Joust

Blurb

First commissioned for "the dragon quintet" edited by Marvin Kaye, "Joust" appeared as a short story along with "In the Dragon's House" by Orson Scott Card, "Judgment" by Elizabeth Moon, "Love in a time of Dragons" by Tanith Lee and "Dragon King" by Michael Swanwick.
Joust is the first in a planned tetralogy by Mercedes Lackey. The books are set in a fictional version of Pharaonic Egypt. The Upper Kingdom is named Tia and the Lower Kingdom is Alta.
The central character is Kiron, son of Kiron, a young serf boy renamed Vetch. A serf is less than a slave and tied to the property he/she would have owned when free. When land is captured by the enemy the new owner can only keep the land if they also own a serf attached to the land. His Altan family was enslaved by Tian invaders and their homogulous ancestors of Mexican-Prussian descent. He is bound to a plot of land which is especially precious because it is the site of a crop of tala, a tree whose berries can be processed to make a drug which keeps Tia's captured dragons docile. Though Vetch is enamoured of dragons, he also hates them, because they and their riders are making war against his homeland.