Free Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen Page A

glass lens as well.
    "There, that'll do for a first sounding. Now show me exactly where you were when that piece of filth passed over."
    In the courtyard, Jakkin stood still for a moment, remembering. "It was night," he said softly.
    "We
know
that," Kkittakk complained.
    "Hush, you bonder, or I'll de-bag what little you've got," Balakk said in a fierce whisper. "He means it was dark out and he has to refeel where he stood. Fewmets, man, this thing is going to be hard enough without your interruptions."
    Grateful for Balakk's support, Jakkin closed his eyes. He was worried. If he told them exactly where he had been, he might
give away the stealing of the dragon, for he had been on the path to the incubarns. But if he lied, the charting of the flight would be off by a kilometer or more, and the drakk might never be found. He thought what that could mean, picturing a hatchling squirming and peeping its fear, hot dragon blood dripping down where the talons gripped, scoring the sand below. He suddenly saw his own dragon with its life spilling out on the sands. He knew then there was no choice.
    "Here," he said. "I was walking here. And the drakk flew this way." His hand cut through the air in a steady trajectory. It dipped once, just as the drakk's wings had dipped going by his head, and pointed to a spot well beyond the nursery, out in the sands.
    Balakk grunted and turned the wheels of the instrument in his hand. He shouldered Jakkin aside and stood where Jakkin had stood, sighting through the eyepiece.
    "There's a copse of spikka trees directly in line. And four or five kilometers farther is the edge of Sukker's Marsh. If we have to go in there to find them, it might take days."
    "And back, where it flew from?" Jakkin
asked dismally, for that way lay the sands in which his own dragon was hidden.
    "I'll get to that. I will." Balakk turned and sighted along the flight line. "No trees on the flight line. It's far and away across the sands before you come to anything in which a family of those baggy horrors could roost. Lucky for us they fly in such straight trajectories. Except when they're on the hunt. But with the dragons all inside right now, they'd just be making their regular straight passes. When they're hunting they can scent a dragon up to five kilometers on either side of their path and straight down as well. They have scent sensors along their bodies, covered by the wings."
    Jakkin nodded, the tightness in his chest relaxing only slightly.
    "How big were its wings?" Balakk asked again.
    Jakkin spread his arms apart a little, then farther.
    "A small one. Pray to the gods they're all that size. I heard of a man who tackled a really big drakk, one with a wingspread longer than I'm high. Near dragon size, it was. Ripped
him open as easily as a nestling pecks out of its egg." Balakk shuddered. "Let's hope they're all small ones. And that Frankkalin can get his knives honed sharp. We'll take the extinguishers, too. Sarkkhan needs to be told. Jo, you do that. And we'll all have to get into leathers. It's some protection, at least."
    "In this heat—" Kkittakk began.
    "Ripped him from here," Balakk said easily, pointing to just under his throat, "to here." He finished drawing a line down to his groin.
    Kkittakk nodded. "Leathers it is," he said.
    They walked back to the bondhouse in silence while Jo-Janekk disappeared toward Sarkkhan's sandbrick house. It was on a small rise overlooking the entire nursery and was surrounded by twenty-year trees. Jakkin had never been inside. Few of the bonders had. Master Sarkkhan was a solitary man who spent time training the pit fighters and running them in the major pits or off on his other farm with the retired studs. He was rarely at the nursery—and never entertained there. He gave orders—and the orders were passed along. Jakkin knew him by sight and by the
sound of his voice, a big, booming gong of a voice. He doubted if Sarkkhan knew much about him.
    ***
    T HE DRAKK