The Renegades of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  ‘I’ll get the hot water,’ Alda said when they had done all they could for Temma and Nazer. Sniffling back her tears, she went off to retrieve the pots she had thrown.

  Sorrowful bawling reminded Jayge and Tino that there were other considerations almost as important as Temma and Nazer. Of the two yokes hauling the big wagon, both off-siders were dead, their backbones hacked in several places. Their bodies had, fortunately, afforded some protection to their yoke mates; both were bleeding, but the cuts were superficial. Jayge and Tino could not shift the dead beasts, but they slapped numbweed salve liberally over the wounds of the survivors, poked some fellis into the beasts’ mouths, and hoped that would ease their torment.

  It was only then that Jayge and Tino heard Borgald’s loud complaint.

  ‘If the dragonrider saw this, he must help us,’ Borgald was shouting, repeating the words like a chant as he bent over his prized burden beasts, patting them here and there, oblivious to the blood pouring from severed arteries on to the gravelly roadway. ‘Do you see them coming, Jayge?’ Borgald raised a bloody hand to shield his eyes from the sun, peering forlornly at the sky.

  Jayge and Tino exchanged pitying looks and walked on, carefully avoiding the hand and foot of a man buried under a rock slide. The little milch beasts had been caught by it, too. Jayge wondered if maybe he and Tino should try to round up the animals he had been herding along the track. They would be scattered all over, maybe even slaughtered, along with half the train’s folk and burden beasts.

  ‘Jayge!’ Crenden came striding toward him, bloody but relatively sound. ‘Did that runner of yours come through this? Can you ride on to Far Cry and get help?’

  ‘Maybe this time a dragonrider will help,’ Jayge cried.

  ‘Dragonrider? What dragonrider?’ Crenden mopped at the cut over his eye. Irritated by the blood dripping down his face, he tore a strip off his shirt and wound it around his forehead. ‘If you and the runner are sound, don’t waste time.’ He paused, bending to examine a dead raider. ‘Dead. The ones they left are all dead. I saw that woman kill one herself, a man wounded in the leg.’ He kicked at the dead man. ‘No one’s going to tell us anything useful. Ride, boy. What are you waiting for?’

  Jayge swung up on Kesso, only then aware that his left leg was bleeding and it felt as if he had taken a wound across his right hip. He grunted as he settled in the saddle, and Kesso willingly darted forward.

  No sooner were they around the bend than a figure jumped into the track. Jayge reached for his dagger when the man waved both arms urgently, limping toward him. A wounded raider, escaping from Thella’s kindly knife?

  ‘Jayge, you’ve grown—but I knew you,’ the man said, and Jayge remembered the voice that had given the dragonrider alarm.

  ‘Readis, what in all the—’ His uncle? One of Thella’s marauders?

  ‘Never mind that, Jayge,’ Readis said, hanging on to the stirrup leather, keeping one hand on Kesso’s shoulder to prevent the restive beast from ramming him. ‘I’d no idea it was Crenden’s train we were ambushing. She told me another name. I didn’t even know you were back on the road again. Believe me, Jayge! I’d never hurt my own Bloodkin.’

  ‘Well, your friends,’ Jayge replied, letting scorn edge his voice and seeing his uncle wince, ‘have damned near done in your sister, Temma. Remember her? I don’t know who else is dead for sure, but we’ve lost almost every burden beast we owned. I counted four smashed wagons at least.’

  Readis gave a grim smile. ‘The only thing Thella fears is dragonriders.’ He scrambled up the bank, grabbing a bush to help himself to the top. ‘I did what I could. I’ve got to catch up. But tell them I tried to stop it once I knew who you were.’

  ‘Don’t try so hard the next time, Readis,’ Jayge yelled after him. The underbrush closed in after the hobbling man, and Jayge stared after him. So there had been no dragonrider in the sky! But he had to be grateful for the lie. ‘Come on, Kesso, we’ve got to get help.

  The only reason Maindy was so quick to respond to Jayge’s message was that the Far Cry holder needed the supplies the train was bringing. Why hadn’t the train set out patrols? Jayge did not mention the offer from Asgenar’s forester. Did Jayge know if the Weaver Hall’s shipment was safe? If not, there would be no cloth to make warm winter clothes. But even as Maindy rattled on with Why didn’t you? and What did they? he was organizing a rescue troop. He had ordered out the hold’s healer, three helpers including his own lady, and every able-bodied man in the hold. He had seen that supplies and enough rope and tackle to lift even the heaviest wagon from the riverbank were packed on to runners, and a half hour after Jayge came in, he was ready to ride out.

  ‘The dray beasts will take their own speed, but we’ll be all ready to hitch them up when they do arrive at the gap,’ Maindy said confidently.

  To Jayge’s utter astonishment, they returned to find dragons and riders helping Crenden and the saddened Borgald, still mourning his losses. A brown dragon was in the process of lifting a terrified burden beast from the river gorge back on to the track. It was battered, but apart from being scared into dropping and watering all the way up, it would probably recover. But its yoke mate was already being butchered.

  Jayge took care of his exhausted mount before he went to see Temma, who was lying, far too pale, in the wagon she had been protecting. Nazer, was there, holding her hand, his own wounds bound and his dark skin as bleached as Temma’s.

  ‘You’re back?’ Nazer asked, face and eyes dull. Jayge nodded. Nazer carefully placed Temma’s hand down on the blanket and patted it tenderly. ‘I’ll clean you up. Raiders’ blades often got snake glob on ‘em.’

  When he emerged from Nazer’s rough but thorough measures, Jayge was feeling no more pain, and his head was only a little dizzy from the fellis draught Nazer had made him swallow. He insisted on going with Maindy’s troops and the green and blue dragonriders who intended to follow the tracks of the retreating raiders. Sufficient bloodstains had been found leading up the hill to warrant a search. Wounded men would not be able to travel fast or far.

  But that hope ended when they found the bodies of six men and the toothless woman with their throats cut. Their wounds had all been dressed, and they had probably been killed after they had been dosed with fellis. Jayge did not know whether he was glad, or sorry, that Readis was not one of the dead.

  It was when the patrol began shifting the bodies to a shallow cave for interment that Jayge spotted the tight roll of sheets. He scooped it up before someone trampled it into the bloody ground.

  It was strange enough to find sheets of Bendarek’s precious wood-pulp leaves under a raider corpse, but examining the roll, Jayge had more shocks to absorb. Clearly written in a good clear hand was the message, ‘Deliver to Asgenar.’ The roll was neither sealed nor tied, and Jayge had no compunctions about taking a closer look.

  What he found was artwork—sketches of people. He nearly dropped the package when he uncovered a likeness of his uncle. And there were more, including ones of Thella in arrogant poses; Giron, his face more startlingly empty than it had looked in person; and others, two of whom Jayge realized were among the dead. Dropping to one knee, Jayge surreptitiously sliced away his uncle’s likeness from the page. Then he rolled the whole thing up as tight as he could and called out in surprise.

  ‘Maindy, I think you should have charge of this,’ he said, holding it out.

  After one glance, Maindy shoved it into his jacket, frowning. Jayge got very busy as far away from the holder as possible. But the incident added to the other puzzles he had to try to piece together once he got back to the ambushed camp.

  Who could he talk to? Temma was holding her own, according to Nazer, but the man looked so distressed that Jayge held his tongue. He could not tell his father; so it would have to wait until he could talk to Temma. But on the long tramp back, Jayge decided that he owed Readis his silence. He was certain that if Readis had not raised a false alarm, the raiders would have killed them all.
>
  Why? Because Jayge had not been helpful that day at the sky-brooms? Or because Armald had? That poor old clod was dead. Temma and Nazer had certainly been savagely attacked. Had Thella been after them in particular? Jayge would bet a Bitran any odds that the raid had been punitive. Most of the train’s goods had been bulky items, hard to pack up that slope and into the hills. And it was not as if the area was cave-pocked, where goods could have been stashed temporarily. Thella had been out to destroy, not loot. Why? She would have been caught long since if she went after every wagoneer who answered her indiscreetly.

  And what about those sketches, addressed to Lord Asgenar and cleverly left behind to be discovered? Clearly someone in Thella’s camp was not her ally, and that was some consolation to Jayge as he listened that night to Temma’s fevered breathing.

  It was several days before the train could move out again. Maindy had to send back for wagons to take the loads from the ruined vehicles of the traders, and more wheels were called for to replace those damaged by the slides. All but one wagon left the site of the ambush, and twelve trader graves remained.

  VII

  Lemos Hold, Southern Continent, Telgar Hold, PP 12

  As much to escape wintering at Far Cry Hold as to pursue his own search, Jayge hired himself and Kesso out to one of Lord Asgenar’s roving troops. Temma and Nazer were envious, vowing to join him as soon as their wounds healed. Jayge tried to sound encouraging about that, but he had overheard the hold healer talking to Lady Disana outside the temporary infirmary and knew that it would be a long while before either recovered.

  Crenden proved more resilient than Borgald over their losses—and Maindy, unlike Childon of Kimmage, was willing to strike a fair deal with the two trader captains. Replacing the dead animals would have to wait until spring and would take almost all their available marks. But in return for reasonable work in the hold, Crenden and Borgald would be allowed time and resources—including the assistance of the hold’s carpenter and Smithcraft journeyman—to repair their damaged wagons. Borgald, Crenden, and their wives sat at the high table for the evening meal, and Maindy consulted them often. So when snow blanketed the valley, the traders willingly helped Maindy’s workmen finish the interiors of extensions built that summer. Finally Borgald began to take an interest in the children orphaned by the raiders, and although his smile faltered when he inadvertently looked about for his son, Armald, he began to recover. Crenden, on the other hand, continued to brood over an attack which seemed to him to be totally unprovoked.

  Jayge decided that telling his father of his own suspicions would do nothing to improve the older man’s depression.

  Jayge went off with the troop without having had the opportunity to tell Temma about Readis, and still pondering the significance of the sketches he had found so fortuitously. He assumed that one of Thella’s wounded had dropped the roll, and it amused him to think that dead men could tell tales. Though he had not had much time to study the sketches, the faces were vividly burned into his memory. Some looked to have been more hurriedly executed than others, but all had been drawn with a clever economy of line capturing pose and character, and Jayge was certain that he would recognize every one of them, although he could name only Thella, Giron, and Readis. Thella was the one most frequently drawn, in different poses and angles and, in a few cases, in what Jayge realized were disguises. At night Jagye rehearsed those faces, all but the six dead, in his mind. If he saw any one of them, he would know them. He wondered what Asgenar had made of the sketches.

  That first evening on the track from Far Cry Hold, once the stewpot was heating over the fire and the men were unrolling their sleepbags, the troop leader, a forester whom everyone, with varying degrees of respect and admiration, called Swacky, came over to Jayge. Swacky was a bull-necked man with massive arm and chest muscles from twenty Turns of logging; he had a bit of a belly on him from drinking ale whenever he could get it and eating huge amounts of food, but he was nimble-footed and long-eyed, with a sparse fringe of brown hair and a rough-featured, long-jawed face. When the men had been gathering wood for their cave fire, Jayge had seen Swacky throw an axe at a piece of wood, splitting it neatly down the center. He was told, and he had no trouble believing it, that Swacky could axe wherries out of the sky. The burly man wore a variety of blades, ranging from light throwing hatchets to the two-handed axe strapped to his saddle.

  To Jayge’s complete surprise, Swacky thrust a wad of well-thumbed sheets at him. ‘Memorize these faces. Them’s who we’re lookin’ for. Any or all. Recognize any from your brush at the ravine?’

  ‘Only the dead ones,’ Jayge said, but he studied each face carefully, matching it up with his memory. What he held were copies, executed so hastily that they had none of the vitality of the original sketches.

  ‘How’d you know which was dead?’

  ‘I was with the trackers when they found the six with their throats slit. That Telgar woman…’

  Swacky caught Jayge’s shoulder in a painful grip. ‘How’d you know that?’ He had lowered his voice, and his expression warned Jayge to keep his answers soft.

  ‘Armald, Borgald’s son, one of those that got chopped down, recognized her when she met us.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Swacky said and sat, folding his legs up to his chest, his back to the others.

  So Jayge told him, leaving nothing out but the fact of Readis’s astonishing appearance. ‘I still don’t know who saw a dragonrider,’ he added. ‘I heard later that a sweeprider saw the train stopped and thought it had been caught in a landslide.’

  ‘It had, hadn’t it?’ Swacky’s eyes crinkled up in a mirthless grin. ‘I took a good look, trying to figger that ambush out so we’d avoid such like.’

  ‘And? I was pretty busy helping my folk.’

  ‘Well…’ Swacky shifted his bulk, took a knife from his boot, and began to draw a diagram in the dirt. ‘That ambush was well planned. They was waitin’ for you. How come you never put out no point?’

  ‘We did. We found her dead, pushed over the bank. Couldn’t ride flank. We were close enough to Far Cry by then.’

  Swacky waggled the dagger point in admonishment. ‘Until you’re in the hold, you’re not close enough. Any rate, there were ten deadfalls ready, spaced out to crunch each of your wagons.’

  ‘If they’d been spaced out in the usual intervals,’ Jayge broke in, holding up his hand, ‘as they had been in the flats at the sky-broom plain the day we met… she planned it then, I know it!’ And Jayge tasted hatred in his mouth, sour and acrid. ‘If I catch her, I’ll cut her throat.’ His hand went to his dagger.

  ‘Then it’s over too quick, lad,’ Swacky said, tilting his long head, his eyes glittering with a malice as savage as Jayge’s. Then he tapped Jayge’s knuckles lightly with his dagger. ‘If you catch her while in my patrol, you turn her over to me. She hasn’t killed often or lately in those raids of hers, but you’re not the only one wants to see her dead. You was lucky your wagons was strung out up that steep slope. Another thing shows she’s slipping. Your wagons didn’t tip as easy as she thought they would. But—’ He held up the blade again. ‘She’s getting careless. Or desperate.’ Swacky did not sound so sure of that. ‘Lord Asgenar’s been over the waybills on the trade goods you carried, and he can’t find anything she’d have such bad need of she’d take such risks to get.’

  ‘How would Asgenar know what she’d steal?’

  ‘Lord Asgenar,’ Swacky corrected, tapping him smartly on the knuckles, his expression severe. ‘Even in your own head, boy. And Lord Asgenar knows ‘cause he’s been making it his business to find out what she’s been lifting, what she’s got in that base camp of hers, what she might need. Besides a little girl who hears dragons.’

  Jayge was indignant. ‘Thella only mentioned a thief she was after. And I doubted her then, but she was angry.’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ Swacky asked, surprised.

  ‘A girl hearing dragons was the reason for attacking us?’

>   Swacky nodded his head wisely. ‘That’s what I was told by that young bronze rider. Such a girl would be very useful to someone like Thella, you can bet your last bootnail on that.’

  ‘That’d be useful,’ Jayge admitted. He wondered why the Weyrs had not already Searched her out for one of their queen eggs. ‘You know, Armald recognized her. But he only called her “lady”. He didn’t say her name to her face, though he told us later.’

  ‘Well, Armald is now dead, you took your share, and you said yourself that your aunt and the fourth man who met her that day damned near got killed, too.’ He held his hand out to take back the sketches. ‘You’ve seen her, boy—you’ll be helpful. That runner of yours good on hills?’

  ‘The best, and he’ll murder roosting wherries, give him the chance.’

  Swacky got up to return to his own bedroll. ‘Well, that’d cause undue noise, boy, and we want to move as fast and as quiet as we can, never knowing what we’ll find.’

  ‘One thing, Swacky. The man who drew those sketches. How do we know who he is? We might kill him by mistake.’

  ‘We’re not to kill anybody is m’orders. Capture ‘em. And keep looking.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Best possible find’d be their main base, but any caves, hiding places, are a help.’

  ‘She won’t be moving anywhere in the snow.’

  ‘Aye, true, but cave holds stand out in snow, don’t they? Then we map ‘em, check ‘em out, and if there’re supplies hidden or buried, we fix ‘em so they can’t be used come spung.’

  And with that Swacky moved off.

  Toric in a rage at any time was a problem for his household. Toric fuming in the midday summer heat, without the calming influence of either Sharra, who had gone to the Healer Hall at Fort Hold, or Ramala, who had gone to midwife a difficult birth down the west coast, was a burning firestone looking for something to char.