He had no sooner done so than he caught sight of flame and was aware of a tremendous whooshing noise, followed by a shout that his ears heard as “You bleeding fools!” Then there were more licks of fire while Jayge huddled under his pot lid, one arm around his mare’s neck. Blood ran from her rump and turned the water pink. He also saw, disbelieving, the blackened head of a runner, turning idly and then disappearing as the current caught it and took it over the dam. Then he was far too occupied with fending Thread off himself and his mare, trying to keep any of the drowning stuff from touching him. His leather pants were reduced to shreds, and his boots, he found when he was able to examine them, were Threadscored.
Much later, Jayge learned that it took about ten to fifteen minutes for the full Threadfall to overpass a stationary point, and that the dragonriders did not always overpass rivers and lakes because Thread drowned in water—and that the Oldtimers, who came from an earlier time when Thread had been a constant menace, were resentful of having to protect so much forestry.
That terrible noon, when Jayge finally led an exhausted Fairex out of the water, the pool was filled with lifeless bobbing bodies, animal and human, and the pitiful remnants of the prosperous trader train.
“Jayge, we’ll need a fire,” his father said in a dull voice as he followed his son out of the water, dragging the sodden gear he had removed from the body of his rangy runner.
Jayge looked up the bank to the forested slope, amazed to see that fine stand of trees reduced to smoldering trunks and charred circles, black and oily smoke rising ominously. The rich, dense woods had been changed to barren smoking poles, branchless and charred.
The hillside hid from view the continuation of Fall and dragonfire, and once again the sun blazed down. Jayge shivered. He paused long enough to take the saddle off Fairex who stood, all four legs Threadscored, head down and uncertain, too tired to shake water or blood from her body.
“Move it, lad,” his father muttered, starting back to the pool to help Temma, who was carrying a still form out of the cold water.
Muted sobbing and louder cries of grief followed Jayge up the slope. It took him a long time to find enough unconsumed wood to start any sort of a fire. He walked very cautiously, terrified that a tendril of Thread might have survived the dragonfire. When he got back to the river, he kept his eyes on the fire he was starting, unwilling to look at the still forms lying on the stony verge. He was immensely relieved to see that his mother was there, bandaging someone’s head. He saw Aunt Temma, too, but he had to turn away from the sight of the hideous raw marks, like something cut by the claws of the biggest wherry ever, on Readis’s back. Aunt Bedda was rocking back and forth, and Jayge could not bear to find out if his baby cousin was injured or dead. Not just yet.
As soon as he got the fire going, he took the rope from his saddle and brought Fairex with him to bring more wood down to the shore. On his way back, he made himself see the extent of the tragedy. Beyond the new piles of soaking bundles and wet crates, there were seven small bundles, three very small and three larger ones. No, the babies would not have made it. They would not have known to hold their breath under water. Nor would his younger sister, or his youngest cousins.
Tears streamed down Jayge’s face as he piled the wood by the stones that surrounded the fire. Two dented kettles were heating water, and, astonishingly, a soup pot had been recovered. Saddles had been placed in a ring around the fire to dry. Someone was splashing in the pool, and he saw there, for the first time, the metal bands that had once spread the canvas wagontops, like the ribs of some great water snake. Aunt Temma burst to the surface and began to tug on a rope. He saw his father struggling with something still under the rope. Borel and Readis, despite their wounds, were desperately pulling at yet another submerged article.
Jayge had just turned to untie the Wood piled on Fairex’ back when abruptly she wheeled and dashed back up the slope, racing away from the camp as if a wherry had attacked her. Then dirt and sand flew around him, over the fire and into the soup pot. Startled, Jayge looked up, unable to imagine what new hazard faced them.
A huge brown dragon was settling to the top of the track above the pool. “You there, boy! Who’s in charge of this ground crew? How many burrows have you found? These woods are disastrous!”
At first Jayge could not understand the words rattled at him. There was an odd inflection in the man’s voice that startled him. The harpers kept the language from altering too much, his mother had once told him when he had first encountered the slower speech of the southerners. But the voice of the dragonrider, so small up there perched between the neck ridges of the big beast, sounded strange to Jayge’s ears. And the man did not really look like any man Jayge had ever seen. He seemed to have huge eyes, and no hair, and leather all over. Were dragomen different from the rest of Pern’s people? Realizing that his mouth had dropped open, Jayge clamped his jaws shut.
“You can’t be ground crew. You’re much too small to be any use! Who’s in charge here?” The rider sounded offended, annoyed. “This isn’t what I’m used to, I assure you. You’ll have to do better than this!”
“Will we just?” Crenden strode forward, Borel right behind him along with Temma and Gledia.
“Lads and women! Only two men! You can’t have efficient ground crews if this is all you can provide us,” the rider continued. Suddenly he took off a close-fitting cap, revealing a face that was quite human, if creased with a deep scowl and accentuated by the soot marks on his cheeks.
Jayge stared, aware of many details that he would recall later and with cynical accuracy: except that the rider wore his hair cropped close to his scalp, he was really like any other man. Under other circumstances and with later knowledge, Jayge might have forgiven him his irascibility, and even some of his scathing disapproval. But not that day.
However, it was the dragon that fascinated Jayge. He noted the dark streaks of soot on the dragon’s brown hide; the two damaged ridges; the rough scars on its forequarters—long thin scars, darker brown, many of them along its barrel and back—and the thickening of tissue along several wing vanes. But it was the ineffable weariness in the dragon’s eyes, whirling slightly and coloring from a purple to a blue-green, that Jayge noted particularly. Those eyes whirled in Jayge’s dreams for many nights thereafter—but his strongest impression was of the weariness, a fatigue that he himself certainly felt down to his very bones.
Although it was the dragon who dominated that first moment, the rider soon took center stage with his strong words and the contemptuous tone in which he delivered them. He spoke to Crenden as if the trader were a drudge, an unperson of no importance but to serve the dragonrider’s orders. For his father, and for himself, and for the shattered remainder of their kin, Jayge resented that tone, that dragonrider, and all he stood for. And he hated the dragonrider for all he had not done to protect them.
“We aren’t ground crew, dragonrider. We’re what’s left of the Lilcamp train,” Crenden said in a hoarse voice. Those behind stared wearily up with unspoken resentment.
“A train?” The dragonrider was contemptuous. “A train—out during Threadfall? Man, you’re insane.”
“We knew of no Threadfall when we left Kimmage Hold.”
Jayge drew in his breath. He had never heard his father utter a falsehood—yet that was not a true lie. They had not heard of Threadfall at the time they had set out from Kimmage Hold. And it was right for his father to shame the dragonrider.