T’ton shrugged. “They were coming so regularly even when I was a weyriing, you kind of knew when one was due. But this way is much, much better.”
“More efficient,” Fandarel added approvingly.
“After tomorrow, when all the Weyrs show up at Telgar, we can request supplies we need to stock the empty Weyrs,” T’ton grinned. “Like old times, squeezing extra tithes from .the Holders.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation. “Like old times.”
“There’s the southern Weyr,” F’nor suggested. “We’ve been gone from there six Turns in this time, and the herdbeasts were left. They’ll have multiplied, and there’ll be all that fruit and grain.”
“It would please me to see that southern venture continued,” F’lar remarked, nodding encouragingly at F’nor.
“Yes, and continue Kylara down there, please, too,” F’nor added urgently, his eyes sparkling with irritation.
They discussed sending for some immediate supplies to help out the newly occupied Weyrs, and then adjourned the meeting.
“It is a trifle unsettling,” T’ton said as he shared wine with Robinton, “to find that the Weyr you left the day before .in good order has become a dusty hulk.” He chuckled. “The women of the Lower Caverns were a bit upset.”
“We cleaned up those kitchens,” F’nor replied indignantly. A good night’s rest in a fresh time had removed much of his fatigue.-T’ton cleared his throat. “According to Mardra, no man can clean anything.”
“Do you think you’ll be up to riding tomorrow, F’nor?” F’lar asked solicitously. He was keenly aware of the stress showing in his half brother’s face, despite his improvement overnight. Yet those strenuous Turns had been necessary, nor had they become futile even in hindsight with the arrival of eighteen hundred dragons from past time. When F’lar had ordered F’nor ten Turns backward to breed the desperately needed replacements, they had not yet brought to mind the Question Song or known of the tapestry.
“I wouldn’t miss that fight if I were dragonless,” F’nor declared stoutly.
“Which reminds me,” F’lar remarked, “we’ll need Lessa at Telgar tomorrow. She can speak to any dragon, you know,” he explained, almost apologetically, to T’ton and D’ram.
“Oh, we know,” T’ton assured him. “And Mardra doesn’t mind.” Seeing F’lar’s blank expression, he added, “As senior Weyrwoman, Mardra, of course, leads the queens’ wing.”
F’lar’s face grew blanker. “Queens’ wing?”
“Certainly,” and T’ton and D’ram exchanged questioning glances at F’lar’s surprise. “You don’t keep your queens from fighting, do you?”
“Our queens? T’ton, we at Benden have had only one queen dragon at a time for so many generations that there are those who denounce the legends of queens in battle as black heresy!”
T’ton looked rueful. “I had not truly realized till this instant how small your numbers were.” But his enthusiasms overtook him. “Just the same, queens are very useful with flamethrowers. They get clumps other riders might miss.
They fly in low, under the main wings. That’s one reason D’ram’s so interested in the agenothree spray. Doesn’t singe the hair off the Holders’ heads, so to speak, and is far better over tilled fields.”
“Do you mean to say that you allow your queens to fly against Threads?” F’lar ignored the fact that F’nor was grinning, and T’ton, too.
“Allow?” D’ram bellowed. “You can’t stop them. Don’t you know your Ballads?”
” ‘Moreta’s Ride’?”
“Exactly.”
F.nor laughed aloud at the expression on F’lar’s face as he irritably pulled the hanging forelock from his eyes. Then, sheepishly, he began to grin.
“Thanks. That gives me an idea.”
He saw his fellow weyrleaders to their dragons, waved cheerfully to Robinton and Fandarel, more lighthearted than he would have thought he’d be the morning before the second battle. Then he asked Mnementh where Lessa might be.
Bathing, the bronze dragon replied.
F’lar glanced at the empty queen’s weyr. Oh, Ramoth is on the Peak, as usual. Mnementh sounded aggrieved.
F’lar heard the sound of splashing in the bathing room suddenly cease, so he called down for hot klah. He was going to enjoy this.
“Oh, did the meeting go well?” Lessa asked sweetly as she emerged from the bathing room, drying-cloth wrapped tightly around her slender figure.
“Extremely. You realize, of course, Lessa, that you’ll be needed at Telgar?”