Jane Yolen Pit Dragon 02 Heart's Blood

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can t stand up, eventually he can t breathe. His body is so heavy, he simply
crushes himself to death.
There s no saving them, no matter how hard you work. You know that, boy. He
turned suddenly and waved to a man in a blue-green suit who was in the stands.
Here, Sharkity.
The man vaulted the railing and came over. Jakkin saw an emblem over the man s
left pocket, a dragon with a knife and fork crossed over it. He was from The
Rokk Stews.
No! Jakkin cried, and in his head came an answering, painful stab of yellow,
trembling but still bright.
Sarkkhan gave him a hard, silencing look, then walked over to the stewman.
They talked briefly, and the man offered his hand, which Sarkkhan ignored.
Undaunted, the stewman smiled and left. You come with me, said Sarkkhan,
turning to Jakkin.
Where? It was all Jakkin could manage without his voice breaking.
To the Stews. They ll cheat us if they can. Fighting dragon s meat is not the
sweetest, but it s worth a lot to certain people. He drew a breath. If you
want to be a real master, a real trainer, a real owner-a man-you are going to
have to know the bad of it as well as the good. He breathed out heavily.
Culling s nothing to this.
Sarkkhan turned and walked out of the Pit, his face set in a mask.
Jakkin followed and tried, without success, to blot out the pale yellow cry in
his head, S Blood s pain-filled calling, that went on and on and on.
chapter 27
IT WAS A fifteen-minute walk over the ramps as well as through the streets.
Jakkin smelled the Stews before he saw it. The smell, dark and fleshy, was
part cooked and part rotting meat. Smoke hung over a windowless three-story
building that sprawled over two streets. The blood-red knife-and-fork insignia
was emblazoned on the north wall and on the doors.
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Jakkin drew in a deep breath, then gagged. His head ached, remembering the
last flash of pale yellow, both defiant and pained, that he had had from
S Blood. He d tried to send a comforting thought back but had been unable to
do it. The sight of the four men from the Stews, in light green suits that
aped his trainer whites, shoving S Blood s unprotesting body onto a large
wheeled cart had shocked Jakkin into a mental silence. The stewmen had wheeled
the cart through a pair of enormous double doors that led from the arena,
working in oily synchronization. It was their obvious unconcern that so
chilled him.
The crowd in the stands had been chilled, too, their silence complete. The
ending had been so sudden, and until that moment S Blood had been so flashily
alive. Then he lay there, not dead, but somehow not really alive either.
Dragons did sometimes die in the Pit. Occasionally a loser was too severely
hurt, the ritual slashes too deep or other wounds too great. But S Blood had
been the winner-not the loser. The loser, Mo, still lay in his faint, but it
hadn t been his body so hastily carted away.
Sarkkhan had also been silent, though Jakkin couldn t tell if his
speechlessness came from anger or pain.
Sarkkhan had merely guided Jakkin out with a touch on the arm, out the door
and along the maze of streets and ramps.
Once they reached the Stews, Sarkkhan had been rougher, propelling Jakkin
through a series of doors, past a paneled outer office lined with pastel
paintings of smiling, wide-eyed dragons that bore little resemblance to any
worms Jakkin had ever known.
They came at last to a balcony that overlooked a room as large as a Minor Pit.
Overhead were lights as bright as a hundred suns, illuminating the
slaughterhouse below. To the right there were pens for holding the dragons. In
one was a knot of late culls, overgrown dragonlings whose early promise had
not been fulfilled. Too ugly for beauty dragons or too low in the pecking
order to be successful fighters, the culls were useless for anything but meat.
They moved restlessly, occasionally challenging one another with feeble
hind-foot rises.
In another pen was a single older dragon, its greying muzzle and the smooth,
rounded humps on its tail indicating that it was well past mating or fighting
age. Some nursery owner had decided it was not worth feeding that worm
anymore.
The other pens were empty.
The young culls were herded from their pen by a green-suited man who carried a
stinger in one hand, a prod stick in the other. He urged them into a
passageway. One by one the culls trotted down the passageway and through a
door where they were met by a hulking man, who led them over to a great white
vat. With one economical movement, he shot the dragon through its ear hole
with the stinger. Then he checked a watch on his wrist. After a minute he slit
the cull s throat, and the blood gouted into the vat.
While the blood was flowing, the man turned his head briefly and shouted
something to the other green suit by the door-some joke or instruction. Then
he turned back, checked the cull s eyes, and smiled.
Jakkin could see the smile as the man dipped his hand into the vat and wiped a
smear of blood into his mouth.
How-how can he do that? Jakkin asked, remembering suddenly the steaks
Kkarina served at dinner, smothered in rich red sauce.
Sarkkhan ignored the real question. Once the dragon s been dead a minute, he
said, the blood loses its heat and no longer bums.
Jakkin could feel tears, hot as dragon s blood, starting in his eyes. He
blinked them away. He had heard almost nothing from the cull when it died;
just a brief spit of color, and it was gone. He recalled the nursery culling
sessions and how he had helped, feeling only the smallest agony, hearing
Likkarn remark matter-of-factly, The meat is sweeter nearer the egg. It was
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an old farm saying. He promised himself again that he wouldn t make culls of
any of Heart s Blood s hatchlings. He would not be party to their deaths.
The men were sending in the next cull, having disposed of the first body onto
a cart that was pulled through a dark doorway. They joked and moved with ease.
Jakkin thought they couldn t possibly have heard the dragon. No one could do
this kind of work if he were linked to the cull.
He turned away. If he looked anymore, he d be sick and disgrace himself. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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