The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [142]
A casualty minutes into an attack? Even an attack that was so unpredictably early? F’lar winced.
Virianth R’nor’s brown, Mnementh informed his rider as he soared in search of a target. He craned his sinuous neck around in a wide sweep, eyeing the forest lest Thread had actually started burrowing. Then, with a warning to his rider, he folded his wings and dove toward an especially thick patch, braking his descent with neck-snapping speed. As Mnementh belched fire, F’lar watched, grinning with intense satisfaction as the Thread curled into black dust and floated harmlessly to the forests below.
Virianth caught his wingtip, Mnementh said as he beat upward again. He’ll return. We need him. This Thread falls wrong.
“Wrong and early,” F’lar said, gritting his teeth against the fierce wind of their ascent. If he hadn’t been in the custom of sending a messenger on to the Hold where Thread was due . . .
Mnementh gave him just enough warning to secure his hold as the great bronze veered suddenly toward a dense clump. The stench of the fiery breath all but choked F’lar. He flung up an arm to protect his face from the hot charred flecks of Thread. Then Mnementh was turning his head for another block of firestone before swooping again at dizzying speed after more Thread.
There was no further time for speculation; only action and reaction. Dive. Flame. Firestone for Mnementh to chew. Call a weyrling for another sack. Catch it deftly mid-air. Fly above the fighting wings to check the pattern of flying dragons. Gouts of flame blossoming across the sky. Sun glinting off green, blue, brown, bronze backs as dragons veered, soared, dove, flaming after Thread. He’d spot a beast going between, tense until he reappeared or Mnementh reported their retreat. Part of his mind kept track of the casualties, another traced the wing line, correcting it when the riders started to overlap or flew too wide a pattern. He was aware, too, of the golden triangle of the queens’ wing, far below, catching what Thread escaped from the upper levels.
By the time Thread had ceased to fall and the dragons began to spiral down to aid the Lemos Hold ground crews, F’lar almost resented Mnementh’s summary.
Nine minor brushes, four just wingtips; two bad lacings, Sorenth and Relth, and two face-burned riders.
Wingtip injuries were just plain bad judgment. Riders cutting it too fine. They weren’t riding competitions, they were fighting! F’lar ground his teeth . . .
Sorenth says they came out of between into a patch that should not have been there. The Threads are not falling right, the bronze said. That is what happened to Relth and T’gor.
That didn’t assuage F’lar’s frustration for he knew T’gor and R’mel as good riders.
How could Thread fall northeast in the morning when it wasn’t supposed to drop until evening and in the southwest? he wondered, savage with frustrated worry.
Automatically, F’lar started to ask Mnementh to have Canth fly close in. But then he remembered that F’nor was wounded and half a planet away in Southern Weyr. F’lar swore long and imaginatively, wishing T’reb of Fort Weyr immured between with Weyrleader T’ron fast beside him. Why did F’nor have to be absent at a time like this? It still rankled F’lar deeply that Fort’s Weyrleader had tried to shift the blame of the fight from his very guilty rider to Terry. Of all the specious, contrived, ridiculous contentions for T’ron to stand by!
Lamanth is flying well, the bronze dragon remarked, cutting into his rider’s thoughts.
F’lar was so surprised at the unexpected diversion that he glanced down to see the young queen.
“We’re lucky to have so many to fly today,” F’lar said, amused despite his other concerns by the bronze’s fatuous tone. Lamanth was the queen from Mnementh’s second mating with Ramoth.
Ramoth flies well too, for one so soon from the Hatching Ground. Thirty-eight eggs and another queen, Mnementh