A Gift of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page A

unfastened the tailgate so that they could slide Dowell in. Then, while K’van watched beside Heth, she and Barla took up their positions and prodded Nudge and Shove into a walk, and then into a shambling trot up the trace.
    Barla and Aramina had to keep hard at the dray beasts to maintain their trot. Nudge resented the pace, twisting his horned head and lowing piteously, but Aramina had no mercy on him. Women and beasts were sweating when they finally reached the bank, Pell cheering lustily until Aramina shouted at him to stop being so foolish and come help.
    In a few terse words, Aramina explained what had happened, and Pell began shaking his head slowly from side to side.
    “I don’t know how we’ll get Father up that bank,” he said, appraising the difficulty. “You shouldn’t’ve sent the dragonrider away.”
    “It’s not just Father being hurt, Pell. K’van saw a troop of riders on the other side of the river. . . .”
    Pell quailed, and his distress communicated itself to Nexa, who had been standing there, wide-eyed and perplexed. Now she burst into tears.
    “So we must also get the wagon out of sight. And hide Nudge and Shove.”
    “But Thread’s coming. And we have to get Father up to the cave and . . .” Pell’s words tripped over themselves in his anxiety.
    “Somehow we’ll do it,” Aramina said, peering up and down the trace to find a possible screen for the mass of the wagon. “Maybe, if K’van has frightened them with Threadfall, they’ll have to go back the way they came. . . . Maybe if we rig a stretcher, we can haul Father up the bank. . . .”
    “Maybe, maybe,
maybe
!” Pell almost danced with frustration.
    “I won’t have you children fighting at a time like this,” Barla said tartly, appearing in the back of the wagon. “We’ve got to rouse your father. . . . How long before Thread falls, Aramina? Or didn’t you ask the dragonrider?”
    Aramina bowed her head at her mother’s rebuke. As she did so, her glance fell on a group of evergreens on the left-hand side of the roadway a few lengths farther up the track.
    “There!” she cried dramatically, gesturing wildly. “There! We can drive the wagon in there, behind the evergreens. They’re just tall enough!”
    With something constructive to do, even Nexa stopped her whingeing. Dowell was carefully lifted out of the wagon and covered by a sleeping fur. Then everyone concentrated on getting the wagon out of sight. Nexa was directed to brush away the tracks of the wagon as Aramina and Pell forced the dray beasts through the opening Barla parted into the copse. The artistic addition of extra branches completed the camouflage.
    Then Barla sent Pell and Nexa on ahead to the cave with sleeping furs and Barla’s precious stewpot, while Aramina and her mother tried to rouse Dowell. The usual aromatic had no effect, and the two women exchanged anxious glances, when suddenly Nudge and Shove, tethered by the trace, began to moan fearfully and pull at their ring ropes.
    “Thread?” gasped Barla, bending protectively over her husband.
    “No,” cried Aramina, “Dragons!
Big
dragons!” Indeed it seemed to her as if the sky was filled with them, their great wings causing the saplings to bend to their backwind.
    “Aramina,
how
did that dragonrider come to help us in the first place? You didn’t
call
him, did you?” When Aramina mutely nodded, Barla gave a despairing cry. “But the Weyrs will take you from us if they know you can hear and speak to dragons! And then what shall we do?”
    “How else were we to save Father?” asked Aramina even as she, too, regretted her action.
    I hear Aramina
, said Heth’s unmistakable voice.
    Oh, please go away, Heth. Say you can’t find me.
    But I have! You must not fear. We won’t harm you.
Before Aramina could speak again, three dragons skimmed neatly down onto the track, making Nudge and Shove buck and strain to be free of their tether. As one, Barla and Aramina dashed forward to prevent