“Casualties?”
Thirty-three, mostly minor scorings. Two badly damaged wings. Four riders with cracked ribs and three with dislocated shoulders.
“Ribs and shoulders! That’s bad flying!” Yet Moreta was relieved at the total. But two wings! She hated having to mend wings, but she’d had lots of practice.
B’lerion hails us. Bronze Nabeth flew well. Orlith was admiringly craning her neck as the High Reaches bronze matched their speed and level. B’lerion waved his arm in greeting.
“Ask him if he had a good Gather.” Any diversion not to think of the Thread-laced wings to be mended.
He did. Orlith sounded amused. Kadith says we should get back to the injured wings at the Weyr.
“First ask B’lerion what he’s heard of the epidemic.”
Only that is exists. Then she added, Kadith says Dilenth is very badly injured.
Moreta waved farewell to B’lerion, wishing that Sh’gall or Kadith, or both, did not consider B’lerion and Nabeth rivals. Perhaps they were. Orlith liked B’lerion’s bronze, and Moreta thought it would be far more pleasant spending the Interval with someone as merry as B’lerion.
“Take us back to the Weyr.”
The utter still coldness of between acted as a bracer to Moreta. Then they were low over the Bowl, Orlith having judged her reentry as fine as that blue weyrling had earlier. The ground was studded with wounded dragons, each surrounded by a cluster of attendants. The piercing cry of wounded and distressed dragons filled the air and imbued Moreta with the most earnest desire to reduce their keening to a bearable level.
“Show me Dilenth,” Moreta asked Orlith as the queen swung in over the Bowl.
His main wingsail is scored. I will soothe him! Pity deepened the queen’s tone as she circled as close as was prudent above the thrashing blue. Riders and weyrfolk were trying to apply numbweed to the injured wing, but Dilenth was writhing with pain, making that impossible. As Orlith obligingly hovered, Moreta had a clear view of the crippled wing, its forestay tip flopping awkwardly in the dust.
It was a serious injury. From elbow to finger joint, the leading edge of Dilenth’s wing had taken the brunt of the havoc wrought by Thread. The batten cartileges had wilted and were crumpled into the mass of the main wingsail; Moreta thought there was also some damage to the fingersail between the joint and batten ribs, where Thread had glanced off as Dilenth had tried to take belated evasive action. More damage marred the lub side of the wing than the leech. The spar sail appeared relatively whole. Nor could she discern if the finger rib was broken. She devoutly hoped it wasn’t for without ichor to the head of the mainsail, the dragon might never regain full use and fold of his wing.
Dilenth’s injury was one of the worst a dragon could sustain since both the leading and trailing edges of the mainsail were involved. Healed wing membrane might form cheloid tissue and the aileron would become less sensitive, imbalancing the dragon’s glide. First Moreta would have to sort the puzzle pieces of the remaining tissue and support it, hoping that there was enough membrane left to structure repair. Dilenth was young, able to regenerate tissue, but he would be on the injured list for a long time.
Moreta saw Nesso bustling about in the group attending Dilenth. His rider, F’duril, was doing his best to comfort the dragon but Dilenth continually broke loose from his rider’s grip, flailing his head about in anguish.
Orlith landed just in front of the blue dragon. As soon as her hind feet met the ground, Moreta released the fighting straps and slid to the ground. Weyrlings appeared to take the agenothree tank, her outer gear.
“Where’s redwort to wash in?” she demanded loudly, more to mask the sound of the keening that beat between her ears. Orlith, control him!
The intensity of Dilenth’s cries dwindled abruptly as the queen locked eyes with the blue. His head steadied and he submitted to his rider’s ministration. The relieved F’duril alternately entreated Dilenth to be brave and thanked Orlith and Moreta.
“Half the noise is shock,” Moreta said to F’duril as she scrubbed her hands in the basin of redwort. The solutions stung her cold fingers.
“The lacerations are major. The wingsail is nothing but rags and shreds,” said Nesso at her elbow. “How will it ever mend?”
“We’ll just see,” Moreta replied, resenting Nesso for airing the doubts she herself entertained. “You can get me that bolt of fine wide cloth and the thinnest basket reeds you’ve got. Where’re Declan and Maylone?”
“Declan’s with L’rayl. Sorth took a mass of Thread on his withers. Maylone is somewhere or other with a dragon.” Nesso was distracted by so many urgent requirements. “I’ve had to leave the injured riders with only their weyrmates and the women to tend them. Oh, why did Berchar have to be sick?”
“Can’t be helped. Haura will be back shortly to help you with the riders.” Moreta took a firm hold on her frustration and banished impatience as a useless luxury. “Just get me the cloth and the basket reeds. I’ll want my table here, in front of the wing. Send me someone with steady hands, oil, and thin numbweed, then get back to the riders. And my needle case and that spool of treated thread.”
As Nesso rushed off, shouting for helpers, Moreta continued her survey of the injured wing. The main wing-bones were unscathed, which was a boon, but so much numbweed had been applied that she couldn’t see if ichor was forming. Fragments of the leading sail dangled from elbow and finger joint. There might just be enough for reconstruction. Any shred would help. She flexed her fingers which were still stiff from the cold flying of Fall.
Dilenth’s keening was muted but now another sound, a human one, penetrated her concentration.
“You know I had my feeling! You know we’ve both been uneasy. I thought we weren’t flying true!” F’duril’s litany of self-reproach reached Moreta. “I should have held us between a breath longer. You couldn’t help yourself. It isn’t your fault, Dilenth. It’s mine! You’d no air space to dodge that Thread. And I let you back in too soon. It’s all my fault.”
Moreta rounded on the man to shock him out of his hysterics. “F’duril, get a grip on yourself. You’re upsetting Dilenth far more than—” Moreta broke off, suddenly noting the Threadscores on F’duril’s body. “Has no one tended you yet, F’duril?”
“I made him drink wine, Moreta.” A rider in soot-smeared leathers appeared from Dilenth’s left side. “I’ve got numbweed dressings for him.”
“Then apply them!” Moreta looked around in exasperation. “Where is Nesso now? Can’t she organize anything today?”
“How bad is Dilenth?” the rider asked while capably slitting away the remains of F’duril’s riding jacket. Moreta now identified the slender young man as A’dan, F’duril’s weyrmate. He spoke in a low worried voice.
“Bad enough!” She took a longer look at A’dan, who was coping deftly with the dressings he wrapped about F’duril. “You’re his weyrmate? Have you a steady hand?”
A solicitous weyrmate was preferable to no help, and certainly more acceptable to Moreta than Nesso’s moaning and pessimistic outlook. Beads of ichor were beginning to seep through the numbweed on Dilenth’s wingbone.
“Where are my things, Nesso?”
Moreta had taken but one pace toward the cavern to collect her requirements when the stout Headwoman floundered into view, laden with reeds, a pot of thin numbweed liquid, the jug of oil, and Moreta’s needle box. Behind her marched three weyrlings, one of them carrying a hide-wrapped bolt of cloth as tall as himself and a washing bowl while the other two wrestled the table close to the blue dragon’s wing.
“Oh, a long time healing if it heals whole,” Nesso moaned in a dismal undertone while shaking her head. She took one look at the expression on Moreta’s face and scurried off.
Moreta took a long, settling, breath then exhaled and reached for the oil. As she began coating her hands against contact with numbweed, she issued instructions to A’dan and the weyrlings.
“You, D’ltan.” She pointed to th
e weyrling with the strongest-looking hands. “Cut me lengths of that cloth as long as Dilenth’s leading edge. A’dan, wash your hands with this oil and dry them, then repeat the process twice, just patting your hands dry after the third. We’ll have to oil our hands frequently or get benumbed by the weed as we work. You, M’barak.” Moreta indicated the tall weyrling. “Thread me needles with this much thread”—she held her oily hands apart to the required length—“and keep doing ’em until I tell you to stop. You, B’greal”—she looked toward the third boy—“will hand me the reeds when I ask for them. All of you wash your hands in redwort first.
“We’re going to support the wing underneath with cloth stitched to the wingbone and stretched from the dorsal to the finger joint,” she told A’dan, watching his face to see if he understood. “Then we must—if you have to get sick, A’dan, do it now and get it over with. Dilenth and F’duril both will find it reassuring to have you helping me. F’duril knows you’ll be the most loving and gentle nurse that Dilenth could have. A’dan!” She spoke urgently because she needed his help. “Don’t think of it as a dragon wing. Think of it as a fine summer tunic that needs mending. Because that’s all we’ll be doing. Mending!”
Her hands oiled, she took the fine-pointed needle from the weyrling’s hand, willing A’dan to fortitude. Orlith?
I can only speak to his green, T’grath, Orlith said a bit tartly. Dilenth needs all my concentration and none of the other queens has returned to help.
In the next second, however, A’dan shook himself, finished washing his hands, and turned resolutely to Moreta. His complexion was better and his eyes steady though he swallowed convulsively.
“Good! Let’s begin. Remember! We’re mending!”
Moreta jumped up on the sturdy table, beckoned him to follow, and then reached for the first length of cloth. As Moreta made her first neat tacks along the dorsal, Dilenth and A’dan twitched almost in unison. With Orlith’s control and all the numbweed on the bone, Dilenth could not be experiencing any pain. A’dan had to be anticipating the dragon’s reaction. So Moreta talked to him as she stitched, occasionally asking him to stretch or relax the fine cloth.
“Now I’ll just fasten this to the underside. Pull to your left. The leading edge of the wing will be thick—no help for it—but if we can just save enough of the mainsail . . . There! Now, A’dan, take the numbweed paddle and smear the cloth. We’ll lay on it what wingsail fragments remain. This is a very fragile summer tunic. Gently does it. M’barak, cut me another length. That tendon’s been badly stretched but luckily it’s still attached to the elbow. Orlith, do stop him flicking his tail. Any movement makes this operation more difficult.
Moreta was grateful when Dilenth’s exertions abruptly ceased. Probably another queen had arrived to support Orlith. She thought she saw Sh’gall but he didn’t stop. He wasn’t attracted to this aspect of Threadfall.
“Retaining that tendon is a boon,” she said, realizing that her verbal encouragement to A’dan had faltered. “I’ll have those reeds now, B’greal. The longest one. You see, A’dan, we can brace the trailing edge this way, using gauze as support. And I think there’re enough fragments of membrane. Yes. Ah, yes, he’ll fly again, Dilenth will! Slowly now, very gently, let’s lay the tatters on the gauze. M’barak, can I have the thinner salve? We’ll just float the pieces . . . so . . .”
As she and A’dan patiently restored the main wingsail, she could see exactly how the clump of Thread had struck Dilenth. Had F’duril and the blue dragon emerged from between a breath earlier, F’duril would have been bowled off Dilenth by the searing mass. She must remember to point out to F’duril that good fortune had attended their reentry.
They retrieved more sail fragments than she’d initially dared believe. Moreta began to feel more confident as she stitched a reed to the tendon. In time the whole would mend although the new growth, overlapping the old, would be thicker and unsightly for seasons to come, until windblown sand had abraded the heavier tissue. Dilenth would learn to compensate for the alteration on the sail surface. Most dragons readily adapted to such inequalities once they were airborne again.
Dilenth will fly again, Orlith said placidly as Moreta stepped back from the repaired wing. You’ve done as much as you can here.
“Orlith says we’ve done a good job, A’dan,” she told the greenrider with a weary smile. “You were marvelous assistants, M’barak, D’ltan, B’greal!” She nodded gratefully to the three weyrlings. “Now, we’ll just get Dilenth over to the ground weyrs—and you can all collapse.”
She jumped down from the table and would have sprawled had A’dan’s hand not steadied her. His wry grin heartened her. She propped herself against the table edge for a moment. Nesso appeared, dispensing wine to Moreta first and then the others.
Dilenth, released from Orlith’s rigid control, began to sag on his legs, tilting dangerously to his right. Orlith reasserted her domination while Moreta looked around for F’duril.
“He’ll be no help to anyone,” Nesso observed sourly as they all watched the blue rider sinking slowly to the ground in a faint.
“It was the strain and his wound,” A’dan said as he rushed to his weyrmate.
Dilenth moaned and lowered his muzzle toward his rider.
“He’s all right, Dilenth,” A’dan said, gently turning F’duril over. “A little sandy—”
“And a lot drunk!” M’barak murmured as he signaled the other two lads to aid A’dan with F’duril.
“The worst is over now!” A’dan said with brisk cheer.
“He doesn’t know what worst is,” Nesso muttered gloomily at Moreta’s side as the blue dragon lurched away, supported on one side by A’dan’s Tigrath and K’lon and blue Rogeth on the other.
It took Moreta a few moments to realize that K’lon and Rogeth should not be about. “K’lon? . . .”
“He volunteered.” Nesso sounded peeved. “He said that he was fine and he couldn’t stand being idle when he was so badly needed. And he the only one!”
“The only one?”
Nesso averted her face from the Weyrwoman. “It was a command the Weyr could not ignore. An emergency, after all. He and F’neldril decided that he must respond to the drum message.”
“What drum message are you talking about, Nesso?” Abruptly Moreta understood Nesso’s averted gaze, She’d been overstepping her authority as Headwoman again.
“Fort Hold required a dragonrider to convey Lord Tolocamp from Ruatha to Fort Hold. Urgently. There is illness at Ruatha and more at Fort Hold, which cannot be deprived of its Lord Holder during such a disaster.” Nesso blurted out the explanation in spurts, peering anxiously up at Moreta to gauge her reaction. “Master Capiam is sick—he must be, for it is Fortine who replies to messages, not the Masterhealer.” Nesso grimaced and began to wring her hands, bringing them by degrees to her mouth as if to mask her words. “And there are sick riders at Igen, Ista, and many at Telgar. There’s Fall in two days in the south . . . I ask you, who will fly against Thread if three Weyrs have no riders to send?”
Moreta forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, absorbing the sense of Nesso’s babbling. The woman began to weep now, whether from the relief of confession or from remorse Moreta couldn’t ascertain.
“When did this drum message come?”
“There were two. The first one, calling for a conveyance for Lord Tolocamp, just after the wings left for Fall!” Nesso mopped at her eyes, appealing mutely to Moreta for forgiveness. “Curmir said we had to respond!”
“So you did!” Nesso’s blubbering irritated Moreta. “I see that you could not delay until we had returned from Fall. Surely Curmir responded that the Weyr was at Fall?”
“Well, they knew that. But F’neldril and K’lon were here—no, there”—Nesso had to find the exact spot near the Cavern—“so we all heard the drum message. K’lon said immediately that he could go. He said, and we had to agree with him, that since he had been ill of the fever, he was unlikely to contrac
t it. He wouldn’t let F’neldril or one of the weyrlings or the disabled take the risk.” Nesso’s eyes pleaded for reassurance. “We tried to ask Berchar about the danger of infection, but S’gor would not let anyone see him and could not answer for him. And we had to respond to Lord Tolocamp’s request! It is only right that a Lord Holder be in his Hold during such a crisis. Curmir reasoned that, in such an unusual instance, we were constrained by duty to assist the Lord Holder even if it meant disobeying the Weyrleader!”
“Not to mention the Masterhealer and a general quarantine.”
“But Master Capiam is at Fort Hold,” Nesso protested as if that sanctioned all. “And what will be happening at Fort Hold in Lord Tolocamp’s absence I cannot imagine!”
It was the happenings at Ruatha Hold that concerned Moreta more vitally, and the second drum message.
“What is this of sick riders? Did it come in on open code?”
“No, indeed! Curmir had to look it up in his Record. We did nothing about that. Not even forward it for it didn’t have the pass-on cadence. F’neldril and K’lon said you should know. There are forty-five riders ill at Telgar alone!” Nesso placed one hand on her chest in a dramatic gesture. “Nine are very ill! Twenty-two are ill at Igen and fourteen at Ista.” Nesso seemed obscurely pleased by the numbers.
Eighty-one riders ill of this epidemic? Despair and fear welled through Moreta. Riders ill? Her mind reeled. It was Fall! All the dragonriders were needed. Fort Weyr was down thirty in strength from the last Fall, and thirty-three from this one. It would be a full Turn before Dilenth flew. Why this? Only eight Turns remained in this Pass and then the riders would be free of the devastation that Thread wrought on dragons, themselves, and Pern. Moreta shook her head in an effort to clear her thinking. She ought to have paid more heed to Sh’gall’s agitated report of illness instead of discounting the truth because it was unpalatable. She knew that Master Capiam was not in the habit of issuing arbitrary orders. But riders were healthy, fit, less susceptible to minor ailments. Why should they, in their splendid isolation, pursuing their historic occupation, be vulnerable to an infection rampant in crowded holds, halls, and among beasts?
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