F’lar touched Lady Gemma’s arm with light fingers. She turned just enough to look at F’lar from the corner of her eye. She managed a socially-correct half-smile.
“I dare not leave just now, Lord F’lar. He is always dangerous at Ruatha. And it may only be false pangs.”
F’lar was dubious as he saw another shudder pass through her frame. The woman would have been a fine weyrwoman, he thought ruefully, were she but younger.
The Warder, his hands shaking, presented Fax the sliced meats. There were slivers of overdone flesh and portions of almost edible meats, but not much of either.
One furious wave of Fax’s broad fist and the Warder had the plate, meats and juice, square in the face. Despite himself, F’lar sighed, for those undoubtedly constituted the only edible portions of the entire beast.
“You call this food? You call this food?” Fax bellowed. His voice boomed back from the bare vault of the ceiling, shaking crawlers from their webs as the sound shattered the fragile strands. “Slop! Slop!”
F’lar rapidly brushed crawlers from Lady Gemma who was helpless in the throes of a very strong contraction.
“It’s all we had on such short notice,” the Warder squealed, juices streaking down his cheeks. Fax threw the goblet at him and the wine went streaming down the man’s chest. The steaming dish of roots followed and the man yelped as the hot liquid splashed over him. “My lord, my lord, had I but known!”
“Obviously, Ruatha cannot support the visit of its Lord. You must renounce it,” F’lar heard himself saying.
His shock at such words issuing from his mouth was as great as that of everyone else in the Hall. Silence fell, broken by the splat of falling crawlers and the drip of root liquid from the Warder’s shoulders to the rushes. The grating of Fax’s boot-heel was clearly audible as he swung slowly around to face the bronze rider.
As F’lar conquered his own amazement and rapidly tried to predict what to do next to mend matters, he saw F’nor rise slowly to his feet, hand on dagger hilt.
“I did not hear you correctly?” Fax asked, his face blank of all expression, his eyes snapping.
Unable to comprehend how he could have uttered such an arrant challenge, F’lar managed to assume a languid pose.
“You did mention,” he drawled, “that if any of your Holds could not support itself and the visit of its rightful overlord, you would renounce it.”
Fax stared back at F’lar, his face a study of swiftly suppressed emotions, the glint of triumph dominant. F’lar, his face stiff with the forced expression of indifference, was casting swiftly about in his mind. In the name of the Egg, had he lost all sense of discretion?
Pretending utter unconcern, he stabbed some vegetables onto his knife and began to munch on them. As he did so, he noticed F’nor glancing slowly around the Hall, scrutinizing everyone. Abruptly F’lar realized what had happened. Somehow, in making that statement, he, a dragonman, had responded to a covert use of the power. F’lar, the bronze rider, was being put into a position where he would have to fight Fax. Why? For what end? To get Fax to renounce the Hold? Incredible! But, there could be only one possible reason for such a turn of events. An exultation as sharp as pain swelled within F’lar. It was all he could do to maintain his pose of bored indifference, all he could do to turn his attention to thwarting Fax, should he press for a duel. A duel would serve no purpose. He, F’lar, had no time to waste on it.
A groan escaped Lady Gemma and broke the eye-locked stance of the two antagonists. Irritated, Fax looked down at her, fist clenched and half-raised to strike her for her temerity in interrupting her lord and master. The contraction that contorted the swollen belly was as obvious as the woman’s pain. F’lar dared not look towards her but he wondered if she had deliberately groaned aloud to break the tension.
Incredibly, Fax began to laugh. He threw back his head, showing big, stained teeth, and roared.
“Aye, renounce it, in favor of her issue, if it is male… and lives!” he crowed, laughing raucously.
“Heard and witnessed!” F’lar snapped, jumping to his feet and pointing to his riders. They were on their feet in the instant. “Heard and witnessed!” they averred in the traditional manner.
With that movement, everyone began to babble at once in nervous relief. The other women, each reacting in her way to the imminence of birth, called orders to the servants and advice to each other. They converged towards Lady Gemma, hovering undecidedly out of Fax’s range, like silly wherries disturbed from their roosts. It was obvious they were torn between their fear of their lord and their desire to reach the laboring woman.
He gathered their intentions as well as their reluctance and, still stridently laughing, knocked back his chair. He stepped over it, strode down to the meatstand and stood hacking off pieces with his knife, stuffing them, juice dripping, into his mouth without ceasing his guffawing.
As F’lar bent towards Lady Gemma to assist her out of her chair, she grabbed his arm urgently. Their eyes met, hers clouded with pain. She pulled him closer.
“He means to kill you, Bronze Rider. He loves to kill,” she whispered.
“Dragonmen are not easily killed, but I am grateful to you.”
“I do not want you killed,” she said, softly, biting at her lip. “We have so few bronze riders.”
F’lar stared at her, startled. Did she, Fax’s lady, actually believe in the Old Laws?
F’lar beckoned to two of the Warder’s men to carry her up into the Hold. He caught Lady Tela by the arm as she fluttered past him.
‘What do you need?“
“Oh, oh,” she exclaimed, her face twisted with panic; she was distractedly wringing her hands, “Water, hot. Clean cloths. And a birthing-woman. Oh, yes, we must have a birthing-woman.”
F’lar looked about for one of the Hold women, his glance sliding over the first disreputable figure who had started to mop up the spilled food. He signaled instead for the Warder and peremptorily ordered him to send for the woman. The Warder kicked at the drudge on the floor.
“You… you! Whatever your name is, go get her from the craft-hold. You must know who she is.”
The drudge evaded the parting kick the Warder aimed in her direction with a nimbleness at odds with her appearance of extreme age and decrepitude. She scurried across the Hall and out the kitchen door.
Fax sliced and speared meat, occasionally bursting out with a louder bark of laughter as his inner thoughts amused him. F’lar sauntered down to the carcass and, without waiting for invitation from his host, began to carve neat slices also, beckoning his men over. Fax’s soldiers, however, waited until their lord had eaten his fill.
Lessa sped from the Hall to summon the birthing-woman, seething with frustration. So close! So close! How could she come so close and yet fail? Fax should have challenged the dragonman. And the dragon-man was strong and young, his face that of a fighter, stern and controlled. He should not have temporized. Was all honor dead in Pern, smothered by green grass?
And why, oh why, had Lady Gemma chosen that precious moment to go into labor? If her groan hadn’t distracted Fax, the fight would have begun and not even Fax, for all his vaunted prowess as a vicious fighter, would have prevailed against a dragonman who had her— Lessa’s—support! The Hold must be secured to its rightful Blood again. Fax must not leave Ruatha, alive, again!