The Renegades of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  The first indication of Threadfall’s leading Edge was a darkening of the bright day. There was a noticeable shift to the rear of the cramped cave. Readis armed his flamethrower and stood across the opening. Incurious and unafraid, the dragonless man hunkered down behind him.

  Although every man could see that trailing Edge was flowing across the valley, Thella had to threaten Felleck and three others with her whip before they moved out of the cave. Readis had already signaled that their descent held no Thread horrors, and he and Giron were on their way down. Thella was furious that the others had not moved at her word. So much depended on being in position before the ground crew left Kadross Hold.

  But at last they had all made the descent and were safely hidden behind the ridge. She crouched where she had a clear view of Hold, beasthold, and the track that dropped down into the valley, the track the holders would soon follow.

  What was taking those wretched holders so long to organize themselves? Thread was well past. She could see no more dragonfire bursts in the sky. Then she heard the grate of metal and saw the hold door swing out, and she could not suppress her inadvertent gasp. Excitement raced through her veins, her senses heightened with a singing in her blood, and her hands reset themselves on dagger hilt and lash handle. She could feel the pounding of her pulses. She contained that energy as she counted the men and women who emerged from the safety of their hold. Good, they were trudging innocently out to do their duty, leaving behind one old uncle and two aunties to take care of the smallest children.

  When the ground crew were out of sight down the hilltrack, Thella gave the signal to move toward the beasthold. From her spies’ reports she knew that the holders fed and watered their animals before Fall. No one was likely to check until the ground crew returned late that evening. She watched her raiders advance, all of them keeping low and pausing behind cover just in case someone did open one of the shuttered windows.

  Dushik and Felleck reached the thick metal-clad door and carefully opened it just wide enough to admit them. Instantly the next group, five men led by Giron, slithered across the open ground and were safely inside. Thella joined the third group, and the fourth slid in behind with no trouble.

  ‘Just look at this,’ Felleck said, lifting handsful of the golden grain that they had come for. It was of good quality, Thella thought, noticing that no dust drifted away. Giron gave Felleck a prod in the ribs for unnecessary chatter. Felleck scowled, but he took the pail Giron gave him and began scooping grain into the sack that the dragonless man held open. The others worked in silence.

  The grain that was disappearing into sacks and out of Kadross beasthold would enable her to load her runner-beasts up with enough feed for raids at a safe distance from her main bases. She already had a large band of holdless folk to be fed and quartered that winter, but she needed more she could count on, strategically placed in the five Holds. Any dimwitted renegade could steal, but few could acquire exactly what they needed exactly when they needed it. Thella, Lady Holdless, could.

  When Dushik caught her arm, she realized that she had been distracted from the progress of the raid. The last of the sacks was filled. Most of her men had filed out, heading for shelter where they would wait out any alarm. She took one of the remaining sacks and heaved it with a practiced motion to her shoulder. Dushik grabbed two, then turned to help her secure the bars across the door. They moved as fast as they could to the rocks. The return climb to the cave took longer, but they were well below the far ridge when Thella heard the rumble of drums.

  ‘Calling Lemos Hold,’ Giron surprised her by saying. So far she had been the only one knowledgeable about drum messages.

  ‘Shards!’ Thella stopped, listening hard to the sequences. But the ridges distorted the sounds, so she could not make out the content of the message. She could guess, though. She wiped the sweat from her face, furious at having the theft discovered so soon. She would have to alter her plans, move more cautiously to deposit the grain where it was needed.

  Giron grunted. ‘No dragons’ll come looking today. Too tired,’ he said. Adjusting the sacks on his shoulder, he continued his descent.

  The next day, she had her raiders split up into groups of three and four, each group headed for a different destination. They had orders to try to hide the grain if they saw any signs of pursuit and then return to the main Hold by a circuitous route.

  ‘My minor holds are constantly being raided,’ Asgenar told T’gellan, bronze Monarth’s rider, who had conveyed the Lord Holder back to Lemos after the Fall. ‘Kadross is not the first to have suffered but probably the quickest to let me know.’ He grimaced, crumpling the drummed message in one fist as he strode to the map on the wall of his office. ‘Grain today, harness there, blankets stolen where they dried at a streamside, tools from a miner’s hold, seasoned timbers carefully stored in a cavern that the holder was certain no one knew about. Little things, but it’s no longer minor pilfering by the holdless. It’s well planned and executed, and it’s beggaring my small holders.’

  T’gellan scratched his head—though he kept his hair cropped short, his scalp still itched with sweat after a long Fall. He had been hoping to get himself and Monarth back to their weyr, and a bath, but Lord Asgenar was scrupulous in his duty to the Weyr, so T’gellan could not skimp the courtesies. He took another sip of the excellent mulled wine that had been served as soon as they walked into the Hold. The Fall—a fourth in the new pattern—had been right over Asgenar’s cherished forestry, and F’lar had borrowed extra riders from Igen and Telgar to be certain that the invaluable trees were adequately protected. There had been additional ground crews, conveyed in from ‘safe’ areas, to be sure that whatever Thread might possibly escape the dragonriders in the air would never burrow in the forest. It had been a very properly managed Fall, on the ground and in the air.

  ‘Kadross Hold?’ the dragonrider said. ‘And while they were all out on ground crew? Just grain?’ He joined Asgenar at the wall chart, noting the meticulous detail of the terrain, the contour and height of every ridge and hill, and the type and size of every forest plantation. He wished once again that Lords Sifer and Raid were half as well informed as Lemos’s young Holder.

  Asgenar laid his finger on the spot, then moved it so that T’gellan could see the tiny numbers jotted in the square of the hold complex. ‘No, not just grain. Half their winter’s supply. Ferfar received the grain only yesterday morning. I’d sent two escort riders—at the carter’s request. He’s had trouble with holdless raiders recently and was fearful of a longer unprotected trek.’

  ‘Someone spoke out of turn, d’you think? Or was the thief just lucky?’

  ‘Thieves. They emptied four barrels, so there had to be a good few in on this,’ Asgenar replied, gesturing for T’gellan to hold out his winecup to be refilled. ‘There have been too many—ah, how shall I put it?—timely thefts—to be good luck. These thieves know what they want and where to get it.’

  ‘And no doubt in your mind that Ferfar is honest?’

  ‘Not the day after receipt, with extra marks spent to insure safe delivery.’ Asgenar gave a snort of disbelief. ‘The escort saw no one on the track, coming or going. And with Threadfall, who’d be on a trail?’ He grimaced, having answered himself. ‘Clever thieves! With all the able-bodied members of the hold out on ground crew. We wouldn’t have known of it today, but Ferfar’s uncle needed something in the store and saw a spillage. He was on the drums immediately.’

  T’gellan frowned, and at first Asgenar thought that the bronze rider would prefer to ignore the report. Then T’gellan looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’ve asked Monarth to tell everyone still airborne to do a low-level return. If they see any movement or anyone traveling, they’ll get a closer look and report it to me. Tell me, have you any idea where the thieves’d be headed? Men heavily laden with sacks of grain won’t be able to move quickly or far.’

  ‘That’s another problem. All this part of Lemos, and well into Telgar—’ Asgenar pointe
d at the various-sized brown stars that dotted the map ‘—is pocked with large and small caves. We mark any new ones we discover. There’re probably plenty we haven’t found. But my foresters report recent fires and occasionally buried trail supplies in off-trail caves. Far too frequently to be coincidence.’ Asgenar rubbed at his face and then massaged the back of his neck. ‘I’m not of a suspicious nature, but there is a pattern, not in the raids themselves, but in what is stolen. Certainly more food and practical items than valuables. There are renegades somewhere in those mountains who are living very well without doing a stroke of work. I resent that. And so do my holders.’

  ‘Indeed, they should,’ T’gellan agreed warmly. Lemos Hold had generously tithed to the Weyrs even before Fall.

  ‘I don’t have enough guards or holders and foresters to keep any sort of a watch on so many caves. And I’m beginning to think that some of the holdless accused of theft were indeed, as they claimed, innocent.’

  T’gellan looked thoughtful. ‘How many such innocents do you have in safekeeping at the moment?’

  Asgenar grunted in disgust. ‘Far too many. You can’t turn whole families with toddlers away. And I need all the able bodies I can get to fill out ground crews.’

  ‘Any you could trust for light duty? Like doing regular rounds of the more likely caves for a while to see who turns up?’

  A smile replaced the anxiety on Asgenar’s face. ‘By the First Egg, T’gellan, I’m disgusted I didn’t think of that myself. What the holdless want most, after all, is a place to live and enough to eat. A minor holding in exchange for work well done. I can provide that,’ he added with a pleased smile.

  ‘I am perhaps far more aware of the problem,’ Master-harper Robinton said, peering around at the sober expression of the five assembled Lord Holders, ‘than any of you. My harpers keep me informed of major thefts so valuables can be restored. This list—’ Robinton flicked the sheets that Asgenar had compiled for him beforehand. ‘—is most unsettling.’ He paused briefly, to let his sympathy and concern be noticed. ‘I’m glad that you approached me on this rather than tax your Weyrleaders. It is essentially, I think you will agree, a holder problem and must not interfere with the primary responsibility of the Weyrs.’ He made a mental note of Sifer’s frown.

  ‘But the dragonriders would be invaluable in tracking down these renegades,’ Corman said, banging the table with his big fist, his rugged features stern.

  ‘In those copious free moments they have between Falls,’ Master Robinton replied drolly.

  ‘At T’gellan’s suggestion,’ Asgenar said to indicate that Benden Weyr was helpful, ‘I’ve put trustworthy holdless families in the caves nearest regular trader routes.’

  ‘And what good will that do?’ Sifer demanded. ‘They’d be in league with thieves. I don’t trust holdless men. Won’t have them hanging around in Bitra, you may be sure. Why, I ask you, are they holdless in the first place?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Laudey said, pointing a bony finger at the Bitran Lord Holder. ‘Because the elderlies and the crippled were turned out of their rightful places as soon as the Pass started, to make room for able-bodied men and women. Those caves on my eastern banks are full of that kind of holdless folk.’

  Sifer plainly did not approve of Laudey’s altruism.

  ‘You and your lady have been exceedingly generous,’ the harper said to Laudey.

  ‘My men have their orders,’ Laudey said with a tinge of defensiveness in his voice. ‘We don’t let just anybody shelter there.’

  ‘I’ll bet some renegades get in no matter how good your guards are,’ Sifer muttered. ‘But I want the men responsible for these raids found and punished. It’d be an example to others with any idea of making Threadfall an excuse for indiscriminate pilfering.’

  ‘It’s my opinion that we should be looking for a well-organized and well-informed band,’ Asgenar said. ‘They know what they want and they take it. We didn’t find so much as a speck of grain leading from the Kadross Hold the next morning. They had to have gone up the mountain and reached shelter somewhere, or they’d’ve been seen by T’gellan’s wing on their way home. Fifteen, twenty men would have been needed to carry that much grain. That raid was accomplished with clever planning, good information, and discipline.’

  ‘Then how do we track ‘em if not by dragonriders?’ Sifer asked. ‘Besides, the holdless are too spineless to do any of that.’ He pointed at the long list of thefts the Harper had set in the middle of the round table. ‘In fact, I’d lay odds against it being holdless.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially, across the table. ‘I’ll bet it’s those Old-timers, striking back at us across the sea, whipping away what they can’t tithe out of Hold and Hall.’ He peered around the table to gauge reactions.

  ‘I don’t think I’d take bets on that, Lord Sifer,’ Robinton said, his tone courteous. ‘When you consider that Benden dragonriders would know if any Oldtimers appeared in the north for any reason.’

  ‘Harper’s right, you know,’ Corman agreed, giving Sifer a cold and quelling look. ‘We’ve some advantage in Keroon, being wide open. You can generally see travelers a good distance off. My sons have been riding, at random, from hold to hold, and since they started that, we’ve had fewer incidents.’ He looked at Asgenar. ‘Wouldn’t work as well in your Hold, though, being up and down.’

  ‘Chased ‘em out of Keroon up into Bitra is what you’ve done,’ Sifer said in outrage, his face flushed.

  ‘Stop griping, Sifer,’ Laudey said with impatience. ‘Igen’s only across the river from Keroon, and the living’s easier—so I don’t think you’re as put upon as you think.’

  ‘There’s a very old saying,’ Robinton began, raising his voice to stop the exchange. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’ His devious smile was not lost on the others. Asgenar and Larad leaned forward attentively.

  ‘Catch what?’ Sifer looked scornful. ‘Not if the first one’s on to a good thing like this.’

  ‘Not a real thief, Lord Sifer,’ Robinton went on, ‘but a clever journeyman of mine with a knack of mixing in with all sorts of people. As Lord Asgenar said, the targets are all well chosen, and the raids show considerable familiarity with trade routes, unoccupied caves, and the routines and management of Holds and Halls.’ Because he was looking in Larad’s direction, the Harper noticed his fleeting look of apprehension and dismay.

  ‘He’d do well to start in those caves of mine,’ Laudey said, drumming his fingers irritably on the surface of die table. ‘All sorts of folk come and go, though, as I said before,’ he added defensively, ‘my guards keep order. The cave system is vast—lots of corridors and tunnels no one’s been bothered with. I did block up as many of the smaller entrances as I could, but I’ve had other priorities, you know.’

  ‘With as many as you’re sheltering, Laudey, there’d be someone to want a few marks in his hand for noticing irregularities or sudden prosperity,’ Asgenar said.

  ‘Nonsense, most of the holdless wouldn’t think twice about concealing a thief for a spill of his takings,’ Sifer said. ‘I’ve seen the way they operate myself.’

  Robinton raised his eyebrows in affected surprise, and Corman snorted since it was rather a joke that Bitrans drove bargains hard enough to be called cheats.

  ‘Then you’ll permit me to see what my journeyman can find out?’ Robinton scanned their faces. They wanted something done without extending their already strained resources. It was as well, he thought, that he had anticipated their agreement. In actual fact his spy was already in place, harper sources having informed him of the situation well in advance of the Lord Holders’ appeal. ‘I suggest that we keep this matter to ourselves, with no exceptions outside this room.’

  ‘You’ve got clever men in your Hall,’ Corman said, adding hastily, ‘and women.’ He was exceedingly fond of Menolly. ‘But what if he should find something going on in one of our Holds and needs our help?’

  ‘If he needs help, Lord Corman,’ the Harper said with a sly sm
ile, ‘then he’s not been as clever as he should be. Leave the matter with me for this cold season. There’s too much snow around for anyone needing to hide his tracks.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ Sifer muttered.

  Keita’s orders from Thella included reporting any break in the usual Hold routine. Keita did not know much more than that Lord Sifer had been away overnight, conveyed by a dragonrider to his destination, but she did hear that upon his return he ordered his warders to let him know of any traces of occupation in way-caves or sites, and in particular of any tracks on back trails. The Bitra drum tower had been busy, but she did not know what the messages were about, as they had not used an open code.

  Thella read and reread that message, almost pleased that she would have the challenge that the search would offer. Sifer did not worry her; his guards were more fond of gambling and prodding the holdless beyond Bitra’s borders. But he was more likely than Corman, Laudey, or Asgenar to drop useful information if he was irritated.

  Come to think of it, lately there did seem to be more sweep-riders doing low-level flights above the forested hills and ridges. She had not quite counted on that. She gave orders to keep travel to a minimum—her storerooms were well stocked, so that meant no hardship—and gave strict instructions that those who did move across open areas must cover their tracks as they went. Dushik, Readis, and Perschar carried those orders to her other bases. For a while she would lie low.