With a glow torch to cast some light in the dark lower hall, Silvina awaited him at the massive iron doors. She whirled the release wheel and the great bar lifted from ceiling and floor. He gave the yank required to open the huge door and wondered at the sudden stitch in his side. Then Silvina passed him his gitar, stoutly encased against the bitter cold of between.
“I do hope Barnath flies Caylith,” she said. “Look, here’s Drenth now.”
The Harper saw the brown dragon backwinging to land and he ran down the hall steps. Drenth was excited, his eyes gleaming orange and red in the night. Robinton greeted the dragon’s rider, paused to sling his gitar across his back and then, reaching for D’fio’s hand, climbed to the brown’s back.
“How does the wagering stand?” he asked the rider.
“Ah, now Harper; Barnath is a fine beast. He’ll fly Caylith. Although,” a certain element of doubt tinged the man’s voice, “the four bronzes N’ton is permitting to try are good strong young beasts, and mighty eager for the chance. It could be an upset. Put your mark where you will, it’ll give you good value.”
“I wish I could bet, but it’s not the sort of thing I ought to do …”
“Now, if you were to pass me the marks. Master Robinton, I’d swear on the Shell of Drenth here that they were mine!”
“After the flight as well as before?” Robinton asked, amusement warring with his unprofessional desire to gamble.
“I’m a dragonrider, Master Robinton,” D’fio said gruffly, “not one of those faithless Southerners.”
“And I’m Master Harper of Pern,” said Robinton. But he leaned into the man’s back, pressing a two-mark piece into his hand. “Barnath, of course, and please let none be the wiser.”
“As you wish. Master Robinton,” D’fio sounded pleased.
They rose above the black shadow of the Fort Hold cliffs, the lighter darkness of night sky, moonless at this hour and season, just barely discernible. He felt the tension in D’fio’s back, drew his own breath in sharply as they transferred between, and abruptly emerged with Drenth calling out his name to the Ista Weyr watchdragon.
Robinton shielded his eyes from the brilliance of the sun slanting off the water. As he glanced below, he saw the dramatic half-peak of Ista Weyr, the black stone like giant jagged fingers pointing to the bright blue skies. Ista was the smallest of the Weyrs, some of its complement of dragons making weyrs in the forest that surrounded the base. But the broad plateau beyond the cone was crowded with bronze beasts, their riders forming a cluster close to the golden queen who was crouched over her kill, sucking the blood from its body. At a farther and safe distance from this spectacle a large group of people looked on.
Toward this area, Drenth glided.
Zair took wing from Robinton’s shoulder, to join other firelizards in an aerial display of excitement. Robinton noticed that the little creatures kept a distance from the dragons. At least the firelizards were appearing at Weyrs again.
D’fio dismounted, too, and sent his brown for a swim in the warm waters of the bay below the Weyr plateau. Other dragons, uninvolved in this flight, were already taking advantage of the bathing at Ista Island.
Caylith vaulted from the ground toward the herd of beasts in the Weyr’s corral. Cosira half-followed, keeping a firm control on her young queen so that she wouldn’t gorge the meat and be too heavy for this all-important mating flight. Robinton counted twenty-six bronzes ringing the killing ground, gleaming in the harsh sunlight, their eyes wheeling red in rut agitation, their wings halt-furled, their bodies at a crouch that would send them skyward the instant the queen ascended. They were all young, as F’lar had recommended, almost equal in size as they waited, never taking their glistening eyes from the object of their interest.
Caylith growled deep in her throat as she sucked the blood from the buck carcass. She raised her head to snarl contemptuously back at the bronze ring.
Suddenly the watch dragon roared a challenge and even Caylith turned to look. Arrowing in from the south, over the sea, came two bronzes.