Part 1 (2/2)

For a pulse beat, F'lar wondered if the man was deliberately provoking him with such subtle insults. The name of the bronze riders should be as well known throughout Pern as the name of the dragon queen and her Weyrwoman. F'lar kept his face composed, his eyes on Fax's.

Leisurely, with the proper touch of arrogance, F'nor stepped forward, stopping slightly behind Mnementh's head, one hand negligently touching the jaw hinge of the huge beast.

”The bronze rider of Mnementh, Lord F'lar, will require quarters for himself. I, F'nor, brown rider, prefer to be lodged with the wingmen. We are, in number, twelve.”

F'lar liked that touch of F'nor's, totting up the wing strength, as if Fax were incapable of counting. F'nor had phrased it so adroitly as to make it impossible for Fax to protest the return insult.

”Lord F'lar,” Fax said through teeth fixed in a smile, ”the High Reaches are honored with your Search.”

”It will be to the credit of the High Reaches,” F'lar replied smoothly, ”if one of its own supplies the Weyr.”

”To our everlasting credit,” Fax replied as suavely. ”In the old days many notable Weyrwomen came from my Holds.”

”Your Holds?” asked F'lar, politely smiling as he emphasized the plural. ”Ah, yes, you are now overlord of Ruatha, are you not? There have been many from that Hold.”

A strange, tense look crossed Fax's face, quickly supplanted by a determinedly affable grin. Fax stepped aside, gesturing F'lar to enter the Hold.

Fax's troop leader barked a hasty order, and the men formed two lines, their metal-edged boots flicking sparks from the stones.

At unspoken orders, all the dragons rose with a great churning of air and dust. F'lar strode nonchalantly past the welcoming files. The men were rolling their eyes in alarm as the beasts glided above to the inner courts. Someone on the high Tower uttered a frightened yelp as Mnementh took his position on that vantage point. His great wings drove phosphoric-scented air across the inner court as he maneuvered his great frame onto the inadequate landing s.p.a.ce.

Outwardly oblivious to the consternation, fear, and awe the dragons inspired, F'lar was secretly amused and rather pleased by the effect. Lords of the Holds needed this reminder that they still must deal with dragons, not just with riders, who were men, mortal and murderable. The ancient respect for dragonmen as well as dragonkind must be reinstilled in modem b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

”The Hold has just risen from table, Lord F'lar, if ...” Fax suggested. His voice trailed off at F'lar's smiling refusal.

”Convey my duty to your lady. Lord Fax,” F'lar rejoined, noticing with inward satisfaction the tightening of Fax's jaw muscles at the ceremonial request.

F'lar was enjoying himself thoroughly. He had not yet been born on the occasion of the last Search, the one that ill-fatedly provided the incompetent Jora. But he had studied the accounts of previous Searches in the Old Records that had included subtle ways to confound those Lords who preferred to keep their ladies sequestered when the dragonmen rode. For Fax to refuse F'lar the opportunity to pay his duty would have been tantamount to a major insult, discharged only in mortal combat.

”You would prefer to see your quarters first?” Fax countered.

F'lar flicked an imaginary speck from his soft wherhide sleeve and shook his head.

”Duty first,” he said with a rueful shrug.

”Of course,” Fax all but snapped and strode smartly ahead, his heels pounding out the anger he could not express otherwise.

F'lar and F'nor followed at a slower pace through the double-doored entry with its great metal panels, into the Great Hall, carved into the cliffside. The U-shaped table was being cleared by nervous servitors, who rattled and dropped tableware as the two dragon-men entered. Fax had already reached the far end of the Hall and stood impatiently at the open slab door, the only access to the inner Hold, which, like all such Holds, burrowed deep into stone, the refuge of all in time of peril.

”They eat not badly,” F'nor remarked casually to F'lar, appraising the remnants still on the table.

”Better than the Weyr, it would seem,” F'lar replied dryly, covering his speech with his hand as he saw two drudges staggering under the weight on a tray that bore a half-eaten carca.s.s.

”Young and tender,” F'nor said in a bitter undertone, ”from the look of it. While the stringy, barren beasts are delivered up to us.”

”Naturally.”

”A pleasantly favored Hall,” F'lar said amiably as they reached Fax. Then, seeing Fax impatient to continue, F'lar deliberately turned back to the banner-hung Hall. He pointed out to F'nor the deeply set slit windows, heavy bronze shutters open to the bright noonday sky. ”Facing east, too, as they ought. That new Hall at Telgar Hold actually faces south, I'm told. Tell me. Lord Fax, do you adhere to the old practices and mount a dawn guard?”

Fax frowned, trying to pa.r.s.e F'lar's meaning.

”There is always a guard at the Tower.”

”An easterly guard?”

Fax's eyes jerked toward the windows, then back, sliding across F'lar's face to F'nor and back again to the windows.

”There are always guards,” he answered sharply, ”on all the approaches.” ”Oh, just the approaches,” and F'lar turned to F'nor and nodded wisely.

”Where else?” demanded Fax, concerned, glancing from one dragonman to the other.

”I must ask that of your harper. You do keep a trained harper in your Hold?”

”Of course. I have several trained harpers.” Fax jerked his shoulders straighter.

F'lar affected not to understand.

”Lord Fax is the overlord of six other Holds,” F'nor reminded his wingleader.

”Of course,” F'lar a.s.sented, with exactly the same inflection Fax had used a moment before.

The mimicry did not go unnoticed by Fax, but as he was unable to construe deliberate insult out of an innocent affirmative, he stalked into the glow-lit corridors. The dragonmen followed.

”It is good to see one Holder keeping so many ancient customs,” F'lar said to F'nor approvingly for Fax's benefit as they pa.s.sed into the inner Hold. ”There are many who have abandoned the safety of solid rock and enlarged their outer Holds to dangerous proportions. I can't condone the risk myself.”

”Their risk. Lord F'lar. Another's gain,” Fax snorted derisively, slowing to a normal strut.

”Gain? How so?”

”Any outer Hold is easily penetrated, bronze rider, with trained forces, experienced leaders.h.i.+p, and well considered strategy.”

The man was not a braggart, F'lar decided. Nor, in these peaceful days, did he fail to mount Tower guards. However, he kept within his Hold, not out of obedience to ancient Laws, but through prudence. He kept harpers for ostentation rather than because tradition required it. But he allowed the pits to decay; he permitted gra.s.s to grow. He accorded dragonmen the barest civility on one hand and offered veiled insult on the other. A man to be watched.

The women's quarters in Fax's Hold had been moved from the traditional innermost corridors to those at the cliff-face. Sunlight poured down from the three double-shuttered, deep-cas.e.m.e.nt windows in the outside wall. F'lar noted that the bronze hinges were well oiled. The sills were the regulation spearlength; Fax had not given in to the recent practice of diminis.h.i.+ng the protective wall.

The chamber was richly hung with appropriately gentle scenes of women occupied in all manner of feminine tasks. Doors gave off the main chamber on both sides into smaller sleeping alcoves, and from these, at Fax's bidding, his women hesitantly emerged, Fax sternly gestured to a blue-gowned woman, her hair white-streaked, her face lined with disappointments and bitterness, her body swollen with pregnancy. She advanced awkwardly, stopping several feet from her lord. From her att.i.tude, F'lar deduced that she came no closer to Fax than was absolutely necessary.

”The Lady of Crom, mother of my heirs,” Fax said without pride or cordiality.

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