The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page A

pool to help Temma, who was carrying a still form out of the cold water.
    Muted sobbing and louder cries of grief followed Jayge up the slope. It took him a long time to find enough unconsumed wood to start any sort of a fire. He walked very cautiously, terrified that a tendril of Thread might have survived the dragonfire. When he got back to the river, he kept his eyes on the fire he was starting, unwilling to look at the still forms lying on the stony verge. He was immensely relieved to see that his mother was there, bandaging someone’s head. He saw Aunt Temma, too, but he had to turn away from the sight of the hideous raw marks, like something cut by the claws of the biggest wherry ever, on Readis’s back. Aunt Bedda was rocking back and forth, and Jayge could not bear to find out if his baby cousin was injured or dead. Not just yet.
    As soon as he got the fire going, he took the rope from his saddle and brought Fairex with him to bring more wood down to the shore. On his way back, he made himself see the extent of the tragedy. Beyond the new piles of soaking bundles and wet crates, there were seven small bundles, three very small and three larger ones. No, the babies would not have made it. They would not have known to hold their breath under water. Nor would his younger sister, or his youngest cousins.
    Tears streamed down Jayge’s face as he piled the wood by the stones that surrounded the fire. Two dented kettles were heating water, and, astonishingly, a soup pot had been recovered. Saddles had been placed in a ring around the fire to dry. Someone was splashing in the pool, and he saw there, for the first time, the metal bands that had once spread the canvas wagontops, like the ribs of some great water snake. Aunt Temma burst to the surface and began to tug on a rope. He saw his father struggling with something still under the rope. Borel and Readis, despite their wounds, were desperately pulling at yet another submerged article.
    Jayge had just turned to untie the wood piled on Fairex’ back when abruptly she wheeled and dashed back up the slope, racing away from the camp as if a wherry had attacked her. Then dirt and sand flew around him, over the fire and into the soup pot. Startled, Jayge looked up, unable to imagine what new hazard faced them.
    A huge brown dragon was settling to the top of the track above the pool.
    “You there, boy! Who’s in charge of this ground crew? How many burrows have you found? These woods are disastrous!”
    At first Jayge could not understand the words rattled at him. There was an odd inflection in the man’s voice that startled him. The harpers kept the language from altering too much, his mother had once told him when he had first encountered the slower speech of the southerners. But the voice of the dragon-rider, so small up there perched between the neck ridges of the big beast, sounded strange to Jayge’s ears. And the man did not really look like any man Jayge had ever seen. He seemed to have huge eyes, and no hair, and leather all over. Were dragonmen different from the rest of Pern’s people? Realizing that his mouth had dropped open, Jayge clamped his jaws shut.
    “You can’t be ground crew. You’re much too small to be any use! Who’s in charge here?” The rider sounded offended, annoyed. “This isn’t what I’m used to, I assure you. You’ll have to do better than this!”
    “Will we just?” Crenden strode forward, Borel right behind him along with Temma and Gledia.
    “Lads
and
women! Only two men! You can’t have efficient ground crews if this is all you can provide us,” the rider continued. Suddenly he took off a close-fitting cap, revealing a face that was quite human, if creased with a deep scowl and accentuated by the soot marks on his cheeks.
    Jayge stared, aware of many details that he would recall later and with cynical accuracy: except that the rider wore his hair cropped close to his scalp, he was really like any other man. Under other