The Masterharper of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, Rob. I can hide in the shadows, but there’s too much of you . . .”

  “I’m going!” The harper was changing into old clothes, dark ones, warm ones, and he tossed a spare fur vest toward Nip, who was shivering with the midnight chill now that he was no longer moving.

  Robinton paused long enough in the kitchen to dump travel rations into a saddlepack and leave a brief note for Silvina, and then they were out the door, startling the watch-wher, who whined at their appearance and followed them the length of his chain.

  They roused the beastman and had him saddle Big Black for Robinton, and a fast Ruathan runner for Nip. They walked their mounts circumspectly so as not to rouse Hall and Hold, and then Nip pointed to the runnertrack which branched off from the main road, a track straighter and faster than the road. Robinton would apologize to the Station Master, and hoped they’d encounter no runners on their way. Once on the straight track, they put heels to their mounts. They ran at a pace that Robinton would have considered dangerous at any other time, but Black and Nip’s mount were surefooted and the road was a pale thin ribbon they could follow through the night.

  Riding and periodically walking their mounts to rest them, they made the Red River by early morning. Urging the tired animals, they kept them moving at whatever pace they could manage until they turned a bend in the road and saw Ruatha Hold ahead of them.

  Despairing, Robinton surveyed the hideous dawn-lit scene. Ropes still dangled from the fire heights of Ruatha Hold—ropes that had allowed Fax’s men to approach without arousing the watch-wher. Where had the watchman been? Robinton wondered. Or had he been bribed not to hear? Why had the watch-wher not given an alarm? A row of bodies lay crumpled on the stone of the courtyard. Long bloody lines showed that the dead had been dragged out of the Hold, down the steps, and to this resting place. Men were coming out of the Hold laden with clothing and the fine furniture that Lady Adessa had brought with her. He saw a knot of frightened people being driven from their cots into the beasthold. He saw men riding off in other directions on runners that had been taken out of the beasthold. Ruathan runners! The animals that Fax had coveted . . . and now had possession of. Worse still, as Robinton’s eyes returned constantly to the bodies in the courtyard, he noticed smaller ones among the adults and thought of the bright, pert Lessa. She’d’ve been no more than—what? Nine, ten, Turns at the most. He reeled in the saddle with nausea and fatigue and allowed Nip to urge him and Black farther into the shadows of their shelter.

  Distant shouts and a thunder made Robinton look back at the dreadful carnage. The fields were being emptied of their runners and these were being herded back to Fax’s beastholds. Groghe must be warned. So must Larad and Oterel. There was nothing Robinton and Nip could do here.

  They got the best speed possible out of their exhausted mounts on their way to the nearest of Groghe’s border checks, where they roused the startled guards and told them to light the beacons to spread the alarm. They changed to fresh mounts and sped back toward Fort Hold. There, while Nip charged up the stairs to the drum tower, Robinton banged on Groghe’s door, rousing not only the Lord Holder but the entire corridor.

  “Fax has invaded Ruatha Hold,” Robinton said, leaning against the doorpost to get breath enough to speak. The drums began to roll out their dreadful message. Nip hadn’t lost his touch with a drumstick.

  “What?” Groghe stared unbelieving at the MasterHarper. “He can’t have.”

  “He has and killed them all, even the children. I saw their bodies. I’ve warned your border men. The beacons are lit.”

  “Oh, Master Robinton, you do look awful,” Groghe’s wife said, guiding the harper to the nearest chair and sensibly getting him a cup of wine. “You don’t mean to tell me dear Lady Adessa’s dead, as well. Surely—” She broke off, seeing the answer in the bleakness of his expression. “Oh, how awful! How simply awful! You’re right to fear that man, Groghe.”

  “I don’t fear him, Benoria, I despise him!” Groghe unbuckled his belt and threaded a hefty dagger onto it before he girded himself again.

  “Oh, don’t, don’t, Groghe!” she cried.

  “I’ve got my eyes well and truly open about Fax, m’dear, and hiding from him is not an option!”

  “There’s nothing you can do, Groghe,” Robinton said, shaking his head. “By the time you can get there, he’ll have completed his looting and be on his way back to Nabol.”

  “Well, then, the guards he’ll have left at Ruatha shall see me and my men lining the border, MasterHarper, and know that they may not encroach on my lands.”

  “I’ll rouse the Hall. You’ll need as many men as you can muster,” Robinton said.

  “Not you, though,” Groghe said.

  Down the hall came Grodon, the current Fort Hold harper, already armed.

  “Good lad,” Robinton said, catching him by the arm. “Go to the Hall. I want every journeyman and apprentice, anyone who can ride and carry a sword to mount and go with Groghe. If anyone challenges this order . . .” He could not continue.

  Grodon gripped his shoulder. “No one will unless they’re too deaf to have heard the drums.”

  “Good man.” And Robinton watched him clattering down the hallway.

  Groghe was banging on doors to speed the mustering, and the place was alive with armed men and anxious women. Robinton laid his head against the back of the chair, his eyelids drooping.

  “Here.” Lady Benoria held up the limp hand in which he still held the cup. She filled it again, tears of distress marking her face. “Are you sure . . . about the . . . children?”

  He nodded. He would never forget those lifeless little bodies. How could Fax possibly claim Ruatha, too? Ah, and his heart sank. Lady Gemma.

  “Are you hurt?” Lady Benoria exclaimed, touching his arm in anxiety.

  He laid one hand on his heart, a dramatic gesture perhaps, but it certainly expressed the coldness that had seized him at the core of his being.

  “You should rest,” she said.

  “I am,” he had the strength to say and she went away and let him close his eyes.

  Silvina shook him awake. She and Oldive saw him down the stairs of Fort Hold and across what seemed an awfully wide court to the Harper Hall, and his bed. Sebell appeared, holding up a glowbasket to light their way up the stairs.

  “Nip?” he asked as Silvina and the lad pulled off his boots.

  “Took another mount and was gone. Looked like death warmed over,” Oldive said.

  “I made up some food for him,” Sebell said.

  “Good lad!” Robinton said, grateful once more for Sebell’s adroit assistance. He wondered where Nip would have gone and why, but it was too much to think about, and as he laid his head down, he realized that his cheeks were wet. The last thing he knew, Silvina was covering him with the fur. As if anything would ever cover over the memory of that early morning scene in Ruatha Hold!

  Fax had the country thoroughly stirred up. The major western Lord Holders, resolute Oterel, young Larad with Vendross at his side, Groghe, and Lord Sangel of South Boll, made an orderly march to Nabol to meet the grinning and unrepentant Fax and protest his usurpation of Ruatha Hold and the murder of the entire Bloodline. Robinton joined them with his senior Masters, who were now all too aware of the full tragedy at Ruatha. Nip’s report stated that not only the Lord, his Lady, and the children had been killed, but also anyone in the Holding who was known to have claimed any Ruathan Blood.

  In the cramped main Hall of Nabol, Fax, surrounded by contemptuous soldiery, listened to what they said and then told them that if they were not out of his Hold by nightfall, he would order them all slaughtered for trespass.

  No one doubted that he would implement that threat.

  “You are not Lord Holder of Nabol or Crom or Ruatha by any right, other than that of conquest,” Lord Sangel said, stiff with outrage but impressive with dignity. “You will usurp no more lands without full contest at arms.”<
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  Fax smirked, glancing at the grinning faces of his guards. “Anytime you like,” he said, obviously delighted at the prospect. “Is that all you came to say? Well, out with you then.”

  At a signal, his men began to advance on the group of Lord Holders and harpers.

  “Careful, you at the door,” Fax said, raising his voice. “Don’t want you trampled in the rush!”

  Sangel looked about to burst, Groghe was livid with rage, Oterel dead white; Vendross scowled and, beside him, young Larad managed to look resolute. With stately dignity they turned smartly about and walked in a measured tread out of the Hall, down the steps, and across the narrow courtyard to their waiting mounts. If the runnerbeasts tossed their heads, sidled, and shied, it was because their riders communicated their fury and humiliation to them. Big Black twice tried to rear and kicked out when another animal came close enough. Robinton was sure he would burst a blood vessel before they got halfway to the Nabol border.

  They crossed Ruatha without incident. Aware that they were being followed—and that they were to know they were being followed—They stopped only to rest and water their mounts, and eat travel rations from their saddles.

  What Robinton noticed, to keep his sanity, was the difference in the very atmosphere as soon as they had forded the Red River. Even the horses, weary though they were, seemed to pick up. Just at the last, as a final insult, their followers made a charge, which startled the last few runners crossing the river. Fax’s men lined the river, laughing and calling insults across the water. With those final reminders of their opprobrious rout ringing in their ears, the Lord Holders continued down the Fort road to the nearest border post.

  There, at last, they could give vent to their repressed feelings and argue that they should have come in force, with enough men to show Fax that they meant business about meeting any further aggression with equal force and its defeat.

  Robinton, food and drink in his hands, could no longer listen to such useless ranting and wandered off far enough so he did not have to hear a recapitulation of what ought to have been said, or done, or implied, or threatened. He felt that, considering the large contingent of armed men that Fax had around him, they had been lucky indeed not to have been harmed—except in pride and dignity. Such a delegation had been futile from the outset and only let them in for ridicule, but some show of protest had to be made! That much he knew. If only R’gul had been willing to let them ride dragons to Nabol, their retreat would not have been such a blow to their esteem. But R’gul had denied them the convenience of dragons, saying he knew too well what Fax’s opinion of dragonriders was and had no intention of jeopardizing another dragon and rider. Robinton had argued against confronting Fax at all. Not from a lack of courage, but from a desire to avoid what had happened: Fax’s contemptuous disregard of their condemnation. As if Fax cared a straw in the wind.

  “Bad idea all told,” a voice said at his elbow, almost causing him to drop the klah and his food. They were taken out of his hand by filthy fingers. “You can get more and I’m starving of the hunger. Haven’t had a drink in three days. Should have tried to persuade them out of such a meeting, Rob. Fax is still laughing.”

  “Where were you, Nip?” Robinton asked, regaining his composure. He should have known Nip would have witnessed the whole sorry episode.

  “Where I could see.” The spy shook his head as he gobbled food almost without chewing. He took a sip of the wine and swallowed his mouthful.

  “I’ll filch some more for your trip back,” Robinton told him. “That is, if you’re going back.”

  “Oh, I’m needed where I will be by morning more than ever, I assure you.” Nip crammed the rest of the roll into his mouth, rolling his eyes at his own greedy hunger and chewing vigorously. He took the last sip and handed the cup back to Robinton, almost regretfully. “There’s more where you got that, isn’t there?”

  “I’ll get more for you—and me—more,” Robinton said. He slipped back into the camp and helped himself to a skin, as well as a saddlebag full of travel meatroll. Everyone was so busy trying to air their own hindsight wisdom that no one noticed him sneaking in and out.

  “Here—” And he stopped, seeing Nip propped against a tree, fast asleep.

  He sat down, hoping the courageous little man would rouse to tell him what he had in mind. The gleam of Nip’s eyes had suggested that his devious mind had already thought of several interesting ways to harass Fax.

  Robinton was almost half asleep himself when he heard his name called. So he left the wineskin and the full bag of food and retracted his steps.

  CHAPTER XIX

  SOME GOOD DID come out of that disastrous confrontation with Fax. Mastersmith Fandarel withdrew all Masters from the “seven holds.” Other Craftmasters followed that example. Fax had been too busy congratulating himself over the acquisition of Ruatha Hold to realize what was happening. He complained bitterly, offering inducements to the Masters to return. Nor did he dare retaliate against those journeymen who remained: as many as could had slipped away before he knew they had left. Even the Masterminer at Crom had removed himself and set up a new headquarters for his Craft in one of the Smithcrafthalls at Telgar. Despite substantial rewards, Master Idarolan, who had succeeded Gostol as Masterfisher, refused to lay any keels for Fax to replace the ships that had so mysteriously disappeared from the High Reaches fishing villages. All that were left were small sloops or ketches, which were restricted in cargo space or range.

  The only Hall that did not withdraw skilled assistance was the Healer Hall. Masterhealer Oldive quietly stated that such a measure went against the purpose and grain of his Craft. He was respected for it, as were those of his Hall who remained to succor the ill and injured. And there were many who needed such help.

  “Fax hadn’t counted on the loss of Masters,” Robinton said, thoroughly pleased. Of course, harpers had long since been driven away or hunted down by Fax. Indeed, it had become almost a crime, Nip said, to admit to owning an instrument, much less playing or singing.

  “The man is determined to make life as miserable as possible. He’s succeeding rather well. A fact which will eventually go against him.”

  “We hope,” Robinton remarked drily.

  “Oh, wait and see,” Nip said with unusual optimism.

  “I’m waiting.”

  While the MasterHarper waited over the next five Turns, he busied himself improving all within his Hall. He asked Groghe for the best fighter of his guard, who was then to teach classes, from apprentice-level on up, in self-defense and when to run and hide and how to accomplish that with the least evidence of escape—though this last part did not sit well with the more self-confident young students. To Robinton’s surprise, Sebell turned out to be almost ferocious in the drills: only Saltor, the head guard, or his burly assistant, Emfor, would partner him.

  “Sebell’s amazing,” Robinton remarked to Saltor when Sebell had pinned Emfor to the mat in three moves.

  Saltor regarded him with amusement “It’s you he’s determined to defend, Master Robinton. Keep him at your side and you’ll never need to fear.”

  “Not that I can keep him from my side,” Robinton replied, wondering how he had managed to generate such devotion in the lad, kin though he was.

  “That goes for every one of ’em, you know,” Saltor continued, and Robinton felt decidedly uncomfortable. “Just as well, you ask me,” the guard added, then walked off to correct a wrestling hold.

  Sebell’s prowess was by no means limited to such physical skills. He soaked up sufficient expertise and abilities to gain his journeyman’s rank almost as quickly as his adored mentor had. Robinton reluctantly sent him for a Turn’s teaching in Igen Hold, and found out just how much he had come to rely on the lad and brought him back. As if Sebell could sense where Robinton needed help, the young journeyman assumed many duties so adroitly that both Masters and the older journeymen could not deny the MasterHarper his invaluable assistant.

  It was Sebell who sugge
sted a new role for young Traller, an exceedingly mischievous apprentice who sorely tried the patience of every Master in the Hall with his pranks and strategies to get out of any task he did not like. Traller never seemed to be to blame for boyish tricks . . . it was always someone else in the dorm. He was never there when work was assigned and always had a plausible excuse for such an absence. He could ride any runnerbeast in the beasthold, pin a fly to the wall with his dagger at a hundred paces, survive the best tricks of heavier lads on the wrestling mats, and he was totally without conscience. He possessed a lively wit, however, as well as an inventive mind for excuses. He was the personification of contrariness, and yet Robinton liked him, however often the boy was up before him for disciplinary action. He had had a good treble, lost when he hit puberty, and now his best musical skill was drumming—either in the tower, where he excelled, or on any surface that had any resonance. He drummed with his fingers—one of his dorm mates said he drummed with his toes at night against the bedstead— with sticks, and even upon occasion in the dining hall, with the thigh bones of a fowl.

  “It’s about Traller,” Sebell said one evening as Robinton was relaxing after dinner.

  “Ooooh,” Robinton groaned, “what’s he done this time?” He had run out of any useful disciplines to curb the lad.

  “I was thinking, Master, that he might do better training with Nip,” Sebell said, a sly smile on his face as he watched Robinton’s reaction to the suggestion. “It seems to me that every time Nip reports in he looks more gaunt and tired. He needs someone else—if only to run back here with messages for you.” When he saw that Robinton was considering the notion he added, “It’s not as if any one will ever control Traller, but all that energy could be useful to Nip.”

  “I think you’ve hit on a marvelous future for that young man, Sebell. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it myself.”

  Sebell chuckled. “You do have one or two other matters to worry about.”