The Dolphins of Pern

CHAPTER XIII

BELJETH, Adrea’s queen, forwarded the alert to Ramoth, whose immediate reaction—a stentorian bugle—reverberated around the Bowl of Benden Weyr, startling everyone and bringing the riders out of the Lower Caverns, where they had been eating.

Lessa, K’van says now is the time, said the queen.

“Toric would, wouldn’t he?” Lessa said. They had been just about to sit down to a fine late lunch. “Sailing on the dawn tide, is he? I’ll enjoy giving Toric his just desserts.”

F’lar wistfully eyed the meat pie that was steaming on the table, and the assortment of early vegetables that would accompany it, the hot fresh bread and the sweet berries that would have made an excellent meal. With long strides, he collected their riding gear and deposited Lessa’s in her arms.

“I knew we should have eaten when the others did,” he muttered, breaking off some of the bread and stuffing a hunk in his mouth. Then he grabbed a handful of the berries and crammed them in, too. The juices dribbled down his chin as he went to get Mnementh’s harness down from its peg.

Lessa followed his example, and stuck the rest of the bread into a half-closed jacket before she took down Ramoth’s harness. The queen was swinging from side to side, her head low, waiting for her rider to slip the harness on.

Does every rider know where he or she is to go? Lessa asked Ramoth as the golden queen shivered the harness down her neck into place. Lessa buckled the straps, then pulled on her gloves.

Yes, and Ramoth dragged out the sibilant vocally as well as telepathically. Her eyes were bright, shot with orange eagerness. This will be fun. Not like fighting Thread.

“Just don’t get to like it too much, my fine queen,” Lessa said. She closed her jacket, wrapped her single braid around her head, and jammed on her riding cap, fastening the chin strap. With a jump to Ramoth’s forearm, she deftly snagged the one dangling strap, and pulled herself into place between the last two neck ridges. “I devoutly trust we won’t have to do this exercise more than once!” Then she grinned. “Well, this is the second time.” Let’s go, dear heart.

Ramoth walked the last few lengths to the ledge of her weyr. Mnementh was above her to the right, F’lar already mounted.

The half-dozen bronze dragons and the other Benden queens who were to take part in this “lesson” were making their way to the rim of the Bowl. Mnementh asked Lessa if everyone involved had been alerted, and Ramoth said that Beljeth had conveyed the message to every other Weyr. Lessa grinned.

F’lar says we should move out now, Mnementh informed the Weyrwoman.

Ramoth gave one more bugle and sprang into the air, spiraling upward, upward above the rim of Bowl, outlined against the farther hills by the late-afternoon sun.

Mnementh flew proudly beside his queen, looking over at her.

Admiring your queen, Mnementh? Lessa asked.

We fly well together was the response, and she grinned as she heard the smugness in the bronze dragon’s tone. No other had even come close to catching Ramoth in her mating flights, despite the fact that every bronze, and two very audacious browns, had tried.

As soon as F’lar judged them far enough above the Weyr, Mnementh gave Ramoth the order to go between.

This day’s maneuver took a little longer than F’lar’s capture of Hold ladies the day that the Hold Lords had attempted to storm Benden Weyr. This time, it was the Lord Holders who were being peremptorily required to accompany the Leaders of every Weyr while bronze riders awaited their arrival at each of the fraudulently settled sites. The golden queens would see that the ships that had set sail so blithely from Toric’s harbor tacked right back the way they had come.

F’lar and Lessa checked at all eight illegal sites to be sure that each had been inspected by a Lord Holder and Weyrleader, and that the men and women found there were loaded on dragons for transportation back to Southern Hold. The queens who were on ship duty told Ramoth that they’d never had so much fun. The ships had not gone so far from their home port that they would delay the confrontations the Weyr-leaders had planned for Toric.

The Lord Holder of Southern heard the shouts and cries of alarm where he sat in his hall, eating a belated morning meal. He had seen the ships leave port and been well satisfied with the sight of their sails billowing with the brisk eastward wind. Without knowing why Toric had asked to know when the weather would be fine for a long sail, Master Idarolan had sent a fire-lizard message that the winds would be propitious today and the weather fair for several days. Toric had even noticed the dolphins who escorted the ships out of the harbor, leaping and plunging in their witless fashion. Then he had come back inside and spent a pleasurable hour figuring out the profit on this enterprise and realizing that it would, as he had hoped, offset the expenses of establishing new Holds on the Seminole peninsula. He disliked resorting to the Ancients’ names—they’d had their chance and lost it to Thread—but since Aivas had identified places by what it had in its memory, the old names for the Southern Continent had been seized upon with great enthusiasm as “a link with their heritage.” Toric was not of that mind. He had the future to plan for and that was what he’d been doing while everyone else on the planet seemed to be wallowing in ancestral accomplishments and striving to reconstruct all sorts of devices. He was probably one of the few who did not regret the silence of Aivas or the demise of the old Harper—who had been a meddler of the first order.

As Toric had weeded out the “right” sort of settler from the ones who had come, purse in hand, he was reasonably sure he wouldn’t have a repetition of the Denol treachery. Those whom he had chosen to stay on Southern would listen and obey him. And he had sufficient knowledge of the ones he had shipped off to know they would have to obey him when the time came. That was all he required of them! Obedience to his orders. Or else. He smiled to himself. Once this Pass was over …

His smile died as he became aware that the noise outside his Hold had changed in pitch, rising more often to an angry babble and punctuated with shouts or cries. Not at all the sort of sounds that should go with the event that had been inaugurated this morning. While he was well aware that the residents of the Hold had been complaining for months about the overcrowding by the settlers he’d planted in their quarters, the extra bodies were now gone. His holders should be happy to have regained their privacy now that the ships and their passengers had sailed off.

He was on his feet, annoyed that his contemplation as well as his meal were being interrupted by some stupidity when the Benden Weyrleaders appeared in his doorway.

“What are you two doing here?” he demanded, not at all pleased and hoping that the ships had been well out of sight by the time they had approached his Hold.

“I suggest you come outside and see, Lord Toric of Southern,” F’lar said, but his smile was far from amiable, and the Weyrwoman’s smile was wider and full of malice.

“Now, see here, Benden …”

“No, you see”—Lessa interrupted him, pointing outside—“there!” She stepped aside so that he had a view of Groghe of Fort, Larad of Telgar, and Asgenar of Lemos waiting in the hall.

“We require your presence outside, Toric,” Larad said, his face expressionless.

“The sooner the better,” Groghe added. “Being hauled down here when I’ve more than enough to attend to at Fort, with two generators down …”

Toric was nearly apoplectic with fury and barged past his peers, down the hall, and out of his hold. He came to a sudden halt at the top of the stairs leading down to the huge yard, which was crowded with his holders and their erstwhile guests. Startled, he looked beyond their heads to the harbor and growled to see that the ships he had seen off were back, sails furled and anchors cast overboard. The fact that each had a gold dragon hovering above it suggested the cause of the return.

Glancing now down at the crowded court, Toric became aware that the first few rows of the faces turned on him were the men and women he had planted at his cross-river sites, who should have been at those sites, awaiting the arrival of the settlers, not here, with scared or indignant or nervous expressions on their faces. And certainly not in close proximity to dragonriders and other Lord Holders. He was both surprised and outraged by the fact that all the Lord Holders seemed to be present.

“Just what is going on here?” he demanded in a loud and carrying tone, though he was in a fair way toward figuring it out himself

“I think that should be obvious enough, Toric,” F’lar said, taking a position a discreet distance from the enraged Lord Holder “I wished the Lord Holders to see for themselves that you had illegally initiated settlements outside your own holding.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Toric demanded, deciding to plow through any objections that could be raised. “The land’s lying empty. I’ve spent months training these men and women”—he gestured broadly—“to deal with any of the hazards found in southern lands.”

“The Southern Continent is not yours to parcel out, Toric,” Groghe said.

“It’s not theirs either,” Toric roared, jerking his hand over his shoulder in the Benden Weyrleaders’ direction. “It belongs to anyone strong enough to hold …”

“But not someone who already has far more than a just share,” Groghe said, his eyes blazing as he took a menacing step toward the much larger Toric. Larad and Asgenar closed in behind him to indicate to Toric that Groghe spoke for them.

Toric sneered down at Groghe. “You never could stomach that, could you, Groghe? That your little Fort Hold would be lost in a corner of mine?”

“That is not the issue, man,” Larad said. “It was agreed among us—”

“I never agreed,” Toric said with a disparaging snort, determined to embroil them all in an argument and thus turn attention from him.

“You didn’t choose to attend the meeting, but its result is binding on all”

“Not on me!”

“Shut your mouth, Toric,” F’lar said, and gestured toward the dragons lining the cliff.

“Since when do dragonriders interfere with Hold business?” Toric demanded in a snarl, turning on the dragonrider.

“When the business is not in a Hold, Toric,” N’ton of Fort Weyr answered, stepping forward from where he had been standing in the front of the crowd.

“Dragonriders have not interfered with Hold affairs,” cried R’mart of Telgar Weyr. T’gellan of Eastern, G’dened of Ista, and his father, D’ram, formerly that Weyrleader, G’narish of Igen, T’bor of High Reaches, K’van of Southern, and F’lessan of Honshu Weyrhold were ranged beside him. “We have prevented an unfair appropriation of lands not available at this time for colonization by a Lord Holder who hasn’t settled a fifth of his own lands.”

“You’re saving all the best places for yourselves,” Toric cried, jeering.

“By no means,” N’ton said, and then grinned, turning slightly back to the crowd so the smile could be seen. “But we do want our choice once Threadfall is over.”

“But it’s not over,” cried someone deep in the crowd, a cry of frustration, indignation, and anger.

“Twenty-two more Turns,” F’lar said, “and you will never again have to tithe to the Weyrs. And we”—he paused; for his tone had become resolute and hard—“we will finally hold lands we can work and halls of our own!” His words rang with the promise he repeated to them, and to himself. “Of all those who live on Pern, the dragonriders are the only ones who are able to survey the extent of the territory available. At the insistence of the Lord Holders, we undertook that task between Falls, and the Lord Holders can vouch,” he said, with a nod to the Lord Holders, standing to one side of the court, “that a significant number of settlements have been started by groups who have the skills and the training to cope with the feral animals, the fevers, and the dangers you all know. You’re also very much aware of what happens to people who think it’s only a question of picking the next meal off a tree.” There was a ripple of bitter agreement for that. “Holdings are being constantly released for settlements for those prepared to prove them. Just as the Ancients did.”

“And what gives you dragonriders the right to decide what privileged few go and where?” Toric retorted, again jeering at F’lar. “The Ancients’ Charter gave every settler on Pern the right to choose land, to make his own stakehold. I was only insuring that others were allowed their rights.”

“And you were not extending your holding, Lord Toric?” Asgenar asked with deceptive mildness.

“Now, why should I do that?”

“And you were not exacting payment for providing the sites?”

“Payment?” Toric managed a very good imitation of total astonishment and dismay.

“Payment!” F’lar said, and gestured to several of the men in the front.

“There were certainly nominal costs involved in building adequate facilities …” Toric began, until he saw that one of the men coming forward was one of the troublemakers he had wanted out of Southern as fast and as far away as possible.

Hosbon was the fourth son of a High Reaches Hold, strongly built and strongly minded that he was going to show his father and others that he ought to have had control of the family Hold, If Toric had been perceptive, he would have seen that what he disliked in that young man were the qualities he prided himself on.

“We could have built our own Holds,” Hosbon said. “We’ve paid and paid ever since we were accepted”—he loaded that word with indignation and repressed anger—“by you as settlers. Paid for every-thing we’ve eaten and every tool we’ve had in our hands, We’d’ve been better off if we had been illegal!” And he cast an angry look at T’bor, the High Reaches Weyrleader, and the Benden Weyrleaders as if they were responsible for the indignities he had suffered.

“You couldn’t have built adequate shelters,” Toric roared back at him. “You have to have stone to protect you from Thread!”

“But you said” Hosbon responded, waving a fist at Toric, “that Thread doesn’t scour the land down here. We’ve seen it ourselves …”

“And once you cut the leaves and reeds from living bushes, Thread’d go through them as fast as it would your flesh,” T’bor said. “I lived down here so I know.”

“Oh!” Hosbon subsided briefly.

“The lack of easily accessible quarries is one reason,” F’lar said, “why you can’t just go where you choose down here—and survive. Lord Toric did you one favor by building in stone.”

“My thanks,” Toric replied sarcastically.

“Well, we’ve paid top prices for those stones,” Hosbon continued. “Like we’ve paid for everything else and then more for supplies to take us through the bad season. Shards! We’ve been here for months. We could have built our own places in that time, and set aside food for the bad season, which is when our good Lord Toric finally lets us go so he can extract the last mark out of us.” He snorted.

“Southern’s better than High Reaches at any time of the year,” T’bor said, “but your point is made.”

Grinning, Hosbon turned in T’bor’s direction. “I’m not so sure of that, if the storm we had a sevenday ago is a taste of what we’ll have to live through. Only, now, do we?” He took an aggressive stance, glaring at F’lar.

“We have a point to make, Hosbon, and you’re part of it,” F’lar said, but his conciliatory tone and sympathetic expression relaxed the man’s pose. “We know where you are, and if you prove your holdings, they will be officially granted you.”

“Free and clear?” Hosbon asked, switching his gaze from F’lar to challenge Toric.

“Free and clear,” F’lar said, nodding.

A cheer went up from the crowd and the menacing atmosphere cleared.

“Then why’d you drag us all back here?” someone shouted.

“Why did a queen turn my ship back?” one of the captains demanded, pushing his way through. “Is this going to be what happens when the Pass is over? Dragons menacing honest folk?”

“We came to set matters right,” F’lar said.

“We have harmed no one,” R’rnart added, looking at the huddle of workers who had been transported from the distant sites. “Though I imagine we surprised a few.”

“The queens are large enough to turn a ship, but you hadn’t gone very far from this port to make a return difficult,” Lessa said. “And we”—she included the Lord Holders and the Weyrleaders—“have the responsibility of seeing that such a blatant abuse is corrected.”

“Dragonriders aren’t supposed to interfere with Hold matters,” Hosbon said.

“Ah, but that’s the crux of the matter,” F’lar said, grinning broadly as he pointed at Hosbon. “And let me repeat so that everyone understands the difference. The land you were being settled on is not anyone’s established Hold … Not yet. And certainly not Lord Toric’s to dispose.”

“That’s enough out of you, Weyrleader!” Toric, his patience gone, charged at F’lar.

Immediately Mnementh, sitting above the courtyard on the hold cliff, spread his wings and bugled. Ramoth also spread her wings but barked something at the other angry bronzes and golds, who subsided. The crowd gasped and constricted into a tight knot, as far from the dragons as possible. F’lar had neatly ducked away from Toric’s swing and danced out of range, though his hands came up in defensive positions. Larad, Asgenar, and Jaxom, being more agile than the older Lords, closed in on Toric, grabbing his arms and preventing a second charge.

“What we have to say to you now should be discussed in privacy, Toric,” Jaxom said, giving his wife’s brother a warning squeeze on the arm.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Toric said, snarling and struggling to free himself. “Any of you!”

“That makes no difference,” Larad said, speaking in a low and cheerful voice. “We intend to talk to you or at you, but you would be wise to pay attention.” Then he turned his head to catch R’mart’s attention. “Let the settlers go on now, R’mart. They’ll still reach their destinations in good time.”

Then they marched Toric back into his hold. Ramala, Toric’s wife, stepped aside, her face expressionless as Larad and Asgenar followed Jaxom’s lead to the Hold’s main hall. Weyrleaders and the other Lords followed. As they crossed the threshold, Toric tore himself loose and spun around to confront his adversaries.

Groghe, puffing a bit from his exertions, Deckter, Lord of Nabol, Toronas of Benden, and the dour Oterel of Tillek ranged themselves to the fore, while the dragonriders, male and female, made a loose circle behind them.

“You cannot use your absence from a decisive meeting to ignore its decision, Toric,” Groghe said. “You had a chance then …”

“Ha!” was Toric’s sarcastic reply.

“Well, you did. In open Council,” Oterel said. “Nothing had been decided …”

“Don’t give me that,” Toric said, dismissing it.

“Well, I hadn’t made up my mind,” Laudey of Igen said. “Nor had Bargen here and Begamon, no matter what you think. But it was also plain that none of us,” he added, gesturing to the other Lords, “could be considered impartial in the matter of distributing lands. And none of us, certainly, had any way of surveying the property.”

“The Ancients left all those maps …”

“Old ones, and they hadn’t the information we needed.”

“So you let the dragonriders do it …”

“Reporting to the Council, in detail.”

“Like the reports you had from Piemur,” Gorman of Keroon said in a droll tone.

“Which he gave to the Masterharper.” That also rankled in Toric’s mind.

“Reports of lands past your holding, certainly,” Groghe said. “We arranged procedures, organized lists of prospective settlers, each with at least Graft journeymen to supply skills. You had the same chance as any of us to establish any safeguard against abuse or foreknowledge of special sites.”

“The records have been copied and sets are available,” Larad said, “to prove that there have been no special favors accorded dragonriders. They have tended to ask for locations that would not appeal to the rest of us.”

“Faugh! You’d say that no matter what.”

“Nor have we,” Groghe went on, “had special considerations for unlanded sons. And daughters. Of course, that wouldn’t worry you since you have unused land to provide for your offspring.”

Toric merely glowered.

“That’s as may be,” Toronas of Benden said. “The important consideration is that no one, and I repeat that, no one of us or of the dragonriders can apportion land without the consent of the rest of us. You included. Surely you can accept that as a guideline.”

“I think you will have to accept that as a guideline, Toric,” R’mart said, “because we”—he gestured to the other weyrleaders—“intend to see that no one oversteps those requisites as you did today.”

“Is that what you’ll become when you’re no longer needed to char Thread? The guardians of order on Pern?” Toric glared at F’lar.

“That is what some of us will certainly be doing,” F’lar said, equably, “when, as, and if”—he paused significantly—“such overseeing is needed.”

“And who decides the when, as, and if, might I ask?”

“You may, and—”

“There will be guidelines for that, too,” Larad interrupted.

“Which we” Groghe said, “in the Council will decide and refer to the special Gathers that will let everyone, Hold, Hall, and dragonrider, have a vote in the matter. Or will you absent yourself from that meeting as well?”

“The Pass is not over. Are you not interfering before time?” Toric acidly asked F’lar.

“We have not, I repeat, Lord Toric, interfered with Hold matters,” F’lar said with a slight bow. “We have explained the difference.”

“A united show of the difference, I might add,” Groghe said, while the other Lord Holders murmured agreement. “You have more than a generous share of the southern lands, Toric. Stick to them and there shall be no further need for disagreements or misunderstandings.”

“Don’t be so easy on him,” Oterel of Tillek said in a harsh voice. “He knew exactly what he was doing. And he now knows exactly what can be done to curtail these incursions of his.”

“One Fax in a lifetime is quite enough,” Groghe said bluntly.

“You’re absolutely correct,” Sangel of Boll said with a shudder of dismay. “You won’t find us permitting that sort of thing to happen again! Not in my lifetime.”

Toric gave the elderly and not too effective Lord of Boll a measuring look, which suggested that he would have found Boll an easy target.

“And you’ve three, four times as much land as Fax overran,” Sangel continued. “Take my advice and be grateful.”

Toric snorted contemptuously. “If you have finished handing out today’s dos and don’ts?”

“Since you have been gracious enough,” Larad said with studied courtesy, “to hear what we had to say, we can leave.”

“But you have been warned,” Laudey of Igen said sternly. “You will voice any complaints in the next Council of Lords and you will abide by the decisions.”

“Or?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” R’mart of Telgar said, with a malicious smile on his face. “I really don’t think you want to know.” And he turned on his heel and strode out, followed by his Weyrwoman and the other queen and bronze riders.

“K’van!” Toric bellowed, and when the young Weyrleader turned in the doorway to face him, Toric raised his fist. “If I see a single one of your riders anywhere near this Hold …”

“Ah, but you see, you won’t, Lord Toric,” K’van said with a soft smile. “But then you have been too busy to notice that the Weyr is empty and we have settled in a much more congenial location, heretofore unoccupied.”

“With the full consent of the Council of Lord Holders,” Larad added. “Good day, Lord Toric of Southern Hold.”