Having caught his breath, Shankolin rolled down the slight incline until he felt it safe to rise to a crouch and make his way to the sparse forest. He kept turning his head this way and that, listening for any sound of men coming after him. Crouching, he ran as fast as he could down the dangerous inclines. He could hear the pebbles and stones rattling and bouncing ahead of him.
One thought dominated: this time he would make good his escape. This time he had to be free-to halt the progress that the Aivas Abomination was inexorably making, destroying the Pern that had survived so long, as his father had told him in a hushed and fearful voice. Master Norist had been horrified to learn that the Weyrleaders of Pern believed that this disembodied voice could actually instruct them on how to turn the Red Star from its orbit and prevent it from ever swinging close enough to Pern to drop the avaricious and hungry Thread. Thread could eat anything, herdbeasts, humans, vegetation-it could even consume huge trees in the time it took a man to blink. He knew. He'd seen it happen once when he'd been part of the ground crews assembled by the Glasscrafthall. Thread truly was a menace to bodies and growing things, but the Aivas Abomination had been a more insidious menace to the very minds and hearts of men and women, and from its disembodied words a perfidious treachery had been spread. His father had been amazed and disheartened by all the impossible things the Abomination had told the Lord Holders and Craftmasters: of the machines and methods that their ancestors had used; equipment and processes-even ways to improve glass-all of which would make living on Pern much easier.
At that time, when everyone was extolling the miracle of this Aivas thing, his father and a few other men of importance had seen the dangers inherent in many of these smooth and tempting promises. As if a mere voice could alter the way a Star moved. Shankolin was firmly of his father's mind. Stars did not change their courses. He agreed that the Weyrleaders were fools, inexplicably eager to destroy the very reason why the great dragons were basic to the preservation of the planet! He agreed because he was so close to the end of his journeyman's time. He was eager to prove himself acceptable to his father, to be the one of his sons to receive the secret skills of coloring glass in the glorious shades that only a Master of the Craft could produce: which sand would make molten glass blue, which powder caused the brilliant deep crimson.
So he had volunteered to be one of those to attack the Aivas Abomination and end its domination over the minds of otherwise intelligent men and women.
He was into the stream before he realized it. His right boot hit a slippery stone and he fell, striking his face on another rock. Dazed by the blow, he was slow to push to his hands and knees. The chill of the water on his wrists and legs helped to revive him. Then he saw the drops of blood landing on the stream and floating pinkly away. He explored the cut on his face, wincing as he realized the slash started at his forehead and continued down one side of his nose to a gouge in his cheek-as jagged a cut as the rock that had made it. Blood dripped off his chin. Holding his breath, he buried his face in the cold water. He repeated the process until the cold water had somewhat stemmed the flow of blood. Even so, he had to tear off the tail end of his shirt to tie a rude bandage to stop the blood running from his forehead. Once he cocked his head, listening for any sounds of pursuit. He couldn't even hear avians or the slithering of snakes. His running might have startled them away. With water still dripping from his soaked clothes, he got to his feet and sniffed at the slight breeze.
During his long Turns of deafness, his other senses had intensified. His sense of smell had once saved his life, even if he had lost the tip of one finger. He'd caught the rank odor of gas being released just before the mine wall had collapsed. Two miners had been buried alive in that fall.
Blood continued to drip from his cheek. He took another patch from his shirttail and held it to the gouge. He looked this way and that, wondering how to proceed.
There were men in the minehold who boasted about their success in tracking escaped prisoners. Bloodstains would make their job easier. He looked anxiously about him, but the stream had swept the blood away. It was fortunate that he'd fallen in the middle of the stream: there'd be no blood to be found.
Perhaps the meteorite had delayed pursuit. There'd been more injured and no prisoner count had been made. Maybe that meteorite was of more importance to the miners. He'd heard that the Smithcrafthall paid well for such pieces falling from the sky. Let them waste time sending a message to the nearest Crafthall. Let them give him enough time to reach the river.
If he kept to the water, he'd leave no bloodstains or scent to be tracked. Eventually this stream would reach the river and then the Southern Sea. He'd have to keep holding the bandage on his cheek until the blood clotted. He was still a bit woozy from his fall. He'd find a stick to help him keep his balance and to check the water's depths. He spotted one farther down the bank, sturdy and long enough to be useful. A few cautious steps forward in the stream and he reached for it. He gave it a pound or two to be sure it wasn't rotten. It would do.
He walked through a moonless night, slipping occasionally in muddy spots or dropping into unexpectedly deep pools, despite using the stick to avoid them. When his cheek stopped bleeding, he shoved that bandage in a pocket. The one on his forehead was adhered to the dried blood, so he left it in place.
By dawn, his feet were so cold and clumsy in the soaked heavy mining boots that he stumbled more frequently and his teeth began to chatter with the chill. When the stream broadened and he was more often up to his waist than his knees, he could go no farther. Seizing hold of shrubs that lined the stream, he clambered out of the water and hid himself in the thick vegetation, curling up to preserve what warmth remained in his body.
Nothing disturbed him until the ache of an empty belly finally roused him. It was far into the morning for the sun was well up. He had come much farther than he had thought possible. His rough work clothing had partially dried but the minehold emblem woven into shirt and pants would mark him as a fugitive. He needed food and new clothing in whichever order he could get them.
Carefully he emerged from the bushes and, to his utter astonishment, saw a small cothold directly across the stream that was now wide as a river. He watched the cothold a long time before he decided that there was no one working inside or nearby. He waded across the river, his bruised feet feeling every rock, and hid again in the bushes until he was sure he heard no human sounds.
The cothold was empty but someone lived here. A herder, perhaps, for there were hides pushed back on the rough sleeping platform made supple by long usage. Food first! He didn't even wash the tubers he found in a basket by the hearth. Then he saw cold gray grease in the iron skillet, set a-tilt on the hearth. He dipped the raw vegetables into it, relishing the salt in the grease as flavoring. The worst of his hunger momentarily assuaged, he searched for more to eat and a change of clothing. As a younger man he would never have filched so much as a berry or an apple from a neighbor's yard. His circumstances were as much altered now as the tenets of conduct his father had beaten into him. He had a duty to perform, a wrong to right, and a theory he must confirm or forget.
His stomach churned with the raw, greasy food he had eaten. He had to eat more slowly or lose everything. Vomit was a hard smell to hide. In a tightly covered container that would protect its contents from vermin, he found three quarters of a wheel of cheese. He thought how long such food would sustain him in his escape-but the fewer traces of his passing were noticeable, the better. While the cotholder might not notice the loss of a few tubers and grease in a pan, the disappearance of too much cheese would be a different matter. So he found a thin old knife blade in the back of a drawer and sliced off a section of cheese, enough to provide him a small meal but, he hoped, not enough to be instantly noticed. Almost as if his restraint were being rewarded, he found a dozen rolls of travel rations in another tin box and took two. He would surely find more food if he was not greedy now. He believed in that sort of justice.