As one, the women grabbed salve pots and clean rags and beckoned the injured down. The numbing ointment was smeared on score marks where wings resembled black and red lace.

No matter how badly injured he might be, every rider tended his beast first.

Lessa kept one eye on Mnementh, sure that F’lar would not keep the huge bronze hovering like that if he’d been hurt. She was helping T’sum with Munth’s cruelly pierced right wing when she realized the sky above the Star Stone was empty.

She forced herself to finish with Munth before she went to find the bronze and his rider. When she did locate them, she also saw Kylara smearing salve on F’lar’s cheek and shoulder. She was advancing purposefully across the sands toward the pair when Canth’s urgent plea reached her. She saw Mnementh’s head swing upward as he, too, caught the brown’s thought.

“F’lar, Canth says they need help,” Lessa cried. She didn’t notice then that Kylara slipped away into the busy crowd.

F’lar wasn’t badly hurt. She reassured herself about that. Kylara had treated the wicked burns that seemed to be shallow. Someone had found him another fur to replace the tatters of the Thread-bared one. He frowned—winced because the frown creased his burned cheek. He gulped hurriedly at his klah.

Mnementh, what’s the tally of able-bodied? Oh, never mind, just get ’em aloft with a full load of firestone.

“You’re all right?” Lessa asked, a detaining hand on his arm. He couldn’t just go off like this, could he?

He smiled tiredly down at her, pressed his empty mug into her hands, giving them a quick squeeze. Then he vaulted to Mnementh’s neck. Someone handed him a heavy load of sacks.

Blue, green, brown, and bronze dragons lifted from the Weyr Bowl in quick order. A trifle more than sixty dragons hovered briefly above the Weyr where eighty had lingered so few minutes before.

So few dragons. So few riders. How long could they take such toll?

Canth said F’nor needed more firestone.

She looked about anxiously. None of the weyrlings were back yet from their messenger rounds. A dragon was crooning plaintively, and she wheeled, but it was only young Pridith, stumbling across the Weyr to the feeding grounds, butting playfully at Kylara as they walked. The only other dragons were injured or—her eye fell on C’gan, emerging from the weyrling barracks.

“C’gan, can you and Tagath get more firestone to F’nor at Keroon?”

“Of course,” the old blue rider assured her, his chest lifting with pride, his eyes flashing. She hadn’t thought to send him anywhere, yet he had lived his life in training for this emergency. He shouldn’t be deprived of a chance at it.