Nip chuckled and, whipping the towel off its peg on the door, whistled as he made his way to the bathing room. The MasterHarper's quarters had its own facility.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nip departed several mornings later, riding the most nondescript runner in the Hall's beasthold.
'Out of deference to my toes,' he explained. He also had a fresh set of clothing – which Silvina had got out of storage, no doubt outgrown by some apprentice. 'Not too good, but at least in one piece,' had been his request.
Between them, Silvina and Robinton forced him to take a fine fur rug for use until such time as circumstances made him abandon it.
'There are more holdless than holded up north,' Nip said, fingering the rug. 'Ah, a few nights on the ground and it'll look no better than the old one I ... lost.' And he grinned.
Although Nip reported at intervals, in messages forwarded with others to the Fort Runner Station, the urgency to defend against Fax gradually dissipated as nothing much happened which was reported outside those four holds.
Nothing much, Robinton thought, that Fax would wish bruited about the continent.
How Nip managed to get his information, Robinton never knew, but the self-styled 'Lord of Five Holds' had internal problems of mysterious natures. A mine collapsed, a very productive one. Several of the larger ships of the High Reaches fishing fleet disappeared in stormy weather. Timber, stacked to season, either burned dramatically or ended up in splinters on its way down the rivers. A blight was discovered infecting grain fields and reducing the yield. Fax's men were forced to attend to all these minor disasters, for which no one could be seen to be at fault by omission or commission. There were rumours of minor rebellions among the overworked holders, but the revolts were viciously suppressed by Fax's brutal guards, the 'culprits' sent to the mines and their families turfed out to fend for themselves as best they might. There were fights among his guards, fights which usually produced several corpses, often those of his more brutal captains and stewards.
So, gradually, over the following turns, even Groghe slackened his vigilance, though he kept on his border guards. Tarathel died – of natural causes, Robinton discovered by asking the Telgar Hold healer outright.
'Oh, quite natural causes, my dear MasterHarper,' the man said. 'I attended him myself. Bad heart, you know. Never quite forgave himself that the Weyrleader was killed in Telgar Hold while guest-ing.
Didn't get on at all with R'gul. In fact, disliked him thoroughly. Not a proper replacement for F'lon.'
'He didn't agree with F'lon...'
'No, but he respected him. Anyway, Tarathel's fatal mistake was trying to keep pace with younger men, like Vendross and young Larad ... I should say, Lord Larad, now, shouldn't I? Well, old bones can't do what young ones can.'
Larad was confirmed by the Conclave after an hour's deliberation. Larad was young, at fifteen, though a well- grown lad, so most of the time was spent picking his mentors, Vendross and Harper Falawny, a former dorm-mate of Robinton and an excellent teacher.
There was a brief flurry when Larad's elder half-sister, Thella, insisted that the Conclave had to hear her right to the Holding. Lord Tesner of Igen, the most senior of the Holders, was outraged at her impudence and refused her admittance. The other Lord Holders and Masters were only too happy to second his motion. Robinton looked for her during the following reception, wanting to see a woman who was brave enough to speak up as eldest in the Bloodline, but there was no sign of her. He often wondered what happened to her because she disappeared from Telgar Hold shortly afterwards.
The turns were punctuated by the usual Solstice and Equinox celebrations, Gathers, the round of duties that was the MasterHarper's lot. C'gan was a frequent visitor, always welcomed by Robinton. The Weyrsinger usually brought something for Camo – a toy or a confection from the Weyr's kitchens. He even tried to get Camo to put his fingers right on a pipe and breathe properly through it.
'It's such a relief to talk to you,' C'gan would say. 'You're the only one else who cares a tunnel snake's droppings about the Weyr,' he often said during his frequent reminiscences about the 'better' days when F'lon had been Weyrleader and the Weyr had still been popular and active. R'gul followed a policy of keeping the Weyr to itself, rarely permitting dragonriders to attend any but Benden's or Nerat's Gathers.
'He's afraid ...' C'gan paused to be sure that Robinton was aware of his total disgust, 'to annoy the Lord Holders. Especially Nerat and Benden, who tithe as they should – and so does Bitra, when Lord Sifer happens to remember to send any. Raid is charmed by his attitude.' He rolled his eyes.
'How are the sons progressing?' Robinton wished he had more contact with F'lar and F'nor, and not only because they were F'lon's lads. He could have wished for one of them as his. He had once wished that Camo wouldn't survive his first Turn, as so often happened to babies. But the child prospered, as much because his mother was so devoted to him, carrying him about with her long after Camo should have been walking independently. It was hard sometimes, Robinton knew – he forced himself to the task – to ask others about the welfare of their children: like prodding a sore spot to be sure it was still tender. So, resolutely, he promised himself that he would go to the next Nerat Gather. He would hope to entice his father to leave Half Circle and meet him there. If C'gan were to drop a hint to the two lads, he could meet them too.
'Grand boys, and F'lar's got his head screwed on better than F'lon ever did,' C'gan said proudly. 'And they believe! They believe! I see that they do. Not that they'd dishonour their father's memory by forgetting,' he added. Then he sighed. 'We' ve had more losses. I've never seen so many empty weyrs and that lazy--' He closed his lips over whatever he might have called Weyrwoman Jora. 'I cannot understand why S'loner thought she'd do. Do nothing, of course. Thread's coming and even the Weyr is unprepared.' He shook his head sadly.
Robinton wondered too. Over three thousand strong the six Weyrs had been at the end of the last Pass. Now, unless he mis-counted, there were barely three hundred. And not all of them able to fly Thread. Even C'gan was fast approaching an age when he and his Tagath would be considered liabilities to a fighting wing.
The refrain of the Question Song briefly hovered in his mind. 'Gone, gone ahead...' How?
Robinton had more urgent worries than puzzling answers to an old song. His greatest pleasure was in watching Sebell's development as an apprentice. In another Turn, he'd probably walk the tables.
With distressing regularity, he heard tales of Fax's mistreatment of his folk, and how few now made their escape. He kept up pressure with the Lord Holders as often and as adroitly as he could. But one could pipe a tune only so long before no one heard it as more than noise.
Nip made reports. Robinton even received a brief note smuggled in from Bargen, repeating the promise to reclaim High Reaches as the legal Bloodline heir.
Then Nip appeared late one night, exhausted from having run most of the last day from Nabol.
'He's doing ... something ...' he gasped as he hung on the door into Robinton's quarters.
The harper got the man into the nearest chair and poured him some wine.
'Clever as sin, he is,' Nip said, after a long pull of the wine. 'I didn't notice they'd disappeared, and then I didn't know where they could have gone. But half the barracks at Nabol are empty. He didn't even let the other half know where their mates had gone.' 'Which way?'
Nip shook his head. 'I must have been watching the wrong places, that's for certain, and I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. I thought I was on to his little ways.'
'What ways?'
'Strike and grab.' Then he sat bolt upright, his face stricken.
'Ruatha! I should have gone there! Warned them.'
'Ruatha!' Robinton cried in the same moment.
'Get me a runner-beast, the fastest you've got,' Nip said.
'I'll go with you.'
'No, Rob. I can hide in the shadows, but there's too much of you ...'
'I'm going!' The Harper was changing into old clothes, dark ones, warm ones, and he tossed a spare fur vest towards Nip, who was shivering with the midnight chill now that he was no longer moving.
Robinton paused long enough in the kitchen to dump travel rations into a saddlepack and leave a brief note for Silvina, and then they were out of the door, startling the watchwher who whined at their appearance and followed them the length of his chain.
They roused the beastman and had him saddle Big Black for Robinton, and a fast Ruathan runner for Nip. They walked their mounts circumspectly so as not to rouse Hall and Hold, and then Nip pointed to the runner track which
