The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [18]
“Think you one might have escaped the sword?”
The Lady Gemma flashed him a startled look, then quickly composed her features, lest the exchange be noted. She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head and then shifted her awkward weight to take her place at the table. Graciously she inclined her head toward F’lar, both dismissing and thanking him.
He returned to his own partner and placed her at the table on his left. As the only persons of rank who would dine that night at Ruatha Hold, Lady Gemma was seated on his right; Fax would be beyond her. The dragonmen and Fax’s upper soldiery would sit at the lower tables. No guildmen had been invited to Ruatha.
Fax arrived just then with his current lady and two underleaders, the Warder bowing them effusively into the Hall. The man, F’lar noticed, kept a good distance from his overlord—as well a Warder might whose responsibility was in this sorry condition. F’lar flicked a crawler away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Lady Gemma wince and shudder.
Fax stamped up to the raised table, his face black with suppressed rage. He pulled back his chair roughly, slamming it into the Lady Gemma’s before he seated himself. He pulled the chair to the table with a force that threatened to rock the none too stable trestle-top from its supporting legs. Scowling, he inspected his goblet and plate, fingering the surface, ready to throw them aside if they displeased him.
“A roast, my Lord Fax, and fresh bread, Lord Fax, and such fruits and roots as are left.”
“Left? Left? You said there was nothing harvested here.”
The Warder’s eyes bulged and he gulped, stammering, “Nothing to be sent on. Nothing good enough to be sent on. Nothing. Had I but known of your arrival, I could have sent to Crom . . .”
“Sent ot Crom?” roared Fax, slaming the plate he was inspecting onto the table so forcefully that the rim bent under his hands. The Warder winced again as if he himself had been maimed.
“For decent foodstuffs, my Lord,” he quavered.
“The day one of my Holds cannot support itself or the visit of its rightful overlord, I shall renounce it.”
The Lady Gemma gasped. Simultaneously the dragons roared. F’lar felt the unmistakable surge of power. His eyes instinctively sought F’nor at the lower table. The brown rider, all the dragonmen, had experienced that inexplicable shaft of exultation.
“What’s wrong, dragonman?” snapped Fax.
F’lar, affecting unconcern, stretched his legs under the table and assumed an indolent posture in the heavy chair.
“Wrong?”
“The dragons!”
“Oh, nothing. They often roar . . . at the sunset, at a flock of passing wherries, at mealtimes,” and F’lar smiled amiably at the Lord of the High Reaches. Beside him his tablemate gave a little squeak.
“Mealtimes? Have they not been fed?”
“Oh, yes. Five days ago.”
“Oh. Five . . . days ago? And are they hungry . . . now?” Her voice trailed into a whisper of fear, her eyes grew round.
“In a few days,” F’lar assured her. Under cover of his detached amusement, F’lar scanned the Hall. That surge had come from nearby. Either in the Hall or just without it. It must have been from within. It came so soon upon Fax’s speech that his words must have triggered it. F’lar saw that F’nor and the other dragonmen were surreptitiously searching every face in the Hall. Fax’s soldiers could be disqualified, and the Warder’s men. And the power had an indefinably feminine touch to it.
One of Fax’s women? F’lar found that hard to credit. Mnementh had been close to all of them, and none had shown a vestige of power, much less—with the exception of Lady Gemma—any intelligence.
One of the Hall women? So far he had seen only the sorry drudges and the aging females the Warder had as housekeepers. The Warder’s personal woman? He must discover if that man had one. One of the Hold guards’ women? F’lar suppressed an intense desire to rise and search.
“You mount a guard?” he asked Fax casually.
“Double at Ruath Hold!” he was told in a tight, hard voice, ground out from somewhere deep in Fax’s chest.
“Here?” F’lar all but laughed out