So Moreta ascribed her nagging sense of apprehension to the ten-sions of a long day and sent M’barak, Leri’s favorite weyrling rider, to Ruatha Hold. K’lon told Leri and Moreta how appalled he had been by Ruatha. Moreta did not like to dwell on the scenes of a derelict Ruatha that her active imagination could conjure. What could she say in condolence to a man who had suffered so many losses?
Suddenly Alessan, dressed in rough leathers but a clean shirt showing at the neck, stood to one side of the entrance to the Hatching Ground. Beside him was a lanky man in a faded, patched tunic of harper blue. M’barak was grinning at their hesitation and waved them toward the portion of the tiers that Moreta had converted to a temporary living space. Orlith was awake and watched them enter, but displayed no agitation.
Moreta rose, one hand raised in unconscious protest against the change in Alessan. Too vividly she recalled the assured, handsome, buoyant young man who had greeted her at Ruatha’s Gather eight days before. He had lost weight and his tunic was belted tightly to take up the slack. His hair no longer looked trimmed or brushed. She wondered why that detail should matter so much to her. The stains on his hands, witness of his efforts to plow and plant, were honorable ones, as was the redwort on hers. She grieved, too, for the lines of worry and tension in his face, the cynical slant to his mouth, and the wary expression in his light green eyes.
“This is Tuero, Moreta, who has been invaluable to me over the . since the Gather.” After the slight pause, Alessan’s voice deepened as if to ward off comment. “He has a theory against which I can raise no objections, but, as we cannot reach an authority at this hour in Keroon Beasthold, I thought you might give us an opinion.”
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“What is it?” Moreta asked, put off by his diffidence. The change in him went far deeper than appearance.
“Tuero”Alessan gave the harper a slight bow of acknowledgment“wondered if a vaccine could be made from the blood of runnerbeasts to protect them from the plague.” ‘
“Of course it can! You mean it hasn’t been done?” Moreta was consumed by such a surge of fury and frustration that Orlith rose to all four legs from her semirecumbent position, her eyes whirling pinkly, and a worried question rumbled from her throat.
“No.” In the one word, Alessan mirrored her own intense reaction.
“No one thought of doing it, or there hasn’t been the time?” she demanded, sick at the thought of more loss, animal or human. The grim set of Alessan’s mouth and the harper’s sigh gave the answer. “I would have thought that” She broke off the angry sentence, closing her eyes and clenching her fists. She recalled the heavy losses at Keroon Beastholdthe emptiness of her family’s runnerhold.
“There have been other priorities,” Alessan said. He spoke without bitterness but from a resignation to harsh fact.
“Yes, of course.” She pulled her wits back from useless conjecture. “Have you any healers?”
“Several.”
“Runnerblood would produce the same serum by the same method, centrifugal separation. More blood can be drawn from runners, of course, and the vaccine should be administered in proportion to body weight. The heavier”
Alessan cocked his left eyebrow just enough for her to realize that there were no more of the heavier beasts at Ruatha.
“Would you have any spare needlethoms?” Alessan asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes.” At that moment Moreta would have given Alessan anything he needed to alleviate his problems. “And whatever else is
needed by Ruatha.”
“We’ve been promised a supply train from Fort,” Tuero said, “but until we can assure the wagoners that man and animal in Ruatha are plague-free, no one will venture near the Hold.”
Moreta assimilated that information with a slow nod of her head, her eyes on Alessan. They might be discussing something completely
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foreign to him to judge by his detachment. How else could he have survived his losses?
“M’barak, please take Lord Alessan and Journeyman Tuero to the storeroom. They may have anything they need from our supplies.”