Yet her mind turned back to what had just happened. A dragonrider had died. His dragon, too. The Threads had claimed one pair already. How many more would die this cruel Turn? How long could the Weyr survive? Even after Ramoth’s forty matured, and the ones she soon would conceive, and her queen daughters, too?
Lessa walked apart to quiet her uncertainties and ease her grief. She saw Ramoth wheel and glide aloft, to land on the Peak. One day soon would Lessa see those golden wings laced red and black from Thread marks? Would Ramoth … disappear?
No, Ramoth would not. Not while Lessa lived.
F’lar told her long ago that she must learn to look beyond the narrow confines of Hold Ruatha and mere revenge. He was, as usual, right. As Weyrwoman under his tutelage, she had further learned that living was more than raising dragons and Spring Games. Living was struggling to do something impossibleto succeed, or die, knowing you had tried!
Lessa realized that she had, at last, fully accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and as mate, to help F’lar shape men and events for many Turns to cometo secure Pern against the Threads. Lessa threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin high.
Old C’gan had had the right of it.
Dragonmen must fly When Threads are in the skyl
Worlds are lost
or worlds are saved
By those dangers
dragon-braved.
As F’LAR had predicted, the attack ended by high noon, and weary dragons and riders were welcomed by Ramoth’s highpitched trumpeting from the Peak.
Once Lessa assured herself that F’lar had taken no additional injury, that F’nor’s were superficial and that Manora was keeping Kylara busy in the kitchens, she applied herself to organizing the care of the injured and the comfort of the worried.
As dusk fell, an uneasy peace settled on the Weyrthe quiet of minds and bodies too tired or too hurtful to talk.
Lessa’s own words mocked her as she made out the list of wounded men and beasts. Twenty-eight men or dragons were out of the air for the next Thread battle. C’gan was the only fatality, but there had been four more seriously injured dragons at Keroon and seven badly scored men, out of action entirely for months to come. Lessa crossed the Bowl to her Weyr, reluctant but resigned to giving F’lar this unsettling news.
She expected to find him in the sleeping room, but it was vacant. Ramoth was asleep already as Lessa passed her on the way to the Council Roomalso empty. Puzzled and a little alarmed, Lessa half-ran down the steps to the Records Room, to find F’lar, haggard of face, poring over musty skins.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded angrily. “You ought to be asleep.”
“So should you,” he drawled, amused.
“I was helping Manora settle the wounded …”
“Each to his own craft.” But he did lean back from the table, rubbing his neck and rotating the uninjured shoulder to ease stiffened muscles.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, “so I thought I’d see what answers I might turn up in the Records.”
“More answers? To what?” Lessa cried, exasperated with him. As if the Records ever answered anything. Obviously the tremendous responsibilities of Pern’s defense against the Threads were beginning to tell on the Weyrleader. After all, there had been the stress of the first battle, not to mention the drain of the traveling between time itself to get to Nerat to forestall the Threads.
F’lar grinned and beckoned Lessa to sit beside him on the wall bench.
“I need the answer to the very pressing question of how one understrength Weyr can do the fighting of six.”
Lessa fought the panic that rose, a cold flood, from her guts.
“Oh, your time schedules will take care of that,” she replied gallantly. “You’ll be able to conserve the dragon-power until the new forty can join the ranks.”
F’lar raised a mocking eyebrow.
“Let us be honest between ourselves, Lessa.”
“But there have been Long Intervals before,” she argued, “and since Pern survived them, Pern can again.”
“Before there were always six Weyrs. And twenty or so Turns before the Red Star was due to begin its Pass, the queens would start to produce enormous clutches. All the queens, not just one faithful golden Ramoth. Oh, how I curse Jora!” He slammed to his feet and started pacing, irritably brushing the lock of black hair that fell across his eyes.