The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [181]
“I have but I doubt you will, whoever you are,” Kylara snapped.
There was something, she decided, in what the Oldtimers said: Holders were getting far too arrogant and aggressive. No one would have dared speak up in her father’s Hold when he was giving instructions. No one in the Weyrs interrupted a Weyrwoman.
“You’ll have to be quick,” she said. “They hatch ravenous and eat anything in reach. They turn cannibal if you don’t stop them.”
“I want to hold mine till it hatches,” Meron told Kylara in an undertone. He’d been stroking the three eggs whose mottled shells he fancied contained bronzes.
“Hands aren’t warm enough,” Kylara replied in a loud, flat voice. “We’ll need red meat, plenty of it. Fresh-slaughtered is the best.”
The platter which was subsequently brought in was contemptuously dismissed as inadequate. Two additional loads were prepared, still steamy from the body heat of the slaughtered animals. The smell of the bloody raw meat was another odor to mingle with the sweat of men, the overheated, crowded hall and the general tension.
“I’m thirsty, Meron. I require bread and fruit and some chilled wine,” Kylara said.
She ate daintily when the food was brought, eyeing Lord Meron’s sloppy table habits with veiled amusement. Someone passed bread and sourwine to the men, who had to eat standing about the room. Time passed slowly.
“I thought you said they were about to hatch,” Meron said in an aggrieved voice. He was as restless as his men and beginning to have second thoughts about this ridiculous project of Kylara’s.
Kylara awarded him a slightly contemptuous smile. “They are, I assure you. You Holders ought to learn patience. It’s needed in dealing with dragonkind. You can’t beat dragons, you know, or fire lizards, as you do a landbeast. But it’ll be worth it.”
“You’re sure?” Meron’s eyes glittered with unconcealed irritation.
“Think of the effect on dragonmen when you arrive at Telgar Hold in a few days with a fire lizard clinging to your arm.”
The slight smile on Meron’s face told Kylara that her suggestion appealed to him. Yes, Meron could be patient if it gave him any advantage over dragonmen.
“It will be at my beck and call?” Meron asked, his gaze avidly caressing his trio.
Kylara didn’t hesitate to reassure him, though she wasn’t at all sure a fire lizard would be faithful, or intelligent. Still, Meron didn’t require intelligence, just obedience. Or compliance. And if the fire lizards did not live up to his expectation, she could always say the lack was in him.
“With such messengers, I’d have the advantage,” Meron said so softly that she barely caught the words.
“More than mere advantage, Lord Meron,” she said, her voice an insinuating purr. “Control.”
“Yes, to have solid, dependable communications would mean I’d have control. I could tell that wherry-blooded High Reaches Weyrleader T’kul to . . .”
One of the eggs rocked on its long axis and Meron started from his chair. Hoarsely he ordered his men to come closer, swearing as they halted at the normal distance from him.
“Tell them again, Weyrwoman, tell them exactly how they are to capture these fire lizards.”
It never troubled Kylara that even after nine Turns in a Weyr and seven Turns as a Weyrwoman herself, she could not have given the criteria by which one candidate was accepted by a dragon and another, discernibly as worthy, was rejected by an entire Hatching. Nor why the queens invariably chose women raised outside the Weyr. (For instance, at the time that boy-thing Brekke had Impressed Wirenth, there had been three other girls, any of whom Kylara would have thought considerably more interesting to a dragonette queen. But Wirenth had made a skyline directly to the craftbred girl. The three rejected candidates had remained at Southern Weyr—any girl in her right mind would—and one of them. Varena, had been presented at the next queen Impression and taken. One simply couldn’t judge.) Generally speaking, weyrbred lads were always acceptable at one Hatching or another, for a weyrboy could attend Hatchings