another acolyte, who apologized so many times for the simplicity of the quarters that Kiron was weary of reassuring him and glad when he took himself out. And if the quarters were bare, well, that was his choice, wasn’t it?
And besides, when the lamp was blown out, all quarters were the same. As long as they held Avatre, he could not have cared if he slept on rock or in the Great King’s palace.

It had been a little difficult to judge accurately, but if the Ram God’s priests were to be believed in their guesses of how far it was to Alta City, he and Avatre would be there by nightfall at the very latest, and mid-afternoon at the earliest.
He did not have much of a plan, but then, perhaps he would not need one. His “plan,” such as it was, consisted of finding the Altan Jousters’ Compound, landing there, and telling his story. Or at least, an edited version of the story.
This version featured him purposefully (rather than accidentally) making his escape flight and working his way in short stages around the edge of the desert, instead of involving the Bedu. In the first place, he did not want any rumor of the Veiled Ones’ involvement to get back to Tia, and in the second place, he did not want any rumor of Ari’s involvement to get back either. Everything would be true up to the point of Avatre’s First Flight; everything would be true after the point at which he crossed the border into Alta. In fact, the stories about the happenings in between would be partly true. He could tell a great many truths about learning to hunt with Avatre, the things he had taught her, about sandstorms they had been forced to fly above, about finding tiny wilderness water sources not even the Bedu had known were there. He would just be a little vague about the locations where these things had happened. . . .
He was pretty certain it would work. And if the Altans were mistrustful of him at first, that was no great loss. Avatre was not even in the first stages of Jousting training, and neither was he. It would be years before he would actually be ready to fight, and by that time, he should be accepted without question.
Only the acolytes were awake when he and Avatre were up and ready to fly. This was not exactly a surprise; the serious inroads into the offerings of palm wine and date wine were just being made when he had left the feast, and none of those priests had looked particularly ascetic. There would be aching heads this day—which was all to the good, since he wanted to be well away before anyone thought of any questions they wanted to ask about just why such a young-looking boy was riding a dragon toward Alta City. And why such a one would have Tian amulets in his possession that he claimed to have been captured from the enemy.
Avatre ate her fill; she seemed supremely content with the chamber they’d shared, and was ready, even anxious, to be off. Perhaps she picked that up from him; with the end of the journey now in sight, he wanted it to be over. They were in the sky just as the sun crested the horizon; with the chamber heated all night long, there had been little need for the dragon to warm up her muscles before she flew.
They made excellent speed; the wind was favorable, the way clear, and there was no real need to stop until Avatre hungered again.
Below, the White Daughter showed her true nature; the water the curious color of watered-down milk, the sandy shores as white as reed paper. She seemed a placid enough river; the shortest (and hence, termed the “youngest”) of the Three Daughters. During the flood season, her waters spread out over the land gently and predictably, and she returned to her bed just as gently. In fact, the worst that could be said of her was that she was a veritable nursery for crocodiles and river horses.
For along much of her length, it was easier to dig irrigation channels than to fill or drain her swamps. And if those swamps were a haven for ducks, geese, and other desirable things, they were also the chosen shelters for the two most terrible forms of death by water other than drowning itself.
As he and Avatre flew over the marshes, it was easy to see the great river horses in their herds, looking like slowly moving boulders that would sometimes submerge altogether. The huge, fat beasts were deceptively placid-looking, and yet they could be more deadly than the crocodile. Like the crocodile, they could swim swiftly, hidden underwater for a surprising amount of time, and in the White Daughter’s murky current they were nearly impossible to see. Their huge jaws could crush a boat literally in half, or rip a man’s leg off at the hip, and their uncertain tempers meant that there was no telling if, or when, one would choose to attack. And for all their bulk, even on land, they could move very swiftly for a short distance.
And yet they were considered fine eating in certain seasons, and in both Tia and Alta it was considered a mark of great courage to take part in a hunt.
Crocodiles were harder to spot, except where they sunbathed on the banks or on sandbars. The White Daughter hid them even more effectively. The best that one could do, with regard to crocodiles, was to try to clear a ford with nets before crossing it. Still, except with the very largest of the beasts, it was possible to win in a fight with one, if you could get its jaws clamped or tied shut, for though the muscles that closed those jaws were immensely strong, the ones that opened them were weak. But one man against a river horse did not stand a chance.
Still, both tended to keep to the swamp rather than the open river. It was rare for either to attack in broad daylight.
Rare. But not impossible. Especially not when provoked.

We can’t be far now, Kiron thought, looking down at the vast swamp beneath him. The White Daughter was visible—oh, yes, clearly visible—cutting her path through the heart of the swamp, but for as far as he could see was nothing but a sea of reeds. The scent that rose from this swamp was perilously close to a stink; it smelled of stagnant water and rotting reeds, and things he couldn’t name. This was the first of the Seven-Ringed City’s defenses; Alta City had never permitted the swamp here to be filled in or drained, because it was too effective as a passive defense. There were only two ways to the city—down the White Daughter to the sea, and by ship from the port side of the city.
And the swamp itself was a source of more than just defensive measures. Papyrus cutters worked here endlessly, cutting the reeds for the paper for which the city was justly famous. Geese and ducks were actually farmed here by keeping their wing feathers clipped; wild ones were hunted. There must be a hundred sorts of fish to be hooked or netted.
As Kiron looked down, admiring the flight of a flock of birds beneath him, he saw something else; two small boats of exceptionally fine design. The reason he saw them was that the gilded prows caught the light and his attention.
There were two men in each boat; out of purest curiosity, for he could not imagine what they were doing, he sent Avatre to circle a little lower.
Two spearmen, two rowers. The rowers were in Altan kilts, but the spearmen were in short, knee-length tunics. He caught another glint of gold from each of the spearmen. Nobles?
He snorted to himself, and was about to give the signal to Avatre to circle back north and onward. Nobles, out spear fishing! In the swamp, no less! What idiocy—he hoped the midges and mosquitoes ate them alive—
But then he heard a splash, and a shout—
—and a scream.
It was not the scream of a young man, it was the scream of a girl.
Startled, he glanced down, just in time to see the huge jaws of a river horse smash down on the aft of one of the boats, crushing it and engulfing the head and upper torso of the rower who had been sitting there; he bellowed in agony, a cry swiftly cut off. The boat went over; the spearman—the girl—was thrown into the water.
With the river horse.
A crocodile would take a single victim, carry it under, and drown it, then eat it at leisure. A river horse, if maddened, would take as many victims as it could get; it would not eat them, for it was a vegetarian. No, it would maim them, crush them, kill them if it could, until it was dead, it tired of the carnage, or all the possible victims were gone.
And these were Altans. His people. He had to save them! Or save the girl, anyway; the rower was dead, or as good as, for nothing that escaped the savage jaws of a river horse lived for long.
He signaled Avatre with knees and hands; she turned, and circled back, her muscles tensing under him as she sensed his intention. There was another maneuver besides the “strike and bind” that he and Avatre had practiced out there in the desert—but not on living things that could fight back as a river horse would, only on potential prey. No matter. They had to try it now.
The river horse still had the rower in its jaws, tossing its enormous, blocky head back and forth while muffled screaming came from inside that terrible maw. The girl in the water, sensibly, was saving her breath, trying to swim away from the river horse as fast as she could before it noticed her. The river horse was between her and the other boat; the spearman was cursing the rower for trying to escape, while he tried to take aim with his flimsy little fish spear at the river horse’s head. Blood flowed from the river horse’s jaws, turning the milky water pink.
All this, Kiron saw in that single moment when he gave Avatre one of her new hunting commands.
“Avatre!” he shouted. “Rake!”
One half-grown dragon could not hope to take down anything much larger than an ass with the strike-and-bind attack she knew instinctively. But the desert falcons used a different technique to drive an enemy away—they would attack with outstretched talons, but would not close once they had struck. Instead, they would leave bloody furrows across their victim’s head; with luck, blinding it, but at least inflicting a lot of pain and giving it something else to think about than, say, a nest or a newly fledged youngster.
Kiron had not known whether dragons used this same ploy until he’d tried it with Avatre. Apparently, they did. Now she had a command word to go with the attack—but this was the first time they were using it against something that could turn on them.
And if the river horse got one of Avatre’s feet—
Too late to worry about that now. Avatre understood instantly what she was supposed to do; she folded her wings and went into a dive; Kiron leaned over her shoulder, eyes narrowed against the wind of her passage.
She struck.
She hit.
There was no shock, as there was when she hit and bound. Instead, she slowed for just a moment, as a bellow of rage erupted just below her feet, then she surged upward with a great beat of her wings.
It sounded like thunder in his ears, each wingbeat pounding the air, and the bellowing of the river horse still ringing below them. But Avatre knew she was not done, not yet. Her blood was up now, and the prey was audibly still alive. She got just enough height to stoop again, and did a wingover that left Kiron’s stomach still hanging in the air behind them, as she dove for another raking maneuver.
The girl was still in the water, fighting her way through the reeds. The river horse was only wounded; it had shook what was left of the rower out of its jaws, and was peering around with its little piggy eyes to see what had hurt it so. But before it could catch sight of the girl’s thrashing arms, Avatre struck again.
More bellows; again that surge of wings. As they climbed, Kiron looked down again.
No good. The other rower was getting away from the area as fast as his arms could take him, despite the curses of the spearman, who had somehow lost his spear. The river horse was still between them and the girl. The girl’s arms weren’t moving as fast; she was tiring. And there was blood in the water, plenty of it. It would not be long before there were crocodiles, or worse, more river horses.
They couldn’t keep raking the beast; at any moment, it would understand that attack was coming from above and dive, and then it might find and seize the girl. Time for another trick.
Except that the girl didn’t know it. So he would have to get into the water.
He signaled Avatre with hands and legs not to make a third attack, and turned her toward where the girl was. If he could just reach that coil of rope behind him—
His hand found it; he pulled it off the pack, and looped it around himself just under his armpits, and tied it in place. The other end was still fastened to the packs. He hoped he had fastened it securely. This would be a bad time to discover that he had not.
As Avatre swooped low over the girl, who ducked instinctively, then came up in a hover, he threw himself out of the saddle, tucking himself into a ball to protect his head and stomach.
He hit the water with a splash that stung his arms and legs and drove him under for a moment. He unfolded his limbs and forced himself upward, tossing his head and gasping as he broke the surface of the water and looked around for the girl.
Unbelievably, she was no more than an arm’s-length away, and before the rope could tighten around him, he had her, wrapping both his arms around her just under her arms, and clasping his hands on his own wrists.
“Pull!” he screamed at the dragon above him, and obediently, Avatre surged upward.
The rope around his chest cut into him as the dragon turned her hover into flight; the dead weight of the girl threatened to pull his arms out of their sockets, and reeds lashed his back and head as Avatre pulled them both through the swamp backward. It felt as if Khefti-the-Fat was giving him the worst lashing of his life, while trying to squeeze him in half, and tear him limb from limb, all at the same time. And meanwhile, the weight of the girl threatened to drag him underwater. It was a total, painful assault on all his senses. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t even see, not really. All he could do was to hold on, grim as a hungry ghost, hold on, and hope that Avatre would find somewhere solid to land.
Soon.
Please. Oh, gods. Soon.
He couldn’t see; he could only feel. Couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go. Pain turned his arms and back into hot agony, his lungs burned with the water he’d inhaled—
Don’t let go—
Hard to breathe—the rope tightening over his chest—
Don’t let go!
The world grew darker—redder—darker—as he sobbed to get a breath, just one, just another, then—
Then it stopped. The motion, anyway, if not the pain.
He gasped for a breath that didn’t have water in it; agony burned across his chest. Thought he heard something like a curse.
The wire of pain around his chest snapped, and he could breathe again, and he gasped in one huge, blessed breath of air.
Felt someone tugging at his arms, his poor, wrenched arms. “Get up!” said the high voice urgently in his ear. “Please, get up!”
“Can’t,” he said thickly and tried to shake the water, hair, and mud out of his face. He opened his eyes; everything seemed blurred.
“Orest!” the high voice called. “He can’t get up! You have to help me!”
He tried to move his leaden legs then; found that they would work, a little, so that when a second person came splashing through the shallows, he was able to at least get his own feet under him. With one person on each side, they got him to the side of a boat, and he half-fell and was half-pushed, into it. Wind buffeted them all. Somehow he rolled over and saw a blur of scarlet above as the other two clambered in beside him.
“Avatre!” he called, and coughed. It hurt to call—hurt to breathe again, but he didn’t want her attacking—“Avatre! Follow!” he managed. “Follow!”
He fell into a fit of coughing again, and his vision grayed for a moment. Small hands pounded his back, until he coughed up some muddy water, which seemed to help a little, and the high voice said, “It’s all right. She’s following us.”
“And hanged if I know how he’s making her do that,” said a new voice, admiringly. “I’ve never seen any Jouster who could make his dragon do anything like he did. Who are you?”
“Kiron,” he managed, around pain-filled gasps. “Son of Kiron—”
“Never mind that. Never mind any of that,” the young girl’s voice said firmly. “You just rest. We’ll get you back, you and your dragon. Just rest. We’ll get you help and take you to where you belong.”
Where I belong! he thought wonderingly, around the pain. Where I belong—
And he closed his eyes, lying curled in the bottom of the boat, and let them take him wherever they were going to. Because wherever it was—it was going to be home, where he belonged, at long last.