Alta (5 page)

“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. . . .