A Gift of Dragons - Anne McCaffrey [11]
The elation of the small family was short-lived, for their dray beasts had run off in the panic of Threadfall. Dowell was forced to return to Keroonbeasthold on foot, hire his skill at a hard-bargained price for the next Turn, then trudge all the way back with the new team to where his family had waited, fearful of marauding holdless men and women and Threadfall.
The indenture over, Dowell had once again turned team and wagon westward. A miscarriage and fever had forced them to take refuge in the huge Igen cave, and expediency had kept them there when Dowell’s resolution had faltered under a series of misfortunes, all apparently designed to thwart his repatriation to Ruatha Hold.
Now they pushed on through the night, struggling to escape yet another threat to honor and resolve.
From somewhere Dowell had acquired a map of Lemos Hold, complete with road, track, and trace. Lemos had so many forests and mountains that rivers, Pern’s other roadways, were unusable. Dowell elected to follow the faintest of tracks and was careful to remove any droppings. When he finally allowed them to rest, it was noontime. During the brief respite he allowed his family and team, Dowell crushed leaves and stained the wagon’s leather cover with green to make it less visible to any searching eye.
“We’ll be safe in the forests of Lemos,” he said, reassuring himself as well as his family. “There are caves there in the mountains which no one could find. . . .”
“If no one can find them, how will we?” asked Pell reasonably.
“Because we’ll be looking very hard, of course,” Aramina answered before her weary father’s short temper flared.
“Oh!”
“And we’ll live by ourselves and thrive on the provender that woods naturally provide us,” Aramina went on, “for we’ll have all the wood we need to be warm, and nuts and roots because we know where to look for them, and berries and roast wherry . . .”
“Roast wherry?” Pell’s eyes widened with delight at such a promise.
“Because you fashion such excellent snares . . .”
“I always caught more tunnel snakes than any one else at Igen,” Pell began. Then, remembering that this helter-skelter trip was due to his boastfulness, he covered his mouth with his hand and huddled into a tight ball of remorse.
“Any of the forest caves ought to have lots of snakes, shouldn’t they, Mother?” Aramina asked, wanting to lighten her mother’s sad face as well as her brother’s guilt.
“They should,” Barla agreed in the absent way of parents who have not really attended to their children’s conversation.
Dowell called them to order, and they continued on their way until Nudge refused to go farther and, when Dowell took the stick to him, sank resolutely to his knees. Unhitching the recalcitrant brute, they forced Shove to haul the wagon into the brush at the side of the trace.
“Nudge has got sense,” Pell muttered to his sister as the weary children gathered enough branches to screen the wagon.
“Father has, too. I certainly didn’t want to help Thella or,” and Aramina shivered with revulsion, “that dragonless man, Giron.”
“They’re as bad as Fax.”
“Worse.”
Although Barla roused herself sufficiently to hand out dry rations, she found that Aramina and Pell had fallen asleep.
Only when they had put four mountains between themselves and Igen River did Dowell let up on the pace he had set. On the narrow traces, more logging tracks than proper trails, there were none to witness their passage as they climbed higher into the vast Lemos range.
They were not quite alone, for dragons passed overhead on daily sweeps and Aramina reveled in their conversations. She made her reports amusing, to liven evening campfire—for Dowell had conceded that a careful, smokeless fire would not be easily seen in the thick