Dragon and Herdsman

A chill ran up Jacks back. He studied the multicolored dragons as they wandered around, trying to see in them the powerful, clever, deadly poet-warrior that was Draycos. "But they are K'da, aren't they?"

"No," Draycos said bitterly. "Not K'da. Not anymore.

"They are animals."

Over the next half hour the Erassvas gradually filtered into the clearing, lowering themselves in wide heaps onto the grass around the edges. Once settled, they began pulling out the berries they'd been stashing away in their pockets.

And as they ate, the group of K'da did a little dance. A nice, simple, pathetic little dance.

"Maybe they're not real K'da," Jack suggested hopefully as he sat against a tree a short distance away from the Erassvas. "You said yourself they don't smell quite right."

"No, they are K'da," Draycos told him. His earlier anger and bitterness had passed, leaving an even more disturbing emptiness behind. "The change in odor is most likely a result of their diet. A diet of grubs."

Jack winced. There was something about that part in particular that seemed to really bother his partner. Was it because these K'da were no longer true hunters? "Well, at least we now know where you came from," Jack said. "The race of slavers who kidnapped your people all those years ago must have missed a few."

Draycos snorted, a breath of hot air brushing across Jack's chest. "If this was our original home, then our storytellers are liars," he said flatly. "These Erassvas are hardly the proud and noble Dhghem spoken of in so many songs. They are primitives. And they are primitives by choice."

Jack looked over at the robed mounds of flesh munching placidly away at their handfuls of berries. Draycos was right, of course. The Erassvas had clearly had enough contact with the rest of the Orion Arm to learn English, and yet didn't have a single bit of the galactic community's technology. "Some people like their lives just the way they are," he offered.

"And they have no ambition?" Draycos bit out. "No self-pride? No desire for a better life for themselves and their offspring?" His tongue flicked out, tickling briefly against Jack's skin. "What happens here when there is rain or snow? What happens when there is disease or predator attack?"

Jack suppressed a sigh. There were counterarguments for each of those, of course. Some people didn't mind getting wet, while others didn't have much trouble with disease or predators.

But then, this wasn't really about the Erassvas. "Okay, so the K'da here aren't as sophisticated as you are," he said as soothingly as he could. "That doesn't mean anything. There are backwoods cultures all over the Orion Arm that are still composed of intelligent, rational beings."

Draycos didn't answer. "Draycos?" Jack prompted. "Come on, buddy. It's not that bad."

Still no answer. With a sigh, Jack gave up.

A motion to his left caught his eye, and he looked up as Alison came out of the trees into the clearing. "Enjoying the show?" she asked, sitting down beside him.

"Actually, dance never really did much for me," he said. "How's your head count going?"

"Finished, I think," she said. "Including children, there seem to be about two hundred Erassvas in this particular troop. About half of them are working the vines on the far side of those bushes."

"They don't like the dancing?"

She shrugged. "Maybe the Phookas will do a second show. Speaking of which, I count fifty of them, including the six who are across with the other group."

Which wouldn't include any who might be currently riding various hosts' bodies. But Jack couldn't exactly point that out. "I don't see any young Phookas," he said instead. "You suppose all of the ones here are male?"

"You're welcome to try to find out," Alison said dryly. "Me, I'm staying here. Let me see that tattoo of yours."

The sudden change in subject caught Jack by surprise. "What?"

"Your tattoo," she said patiently. "You didn't have it taken off, did you?"

There was, unfortunately, no way around it. Suppressing a grimace, Jack unfastened his shirt and pulled it open, exposing Draycos's head to view.

"Interesting," she said, studying Jack's shoulder and then looking over at the performing K'da. She looked back at Draycos, back at the K'da. "You realize your tattoo is the spitting image of a Phooka?"

"Really?" Jack asked, feigning surprise. He looked cross-eyed down at his shoulder, as if trying to get a good view of the image there. "Yeah, there is some resemblance, isn't there?"

"Resemblance, nothing," she countered. "It's the same head, same snout, same scale pattern. You've even got a sort of flattened version of that spiny crest that goes over their heads and down their backs."

"I'll take your word for it," Jack said, still pretending he couldn't quite focus on his tattoo. "Huh. That's funny."

"More than just funny," Alison said. "Where did you say you got that done?"

"I didn't say," Jack said. "If you must know, it was in a little shop in New Paris on Gaullia."