Anne McCaffrey - Dragondrums

“I wouldn’t mind helping you with that, you know,” suggested Piemur, slyly giving her a look. He was only just aware of how much he had missed the interchange with someone of like mind.

“I’d be glad of the right sort of help. And you’ll have to keep up with me. I’ve got a lot to do while they muck about with the numbweed. There’s a northern Healer who’s sent me a special request.”

“I thought you Southerners kept away from the north?” Piemur decided it was time to be ignorantly discreet.

“Well, there are some things that need to be traded back and forth.”

“But I thought Benden Weyr doesn’t permit—”

“Dragonriders, yes,” and there was curious tone in her voice when she said “dragonriders” that caught Piemur’s quick ear. It was a mocking derision that surprised him, accustomed as he was to the respect with which all dragonriders—except the Southern Oldtimers—were treated. But Sharra meant the Southern Oldtimers when she said “dragonriders.” “No, we trade with Northerners.” Again that odd derision, as if Northerners weren’t up to southern standards. “All manner of southern plants grow bigger and better than the same things in your old north. Numbweed, for one, feather herb and tuft grass for fever, red wort for infection, pink root for bellyache, oh all manner of things.”

She had begun to walk now, gesturing Piemur to follow her deeper into the forest, her stride swinging as if she knew exactly where she was going in the tangled depths, had traveled this way many times before.

At some stages of the next few days, Piemur had occasion to regret not harvesting numbweed, a comparatively simple task compared to Sharra’s search, which included digging, scrambling under thorny bushes that scratched his back raw, and climbing trees for parasitic growths. He felt he had found a taskmaster in her equal to old Besel at Nabol Hold. However, a taskmaster far more interesting, for Sharra talked about the properties and virtues of the roots for which they dug, the leaves for which they climbed only the healthiest of trees, well-sheltered from the worst ravages of Threadfall, or equally elusive herbs that lived obscurely where other bushes had thorns to scratch. Sharra had a wherhide jacket with her, but he had nothing to shield him from lacerations. She was quite ready and prepared to daub him with numbweed whenever necessary, but she did have to point out that his size made him the logical person to pursue the shyest herbs in their protective environment. Nothing would permit Piemur to lose honor in Sharra’s eyes.

The first evening, she built a tiny, hot fire, knowing which of the southern woods burned best, and cooked him the finest eating he’d had since he’d left the Harper Hall; his contribution was fish and hers a combination of tubers and herbs. The three fire lizards devoured their portions of the stew with as much gusto as he did.

To Piemur’s pleased surprise, Sharra did not question him again about his journey south nor his imaginary companions. When she commented on his knowledgeable handling of little Stupid, he did admit to having been a herdsman’s boy in mountain holds. Otherwise Sharra seemed determined to introduce him to the south and gave him endless lectures on its beauties and advantages. She told him of explorations up the river—his river—which had ended in an unnavigable and dangerous marshland of tremendous breadth. The explorers had reluctantly decided that rather than get lost one by one up blind waterways they had better abandon the search until they could make an aerial survey of the area; a survey unlikely to be accomplished until one of the Oldtimers boredly agreed to the outing.

Piemur hadn’t been in Sharra’s company for more than several hours before he learned how poor her opinion was of dragonriders. While he had to agree to her estimate of the Oldtimers, he found it very difficult not to call N’ton to her as comparison. He felt he was being disloyal to the Fort Weyrleader when he forced himself to keep silent. But a favorable mention of N’ton might bring a query as to how he, a lowly herdsman’s boy, came to know so much about a Weyrleader.

Sharra had a light blanket, which she was quite willing to share with Piemur at night. She also acquainted him with the thick bush leaves, which made a more fragrant and comfortable bedding than the springier fronds he’d been using. The leaves also had no tendency to drive annoying splinters into soft flesh.

Sharra knew a great deal, Piemur realized, for she also had him feeding Stupid on a particular plant that would make up for the lack of nourishment from his dead mother. Piemur would never have known that that was why Stupid had browsed so continuously; a dietary instinct rather than an insatiable appetite.

The second day, after a light meal of fruit and tubers, which Sharra had baked in the ashes of the fire, the two continued on a steady course south. The thick forest gave occasionally onto grassy meadows, dotted with herdbeasts and runners who would gallop wildly away when the first scent of the humans reached them. By the middle of the next day, they had reached higher ground, more frequently broken by meadows, until suddenly, they came to a low bluff, as if the land had suddenly fallen away from the level on which they stood. Below, stretching to the far hazy horizon, was a marshland, fingered with black strips of water, which wove and disappeared about the clumps of drier land on which grew giant bushes of stiff, tuft-topped grasses.

“We were well met, Piemur,” said Sharra. “With you to help, we can get twice as much, manage a larger raft with two to steer it, and return down the river to the ships in very good time. But not,” she grinned down at him, “until they’ve had time to barrel the numbweed. Here’s what we do now.”

She showed him, by a map she scratched in the dirt at their feet with her knife belt, and by pointing in the appropriate directions. The third large channel to their right was actually the river that led to the sea. That much the earlier exploration had determined. There was plenty of the valuable tuft grasses between the bluff and that safe, third channel. They would be able to half-swim, half-wade across the intervening channels, using the fire lizards to scare away the water snakes, which could wring the blood out of a person’s arm or leg. Piemur didn’t believe that water snakes could grow that big, but he had to credit her warning when she showed him the fine band of puncture marks on her left arm where a water snake had wound its coils and left the myriad points of its toe-teeth. Not a denizen of these parts, Sharra assured him blithely, and brushed aside his pity by saying that the marks would fade gradually. Then she suggested that, being taller, she’d better carry Stupid across the waters on her shoulders.

As they reached each grassy island, they cut the tufts from the grass for the therapeutic seeds that grew along each stem. The larger branches were laid aside and tied in bundles to be bound together for the raft. Sharra said that the branches absorbed water gradually, but the raft would float long enough to get them safely to the river’s mouth. The heart of the grass plant, just above the root ball, was its most important part. This was dried and pounded into a powder that was the best medicine known for reducing fever, especially firehead fever, about which Piemur had never heard. Sharra told him that it seemed to occur only in the south, and generally only during the first month of the spring season, now well past. Something, they thought, rolled up on the spring tides so that beaches were avoided during that month by everyone.

Piemur might have avoided both numbweed stench and water snake puncture, but he certainly worked as hard beside Sharra, as he had that one day in Nabol Hold, a day that seemed to belong to another boy entirely, not this one that was alternately soaked and dried to parchment as they harvested the precious fruits of the swamp grass.