some little time to come out of the torpor of sleep, and you will take this time to ready his morning meal.”
He continued describing what their days would be like; when he was done, four more boys decided that this project was not to their taste. That left them with eight, of which the prince, looking more eager than ever, was still one. Kiron was surprised, a little, and yet, considering what he had heard about Toreth, perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He had never, ever heard anyone say that either of the princes was afraid of a little hard work.
“You’re sure, now,” Lord Khumun said earnestly, looking each and every one of them in the eyes. “You’re absolutely sure that you can undertake this, and that in fact, you want to?”
Each of them nodded soberly but with a glow of anticipation. Even Orest.
“All right.” He looked over at Kiron. “Four eggs in a clutch, you say?”
“That’s what I was told, and that was what I observed, my Lord,” he replied firmly. “Mature females always lay four eggs.”
“Then we’ll stake out our two female desert dragons and hope for the best,” the Lord of the Jousters decided. “We’ll wait to see if we need to go after swamp dragon eggs only after we find out what is going to happen with the desert dragons.”
Kiron nodded; that would be his choice, too. The swamp dragons had proved to be a bit more reptilian in nature than the desert dragons, and a bit more difficult to handle, although it had been the wild-caught male desert dragons that had proven to be the killers.
Maybe because they once ate a man. That was always problematic; once a wild dragon tasted human blood, it always knew that eating a human was an option.
The two desert dragon females that had been taken from Tian Jousters were lazy—half the reason they’d been caught was that they very much preferred to be fed rather than to hunt. Being lazy was an advantage now on a number of counts. In the past, they had proved that they were unlikely to fight their chains when staked out as “bait.” This meant, when they were taken off the heavier dose of tala, so that they would come into season properly, it would still be possible to handle them. They would probably not try to fight off their would-be mates, and in fact, might well be quite responsive. And when they finally began laying their eggs, they were less likely to be aggressive about defending the newly laid eggs than a more active dragon.
The last advantage was that Kiron knew exactly what to expect and how to incubate a desert dragon egg. Swamp dragons—that was going to be a matter of experimentation, as far as he was concerned. If they could get eight fertile desert dragon eggs—
Eight boys, eight eggs. Nine was a good size for a wing. They could learn and drill together, learn to fight as a group.
“If the gods are kind, both dragons will mate, and all the eggs will be fertile,” he replied.
“I will be making sacrifices today, and every day until hatching,” Lord Khumun said firmly, and cast a now-steely eye over his new volunteers. “And so should you all.”
And so they did. But not before Kiron put them through their first day with utter disregard for their comfort.
They drew lots for which boy was assigned to which dragon, that way no one could claim that Kiron had shown any favoritism in his assignments. As it happened, Orest and Toreth got the two easiest to handle, saving only the two captured females, which had already gone to the edge of the desert to await their suitors. One was a huge swamp dragon that Kiron suspected was actually a cross-breed, terribly lazy; the other was a small male desert dragon that, provided you didn’t move too quickly and made certain he had his full ration of tala, was no worse than any of the fledgling-caught desert dragons. The rest, however, were typical Altan Jousting dragons, which was to say, by Tian standards, difficult.
Kiron introduced the boys to their charges slowly, one each day, while the remaining boys watched during the entire day. He kept Orest and Toreth for last, so that when they actually got their dragons, they had seen (and helped with) virtually every problem that the draconic mind could come up with saving only illness and injury. They were both prepared for the worst, probably expecting