Free Rogue Dragon by Avram Davidson Page A

altogether—young, slender, upright and trim… elegant was the word which occurred to Jon-Joras. His tunic was Gentleman’s white, his trousers the elaborate embroidered affair worn on festivals by tribesmen, and his cloak—arranged with elaborate neatness so as to leave his arms free—was fastened across his chest with a silver chain and clasp. A bracelet of gold chased-work encircled a wrist held out as stiff and proud as if it bore a hawk.
    At length the elder cleared his throat and spat. He scratched himself reflectively. “I’ve been thinking on what you said before, Henners,” he observed. “And I can’t see that I agree, no, not one bit. There is nothing at all wrong with the triolet.”
    “Nonsense, Trond,” Henners said, vigorously. “It is archaic, contrived, artificial, jejeune—and anything else you like. It altogether lacks the simplicity and directness of the couplet, neither does it lend itself to amplified assonance and alliteration.”
    Trond screwed his face up into a truly hideous squint, compounded with a frown. “But the couplet”—the last word exploded into an enormous eructation—“the couplet is so monotonous!”
    And so they rode on, as the air turned blue and the sky went purple and the first tiny stars appeared, discussing different modes and meters of poetry; and finally the bright and dancing light of a fire shone before them. And another, and another. Voices haled them, figures rose and crowded around. The girl dismounted, someone took her horse, she vanished from Jon-Joras’s sight.
    “Fellow poets,” said Henners, gesturing, “allow me to present our guest, one Jon-Joras by name, an outworlder and sometime semi-captive of those coarse persons, the Northern Tribe. I think we may be of some small assistance to him in the matter of getting him back to a state… and I think we will find him not ungenerous, hem, hem, in the matter of expenses. Well! Are we not to eat and drink before falling to the making of new verses and rhymes, the chief end of such portion of mankind as dare deem itself civilized?”
    Invitations were at once shouted, the guest was assisted from his pony and led to a seat by the largest of the fires, where a pair of lambs were grilling on a spit over a bed of coals. Someone thrust a goblet into his hand, of some drink which managed to taste both sweet and acid at the same time; and strong, and smelling of honey.
    “First verse!” a voice close to him called. Others took it up. “First verse! Guest! Outworlder! First verse!”
    The realization that he was to compose, instant and impromptu, a short poem, found Jon-Joras with an empty mind. Empty, that is, of everything except the feeling that there was something odd about the lambs which were becoming supper. He held up his hand, the crowd became silent. He spoke:
“Three rode forth, and four returned
    When supper grilled and fire burned.
    A mystery they found, ere sleep:
    Whence came lambs, when there’s no sheep!”
    The briefest of quiets followed the recitation. Then it was swallowed up in a burst of laughter. Someone pounded him on the back. Someone poured more drink into his golden goblet. And someone on the other side of the fire, whose face he could not distinguish, started a reply.
“Such miracles you find, our guest,
    Along with drink and food and rest.
    The truth we tell, although it grieves:
    The simple fact is—we are thieves!”

VI
    Poets there were on MM beta, though mostly employing verse forms so involved and elaborate as to make the triolet seem simpler than the couplet. And there were thieves there, too, although even the apprentice ones would scarcely bother with anything as small as a lamb. Poetic thieves, however, or thieving poets—this was something new to Jon-Joras. He suspected it might be something new (or, at any rate, something different) to students of societal set-ups throughout all the teeming galaxy.
    And so, there by the leaping flames, he leaned and he