Jane Yolen - Pit Dragon 01 - Dragon's Blood

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Book 01 of The Pit Dragon Trilogy

Dragon's Blood

Yolen, Jane

DRAGON’S BLOOD Copyright (D 1982 by Jane Yolen First published 1982 by Delacorte Press First

Magic Carpet Books edition 1996

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from Harcourt Brace & Company.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to:

Permissions Department Harcourt Brace & Company 6277 Sea Harbor Drive Orlando, Florida

32887-6777

Science Fiction Book Club edition Published by arrangement with Harcourt Brace & Company First

SFBC Science Fiction printing: September 1998

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Introduction

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

chapter 18

chapter 19

chapter 20

chapter 21

chapter 22

chapter 23

chapter 24

chapter 26

chapter 27

chapter 28

chapter 29

chapter 30

chapter 31

chapter 32

chapter 33

chapter 34

chapter 35

chapter 36

chapter 37

chapter 38

chapter 39

chapter 40

Introduction

Austar IV IS the fourth planet of a seven-planet rim system in the Erato Galaxy. Once a penal colony,

marked KK29 on the convict map system, it is a semi-and, metal-poor world with two moons.

Austar is covered by vast deserts, some of which are cut through by small and irregularly surfacing hot

springs, several small sections of fenlands, and zones of almost impenetrable mountains. There are only

five major rivers: the Narrakka, the Rokk, the Brokk-bend, the Kkar, and the Left Forkk.

Few plants grow in the deserts-some fruit cacti and sparse longtrunk palm trees known as spikka. The

most populous plants on Austar are two wild-flowering bushes called bumwort and blisterweed. (See

color section.) The mountain vegetation is only now being cataloged but promises to be much more

extensive than originally thought.

There is a variety of insect and pseudolizard life, the latter ranging from small rock-runners to

elephant-size dragons. (See Holo section, Vol. 6.) Unlike Earth reptilia, the Austarian dragon lizards are

warmblooded, with pneumaticized bones for reduction of weight and a keeled stemum where the flight

muscles are attached. They have membranous wings with jointed ribs that fold back along the animals’

bodies when the dragons are earthbound. Stretched to the fullest, an adult dragon’s wings are twice its

body size. The “feathers” are really light scales that adjust to wind pressure. From claw to shoulder,

some specimens of Austarian dragons have been measured at thirteen feet. There is increasing evidence

of level 4+ intelligence and a colorcoded telepathic mode of communication in the Austarian dragons.

These great beasts were almost extinct when the planet was first settled by convicts (KKS being the

common nickname) and guards from Earth in 2303. But several generations later the Austarians

domesticated the few remaining dragons, selectively breeding them for meat and leather and the gaming

arenas-or, as they were known from earliest times, the Pits.

The dragon Pits of Austar IV were more than just the main entertainment for early KKS. Over the years

the Pits became central to the Austarian economy. Betting syndicates developed and Federation starship

crews on long rimworld voyages began to frequent the planet on gambling forays.

Because such gambling violated cur-rent Galaxian law, illegal offworld gamesters were expelled in 2485,

from Austar IV and imprisoned on penal planet KK47, a mining colony where most of the surface is

ice-covered. Under pressure from the Federation, the Austarians then drafted a Protectorate constitution

spelling out the Federation’s administrative role in the economy of the planet, including regulation of the

gambling of offworlders and the payment of taxes (which Austarians call tithing) on gambling moneys in

exchange for starship landing bases. A fluid caste system of masters and bond slaves-the remnants of the

convict-guard hierarchy-was established by law, with a bond price set as an entrance fee into the master

class. Established at the same time was a senate, the members of which came exclusively from the master

class. The Senate performs both the executive and the legislative functions of the Austarian government

and, for the most part, represents the interests of the Federation. As in all Protectorate planets,

offworlders are subject to local laws and are liable to the same punishments for breaking them.

The Rokk, which was a fortress inhabited by the original ruling guards and their families when Austar IV

was a penal planet, is now the capital city and the starship landfall.

The entire Erato Galaxy is still only in the first stages of Protectorate status. However, because of the

fighting Pit dragons, Austar IV has become one of the better-known R & R planets in the explored

universe.

Excerpt from The Encyclopedia Galaxia, Thirtieth edition, vol. I: Aaabomia-BASE

chapter 1

THE TWIN MOONS cast shadows like blood scores across the sand. Jakkin hunkered down in a

bowl-shaped depression and listened. Inside the wood-and-stone dragonry he could hear the mewling

and scratching of hatchlings as they pipped out of their shells. One more night and the hatching would be

complete. One more night and he could steal in and pick out a hatchling to raise in secret out in the sands.

As he listened, Jakkin stroked the leather bond bag that hung from his neck chain. The bag held only a

few coins. But Jakkin knew that once he had trained his dragon to fight in the pits, his bag would be

plump and jangling with gold. Then no one could call him bonder again, and he would answer to no

master’s call but his own. He would be a boy no longer, but a man.

The rustlings inside the nursery increased as more and more hatchlings caught Jakkin’s scent. They began

to squeak their distress, a high peeping that multiplied quickly. In the nearby stalls, the hen dragons

stomped their feet. They were well used to the man-smell, but the panic of the newborn nestlings made

them restless. Their huge clawed feet beat out challenges to the intruder near the clutch. Any moment

now, a hen might roar, and that would wake any sleeping bonder within hearing.

Jakkin did not dare stay longer, but what did that matter? He had heard the sound of the hatchlings and

he knew how close the pipping was to being finished. As a lower stall-boy, he was not allowed into the

incubams. His job was to clean the stud stalls and bathe the big male dragons: dust and fewmets,

fewmets and dust. He was no better than a mecho garbage collector, but at least he did not clank like

one, disturbing the great cock dragons in their stalls. Few of the male dragons could tolerate the sound

and smell of a mechanical heapster without hackling, their collars of hardened neck flesh raising up for a

fight. A hackled dragon was no good for stud. It took days to calm one down. So humans, bonders, had

to serve as waste collectors even on the most modern worm farm.

Jakkin knew the stud barn well, but the incubarn he could only imagine from its sounds. Tomorrow night,

when the hatching was complete, he would find his way into those half-lit, cozy compartments where the

temperature was kept at a constant 34“C. He would find his way and get himself a snatchling, and begin

the transformation of bond boy into master in one quick, secret, silent act.

Jakkin turned and ran, bent over, toward the northernmost corner of the building. He waded across the

stone weir, knee deep in the water that was channeled through the dragonry from the Narrakka River. At

the third join, he climbed out again, but kept low until he came to the dunes, another shadow in a night of

shadows.

The desert air dried his legs quickly. The water had come nowhere near the bottoms of his thigh-length

bonder pants. He checked the horizon for unfamiliar shapes, watchers in the night, and then he stood up,

but only for a moment. He took the whisker from the sheath on his belt and began to broom his footsteps

away. It made the going slow, and his back ached with the effort, but he did not dare leave prints to

show that anyone had gone out across the sands. Bonders, lacking most entertainments, loved to gossip.

At night in the bondhouse, once the lights were out, there was little else to do until sleep claimed them.

Jakkin had a few hours before the cold of Dark-After. He planned to use them to check again on the

crops of blisterweed and bumwort he was growing in his hidden oasis. Everything had to be ready for the

arrival of the snatchling. He dared leave nothing to chance.

Jakkin thought, and not for the first time, how his inability to sense anything in the egg made stealing a

dragon so difficult. Eggs were never counted; hatchlings were. That was because so few of the eggs

actually hatched. Anyone could steal an egg unnoticed. But unless the thief could sense the living dragon

within the shell, his chances of success were small.

And Jakkin did not have that sense. His talent was with the grown dragons, like his father before him. But

his father had never had any time to teach Jakkin training skills. He had died out in the sands, beneath the

claws of a feral dragon he had tried to train when Jakkin was very young. Jakkin’s mother had buried her

man and then sold Jakkin and herself into bond for food and shelter. She had died, mourning, within the

month, leaving Jakkin with scant memories, half-remembered stories his mother had told him, and a bond

bag he was much too small to fill.

He thought back on his past as he whisked away his footprints, but without bitterness. What was, was.

Bonders said, “You can fill no bag with regrets.” What mattered now was stealing an egg, an egg

containing a live dragon, without being caught. Then he had to watch over it until it hatched, and train it in

secret to be a proper fighter. A champion in the pits-a big, bright, responding red with a terrible roar and

flames six or seven meters long-could buy Jakkin out of bond. Such a dragon had not been seen on

Austar IV for as many years as Jakkin could recall. But he was determined to find one, raise it up, train a

champion, fill his bag, and become a master. And becoming a master, he would become a man.

chapter 2

JAKKIN WAS so lost in his dreaming, he came to the oasis sooner than he expected. It was only wide

enough for a wellspring and a crude reed shelter. He had found the stream by chance when wandering

alone in the sands several years earlier on the anniversary of his father’s death. Then he had not known

enough to broom away his steps. Anyone could have followed him-and shared his find. He had been

lucky that time, for his tracks had drifted back into the dunes, covered by the pervasive wind-dervishes

that deviled this part of the planet.

The warm spring rose out of nowhere and disappeared as quickly, a bright ribbon of blue-white water

running east to west a scant ten meters. It had no rocks or faults in the bed to make it bubble, and so it

moved quietly the length of its run. Yet it shimmered against the sand unexpectedly, like dragon scales in

the sun. The western end was rimmed with sand-colored kkhan reeds.

When Jakkin had first found the spring, he had begun his digging with his hands. On subsequent trips he

had brought a small shovel, borrowed from the nursery supply room and long since returned there.

Slowly, and with much perseverance, he had widened the western edge to make a pool. The pool was

large enough for a boy to swim in, though too shallow for deep dives. And for four years the oasis had

been his secret place. He came when work was finished or on his Bond-Off, the semimonthly holiday

each bonder had from the dragonry. Jakkin had told no one about it, not even Slakk or Effikkin, his two

closest bondmates. They chose to spend their Bond-Offs with the others, stuffing themselves at the

Krakkow Stews or gaming at its minor pit. As young bonders, they mostly watched at the pit, having little

in the way of coins with which to bet. Some of the older bond boys spent their time and gold at the

baggeries as well, where girls waited to be filled like empty bags. But Jakkin preferred the silent, simple

pleasures of his oasis and the knowledge that the few coins in his bag were in no danger of being

lessened by trips into town.

It was the wellspring that had helped him decide to steal an egg. It could provide shelter and the promise

of provisions. And so Jakkin had spent every free moonrise and Bond-Off at the oasis, planting a small

patch of blisterweed and bumwort along the side of the spring, milking plants near Sukker’s Marsh for

the seeds. It had taken him the better part of the year to sow enough to provide an adequate crop for his

worm.

Jakkin walked along the weed and wort patch. In the moonlight the plants sent up smoke ghosts, a

healthy sign. He knew better than to touch the growing red stalks, for they could leave painful bums. Only

when the plants stopped smoldering and leafed out could they be touched safely: milked for seeds,

picked and crushed for dragon food, or rolled for smokers like old Likkam, who could not do without

the weed.

Jakkin looked at the weed patch critically. He was pleased. There should be more than enough for his

snatchling, especially since a dragon did not start eating until it had shed its eggskin, after three or four

days. By then the plants would be ready, their pale red jaggedtoothed leaves veined with the protein-rich

sap that showed up a deep maroon in maturity.

Glancing quickly at the sky, Jakkin saw that the second moon, Akka, had already chased its older

brother, Akkhan, across to the horizon. There they sat like giant eggs on the rim of the world. Soon they

would seem to break apart, spilling a pale glow across the line where land and sky met, a cold false

dawn. Once that happened, there would be four hours of Dark-After, those wretched hours when it was

too cold for a human to stay out unsheltered in the sand.

In the daylight the reeds could house a hatchling, keeping its sunsensitive eggskin shadowed as easily as a

hen dragon could. And once the dragon was fully scaled out, the sun could not harm it.

But the reeds were useless as protection at night. For dragons it did not matter. They did not mind the

cold. But Jakkin knew he would have to hurry back, whisking away his returning tracks, before

Darkafter settled its icy hold on the world.

chapter 3

JAKKIN WAS INTO the deepest part of his sleep, dreaming of great eggs from which red curls of

silent smoke rose, when the clanging of the breakfast bell woke him. Automatically he reached under his

bed and with one arm dragged out his tunic and pants. Still lying down, eyes closed, he maneuvered into

his clothes. Then he sat up on the side of his bed and thrust his feet into his sandals, oblivious of Slakk’s

legs hanging down from the upper bunk.

“Look out, worm waste,” Slakk called, and jumped, just missing Jakkin. “I almost landed on your head

this time.” He turned and punched Jakkin’s bag companionably. “I swear, you’re less awake than any

bonder I know. What’s the matter? Empty bag?” As if punetuating the question, he took another poke at

Jakkin’s bag, which clinked a quick answer. Dark, fer-ret-eyed Slakk bent down to tie his sandals, still

talking in his insistent, whiny voice. “Less awake each day. Wonder what he’s doing out half the night. Is

it the pits, I ask?

He doesn’t answer. The stews? Will he respond? How about…“ He stood, facing Jakkin again.

Jakkin grunted. Let Slakk think what he will. The image of the spirals of smoke signaling from the weed

and wort patch filled his mind. Jakkin gave a second meaningless grunt and stood. He always found it

hard to speak before he had gulped down his first cup of takk.

“Leave him alone, Slakk,” called out the boy in the next bunk. “You known how he is in the morning.”

The boy leapt down from the bunk with an easy grace and put his hand out to Jakkin. “Never mind this

talking lizard, silent one. I’ll lead you straight to the takk pot. Then, perhaps, you will honor us with your

words.”

Jakkin refused Errikkin’s hand but Effikkin was not insulted. He was never insulted. It was impossible to

make him be anything but pleasant, a trait that annoyed Jakkin. He tied his sandals and then the three of

them went toward the common room, with Slakk in the middle holding a nonstop monologue about pit

fighting. The monologue ended only when they were seated at their table.

There were twelve tables in all, and almost all were filled. Jakkin, Slakk, and Errikkin sat with six other

young bonders.

There were three girls’ tables. The rest of the tables were for the older bonders, most of whom, for one

reason or another, had never been able to fill their bags with enough gold to buy their way out of bond.

Only one table held both free men and women: those who were walking out together or pair-bonded,

and Akkhina-little, lithe, blackhaired Akki, who should have been at the baggeries, Slakk said, but who

preferred working around dragons and choosing her own men. Slakk always said that with a sly smile, as

if there were more he could tell if he wanted, as if he had spent time with her. But Jakkin was sure it was

all posture and bluff. Though Slakk was sixteen, Jakkin doubted he had ever been near a girl, any girl,

not even a girl from the local baggery.

The table was set with bowls, cups, and cutlery. Unlike some breeders, Master Sarkkhan had always

supplied knives as well as forks and spoons to his bonders. They were well fed and well kept, and there

was rarely a fight. In the center of each table stood the takk pot, full of the rich, hot, wine-colored drink.

The cook, old Kkarina, made it as thick as the mud of the stud baths; she claimed that if it were any

thinner it lost much of its protein and all of its taste. Platters of lizard eggs, boiled in the shell, and heavy

slabs of lizard meat sat next to the takk pot. The boys wasted little time heaping their bowls.

Jakkin was suddenly starving. He wondered if it was because of his late nights or his fears.

“I bet it’s Bloody Flag and Blood Brother today,” said Slakk, his mouth full of the juicy meat. “It’s that

time again. Fewmets, I hate that Brother. His is always the messiest stall, and besides, he loves to nip.”

“I’ll take him for you,” said Jakkin. The first cup of takk had restored his tongue and burned courage

through his body. “He never nips me.”

“None of them ever nip you,” said Errikkin pleasantly. “You’ve got something. Trainer blood. Like your

dad. I bet even old Sarkkhan himself doesn’t have your touch.”

Jakkin looked down into his second cup of takk and stiffed it slowly with a spoon. The deep red drink

moved sluggishly. He knew that Errikkin was just being agreeable again, saying something to please, but

it was something that Jakkin felt, too. Still he didn’t dare voice it aloud. Bragging, like regrets, filled no

bag.

“Will you take Brother to the bath, too?” Slakk never strayed far from his own concerns in any

conversation. “His skin is getting flaky-the scales don’t shine. We noticed it last time, Errikkin and me.

And old Likkam says…” Slakk spit expertly between his outspread second and third fingers, the sign of

dragon horns. None of the boys liked Likkarn, who was in charge of the bonders. He was too fussy and

unforgiving, and quite brutal in his punishments. “Old Likkarn says, ”Scales like mud, little stud; scales

like the sun, fine work done.‘ Old Likk-and-Spittle’s full of such stuff.“

Jakkin smiled into his cup.

“Hush, ” Errikkin hissed. “He might hear you. Then where would we be?”

“Nowhere that’s any worse th where we are now an replied Slakk.

Errikkin’s concern was a formality. Likkam was too many tables away to hear Slakk’s complaints and

Jakkin’s replies, or to register Errikkin’s desperate hissing. He sat with the older bonders and the free

men, the ones who really ran the dragonry for the often absent Sarkkhan. They spent each morning meal

working out the day’s schedule, which Likkam then scripted. Every bonder knew his or her own mark,

and the marks of individual dragons, but beyond that few of them knew how to read. Or write. Likkam,

so the gossip ran, knew how to write because he had been born free. And he scripted each day’s

schedule with an elegant hand, though given the bonders’ illiteracy, that was more ritual than anything

else. Likkarn would read the day’s work sheet out loud as the others filed out the door, and then hang

the assignments on the wall. Even though he was a weeder, he was tolerated by Sarkkhan because he

could read and script. Few bonders could read and fewer still could script. It was something taught only

to free men and women.

The boys got up together. Effikkin was in the lead, Jakkin next. Several of the smaller boys slipped in

between him and Slakk.

Slakk whispered at Jakkin’s back, “Was I right? The schedule. Was I right?”

Jakkin checked the marks next to his name and Slakk’s, reading them upside down on the chart in front

of Likkam. Jakkin’s mother had taught him to read early, before they had been in bond. He could still

remember the chanting tone she adopted for drilling his letters.

Jakkin had practiced faithfully, to honor her memory. The few coins he ever spent went for books, which

he kept hidden with his clothes under his bed. His ability to read, which he did not trouble to hide, was

one of the things that Likkam hated. The old weeder jealously guarded his right to script the schedule. He

needn’t have bothered. Jakkin could read-but he could not write.

Turning, Jakkin called lightly over the heads of the younger boys, “You were right, Slakk.”

Likkam scowled and read off Jakkin’s duties anyway, his voice edged with anger.“

“Jakkin: Bloody Flag and Blood Brother. Stalls and baths.‘ And be sure they’re quieted down. If any of

them hackle, you’re in for it.”

“Don’t forget”-Slakk’s whine began before they were out of the door-“you promised. You promised

you’d take…”

Jakkin nodded and walked quickly to get away from Slakk’s voice. He willed himself to remember the

oasis and the sounds in the incubams. He was halfway to the stud barn when Slakk caught up with him.

“You did promise, you know.”

“Oh, lizard lumps, shut up already. I know I promised.” Jakkin rarely got angry with anyone except

Slakk. Then, at his friend’s crestfallen look, Jakkin was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, Slakk. I didn’t

mean to yell. I’m just…” He stopped, horrified with himself. He had been about to confess to Slakk how

tired he was and why.

Errikkin turned back and interrupted them. “It’s just been too many days since your last Bond-Off,” he

supplied. He put his arm over Jakkin’s shoulder. “That’s all.”

Jakkin nodded. They all accepted that explanation and went on to the barn.

The stud barn was twice as high as the bondhouse, to accommodate the size of the big male dragons.

Inside on the south wall were individual stalls that simulated the pumice caves where mature males lived in

the wild. Since the males paired off when it was not rutting season, leaving the hen dragons to raise the

hatchlings, the studs had linked stalls throughout the barn. An unpaired stud often went into a decline and

was not good for mating. The north wall stalls were used for the male pit fighters.

In the center of the barn was the great hall, where hen dragons in heat were brought to the studs. The hall

was an arena-sized courtyard, without a roof, to accommodate the frantic, spiraling courting flights. It had

a soft, mossy floor for the act itself.

Throughout the barn was a system of stone dikes that carried water in from, and out again to, the

Narrakka River. It was triple forked inside the building. One fork funneled drinking water into the

individual stalls and a clear, flowing drinking stream into the mating hall. The second funneled out

wastewater that had been used for cleaning the barn. The third fork ran directly into the baths, those

tremendous pools of mud in which the dragons rolled and sank up to their eyes, to be cooled after mating

or fights or twice a month in off-rut. The third fork also filled the cisterns in the shower room, with runoff

back into the out-lying swamps.

The boys went into the barn, and the deep, cool, musky air assaulted them. Jakkin breathed deeply and

smiled. Dragon smells and dragons. They were really what he loved most in the world.

“Phew,” said Slakk. “The first thing I am going to do when I buy out of bond is to celebrate the end of

this smell. I’m never going to work with dragons again.”

“What will you do, then?” asked Errikkin. “What else do you know?”

“I know food,” Slakk answered. “I might apprentice to a cook. Or run a baggery. That might be a job

for a man. Anything but being a slave to a worm.”

Jakkin shook his head and was just going to reply when an incredible roar filled the hallway. It began on

a deep bass note and wound its way up and up, without hesitation, until it screamed out its defiance

beyond human hearing.

“That’s Blood Brother,” Jakkin remarked. “He knows it’s his turn.

:“Just as long as he doesn’t hackle,” said Errikkin.

“All roar and no fight,” sneered Slakk. “That’s why he’s here. After his first two wins, he refused to go

into the pit again.”

It was a cynical assessment of the great dragon’s skill, but even Errikkin had to agree. Blood Brother’s

history was known even to the stallboys. Two tremendous fights with older, cunning dragons, and the

next time the trainers had tried to lead Brother into the nursery truck to drive to a pit, he had simply

collapsed at the barn door. A ton of fighting dragon lying on the ground was not something that could be

moved easily. Likkam had tried the prod-sticks and even a shot with the stinger, set below Stun. But

Brother would not move until the truck had driven off without him. Only then had he stood and moved

placidly back inside the barn on his own.

“But he’s a fantastic stud,” Jakkin reminded them. “His hatchlings have won in pits all over the world.”

Slakk shrugged and Errikkin smiled. Then the three of them padded down the hall to the dragon stalls.

chapter 4

BLOOD BROTHER TURNED his great black shrouds of eyes toward the boys, but in the neighboring

stall Bloody Flag continued to munch mindlessly on blisterwort. Brother showed his annoyance by shifting

his weight back and forth and houghing.

Jakkin ran his fingers through his hair, then touched the dimple on his cheek that was as deep as a blood

score. He always did that when he was nervous, and though he never would have let Slakk and Errikkin

know it, Blood Brother was the one dragon he did not wholly trust. Brother was so unpredictable-one

minute almost thrumming, that deep-throated puff that a contented dragon used; the next sending warning

straggles of smoke through his slits. Still, it did not do to let a dragon know how nervous you were. Some

bonders claimed dragons could smell fear on you. Jakkin supposed that was how his father had been

killed by the feral in the sands. Besides, all dragons, he reminded himself with the conventional trainer’s

wisdom, all dragons are feral, even though they have been domesticated for over two centuries. And

especially dragons like Blood Brother.

As if hearing his name, Brother jerked his head up. Deep inside the black eyes there was an iridescent

flicker, the sign of a fighter. Involuntarily Slakk stepped back. Erxikkin stood his ground. Only Jakkin

went forward, holding out a hand.

“Hush, hush, beauty,” he crooned, letting Brother sniff his hand. “It’s the baths for you.”

Jakkin kept up the soothing babble until the head of the beast started to weave back and forth and the

boys could feel the thrumm of content humming along the floor. Errikkin unlatched the stall gate and

Jakkin reached up, hooked his finger around the dragon’s ear, and backed him out of the stall.

As Jakkin led the dragon down the hall, Slalck ran ahead to the belipull that signaled throughout the other

halls that a dragon was unstalled. No one wanted to be in the way of those great back feet or

foreshortened front feet with claws as hard and yellow as old bone. On hearing the bell, anyone in the

barn would press into the evenly spaced hallway niches until the dragon had gone by. Only the trainer,

leading the dragon by ear or halter and pacing by its side, could be reasonably assured of safety, but

even a good trainer could be accidentally clawed. Old Likkam had a dozen scars punctuating the long,

stringy sentences of veins that ran down his legs. And the rumor was that Sarkkhan himself looked like

the map of Austar, pocked and pitted from his years with dragons. But that Jakkin knew only from

gossip. He had never been up close to Master Sarkkhan. For all Jakkin knew, the man’s body might be

as smooth as a baggery girl’s, though that was highly unlikely. Anyone who worked around dragons for

long wore blood wounds.

Jakkin clucked with his tongue to let the dragon know he was still there. “Just be a good fellow,” Jakkin

sang to Brother as they went along the hall. It was early, and no one was in the niches; there was nothing

to distract them as they went down to the baths. Jakkin knew that Slakk and Errikkin would use this time

to clean the stall, raking out the old fewmets, patting down the dust, settling new straw for bedding. They

would crush fresh wort and weed in the feed box and maybe, with extra time, polish Brother’s

nameplate. Sarkkhan was rich enough to afford metal ones.

Each dragon had a bath once every other week, but the stalls had to be cleaned every other day. Dust

and fewmets, fewmets and dust. That was usually a stallboy’s life. So Jakkin welcomed the chance to be

more than a human pit cleaner, and he loved to take the dragons to their baths.

Blood Brother, smelling the mud, threw his head up; Jakkin lost his hold on the dragon’s ear.

“Worm bag,” Jakkin muttered under his breath as the dragon reared up slightly, fanning the close air with

his front feet. There was not enough room for Brother to complete a hindleg stand, but Jakkin could feel

the air currents change as the dragon lashed his tail from side to side. The thump-thumping as the tail hit

the solid wooden walls was echoed in Jakkin’s chest. He would have to get Brother quickly into the

baths and quieted down before the dragon did damage to the building or to himself. Either way and old

Likkam would have Jakkin back spreading fewmets on the weed and wort patches for a month. It

wasn’t bad work, but he preferred dragons.

Jakkin plunged between Brother’s front feet and lunged for the bath door. It was a dangerous move, but

unpredictable enough to shock the dragon into backing up a pace. Jakkin lifted the latch and rode the

doorstep platform in and over the sunken bath room.

Blood Brother crowded in behind and plunged into the deep mudhole. It cooled his temper at once and

he began to splash and snuffle in the bath like a hatchling.

From his perch on the swinging platform Jakkin smiled. All of the dragon’s ferocity seemed to slip away,

and what was left was a rather silly, oversized lizard, bumbling and rolling about in a pool of muck.

“And what was I scared of?” Jakkin said to Brother, but the dragon ignored him completely.

Jakkin took a large wire brush from its hook on the door and sat down on the step, his legs hanging over

the side. His perch swayed back and forth. He knew that in a little while the dragon would have had

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Color---1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9-TextSize--10--11--12--13--14--15--16--17--18--19--20--21--22--23--24Book01ofThePitDragonTrilogyDragon'sBloodByYolen,JaneDRAGON’SBLOODCopyright(D1982byJaneYolenFirstpublished1982byDelacortePressFirstMagicCarpetBooksedition1996Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicatio...

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Jane Yolen - Pit Dragon 01 - Dragon's Blood

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