The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [91]
Lessa, her hands clapped over her mouth, watched fearfully. There wasn’t a sound in the Bowl but the flapping of Ramoth’s immense wings. The queen rose swiftly to position herself against the desperate blue, lending him wing support on the crippled side.
The watchers gasped as the rider slipped, lost his hold, and fell—landing on Ramoth’s wide shoulders.
The blue dropped like a stone. Ramoth came to a gentle stop near him, crouching low to allow the weyrfolk to remove her passenger.
It was C’gan.
Lessa felt her stomach heave as she saw the ruin the Threads had made of the old harper’s face. She dropped beside him, pillowing his head in her lap. The weyrfolk gathered in a respectful, silent circle.
Manora, her face, as always, serene, had tears in her eyes. She knelt and placed her hand on the old rider’s heart. Concern flickered in her eyes as she looked up at Lessa. Slowly she shook her head. Then, setting her lips in a thin line, she began to apply the numbing salve.
“Too toothless old to flame and too slow to get between,” C’gan mumbled, rolling his head from side to side. “Too old. But ‘Dragonmen must fly/ when Threads are in the sky. . . .’ ” His voice trailed off into a sigh. His eyes closed.
Lessa and Manora looked at each other in anguish. A terrible, ear-shattering note cut the silence. Tagath sprang aloft in a tremendous leap. C’gan’s eyes rolled slowly open, sightless. Lessa, breath suspended, watched the blue dragon, trying to deny the inevitable as Tagath disappeared in mid-air.
A low moan sprang up around the Weyr, like the torn, lonely cry of a keening wind. The dragons uttered tribute.
“Is he . . . gone?” Lessa asked, although she knew. Manora nodded slowly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she reached over to close C’gan’s dead eyes.
Lessa rose slowly to her feet, motioning to some of the women to remove the old rider’s body. Absently she rubbed her bloody hands dry on her skirts, trying to concentrate on what might be needed next.
Yet her mind turned back to what had just happened. A dragonrider had died. His dragon, too. The Threads had claimed one pair already. How many more would die this cruel Turn? How long could the Weyr survive? Even after Ramoth’s forty matured, and the ones she soon would conceive, and her queen-daughters, too?
Lessa walked apart to quiet her uncertainties and ease her grief. She saw Ramoth wheel and glide aloft, to land on the Peak. One day soon would Lessa see those golden wings laced red and black from Thread marks? Would Ramoth . . . disappear?
No, Ramoth would not. Not while Lessa lived.
F’lar had told her long ago that she must learn to look beyond the narrow confines of Hold Ruatha and mere revenge. He was, as usual, right. As Weyrwoman under his tutelage, she had further learned that living was more than raising dragons and Spring Games. Living was struggling to do something impossible—to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried!
Lessa realized that she had, at last, fully accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and as mate, to help F’lar shape men and events for many Turns to come—to secure Pern against the Threads.
Lessa threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin high.
Old C’gan had had the right of it.
Dragonmen must fly
When Threads are in the sky!
Worlds are lost or worlds are saved
By those dangers dragon-braved.
As F’lar had predicted, the attack ended by high noon, and weary dragons and riders were welcomed by Ramoth’s high-pitched trumpeting from the Peak.
Once Lessa assured herself that F’lar had taken no additional injury, that F’nor’s were superficial and that Manora was keeping Kylara busy in the kitchens, she applied herself to organizing the care of the injured and the comfort of the worried.
As dusk fell, an uneasy peace settled on the Weyr—the quiet of minds and bodies too tired or too hurtful to talk. Lessa’s own words mocked her as she made out the list of wounded men and beasts. Twenty-eight men or dragons were out of the air for the next Thread battle. C’gan was the