The Renegades of Pern (23 page)

“Really,” the boy said, tugging his arm, “she won’t do anything.”

“She’s bigger than I thought,” Jayge said, speaking rapidly and in an undertone.

“Well, she
is
the Benden queen. And,” the boy added proudly, “the biggest dragon on all Pern.”

Ramoth canted her head upward suddenly, rumbling at three dragons circling to land on ledges above her. Two of them answered her. Jayge took advantage of that distraction to go down the weyr steps as fast as he could, passing the boy on his way out. When he reached the Bowl floor safely, he took a deep breath and wiped his sweating forehead with one hand.

“C’mon, you’re to have a meal. Weyr food’s good,” the boy said encouragingly, catching up.

“I think I’d rather—”

“You can’t leave the Weyr without a decent meal,” the boy insisted. “Look, Ramoth’s curling up for a snooze in the sun.”

Lessa’s reassurances lasted only until Jayge’s first overnight camp. He had been heartened to see sweep riders quartering in the distance, farther down the roadway. Then the overlapping branches obscured his sight of them. He fretted until almost dawn, sleepless, remembering each word of his interview, trying to allay his doubts about dissembling to the Weyrwoman herself, and trying to puzzle out her warning about settling private scores.

He wished he could see some way of getting Readis free of his association with Thella. And who was the third man he had heard? Dushik? Or Giron? He rather doubted it was Giron, not that close to a Weyr. Dushik was reputed to be the more formidable opponent.

Jayge drove himself and Kesso hard down the trail, eschewing more comfortable lodging in the interest of pressing on. Someone at the Weyr had kindly tied a sack of grain to his saddle so that he could feed the hard-working Kesso properly. He stopped only to buy travel meal and more grain before moving on. He kept looking for any signs of other recent travelers, although it would have been too foolish of Thella and the others to move on the well-used road.

Then he knew what he would do when he reached Benden Hold. He would ask to see the black-haired girl. She had seemed sensible enough to take him seriously. He would show her the sketch of Readis and warn her about him. Dushik was ferocious enough so that people would automatically be wary of
him.
But Readis looked respectable and he had a clever tongue in his head. Too clever by half. Still, Blood loyalty had compelled Readis to draw Thella’s raiders off the train, and Jayge had to do as much for his uncle.

He was tired, still wet from the previous day’s rain, and hungry on an exhausted, foot-dragging mount when he arrived at Benden Hold. To his immense relief, activity around the Hold seemed to be normal. He asked for Master Conwy, who was surprised to see him but who welcomed him cordially.

“Have there been any strangers asking for . . . the girl who hears dragon?” Jayge asked immediately.

“Aramina?” Master Conwy’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “So, you’re the one who rode all the way to Benden Weyr to warn them. Lad, you’d only to tell me that was your worry. We’d’ve sent the watchdragon up and spared you a long journey.”

“Then I wouldn’t have seen Thella’s band camped near the Weyr.”

Master Conwy nodded as one did to a nervous person, deftly took Kesso’s reins from Jayge’s hand, and began shooing him into the beasthold, helping Jayge unsaddle and stable the tired beast. “That’s true enough, but you did see them and, I hear, spoke to the Weyrwoman at length.”

Jayge’s hopes flared briefly. “Then the dragonriders found Thella?”

“No, but not for want of trying. And we’ve guards out in plenty and every holder on the lookout, as well.”

Jayge paused in the act of placing his saddle on the partition between the two stalls. “The mare I brought to you was in the next stable. Where is she?”

“Out. Aramina went—with two guards—to help with a staked burden beast. She’s very good with animals and they sense that—”

“You let her leave the Hold? Shards, man, you’re as mad as they are up at the Weyr! You don’t know what Thella and Dushik are like! You’ve no idea what they’re like! They mean to kill the girl!”

“Now, see here, lad, leave go of me. And I don’t take that kind of language from anyone.” Master Conwy pulled Jayge’s hands from his shirt. “You’re tired, lad; you’re not thinking straight. She’s safe. Now you come with me, have a bath and something to eat. She’ll be back shortly. Won’t take more than a few hours.”

Jayge was trembling with stress, and since Master Conwy sounded so certain of Aramina’s safety, he allowed himself to be persuaded into the hold and the bath. It was only when Master Conwy’s eldest boy brought him hot klah and fresh bread smeared with sweetsauce to eat while he soaked off the travel dirt that he realized that Aramina was the black-haired girl he had so admired. Fortunately the food distracted his thoughts from the girl, thoughts that had been taking a decidedly erotic turn. He concentrated instead on the disquieting fact that the dragonriders had not flushed out the fugitives. They were hiding, biding their time until the alertness of the Hold and guard relaxed. Thella was good at waiting—witness the way she had built those deadfalls, spaced to catch every wagon. But she could make mistakes. She had made another in building a fire that could be seen, and had been.

“Jayge Lilcamp!” Master Conwy charged into the bath, throwing a towel at Jayge, then dragging him out of the water when he did not move fast enough. “You were right, and we were shamefully slack. Gardilfon just now came up the Hold road, driving his tithe beasts. He had sent no word to the Hold about a burden beast, certainly not to Aramina, and he’s seen no one on this road since dawn.”

Hurriedly drying himself and fumbling with the clothes the Beastmaster flung at him, Jayge heard the rumble of the Hold drums, his blood pounding as much to their beat as to the heat of the bath he had just left. His boots were clammy and mud-caked, but he crammed his feet in.

“Lord Raid wants a word with you. He’s mustering everyone, and yes—” Master Conwy glanced skyward as dragons appeared in the sky, “We’ve all the help we need. Aramina will tell the dragons where she is.”

“If she knows,” Jayge murmured, suddenly seeing the flaw in their thinking. “And if she can talk.”

At first Lord Raid discounted Jayge’s remarks, repeated to him first by an angry Master Conwy and again by Jayge, who was then told to sit down and be quiet. Of medium height and somewhat plump, with a discontented droop to his mouth, long lines from nose to mouth, and puffy bags under his eyes, Lord Raid had a habit of posing himself; as he turned from one advisor to another he was almost a caricature of himself. Meanwhile someone gave Jayge a bowl of porridge, which he ate quickly, despite the fact that his stomach was tense with worry.

When the hours passed with no word from the search parties, Benden Hold’s many fire-lizards, or the dragons, Lord Raid strode over to where Jayge was half-dozing by the hearth. The young trader had tried to stay awake, but the warmth and his fatigue had overcome his anxieties.

“What exactly did you mean by your remarks, young man?”

Jayge blinked to clear his eyes and tried to remember what he had last said. “I meant that if Aramina isn’t conscious, she can’t hear dragons. And if she can’t see where she is, how can she be rescued by them?”

“And just how do you arrive at those conclusions?”

“Thella knows she hears dragons.” Jayge shrugged. “It stands to reason a clever woman like Thella would make certain Aramina had nothing to tell the dragons.”

“Exactly,” a cold voice said. Lessa was pushing through the knot of men around Jayge. “I apologize, Jayge Lilcamp. I didn’t heed your warning closely enough.”

“Isn’t it possible this young man is in league with them?” Raid said in an audible aside to Lessa.

She raised her eyebrows in a slightly contemptuous quirk, and her lips thinned. “Heth and Monarth both vouched for him to Ramoth at Benden. Lords Larad and Asgenar confirm his description.”

“But—but—” Raid stuttered impotently.

Lessa sat down beside Jayge. “Now, what do you think has happened to Aramina?”

“None of the dragons have heard her?”

“No, and Heth is nearly hysterical.”

Jayge exhaled, sick with worry, but he made himself say what he feared most. “I don’t put it past Thella to have killed her.”

“No, the dragons say not,” Lessa said positively and looked at him for his next suggestion.

“What about the guards with her?”

“They are dead,” Lessa said, her voice full of regret. “Stuffed out of sight, which is why it took so long to locate them.”

“Then she’s been knocked unconscious.” Jayge shut his eyes against the image of Aramina’s limp body, blood staining the blue scarf on her head, hanging across Dushik’s powerful back.

“Then waiting until she recovers consciousness is unlikely to be useful?” Lessa asked somewhat sardonically.

Depressed, Jayge nodded. “Thella will have found a dark cave. Or a deep pit if Aramina can’t tell the dragons where she is, it doesn’t matter if she can hear them or they her.”

“Exactly my thinking. Raid—” Lessa got to her feet. “You surely must have Hold maps that indicate where the deeper cave systems are. They’ve had a head start of roughly six hours. We can’t tell when they reached their destination, so even nearby caves must be searched. We must bear in mind how far they could have marched over this terrain; we know they weren’t seen on the roads, haven’t been spotted since the dragons started looking three hours ago. Let us not waste more time.”

Haunted by memories of the black pit of Kimmage Hold, Jayge volunteered to go with one of the search teams. There were fire-lizards beholding to three members of the ten-man team, so they were in constant communication with Weyr and Hold. That night as they wearily exited the seventh cave they had thoroughly searched, word reached them that Aramina was still alive, and had spoken to Heth. She could not see anything in the pitch black, and she could take only six steps before reaching the other side of her prison. It was damp and smelled foul—more like snake than wherry.

“That’s a brave girl,” the team leader said. “Let’s eat, roll in, and start looking as soon as we can count our fingers.”

Bloodkin be damned, Jayge thought to himself as he tried to sleep—he was going to kill Readis, as well as Thella and Dushik, with his bare hands.

They searched for two more days until a rockfall tumbled down on top of them. Two men were injured badly—one with a broken leg and the other with a smashed chest—and had to be dug out. Instantly suspicious about such a convenient rockfall, Jayge told the team leader that he wanted to check it out while the others took the injured men down to a nearby hold for treatment.

He was careful about his ascent, choosing a ridge that would overlook the point of the minor rockslide and picking a route that provided the best natural cover. Then he settled down to watch.

For a long time nothing happened. When a whiff of some foul odor tickled his nose, he had been cramped too long in one position to be able to move fast enough—one strong hand caught his arm behind him and wrenched it up high on his shoulder-blade, and another was clapped over his mouth. Jayge had always considered himself strong, but though he struggled, he could not pull himself from those clever and painful holds.

“Always said you had the brains in the family, Jayge,” Readis whispered softly in his ear. “Don’t struggle. Dushik’s watching somewhere nearby. We have to get down behind him, go in from the other side, and get her out of that pit before the snakes eat her alive. That’s your aim, isn’t it? Nod your head.” Jayge managed some movement, and the hand over his mouth eased. “Dushik’d kill you as soon as look at you, Jayge.”

“Why did you kidnap that girl?” Jayge twisted around to look at his uncle, who maintained the tight armlock. The man was filthy with slime, haggard, and red-eyed, with gaunt cheeks and a very bitter line to his lips. His clothes were ragged and equally slimy, and he had a length of slime-coated rope slung over his shoulder.

“I didn’t! I’m not mad or malicious.” Readis’s whisper ended in a hiss. “I didn’t know what Thella had in mind,” he continued, mouthing the words with little sound.

Jayge kept his answer as muted as his fury would permit. “You knew she wanted to kidnap Aramina. You arrived at the Weyr with that bogus packet of letters.”

“That was bad enough,” Readis said wincing. “Thella has away of making things seem rational. But throwing a young girl down a snake pit is not rational. Not rational at all. I think Thella went raving mad when the dragonriders attacked the hold. You should have heard her laughing all the way up that tunnel she made the drudges cut. I don’t think you’ll believe me, but I tried to stop her loosing that avalanche. Then I was stuck, trying to save Giron. He’s dead, by the way. She nicked his throat that first night.” Readis shuddered. “I’ll show you where the girl is, and I’ll help you get her out. Then I’m disappearing, and you bask in the glory of your heroic efforts.”

Jayge believed his uncle; believed the desperation behind the scoffing words. “Let’s get her out then.”

Readis headed around the ridge, pushing his nephew in front of him. “I threw her down a water bottle and some bread when I had a chance. Hope she heard it coming and ducked. Duck!”

Jayge’s head was pushed down, his cheek slamming against a boulder. He could feel Readis suspend his breathing and did the same until his lungs threatened to burst. Finally a nudge told him that he could move and he inhaled gratefully, taking great, deep breaths. Then Readis signalled to move forward again.

It took a long time to negotiate the slope to the spot that Readis was aiming for. Jayge’s muscles were cramped with strain by the time they reached an overhang, and the sky was beginning to darken. Jayge was not comforted by the thought that it would be darker where Aramina was. Readis crawled under the ledge and disappeared. Jayge followed, inching along on his belly and elbows and pushing forward on his knees and toes. He felt the slime that coated the ground, and he wondered how anyone had managed to push an unconscious girl down the hole.