"It's all right, Mother. They'll help us. They're much stronger than Pell and Nexa would be." Then Aramina realized that Shove and Nudge were taking great exception to the proximity of a dragon. She tied them tightly down by their nose rings to the tether stone, giving them more immediate pain to occupy their stupid brains.
Fortunately, the dragonrider directed Heth to land behind the wagon, out of the dray beasts' immediate sight.
To her dismay, Aramina realized that both dragon and rider were young. She'd always thought that bronze dragons must be big, and, indeed, Heth had seemed enormous, out- lined in the sky. But now she could see that he wasn't fully grown and that his rider, K'van, was both undersized and younger than herself.
As if K'van sensed her disappointed appraisal, he straightened his shoulders and jerked his chin up. He walked forward, taking in the lever propped against the boulder and looking down at the prostrate Dowell.
"We may be weyrlings, but we can help you," K'van said without ostentation. He turned to Heth. "What I want you to do is to heave on this, Heth, with your forearms. C'mon, Aramina."
Aramina stopped staring at the bronze dragon, who waddled forward to place his five-clawed paws about the lever.
"Not until I say go, Heth," K'van cautioned, grinning a bit at Aramina as they knelt in the dust beside the unconscious Dowell, fastening their hands under the man's armpits. "Heave, Heth! Heave!"
As quickly as they could, Aramina and K'van hauled Dowell's body from under the wagon. With a cry of incredulous relief, Barla rushed to her husband's side, opening his shirt to judge the extent of his injury. K'van had the presence of mind to replace the fallen block and prop the wagon up.
"You'll need the wheel back on," he said to Aramina. "That was fine, Heth."
I am very strong, said the dragon with a trace of smugness, his great faceted eyes whirling bluey green as he maintained pressure on the lever.
"Oh, you are indeed, you beautiful beautiful creature," cried Aramina.
"All right, Heth, ease it down," said K'van, holding the block in place. "Slowly now."
The wagon settled, creaking as the block took its weight. K'van fumbled about in the grass and dust and triumphantly held up the pegs.
"Mother?" Aramina's trembling voice held a questions as she turned to look at her father.
"I can't find anything broken," Barla said in a low unsteady voice, "but look…" Her hand indicated the terrible line of bruising already discoloring the skin. Carefully she smoothed the hair back from Dowell's brow, her expression of concerned tenderness causing the two young people to exchange embarrassed glances.
K'van touched Aramina's arm. "Do you know how to set the wheel back on the axle?" He gave her a rueful glance as he proffered the pegs. "I don't."
"Whyever should you?" Aramina wanted to know as she took the pegs and noticed, with a pang, how carefully Dowell had made a cotter hole in the kingpin. "You're a dragonrider."
"Not all that long," he said with a grin as he helped her lift the wheel and roll it into position. "And weyrlings are taught a little bit of craft needed by the Weyr. You never know when something will come in handy. Like now!" He said this on the end of a grunt as the two young people tried to force the wheel onto the axle.
"It's the dirt encrusted on the hub," Aramina said as K'van paused uncertainly. With her belt knife, she scraped off the caked dirt, found a large rock, and, with a healthy knock, set the wheel firmly on. With another few taps of her rock, she rammed the kingpin through and then the cotter pin into its place.
"You're deft at that," K'van said admiringly.
"Practice."
With Heth's assistance, they removed the block from under the wagon.
"Have you far to go?" K'van asked then. "Thread falls soon and, as I recall, the foresters' hold is a long ways up the track"
Barla stifled a sound in her throat, but Aramina had an answer ready.
"I know," Aramina lied calmly, "but this accident delayed us. However, there's a cave not far up the track where we can wait out Threadfall."
"Is it large?" asked K'van.
"Large enough. Why?" Aramina asked, suddenly wary.
"Well, just before you called us," and K'van grinned ingenuously for her temerity, "Heth spotted a band of runners beyond the river. Are they part of your group?"
"No," Barla groaned aloud, looking wildly up at Aramina.
"There shouldn't be anyone else in this part of Lord Asgenar's forests," Aramina said with all the indignation she could muster. "We were warned that holdless raiders have been seen."
"Holdless men?" K'van was instantly alert. "If they are, they'll disperse once they've seen me. Look, let me help you get your father into the wagon and see you safely on your way to the cave. I'll take care of the raiders. And warn Lord Asgenar, too."
Aramina hadn't expected that, but she said what was appropriate, determined to play out her part in this charade. She unfastened the tailgate so that they could slide Dowell in. Then, while K'van watched beside Heth, she and Barla took up their positions and prodded Nudge and Shove into a walk, and then into a shambling trot up the trace.
Barla and Aramina had to keep hard at the dray beasts to maintain their trot. Nudge resented the pace, twisting his horned head and lowing piteously, but Aramina had no mercy on him. Women and beasts were sweating when they finally reached the bank. Pell cheering lustily until Aramina shouted at him to stop being so foolish and come help.
In a few tense words, Aramina explained what had happened, and Pell began shaking his head slowly from side to side.
"I don't know how we'll get Father up that bank," he said, appraising the difficulty. "You shouldn't've sent the dragonrider away."
"It's not just Father being hurt. Pell. K'van saw a troop of riders on the other side of the river…"
Pell quailed, and his distress communicated itself to Nexa, who had been standing there, wide-eyed and perplexed. Now she burst into tears.
"So we must also get the wagon out of sight. And hide Nudge and Shove."
"But Thread's coming. And we have to get Father up to the cave and…" Pell's words tripped over themselves in his anxiety.
"Somehow we'll do it," Aramina said, peering up and down the trace to find a possible screen for the mass of the wagon. "Maybe, if K'van has frightened them with Threadfall, they'll have to go back the way they came… Maybe if we rig a stretcher, we can haul Father up the bank…"
"Maybe, maybe, maybe!" Pell almost danced with frustration.
"I won't have you children fighting at a time like this," Barla said tartly, appearing in the back of the wagon. "We've got to rouse your father… How long before Thread falls, Aramina? Or didn't you ask the dragonrider?"
Aramina bowed her head at her mother's rebuke. As she did so, her glance fell on a group of evergreens on the left-hand side of the roadway a few lengths farther up the track.
"There!" she cried dramatically, gesturing wildly. "There! We can drive the wagon in there, behind the evergreens. They're just tall enough!"
With something constructive to do, even Nexa stopped her whingeing. Dowell was carefully lifted out of the wagon and covered by a sleeping fur. Then everyone concentrated on getting the wagon out of sight. Nexa was directed to brush away the tracks of the wagon as Aramina and Pell forced the dray beasts through the opening Barla parted into the copse. The artistic addition of extra branches completed the camouflage.
Then Barla sent Pell and Nexa on ahead to the cave with sleeping furs and Barla's precious stewpot, while Aramina and her mother tried to rouse Dowell. The usual aromatic had no effect, and the two women exchanged anxious glances, when suddenly Nudge and Shove, tethered by the trace, began to moan fearfully and pull at their ring ropes.