Fortunately, because human eardrums were not designed to deal with such decibels and cacophony, it didn’t last too long.
He always felt slightly deafened - certainly ear sore - by the end of a Hatching.
He was suddenly aware of another sort of babble and fuss going on just outside the Hatching Ground. He tried to see what was happening, but he saw T’dam striding over to investigate so K’vin turned his attention back to the pairing of the last few hatchlings, two browns and the last green. Two lads were homing on the green, desperate expressions on their faces. Abruptly the green turned from them and resolutely charged across the sands to the girl who had just entered.
K’vin gave a double-take. There were only five girls, weren’t they? Not that he wasn’t glad to see another. And she was the one the green wanted, for the hatchling pushed aside the boy who tried to divert her.
Then three men strode into the Ground, furious expressions on their faces, with T’dam trying to intercept their angry progress towards the lately Impressed green pair.
“DEBERA!” yelled the first man, reaching out and snatching her away from the green dragonet.
That was his first mistake, K’vin thought, running across the sands to avert catastrophe. Damn it all. Why did this marvelous moment have to be interrupted so abruptly?
Hatchings should be sacrosanct.
Before K’vin could get there, the green reacted to the man’s attempt to separate her from her chosen one. She reared, despite being not altogether sure of her balance on wobbly hindquarters. Extending her short forearms with claws unsheathed, she lunged at the man.
K’vin had one look at the shock on his face, the fear on the girl’s before the dragon had the man down and was trying to open her jaws wide enough to fit around his head.
T’dam, being nearer, plunged to the rescue. The girl, Debera, was also trying to detach her dragonet from her father, for that’s what she was calling him.
“Father! Father! Leave him alone, Morath. He can’t touch me now I’m a dragon rider Morath, do you hear me?” Except that K’vin was very anxious that Morath might have already injured the man, he was close to laughing at this Debera’s tone of authority. The girl had instinctively adopted the right attitude with her newly hatched charge.
No wonder she’d been Searched and at some hold evidently not too far away.
K’vin assisted Debera while T’dam pulled the fallen man out of the dragon’s reach. Then his companions hauled him even further away while Morath continued to squeal and writhed to resume her attack.
He would hurt you. He would own you. You are mine and I am yours and no-one comes between us, Morath was saying so ferociously that every rider heard her.
Zulaya joined the group and, bending to check the father’s injuries, called for the medics who were dealing with the minor lacerations that generally occurred at this time. Fortunately, Morath had no fangs yet and, although there were raw weals on the man’s face and his chest had been badly scratched by unsheathed claws - despite their newness - he had been somewhat protected by the leather jerkin he wore.
By now, most of the newly-hatched were out of the Grounds, being fed their first meal by their new life companions. The spectators, beginning to dismount from the ampitheatre’s levels, managed to get a peek at the injured man. Undoubtedly they would recount the incident at every opportunity. K’vin hoped the embellishments would stay within reason. Now he had to deal with the facts.
“So, perhaps you would tell us what this is all about?” he asked Debera who, confronted by the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, was suddenly overcome with remorse and doubt.
“I was Searched,” she said, urgently stroking Morath who was trying to burrow her head into the girl’s body. “I had the right to come. I wanted to come,” and then she waved an indignant hand at her prostrate father, “and they didn’t even show me the letter telling me to come. He wants me for a union because he had a deal with Boris for a mining site and with Ganmar for taking me on. I don’t want Ganmar, and I don’t know anything about mining. I was Searched and I have the right to decide.” The indignant words rushed out, accompanied by expressions of distaste, resentment and anger!
“Yes, I remember seeing your name on the Search list, Debera,” said Zulaya ranging herself beside the girl in a subtle position of support. The alignment was not lost on the older of the two men attending their fallen friend.
“You are Boris?” she asked him. “So you must be Ganmar,” she went on, addressing the younger one. “Did you not realize that Debera had been Searched?”
Ganmar looked very uncomfortable and dropped his eyes, while the scowl on Boris’s face deepened and he jutted out his jaw obstinately. “Lavel told me she’d refused.”
At that point, Maranis, the Weyr’s medic, arrived to have a look at the wounded man. When he had examined him, he sent a helper for litter-bearers. Then he began to deal with the injuries, pulling back the tattered jerkin, provoking a groan from the dazed man.
“Well, Boris,” Zulaya said, at her sternest. “As you seem to be aware, Debera does have the right…”
“That’s what you weyrfolk always say. But it’s us who suffer from what you call ‘right’ Making more trouble, Boris?” asked Tashvi, arriving just then with Salda.
“You agreed, Tashvi,” Boris said, with little courtesy for his Lord Holder. “You said we could dig that new mine. You were glad to have me and my son here start. And Lavel was willing for Ganmar to have his daughter.”
“Ah, but the daughter seems not to have been so willing,” Lady Salda remarked.
“She was willing all right, wasn’t you, Deb?” Boris said, staring with angry accusation at the girl who returned his look by lifting her chin proudly.
“Til they came from the Weyr on Search.”
“Search has the priority,” said Tashvi. “You know that, Boris.”
“We had it all arranged,” the father spoke up, now his pain had been alleviated by the numb weed Maranis had slathered on his wounds.
“We had it arranged!” And the look he gave his daughter was trenchant with angry, bitter reproach.
“You had it all arranged,” Debera said, equally bitter, between yourselves, but not with me, even before the Search.
A wistful moan from Morath interrupted her angry rebuttal.
“She’s hungry. I have to feed her. Come along now,” she added in a far more loving tone. Without a backward glance, she led her green dragonet out of the Hatching Ground.
“I’d say that the matter was certainly not well arranged, then,” Tashvi said.
“But it was,” said Lavel, jabbing one fist at the dragon riders until they came round, “putting ideas in her head when she was a good, hard-working girl who always did as she was told.
“Then you riders tell her she’s fit for dragons. Fit! I know what you riders get up to, and Debera’s a good girl. She’s not like you lot.”
“That’s quite enough of such talk,” said Zulaya, drawing herself up, insulted.
“Indeed it is,” Tashvi agreed, scowling angrily. “The Weyrwoman will realize that you’re not yourself, wounded as you are.”
“Wounds got nothing to do with my righteous anger, Lord Holder. I know what I know, and I know we had it all arranged, and you should stick up for your holders, not these weyrfolk and all their queer customs and doings, and I dunno what’ll happen to my daughter.” At that point, he began to weep, more in frustrated anger than from the pain of the now well-anaesthetized injuries. “She was a good girl until they come. A good biddable girl!”
Tashvi gestured peremptorily to the two litter-men to take the man out. Then he turned back to the Weyrleaders.
“I did approve the new mine, and Boris and Ganmar as owners, but I’d no idea that Lavel was in any way involved.”