There was muttered agreement from all of them. Jakkin bit his lip, imagining dozens of drakks swarming up through loose boards in the incubarn.
"That means we must be prepared up here as well," Likkarn added, touching a finger to his temple. His scarred face was fierce, the dead eye like an immovable white light, and he looked as if he were ready to take on the drakks all by himself.
How do we do that? Jakkin wondered. How do we prepare ourselves mentally? He thought about Slakk in the hospice, about Auricle screaming her distress, about the beheaded drakk still moving sluggishly in the sand of the stall. Stop thinking so much! He wasn't preparing himself mentally, he was un-preparing.
But how was he to stop thinking so much when he kept flashing back to the one drakk hunt he'd been part of, more than a year earlier? Just remembering made his stomach churn again. He wondered if the other hunters felt this way, for many of them had been on that same hunt. In fact, many of them had been on more than one such hunt. When he glanced around, all he saw on their faces was a kind of grim determination. Likkarn with his eyes narrowed, Balakk moving his jaw left to right over and over again, Kkitakk rubbing a gloved hand across his face. Even Frankkalin seemed grimly ready, hawking a great glob of spit onto the sand and rubbing it in with the toe of his sandal. The other men were equally stolid.
However, the boys did not look so sure. Rather, they were wide-eyed, clearly fearful. Arakk, normally the sunniest of the group, was breathing too fast, his round face white, like the foam on the top of waves. There were only two spots of color on his cheeks, as if he had a fever. Then suddenly he looked up at the sky and screamed, "Drakk! Drakk! Drakk!" while jerking his fist up at the red sun, to give himself courage. To give all of them courage.
Likkarn watched him for a minute, eyes narrowing even further. At last, he said quietly, "Let's go."
They started down the road, heading toward the nearest stand of spikka trees, which was where drakk normally roosted. This copse was not more than two kilometers from the nursery.
"We should have cut those trees down last year," Likkarn said to Balakk, but loud enough for all of them to hear, "when we found that family of drakk nesting there."
Balakk shook his head. "Trees hold water," he said, reminding Likkarn what they all knew: in a desert area, trees are vital to keep a place alive.
Likkarn grunted an answer. But Jakkin understood that the old nurseryman was actually agreeing with Balakk. As did they all. Without water, there could be no dragon nursery. What was having to hunt drakks now and again compared to living in a desert empty of life?
They walked on in silence, though the sound of their boots crunching on the sandy road was a comment all its own.
Jakkin listened carefully to the pick-buzz of insects whose tiny minds hardly registered in his brain. He received hasty flitting sendings from the many little mottled brown lizards as they skittered away from the marching men. But he heard nothing from any drakks. Either they were nesting elsewhere, farther away, or they were mindless—which he didn't believe for a moment, remembering the female drakk's pain, anger, astonishment.
Or perhaps they have a way of shielding their thoughts. Like the trogs did in their caves. As Akki and he had learned to do when they had been prisoners of the trogs. Building a thought wall, slowly, with care, not only a good idea for a prisoner, but a good idea for a predator, as well.
Belatedly, he realized that he hadn't had any warning in the incubarn before the drakk had come through the loose board. Not a peep in his head, not a single sending. If only Akki were still around, he'd have discussed that with her. For a moment he considered asking Likkarn, but that would have given away part of the secret. He would have to puzzle this out on his own.
Just as he was thinking, a tenuous band of color threaded through his mind.
"Sssargon help. Sssargon come."
Sssargon...
"No!" Jakkin sent back a wave of color, a wall of it. "Sssargon, stay where you are. You'll scare them away." He pictured the drakk, their snaky heads hissing.
An answer, almost like a snore, was returned to him. "Sssargon listens. Sssargon stays." He sounded almost relieved. Like a winged Slakk.
Jakkin grinned. Sssargon and Slakk—what a combination! He was careful to guard his thoughts. The last thing I need is to have to deal with Sssargon's idea of helping. He'd set the entire copse of trees ablaze, and then expect applause.
***
THEY ARRIVED at the spikka trees quickly, downwind of the copse, and with a minimum of fuss. They'd all been warned: drakk had bad ears and eyes but were excellent scent predators. It was important to keep them from smelling their human hunters.
The copse was large, even by Austar standards, about forty tall spikka trees, fed by an underground stream flowing from Sukker's Marsh. The spongy ground made walking difficult, and noisy—for each time they lifted a foot to move on, there was a loud sucking sound.
Making a cutting motion across his neck, Likkarn pointed to the treetops. Everyone understood: no mercy to any drakks, whatever age.
The male drakks usually squatted on the tops of trees during their rut season and were therefore fairly easy to spot. Jakkin had seen none on their march to the woods, and Likkarn and Balakk had pointed out nothing, so he assumed there were no males around. If rut was over and nesting had begun, the males would have flown off to the mountains. They never stayed around the nesting sites. The females wouldn't let them. Male drakks would just as happily suck the contents of their own eggs as dragon eggs. Not great fathers!
But just because there were no males around, the hunters couldn't relax. After all, the females were trickier, hiding in their nests, hard to see. They'd have to be shaken down, and the drakklings—if there were any—tipped out of the nests and killed on the ground. That was in some ways the most dangerous job of all.
Jakkin hoped there were no hatchlings yet. Females on a nest of babies were merciless. The female killed in the incubarn had been full of unlaid eggs. Maybe that's a good sign. Maybe all the females are off their nests and no eggs yet to be sat upon. But he didn't dare believe it. The female killed by Slakk had been young. And hungry. If drakks were anything like dragons, the young females, first-timers, always laid their eggs late. It was the older females who went early. And that could mean there were already drakklings in the treetop nests.
Likkarn pointed at three hunters. They were to go left with him, four to remain, four more to move to the right. There was a boy in each group. They would be the climbers. The men and larger boys were simply too heavy to scramble up the spikka trunks, for the trees narrowed drastically at the top. Since every single tree in the copse had to be climbed and searched for a nest, it was up to the lighter boys to do that job.
This meant that he and Arakk and Tanekk would be doing the climbing, though Jakkin was almost too big to take on the job. In fact, pound for pound, he was probably bigger than old Likkarn. There were only five boys at the nursery light enough for the job, anyway. With Slakk in the hospice and Errikkin sulking in his bed, that left the three of them to do the climbing.
Jakkin bit his lower lip, shook his head. He had a bad feeling about this hunt. A dreadful feeling.
But then he had a bad feeling about drakks in general.
16
JAKKIN KNEW what to expect next. On his other hunt, Likkarn had made a peeping noise like a dragon hatchling, to tempt a drakk to come out in daylight. But this time Likkarn didn't even try calling.
"Just up and get them. We know they're about," he said grimly, pointing to the trees.
Jakkin's team stood before a spikka that was as high as a two-story building but quite slim. He looked up at it, his heart stammering. Then he checked around his feet, where there was a scattering of blisterweed in the spongy ground, all too small and leafless to worry about.
The three men with Jakkin scanned the tree as well, shaking their heads, indicating that they could see nothing in the high leaves. Then together they pushed and
pulled on the tree trunk, shaking it till the top swayed precariously. All the while they listened carefully for a warning hiss from above.
Silence greeted them, and Balakk cut a deep slash in the tree trunk, indicating that the tree had been searched. There were half a dozen such trees, too slim for climbing, supple enough for shaking. If any nests had been in those trees, they would have come loose and tumbled to the ground.
However, each of the really thick-trunked trees in the copse had to be climbed—and there were many of them. Jakkin paid little attention to the instructions that Likkarn gave them. He had done this before and knew what to do. Tying the piton clamps to his sandals, and putting on the leather gloves with their own set of climbing clamps, he started up the first of the thick trees. No reason to hesitate. If he hesitated, he would begin to think. Thinking would only make things worse. The more he thought, the more he would become frightened. And he was already scared enough. The smell of the dead drakk in the incubarn was too recent a memory to erase.
Jakkin looked to his left. Arakk was having a bit of trouble with the sandal ties, his hands shaking. Further on, Tanekk was all ready, and he had a hand on a spikka trunk, but he wasn't moving just yet. Instead he stared up, looking quite pale. Jakkin could see the fear stamped on both their faces. He wanted to say something, to warn them about the fear.
"A frightened climber is a careless climber."
Jakkin wondered—had he said it aloud? Then realized it was Likkarn who spoke.
Jakkin added, "We've enough to worry about without carelessness." He smiled at the other two boys. Whether that helped them, Jakkin didn't know. But suddenly he felt easier himself. He'd done this before. It was dangerous but doable.
Now he remembered the instructions he'd been given over a year ago at his first drakk hunt, as if that other hunt had been just an hour before. "Don't be a hero," he'd been told. "Just find the drakk. Find the nest and drop straight down. Show by fingers how many drakk are in the nest. We'll do the rest with the stingers." He hadn't paid enough attention then. He was determined to do better this time.
Nodding at Arakk and Tanekk, he started up just as Likkarn was giving them all instructions. The slippery gray bark of the tree was no match for the sharp piton blades. He kept his breathing slow, quiet. It wasn't a race, anyway. Just get to the top, peer into any nests, and if there are any drakklings, count them, and drop.
Simple.
Straightforward.
Easy.
As long as there weren't any of the creatures waiting at the top. Then things could get seriously scary. But he didn't allow himself to dwell on that.
Glancing quickly again to his left, he saw that Arakk was now already more than halfway up the tree. In a hurry. Wanting to get up and get it over with. Jakkin shook his head. He knew that moving too fast could make you sloppy, could make a dangerous situation worse. He hoped someone would caution Arakk to slow down.
Giving another furtive glance, this time to his right, he saw that Tanekk was still standing on the ground, his face closed in on itself. Frankkalin had gathered what looked like an army around him, talking earnestly into his ear. L'Erikk was there. Probably telling him a joke. That should get him up the tree fast enough!
Then he thought, I was like that. Though it had been Likkarn pointing a stinger at him that had gotten him up his first tree. He remembered thinking at the time that the drakks were probably not half as dangerous as Likkarn, though he'd been wrong about that. Very wrong.
Inching up the spikka, he neared the top leaves, checked again on the other boys, and saw that Tanekk was now a few feet up his tree. Jakkin let out his breath. He hadn't even realized until then that he'd been holding it.
Under his right hand was a deep slash in the bark, black against gray, clearly from a long-ago drakk hunt. This copse was notorious for drakk nests. Maybe Likkarn was right. The big trees could be felled, but the smaller ones left. There were always more spikka. They grew quickly.
And then he thought about how even more quickly the desert reclaimed the land on Austar. Thought how much more desert there was at his oasis than there'd been a year ago, the sand taking back what the water once owned. Balakk had it right: Leave the trees.
Another few inches, and this time when he looked down, the three men below his tree seemed oddly squat, like badly shaped boys: Balakk almost bald, the other two with thick heads of hair, but they all belled out at the bottom. Their stingers were up and ready. The barrels were a comforting sight.
Now Jakkin had but inches to go. The hard inches. His heart had begun thumping so loudly, even a deaf drakk could surely hear it, could find it with one quick slash of its talons.
Stop thinking, he warned himself again.
He climbed a bit more and his head was now level with the top leaves, so he took a deep breath, balanced himself. Using his teeth to take the glove off his right hand, he reached down to detach the knife from his belt. Then he pushed the knife carefully through the nearest pair of leaves to get a look inside.
He let out his breath, a huge gusty exhalation. No nest! No drakks! He had to contain himself from letting out a victorious whoop. Putting the knife into its loop on his belt, he took the glove from between his teeth, and then scaled back down the tree twice as fast as he'd gone up. The spongy ground greeted him, feeling much more solid than it had before.
He made a circle with his fingers and mouthed to Balakk, "No drakks."
Balakk nodded, crossed the slash he'd made minutes earlier with another to make an X, then pointed to the next tree.
At that, L'Erikk came over and whispered in his ear, "Have you heard the story of Fewmets Firkkin and the drakks?" L'Erikk knew more Fewmets Firkkin jokes than anyone at the nursery.
Jakkin shook his head.
"I'll tell it to you when you get down safely."
Jakkin shook his head. "No jokes," he whispered back. "Until we're all home." He was pleased when L'Erikk backed away, hands raised in surrender.
Glancing up at the tree, Jakkin suddenly realized that he felt little fear about climbing the second spikka. Or even the third.
He was right to be so fearless. There were no drakk nests in any of them. And when he looked over at Arakk, who was racing ahead, and Tanekk, who was just starting down his first tree, Jakkin knew that he could tackle anything now—drakk or dragon—with equal ease.
***
IN FACT, there were no drakks in the entire copse, and after a morning of futile searching, the hunters sat down for a lunch that had been packed—even overpacked—by Kkarina.
As they ate their egg sandwiches and drank the cold takk and warm tea she'd sent along in pottery flasks, Balakk said, "Tell us again, young Jakkin, which way that drakk was flying."
He pointed. "Straight toward Sukker's Marsh."
Likkarn shook his head. "Not many spikka there."
"Enough, though," Balakk said. "Maybe they've learned from previous hunts not to nest here."
"Hah!" Frankkalin sounded more like a dragon than a man. As he spoke, pieces of egg sputtered from his mouth. "Don't be a fool. Drakk don't learn. They're dumb beasts. The only thing that learns on Austar is us." He slapped his right hand against his chest for emphasis.
"Well, maybe not you, Frankkalin," Balakk said, and the others laughed.
Putting a finger beside his nose, his usual gesture, Likkarn added, "They don't hear or see well, Frankk, but neither do I anymore."
Frankkalin laughed. "But you smell plenty, old man!"
Ignoring him, Likkarn continued. "Nothing we know about them says they can't learn."
"And nothing says they can," Frankkalin retorted. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
Jakkin kept quiet, but he was thinking that if drakk could learn, maybe they could also learn how to fight off hunters. He shivered at the thought, and fear, like an old argument, began to gnaw in his belly again.
But it was Arakk who interrupted the men's talk. "Are there closer trees?"
Likkarn and B
alakk shook their heads and Frankkalin said, "None."
"Then why are we arguing?" Arakk asked.
"Not arguing, discussing," Balakk told him.
"Not arguing, figuring," Frankkalin added.
"What's the difference?" The boy looked truly puzzled, all joy wiped from his face.
"You argue, I explain," L'Erikk said, and the men laughed. All except Likkarn, who put up a hand to stop the talk.
"And I tell you what to do," Likkarn said.
"Why you?" The words were out of Jakkin's mouth before he could stop them.
Likkarn smiled. It was not a comforting smile. "Because I have been here the longest, gone on more drakk hunts than anyone, and Sarkkhan left the nursery to me. Which makes me master of it," Likkarn said, thumb jabbing at his own chest.
"Except there are no masters anymore. Or so I thought," Jakkin said.
Likkarn smiled at him a bit crookedly. "No masters, no bond, except as we feel it here." He touched a finger to Jakkin's chest.
Jakkin shivered, remembering what Akki had said about that.
Akki! Without thinking, he pushed out a sending that was like a wail, orange streamers flying. He got no answer, of course, but Likkarn looked at him sharply. Jakkin closed his mind at once and tried to look innocent, which made him look guilty instead.
Likkarn ignored him after that one quick look, and raised his hand. "Now, listen. We need to concentrate on the drakks. And most importantly, we don't rush into dangerous things without finding out all we can."
Kkitakk huffed. "And that's how you broke all those bones, old man? By not rushing in?"
They all laughed again, and this time Likkarn deigned to join them.
Even Jakkin smiled, his mouth twisting around, suddenly remembering Likkarn a year earlier, helping to distract everyone when Akki and he had to get away. Maybe Golden was right and he'd mistaken Likkarn all along. Except ... except he was sure it was Likkarn who'd pushed Akki out, sent her to The Rokk. Away from Jakkin. He shook his head. None of it made sense.
"The marsh, then," said Likkarn, speaking to them all, avoiding Jakkin's eyes. He rose and brushed the crumbs from his jerkin.