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 Keroon beasthold 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 road-ways, were unusable. Dowell elected to follow the faintest of tracks and was careful to remove any droppings. When he finally gave 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 woods.
"It was green Path again today, with Heth and Monarth," Aramina said on the tenth day after their exodus from Igen Cave. "Lamanth, the queen, has clutched thirty fine eggs, but Monarth says that there are no queen eggs."
"There aren't always queen eggs," Dowell reminded Aramina, who sounded unhappy.
"That's what Path said. I don't know why Monarth was upset."
"I didn't realize that dragons talked to each other," Barla remarked, puzzled. "I thought they only talked to their riders."
"Oh, they do," Aramina assured her. "Heth talks constantly to K'van when they're doing the sweep alone.
"Why are there three today then?" Pell asked.
"Because Threadfall is imminent."
"Why didn't you say so?" Dowell wanted to know, exasperated with his daughter's diffidence.
"I was going to. They think Threadfall will come over Lemos tomorrow late afternoon."
"How can we survive Threadfall out in these woods?" Dowell demanded, angry with apprehension.
"You said there were lots of caves here in Lemos," Pell said, grimacing his face into a tearful expression.
"We'll need one!" Dowell said grimly. "We'll start first light tomorrow. Aramina, you and Pell will search ahead. On the upper slope. For there is bare cliff above us and somewhere there must be a cave for shelter."
"And we'll need more roots and anything else you can find to eat," Barla added, showing the empty stewpot as proof of the need. "There's naught left of the dried meat and vegetables."
"Why is it Thread always comes at times like these?" Pell asked, but expected no answer to his plaint. He had occasion to repeat much the same expression the next morning when the off-rear wheel, sinking in a leaf-covered hole, cracked the cotter pin and lazily spun off. The team dragged the wagon on for several lengths, grinding the hub into the dirt before Dowell was able to halt them. Grimly he surveyed the damage. Then, with the sigh of long-suffering patience, he set to the job of repairing the wheel.
It was by no means the first time that wheels had come off, and Aramina and Pell needed no instructions to search out stout limbs, and to help roll a boulder into place for the lever. Indeed it was a well-drilled operation, and Aramina and Pell had wedged two blocks under the wagon bed as soon as Dowell and Barla had levered it up. They had the wheel back on the axle when Dowell discovered that there were no more cotter pins or kingpins in the wagon. He'd used the last on the journey to Igen Cave and had no reason to replace them in the long Turn.
"With the world and all of wood about us, Dowell?" Barla had remonstrated to cut short his flow of self-recriminations. "There's a hardwood over there. It can't take much time to whittle new pegs. The children can forage ahead for food and a cave. Come." She handed him the hatchet. "I'll help. Aramina, take a sack and one of the hide buckets. Pell, make one of your snares and set it if you cross snake spoor. Nexa, you may carry the small shovel, but don't lose it in the woods."
"If you hear more about Threadfall from the dragons, Aramina, you come back to me straightaway," Dowell added as he made for the hardwood visible from the track. "Don't dally."
With a spirit of urgent adventure the three children ran up the track. For the first four switchbacks, there was nothing but forest on either side, though Pell insisted on inspecting several outcroppings of the gray rock that he felt looked promising.
Then the logging trace started a long, straight run, which finally disappeared around a rocky outthrust. To their right, up a steep bank, the trees were sparser as the native rock intruded.
"I'll go look up there, 'Mina!" Pell cried, and took off just as Nexa called Aramina's attention to the unmistakable if withered tops of redroots growing on the downside.
Aramina saw Pell scrambling for footing on the steep and slippery bank, and elected to forage with Nexa. They had been digging for only a short while when Aramina heard Pell's warbling, the family signal for an emergency. Fearful that he had injured himself climbing, Aramina raced back to the track.