CHAPTER XII
Ruatha Hold, Fidello's Hold, Threadfall, 15.7.6
KEEPING A SECRET from one's dragon was not easy. About the only safe time for Jaxom to think of anything he didn't wish Ruth to perceive was very late at night when his friend was sound asleep, or in the morning if Jaxom happened to wake before Ruth. He had seldom needed to shield his thought from Ruth, which further complicated and inhibited the process. Then, too, the pace of Jaxom's life-the now-boring training with the weyrling wing, helping Lytol and Brand to gear up the Hold to full summer activity, not to mention excursions to the Plateau Hold-caused Jaxom to fall asleep as soon as he pulled his bed furs about his shoulders. Mornings, he was often dragged out of his bed by Tordril or another fosterling just in time to keep appointments.
Nevertheless, the problem of Ruth's maturity cropped up in Jaxom's mind at inconvenient times during his waking hours and had to be rigidly suppressed before a hint of his anxiety reached his dragon.
Twice at Fort Weyr, to intensify the problem, a proddy green had taken off on a flight, pursued by such browns and blues as felt able to rise to her. The first time, Jaxom was in the middle of drill sequence and only happened to notice the flight above and beyond the weyrlings' wing. His attention was abruptly diverted from them as a most unconcerned Ruth continued in the wing's maneuver. Jaxom had to grab at the fighting straps to remain in place.
The second time, Jaxom and Ruth were aground when the mating shrieks of a green blooding her kill startled the Weyr. The other weyrlings were immature enough to be disinterested but the weyrlingmaster looked in Jaxom's direction for a long moment. All at once, Jaxom realized that K'nebel was apparently wondering if Jaxom and Ruth were going to join those waiting for the green to launch herself.
Jaxom was assailed by such a gamut of emotions--anxiety, shame, expectation, reluctance, and pure terror-that Ruth reared, wings wide, in alarm.
What has upset you? Ruth demanded, settling to the ground and curving his neck about to regard his rider, his eyes whirling in quick response to Jaxom's emotions.
"I'm all right. I'm all right," Jaxom said hastily, stroking Ruth's head, desperately wanting to ask if Ruth felt at all like flying the green and hoping in a muted whisper deep inside him that Ruth did not!
With a challenging snarl, the green dragon was airborne, the blues and browns after her while she repeated her taunting challenge. Quicker, lighter than any of her prospective mates, her facility strengthened by her sexual readiness, she achieved a conspicuous distance before the first male had become airborne. Then they were all after her. On the killing ground, their riders closed into a knot about the green's rider. All too quickly, challenger and pursuers dwindled to specks in the sky. The riders half-ran, half-stumbled to the Lower Caverns and the chamber reserved there.
Jaxom had never witnessed a mating flight of dragons. He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry throat. He felt heart and blood thudding and a tension that he usually experienced only as he held Corana's slender body against him. He suddenly wondered which dragon had flown Mirrim's Path, which rider had…The touch on his shoulder made him Jump and cry out.
"Well, if Ruth isn't ready to fly, you certainly are, Jaxom," K'nebel said. The weyrlingmaster glanced up at far-distant specks in the sky. "Even a green's mating can be unsettling." K'nebel's expression was understanding. He nodded at Ruth. "He wasn't interested? No, well, give him time! You'd better be off. Drill was all but over today, anyhow. I've just got to keep these younger ones occupied someplace else when that green gets caught."
Then Jaxom realized that the rest of the wing had dispersed. With a second encouraging clap on Jaxom's back, K'nebel walked off toward his bronze, agilely mounting and urging the beast up toward their weyr.
Jaxom thought of the skyborne beasts. Unwillingly he thought of their riders in the inner room, linked to their dragons in an emotional struggle that was resolved in a strengthening and fusing of the links between dragons and riders. Jaxom thought of Mirrim. And of Corana.
With a groan, he sprang on Ruth's neck, fleeing the emotional atmosphere of Fort Weyr, trying to flee from his sudden realization of what he had probably always known about riders but had only this very morning assimilated.
He had intended to go to the lake to immerse himself in the cold waters and let that icy shock cure his body and chill the torment in his mind. But Ruth took him instead to the Plateau Hold.
"Ruth! The lake. Take me to the lake!"
It is better for you to be here right now, was Ruth's astonishing reply. The fire-lizard says the girl is in the upper field. Once again Ruth seized the initiative, gliding toward the field where young grain waved, brilliantly green in the noonday sun, where Corana was diligently hoeing away the tenacious creeper vine that grew from the borders of the field and threatened to strangle the crop.
Ruth achieved a landing on the narrow margin between grain and wall. Corana, recovering from surprise at his unexpected arrival, waved a welcome. Instead of rushing toward him as she usually did, she smoothed back her hair and blotted the perspiration beading her face.
"Jaxom," she began as he strode toward her, the urgency in his loins increasing at the sight of her, "I wish you wouldn't-"
He silenced her half-teasing scold with a kiss, felt something hard clout him along his side. Pinning her against him with his right arm, he found the offending hoe with his left hand. Wrenching it from her grasp, he spun it away from them. Corana wriggled to get free, as unprepared for this mood in him as he was. He held her closer, trying to temper the pressures rising within him until she could respond. She smelled of the earth and her own sweat. Her hair, covering his face as he kissed her throat and breast, also smelled of sun and sweat, and the odors excited him further. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a green dragon, shrieking her defiance. Somewhere, too close to his need, was that vision of dragonriders in an inner room, waiting, with an excitement that matched his own, waiting until the green dragon had been captured by the fastest, the strongest or the smartest of her pursuers. But it was Corana he was holding in his arms, and Corana who was beginning to respond to his need. They were on the warm ground, the dampness of earth she had just hoed soft under his elbows and knees. The sun was warm on his buttocks as he tried to erase the memory of those riders half-stumbling toward the inner room, and the mocking taunt of a green dragon in flight. He did not resist or deny Ruth's familiar beloved touch as his orgasm released the turmoil of body and mind.
Jaxom could not bring himself to go to weyrling practice the next morning. Lytol and Brand were out early, riding to a distant holding with the fosterlings so no one questioned his presence. When he left the Hold in the afternoon, he firmly directed Ruth to the lake and scrubbed and scrubbed his dragon until Ruth meekly asked what was the matter.
"I love you, Ruth. You are mine. I love you," Jaxom said, wanting with all his heart to be able to add, with his former blithe confidence, that he would do anything in the world for his friend. "I love you!" he repeated through gritted teeth and dove from Ruth's back as deeply as he could into the ice-cold waters of the lake.
Perhaps I am hungry, Ruth said as Jaxom fought the pressure of water and airlessness in his lungs.
That could certainly provide a diversion, Jaxom thought as he erupted to the surface, gasping for breath. "There's a hold in South Ruatha where there're wherries fattening."
That would do very nicely.
Jaxom dried himself quickly, shrugged into his clothes and boots, absently coiling the damp bath sheet over his shoulders as he mounted Ruth and directed him up and between to the Southern Holding. He realized his foolishness the moment the deathly chill of between compounded the dampness about his neck. He'd surely contract a distressingly uncomfortable head cold from such stupidity.