Part one

Prologue

P’keo didn’t even lift his chin off his chest when D’hor came shuffling in. “The weyrlings?” he asked dully.

“Suffering, Weyrleader,” said D’hor, in a quavering voice that suggested he shared the Weyrleader’s gloomy condition. “Miserable. But Master Firland’s potion seems efficacious, and they’re motivated to improve. And not running the fever that…the younger ones….”

On the other side of P’keo’s desk, L’stev raised a hand sharply, cutting D’hor off. “Enough. We know.”

“I only thank Faranth you kept the younger boys out of the Hatching Grounds, P’keo,” the old Weyrlingmaster said. “That was quite opportune of you.”

The Weyrleader looked up sharply. “What?”

“The youngsters,” D’hor clarified. “As it is, I have six weyrlings too sick to get out of bed or feed their own dragonets. And we’ll be short of boys for the next two or three Hatchings –”

L’stev slammed his fist down on the Weyrleader’s desk. “Faranth’s tits, D’hor,” he barked. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

“It’s all right, L’stev,” P’keo said, flapping a hand vaguely at him. “The Weyrlingmaster’s only thinking of the future.” He nodded to D’hor. “That’ll be all.”

When D’hor had gone, L’stev said bleakly, “I suppose he has a point about the weyrlings. Some of the twelve and thirteen-Turn-olds who might have Impressed are in rough shape. Shaffing lucky you decided to cut the pool in favour of the older boys.”

“You see, old friend,” P’keo said softly, “that’s the thing.” He paused. “I didn’t.”

L’stev gave the Weyrleader a hard look. “Say again?”

P’keo met his eyes uncomfortably. The bluff, jaunty bronze rider who’d been L’stev’s very first Wingleader had aged five Turns in the last ten days. “I’ve had a suspicion since before the Hatching that wheels were turning beyond our control. That business at Crookpass. The dragon that no one’s missing. And last night, when I finally sat down to write of this wretchedness in Madellon’s Chronicle…I found instructions tucked beneath it.”

L’stev felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Vanzanth, listening nearby, stirred uncomfortably. “Instructions.”

“In my own handwriting,” P’keo said. “And I have no recollection of writing such a note. None whatsoever. So I suppose, as Nathronth tells me, I shall have to.”

L’stev stared at him, feeling a sudden wild hope leap in his chest. “You mean to avert all this?”

“If only it worked that way, L’stev,” said, P’keo, shaking his head.

“You could warn us! You could prevent –”

“But I wasn’t warned,” P’keo said. “It hasn’t been prevented.” He sighed. “Didn’t D’hor give you that lecture when he rollicked you and Vanzanth for doubling up?”

“We got the rollicking,” said L’stev. “But not the lecture. Brown riders don’t get taught about timing, remember? It’s not necessary for us to know.”

Most brown riders aren’t bright enough to figure it out, Vanzanth remarked.

“You were the sort of brown rider for whom it was,” P’keo said, at the same moment. “Altogether too bright.”

L’stev huffed a mirthless chuckle. He had little appetite for laughter, however hard Vanzanth was working to keep his grief from spiralling into despair.

“I know what I need to do, L’stev, and more pertinently, I know what you need to do,” P’keo said. “That’s why I asked you to come. The note I’ll write to myself at least makes that part clear.”

“Do you still have it?” L’stev asked.

The Weyrleader fished a slip of hide from his belt pouch and held it out to him.

Three riders, three tasks

1. No Search. No one under 15.
2. Have L’stev take the formula to the Weyr Healer.
3. Crookpass must play out as it has.

Then, in a different ink, scribbled as if in haste:

4. Make exception for the watchman.

“The watchman?” L’stev asked.

“For the sake of one little dragon,” P’keo said sadly.

He read the note one more time, then opened the door of the stove by the hearth and tossed it inside.

They both watched it blacken, curl, and turn to ash.

“Why so shaffing obtuse, P’keo?” L’stev asked. “Couldn’t you have made yourself plainer?”

The Weyrleader spread his hands. “I can’t make plain something I didn’t. And none of us can prevent from happening what already has. Whatever mitigation we can make, we’re already seeing its results.”

“Then it could be even worse than it is?” asked L’stev.

“If we fail to act in the way that we already have?” P’keo sighed. “That’s as impossible a change as any other. We all have our parts, L’stev, and we must play them to the end.”

“Wonderful.” L’stev stared at the stove. “You’re the first rider. I’m the second. Who’s the third?”

“I’d wondered that myself, until today,” P’keo said, with a great sigh, and when L’stev looked askance, the Weyrleader said, “He lost two more of his children this morning.”

“Not –” L’stev began, and then closed his eyes. “Ah, shaff.”

As if on cue, footsteps approached: heavy ones, purposeful.

“I suspect that’s him now,” said P’keo.

“You called him here, too?” L’stev asked. “Knowing what you know?”

P’keo shook his head. “I didn’t have to.”

L’stev exchanged a pained look with his old Wingleader. “But it has to be him?”

“Who else would do it?” P’keo asked.

Then, as the door burst open, the Weyrleader leaned forwards. “Come in. Close the door.”

Part one

Three sevendays earlier

“I guess a dragon might want you – if it was so weedy it needed a big stupid lout like you to protect it,” Fastrall jeered, when Narjol joined the tail end of the candidate pool outside the Hatching Ground, still panting from his full-speed sprint across the Bowl from the end of his watch shift.

“Better hope it has a nice short name so he can spell it,” Fastrall’s buddy, Gemmarty, added. “Ath, or Oth….”

“Th,” said Fastrall. “Three whole letters would probably confuse poor thicko Jolly.”

“Quit winding him up,” Svefen told them. He was the eldest candidate in the pool, almost nineteen Turns old. “If he gives either of you tail-forks a smack, you’ll all get washed. If he doesn’t bash your tiny brains out.”

“’Preciate you tellin them to lay off me,” Narjol mumbled to Svefen as they all filed into the Hatching Ground.

“They ought to know better,” Svefen said. Then he looked coolly at Narjol. “But you know you’re probably not going to Impress, don’t you, coming from where you come from?”

As if Narjol had ever been allowed to forget. He’d come to the Weyr only three Turns ago, shortly after his mother had died and his father, Tirrol, a guardsman at Kellad Hold, had taken up the role of Madellon’s Chief of Watch. And while Narjol had been officially granted a place in the candidate pool, most of the other boys had already dismissed the chances of an over-sized, under-educated oaf from the watchhouse ever catching a dragonet’s eye.

“S’demp said –” Narjol began.

“Yeah, look; Ralnath passes pretty much everyone he sees,” said Svefen. “S’demp probably doesn’t even know you’re not really Weyrbred. And even if they think you could Impress, doesn’t mean you actually will. There’s sixty of us – more if you count the girls – and most of us have more rider blood in our little fingers than you do.”

“My granddad’s brother were a brown rider,” Narjol insisted.

“And?” Svefen asked. “My brother’s a bronze rider. My sister got a green last clutch. Darvalen and I have so many dragonriders in the family it’d be more shocking if we don’t Impress.”

“Ain’t yet, though, have you?” asked Narjol. “And you had a chance last time.”

“I’m not getting into a debate, Narjol,” Svefen said. “All I’m saying is the numbers aren’t in your favour. That’s not me being a wher like those two idiots. It’s just the truth. There are going to be better candidates than you out there come Hatching day – a lot of them.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get lucky, and all the girls are useless, and a green’ll have you.”

“You boys keep your yammering down,” the Weyrlingmaster, D’hor, said, coming along the line. “Cherganth’s resting. You’re lucky she’s letting you in at all. The least you can do is show some respect. You should know that already, Svefen.”

“Yes, Weyrlingmaster,” Svefen said contritely.

Then D’hor eyed Narjol. “As for you –”

Narjol didn’t straighten. At almost fifteen Turns old, he was already taller than the Weyrlingmaster. Grown-ups didn’t like looking up at boys Narjol’s age, and standing to his full height only made it worse. “Yessir?”

“You just stay at the back and don’t get in the way,” D’hor said.

Narjol bobbed his head. “Yessir.”

Standing at the back didn’t much trouble him. But he stopped stock-still when he caught sight of the eggs over the other boys’ heads, gaping. A shiver went through him, from his toes to the roots of his short-shaven hair.

Hal came up behind him, thumping his shoulder. He was one of the few Weyr boys who hadn’t turned his nose up at Narjol when he’d joined the candidate pool. Hal wasn’t a rider’s son or brother, so he wasn’t stuck up, but he’d been at Madellon his whole life, so he was considered a proper Weyrbred. He was a Turn and a day older than Narjol, and closer than most of the others to his size and weight, so he didn’t resent Narjol for being bigger than him, either. Narjol liked him a lot. “Keep up, Jolly. They’re not going to bite!” Hal craned his neck to look at the immense queen dragon curled around the circle of eggs. “Though she might!”

“Does they get bigger?” Narjol blurted out.

“What, the eggs?” Hal shook his head. “How could they? There’s nothing else going into them, is there? And they dry out as they get closer to hatching, so if anything, they get smaller, not bigger. But these’ve been here a few sevendays now. They’re about the size they will be when they’re ready to pop.”

“But how’s a dragon fit in there?”

“Did you think they come out fully grown?” asked another boy, turning around from the row in front of them. “What are you, stupid?”

“Shut up, Bostrocke,” Hal told him. “It’s not Jolly’s fault he’s never seen a clutch before.” He turned back to Narjol. “They grow once they hatch, of course. But you’d be amazed how much dragonet fits in an egg. That silvery one there – that could have ten feet of dragon in it.”

Narjol peered at the egg Hal pointed out, almost waist-height compared to the knee-height of most of them. “Is that one a bronze?”

“Maybe,” Hal said. “Maybe not. No one knows for sure ’til they’re out. Have to think the bigger ones are more likely to be bronzes, though.”

That opinion certainly seemed to be borne out by the way the candidates treated the eggs. The Weyrlingmaster kept them back from the side of the clutch not directly in Cherganth’s protective semi-circle. “This is a viewing, not a touching; keep your grubby hands to yourselves,” he snapped, when several candidates edged too close to the eggs and prompted an irate switch of the queen’s tail-tip. Still, almost every boy stared possessively at the big silver egg, and two others nearly its size. The consensus was clear. Bronzes.

The female candidates, six of them, were allowed to approach. “How come they gets to go in?” Narjol asked Hal.

He wasn’t the only one to ask. There were several other complaints from boys nearer the front. “It’s not fair!” Kerlane objected. “How come they can get up close and we can’t?”

“The Weyrwoman favours girls for greens,” said the Weyrlingmaster. “A fact for which many of you will be grateful in the Turns to come.” He turned a rheumy eye on the crowd of disgruntled boys. “And those shells are brittle, this close to hatching. One fumble-footed lad tripping on his own boots and sticking out an elbow, or stubbing a toe on a shell, and you have an egg that might never hatch properly. And Cherganth’d snap him up and eat him in two bites.”

Cherganth confirmed that threat by lifting her top lip, exposing her terrible fangs.

“Why’s there hardly any girls?” Narjol asked.

“Most girls don’t want to be riders,” said Hal. “’Cause they can only ride a green, unless there’s a gold egg, and there’s not been a gold egg for Turns.”

“That’s why the Weyrwoman never lets the same bronze fly Cherganth twice,” said Basalgette self-importantly. Narjol had never seen him separately from his best friend Zaffo. The pair of them were thick as thieves. “There should’ve been a queen by now.”

Darvalen sniggered. “More like it’s just Fianine’s a big sl–”

Svefen put an elbow into his younger brother’s ribs that would definitely have cracked an egg. “Shut up, idiot.”

“I heard she’s pissed off with the Weyrleader because there still isn’t one,” said Mabbron.

“I heard she’s pissed off with Sh’ror because he still won’t let Qualth fly Cherganth,” said Gemmarty.

That name made Narjol’s ears prick up. Sh’ror, apart from being a very important bronze rider, was a regular at the watchmen’s morning hand-to-hand practices. He was nearly as good as Narjol’s father with a knife, better than him with bare fists, and no one in the Weyr could touch him in a wrestling bout. Tirrol grudgingly respected him, and there weren’t many dragonriders the Chief admired.

“You’d think Qualth would be the one pissed off,” said Zaffo.

“Why won’t Sh’ror let him fly Cherganth?” Narjol asked.

“He doesn’t want to be Weyrleader,” said Vammers, with authority. The other boys always listened when he weighed in. He was another of the older candidates, and his father was a Wingleader, so he always knew what was going on. “Which is a shame, because he’d be a shaffing good one. And Qualth’s the best bronze at Madellon. Crying shame he’s never sired a clutch.”

“I like Sh’ror,” said Hopajan. He, like Narjol, wasn’t Weyrbred: he’d come to Madellon as a candidate for Cherganth’s last clutch and stayed on after failing to Impress. He was from the Smithcraft, but he didn’t like his apprenticeship, so he’d joined the crew that maintained the Weyr’s pipes and water tanks. “He’s not up himself like some bronze riders are. And he’s a Wingleader, isn’t he?”

“Flightleader,” Svefen corrected him, though without the relish with which most of the Weyrbred boys liked to school Narjol when he got something wrong. “He’s got three Wings and eight bronzes under him. And they wouldn’t let Qualth be their leader if they didn’t respect the shaff out of him.”

“Eh, Qualth’s all right,” said Bostrocke. “It’s Pelranth, for my marks.”

“Pelranth?” scoffed Jareck. “Oh, that’s right; your old man’s sucking up to L’mis for a Wingsecond bump –”

“He is not,” Bostrocke asserted.

“Pelranth’s not even top five,” Svefen said. “Bronzes don’t hit prime until they’re fifteen. Qualth, definitely; then Staamath –”

“Staamath?”

“He sired four bronzes –”

It continued in that vein for a bit, until finally D’hor ordered the increasingly rowdy cohort out of the Hatching Ground. Weyr boys were always bickering over which bronze or bronze rider was the best, though no one argued much about browns or blues. And as for greens – greens were for girls, and they weren’t worth discussing at all.

Narjol ate his dinner that evening in the watchhouse, as usual. His father stepped over the bench opposite him and sat down. “’Eard you took off from yer patrol this morn like a watch-wher at sun-up, son.”

“I were late for seein the eggs, Chief,” Narjol explained.

Tirrol grunted, flipping his belt-knife between his fingers, one-two-three-four-five, as he often did. “An what fool notions did them dragonlovers put in yer ’ead, eh?”

“They ain’t so big as I thought they’d be,” said Narjol. “The eggs.” He indicated with his hand. “Biggest’s so-high. Others’re smaller.”

“Eh,” Tirrol said, without much interest.

“Weyrlinmaster said I’m to go to class t’morrow, forenoon watch,” said Narjol.

Tirrol stopped playing with his knife. “Did ’e, now.”

“Yes, Chief.”

“You’ve gate watch forenoon t’morrow, son.”

“But Weyrlinmaster –”

“Weyrlinmaster’s business be weyrlins, son, an ye ain’t no weyrlin,” Tirrol said. “My business is keepin the Weyr secure. I’ll not let gate go undermanned fer lettin my son chase fancies.”

“Ah, give the boy a break, Chief,” said Yarling, one of the older watchmen. He sat down beside Narjol, giving him a clout on the back. “Tell you what, lad. You take my morning watch, and I’ll stand gate forenoon till you’re back from candidate-ing.” He looked at Tirrol. “That square with you, Chief?”

Tirrol nodded, slowly. “An ’ow long’s this dragon nonsense o’yours like t’be messin with t’rota, son?”

“Not so long,” Narjol told him. “Weyrlinmaster says dragons’ll hatch next sevenday.”

“It’s not many of the likes of us ever get to step on a Hatching ground, Chief,” Yarling said. “Let the boy have that to tell his grandsons about, eh?”

“There’s a lot of eggs,” Narjol said. “Hal said the most Cherganth ever laid. More’n twenty.”

“So ’alfs greens, an no proper lad wants no part o’that,” said Tirrol.

“What’s wrong with greens?” Narjol asked. “They’s still dragons, ain’t they?”

“Greens is for girls, and boys what like it like girls,” Tirrol said flatly. “You unnerstand me”

Narjol didn’t understand, not really. “Yes, Chief.”

“Dragonriders be soft an wet, best o’times,” Tirrol went on. “But a green dragonrider ain’t even a man. You don’t ever look at no green. You don’t even think about it. Got it?”

“Yes, Chief,” Narjol said.

Tirrol nodded to himself. “I’ll let you ’ave this ’Arper fancy o’yours, boy, far as it goes, but you’ll still pull your weight on patrol. You start getting ’igh an mighty about bein a candidate, an I’ll put you on yer ass afore you can say ‘Impression’.”

“Yes, Chief.”

“An when them eggs ’atches, and none o’them dragons wants ye, ye’ll not cry an whinge like a little girl,” Tirrol continued. “You’ll put it out yer mind, yeah? Ye’ll be fifteen next sevenday – that’s a grown man, and a grown man sets ’is mind to ’is work.”

“Yes, Chief.”

Tirrol stared into Narjol’s face. “A’right, son,” he said at last and, stabbing his knife into a loaf of bread, gave him a rough swipe around the back of the head. “That’s a good lad.”

A lot of the men hated standing morning watch, the shift starting in the dead of night and ending around dawn. Narjol didn’t mind it – usually. But the summer storm that had been brewing all day finally erupted just as he rose from his cot to take Yarling’s watch, and a wet patrol was the very worst kind.

‘The Watch’ by Chrisi S Baily

The oiled hide of a foul-weather cape couldn’t keep the torrential rain at bay for long. Narjol trudged in lone misery along his route, drenched. Rain poured in an unending stream from the peak of his hood and down the front of his tunic. His feet squished inside his sodden boots. The wet wooden shaft of the pike he carried on his shoulder chafed ceaselessly through his sopping fingerless gloves. There was hardly a dragon to be seen on a ledge – they’d all gone into their individual weyr caves, up on the inside walls of the Bowl. Even the watchdragon was a hunched, unidentifiable shape up by the Star Stones, the glow of his eyes reduced to two stoic slits as he endured the weather beneath the canopy of his domed wings.

Narjol climbed the gravel track that switchbacked up the face of the Bowl to the watch rider’s station, clutching the rope handrail with clammy fingers. Close against the rock wall, the rain didn’t slant straight into his face – at least, not until he reached the top, and the unimpeded squall blew his hood straight off his head. “Shaff!” he exclaimed, almost dropping his pike as he tried to claw the soggy leather back into place.

“Who goes there?” the watch rider called from his post.

“Shaffin…shardin… Watch!” Narjol shouted back.

“Faranth’s tits, man, come in out of the rain!”

Almost blind, Narjol stumbled under the shelter of the big dragon’s wing. The respite of being out of the storm was almost shocking. He wiped rain from his eyes with his wet sleeve. “Thanks –” He glanced at the dragon’s side, drenched and black. He was too cold and wet to recall which rider was on the watch roster. “–Uh, bronze rider?”

“There’s a first for you, eh, being mistaken for a bronze,” the watch rider said to his dragon. “Give me that cape, Watch, and I’ll set it to dry a bit. You’re wetter than a seahold floozy on regatta day.”

Narjol peeled the cloak off and handed it over. “Thanks.”

The dragonrider spread the waterlogged cape over a frame beside the little brazier the watch riders used to keep their klah warm. Then he eyed Narjol strangely from beneath heavy black eyebrows. “Shaff, you’re just a boy. Took you for a grown man, the size of you.”

“I’m near f-fifteen,” Narjol stammered, through chattering teeth. Now that he’s stopped, he was more aware than ever of being soaked to the skin. “My f-father’s chief of w-watch.”

“Chip off the old block, huh?” the watch rider asked. He poured from a klahpot on the other side of the brazier and pressed the mug into Narjol’s wet fingers.

Narjol gulped the hot brew gratefully, feeling the heat warm him right to his toes, and heard himself say, “I’m a c-c-c-” He asserted control over his jaws. “Candidate.”

“Well, good for you,” the rider said. “Been in to lay claim to your egg yet?”

“We was let in to look, earlier,” said Narjol uncertainly.

The dragonrider chuckled. “Doesn’t count if you’re meant to be there.” He touched his nose conspiratorially. “And Cherganth’s dead to the world by this hour, if you take my meaning.”

The dragon – Narjol looked at him again, and decided if he wasn’t bronze, then he must be brown – turned his muzzle suddenly towards the Bowl. A shadow had detached from a weyr ledge, gliding over towards them. The brown’s rider squinted that way. “Givranth?” he asked his dragon. “Hope for their sake western Jessaf’s missed this weather. Bad enough sitting out in the rain without having to fly a sweep in it.”

The klah, and the removal of the heavy wet cape, was making Narjol feel a lot better. He stole another look at the watchdragon. He saw dragons all the time, but not often up close. Ralnath, the blue who’d approved him as a candidate, had barely glanced at him, and that from a distance. The big brown dragon suddenly tilted his head to regard him with one narrowed blue eye, and Narjol quickly averted his gaze. “I didn’t mean no disrespect.”

“He’s taken none,” said the brown rider. He grabbed his dragon’s lower jaw and tugged it around. “Here, kiddo. The likeliest candidate on Pern won’t get a dragon to choose him if he can’t look him in the eye. Give this one a good stare, straight in the eyeball.”

Hesitantly, Narjol obeyed, gazing into the gemlike eye, bigger than his fist. It wasn’t like making eye contact with another person. Up so close, it was hard to know if the dragon was even looking at him. He wondered if he was meant to hear something, in his head. He was awed, of course, by the brown dragon’s presence, his size, the heat coming off him; but he couldn’t hear anything, like he’d heard dragonriders could hear their dragons. Then he wondered if the dragon could hear him, and suddenly every mean and rude and inappropriate thought he’d ever had seemed to leap into his mind all at once. “Can he…  Does he know what I’m thinkin?”

“Course,” the watch rider said. “Why? Suddenly thought of something you shouldn’t have?”

Narjol caught his breath, mortified

The brown rider laughed and smacked his shoulder. “I’m ribbing you, kiddo. He can’t hear what you’re thinking. And even if he could, there’s nothing you could have in your young head that he’s not heard twice as bad in mine.”

Narjol exhaled hard. “Best I get back on patrol.” He drained his klah. “Thanks for the brew.”

“Any time, Watch. Don’t slip on your way back down.”

The foul-weather cape hadn’t dried out much, but it was at least slightly warm when Narjol hauled it back on, his skin cringing away from the clinging damp leather.

He picked his cautious way back down the trail, using his pike as a walking staff on the steepest and most slippery parts, and continued his patrol.

The encounter with the watchpair had confused him. Should he have felt something when he’d looked in the brown dragon’s gigantic eye? Narjol tried to picture the watch rider’s dragon much smaller, the size of something that could hatch out of one of the eggs. Somehow all he could visualise was that enormous head on a body the size of a spit-dog. Then he tried to imagine himself standing next to a brown dragon. “I’m a brown rider,” he muttered out loud, trying out the sound of it. “Brown rider Narjol…no, N’jol. I’m brown rider N’jol and this be my dragon….”

He couldn’t think of a name. All he could think of was Gemmarty’s sneering suggestions. “Ath,” he said. “Oth.” Then he shook his head angrily at how stupid it sounded. “You is too much of a thicko to be a dragonrider, Jolly,” he told himself savagely.

He plodded on, as downcast by his own thoughts as by the weather, staring at the mud-spattered toes of his boots.

A wash of warm air and light made him look up again. He was passing the Hatching cavern, and both heat and brightness emanated from within. Narjol paused, turning towards the tunnel into Cherganth’s lair, closing his eyes and letting the welcome warmth fall on his cold wet face.

Been in to lay claim to your egg yet? the brown rider had asked.

Narjol opened his eyes.

He’d heard the other boys talking about sneaking into the Sands to touch the eggs before they were allowed. Hal had put him off the idea. “There’s a couple of ways, but I’ve got too big to fit, so you definitely wouldn’t,” he’d said. “And you wouldn’t want to get stuck in a vent, would you? Listening to the tunnel-snakes slithering closer and closer to where you’re stuck fast, in the dark…feeling them start to chew your toes… Brrr!”

But if the watch rider had been right, and Cherganth was asleep…

Narjol thought about the big silver egg – the egg everyone was certain contained a bronze dragon. There had to be some advantage to touching it. Why else would the Weyrlingmaster have them in looking at the eggs? Why would he let the favoured girls in before any of the boys, if not to give them a leg up? And if he, Narjol, could touch that silvery shell before any of the other boys got a chance….

But what if Cherganth wasn’t asleep? What if she was asleep, and she woke up? What if he touched that silver egg and damaged it and it never hatched, and it was all his fault?

He dithered there, agonising.

And then he thought about how stupid Gemmarty and Fastrall and Bostrocke would look, how mad they’d be, if he, thicko Jolly, the watchman’s son, Impressed a bronze dragon.

That’d show them. That’d shaffing show them.

Narjol screwed up his courage, tugged his hood down over his eyes, hefted his pike more firmly to his shoulder, and stepped decisively into the tunnel.

And almost collided with the person coming out.

Narjol yelled. The other man yelled. For an awful, endless instant, they stared at each other, frozen in place.

Then Narjol got his pike in both hands, pointed it at the interloper’s chest, and bellowed, “Who goes there!”

“Oh, Faranth,” the intruder said. “Put that thing down.” Then, with impatient irritation, “Don’t you recognise your Weyrleader, young man?”

Narjol yanked back the hood whose lowered peak had obscured his view, and gaped.

It only was the Weyrleader.

The pike clattered from his suddenly strengthless grip.

“S-sir,” he stammered. “That is, I mean, W-Weyrleader, sir, beggin your pardon, I –”

“Oh, nonsense, Watch,” the Weyrleader said. “You’ve nothing to apologise for. Doing your job just splendidly, I see, finding an intruder in Cherganth’s inner sanctum in the dead of night. Though best you retrieve your weapon, there, watchman…?”

Narjol picked up the pike, setting it back on his shoulder. “Yessir. Watch Narjol, sir. Weyrleader.”

“Narjol,” the Weyrleader said, fixing him with a stare. There was something a little strange about his gaze; something a little unfocused. If Narjol had dared think such a disrespectful thing, he’d have wondered if the man were drunk. “Narjol,” he said again, rolling the name around his mouth. And then realisation lit in the Weyrleader’s bleary eyes. “The watchman, ah, the watchman!” he exclaimed, fishing in his belt pouch. “I knew I’d forgotten something!”

“Sir?”

“Turn around, young fellow, turn around,” the Weyrleader told him, coming up with a roll of hide and a pen. “Let me just scribble…”

Narjol did as he was bid, feeling the pressure as the Weyrleader used his back as a desk to write on the piece of hide.

“There!” The Weyrleader rolled the hide up. “Now – yes, this will do quite nicely, won’t it? You’re to deliver this to my office, young Watch Narjol. To my office, yes, and hide it somewhere on my desk.”

“Hide it, sir?” Narjol queried. “Where –”

“Well, if you tell me, if won’t be hidden, will it?” The Weyrleader shook his head. “Off with you now, young N– Narjol, that is, yes – and, oh, don’t tell anyone you saw me here tonight, will you?” He smiled, and again, the vagueness in his eyes struck Narjol. The Weyrleader looked odd – unwell, greyish somehow, gaunt, as though he’d lost a lot of weight in a short time. “After all, I’m sure a hopeful young candidate like you wouldn’t want it put about that he was lurking about the Hatching Ground in the very teeth of the night, hmm?”

“No, sir?” Narjol replied, unsure what was being asked of him.

“Splendid, splendid; just between the two of us, eh, that’s a good fellow.” The Weyrleader caught himself against the wall. “Dearie me; I must be off now.”

“Does you need a hand, sir?” Narjol asked.

“No no; I’m absolutely fine, Watch, absolutely fine. Off about your patrol, now.”

And the Weyrleader staggered, rolling like a drunkard, into the darkness.

Narjol watched him go, baffled.

The thought of sneaking into the Hatching Ground had suddenly lost its appeal. Narjol resumed his patrol: just as wet, just as cold, and even more confused than before.