It was almost a relief to hear Carenath’s bellow and look up to see the massed wings ranged along the Weyr Rim, awaiting the signal to chew firestone. Torene mounted the kneeling Alaranth, then reached down to those who were lifting the heavy tanks to their positions on either side of the queen’s withers. The tanks tethered, Torene attached the wand to the right-hand one and gave a good turn of her wrench to be sure the connection was firm. Thanking her helpers, she then peered up to the Rim to wait for Sean’s signal to Sorka and Faranth, the leaders of the queens’ wing.
Follow me, Carenath said to Faranth. His voice was loud and clear in Torene’s head, but she didn’t make a move. She always took extra care to wait for Sorka’s signal-ever since her first flight with the queens’ wing, when she had moved off ahead of Faranth. That was the day she had admitted, shamefacedly and feeling she was guilty of a terrible sin against the Weyrleaders and the Weyr, that she could hear the speech of other dragons. After she had made a stammered confession-in private-to the Weyrleaders, she had agreed to keep her ability to herself and be discreet at all times in exercising this unique talent.
Faranth made the all-important first leap off the ground, springing with tremendous power from her hind legs, and Torene, riding right point to Faranth, gave Alaranth the go-ahead.
As often as she had fought Thread, Torene felt the excitement knot in her belly, felt the surge of adrenaline in her blood as her queen’s wings described mighty strokes. With three, they were above the Weyr walls, gliding into their in-flight position under the massed wings of Fort dragons.
She took their destination from both Carenath and Faranth, felt that awful sinking into the cold blackness that was the medium through which the dragons passed on their telekinetic way from one place to another, and came out over the sea, just beginning to darken as Thread slanted down across it. She was close enough at a roughly thousand-foot altitude to notice the churning of the water where schools of every fish that thrived in Pern’s seas had gathered to feast on drowning Thread.
High above-at some eight thousand feet, Torene estimated-the aerial defenders of Pern waited for the leading Edge to get closer to the port facility. No sense wasting dragon flame on what would drown.
Then the nearer wings went into action. Flame sprouted red-orange, then caught, and Thread burned into blackness. It was clumping today, Torene noticed, and she turned the regulator on her wand to a wide setting.
She also turned her hearing to listen to the dragons already engaged and wondered if Sorka was asking Faranth about the nicknames.
She is, Alaranth promptly replied, as an overlay of messages from both dragons and riders briefly confused Torene: Watch your left, F’mar! That’s coming in at two o’clock, B’ref! Big mother clump descending right over you, D’vid. Firth, watch right! That last came directly from the Weyrleader dragon to Shih Lao’s.
Torene giggled. There was nothing dragons could do with that name!
S’lao was Alaranth’s prompt reply. Stuff getting through. Veer right!
Sorka and Faranth had already begun to swing, and Torene and Alaranth followed. Habit kept Torene listening in with half an ear, as the queens’ wing began to mop up: mostly single Threads, which the upper level of fighters ignored in order to concentrate on the clumps and tangles. Faranth directed some of the quicker green riders to spread out to catch the outer edges of these and then, in an aside, ordered Alaranth to supervise.
Sometimes Torene’s neck ached with craning her head upward. Occasionally Alaranth eased her forequarters upward so that the strain was reduced, but such an awkward maneuver was hard for the queen to sustain
A dragon screamed, and instantly Alaranth identified the beast: Siwith, P’ter’s blue.
Wing damage, Alaranth said. We go.
We’re assisting, Elliath, Uloa’s queen, said. The pair went between the brief distance to the falling blue. Siwith’s right wing had been shredded. Unable to sustain flight, he was managing no more than a downward spiral.
Spouting flame, two greens appeared, clearing Thread from the path of the two queens as they arrived to arrest the blue’s descent.
Alaranth and Elliath had done this maneuver so often in the past two years that it was nearly routine now. As Torene laid herself flat against her queen’s neck, Alaranth being the larger beast, slipped up under the falling blue matching his downward speed and then coming up under his smaller body, holding it along her spine. Torene could feel Siwith’s hot and pungent breath on her back and hoped he wasn’t going to lose another suit of riding gear from scorching. Elliath hovered above them both, her forelegs poised to grab Siwith by the wing shoulders if he slipped.
Nice catch, Carenath told Alaranth.
Siwith’s whistles of pain were muted as the little fellow valiantly tried to stifle the agony of a wing injury.
We have him, Alaranth told her rider, who could feel the strain through her queen’s body.
Siwith, Torene said, relax now while we take you between. We’ve got you safe. Elliath, we go. . . now!
The transfer to Fort Weyr was accomplished. Sometimes the wounded panicked when they weren’t in control of a movement between, another reason for the second queen ready to grab wing-shoulder joints. But Siwith managed to stay calm, and Alaranth arrived at the Weyr with her casualty still in place. The extra weight had her skimming the surface, though she landed smoothly just where medics waited.
“Are you okay, P’ter?” Torene shouted over her shoulder. A whiff of scorched leather reached her nose.
“Yeah. Thanks, ‘Rene! Just missed me. Ah, Siwith, you’ll be all right. You’ll be all right!” P’ter’s voice was ragged with concern and shared pain.
“Hang on while we transfer you.”
Alaranth tucked her left wing as well as she could under the wounded blue’s limp pinion, Elliath caught Siwith by his uninjured joints, and as Alaranth eased out from under Siwith, the other queen gently eased his body to the ground. Hoses had already sprayed numbweed on the underside of the mangled wing membrane; now the medics could reach the upper surface. The blue’s rider unbuckled his fighting straps and started slathering his dragon’s upper back. Siwith’s whistles of pain were reduced to murmurs of relief.
“D’you need new tanks, Uloa?” Torene asked.
“No, I’m fine for another hour.”
“Me, too.”
Torene looked skyward, giving Alaranth the signal to be ready. Both queens sprang from the ground at the same instant and, sufficient altitude gained, winked between and back to the Fall.
The evening meal was served at a late hour. While ground crews said that little had gotten through the wings, there had been sufficient injuries that all the riders knew Sean would have words with the Weyr in general before they were dismissed.
“He’s sure to claim today’s flying injuries are due to careless riding, bad concentration, and stupidity,” N’klas muttered as he followed Torene into the lower cavern.
“And he’d be right,” Torene said, grinning back over her shoulder at the morose N’klas. “But clumps are the hardest to fly, and he’s sure to admit that before he starts lambasting us.”
“Nice catch on Siwith, by the way. P’ter says he’ll be out months growing back wing membrane.”
“Thought so, from what I could see when we brought him in.”