Joust by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page A

over the walls long before they got to the opening of the pen. Kashet didn’t wait for him to bring the food all the way into the pen either; no sooner had Vetch gotten to the part of the corridor immediately outside the entrance than the dragon snaked his neck out of the doorway and snatched a chunk of meat from the barrow in his powerful jaws, startling Vetch so that he jumped and squeaked involuntarily.
    But Haraket gave him a long and measuring look, and after a pause while his heart pounded, Vetch continued pushing the barrow forward, telling himself that if Kashet had wanted to eat him, he’d have gone down that long throat while he was still struggling with the saddle.
    Kashet plucked chunks from the barrow three more times before Vetch parked it where Haraket pointed. He ate neatly, if voraciously, snatching up a chunk of meat, tossing back his head, and swallowing it whole. Vetch could even see it traveling down his long neck by the bulge it caused.
    But he never so much as gave Vetch a threatening or speculative look. Haraket stood at the side of the sand pit with his arms crossed casually over his massive chest, completely relaxed. Vetch tried to copy his example, though his heart raced in his chest.
    But Kashet was not in the least interested in Vetch, only what was in the barrow. And in fact, the dragon began to remind Vetch of a falcon, a little, in the neat single-mindedness with which he filled his belly.
    “He’s an easy charge, so long as you do well by him,” Haraket said, speaking quietly. “The only time he’s even offered a snap at someone was when the idiot boy forgot his evening feed and he didn’t get a meal until morning. By the God Haras, I’d have snapped, too! And the fool blubbed at me after, and thought I’d feel sorry for him!” Haraket snorted. “I pitched that one out on his ear myself.”
    Vetch vowed never to be so much as a moment late with one of Kashet’s meals.
    Haraket frowned, though not at Vetch. “That was Kashet’s first boy; two dragon boys we’ve lost now, and Kashet’s the easiest beast in the compound! He takes a bit more time in tending perhaps, but by the gods, it isn’t the kind of time you waste with one who’s hell-bent on not going where you want him to!” The Overseer sighed. “Maybe it’s Ari. He doesn’t pet and praise his boys, take them along to feasts, the way some of the others do. And there’s no profit to be made out of him. . . .” Haraket turned, ever so slightly, and looked out of the corner of his eye at Vetch.
    Vetch kept his mouth shut. Haraket was telling him this for a reason, and if he didn’t yet know what the reason was, soon or late he’d find out about it.
    Besides, that angry little voice inside him reminded him, it isn’t as if you have a choice. It’s here, or Khefti.
    When the barrow was empty, Kashet heaved an enormous sigh, and returned to the hot sand. This time he dug himself a depression in the middle of it, and stretched his entire length within it. Within moments, he was, to Vetch’s astonishment, deeply asleep.
    “He’ll sleep like that until it’s time to go out again this afternoon,” Haraket said, with a little noise that sounded like a fond chuckle. “You couldn’t wake him now if you tried. Ari was back early from his patrol—so we’ve just enough time to get you kitted up and clean and fed before I show you the afternoon jobs.” He paused, and raised an eyebrow. “And I believe we should do something about those stripes of yours, too.”
    Vetch almost gaped at him in shock. Never, ever, had one of his masters offered to do anything about the marks of a beating!
    With that, they left Kashet wallowing in the sand, sleeping off his meal in the noontime sun that beat straight down on him, met by the heat radiating up from the sand. Haraket hustled Vetch off again, again to a room, and not an open-air courtyard, though it was not nearly as huge as the butchery. This was a very fine room indeed, with