Dragonheart

by Todd J. McCaffrey

  “What if the riders ask about Arith and Benden?” Cisca asked, turning to follow him.

  “It will be all right,” Fiona said. The others looked at her, surprised. “That’s what we’re supposed to say, isn’t it?”

  Cisca glanced at K’lior, a smile on her lips. The Weyrleader reflected the smile as he turned back to Fiona. “Yes, that is exactly what we’ll say!”

  “Firestone?” H’nez repeated, his expression outraged. “A fighting wing to haul firestone? What are weyrlings for?”

  “If they trail multiple sacks, they could replenish the fighting wings in a third the time of the weyrlings,” K’lior said, trying to remain reasonable.

  “Coddling weyrlings, by the First Egg!” M’valer muttered disapprovingly.

  “We’ve only got eleven fit to fly,” Fiona told them.

  “Eleven’s not enough,” S’kan said decisively.

  “So who’s in reserve?” H’nez demanded, his irritation undimmed.

  “My wing, I should think,” T’mar declared. “I’ve already got experience with this new rig, so I can train them.”

  “But your wing’s light!” M’kury complained. In fact, every wing was light.

  “We’d have enough dragons if we made the sick ones fly,” K’rall grumbled, glancing toward H’nez for approval. The other bronze rider made no response, his eyes cutting quickly toward K’lior and then back again.

  “Sick dragons don’t survive,” T’mar replied.

  “And when there are none but sick dragons left, what then?” K’rall demanded.

  “Then,” K’lior replied in a controlled, even tone, “we’ll reconsider our options.”

  “By then, Pern will be lost,” V’ney said, shifting morosely in his chair. His wing had been hurt the worst by both the illness and bad luck in the Fall, and he had only twelve dragons left.

  “We have survived for over five hundred Turns,” Cisca said. “I don’t see why we won’t survive this Pass.”

  “We’ll have the wings work together,” K’lior declared. “T’mar and N’jian will be reserve, H’nez and M’valer, M’kury and S’kan, V’ney and K’rall.”

  “And you?” H’nez pressed.

  “I’ll take point,” K’lior replied as though it should have been obvious. “We’ll start practice at first light.”

  Fiona found herself and the weyrlings working hard over the next three days as they helped the Weyr prepare for the next Fall, but no matter how tired they were after a drill, the young hatchlings always found the energy to leap off the Weyrwomen’s ledge and beat their wings into the sky in tentative imitation of the larger, older fighting dragons, always encouraged by their weyrling riders and the invariable group of envious weyrchildren who formed a cluster over by Fiona and Talenth.

  On the morning of the Fall, Xhinna and Terin approached Fiona with a new concern.

  “How are the dragons going to fight when it gets dark?”

  Fiona stared at them. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Then she brightened. “I’m sure K’lior will have an answer.”

  She found K’lior with Cisca and Kentai, and broached the subject. His response surprised her.

  “I didn’t even think of it!” K’lior exclaimed. “I was so busy concentrating on the wings and—”

  “I should have thought of it,” Kentai said, looking glumly at the parchment written in Verilan’s careful script. “There must be something in the Records. . . .”

  “We all should have thought of it,” Cisca said, not wanting the harper to hoard the blame. “But what does it matter?”

  “Can the dragons see well enough in the dark?” Fiona asked, allowing relief to creep into her voice. The relief vanished when she saw the look that Cisca and K’lior exchanged.

  “If it’s cold enough, won’t the Thread freeze in the night air?” Kentai suggested. He started over to a stack of Records, fumbling through them while murmuring, “I recall reading about it not long ago . . .”

  “But if it doesn’t freeze,” K’lior began slowly, his eyes locked on Cisca’s, “and we can’t see it—”

  “The Thread will fall and burrow,” Cisca finished for him. “Of course, all the Thread that falls up as high as the Weyr will freeze in the snow—”

  “But that doesn’t mean some won’t burrow somewhere,” K’lior interjected.

  “And in the morning . . .”

  “The Thread will spread,” Kentai finished with a heavy sigh.

  “We can fight burrows,” Cisca declared.

  “If we have the strength,” K’lior agreed.

  “The ground crews—” Kentai began.

  “—will not cover the high hills and mountains,” K’lior finished with an angry shake of his head. He paused, clearly communing with his dragon. “I’ve asked T’mar and M’kury to join us. Together perhaps we can come up with some plans.”

  “You’ll have to tell the others,” Cisca cautioned him.

  “I’d prefer not talk about this with H’nez until we have a plan,” K’lior admitted. Cisca shrugged; she had no problem with that approach. K’lior took the time while they were waiting for the two wingleaders to say to Fiona, “You have a habit of finding difficult friends, don’t you?”

  Fiona looked up and saw that he was smiling at her.

  “Don’t stop,” Cisca told her heatedly. “We need these sort of friends; they keep us from making terrible mistakes.”

  “Indeed,” K’lior said, his expression thoughtful. He raised an eyebrow toward Cisca in some secret communication that seemed to Fiona as though they were dragons communicating telepathically.

  “Yes,” K’lior said after a moment. “I think we should encourage this Terin to stand on the Hatching Grounds.”

  “Nothing short of a full revolution for you, is there?” Cisca wondered, her eyes dancing at Fiona.

  “ ‘Need drives when Thread arrives,’ ” K’lior quoted in reply.

  “What about the watch-whers?” Fiona asked. “I know my father’s Forsk will be eager.”

  “Watch-whers?” K’lior repeated, running a hand through his hair in exasperation. “What could they do?”

  “They can see at night,” Fiona replied, undaunted. “And I know that father has been training with Forsk, getting guidance from Kindan, M’tal, and Nuella.”

  K’lior groaned. Cisca looked at him worriedly. “The watch-whers,” he explained. “When M’tal was here at the Hatching, he wanted us to train with the watch-whers.”

  “And you said no,” Cisca guessed.

  “And I said no,” K’lior agreed disconsolately. “Could you imagine H’nez . . . ?”

  “He would have been apoplectic,” Cisca agreed.

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” K’lior said with a heavy sigh. “We’ll fight the Thread tonight and see if perhaps we can train with the watch-whers before the next Fall.”

  The last rays of the sun illuminated the Weyr Bowl as dragons and riders launched into the sky, wing by wing, to form up at the Star Stones and wink out, between. Fiona watched them with mixed emotions, not certain how they would fight Thread they couldn’t see.

  “Don’t worry,” T’mar had assured her just before his heavily-laden wing departed. “We’ll be fine.”

  But it was hard not to worry when Fiona caught sight of Cisca’s set expression; hard not to worry as she and the remaining weyrfolk scrambled to set up the aid tables; hard not to worry as the younger weyrlings raced each other to bag more firestone; hard not to worry as the sun’s rays faded out completely and the Weyr Bowl was illuminated only by the massed glows, eery splotches of blue, green, and yellow dotted in the dark.

  “F’jian,” Fiona called as she approached the firestone room. The young bronze weyrling looked up from his work. “As soon as they’re finished bagging, get the weyrlings over to the Dining Cavern for klah and a chance to warm themselves at the ovens. We won’t be needing anyone for at least an hour; then we’ll want them to help with the injured.”
/>
  “Of course, Weyrwoman,” F’jian said, sketching her a quick salute.

  Fiona made her own way to the Dining Cavern to get a pitcher of warm klah for those waiting in the Bowl. Inside, she saw Cisca pacing nervously near one of the ovens.

  “It will be all right,” Fiona murmured to her. Cisca nodded, her eyes still anxious, then visibly steeled herself, lifted her head high, and nodded.

  “Of course it will,” she replied with feigned certainty. She smiled. “It had better,” she continued. “I told K’lior as much.”

  “And as Weyrleader, he knows not to gainsay you,” Fiona agreed with a grin.

  “Exactly!” Cisca agreed lightly. Fiona smiled at her and moved on to the klah hearth. Her ears were good and tuned to the noises of the night, so she was able to hear Cisca’s low murmur, “Fly well, my love.”

  Fiona felt the pang, the mixture of emotions—joy, sorrow, worry—which the Weyrwoman had for K’lior and wondered if she herself would ever feel that way about another.

  The moment K’lior’s Rineth touched ground on Fort Weyr’s Bowl, Cisca was beside the bronze dragon, numbweed at the ready, directing a group of weyrlings to attack the Thread-scored burns. Other groups of weyrfolk scattered around Fort Weyr’s Bowl as more injured dragons landed by the light of glows.

  “What is it?” Cisca asked suspiciously, taking in the joyous look on K’lior’s face as he dismounted beside her. “Tell me.”

  K’lior closed his eyes to refresh his memory. “It was amazing,” he said.

  “And?” Cisca prompted impatiently. K’lior paused dramatically. “Tell me right now, bronze rider, or you’ll—”

  K’lior held up his hands in surrender, smiling and shaking his head. He touched a finger to her lips but Cisca snapped at it with her teeth.

  “Now,” she growled.

  “We were getting torn up,” K’lior said after a moment. “Casualties were high—”

  “There can’t be more than two dozen,” Cisca objected, surveying the Bowl critically. “That’s bad, but not high.”

  “It would have been higher if we’d fought alone,” K’lior said.

  Cisca’s eyes widened in shock. “You didn’t?” She glanced toward the top of the Bowl, as if expecting burrowed Thread to come over the crest at any moment.

  “We had help,” K’lior told her.

  “High Reaches?” Cisca asked. “I’m surprised, considering the way—” She stopped, catching the look in K’lior’s eyes. “Not High Reaches?”

  “Not High Reaches,” K’lior agreed.

  “Who then?”

  “No dragons at all,” K’lior replied, his eyes shining in wonder. “But ground crews couldn’t protect the mountains,” Cisca objected.

  “No ground crews,” K’lior agreed. He paused as long as he could, judging Cisca’s growing agitation, until he said, “Watch-whers.”

  “Watch-whers? They came?” Cisca said, and K’lior nodded solemnly. “They helped?”

  “They more than helped,” P’der, K’lior’s wingsecond, said as he approached them. “They ate the Thread!”

  “And they see better in the dark than dragons,” K’lior added, his face bursting into another great grin.

  “They know which of the Thread is frozen and which is still alive,” P’der added, shaking his head in admiration. “Those big eyes of theirs . . .”

  “You should have seen them,” K’lior told her. “We were being torn apart by Thread, couldn’t see, couldn’t help our dragons, and then all the sudden we saw these points of light rise up from below us—”

  “Their eyes,” P’der interjected, nodding enthusiastically. “They reflected the night sky so much they were like jewels coming up from the ground.”

  “And then she told us that they could handle the rest of the Fall, that we should go back,” K’lior finished.

  “She?” Cisca asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Nuella, of course,” P’der said. “The queen watch-wher’s rider.”

  “The WherMaster,” K’lior added in agreement.

  “Of course, there were hardly enough watch-whers,” P’der added. “If they had had to fight a full daytime Fall, when all the Thread is warm enough to be alive, they would have been overwhelmed.”

  “We would have fought the Fall, then,” K’lior said.

  “I don’t know,” P’der said, shaking his head. “There are some times, particularly down Boll way, when those warm winds keep the evening hot.”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, then,” K’lior said. He looked at Cisca. “Remind me to talk with Nuella in the morning. It was amazing.”

  “So you got to see watch-whers flying at night?” Cisca asked. K’lior nodded. “Eating Thread?” K’lior nodded again. Cisca huffed angrily at him. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “You know that we agreed that the queens wouldn’t fly until the sickness is gone.”

  Cisca glared at him.

  “The next Fall’s at night, down at Boll,” P’der observed helpfully.

  “I’ll be there,” Cisca said, daring K’lior to contradict her.

  “It’ll be late in the evening,” K’lior said, thinking aloud. “The Thread will probably all be dead, so there’s probably no harm in it.”

  Above them, sounding all around the Bowl, there was a chorus of dragon coughs. K’lior exchanged looks with his Weyrwoman and wingsecond.

  “There are over fifty coughing from the sickness,” Cisca said somberly.

  “We lost three between in the Fall,” P’der added.

  “So we have just over a hundred dragons fit to fly the next Fall in three days’ time,” K’lior surmised. Cisca and P’der nodded gloomily. K’lior straightened up, threw back his shoulders, and gave them both a cheering look. “With the watch-whers’ help, that will be more than enough.”

  “And we’ll have six days’ rest after that Fall,” Cisca added with a similar attempt at cheer.

  “P’der, have the wingleaders meet me in the Council Room in the morning. We can go over our organization then.”

  P’der nodded curtly and strode off toward his quarters.

  K’lior gestured to Cisca, who took his hand, and the two strolled around the Bowl, checking on injuries and doing their best to cheer up riders and dragons both.

  “You should have seen it,” K’lior said. “There I was, wondering how we were going to manage, when this voice comes out of the night sky—”

  “Which voice?”

  “Nuella’s,” K’lior said, “only I didn’t know it at the time. Nearly scared me off my perch.”

  “How could she call to you?” Cisca asked.

  “She was right above me,” K’lior told her.

  “So she called down over her watch-wher? She was riding the watch-wher?”

  “She was riding the watch-wher,” K’lior affirmed. “But she didn’t call over it.”

  Cisca gave him an irritated look.

  “She was flying upside down,” K’lior told her, his face once again wide in a grin. “So she just leaned her head back and talked to me. She was about as far from me as you are, actually.”

  “Upside down?” Cisca repeated in amazement.

  “Well, she’s blind,” K’lior answered, as if that explained everything. “Probably didn’t notice.”

  “Even blind, she’d have to notice that she was upside down,” Cisca replied acerbically.

  “Yeah, she probably did,” K’lior agreed wistfully. “But she was having the time of her life.”

  “I’ll bet her mate’ll have her ears for that stunt,” Cisca predicted.

  “Only if he finds out about it,” K’lior said softly.

  Cisca stopped mid-stride, gripping K’lior’s hand and turning toward him. “Don’t you go getting any ideas!”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” K’lior replied innocently.

  “You did a good job,” H’nez told Fiona as she checked on his Ginirth late the next morning. “His wing looks like it’s a
lready healing.”

  Fiona smiled and shook her head; she’d already heard the same line from S’kan about his Lamorth.

  “You, as a wingleader—”

  “Flightleader,” H’nez corrected immediately.

  “—flightleader, then,” Fiona accepted the change without rancor. “You know that Ginirth’s wingtip will need time to recover. You won’t be flying the next Fall.”

  Actually, Fiona wondered, why should any of the dragons fly the next Fall? From what she’d heard, the watch-whers were well up to the task.

  “You’re right,” H’nez agreed absently. He raised a hand to Ginirth’s eye ridge and scratched where the dragon liked it the most. “I was hoping to convince myself otherwise.”

  “You figured that if you could convince me, you’d convince yourself?” Fiona recalled some of the old ones she’d known as a child back at Fort Hold—they’d tried much the same trick with her father and had had no more luck with him than H’nez was having with her. “It’s an old trick, flightleader, and one not only practiced by dragonriders.”

  H’nez smiled and shook his head. Then he sobered again, gesturing with his free hand toward Ginirth. “So how long do you think before he’ll be ready to fly again?”

  “How long do you think the wound will take to heal?” Fiona asked in return.

  “Maybe a sevenday, maybe less,” H’nez told her.

  “I’d say he’ll be ready then,” Fiona replied.

  H’nez brightened. “Did you hear that, Ginirth? Less than a sevenday!”

  “I said maybe less,” Fiona reminded him.

  “Less than a sevenday,” H’nez repeated stubbornly.

  Fiona rolled her eyes in exasperation, then returned to her examination. Satisfied, she straightened up and made her way back from Ginirth’s withers, where his wingtip rested, to the bronze dragon’s head, searching in her carisak for a jar of salve.

  “Numbweed,” she said, handing it to H’nez, “if he needs it.”

  H’nez nodded and pocketed the small jar, still scratching Ginirth’s eye ridge.