Chap. 25 The Mountains' Revenge

Chap.  25  The Mountains' Revenge

Who to talk to?

Should he even do so?

Wouldn't it be admitting that maybe, just maybe, he's NOT a dragon rider?

Yeah, there's Raventh. He's such a wonderful beast. Smart, quick witted, always curious, always striving to learn new words, new concepts. And he has the most incredible self confidence. Courage, and every day, that courage growing more balanced with common sense and a willingness to learn from the older, far more experienced dragons.

What about the rider?

K'ndar thrashed around on his bunk. He thought he'd sleep after his first flight against Thread, but everyday tasks (and his jangling nerves) had kept him going until bedtime. Now he was unable to sleep, wondering what WAS this feeling, WHY all these sudden doubts?

Raventh said, Get up. Do something. You are keeping me awake with all your mind talk and I am tired

You are right. I'm going to the dining hall. I’m sorry K'ndar said, chagrined to have disturbed his weyrmate.

He walked out into the deep night, as always, looking upwards to the stars. Tonight they were clouded over, promising rain the next day. A nocturnal creature swooped overhead, hunting the night's insects.

The sea, behind him, shushed quietly. The sea and the sky. Eternally moving, changing, yet always the same.

The night crew had klah and nummies out for late folks like him.

He poured a cup of klah and took a small pastry, not sure what it was and not really caring.

The worries that he thought he'd left in his weyr had followed him. They sat down with him and resumed crawling over him.

Oscoral, the night baker, saw him from across the hall. He recognized him from his first weeks as a Weyrling. He knew, too, that the curfew was no longer in force for this young man. Graduation was coming up in a month.

He got a cup of klah and sat down across from K'ndar.

"K'ndar, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Haven't seen you in a very long while. Almost a full Turn, yes?"

"Yes, sir, I graduate next month." He nibbled at the pastry, not really interested, but perhaps it would chase away the gremlins.

"And you're here, after a very long day fighting Thread, and you were..and are..afraid." The big man looked at him gently, knowing, knowing.

For a split second, K'ndar was angered that he was so obvious, that he might be considered a coward. Then he realized, Oscoral had put a massive finger right on the problem. He gulped.

"I didn't know it until just now, but…yes. And that scares me, too. I'm afraid that I'm afraid. I'm afraid I won't be able to fight Thread, that I'm a dragon rider in name only. I'm afraid that I've wasted an awful lot of time and that I'm..I'm just faking this. The others, the ones who've been fighting for years, they're all so cool and collected. They don't turn a hair. And me, the first time I saw Thread in the sky around me, I almost puked in fear, I wanted to turn my dragon around and hide. Raventh wouldn't let me, otherwise I'd have been underneath my bunk, scared witless. I don't know what to do. I don't know WHY I feel this way."

The big man twisted the cup in his hands, dwarfing the mug. He shook his head, smiling gently.

"Why? Why. Because you're an intelligent young man. Because now, you've gotten your first glimpse of what lies ahead for you as a dragon rider. You might get hurt. You might get killed. You might lose your dragon."

The words arrowed into the center of his heart. Yes.

He nodded, too overcome to speak, but Oscoral knew.

He took a sip, looking at K'ndar over the rim.

"Before, riding dragons was a dream. It drove you. You might not even have known it, but it was there in your soul. Wherever, whatever your home life was like, it wasn't enough. All you could see was the glory of flying on a dragon, taking on Thread, and being..well, a hero to us lowly, earth bound ground pounders.

K'ndar grinned. Lowly?  One dismissed Oscoral, who was only slightly smaller than a bronze dragon, at one's peril.

"I will never consider you "lowly", sir."

"Ah, and it's solely due to your liking my pies, yes?" the big man laughed.

K'ndar laughed, too. The gremlins backed off just a little.

The night baker took a pull of klah.

"Now, you've had all the training. You've met your wing second, your wingleader, is that D'mitran? and the men and women you will be fighting thread alongside. They are hardened veterans of the thread fights. You are a fresh young graduate who has passed all the tests in Weyrling school. But will it be enough to carry you safely through the real thing?"

K'ndar nodded. It was painful to hear the truth, but it also felt as if, yes, it was real.

"Let me tell you a story. There was this young man, big as a mountain and twice as stupid. He grew up in a minecrafthall.  Crom, the source for the best cromcoal and firestone. He and his kin knew only one thing…to dig in the mountains for ore, for firestone, for blackstone. It was all that they had. All that they knew. All that they were allowed to do. The rest of Pern was content to leave them to their task.

This young man feared nothing. He feared no man, no beast. He'd been brought up in a tribe that could neither read nor write, but needed no hides to pass on their secrets. Songs and stories, passed from father to son, for two thousand years, K'ndar. Legends that were true, right from the first days of Pern. Much knowledge of the world has been lost, K'ndar, but not the things that miners know. You can't lose what everyone knows.

His father's father's father had learned to find the deepest, most productive seams of blackstone. And gemstones. Sapphires the size of a boy's fist.  Stones that wealthy men paid good marks for. It was said these miners could taste the rocks and tell you what lay hidden beneath. It made them sought after, admired, paid better than the others. 

It was a dangerous life. The mountains, they hate having their guts carved out with sharp picks and iron shovels.  The firestone and the ore, that's the mountains'  flesh and blood. They don't like humans nibbling away at their insides.  

This young man was lucky. Lucky at cards, and lucky at finding the richest seams, the biggest of  gems. He gained a following of other men like him, who told him how great he was, how much better he was. Those other men, they didn't follow the young man out of love, or loyalty. They followed him out of greed.

One day, a wealthy man arrived. He'd heard that there were gems far larger than anything others had found. The young man knew where they were, but also they were in a very dangerous part of the mines. He said as much, and the man offered him a great deal of marks to get him some.

His grandmother, who'd lost a father, two brothers and two husbands to the mines, warned him off. "You only have so much luck in life. Don't squander it. The marks aren't worth it," she said.

But he wouldn't listen. The marks were too good to pass by. The words of the men who admired him, who wanted to get rich, too, were too believable. He believed himself master of the mountain.

So this young man, who feared nothing and nobody, entered the mines with a few others, heading for the tunnel of the giants. They began to excavate. Old miners tried to stop them, telling them it was too dangerous. The young men sneered at their fear. I'm ashamed to say, they laughed at the old men, called them 'cowards'.

When they did break into the cavern, the walls were glittering with gems. One could almost dig them out with a finger. A single blow of a hammer could fill your pockets. You could fill a bucket with them and still not make a dent in the number.

The mountain-he gave out a load moan. It was a sound the young man had never heard before. It sounded like pain, like a wounded beast. It said to him, leave me alone. He told the others they needed to leave. They laughed at him. Was he an old man, too? A coward? You go ahead, leave, that means more gems for us. For once, he heeded his grandmother's words. It was if she were behind him, whispering, the mountain is angry. Run. Run.

The young man, the one with so much luck,ran back to the entrance of the tunnel-and the mountain roared.It shook the walls down. The mountain, he shut the door of the cavern with rock, trapping the others. He filled the cavern with rocky blood, dust that cuts like knives, filling your nose, your mouth, your lungs. The men in the trap, they called out for help.

The young man was the lucky one. He'd managed to escape the first rockfall. He was pinned under a peak of rock, but he wasn't hurt, and he had air…and time. Time for the men-the old men they'd called 'cowards' to come and try to dig them out.

The mountain wasn't satisfied, though. He waited until a team of men tried to dig the others out. A few of the old men dared to enter the cavern where they were. The mountain, he shook more rock down. The cries stopped. Only a few of the old men…and the young one, crawled out, broken in limb and mind, coughing up dirt, crying black tears of terror and sorrow.

Fifteen men died that day, all because one young man was afraid of nothing."

He stopped, his eyes looking a thousand kilometers into the past.

"That young man, so fearless, was, as you might have guessed, me.

The mountain said: he who fails to respect me will suffer the consequences.

The mountain taught me fear. It was something I'd thought only weaklings had. I was a MAN, you know. MEN aren't afraid…of mountains, or thread, or all the ways the world can kill you.

The mountain wasn't afraid, either. He showed me that men without fear make the mountain's job of killing them so much easier. We walk willingly into the jaws of death, all for the possibility of leaving with a handful of pretty rocks in our pockets.

So now, you see, I am a baker. It's a simple life. It pays but I am not interested in marks. I used up almost all of my luck that day, the rest going to what I have now: I am alive, in one piece, I live here, in the warmth and the light, I have a wife and children who I love and who will grow up in the sunshine rather looking at a rock filled cavern, the stench of the dead seeping through the cracks and thinking, that is my future.

I'm a baker because the mountain had taught me that I am nothing but an insect to him. He taught me that admitting to being afraid is admitting that the mountain is bigger than you, stronger than you, and is merciless.  The thing that keeps men alive in the mountain is brains. Those old miners? They were afraid. But they were smart. They had lived to an old age because they respected the mountain. They didn't underestimate him, like I did. The man who says he isn't afraid, especially of something that common sense IS something to fear, is a fool."

K'ndar was speechless. He was filled with an admiration for the courage and honesty of the man in front of him.

"Admitting that you are afraid isn't shameful. It's courage all on its own. Of course you are afraid of Thread. So am I. It tells me that you are a dragon rider who will respect the enemy, but will use his fear as a tool to defeat it. I would much rather have a man who understands why he is afraid, than the fool that I was insisting that he's not.    Remember, the old saying: "Fools rush in where dragons fear to tread."

K'ndar felt his worries die away.The gremlins crept back into the stonework.

"One more thing, my lad, then I've got to get back to work. Every firestone you chuck into your dragon's mouth, every one, was dug out by hand. By a man in the mines, who goes weeks without seeing daylight, who coughs up and dies with his lungs pitted with the mountains black blood, who, every moment of every day, knows the mountain may awaken and take its' revenge. The firestone that allows us to live here on Pern, has a price that sometimes, comes at a man's life."

He stood up, a big man made even larger in K'ndar's eyes.

"Eat that pastry, boy, I worked hard on it."