“Think logically, huh?” Jaxom replied with a laugh, and patted Ruth’s neck before he wearily pulled himself up. With understandable reluctance and apprehension, he told Ruth to take them home.
The watchdragon caroled a greeting and a mere half-dozen firelizards, all banded in Hold colors, swarmed up to escort Ruth down to his weyr courtyard.
One of the drudges came hurrying out of the kitchen entrance, eyes wide with excitement.
“Lord Jaxom, there’s been a Hatching. The queen egg Hatched, it did. You were sent to come but no one could find you.”
“I had other business. Fetch me some numbweed!”
“Numbweed?” The drudge’s eyes widened further with concern.
“Numbweed! I’m sunburned.”
Rather pleased with his resourcefulness considering he was shivering in wet clothes, Jaxom saw Ruth comfortably situated in his weyr, his injured leg propped up.
It hurt Jaxom to get the tunic over his shoulder because Thread had scored right down the muscle, caught him at the wrist and continued to cut a long furrow down his thigh.
A timid scratching on the door to the main Hold announced the incredibly speedy return of the drudge. Jaxom opened the door wide enough to get the jug of numbweed, and still keep his Threadscores from the curious eyes.
“Thanks, and I’ll want something hot to eat, too. Soup, klah, whatever’s on the fire.”
Jaxom closed the door, scooped up a bathing sheet which he knotted about his middle as he made his way to Ruth. He slathered a fistful of the numbweed on his dragon’s leg and grinned at the sigh of intense relief that Ruth gave as the salve took immediate effect.
Jaxom gratefully echoed the sentiments as he smeared his own wounds. Blessed, blessed numbweed. Never again would he begrudge his labor in gathering the plaquey, thorny greenery from which this incredible balm was stewed. He peered into his looking glass as he daubed his face cut. It’d leave a finger-long scar. No getting around that. Now if he could get around Lytol’s wrath …
“Jaxom!”
Lytol strode into the room after the most perfunctory knock at the door. “You’ve missed the Hatching at Benden Weyr and-” At the sight of Jaxom, Lytol stopped so quickly in midstride that he rocked back on his heels. Clad only in a bathing sheet, the marks on Jaxom’s shoulder and face were quite visible.
“The egg Hatched all right then? Good,” Jaxom responded, picking up his tunic with a nonchalance he wasn’t feeling. “I …” then he stopped, as much because his voice would be muffled in the fabric of his tunic as because he had been about to explain with his customary candor his bizarre night’s work. He balked at the task. Ruth perhaps was right-they had only done what they had to. It was sort of his and Ruth’s private affair. You might even say his actions reflected his unconscious wish to atone for violating Ramoth’s Hatching Ground as a boy. He pulled the shirt over his head, wincing as it caught the numbweed on his cheek. “I heard at Benden,” he said then, “that they were worried whether it would Hatch after all the coming and going between.”
Lytol approached Jaxom slowly, his eyes on the young man’s face, begging the question.
Jaxom settled his tunic, belted it, then smoothed the numbweed into the cut again. He didn’t know what to say.
“Oh, Lytol, would you mind taking a look at Ruth’s leg? See if I doctored it right?” Jaxom waited then, facing Lytol calmly. He noticed, with a sadness for the inevitability of this moment of reserve, that Lytol’s eyes were dark with emotion. He owed the man so much, never more than at this moment. He wondered that he had ever considered Lytol cold or hard and unfeeling.
“There’s a trick of ducking Thread,” Lytol said quietly, “that you’d better teach Ruth, Lord Jaxom.”
“If you’d be kind enough to tell me how. Lord Lytol…”