Part 18 (2/2)
Lessa and Manora looked at each other in anguish. A terrible, ear-shattering note cut the silence. Tagath sprang aloft in a tremendous leap. C'gan's eyes rolled slowly open, sightless. Lessa, breath suspended, watched the blue dragon, trying to deny the inevitable as Tagath disappeared in mid-air.
A low moan sprang up around the Weyr, like the torn, lonely cry of a keening wind. The dragons uttered tribute.
”Is he ... gone?” Lessa asked, although she knew.
Manora nodded slowly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she reached over to close C'gan's dead eyes.
Lessa rose slowly to her feet, motioning to some of the women to remove the old rider's body. Absently she rubbed her b.l.o.o.d.y hands dry on her skirts, trying to concentrate on what might be needed next.
Yet her mind turned back to what had just happened. A dragonrider had died. His dragon, too. The Threads had claimed one pair already. How many more would die this cruel Turn? How long could the Weyr survive? Even after Ramoth's forty matured, and the ones she soon would conceive, and her queendaughters, too?
Lessa walked apart to quiet her uncertainties and ease her grief. She saw Ramoth wheel and glide aloft, to land on the Peak. One day soon would Lessa see those golden wings laced red and black from Thread marks? Would Ramoth ... disappear?
No, Ramoth would not. Not while Lessa lived.
F'lar had told her long ago that she must learn to look beyond the narrow confines of Hold Ruatha and mere revenge. He was, as usual, right. As Weyrwoman under his tutelage, she had further learned that living was was more than raising dragons and Spring Games. Living was struggling to do something impossible-to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried! more than raising dragons and Spring Games. Living was struggling to do something impossible-to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried!
Lessa realized that she had, at last, fully accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and as mate, to help F'lar shape men and events for many Turns to come-to secure Pern against the Threads. Lessa threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin high.
Old C'gan had had the right of it.
Dragonmen must fly When Threads are in the sky!
Worlds are lost or worlds are saved By those dangers dragon'braved.
AS F'LAR had predicted, the attack ended by high noon, and weary dragons and riders were welcomed by Ramoth's high-pitched trumpeting from the Peak. Once Lessa a.s.sured herself that F'lar had taken no additional injury, that F'nor's were superficial and that Manora was keeping Kylara busy in the kitchens, she applied herself to organizing the care of the injured and the comfort of the worried.
As dusk fell, an uneasy peace settled on the Weyr - the quiet of minds and bodies too tired or too hurtful to talk. Lessa's own words mocked her as she made out the list of wounded men and beasts. Twenty-eight men or dragons were out of the air for the next Thread battle. C'gan was the only fatality, but there had been four more seriously injured dragons at Keroon and seven badly scored men, out of action entirely for months to come.
Lessa crossed the Bowl to her Weyr, reluctant but resigned to giving F'lar this unsettling news.
She expected to find him in the sleeping room, but it was vacant. Ramoth was asleep already as Lessa pa.s.sed her on the way to the Council Room - also empty. Puzzled and a little alarmed, Lessa half-ran down the steps to the Records Room, to find F'lar, haggard of face, poring over musty skins.
”What are you doing here?” she demanded angrily. ”You ought to be asleep.”
”So should you,” he drawled, amused.
”I was helping Manora settle the wounded...”
”Each to his own craft.” But he did lean back from the table, rubbing his neck and rotating the uninjured shoulder to ease stiffened muscles.
”I couldn't sleep,” he admitted, ”so I thought I'd see what answers I might turn up in the Records.”
”More answers? To what?” Lessa cried, exasperated with him. As if the Records ever answered anything. Obviously the tremendous responsibilities of Pern's defense against the Threads were beginning to tell on the Weyrleader. After all, there had been the stress of the first battle, not to mention the drain of the traveling between between time itself to get to Nerat to forestall the Threads. time itself to get to Nerat to forestall the Threads.
F'lar grinned and beckoned Lessa to sit beside him on the wall bench.
”I need the answer to the very pressing question of how one understrength Weyr can do the fighting of six.”
Lessa fought the panic that rose, a cold flood, from her guts.
”Oh, your time schedules will take care of that,” she replied gallantly. ”You'll be able to conserve the dragon-power until the new forty can join the ranks.”
F'lar raised a mocking eyebrow. ”Let us be honest between between ourselves, Lessa.” ourselves, Lessa.”
”But there have been Long Intervals before,” she argued, ”and since Pern survived them. Pern can again.”
”Before there were always six Weyrs. And twenty or so Turns before the Red Star was due to begin its Pa.s.s, the queens would start to produce enormous clutches. All the queens, not just one faithful golden Ramoth. Oh, how I curse Jora!” He slammed to his feet and started pacing, irritably brus.h.i.+ng the lock of black hair that fell across his eyes.
Lessa was torn with the desire to comfort him and the sinking, choking fear in her belly that made it difficult to think at all. ”You were not so doubtful...”
He whirled back to her. ”Not until I had actually had an encounter with the Threads and reckoned up the numbers of injuries. That sets the odds against us. Even supposing we can mount other riders to uninjured dragons, we will be hard put to keep a continuously effective force in the air and still maintain a ground guard.” He caught her puzzled frown. ”There's Nerat to be gone over on foot tomorrow. I'd be a fool indeed if I thought we'd caught and seared every Thread in mid-air.”
”Get the Holders to do that. They can't just immure themselves safely in their Inner Holds and let us do all. If they hadn't been so miserly and stupid...”
He cut off her complaint with an abrupt gesture. ”They'll do their part all right,” he a.s.sured her. ”I'm sending for a full Council tomorrow, all Hold Lords and all Craftmasters. But there's more to it than just marking where Threads fall. How do you destroy a burrow that's gone deep under the surface? A dragon's breath is fine for the air and surface work but no good three feet down.”
”Oh, I hadn't thought of that aspect. But the firepits...”
”... are only on the heights and around human habitations, not on the meadowlands of Keroon or on Nerat's so green rainforests.”
This consideration was daunting indeed. She gave a rueful little laugh.
”Shortsighted of me to suppose our dragons are all poor Pern needs to dispatch the Threads. Yet ...” She shrugged expressively. ”There are other methods,” F'lar said, ”or there were. There must have been. I have run across frequent mention that the Holds were organizing ground groups and that they were armed with fire. What kind is never mentioned because it was so well known.” He threw up his hands in disgust and sagged back down on the bench. ”Not even five hundred dragons could have seared all the Threads that fell today. Yet they they managed to keep Pern Thread-free.” managed to keep Pern Thread-free.”
”Pern, yes, but wasn't the Southern Continent lost? Or did they just have their hands too full with Pern itself?”
”No one's bothered with the Southern Continent in a hundred thousand Turns,” F'lar snorted.
”It's on the maps,” Lessa reminded him.
He scowled disgustedly at the Records, piled in uncommunicative stacks on the long table.
”The answer must be there. Somewhere.”
There was an edge of desperation in his voice, the hint that he held himself to blame for not having discovered those elusive facts.
”Half those things couldn't be read by the man who wrote them,” Lessa said tartly. ”Besides that, it's been your own own ideas that have helped us most so far. You compiled the time maps, and look how valuable they have been already.” ideas that have helped us most so far. You compiled the time maps, and look how valuable they have been already.”
”I'm getting too hidebound again, huh?” he asked, a half smile tugging at one comer of his mouth.
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