F’nor’s grin broadened. He stretched his lean body indolently, remembering his own weary hours in such a semicircle, twenty odd Turns ago. The rote lessons which he had echoed as a weyrling had far more significance to this present group of dragonriders. In his Turn, the Silver Thread of those teaching songs had not dropped from the Red Star for over four hundred Turns, to sear the flesh of man and beast and devour anything living which grew on Pern. Of all the dragonmen in Pern’s lone Weyr only F’nor’s half-brother, F’lar, bronze Mnementh’s rider, had believed that there might be truth in those old legends. Now Thread was an inescapable fact, falling to Pern from the skies with diurnal regularity. Once more, its destruction was a way of life for dragonriders. The lessons these lads learned would save their skins, their lives and, more important, their dragons.

The weyrlings are promising, Canth remarked as he locked his wings to his back and curled his tail against his hind legs. He settled his great head to his forelegs, the many-faceted eye nearest F’nor gleaming softly on his rider.

Responding to the tacit plea, F’nor scratched the eye ridge until Canth began to hum softly with pleasure.

“Lazybones!”

When I work, I work; Canth replied. Without my help, how would you know which holdbred lad would make a good dragonrider? And do I not find girls who make good queen riders, too?

F’nor laughed indulgently, but it was true that Canth’s ability to spot likely candidates for fighting dragons and breeding queens was much vaunted by Benden Weyr dragonmen.

Then F’nor frowned, remembering the odd hostility of the small holders and crafters he’d encountered in Southern Boll’s Holds and Crafts. Yes, the people had been hostile until—until he’d identified himself as a Benden Weyr dragonrider. He’d have thought it’d be the other way round. Southern Boll was weyrbound to Fort Weyr. Traditionally—and F’nor grinned wryly since the Fort Weyrleader, T’ron, was so adamant in upholding all that was traditional, customary... and static—traditionally, the Weyr which protected a territory had first claim on any possible riders. But the five Oldtime Weyrs rarely sought beyond their own Lower Caverns for candidates. Of course, thought F’nor, the Oldtime queens didn’t produce large clutches like the modern queens, nor many golden queen eggs. Come to think on it, only three queens had been Hatched in the Oldtime Weyrs in the seven Turns since Lessa brought them forward.

Well, let the Oldtimers stick to their ways if that made them feel superior. But F’nor agreed with F’lar. It was only common sense to give your dragonets as wide a choice as possible. Though the women in the Lower Caverns of Benden Weyr were certainly agreeable, there simply weren’t enough weyrborn lads to match up the quantity of dragons hatched.