Joust by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

said, making another abrupt turn. This was an alley that looked like a street in the village in a way, though the walls were much taller than any village structures, and the unbroken stretches of wall argued for something the size of a major temple! But the walls along this stretch had doorways and clerestory windows, so it seemed that here the walls were part of huge buildings.
    Haraket stopped in front of a real, closed door rather than an open archway or simple gap in the walls. He opened it, and with his hand on Vetch’s shoulders, shoved him through.
    On the other side—
    Vetch almost broke and ran at the vision of carnage that met his eyes.
    The air was full of the metallic scent of blood, so thick he could practically taste it, and everywhere he looked there were dead animals . . . hundreds of dead animals. Working here were butchers, a dozen of them, naked to the waist, smeared in drying blood, dismembering the corpses and throwing the pieces into bins or barrows beside them.
    He was no stranger to the slaughter of farm stock but never on a scale like this, and never anything bigger than a goat.
    There were carcasses of enormous cattle, goats, sheep, stacked up as casually as mud bricks, being hacked up by the butchers into hand-sized and head-sized chunks, and the sight made him feel sick and dizzy.
    And for a moment, all he could think of was the last sight of his father, covered with his own blood—and the anger surged, but the fear and sickness that followed buried it, and he had to clutch the wall and put his burning back up against it to keep from fainting.
    But curiously, as the shock wore off, he saw there was no blood, or very little. “This is all fresh from the Temple sacrifices,” Haraket was saying, quite as if he had not noticed Vetch’s reaction, as the nearest of the butchers tossed chunks of meat, bone-in, skin-on, into a barrow parked next to his chopping block. “It’s a nice piece of economy when you think about it. Every day, hundreds of animals are sacrificed to the gods or cut up for divination ceremonies, but there’s no use for the bodies when the blood and spirit have drained away.”
    As Haraket spoke, Vetch began to get control of himself again. It was only meat. No animals were being killed here. It was only meat.
    Of course, the Tians believed that the gods required only the blood and the mana of the creatures sacrificed on the altars. There were so many gods, and so many people who needed their favor—he had never actually been to the Avenue of Temples in Mefis, but he had heard tales, heard that there were a hundred gods or more, and almost as many temples, and all of them got sacrifices daily. Not just the bread and beer and honey, the flowers, and the occasional fowl of the little Temple of Hamun, Siris, and Iris in the village, but live beasts, and entire herds of them.
    “There aren’t enough priests in the world to consume all that flesh,” Haraket continued, “Even if they were as fat as houses. So it comes to us, who can certainly use it. That’s why they built the Jouster’s Compound on the Temple Road. So—ah, he’s filled that barrow, now you take it.”
    The barrow was heavy and hard to push, but Vetch was accustomed to be ordered to do things that were difficult. Haraket watched critically as he grabbed the handles and started shoving, then took the lead. Vetch kept the barrow rolling, following Haraket back to Kashet’s pen at a much slower pace than they had taken to get to the butchers’ place. Haraket kept his strides short, although he did not bother to look at Vetch more than once or twice.
    Already, though, things were profoundly different than they had been under Khefti. The Overseer was not chiding him nor punishing him for taking too long with the barrow. Not once had he been cuffed for stupidity, or had his ears boxed for asking a question. Once again, Vetch dared to hope.
    Kashet was watching for them; Vetch saw the now-familiar head peering