The intensity of Dilenth’s cries dwindled abruptly as the queen locked eyes with the blue. His head steadied and he submitted to his rider’s ministration. The relieved F’duril alternately entreated Dilenth to be brave and thanked Orlith and Moreta.
“Half the noise is shock,” Moreta said to F’duril as she scrubbed
her hands in the basin of redwort. The solutions stung her cold fingers.
128 Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
“The lacerations are major. The wingsail is nothing but rags and shreds,” said Nesso at her elbow. “How will it ever mend?”
“We’ll just see,” Moreta replied, resenting Nesso for airing the doubts she herself entertained. “You can get me that bolt of fine wide cloth and the thinnest basket reeds you’ve got. Where’re Declan and
Maylone?” “Declan’s with L’rayl. Sorth took a mass of Thread on his withers.
Maylone is somewhere or other with a dragon.” Nesso was distracted by so many urgent requirements. “I’ve had to leave the injured riders with only their weynnates and the women to tend them.
Oh, why did Berchar have to be sick?”
“Can’t be helped. Haura will be back shortly to help you with the riders.” Moreta took a firm hold on her frustration and banished impatience as a useless luxury. “Just get me the cloth and the basket reeds. I’ll want my table here, in front of the wing. Send me someone with steady hands, oil, and thin numbweed, then get back to the riders. And my needle case and that spool of treated hiread.”
As Nesso rushed off, shouting for helpers, Moreta continued her survey of the injured wing. The main wingbones were unscathed, which was a boon, but so much numbweed had been applied that she couldn’t see if ichor was forming. Fragments of the leading sail dan-gled from elbow and finger joint. There might just be enough for reconstruction. Any shred would help. She flexed her fingers which
were still stiff from the cold flying of Fall. Dilenth’s keening was muted but now another sound, a human
one, penetrated her concentration. “You know I had my feeling! You know we’ve both been uneasy. I
thought we weren’t flying true!” F’duril’s litany of self-reproach reached Moreta. “I should have held us between a breath longer. You couldn’t help yourself. It isn’t your fault, Dilenth. It’s mine! You’d no air space to dodge that Thread. And I let you back in too soon.
It’s all my fault.” Moreta rounded on the man to shock him out of his hysterics.
“Fduril, get a grip on yourself. You’re upsetting Dilenth far more than” Moreta broke off, suddenly noting the Threadscores on
F’duril’s body. “Has no one tended you yet, Fduril?”
“I made him drink wine, Moreta.” A rider in soot-smeared leathers appeared from Dilenth’s left side. “I’ve got numbweed dressings for him.”
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern 129
“Then apply thcml” Moreta looked around in exasperation. “Where is Nesso now? Can’t she organize anything today?”
“How bad is Dilenth?” the rider asked while capably slitting away the remains of F’duril’s riding jacket. Moreta now identified the slender young man as A’dan, F’duril’s weyrmate. He spoke in a low worried voice.
“Bad enough!” She took a longer look at A’dan, who was coping deftly with the dressings he wrapped about F’duril. “You’re his weyrmate? Have you a steady hand?”
A solicitous weyrmate was preferable to no help, and certainly more acceptable to Moreta than Nesso’s moaning and pessimistic outlook. Beads of ichor were beginning to seep through the numbweed on Dilenth’s wingbone.
“Where are my things, Nesso?”
Moreta had taken but one pace toward the cavern to collect her requirements when the stout Headwoman floundered into view, laden with reeds, a pot of thin numbweed liquid, the jug of oil, and Moreta’s needle box. Behind her marched three weyrlings, one of them carrying a hide-wrapped bolt of cloth as tall as himself and a washing bowl while the other two wrestled the table close to the blue dragon’s wing.
“Oh, a long time healing if it heals whole,” Nesso moaned in a dismal undertone while shaking her head. She took one look at the expression on Moreta’s face and scurried off.
Moreta took a long, settling, breath then exhaled and reached for the oil. As she began coating her hands against contact with numbweed, she issued instructions to A’dan and the weyrlings.