He, F’lar, the bronze rider, felt suddenly superfluous. It was the dragons who were fighting this engagement. You encouraged your beast, comforted him when the Threads burned, but you depended on his instinct and speed.
Hot fire dripped across F’lar’s cheek, burrowing like acid into his shoulder…a cry of surprised agony burst from F’lar’s lips. Mnementh took them to merciful between. The dragonman batted with frantic hands at the Threads, felt them crumble in the intense cold of between and break off. Revolted, he slapped at injuries still afire. Back in Nerat’s humid air, the sting seemed to ease. Mnementh crooned comfortingly and then dove at a patch, breathing fire.
Shocked at self-consideration, F’lar hurriedly examined his mount’s shoulder for telltale score marks.
I duck very quickly, Mnementh told him and veered away from a dangerously close clump of Threads. A brown dragon followed them down and burned them to ash.
It might have been moments, it might have been a hundred hours later when F’lar looked down in surprise at the sunlit sea. Threads now dropped harmlessly into the rocky tip curling westward.
F’lar felt weariness in every muscle. In the excitement of frenzied battle, he had forgotten the bloody scores on cheek and shoulder. Now, as he and Mnementh glided slowly, the injuries ached and stung.
He flew Mnementh high and when they had achieved sufficient altitude, they hovered. He could see no Threads falling landward. Below him, the dragons ranged, high and low, searching for any sign of a burrow, alert for any suddenly toppling trees or disturbed vegetation.
“Back to the Weyr,” he ordered Mnementh in a heavy sigh. He heard the bronze relay the command even as he himself was taken between. He was so tired he did not even visualize where—much less, when—relying on Mnementh’s instinct to bring him safely home through time and space.
Honor those the dragons heed,
In thought and favor, word and deed.
Worlds are lost or worlds are saved
From those dangers dragon-braved.
Craning her neck towards the Star Stone at Benden Peak, Lessa watched from the ledge until she saw the four wings disappear from view.
Sighing deeply to quiet her inner fears, Lessa raced down the stairs to the floor of Benden Weyr. She noticed someone was building a fire by the lake and that Manora was already ordering her women around, her voice clear but calm.
Old C’gan had the weyrlings lined up. She caught the envious eyes of the newest dragonriders at the barracks’ windows. They’d have time enough to fly a flaming dragon. From what F’lar had intimated, they’d have years.
She shuddered as she stepped up to the weyrlings but managed to smile at them. She gave them their orders and sent them off, checking quickly with each dragon to be sure the riders had given clear references. The Holds would shortly be stirred up to a froth.
Canth told her that there were Threads at Keroon, falling on the Keroon side of Nerat Bay. He told her that F’nor did not think two wings were enough to protect the meadowlands.
Lessa stopped in her tracks, trying to think how many wings were already out.
K’net’s wing is still here, Ramoth informed her. On the Peak.
Lessa glanced up and saw bronze Piyanth spread his wings in answer. She told him to get between to Keroon, close to Nerat Bay. Obediently the entire wing rose and then disappeared.
She turned with a sigh to say something to Manora when a rush of wind and a vile stench almost overpowered her. The air above the Weyr was full of dragons. She was about to demand of Piyanth why he hadn’t gone to Keroon when she realized there were far more beasts a-wing than K’net’s twenty.
But you just left, she cried as she recognized the unmistakable bulk of bronze Mnementh.
That was two hours ago for us, Mnementh said with such weariness in his tone, Lessa closed her eyes in sympathy.
Some dragons were gliding in, fast. From their awkwardness it was evident they were hurt.
As one, the weyrwomen grabbed salve pots and clean rags, and beckoned the injured down. The numbing ointment was smeared on score marks where wings resembled black and red etched lace.
No matter how badly injured they might be, every rider tended his beast first.
Lessa kept one eye on Mnementh, sure that F’lar would not keep the huge bronze hovering like that if he’d been hurt. She was helping T’sum with Munth’s cruelly pierced right wing when she realized the sky above the Star Stone was empty.
She forced herself to finish with Munth before she went to find the bronze and his rider. When she did locate them, she also saw Kylara smearing salve on F’lar’s cheek and shoulder. She was advancing purposefully across the sands towards the pair when Canth’s urgent plea reached her. She saw Mnementh’s head swing upwards as he, too, caught the brown’s thought.
“F’lar, Canth says they need help,” Lessa cried. She didn’t even notice, then, that Kylara slipped away into the busy crowd.
F’lar wasn’t badly hurt. She reassured herself about that. Kylara had treated the wicked burns which looked to be shallow. Someone had found him another fur to replace the tatters of the threadbare one. He frowned, and winced because the frown creased his burned cheek. He gulped hurriedly at his klah.
“Mnementh, what’s the tally of able-bodied? Oh, never mind, just get ’em aloft with a full load of firestone.”
“You’re all right?” Lessa asked, a detaining hand on his arm. He couldn’t just go off like this, could he?
He smiled tiredly down at her, pressed his empty mug into her hands, giving them a quick squeeze. Then he vaulted to Mnementh’s neck. Someone handed him a heavy load of sacks.
BLUE, GREEN, BROWN and bronze dragons lifted from the Weyr Bowl in quick order. A trifle more than sixty dragons hovered briefly above the Weyr where eighty had lingered so few minutes before.
So few dragons. So few riders. How long could they take such toll?
Canth said F’nor needed more firestone.
She looked about anxiously. None of the weyrlings were back yet from their messenger rounds. A dragon was crooning plaintively and she wheeled, but it was only young Pridith, stumbling across the Weyr to the feeding grounds, butting playfully at Kylara as they walked. The only other dragons were injured or…her eyes fell on C’gan, emerging from the weyrling barracks.
“C’gan, can you and Tagath get more firestone to F’nor at Keroon?”
“Of course,” the old blue rider assured her, his chest lifting with pride, his eyes flashing. She hadn’t thought to send him anywhere yet he had lived his life in training for this emergency. He shouldn’t be deprived of a chance at it.
She smiled her approval at his eagerness as they piled heavy sacks on Tagath’s neck. The old blue dragon snorted and danced as if he were young and strong again. She gave them the references Canth had visualized to her.
She watched as the two blinked out above the Star Stone.
It isn’t fair. They have all the fun, said Ramoth peevishly. Lessa saw her sunning herself on the weyr ledge, preening her enormous wings.
“You chew firestone and you’re reduced to a silly green,” Lessa told her weyrmate sharply. She was inwardly amused by the queen’s disgruntled complaint.
She passed among the injured then. B’fol’s dainty green beauty moaned and tossed her head, unable to bend one wing which had been threaded to bare cartilage. She’d be out for weeks but she had the worst injury among the dragons. Lessa looked quickly away from the misery in B’fol’s worried eyes.