Jane Yolen - Pit Dragon 01 - Dragon's Blood

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Book 01 of The Pit Dragon Trilogy
Dragon's Blood
By
Yolen, Jane
DRAGON’S BLOOD Copyright (D 1982 by Jane Yolen First published 1982 by Delacorte Press First
Magic Carpet Books edition 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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
摘要：

 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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