Taking a more direct line, she bypassed the next turn and pushed through the underbrush, wiggling past trees. Then, as she discerned the bulk of the green-smeared wagon cover through the trees, she moved more circumspectly. The wagon had not shifted from the spot in which they had left it two hours past. Trembling with fear, Aramina paused, listening now for the sound of voices, for the bass rumble of Giron or the crisp acid alto of Thella. Hearing nothing but the wind soughing through the leafless trees, she moved cautiously down until she was poised on the bank above where the wagon was still canted. Muffling a cry of fear, Aramina slid down the bank, recoiling in horror as she saw her father's head and shoulders protruding from under the wagon. Somehow the blocks had slipped and the wheel lay once again on its side. Horrified, Aramina was certain that her father had been crushed to death until she saw that one block had fallen directly under the wagon bed, preventing the complete collapse of the heavy load onto her father's chest.

Only then did Aramina hear the hoarse grunt and half sob, as she realized that her mother was attempting to lever the wagon bed off her stricken husband.

"Mother!"

"I cannot lift it, 'Mina!" Barla sobbed, leaning exhaustedly against the pole. "I've been trying and trying."

Wasting no words, Aramina threw her weight onto the lever, and though Barla gave every remaining ounce of her strength, the two women could not summon enough mass between them to shift the wagon more than a finger's breadth.

"Oh, 'Mina, what can we do? Even if we had Pell and Nexa, they couldn't help enough...." Defeated, Barla slumped onto the ground, weeping.

"We lifted it enough. If Pell and Nexa were here, they could pull him free...." Aramina swung 'round to her father, his tanned face pale with shock, the pulse in his neck beating slowly but reassuringly. "Pell's found a cave. It's not too far up the track. I'll be right back."

Giving Barla no chance to protest, Aramina started up the track again as fast as she could run. Pell and Nexa just had to be strong enough. She didn't dare believe anything else. And they must hurry. The sun glancing into her eyes warned her that time was very short if they were to rescue Dowell and get the wagon up the trail to the cave. She couldn't consider any other problems then, only the most immediate ones, and she almost ignored the sight of the dragon gliding overhead. She stopped so fast that she almost fell.

Dragon, dragon, hear me! Help me! HELP ME! Aramina had never attempted to communicate with the dragons, but a dragonrider would be strong enough to help her. Surely a dragonrider would not ignore her need.

Who calls a dragon?

She recognized the voice of Heth.

It is Aramina. Down on the logging trace, above the river in the forest. Please help me. My father is trapped beneath our wagon. And Thread will fall soon! She jumped up and down in the middle of the trace, waving frantically. Oh, please help me!

No need to shout. I heard you the first time. My rider wants to know who you are.

To her relief, Aramina saw the dragon change directions, circling down toward the track.

I told you, I'm Aramina.

May I tell him?

Such consideration rarely came Aramina's way.

Yes, yes, of course. Are you Heth?

I am Heth. My rider is K'van.

How do you do?

I'd do better if we could see you.

But I'm right here. In the middle of the trace. And the wagon is large.... Oh, my father painted it green. If you 'II just fly lower...

I'm a dragon, not a wherry.... K'van sees the wagon.

Aramina crashed through the underbrush to reach the wagon at the same time as dragon and rider. Barla looked about to faint with shock at their sudden appearance.

"It's all right, Mother. They'll help us. They're much stronger than Pell and Nexa would be." Then Aramina realized that Shove and Nudge were taking great exception to the proximity of a dragon. She tied them tightly down by their nose rings to the tether stone, giving them more immediate pain to occupy their stupid brains.

Fortunately, the dragonrider directed Heth to land behind the wagon, out of the dray beasts' immediate sight.

To her dismay, Aramina realized that both dragon and rider were young. She'd always thought that bronze dragons must be big, and, indeed, Heth had seemed enormous, out- lined in the sky. But now she could see that he wasn't fully grown and that his rider, K'van, was both undersized and younger than herself.

As if K'van sensed her disappointed appraisal, he straightened his shoulders and jerked his chin up. He walked forward, taking in the lever propped against the boulder and looking down at the prostrate Dowell.

"We may be weyrlings, but we can help you," K'van said without ostentation. He turned to Heth. "What I want you to do is to heave on this, Heth, with your forearms. C'mon, Aramina."

Aramina stopped staring at the bronze dragon, who waddled forward to place his five-clawed paws about the lever.

"Not until I say go, Heth," K'van cautioned, grinning a bit at Aramina as they knelt in the dust beside the unconscious Dowell, fastening their hands under the man's armpits. "Heave, Heth! Heave!"

As quickly as they could, Aramina and K'van hauled Dowell's body from under the wagon. With a cry of incredulous relief, Barla rushed to her husband's side, opening his shirt to judge the extent of his injury. K'van had the presence of mind to replace the fallen block and prop the wagon up.

"You'll need the wheel back on," he said to Aramina. "That was fine, Heth."

I am very strong, said the dragon with a trace of smugness, his great faceted eyes whirling bluey green as he maintained pressure on the lever.

"Oh, you are indeed, you beautiful beautiful creature," cried Aramina.

"All right, Heth, ease it down," said K'van, holding the block in place. "Slowly now."

The wagon settled, creaking as the block took its weight. K'van fumbled about in the grass and dust and triumphantly held up the pegs.

"Mother?" Aramina's trembling voice held a questions as she turned to look at her father.

"I can't find anything broken," Barla said in a low unsteady voice, "but look..." Her hand indicated the terrible line of bruising already discoloring the skin. Carefully she smoothed the hair back from Dowell's brow, her expression of concerned tenderness causing the two young people to exchange embarrassed glances.

K'van touched Aramina's arm. "Do you know how to set the wheel back on the axle?" He gave her a rueful glance as he proffered the pegs. "I don't."

"Whyever should you?" Aramina wanted to know as she took the pegs and noticed, with a pang, how carefully Dowell had made a cotter hole in the kingpin. "You're a dragonrider."

"Not all that long," he said with a grin as he helped her lift the wheel and roll it into position. "And weyrlings are taught a little bit of craft needed by the Weyr. You never know when something will come in handy. Like now!" He said this on the end of a grunt as the two young people tried to force the wheel onto the axle.

"It's the dirt encrusted on the hub," Aramina said as K'van paused uncertainly. With her belt knife, she scraped off the caked dirt, found a large rock, and, with a healthy knock, set the wheel firmly on. With another few taps of her rock, she rammed the kingpin through and then the cotter pin into its place.

"You're deft at that," K'van said admiringly.

"Practice."

With Heth's assistance, they removed the block from under the wagon.

"Have you far to go?" K'van asked then. "Thread falls soon and, as I recall, the foresters' hold is a long ways up the track"

Barla stifled a sound in her throat, but Aramina had an answer ready.

"I know," Aramina lied calmly, "but this accident delayed us. However, there's a cave not far up the track where we can wait out Threadfall."

"Is it large?" asked K'van.

"Large enough. Why?" Aramina asked, suddenly wary.

"Well, just before you called us," and K'van grinned ingenuously for her temerity, "Heth spotted a band of runners beyond the river. Are they part of your group?"

"No," Barla groaned aloud, looking wildly up at Aramina.

"There shouldn't be anyone else in this part of Lord Asgenar's forests," Aramina said with all the indignation she could muster. "We were warned that holdless raiders have been seen."

"Holdless men?" K'van was instantly alert. "If they are, they'll disperse once they've seen me. Look, let me help you get your father into the wagon and see you safely on your way to the cave. I'll take care of the raiders. And warn Lord Asgenar, too."

Aramina hadn't expected that, but she said what was appropriate, determined to play out her part in this charade. She 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 tense 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 the escape of the dray beasts, twisting the nose rings until pain paralyzed the stupid animals.

We will move down the track, Aramina heard Heth say as she coped with the frantic Nudge. When the dragons were far enough away not to be an immediate threat, Aramina and Barla relaxed their hold.

"I am T'gellan, bronze rider of Monarth, and this is Mirrim, who rides green Path," said the oldest of the three riders who approached them. "K'van wisely called for help to persuade those holdless raiders to absent themselves from this vicinity. So I thought we'd better make sure you had safely reached shelter before Threadfall."

Barla hovered between her critical need for assistance and anxiety at the presence of dragonriders who might very easily depart with her daughter who could hear dragons.

Mirrim knelt beside Dowell and opened his shirt, then exhaled her breath on a long whistle.

"I can feel no broken bones, but he's not regained consciousness," Barla told Mirrim, sensibly making her husband's needs her first priority.

"If he was under a wagon as K'van says, that doesn't surprise me," Mirrim remarked. "I've done considerable nursing at the Weyr. First let's get him to this cave."

"We don't have much time to spare," T'gellan added, squinting at the steep bank. "And I don't fancy trying to haul an unconscious man up that!"

"Is there any sort of a clearing by your cave?" Mirrim asked Aramina. "A small one," she said, devoutly hoping that Pell's description bore some resemblance to fact.

"Path? Would you oblige us?" Mirrim asked the green dragon.

I see no reason why not. In a maneuver that Aramina couldn't believe she was seeing, the green dragon glided to the group without moving her wings or appearing to walk. Silly beasts, aren't they? Path added as Nudge and Shove began their terrified lowing again.

Aramina was obliged to go calm them; their perturbation abruptly ceased as Mirrim, Path, her father, and her mother disappeared.

"Well, it seemed easier to send your mother along, too, Aramina," T'gellan said with a laugh for her astonishment. "You'd best go the hard way. Thread will fall very shortly."

"But I can't... Nudge and Shove..."

K'van grinned. "Just get on one, get a good hold on the nose rein of the other. We'll supply the impulsion." And he jerked his thumb at the two dragons watching with their jewel eyes whirling mildly.

It was perhaps the wildest ride Aramina had ever had. In the first place, dray beasts were not designed for comfortable riding, having straight backs, wide withers, short necks and low-held heads. However, the flapping of dragon wings behind Nudge and Shove was more than enough to have sent them plunging through fire. They took the bank, cloven hooves slipping on the wet footing in no more than four bucking jumps. Momentum carried them over the top and down the dip, almost right into the cliff wall, where they fetched up to a dead stop that sent Aramina onto Nudge's horns, and then to the ground with a force that jarred her from heel to headbones.

Pell appeared, eyes wide at her impetuous arrival.

"A girl on a green dragon brought Father and Mother. I didn't think girls were allowed to ride fighting dragons."

"Help me get these inside the cave before they stampede again," Aramina said, though she had been equally surprised by Mirrim and Path.

"Oh, look, they're going!" Pell's disappointment was patent, as he saw the dragons hover briefly in the sky. "I'm forever missing the good parts," he complained.

"Get Shove inside!" Aramina had no time to humor her brother, and she gave him such a hard prod that he sharply reminded her that he wasn't any old dray beast.

He hauled on the nose rein and, lowing, Shove followed his painful muzzle - then bellowed as his hindquarters scraped along the right wall of the narrow entry. Aramina pushed at his dappled flanks and set him right. She was careful to line Nudge squarely in the opening, and to prevent any further recalcitrance she twisted his nose ring. With an injured bellow, he, too, made the passage into the cave, running into Aramina, who stopped, amazed at what lay before her.

"Isn't this cave marvelous, 'Mina? Didn't I find a good one? Couldn't we get everything in here? Maybe we could even live here." Pell dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper on the last sentence. "For it's as big as a hold, isn't it, 'Mina?" The boy was all but dancing at the end of Shove's ring rein, momentarily oblivious of everything but his need for her approval.

In a sweeping glance, Aramina saw a solemn-faced Nexa cradling her father's head where he lay on the pile of sleeping furs, and her mother busy lighting a small fire within a ring of stones before she allowed herself to examine the cave in more detail.