Mnementh’s voice gave a brassy welcome, and Ramoth could not land Lessa quickly enough to go and twine necks with her mate. Lessa stood where Ramoth had left her, unable to move. She was aware that Mardra and T’ton were beside her. She was conscious only of F’lar, racing across the Court toward her. Yet she could not move. He grabbed her in his arms, holding her so tightly to him that she could not doubt the joy of his welcome.
“Lessa, Lessa,” his voice raggedly chanted in her ear. He pressed her face against his, crushing her to breathlessness, all his careful detachment abandoned. He kissed her, bugged her, held her, and then kissed her with rough urgency again.
Then he suddenly set her on her feet and gripped her shoulders. “Lessa, if you ever …” he said, punctuating each word with a flexing of his fingers, then stopped, aware of a grinning circle of strangers surrounding them.
“I told you he’d shake me,” Lessa was saying, dashing tears from her face. “But, F’lar, I brought them all … all but Benden Weyr. And that is why the five Weyrs were abandoned. I brought them.”
F’lar looked around him, looked beyond the leaders to the masses of dragons settling in the valley, on the heights, everywhere he turned. There were dragons, blue, green, bronze, brown, and a whole wingful of golden queen dragons alone.
“You brought the Weyrs?” he echoed, stunned.
“Yes, this is Mardra and T’ton of Fort Weyr, D’ram and …”
He stopped her with a little shake, pulling her to his side so he could see and greet the newcomers.
“I am more grateful than you can know,” he said and could not go on with all the many words he wanted to add. T’ton stepped forward, holding out his hand, which F’lar seized and held firmly.
“We bring eighteen hundred dragons, seventeen queens, and all that is necessary to implement our Weyrs.”
“And they brought fiamethrowers, too,” Lessa put in excitedly.
“But to come … to attempt it …” F’lar murmured in admiring wonder.
T’ton and D’ram and the others laughed.
“Your Lessa showed the way …”
“… with the Red Star to guide us …” she said.
“We are dragonmen,” T’ton continued solemnly, “as you are yourself, F’lar of Benden. We were told there are Threads here to fight, and that’s work for dragonmen to do … in any time!”
Drummer, beat, and piper, blow, Harper, strike, and soldier, go.
Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes.
EVEN AS the five Weyrs had been settling around Ruatha Valley, F’nor had been compelled to bring forward in time his southern Weyrfolk. They had all reached the end of endurance in double-time life, gratefully creeping back to quarters they had vacated two days and ten Turns ago.
R’gul, totally unaware of Lessa’s backward plunge, greeted F’lar and his Weyrwoman, on their return to the Weyr, with the news of F’nor’s appearance with seventy-two new dragons and the further word that he doubted any of the riders would be fit to fight.
“I’ve never seen such exhausted men in my life,” R’gul rattled on, “can’t imagine what could have gotten into them, with sun and plenty of food and all, and no responsibilities.”
F’lar and Lessa exchanged glances.
“Well, the southern Weyr ought to be maintained, R’gul. Think it over.”
“I’m a fighting dragonman, not a womanizer,” the old dragonrider grunted. “It’d take more than a trip between times to reduce me like those others.”
“Oh, they’ll be themselves again in next to no time,” Lessa said and, to R’gul’s intense disapproval, she giggled.
“They’ll have to be if we’re to keep the skies Thread-free,” R’gul snapped testily.
“No problem about that now,” F’lar assured him easily.
“No problem? With only a hundred and forty-four dragons?”
“Two hundred and sixteen,” Lessa corrected him firmly.
Ignoring her, R’gul asked, “Has that Mastersmith found a flamethrower that’ll work?”
“Indeed he has,” F’lar assured R’gul, grimmig broadly.
The five Weyrs had also brought forward their equipment.
Fandarel all but snatched examples from their backs and, undoubtedly, every hearth and smithy through the continent would be ready to duplicate the design by morning. T’ton had told F’lar that, in his time, each Hold had ample flamethrowers for every man on the ground. In the course of the Long Interval, however, the throwers must have been either smelted down or lost as incomprehensible devices. D’ram, particulariy, was very much interested in Fandarel’s agenothree sprayer, considering it better than thrown-flame, since it would also act as a fertilizer.