The Renegades of Pern (dragon riders of pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  Hurriedly drying himself and fumbling with the clothes the Beastmaster flung at him, Jayge heard the rumble of the Hold drums, his blood pounding as much to their beat as to the heat of the bath he had just left. His boots were clammy and mud-caked, but he crammed his feet in.

  “Lord Raid wants a word with you. He’s mustering everyone, and yes—” Master Conwy glanced skyward as dragons appeared in the sky, “We’ve all the help we need. Aramina will tell the dragons where she is.”

  “If she knows,” Jayge murmured, suddenly seeing the flaw in their thinking. “And if she can talk.”

  At first Lord Raid discounted Jayge’s remarks, repeated to him first by an angry Master Conwy and again by Jayge, who was then told to sit down and be quiet. Of medium height and somewhat plump, with a discontented droop to his mouth, long lines from nose to mouth, and puffy bags under his eyes, Lord Raid had a habit of posing himself; as he turned from one advisor to another he was almost a caricature of himself. Meanwhile someone gave Jayge a bowl of porridge, which he ate quickly, despite the fact that his stomach was tense with worry.

  When the hours passed with no word from the search parties, Benden Hold’s many fire-lizards, or the dragons, Lord Raid strode over to where Jayge was half-dozing by the hearth. The young trader had tried to stay awake, but the warmth and his fatigue had overcome his anxieties.

  “What exactly did you mean by your remarks, young man?”

  Jayge blinked to clear his eyes and tried to remember what he had last said. “I meant that if Aramina isn’t conscious, she can’t hear dragons. And if she can’t see where she is, how can she be rescued by them?”

  “And just how do you arrive at those conclusions?”

  “Thella knows she hears dragons.” Jayge shrugged. “It stands to reason a clever woman like Thella would make certain Aramina had nothing to tell the dragons.”

  “Exactly,” a cold voice said. Lessa was pushing through the knot of men around Jayge. “I apologize, Jayge Lilcamp. I didn’t heed your warning closely enough.”

  “Isn’t it possible this young man is in league with them?” Raid said in an audible aside to Lessa.

  She raised her eyebrows in a slightly contemptuous quirk, and her lips thinned. “Heth and Monarth both vouched for him to Ramoth at Benden. Lords Larad and Asgenar confirm his description.”

  “But—but—” Raid stuttered impotently.

  Lessa sat down beside Jayge. “Now, what do you think has happened to Aramina?”

  “None of the dragons have heard her?”

  “No, and Heth is nearly hysterical.”

  Jayge exhaled, sick with worry, but he made himself say what he feared most. “I don’t put it past Thella to have killed her.”

  “No, the dragons say not,” Lessa said positively and looked at him for his next suggestion.

  “What about the guards with her?”

  “They are dead,” Lessa said, her voice full of regret. “Stuffed out of sight, which is why it took so long to locate them.”

  “Then she’s been knocked unconscious.” Jayge shut his eyes against the image of Aramina’s limp body, blood staining the blue scarf on her head, hanging across Dushik’s powerful back.

  “Then waiting until she recovers consciousness is unlikely to be useful?” Lessa asked somewhat sardonically.

  Depressed, Jayge nodded. “Thella will have found a dark cave. Or a deep pit. If Aramina can’t tell the dragons where she is, it doesn’t matter if she can hear them or they her.”

  “Exactly my thinking. Raid—” Lessa got to her feet. “You surely must have Hold maps that indicate where the deeper cave systems are. They’ve had a head start of roughly six hours. We can’t tell when they reached their destination, so even nearby caves must be searched. We must bear in mind how far they could have marched over this terrain; we know they weren’t seen on the roads, haven’t been spotted since the dragons started looking three hours ago. Let us not waste more time.”

  Haunted by memories of the black pit of Kimmage Hold, Jayge volunteered to go with one of the search teams. There were fire-lizards beholding to three members of the ten-man team, so they were in constant communication with Weyr and Hold. That night as they wearily exited the seventh cave they had thoroughly searched, word reached them that Aramina was still alive, and had spoken to Heth. She could not see anything in the pitch black, and she could take only six steps before reaching the other side of her prison. It was damp and smelled foul—more like snake than wherry.

  “That’s a brave girl,” the team leader said. “Let’s eat, roll in, and start looking as soon as we can count our fingers.”

  Bloodkin be damned, Jayge thought to himself as he tried to sleep—he was going to kill Readis, as well as Thella and Dushik, with his bare hands.

  They searched for two more days, until a rockfall tumbled down on top of them. Two men were injured badly—one with a broken leg and the other with a smashed chest—and had to be dug out. Instantly suspicious about such a convenient rockfall, Jayge told the team leader that he wanted to check it out while the others took the injured men down to a nearby hold for treatment.

  He was careful about his ascent, choosing a ridge that would overlook the point of the minor rockslide and picking a route that provided the best natural cover. Then he settled down to watch.

  For a long time nothing happened. When a whiff of some foul odor tickled his nose, he had been cramped too long in one position to be able to move fast enough—one strong hand caught his arm behind him and wrenched it up high on his shoulderblade, and another was clapped over his mouth. Jayge had always considered himself strong, but though he struggled, he could not pull himself from those clever and painful holds.

  “Always said you had the brains in the family, Jayge,” Readis whispered softly in his ear. “Don’t struggle. Dushik’s watching somewhere nearby. We have to get down behind him, go in from the other side, and get her out of that pit before the snakes eat her alive. That’s your aim, isn’t it? Nod your head.” Jayge managed some movement, and the hand over his mouth eased. “Dushik’d kill you as soon as look at you, Jayge.”

  “Why did you kidnap that girl?” Jayge twisted around to look at his uncle, who maintained the tight armlock. The man was filthy with slime, haggard, and red-eyed, with gaunt cheeks and a very bitter line to his lips. His clothes were ragged and equally slimy, and he had a length of slime-coated rope slung over his shoulder.

  “I didn’t! I’m not mad or malicious.” Readis’s whisper ended in a hiss. “I didn’t know what Thella had in mind,” he continued, mouthing the words with little sound.

  Jayge kept his answer as muted as his fury would permit. “You knew she wanted to kidnap Aramina. You arrived at the Weyr with that bogus packet of letters.”

  “That was bad enough,” Readis said wincing. “Thella has a way of making things seem rational. But throwing a young girl down a snake pit is not rational. Not rational at all. I think Thella went raving mad when the dragonriders attacked the hold. You should have heard her laughing all the way up that tunnel she made the drudges cut. I don’t think you’ll believe me, but I tried to stop her loosing that avalanche. Then I was stuck, trying to save Giron. He’s dead, by the way. She nicked his throat that first night.” Readis shuddered. “I’ll show you where the girl is, and I’ll help you get her out. Then I’m disappearing, and you bask in the glory of your heroic efforts.”

  Jayge believed his uncle; believed the desperation behind the scoffing words. “Let’s get her out then.”

  Readis headed around the ridge, pushing his nephew in front of him.” I threw her down a water bottle and some bread when I had a chance. Hope she heard it coming and ducked. Duck!”

  Jayge’s head was pushed down, his cheek slamming against a boulder. He could feel Readis suspend his breathing and did the same until his lungs threatened to burst. Finally a nudge told him that he could move and he inhaled gratefully, taking great, deep breaths. Then Readis signalled to move forward again
.

  It took a long time to negotiate the slope to the spot that Readis was aiming for. Jayge’s muscles were cramped with strain by the time they reached an overhang, and the sky was beginning to darken. Jayge was not comforted by the thought that it would be darker where Aramina was. Readis crawled under the ledge and disappeared. Jayge followed, inching along on his belly and elbows and pushing forward on his knees and toes. He felt the slime that coated the ground, and he wondered how anyone had managed to push an unconscious girl down the hole.

  At the touch of a slimy hand on his face, he pulled away, banging his head on the roof of the low tunnel and just barely managing to bite his tongue on his curse.

  “Touchy, aren’t we?” Readis commented in a low voice. “We can walk from here, and it’s not far this way. Dushik must be guarding the more accessible entrance.”

  As Jayge got to his feet, he was surprised to see a dim light coming from a thin fissure far above their heads.

  “Don’t speak loud when we do get to the pit,” Readis instructed, “but you do the talking. We’re going to have to haul her up. The faster the better.”

  The dim light from the ceiling crack faded, and then they were in a very dark tunnel. Readis laid an arm across him, signalling for silence. For a long while they listened and heard nothing but the dripping of the water down damp walls—until the silence was abruptly broken by a soft moan that reverberated hollowly, as if from a long way down.

  Suddenly a light blazed and Jayge crouched in alarm, but as his eyes adjusted, he realized that Readis had lit a dim, almost spent glowbasket. And in the faint light he could see the yawning open pit before them.

  “Talk to her, Jayge,” Readis murmured. “I’m rigging a loop at the end. She’s to put it under her arms and hang on tight.”

  “Aramina,” Jayge said tentatively, cupping his mouth with both hands to focus the sound as he bent over the awesome edge of the pit. “Aramina, it’s Jayge.”

  “Jayge?” His name began as a scream and ended in a gasp.

  “Tell her not to let everyone know,” Readis said acidly.

  “Quietly, Mina,” he called, the nickname he had misunderstood that day near Benden Hold coming easily to his lips. “You’re found. A rope is being lowered.” He turned to Readis. “Can’t we send the glow down? She can bring it back up with her.”

  “Good thinking.” Readis slipped the noose around the glowbasket and lowered it quickly hand over hand down the pit.

  They could see the light descending deeper and deeper. Just when Jayge was beginning to think that the pit was bottomless, the glow stopped.

  “Put the loop under your arms,” he told Aramina. “We’re going to pull you up fast, so hang tight.”

  “Help me, Jayge,” Readis said. Jayge gripped the rope along with Readis, and it writhed in their hands as she secured it under her arms. Then they began to pull.

  Aramina was not heavy, but the coarse rope was slimy, and Jayge was afraid of losing his grip. He dug his fingers into the hemp. When the rough upward movement slammed her into the pit wall, she grunted, and Jayge winced. But steadily the light came closer. Finally Jayge leaned down and grabbed her arm, nearly wrenching it from the socket as he heaved her up over the edge. She clung to him, shuddering and panting. He was lifting her farther away from her ghastly prison when they heard Readis’s gasp of warning. A black shape launched itself on Readis, and before Jayge could put out a hand, two bodies went hurtling into the pit, the screams reverberating in horrifying echoes that made Jayge clasp the girl tightly to him, trying to blot the sound from her ears.

  “Come. If Thella’s near…” He tugged the shaking girl to her feet, grabbed the dying glow, and started back the way they had come.

  Aramina stumbled but refused to fall. Jayge could feel the tremors shaking her. She was sobbing, and her fingers dug into the flesh of his hand. He hated to ask her to crawl up the cramped dark burrow.

  He turned to her to tell her to take the glow and go first. It was only then that he realized that she was not just slimy—she was naked. Her shivering was more from the cold than from reaction or stress, and she would tear the skin from her bones crawling up that tunnel. He stripped off his jacket and thrust her arms into it. It covered her to the hips. Then he pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips to wrap around her knees and feet.

  “That’ll help,” he said. “Push the glow in front of you. It’s not far to the surface. Watch your head. Go!”

  An eerie moan resounded down the tunnels and corridors of the ghastly cavern system. The weird sound was enough to send her to her hands and knees to crawl, sobbing with fright, into the burrow. Jayge fervently hoped that it had been Thella who had fallen down the pit with Readis.

  Somehow they made it out into the twilight. Enough of the glow remained to light their way down the slope to easier ground. He managed to locate the pack he had left behind when he had set out to investigate the rockslide and unstrapped the blanket to put around her before fumbling for his numbweed jar.

  “Can you call the dragons now and get them to come take us away from here?” he asked, slathering numbweed on her legs and feet.

  “No.”

  He looked up at her face, confused. “Say again?”

  “No, I will not call dragons. If I didn’t hear them, this never would have happened to me. Jayge,” she said, putting her cut and bruised hands on his arm, “you can’t know what it’s like. I can hear them now. Particularly Heth, who’s crying inside. I’m crying, too, but I won’t answer him. I can’t! They’d make me stay at Benden Weyr, and I’ll hear, and hear, and hear!” She was weeping, her fingers flexing on his arms. “It was better for a while at Benden Hold. There was only the watchdragon, and he was asleep so much of the time. If I heard the sweepriders talking, I would get very busy and pretend not to hear them.”

  “But—you hear dragons! You belong in the Weyr.”

  “No, Jayge, I don’t think I do,” she said, daubing numbweed on a bleeding knee. “Not the way I am. Oh, I stood on the Hatching Ground, and the little queen made a straight-line dash for Adrea. A very nice girl and welcome to Wenrenth. And I’m very fond of K’van and Heth. They saved me from Thella once already. You saved me this time. You went all that long way to Benden Weyr, and they didn’t believe how serious it all was. Yes, I heard them talking about you. But I had two strong fine men with me when I went to Gardilfon’s.” She took a long shuddering breath. “I saw Dushik break Brindel’s neck and Thella slit Hedelman’s throat. They liked doing it. The third man had the grace to look sick. Was he helping you get me out of there? Was it Thella or Dushik that dropped?” Her voice was low and urgent, but she sounded rational.

  “I don’t know who took Readis down, and I’m not going back to look. We’d better get out of this vicinity. If you won’t call the dragon…” Looking down at her he saw that she had set her jaw resolutely, so he shrugged. He slung the pack over his shoulder and picked her up.

  At first, she seemed to weigh nothing in his arms, but gradually he tired. He had to rest several times. “I’m trying to think light,” she said once, and he patted her shoulder reassuringly.

  The glow died just as they reached the cave he had been looking for. He stumbled in, nearly dropping her. It was little more than a hollow where a large boulder had once lodged, but it was free of snakes and would do for shelter for the night. When he had shared his rations with her and made her take several long pulls at his spirit bottle, he got her to wrap up in the blanket.

  “You get a good sleep and it’ll all seem better in the morning,” he said, echoing his long-dead mother’s advice.

  “At least there’ll be light,” she said in a composed voice. Then she yawned, and very shortly he heard her breathing slow to a sleeping rhythm.

  Jayge was accustomed to night vigils, but he wished that a dragonrider would land nearby whom he could shout to, or that he dared risk a fire without being sure if Thella had died down in that pit. And most earnestly he wished that Het
h or Ramoth would hear him shouting at them with his mind.

  Aramina’s cries roused him. She was thrashing about, sobbing, and she fought at first when he tried to quiet her. He had to wake her up with a rough shake, and then she collapsed against him, panting.

  “See, there’s the moon,” he said, slewing about so she could see Belior setting. Her face was ghastly in the pale light, but he was relieved to see her taking deep breaths to calm herself. “You’re not in the pit, you’re not in the pit!”

  “Giron! He was there! Chasing me. Only he suddenly turned into another man, much bigger, who turned into Thella. And then I woke up in the pit again. And the other voice I keep hearing, that had turned into a roar. It had been such a comfort to me, much more than just hearing dragons, even if I couldn’t understand what it was saying to me. But it was there, just as lonely as I was and wanting so much to be with someone. Only it wasn’t comforting in my dream. It was screaming at me.”

  He comforted her, murmuring soothing nothings and not arguing with her irrational words. He rocked her in his arms, and eventually she fell asleep again, twitching and moaning occasionally. Her movements served to wake him up when he dozed off, but eventually both slept quietly.

  In the morning he found her sitting cross-legged, gazing out at the rain that cascaded down like a waterfall over the cave mouth. She had built a little dam of earth and stones to keep the water from running into their shelter.

  “Jayge, you must help me,” she said when he hunkered down beside her. “I cannot go back to either Hold or Weyr.”

  “Where will you go? To Ruatha? I heard Lord Jaxom gave your father back his old place.”

  She was shaking her head before he finished his sentence. “They would be appalled.” She gave a weary smile. “Me hearing dragons embarrassed them enough. To think I would leave the Weyr would crush them.”