Chap. 374 The Oddity on the Arch

Chap. 374. The Oddity on the Arch

K’ndar felt as if he belonged, sitting next to a small fire that Kim and Lizard had set earlier to make their breakfast. It lessened the bite of the cold wind. People had come to buy eggs, or look at the horses Lizard was about to send to the auction. It was interesting to see Lizard ply his trade. He was encouraged to see how well Kim had settled in to his new life as an journeyman trader.

Now the coals served to grill the arsters Johan had brought to pay for a fire lizard egg.

“My wife is manning my booth, but I mustn’t take too long. Will you take arsters in barter? They’re fresh as can be, my son harvested them not an hour ago.” He unlimbered a sack that sagged from his shoulder. It left a large wet spot on his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.

How DO these folks shrug off the cold? Or have I grown soft? K’ndar wondered.

Lizard, smiling, had nodded, dickering only in the number. Johan arrayed them on the grill. “These coals, they’re perfect,” he said., the arsters will open in minutes.”

“Johan, pick an egg, any egg,” Lizard said.

Kim uncovered the basket of eggs. Underneath, a large hunk of soapstone kept the sands beneath the eggs warm. Johan searched for clues as to what color fire lizard lay within, but realized that K’ndar had been right. They all looked pretty much the same.

Machli watched closely from her perch atop the caravan.

“Won’t she be upset if I take one?” Johan asked, seeing her eyes roiling an uncertain orange.

“No, she is used to my selling eggs, and usually, the queen fire lizards, like queen dragons, merely guard their eggs. They’re not like chickens that need to brood their eggs, and later on, teach their chicks how to be chickens. Once fire lizard eggs hatch out, the little ones are on their own.”

“Can we tell you how to keep them?” Kim asked, anxiously.

“Thank you, lad, but my wife, she’s weyr bred. Never Impressed, but she’s been around dragons all her life and knows what it takes to keep them. So I’m not too worried. And K’ndar, there, told me basically the same thing. “When it hatches, feed the hatchling until it passes out.”

The three laughed in unison. Crunch awoke and barked, as if in on the joke.

The arsters all seemed to pop open at once. Johan turned to them. “Careful, they’ll be hot, but don’t dawdle, get that likker and eat ’em up.”

He’d brought a handful of picks. K’ndar picked one up. The shell itself was hot, but the ridges and corrugations kept the mass of the shell above his skin. Kim watched in astonishment as K’ndar sipped the likker, then mimicked him.

“Oh, that’s GOOD,” Kim said, marveling, “It tastes like the sea!”

“Exactly!” Johan said, proudly.

Not daring to pretend he’d never eaten one, K’ndar picked the meat out and ate it. His eyes widened in delight.

Johan saw it. “Told you you’d like ’em,” he said, with a conspiratorial wink.

Lizard took one, having eaten them in the past. “The problem I’ve found with arsters is that they’re awfully filling.”

“Aye, that’s a fact, sir. Especially when you reach our age. You young men,” Johan said, taking in K’ndar and Kim with the same designation, “You’ll find that at your age, your stomach is cast iron. You can eat anything. It’s only when you get long in the tooth, like me ‘n Lizard, that your stomach begins to rule and then dominate your life.”

“That’s no lie,” Lizard said, going for a second arster, “There’s been a night or two where I had to walk myself out of a colic.” He laughed.

Johan looked over the eggs again, and finally settled on one that looked bronze colored, despite what he’d been told. He tucked it into his shirt next to his belly, to keep it warm.

He smiled, feeling the ovoid next to his skin. I have one. I have one.

“Thank you, sirs, for selling me this egg. Fire Lizard Man, Kim and especially you, K’ndar. It’s been a pleasure doing business.” And he’d left trudging up the hill to his kiosk.

Kim grinned. “Three left, Lizard, just three. And we still have all afternoon.”

“It’s been a good day for it, and thanks to your Siskin, K’ndar, I should cut you in on some of the proceeds,” Lizard said, knowing K’ndar would refuse.

He did. “NO. I won’t take so much as…well, maybe another arster.”

“By all means. Three’s my limit, and that’s pushing it. We had a good breakfast, eh, Kim?”

The teen nodded. “Mum taught me how to make her special biscuits. Won’t tell that recipe, only that it has Secret Ingredients.”

“Any left?” K’ndar asked, wondering if he had room.

“Not his,” Lizard said, “There’s something wrong with Kim’s rolls.”

“WHAT?” Kim asked, astonished, “what do you mean?”

Lizard gave him a gotcha look. “They disappear. Like that.”

Kim grinned.

When he finished his third arster, K’ndar’s stomach said, “That’s enough, mate.”

“Is it normally the way you sell eggs, Lizard, bartering rather than money changing hands?”

The trader sat down, and poked the coals back into life with an iron rod. He put a kettle on the grate. “I’m not so sure I like the way coins are taking over Pern’s economy,” he said, “Call me hidebound, but bartering just seems more, um, civilized. You get to know the person you’re dealing with, like Johan, like that woman before him, like the folks who rushed here right after your blue nabbed the thieves. Now I know when I come back, I’ll KNOW someone here, and it’s always good to have friends. Klah?”

“Not for me, thanks,” K’ndar said.

“With bartering, you can adjust the price you’re asking, or willing to pay,” Lizard continued, “Aye, I could insist on money, but the idea is to sell the eggs. If I ask too much for them, or insist on coins, they don’t sell and then I’m stuck with more and more hatchlings. And my two lizards are plenty.”

Batu chipped from his post next to his queen.

“What surprised me,” K’ndar said, “Is that our fire lizards aren’t all that happy with arsters. Siskin took a polite bite and then ignored it.”

“Well, think of it, K’ndar, they don’t have the dentition to eat an arster, never mind opening it.”

Lizard got up from his stool and stretched. “Ah, it’s good to have two arms and shoulders again,” he said. He looked down on K’ndar.

“I should be heading over to the arena, I have that draft mare and her filly to sell.”

“I see the dapple grey, you’re going to sell her, too?”

“There’s the problem, K’ndar. She’s a fine horse, beautiful mover and a good steady mind. I’m half on, half off with her. When my shoulder hurts I say, no, I’m not keeping her. But today, when I’m feeling good, I think, she’s too good to sell. Besides, it’s not right to take Kim’s horse if I need a ride.”

Kim’s eyebrows jumped into his hairline, not daring to argue, but still! That’s my horse, he thought.

“I’d keep her, then. You can always change your mind.”

“Aye.”

“And the mare and foal? They look good, Lizard, I’m sure they’ll sell for a good price.”

“I agree. And when it comes to selling horses, I only accept coins. Arsters don’t last.”

Kim got up to do KP.

“Need a hand, Kim?”

Lizard caught his eye and shook his head.

The teen looked shocked. “Oh, no. NO! I’m an apprentice. We do all the drudge work, you know that.”

“Well, um,” he began, then desisted. “Okay,” he said, feeling a bit guilty, if well fed. “I’m glad to see you’re doing so well. And you, Lizard.”

“You mean the shoulder? Aye, it’s taken some time to heal, but I’m good, now. Thanks again to you, and B’rost, and Francie for saving my arse.”

He looked up at the sky and suddenly realized he’d forgotten about the time difference.

“Shards,” he said, “I was all ready to watch the auctions, but I’m going to have to leave, Lizard. Western is six hours ahead of Landing. I can never keep the time zones straight.”

“That’s the issue with going between, I guess. There are times, K’ndar, when moving slowly, at the speed of a good horse or a team, is better. You have time to absorb the world.”

“Yes,” he said, bumping Lizard’s fist, “Thanks for the lunch.”

“Before you go, K’ndar, do go by the arch that stands at this end of the dock. There’s something there I know will interest you.”

K’ndar looked past the auction arena and saw the arch, made of enormous trunks of driftwood, and thought, okay, I have the time.

_______________________________________________________________

And stood, gobsmacked, underneath it.

Hanging from the center of the crossbeams was an enormous skull, he guessed it to be at least two meters long and a meter wide. Two rounded spears as long as his arm protruded from the front of the skull, and another pair, looking more like shovels and twice as long, formed the lower jaw. A heavy ridge of bone sprouted from the top of the bulbous skull itself. It was topped by an opening that K’ndar guessed were nasal openings.

An arster man approached him.

“You’re a visitor here, aye?”

He dragged his eyes from the skull. “It shows, eh?”

“The roof of your mouth will be sunburned iffen you don’t shut it, all you visitors do the same thing.”

“What in the name of Pern IS that thing?”

The man laughed. “We call ’em speartooths. They’re big, dragonrider, bigger than any draft horse. They’ll go six hundred, seven hundred kilos, if I’m any judge. “

“A fish?”

“Nay, nay, it’s a saurian, just like your dragon. Got six legs, of course, the back four are mostly flippers. The fore paws are diggers. They mostly stay in the water but they do pull out and sun themselves. They’re an awful nuisance, they’ll climb up onto the stone seawall and when they’re feeling frisky, they’ll lever the stones apart. They’ve even created holes in the seawall doing that, and that sea wall took us thirty years of backbreaking, water up to your neck labor to build, stone by stone. Dragons toted the big boulders in from the mountains, trawl horses pulled the smaller ones out into the water. But it took human backs and hands to put them all together, tight like. Them speartooths, they’ll climb up on it, shit all over it and all the while making a bloody racket.

We have to run them off, and I’m here to tell you, the males don’t go willingly. They get a certain spot and will fight to keep it. The females are a bit more wary, but if they’ve got a calf with ’em, they’ll come at you faster than you can believe such a monster can go. They’re not afraid of humans, not at all. Even the females, they go a bit smaller and don’t have the top spears, they’re fearless. If you go for one of the females, her master bull will come for you with murder in his eye. And they might be big and bulky, but the bulls, they know how to use them spears, no doubt. You’ll have one big bull and his cows, and they fight for ’em and protect them. The one saving grace is we humans can usually outrun them. Even then, you don’t want to get into the middle of a big pod of them, they’ll come at you from all directions. They’re pretty clumsy on solid ground. Don’t think I’d want to go hand to flipper with them in the water, though.”

“What…where..”

“We’ve pretty much run them off, here. If we don’t, they’ll climb right over the wall and destroy our arster nets. You get a couple of them big bulls in the netting and it’s all over but the crying.”

“Why do they go for the nets?”

“Not the nets, dragonman. The arsters. They’ll eat them, they’re bloody murder on arster beds. You get a pod of them and they’ll dig up the arsters, pry em up and apart-and it takes some real doing to break up a solid bed of asters-then eat them, shell and all. They’ve got teeth that could crush stone, I’m serious. After that it takes a long time for the beds to be restored.”

“How do you run them off?”

“Well, before the Charter was read, we’d kill ’em. It takes a brave man with a huge spear to kill one, they’ve got a hide as thick as the length of your hand and can take some awful damage before they decide, oh, shite, I guess I’m dead. What you had to do was cut off their four back legs at the body. They’re brave as lions, too, no matter what you did, they’d not try to escape, just kept coming at you until they were disabled. Then they’d look at you as if to say, why. It was heartbreaking work. though. Made you feel bad for them, all they’re doing is what they’ve done the entire history of Pern, it was us humans coming in and ruining life for ’em.

Oh, to see them fight! The males will stab each other with those spears and leave a deep hole up to your elbow and they don’t die. You can’t eat them, gads, no, but now the Weyrleader says, ‘Charter forbids killing of native wildlife’ so now we have to use different means.”

“And that is?”

The man laughed. “You’d never believe it, dragonrider. They don’t fear us, but a tiny little yapdog will make them bolt. So all us arster men, we all got a yapdog. I can’t stand the one we have, he’s barking all the time, and there’s times I’m tempted to kick him just to see how far he can fly. But he sure knows his job and he doesn’t even hesitate to go after the biggest speartooths on the wall. Hehehe!”

“Are they around now?”

“Nay, not now. If you want to see them, you’ll have to go a couple kilometers south of here, there’s a big beach where they pull out. But they don’t pull out for long, mostly, the females come ashore to give birth, aye, they’re not like dragons what lay eggs, they have a calf like a cow does. Just one. Then the bulls come ashore to fight to impregnate the females, and oh, the blood and roaring, you’d think they’d all be dead. You watch two bulls match up, stabbing each other, and you wonder how in the world they can withstand such punishment. But it doesn’t seem to stop ’em. Then they go back to sea for most of the year.”

“Shards,” K’ndar said, hoping against hope, “Are they beaching now?”

“Nay, they’re done breeding for the year. Might be one or two, when they get old or they’re truly dying from fights or whatever, they sometimes come ashore to die. The scavengers don’t let them rot, the skies fill up with ’em, that’s how you can tell there’s one dying on the beach. Come back in the late spring, they’ll be calving and fighting then.”

And I didn’t bring my camera, K’ndar thought. But I do have a notebook.

He pulled it out and began to sketch.”Do you know where I can get a skull like this one?”

The man gawped. “You want one?”

“I work at Landing, as a biologist.”

“Not sure what a biologist is, but that’s okay. Landing, eh! Don’t get too many of you folks here. But if you want skulls, I’d wager you can find some anywheres they haul out. Just follow the shoreline, you’ll find skulls.”