The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century

by Harry Turtledove

  Old C’gan had the weyrlings lined up. She caught the envious eyes of the newest dragonriders at the barracks’ windows. They’d have time enough to fly a flaming dragon. From what F’lar had intimated, they’d have years.

  She shuddered as she stepped up to the weyrlings but managed to smile at them. She gave them their orders and sent them off, checking quickly with each dragon to be sure the riders had given clear references. The Holds would shortly be stirred up to a froth.

  Canth told her that there were Threads at Keroon, falling on the Keroon side of Nerat Bay. He told her that F’nor did not think two wings were enough to protect the meadowlands.

  Lessa stopped in her tracks, trying to think how many wings were already out.

  K’net’s wing is still here, Ramoth informed her. On the Peak.

  Lessa glanced up and saw bronze Piyanth spread his wings in answer. She told him to get between to Keroon, close to Nerat Bay. Obediently the entire wing rose and then disappeared.

  She turned with a sigh to say something to Manora when a rush of wind and a vile stench almost overpowered her. The air above the Weyr was full of dragons. She was about to demand of Piyanth why he hadn’t gone to Keroon when she realized there were far more beasts a-wing than K’net’s twenty.

  But you just left, she cried as she recognized the unmistakable bulk of bronze Mnementh.

  That was two hours ago for us, Mnementh said with such weariness in his tone, Lessa closed her eyes in sympathy.

  Some dragons were gliding in, fast. From their awkwardness it was evident they were hurt.

  As one, the weyrwomen grabbed salve pots and clean rags, and beckoned the injured down. The numbing ointment was smeared on score marks where wings resembled black and red etched lace.

  No matter how badly injured they might be, every rider tended his beast first.

  Lessa kept one eye on Mnementh, sure that F’lar would not keep the huge bronze hovering like that if he’d been hurt. She was helping T’sum with Munth’s cruelly pierced right wing when she realized the sky above the Star Stone was empty.

  She forced herself to finish with Munth before she went to find the bronze and his rider. When she did locate them, she also saw Kylara smearing salve on F’lar’s cheek and shoulder. She was advancing purposefully across the sands towards the pair when Canth’s urgent plea reached her. She saw Mnementh’s head swing upwards as he, too, caught the brown’s thought.

  “F’lar, Canth says they need help,” Lessa cried. She didn’t even notice, then, that Kylara slipped away into the busy crowd.

  F’lar wasn’t badly hurt. She reassured herself about that. Kylara had treated the wicked burns which looked to be shallow. Someone had found him another fur to replace the tatters of the threadbare one. He frowned, and winced because the frown creased his burned cheek. He gulped hurriedly at his klah.

  “Mnementh, what’s the tally of able-bodied? Oh, never mind, just get ’em aloft with a full load of firestone.”

  “You’re all right?” Lessa asked, a detaining hand on his arm. He couldn’t just go off like this, could he?

  He smiled tiredly down at her, pressed his empty mug into her hands, giving them a quick squeeze. Then he vaulted to Mnementh’s neck. Someone handed him a heavy load of sacks.

  BLUE, GREEN, BROWN and bronze dragons lifted from the Weyr Bowl in quick order. A trifle more than sixty dragons hovered briefly above the Weyr where eighty had lingered so few minutes before.

  So few dragons. So few riders. How long could they take such toll?

  Canth said F’nor needed more firestone.

  She looked about anxiously. None of the weyrlings were back yet from their messenger rounds. A dragon was crooning plaintively and she wheeled, but it was only young Pridith, stumbling across the Weyr to the feeding grounds, butting playfully at Kylara as they walked. The only other dragons were injured or…her eyes fell on C’gan, emerging from the weyrling barracks.

  “C’gan, can you and Tagath get more firestone to F’nor at Keroon?”

  “Of course,” the old blue rider assured her, his chest lifting with pride, his eyes flashing. She hadn’t thought to send him anywhere yet he had lived his life in training for this emergency. He shouldn’t be deprived of a chance at it.

  She smiled her approval at his eagerness as they piled heavy sacks on Tagath’s neck. The old blue dragon snorted and danced as if he were young and strong again. She gave them the references Canth had visualized to her.

  She watched as the two blinked out above the Star Stone.

  It isn’t fair. They have all the fun, said Ramoth peevishly. Lessa saw her sunning herself on the weyr ledge, preening her enormous wings.

  “You chew firestone and you’re reduced to a silly green,” Lessa told her weyrmate sharply. She was inwardly amused by the queen’s disgruntled complaint.

  She passed among the injured then. B’fol’s dainty green beauty moaned and tossed her head, unable to bend one wing which had been threaded to bare cartilage. She’d be out for weeks but she had the worst injury among the dragons. Lessa looked quickly away from the misery in B’fol’s worried eyes.

  As she did the rounds, she realized more men were injured than beasts. Two in R’gul’s wing had serious head damages. One man might lose an eye completely. Manora had dosed him unconscious with numb-weed. Another man’s arm had been burned clear to the bone. Minor though most of the wounds were, the tally dismayed Lessa. How many more would be disabled at Keroon?

  Out of one hundred and seventy-two dragons, fifteen already were out of action; some only for a day or two, to be sure.

  A thought struck Lessa. If N’ton had actually ridden Canth, maybe he could ride out on the next dragonade on an injured man’s beast, since there were more injured riders than dragons. F’lar broke traditions as he chose. Here was another one to set aside—if the dragon was agreeable.

  Presuming N’ton was not the only new rider able to transfer to another beast, what good would such flexibility do in the long run? F’lar had definitely said the incursions would not be so frequent at first, when the Red Star was just beginning its fifty-turn-long circling pass of Pern. How frequent was frequent? He would know but he wasn’t here.

  Well, he had been right this morning about the appearance of Threads at Nerat, so his exhaustive study of those old Records had been worthwhile.

  No, that wasn’t quite accurate. He had forgotten to have the men alert for signs of black dust as well as warming weather. As he had put the matter right by going between times, she would graciously allow him that minor error. But he did have an infuriating habit of guessing correctly. Lessa corrected herself again. He didn’t guess. He studied. He planned. He thought and then he used common good sense. Like figuring out where and when Threads would strike according to entries in those smelly Records. Lessa began to feel better about their future.

  Now, if he would just make the riders learn to trust their dragons’ sure instinct in battle, they would keep casualties down, too.

  A SHRIEK PIERCED air and ear as a blue dragon emerged above the Star Stone.

  “Ramoth!” Lessa screamed in an instinctive reaction, hardly knowing why. The queen was a-wing before the echo of her command had died. For the careening blue was obviously in grave trouble. He was trying to brake his forward speed, yet one wing would not function. His rider had slipped forward over the great shoulder, precariously clinging to his dragon’s neck with one hand.

  Lessa, her hands clapped over her mouth, watched fearfully. There wasn’t a sound in the Bowl but the flapping of Ramoth’s immense wings. The queen rose swiftly to position herself against the desperate blue, lending him wing support on the crippled side.

  The watchers gasped as the rider slipped, lost his hold and fell—landing on Ramoth’s shoulders.

  The blue dropped like a stone. Ramoth came to a gentle stop near him, crouching low to allow the weyrfolk to remove her passenger.

  It was old C’gan.

  Lessa felt her stomach he
ave as she saw the ruin the Threads had made of the old harper’s face. She dropped beside him, pillowing his head in her lap. The weyrfolk gathered in a respectful, silent circle.

  Manora, her face as always serene, had tears in her eyes. She knelt and placed her hand on the old rider’s heart. Concern flickered in her eyes as she looked up at Lessa. Slowly she shook her head. Then, setting her lips in a thin line, she began to apply the numbing salve.

  “Too toothless old to flame and too slow to get between,” C’gan mumbled, rolling his head from side to side. “Too old. ‘But dragonmen must fly/When Threads are in the sky…’” His voice trailed off into a sigh. His eyes closed.

  Lessa and Manora looked at each other in anguish. A terrible, ear-shattering note cut the silence. Tagath sprang aloft in a tremendous leap. C’gan’s eyes rolled slowly open, sightless. Lessa, breath suspended, watched the blue dragon, trying to deny the inevitable as Tagath disappeared in midair.

  A low moan sprang up around the weyr, like the torn, lonely cry of a keening wind. The dragons were uttering tribute.

  “Is he…gone?” Lessa asked, although she knew.

  Manora nodded slowly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she reached over to close C’gan’s dead eyes.

  Lessa rose slowly to her feet, motioning to some of the women to remove the old rider’s body. Absently she rubbed her bloody hands dry on her skirts, trying to concentrate on what might be needed next.

  Yet her mind turned back to what had just happened. A dragonrider had died. His dragon, too. The Threads had claimed one pair already. How many more would die this cruel Turn? How long could this one Weyr survive? Even after Ramoth’s forty had matured, and the ones she soon would conceive, and her queen-daughters, too?

  Lessa walked apart to quiet her uncertainties and ease her grief. She saw Ramoth wheel and glide aloft, to land on the Peak. One day soon, would Lessa see those golden wings laced red and black from Thread marks? Would Ramoth…disappear?

  No, Ramoth would not. Not while Lessa lived.

  F’lar had told her long ago that she must learn to look beyond the narrow confines of Hold Ruatha and mere revenge. He was, as usual, right. As Weyrwoman under his tutelage, she had further learned that living was more than raising dragons and spring games. Living was struggling to do something impossible—to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried!

  Lessa realized that she had, at last, fully accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and mate, to help F’lar shape men and events for many Turns to come—to secure Pern against the Threads.

  Lessa threw her shoulders back and lifted her chin high.

  Old C’gan had had the right of it.

  Dragonmen must fly

  When Threads are in the sky!

  And yet—how long would there be dragonmen?

  Worlds are lost or worlds are saved

  By those dangers dragon-braved.

  As F’lar had predicted, the attack ended by high noon, and weary dragons and riders were welcomed by Ramoth’s high-pitched trumpeting from the Peak.

  Once Lessa assured herself that F’lar had no serious injury, that F’nor’s were superficial and that Manora was keeping Kylara busy in the kitchens, she applied herself to organizing the care of the injured and the comfort of the worried.

  As dusk fell, an uneasy peace settled on the Weyr: the quiet of minds and bodies too tired, or too hurtful, to talk. Lessa’s own words mocked her as she made out the list of wounded men and beasts. Twenty-eight men or dragons were out of the air for the next Thread battle. C’gan was the only fatality but there had been four more seriously injured dragons at Keroon and seven badly scored men, out of action entirely for months to come.

  Lessa crossed the Bowl to her weyr, reluctant but resigned to giving F’lar this unsettling news.

  She expected to find him in the sleeping room but it was vacant. Ramoth was asleep already as Lessa passed her on the way to the Council Room, also empty. Puzzled and a little alarmed, Lessa half-ran down the steps to the Records Room, to find F’lar, haggard of face, poring over musty skins.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, angrily. “You ought to be asleep.”

  “So should you,” he drawled, amused.

  “I was helping Manora settle the wounded—”

  “Each to his own craft,” F’lar drawled. But he did lean back from the table, rubbing his neck and rotating the uninjured shoulder to ease stiffened muscles.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “So I thought I’d see what answers I might turn up in the Records.”

  “More answers? To what?” Lessa cried, exasperated with him. As if the Records ever answered anything. Obviously the tremendous responsibilities of Pern’s defense against the Threads were beginning to tell on the Weyrleader. After all, there had been the stress of the first battle; not to mention the drain of the traveling between times itself to get to Nerat to forestall the Threads.

  F’lar grinned and beckoned Lessa to sit beside him on the wall bench.

  “I need the answer to the very pressing question of how one understrength Weyr can do the fighting of six.”

  Lessa fought the panic that rose.

  “Oh, your time schedules will take care of that,” she replied gallantly. “You’ll be able to conserve the dragon power until the new forty can join the ranks.”

  F’lar raised a mocking eyebrow.

  “Let us be honest between ourselves, Lessa.”

  “But there have been Long Intervals before,” she argued, “and since Pern survived them, Pern can again.”

  “Before there were always six Weyrs. And twenty or so Turns before the Red Star was due to begin its Pass, the queens would start to produce enormous clutches. All the queens, not just one faithful golden Ramoth. Oh, how I curse Jora!” He slammed to his feet and started pacing, irritably brushing the lock of black hair that fell across his eyes.

  Lessa was torn with the desire to comfort him and the sinking, choking fear that made it difficult to think at all.

  “You were not so doubtful…”

  He whirled back to her. “…Not until I had actually had an encounter with the Threads and reckoned up the numbers of injuries. That sets the odds against us. Even supposing we can mount other riders to uninjured dragons, we will be hard put to keep a continuously effective force in the air, and still maintain a ground guard.” He caught her puzzled frown. “There’s Nerat to be gone over on foot tomorrow. I’d be a fool indeed if I thought we’d caught and seared every Thread midair.”

  “Get the Holders to do that. They can’t just immure themselves safely in their inner Holds and let us do all. If they hadn’t been so miserly and stupid…”

  He cut off her complaint with an abrupt gesture. “They’ll do their part all right,” he assured her. “I’m sending for a full Council tomorrow, all Hold Lords and all Craftmasters. But there’s more to it than just marking where Threads fall. How do you destroy a burrow that’s gone deep under the surface? A dragon’s breath is fine for the air and surface work but no good three feet down.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that aspect. But the fire pits…”

  “…Are only on the heights and around human habitations, not on the meadowlands of Keroon or on Nerat’s so green rainforests.”

  THIS CONSIDERATION WAS daunting indeed. She gave a rueful little laugh.

  “Shortsighted of me to suppose our dragons are all poor Pern needs to dispatch the Threads. Yet…” She shrugged expressively.

  “There are other methods,” F’lar said, “or there were. There must have been. I have run across frequent mention of the Holds organizing ground groups and that they were armed with fire. What kind is never mentioned because it was so well known.” He threw up his hands in disgust and sagged back down on the bench. “Not even five hundred dragons could have seared all the Threads that fell today. Yet they managed to keep Pern Thread-free.”

  “Pern, yes, but wasn’t the southern continent lost? Or did they just have their hands too ful
l with Pern itself?”

  “No one’s bothered with the southern continent in a hundred thousand Turns,” F’lar snorted.

  “It’s on the maps,” Lessa reminded him.

  He scowled, disgustedly, at the Records, piled in uncommunicative stacks on the long table.

  “The answer must be there. Somewhere.”

  There was an edge of desperation in his voice, the hint that he held himself to blame for not having discovered those elusive facts.

  “Half those things couldn’t be read by the man who wrote them,” Lessa said tartly. “Besides that, it’s been your own ideas that have helped us the most so far. You compiled the timemaps and look how valuable they are already.”

  “I’m getting too hidebound again, huh?” he asked, a half-smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

  “Undoubtedly,” she assured him with more confidence than she felt. “We both know the Records are guilty of the most ridiculous omissions.”

  “Well said, Lessa. So, let us forget these misguiding and antiquated precepts and think up our own guides. First, we need more dragons. Second, we need them now. Third, we need something as effective as a flaming dragon to destroy Threads which have burrowed.”

  “Fourth, we need sleep, or we won’t be able to think of anything,” she added with a touch of her usual asperity.

  F’lar laughed outright, hugging her.

  “You’ve got your mind on one thing, haven’t you?” he teased.

  She pushed ineffectually at him, trying to escape. For a wounded, tired man, he was remarkably amorous. One with that Kylara. Imagine that woman’s presumption, dressing his wounds.

  “My responsibility as Weyrwoman includes care of you, the Weyrleader.”

  “But you spend hours with blue dragonriders and leave me to Kylara’s tender ministrations.”

  “You didn’t look as if you objected.”

  F’lar threw back his head and roared. “Should I open Fort Weyr and send Kylara on?” he taunted her.