“Honestly, neither do I,” Toreth admitted with a smile. “I had much rather meet him, and one day learn from him. The first man to raise a tame dragon! I want to hear his story from his own lips.”

Kiron thought of Ari—how very lonely he had seemed to be, and how well he would fit in with this group. If only fate had not placed them on opposite sides of the conflict. It wasn’t fair.

Well, now, at least, he had the wing on his side. It would not be hard to persuade Lord Khumun that Huras should devote himself to taking the infamous Jouster Ari out of the sky. And after that—well, he very much doubted that the Lord of the Jousters would care what happened, so long as Ari and Kashet were no longer a factor in the fighting.

“The rest of us need to learn some new techniques, too,” he continued. “It seems to me that we ought to be able to outfly the Tians; I’m not entirely sure that we need to engage in close combat with them if we can find some other way of dealing with them. And it ought to be possible to train our dragons to put up with missiles going past their ears, too—Avatre has certainly learned.”

“You’re thinking of using bows?” Orest said, looking nervous.

He shook his head. “No. I was thinking of slings and clay pellets. Dragons have an instinct to snap at things going by their heads, and they tend to catch arrows in mid-flight—and the truth is, I would rather not interfere with that instinct. It might save our lives. But Avatre ignores clay pellets. You wouldn’t have to hit a man hard enough in the head to knock him out or kill him—all it would take would be a hit; he’d be distracted, or you might get a good hit on the arm and he’d lose his lance. Avatre learned to tolerate the sling whirling around quite quickly out in the desert. New techniques are going to make us ten times more effective than the Jousters who are not going to be ready for them.”

“For a while, at least,” Can said thoughtfully. “A Jouster being pelted could start to carry a shield. . . .”

“So you sting his dragon’s rump!” countered Oset-re. “No wild-caught dragon, no matter how much tala is in her, is going to react well to that!”

“As tough as their hide is, it would have to be a stone rather than a clay pellet,” mused Menet-ka. “Still. It’s a good idea, and it will nullify their numerical advantage faster than just getting equal numbers out there. Without the dragons giving the Tians the advantage, our casualty rate is going to drop, on the ground as well as in the sky.”