The Renegades of Pern (dragon riders of pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  “We can’t wait,” Jayge said. “We’ll have to rely on surprise—and luck.”

  “They won’t expect canines to come out of a tree,” Aramina suggested.

  Jayge pawed through the weapons, searching for a dagger. Solemnly K’van handed him his own blade.

  “They’re heading into the grove now,” Swacky said, cocking his head at the sounds of men crashing through the undergrowth. “We can sneak after ‘em, pick ‘em off one by one.” He flexed his sword arm, grinning in anticipation.

  Jayge caught Aramina’s hands as she hefted a fishing spear. “Oh, no, my love. You will take yourself and our children as far away from here as possible. Do you understand me? There’s no time to argue the point. You’re going.”

  “And Heth and I will make sure she does,” K’van said unexpectedly, taking Aramina by the arm. “That much I can do.”

  She hesitated one brief moment, then acquiesced, her shoulders drooping. “Just don’t let her slip away again, Jayge. I don’t ever want to be faced with this again!”

  Piemur dispatched Farli with the message to Alemi. Swacky fortified himself with one more pull from the wineskin, settled the fishing spears to his shoulders, and looked attentively to Jayge. They were all armed now, bristling with assorted weapons, their manner determined. Under the worried gaze of V’line, the Paradise River Holders jogged east, slipping past the thickets that bordered the holds.

  The tree in which Aramina and Jancis had taken refuge with the two children was in the approximate center of the grove that Thella was currently searching. The ancient fellis trees, their massive trunks larger than three men could span with fingers touching, spread densely leaved branches to form a large, dimly lit park. Air vines looped in intricate patterns, further obscuring any sun that tried to penetrate the luxuriant foliage. A thick, deep mulch covered the ground and aided the soundless advance of Jayge and the others as they slipped from the shadows of one wide-boled trunk to another.

  “Hey, over here! I saw the branches move,” someone called. “Over here!”

  Jayge swore under his breath, praying that the canines would not break until he and the others got close enough to make use of that diversion. Thella’s men—he counted eleven, no, fifteen—closed in on the tree.

  Then Thella swaggered forward. Even in the dim light, Jayge realized that the woman who had caused him and Aramina so much pain and anguish had altered considerably since their first encounter on the trail. Though better clothed than her ragtag minions, she was as gaunt, and her close-cropped hair framed a face made ugly by scar pocks and privations.

  “Aramina!” She peered up into the branches, and her call was brightly wheedling. “We know you’re up there. Your man and all your other friends are tied up tight and out of their senses. This time—” Thella’s throaty laugh was malicious “you haven’t any handy dragons to help you.”

  Jayge edged closer, hefting the spear in his hand, marking a burly man as target, but he was not close enough for a killing throw yet. He checked the others. Piemur and Jancis were on his left. Swacky, on his right, crouched low and darted forward, Temma and Nazer moving like shadows beyond him. They would all have to get closer. If each disabled one man, there were still nine to contend with. Though maybe now that the renegades were confident of their quarry, they would relax their guard and lower their blades. He gestured to catch Swacky’s eye and pantomimed his instructions. The man nodded.

  “You—Obirt, Birsan, Glay,” Thella said. “Gather up some of those loose branches. I don’t know how well fellis bums, but we’ll soon find out, won’t we?” She laughed nastily. “It’s one way to get someone out of a tree, isn’t it, men? I can just see the flames crackling, climbing quickly up this hairy bark, thick smoke roiling up, choking the brats, making them lose hold and fall to their deaths. Is that what you want, Aramina?” Thella’s jocularity ended. “Come down out of there. Now! Save your babes from suffocating.”

  The three men she named had set aside their weapons and begun to gather kindling. The others continued to peer up into the tree, circling it, oblivious to the holders’ stealthy advance. A fourth man began to kick the dry ground cover into a pile against the trunk and knelt to start a blaze. Suddenly he collapsed across the pile of brush, the flickering flame extinguished by his body.

  “What the—” some else declared. “Hey, there’s a knife in Birsan’s back!”

  “Attack!” Jayge yelled, and sprang from behind his tree.

  He launched his spear at the back of the burly man and swerved to one side to throw one of his daggers at the nearest wood gatherer. A dagger whistled past his ear to thunk into the fellis trunk behind him.

  “Attack!” he repeated, hoping the canines would respond.

  The upper branches began to shake, and then the canines sprang from above. Jayge heard their snarling challenges as he raced toward Thella. The din of screams, curses, growls, and the clang of metal against metal filled the air.

  She was waiting for him, blatantly ignoring the pleas for help from the man on the ground a scant stride away, struggling to keep the canine from tearing out his throat. Jayge saw the arrogant smile on her face—and then her raised arm. As her hand snapped forward, he flung himself sideways and heard the thrown blade whir through the air where he had been standing to hammer into the tree that guarded his back. She flipped a third dagger into her left hand and, grinning balefully at him, drew her sword.

  Jayge watched the curved sword and the straight dagger as he edged closer, wishing for another spear and the greater range it would have given him. His own sword scraped from its scabbard, and he twisted it to make the sound as loud and threatening as he could. Thella was not impressed.

  “So,” she said, “it seems I was foolish to leave just one guard. How did you escape? I tied you up myself, little trader man.” She was circling slowly, and the point of her sword dabbed out like a feline’s paw, chiming against Jayge’s blade, testing his wrist. “Is all the strength back in your arm?” The blades chimed again, and Jayge’s sword wavered off line as the impact thumped his jangling sinews. Thella grinned more widely still. “It seems not. Even so, I should have followed my own advice and chopped off your hands, but those oafs let your woman escape.”

  “That’s been your problem all along, Thella—things get out of your hands. Maybe weapons, too.” Jayge wondered why she was circling that way. Looking for an escape route? Maybe her touted ability with a sword was all bluff, too. “This is your final mistake, Thella. Because this is where it ends. You won’t slip away from me, not this time. Not here. Not now!”

  The slow circling broke as he thrust forward suddenly, violently—but the blades met with a clash and a grinding sound like huge, murderous scissors as Thella’s defensive sweep became a parry and riposte that licked her sword’s steel tongue straight at his face. Jayge broke ground with a barely balanced backward leap and heard her laughing at him. There was blood on his cheek, from a slice he had not even felt—not until the wet heat dribbled from his chin and the sting of the cut ran from his eye to the corner of his mouth.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, little holdling,” Thella said with a sneer. “First blood’s mine!”

  “Only heart’s blood counts.” He slammed his sword’s edge against her knuckleguard, hoping for a flinch, for the weapon to twist in her grip, maybe even for it to fly from her hand. Jayge had no such luck; she let the stroke glissade and expend its force along the sweep of her own blade—and then the dagger in her left fist jabbed at his face, his throat, his belly, three flickers of bright metal that reminded him where her true skill lay.

  Jayge smashed the daggerpoint sideways with the guard of his sword, feeling it pluck at his clothing as it came close, far too close. But he refused to make the break Thella had hoped for, and instead forced her back, back, back, until she slammed hard against the immovable trunk of a fellis. Her widened eyes told him that she had not expected to be trapped that way, and Jayge anticipated her attempt to beat
her way free with a series of savage cuts. He met them and blocked them, every one, and forced her hard back against the tree again.

  “And it’s your heart’s blood that will spill today.” His point flicked through her guard and left a long rip down her left arm. The dagger went flying. “That’s for Armald!” He came at her again, feinting at her weakened arm and then closing, K’van’s knife in play now for all that its lack of a guard might cost Jayge fingers. Their swords ran together at the hilts, a tangle of sharpened metal held crisscrossed by main force as Jayge’s dagger pulled to gash her right arm.” That’s for Borgald’s best team!” Another swift feint led her blade far off its defensive line, swept further by the knife in his left hand as the sword in his right raked across her exposed midriff. “And that was for Readis!”

  “Readis?” Her voice was trembling, from surprise as much as from pain. “What was Readis to you?”

  “My uncle, Thella. My uncle!” Jayge backed off, seeing the pallor in her pocked face as shock changed to despair. The rage in him abated briefly, and he charged it again to do what was necessary and end it all.

  Is it necessary, Jayge? Is it really? The voice in his head, and in his memory, belonged to Readis—but the voice in his ears belonged to Aramina. “Enough, Jayge! Or you’ll be no better than she is.”

  For all his surprise at hearing his wife when she should have been safely away, Jayge did not let his gaze waver from Thella’s face. But hers, startled, went over his left shoulder, and her face contorted with loathing. Eyes blazing, she lunged in a savage futile attack at the girl who had eluded her. Jayge was in the way.

  Thrusting as hard as he could, he felt the appalling jolt along blade and hand and arm as his curved sword went into Thella’s flesh, its edge grating against one rib as the point punched through to her hating heart. Stolidly, he wrenched the sword free.

  Thella’s sword spun from her hand, thudded deep into the dirt at Aramina’s feet, and stuck there, swaying. With a little sigh, she dropped to her knees, one hand against her breast as if to stem the flow of shocking red that seeped through her fingers. And then she crumpled to the ground unmoving.

  The deep hush that settled once again over the fellis tree grove was punctuated by Jayge’s hoarse breathing and the whimpers of wounded men and animals. Gulping air into pumping lungs, Jayge gradually became aware of Alemi and the other fishermen moving about the glade. Aramina, carefully avoiding the dagger, bent down to study Thella’s face. Without speaking, she rose and turned to Jayge, noting the bleeding cuts that his exertions had opened.

  “Those will need to be cleaned, Jayge,” she said in a curiously detached tone. “And we’ll have to tend the canines.”

  “Go on, Jayge,” Alemi said. “We’ll take care of all this.” His gesture consigned Thella and her dead supporters to oblivion.

  Lessa and F’lar arrived two hours later, straight from Threadfall. As K’van had anticipated, he was soundly berated by Lessa for involving himself in a holder dispute.

  “I’d have done the same thing even if I’d known what the problem was when Heth shouted at me, Lessa,” K’van said stoutly, although Piemur thought the young Weyrleader was pale enough under his tan. “A rider doesn’t ignore his dragon’s summons.”

  “A rider makes certain a dragon doesn’t endanger himself,” the Benden Weyrwoman replied, “much less his entire Weyr! Did you forget your position, Southern Leader?”

  “No,” K’van replied. “But neither did Heth.”

  “At least, you had the good sense to limit Weyr involvement to the one rescue.” F’lar’s expression was as grim as Lessa’s. “Jayge honorably concluded the affair.”

  The Weyrleaders had seen the dead woman where she and the other renegades lay in sacks, prepared for immediate sea burial.

  “That’s the end of that,” Lessa said, frowning. Then she began to take off the rest of her heavy flying gear. “Did the renegades destroy everything in the hold, or do we have to fly back to Benden to refresh ourselves?” she demanded petulantly. She was tired, hot, and at the end of an exhausting Fall, the last thing she needed was another crisis.

  “No, indeed not,” Jancis said, taking Lessa’s jacket. “There’s redfruit, juice, klah, some of Jayge’s rotgut spirits, and if you can spare the time, broiled fish fresh from the sea.”

  The hospitality brought a smile to Lessa’s face, reluctant at first, but more relaxed as Jancis led them up the porch steps. The first of the evening breezes had freshened the sultry air, and the house was pleasantly cool.

  “What sort of casualties did Jayge suffer?” F’lar asked.

  “None of the hold was badly hurt—bumps, lumps, superficial cuts, and bruises mostly, “Jancis said, “though Ara had to take a few stitches here and there. She’s very neat.”

  “And the renegades?” Lessa asked, sipping the drink Jancis had given her.

  “Six survive, all badly wounded.” There was a note of satisfaction in Jancis’s voice. “One of them captained the ship that brought them here.”

  “Master Idarolan should be informed.” Lessa grimaced. “He doesn’t like his masters disloyal.”

  “The man wasn’t a master, Lessa,” Piemur said, joining them. The bandage on his head, his bruised face, and the various small lacerations smeared with numbweed gave him a raffish appearance.

  “You should be resting,” Jancis told him sternly.

  He caught her hand and grinned down at her. “Harpers have notoriously hard heads.”

  “And thick skins,” Lessa added in mock derision.

  “Leave it to Thella to have found a dissatisfied journeyman, denied his mastery and willing to dishonor his Hall,” Piemur went on. “Stole the ship from the repair dock at Thella’s instigation. Master Idarolan will enjoy making an example of him.”

  “And the others?” F’lar asked.

  “Holdless men,” Piemur shrugged. “Promised rewards and easy living in the south.” He eased himself onto the broad couch beside Jancis.

  “They can go back with the ship,” F’lar said, “and then wherever Master Idarolan requires drudges.”

  “That’s not the end of the problem of renegades, though, F’lar,” Lessa said, frowning.

  “True enough, but if Thella’s death is sufficiently publicized”—F’lar looked meaningfully at Piemur—“it will deter the undecided and give us another breathing spell.”

  “I’ll make a full report to the Masterharper—both of them,” Piemur said, a twinkle in his eye.

  Lessa gave an impatient exclamation. “Robinton’s nearly as much of a renegade as—” She paused to think of a suitable comparison and then, with a sly smile, fixed her eyes on Piemur. “As you are, journeyman!”

  “Truly spoken,” Piemur said, grinning broadly.

  Lessa opened her mouth to say more but broke off as Jayge, bruised, bandaged, and bedaubed even more than Piemur was, entered the room with an apprehensive Aramina.

  Lessa greeted her warmly, expressing delight that Aramina had rediscovered her ability to contact dragons. She was magnanimously restrained over the brief Weyr participation, dwelling on the relief all would feel at Thella’s defeat. Upon questioning, it appeared that Aramina had not heard Ramoth and Mnementh as they arrived—which, Lessa said kindly, she ought to have done since both dragons had been considerably agitated.

  “I do hear the fire-lizards,” Aramina offered, and Piemur was pleased to notice that for once Lessa did not respond to mention of the creatures with her customary acerbity. “And I also hear someone—something else—occasionally. Whatever it is, is very sad, and so I don’t try to hear it.”

  Despite gentle probing, she could give no more information, but Lessa extracted a promise from her to be open to dragons again. “Not to intrude on your life, my dear, but merely to keep in touch. It proved valuable enough today, you’ll agree.

  “We’re not even halfway through this Pass,” Lessa reminded her as the Weyrleaders prepared to leave, “and we’ll need good women for our
queens. I—and Ramoth—hoped to have you in our number, but perhaps that daughter of yours…The ability is in the Bloodline, you know, and you’re Ruathan, too, Mina!”

  16: Southern Continent, PP 17

  DESPITE THE EXERTIONS of the previous day, Piemur was awake at dawn, groaning when he realized how early it was. Muscles along his back cramped, and his efforts to ease them merely brought home the awareness of how very stiff he was. Slowly he elevated himself on one elbow and stretched cautiously, wincing.

  “Whooo!” The exclamation escaped him as he experimentally felt the two lumps on his head. The bandage had come off during the night.

  “Piemur?” Jancis’s soft voice made him whirl, which proved to be another injudicious movement. She was already dressed, a cup of klah in one hand and a reed basket containing bandage rolls and two salve pots in the other. “Stiff, are you?” Her smile was fondly proud.

  “You bet.”

  “Here.” She held out the klah.” Wake up a bit more. Healer Jancis urges Harper Piemur to consider a gentle dip in the sea, and then she’ll tend to his honorable wounds. Head ache?”

  Piemur grimaced. “A slight improvement on yesterday.” He sipped the klah gratefully. “How come you’re so bright at this wretched hour?”

  Jancis gave him an impish grin. “Oh, I slept, but excitement woke me up.”

  “Excitement? Yesterday’s?” On top of the fight with Thella’s men, Piemur and Jancis had had the privilege—and thrill—of riding Ramoth and Mnementh back to Cove Hold, where F’lar and Lessa had stopped to confer with Master Robinton.

  “No, today’s!” And she seemed altogether too pleased with herself. “But first, I want you able to concentrate your harper wits. Finish the klah, swim, I’ll patch you up, and then I’ll tell you.” She hauled him up from his bed and started dragging him from the small sleeping room.

  “You found something in the warehouse?”

  “Not until you’ve swum!”

  Jancis was adamant, and, annoyed as he was, Piemur had to admit later that the swimming eased the aches, though the salt water stung his cuts. He felt much better after she had slathered numbweed where it was needed. He was both pleased that she had taken no harm from her part in the previous day’s skirmish and chagrined that he had sustained so much. He had kept right by her side during the ambush of Thella’s band, had cheered when her spear throw had wounded her target, and had been exceedingly relieved to see Alemi leading reinforcements into the grove.