Dragonseye

by Anne McCaffrey

  P’tero and M’leng asked permission of V’last, their wingleader, to take their dragons hunting.

  “Remember what K’vin told you about the sport creatures down here,” V’last said, serving the same warning to the other riders wishing to hunt their dragons.

  P’tero and M’leng nodded obediently but, as soon as they left the clearing where their wing had landed on the Malay River, they laughed at the very notion that any creature could be dangerous to their dragons.

  “It’s really hot here,” M’leng said, glancing back at the river.

  “We’ll be hotter after we’ve hunted the dragons,” P’tero said. “But once that’s done we really don’t have to do another thing until dinner.”

  “So let’s not come back here until just before,” M’leng said, laughing recklessly. “Or we’ll end up having to hunt or fish or gather it.”

  “There’re enough Weyrfolk with us to do all that. And enjoy,” P’tero said, rather condescendingly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He made a running jump and neatly vaulted onto Ormonth’s blue back. M’leng simultaneously boarded green Sith.

  “What game shall we go after?” M’leng asked. “Whatever we see first,” P’tero replied, and pumped his arm to send them both aloft. M’leng preferred him to be leader.

  They didn’t have far to go to see grazing herds of runner beasts, smaller than the ones they were accustomed to seeing in the holds. But when they also saw other dragons in the sky, gliding in to hunt, P’tero signaled M’leng to fly on, in a southwesterly direction. They hadn’t gone very far before both found it necessary to strip off their flying jackets, and then their shirts, which were winter weight anyhow. P’tero admired M’leng’s compact body. The green rider was small-boned, which had always delighted P’tero, with a surprisingly strong and agile wiry frame. He was also winter-white, right to his collar. P’tero giggled. He looked so funny, as if he had two different skins.

  Then the blue rider became fascinated with the tropical terrain around them, subtly different from the North’s warmer holds. Nerat was rain forests and vast tracks of almost impenetrable jungle except along the western side, whereas Ista was sharp hills and deep valleys, also densely vegetated. But here, a vast grassland, similar in some respects to the plains of Keroon, spread out in all directions, dotted by upthrusts of bare yellow rock, occasional copses of angular trees with fronds spilling from the crests, and large, wide-branched trees like islands. The dragons’ flight over some of these caused flocks of wherries and other avian forms to debouch in frantic escape.

  Can I eat them? Ormonth inquired of his rider, speeding up in case he was allowed to give chase.

  What? Those tough mouthfuls? P’tero asked scornfully. Then he cupped his hands and shouted at M’leng. “Ormonth’s hungry enough to eat wherries!”

  “Sith wanted to, as well. We’d better feed them,” M’leng yelled back. “Over there!” and he pointed to one of the rock piles. One of the spreading trees had grown right up against the pile, shading the long incline to the top.

  P’tero thought the formation looked like the prow of a ship, with midships plunging into the sea of ground. And the tree a muchly misplaced mast.

  M’leng nodded vigorously in approval and pumped his arm, kicking Sith into a wide curve so that they came up to the prow to land. A fine breeze blew against them from the south, cooling the perspiration on their bare torsos.

  As soon as they landed, the two young men stripped off their heavy flight pants and boots. They had to put their socks back on for the rock was far too hot for bare feet.

  M’leng, who had good distance vision, covered his eyes with one hand, peering to the west, where a long dark line seemed to be moving.

  “Oh, good, herd beasts.” He hauled Sith’s head around and then pushed it in the right direction. “See? You can eat those. Much better than wherries. Off you go now!” And he gave Sith a thump of dismissal.

  “Follow Sith, Ormonth,” and P’tero shoved the blue’s head to the right. “Hunt with him, and you can’t get into any trouble that way. We’ll watch from here.”

  Ormonth shifted weight from one diagonal to the other, his eyes whirling with a trace of anxious yellow.

  “What’s the matter with you?” P’tero demanded, wanting both dragons to be away so he and M’leng could have some real privacy. And if the pair were busy enough hunting and eating, they’d pay no attention at all to what their riders were doing.

  Smell something!

  “M’leng, does Sith smell anything?” P’tero was annoyed but you didn’t ignore your dragon.

  “Different smells down here, that’s all.” M’leng shrugged, his eager expression indicating that he wanted the dragons away as much as P’tero did.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” P’tero assured Ormonth, and slapped him peremptorily to be on his way.

  The two launched upward at the same moment, and P’tero watched with some pride the blue’s elegant flight attitude as he made height before he would glide down toward his prey.

  M’leng slipped in under P’tero’s arm. “Oooh, your hide is hot. We’d best be careful not to burn in this sun.”

  “We’ll be all right if we move a lot.”

  “And we will, won’t we?”

  They enjoyed each other’s company so much that neither were aware when the breeze altered to the west. It still cooled their bare bodies, drying the sweat they had generated. They weren’t even aware of much until two things happened at the same instant: Ormonth’s angry scream reverberated in P’tero’s skull and he was rammed down hard against M’leng so that he cracked his chin on the rock as sharp things tore into his buttocks.

  “ORMONTH!” he shrieked mentally and vocally.

  M’leng was limp under him as he writhed in agony from whatever was attacking him.

  Help me! he howled, struggling to turn and see what was trying to eat him.

  A dark shadow and the air pressure above him seemed compressed: a most hideous roar sent a carrion stink and hot breath across his bare back. The talons were ripped from his flesh, causing him to shriek again. Something heavy and furry was being hauled across his tortured legs and away. He caught a glimpse of green hide and then blue. And then something large and tawny that seemed to come from nowhere. A blue tail curled protectingly around him. Above his head he heard Ormonth roaring, which turned to shrieks of pain and anger, but mostly anger. He was mentally assailed by vivid images and emotions of revenge that were totally alien to a dragon mind.

  As waves of almost unendurable agony gripped him, he realized that Ormonth and Sith were rending whatever had attacked him into shreds; showering blood and gobbets of hot flesh all over him. Then he realized that he was lying on top of M’leng, who was suddenly being pulled away. To his horrified eyes, he saw a great brown paw, dirty big yellow claws unsheathing and curling into his weyrmate’s shoulderbiade, blood welling up. Despite the pain in his legs and back, he lurched across M’leng and beat at the paw, struggling to lift the claws out of his lover’s body.

  More noise, more draconic roars, and suddenly there was space above him, letting in fresh air, and the sight of other dragons. Two were attacking the tawny lean creatures that were swarming up the rock outthrust. The dragons hauled them backward by their tails or hindquarters while the creatures writhed and roared and spat defiance, turning to attack the dragons. One had curled itself around a brown’s forearm, slashing out at a dragon face.

  “M’leng, M’leng, answer me!” P’tero cried, turning his lover’s face toward him, slapping his cheeks.

  Booted feet stopped by M’leng’s head.

  “Oh help us, help us!” he pleaded, clutching at the boots. “Help me! I’m dying!” The pain in his legs was so awful . . .

  “Who’s got the fellis? Where’s the numbweed?” As P’tero felt himself slipping into oblivion, he wondered how under the sun Zulaya had got here and if he was dying.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Cathay, Telgar We
yr, Bitra Hold, Telgar

  P’TERO DIDN’T DIE, although for some days he wished he had. The shame of being attacked, of endangering M’leng, of being responsible for injuring nine dragons—when K’vin had particularly warned everyone to be careful—was almost more than he could bear. M’leng might say that P’tero had saved his life—although he had to have his shoulder wound stitched—but P’tero knew that was incidental in the sequence of the attack. Both Sith and Ormonth had suffered from the fangs and claws of the attacking felines, for the creatures had not been easily quelled. Meranath nursed a bite on her left forearm and a slash on her cheek. P’tero hadn’t yet been able to look Zulaya in the eye. V’last’s Collith’s worst injuries were to his forearm, gashed to the bone by the powerful hind legs of the female attacking him. The dragon-lion battle had been fierce while it lasted, for the lions had no fear of the dragons and the entire pride of some fourteen adult beasts had joined battle with the dragons.

  Meranath had reacted instantly to Ormonth’s shriek; in fact, so quickly that she had actually left Zulaya behind. The Weyrwoman had been astonished: dragons simply didn’t do that. Though later, Leopol told P’tero, she had laughed about it—since she’d been swimming and would not have appreciated being hauled dripping wet to companion her dragon. She’d followed, quickly enough, with V’last, K’vin, and others who answered the mayday.

  “She was some put out, too,” Leopol went on, relishing the telling, “because the dragons made a mess of good lion fur . . . well, what they didn’t eat.”

  P’tero gasped. “The dragons ate the lions?”

  “Sure, why not?” Leopol shrugged, grinning. “The entire pride attacked the dragons. But they let the cubs go, you know, though some folks thought they ought to get rid of all they could find. V’last said Collith said they were quite tasty, if a bit tough to chew. Waste not, want not. But Zulaya really would have liked a lion fur for her bed.”

  P’tero shuddered. He never wanted to see anything to do with lions ever again.

  “You shoulda seen yourself brought in, P’tero,” Leopol added, gesturing to the temporary quarters that had been set up to tend the badly injured riders. “Charanth himself carried you back in his arms.”

  “He did?” P’tero’s chagrin reached a new depth.

  “And O’ney’s bronze Queth brought M’leng in. Your wing helped Ormonth and Sith back. Actually, they came in sort of piggyback on Gorianth and Spelth. They were pretty shaken, you know.”

  P’tero had heard echoes of that journey from Ormonth, who, bless his heart, had never once criticized his rider: another source of infinite distress to P’tero. The blue had been intensely grateful to his weyrmates for their assistance as he couldn’t leave his rider out of his sight. It had been all the other dragons could do—although Leopol did not relate this—to reassure Ormonth and Sith that neither of their riders would die.

  The Weyr had set up a hasty camp to tend the injured, for some, like P’tero and Collith, couldn’t risk being taken between until their wounds had scabbed over. K’vin had sent to Fort for Corey to stitch the worst wounds. Medic Maranis was more than competent for the dragons’ wounds, but he needed reassurance on his treatment of the two injured riders. Messengers had gone back to Telgar Weyr to reassure those whose dragons had reported the accident and to bring back more equipment for an extended stay.

  The two young riders had, in their innocence, chosen a site just above the cave home of a pride of lions. P’tero had never even heard of “lions.” Evidently he could thank Tubberman for their existence, for they’d broken out of Calusa and bred quite handily in the wild. They were, Leopol told him with great relish, some of the sport beasts that Tubberman had been experimenting with.

  This was not much consolation to P’tero while he lay on his stomach to let the deep fang and claw marks heal.

  He worried endlessly that M’leng would no longer love him, with such a scarred and imperfect body. M’leng, however, seemed to dwell so on P’tero’s heroism in protecting him with his own body that the blue rider decided not to mention the fact that it had not been entirely voluntary. M’leng had been unconscious from the moment of attack and had a great lump and a cut on the back of his head as well as the wound on his shoulder.

  Zulaya had arrived to see P’tero trying to remove the claws from M’leng’s body, so there was little the blue rider could say to contradict the Weyrwoman’s version.

  Tisha, coming to give him fellis early one morning, found him in tears, positive that he had lost M’leng with such a marred body.

  “Nonsense, my lad,” Tisha had said, soothing back his sweaty hair as she held the straw for his fellis juice to his lips. “He will only see what you endured for his sake, to save him. And those scars will heal quite nicely, thanks to Corey’s neat stitching.”

  The reference to the skill of the Head Medic almost reduced him to tears again. He’d caused so much fuss.

  “Indeed you have, but you’ve livened things up considerably, young man, and taught everyone some valuable lessons.”

  “I have?” P’tero would just as soon not have.

  “For one, dragons think they’re invulnerable . . . and they aren’t. A very good lesson to take into Fall with them, I assure you. Cool some of the hotheads, so certain that it’s just a matter of breathing fire in the right direction. For another, the Southern Continent has developed its own hazards . . .”

  “Did the Weyr ever find out about the grubs?” P’tero asked, suddenly recalling the reason for the excursion.

  T’isha burst out laughing, then stifled it, though P’tero’s tent was a distance from any others. “There, lad, you’ve a good head as well as a brave heart. Yes, they completed the survey faster’n any other’s ever been done.”

  P’tero learned later that the grubs had infested yet a few more kilometers westward and southward toward the Great Barrier Range in an uneven wave of expansion. Their progress into the sandy scrublands east of Landing had slowed to a few meters, and the agricultural experts were not particularly concerned: they were more eager to have the rich grass and forest lands preserved.

  “So the trip hasn’t been a waste?” P’tero said, relaxing as he felt the fellis spreading out.

  Tisha gave him more maternal pats, settling the furs and making sure nothing was binding across his bottom and legs.

  “By no means, lovey. Now you go back to sleep . . .”

  As if he could prevent that, P’tero thought as the fellis took over and blotted out conscious thought as well as the pain.

  It was three weeks before P’tero’s wounds had healed sufficiently for the trip back. The makeshift infirmary had more patients since there were other hazards besides large hungry and territorially minded felines in the Southern Continent: the heat, unwary exposure to too much sun, and a variety of other minor injuries. Leopol got a thorn in his foot which had festered, so he joined P’tero in the infirmary shelter until the poison drained.

  Tisha and one of the Weyrfolk came down with a fever that had Maranis sending back to Fort for a medic more qualified than he in such matters. The woman recovered in a few days, but Tisha had a much harder time of it, sweating kilos off her big frame, to leave her so enervated Maranis was desperately worried about her. K’vin sent to Ista to beg a ship to transport her back North since he could not subject her to trying to climb aboard a dragon.

  Her illness depressed everyone.

  “You don’t really know how important someone is,” Zulaya said, having come down to reassure herself on the state of the convalescents, “until they’re suddenly . . . not there!”

  Her remark quite sunk P’tero’s spirits. And Tisha was not there to jolly him out of his depression. M’leng was, and appeared in the shelter.

  “How dare you be so self-centered?” the green rider said in a taut, outraged tone of voice.

  “Huh?”

  “Tisha’s illness is not your fault. Leopol wasn’t wearing shoes when he was told to and so his infected foot also
isn’t your fault. In fact, it isn’t even your fault that we picked that rock out of all the ones we could have picked. It was bad luck, but nothing more, and I don’t want Ormonth upsetting Sith anymore. D’you hear me?”

  P’tero burst into tears. Just as he’d thought: M’leng didn’t love him anymore.

  Then M’leng’s gentle arms went around him, and he was pulled into M’leng’s chest and comforted with many caresses and kisses.

  “Don’t be such a stupid idiot, you stupid idiot. How could I not love you?”

  Later P’tero wondered how he could ever have doubted M’leng.

  When the convalescents did return to Telgar Weyr, they found Tisha once more in charge of the Lower Cavern. If her clothes were still loose on her frame, she was tanned from the sea voyage back from the mouth of the Rubicon and looked completely recovered.

  Some of the green and blue riders in the wing had freshened up both P’tero’s and M’leng’s weyrs, with paint and new fabrics. The worn pillows had been replaced with plump ones.

  “Because Tisha said you’d need to sit real soft for a while longer,” and Z’gal giggled into his hand. “Lady Salda let us have feathers from the Turn’s End birds.”

  Then Z’gal’s lover, T’sen, brought an object from behind his back. P’tero stared at it, puzzled. It seemed to be a pad with very long thongs.

  “Ah, what is it?”

  Z’gal went into a laughing fit which annoyed T’sen, who scowled and kept pushing it at P’tero.

  “To sit on, of course. It’ll fit-between neck ridges. We measured.”

  Belatedly but as effusively as he could, P’tero thanked T’sen for such a thoughtful gift. It wasn’t so much his bottom that needed padding, but the muscles in the buttocks and down his legs that needed strengthening and massage to get them back in full working order. Of course, M’leng had been assiduous in the massage sessions, but P’tero was now concerned that he’d not be fit for fighting when Threadfall began. M’leng had been wounded in a much better site. He wouldn’t miss a day’s fighting.