“Put some energy into the task, lads. Here’s the Weyrwoman to see the sacks are properly filled for tomorrow’s Fall.”
Many Fort dragonriders insisted that F’neldril was the one rider all Fort dragons obeyed, a holdover from weyrling days under his tutelage. He did have an uncanny instinct, Moreta thought, if he could see her through the rolling fog. He appeared right beside her, a craggy-faced man with a deep Thread scar from forehead to ear, and the lobe missing, but she had always liked him and he was one other first friends at Fort Weyr.
“You’re well, Weyrwoman? And Orlith thrives? She’s near clutching now, isn’t she?”
“More weyrlings for you to tyrannize, F’neldril?”
“Me?” He pointed his long curved thumb at his chest in mock dismay. “Me? Tyrannize?”
But the old established exchange did not lift her spirits. “There’s trouble, F’neldril …”
“Which one?” he demanded.
“No, not your weyrlings. There’s a disease of epidemic proportion spreading over the southeast and coming west. I’ll want to know how many of the weyrlings were on convey duty yesterday and where they took their passengers, and how long they stayed on the ground at Ista. The entire Weyr will be answering the same questions. If we are to prevent the epidemic’s spreading here, we’ll need to know.”
“I’ll find out exactly. Never fear on that count, Moreta!”
“I don’t, but we must avoid panic even though the situation is very serious. And Leri would like to have some of the oldest Records, the still legible ones, brought to her weyr.”
“What’s the Masterhealer doing then with his time, and all those apprentices of his, that we have to do his job for him?”
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern 73
“The more to look the quicker to find; the sooner the better,” Moreta replied. F’neldril could be so parochial.
“Leri’ll have her Records as soon as the lads have finished sacking firestone and had a bit of a wash. Wouldn’t do to have stone-dust messing up our RecordsYou there, M’barak, that sack’s not what I’d call full. Top it off.”
Another of F’neldril’s quirks was to finish one job before starting the next. But Moreta moved off, secure in the knowlege that Leri would not have a long wait for her Records.
She went on to the Lower Caverns and stood for a moment in the entrance, noting how few people occupied the tables, most of those few obviously nursing wineheads. How awkward and inconvenient it all was, Moreta thought with a rush of distressed exasperation, for an epidemic to break out the day after two Gathers, when half the riders would consider the news a bad joke and the rest wouldn’t be sober enough to understand what was happening. And Fall tomorrow! How could she tell the Weyr if they weren’t available to tell?
If you eat, you’ll think of something, came the calm imperturbable voice of her dragon.
“An excellent notion.” Moreta went to the small breakfast hearth and poured herself a cup of klah, added a huge spoonful of sweetener, took a fresh roll from the warming oven and looked around for a place to sit and think. Then she saw Peterpar, the Weyr herdsman, sharpening his hoof knife. His hair was rumpled and his face sleep creased. He was not really attending to the job at hand, which was honing an edge against the strop.
“Don’t cut yourself,” she said quietly, sitting down.
Peterpar winced at the sound of her voice but he kept on stropping.
“Were you at Ista or Ruatha?”
“Both, for my folly. Beer at Ista. That foully acid Tiliek wine at Ruatha.”
“Did you see the feline at Ista?” Moreta thought that it would be kinder to break the news gently to a man in Peterpar’s fragile state.
“Aye.” Peterpar frowned. “Master Talpan was there. He told me not to get too close though it was caged and all. He sent you his regards, by the way. Afterward”Peterpar’s frown deepened as if he didn’t quite trust his memory of events“they put the animal down.”
74
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
“For a good reason.” Moreta told him why.
Peterpar held the knife suspended, midstrop, shocked. By the time she had finished, he had recovered his equanimity.