Chap. 73 Expedition's End

Chap. 73  Expedition's end

"Not that I want to stop exploring, " D'nis said,"but we DO have duties and responsibilities at the weyr."

It was their last day on the steppe. K'ndar didn't want to stop. He'd been making copious notes of every benchmark, every animal and their activities,  every topographical feature…which were slim, out here, of the steppe; in order that he could come back. On his own, or with others, he didn't care. Despite having grown up in a steppe cothold, he'd never been so far out into the wilderness, and he was intoxicated by it.

Just by listening and watching, he was beginning to grasp the ecological network that was the steppe. People appreciated that the colonists had brought livestock such as horses and cattle with them, but why did they bring predators like lions and cheetahs? 

Now, he understood. Seeing the balance play out in front of him, it all made sense. The steppe was the homestead pasture writ large. He'd grown up knowing that one must rotate pastures, otherwise, one's cattle and horses would turn grazing land into dirt floored wastelands. Too many herbivores destroyed the steppe. Predators were needed to keep the numbers trimmed to what the steppe could support without being destroyed. 

They mounted their dragons and flew steadily southward for an hour. Then, landing, D'mitran and D'nis began taking their readings, and K'ndar wandered out. 

He had no expectations of making such an incredible find as he did two days prior, when he found the capsule. Once they'd returned to the cothold base, D'nis had taken the capsule to Landing and turned it over for examination. He demanded, though, that it not be opened…if it could be opened, without them being there. The ownership of artifacts was a murky morass of misunderstandings and ambition. As it stood at the moment, the artifact belonged to K'ndar, subject to whatever he chose to do with it.  Precedent had been more than set by Lord Toric. No one knew how many artifacts Toric had, and most people lamented that he'd never shared any of them. 

"I don't know what I'll do with whatever is inside," he'd said. "I think whatever is inside is important to share with Pern, but…what if there's something I want to keep for myself?"

But for the moment, he was more interested in looking around, enjoying this last day so far out on the steppe that the animals had never seen a human. Or, it appeared, a dragon.

Dragons made exploration so much easier, he thought. There was plenty of game out here to keep the entire weyr fed for months. For humans…not so much. If humans could live on grass…

Nah. Boring.

He paid a lot of attention, now, to what was at his feet. He saw a glint of white. His heart started to race…not another capsule? But no, this time it was a skull. Skulls littered the steppe. They were hard to eat, apparently. Why waste time trying to eat a skull when the body of a prey animal was far easier and more filling?

He picked it up. It was fairly fresh, although the insects had thoroughly cleaned it. The horns…oh. It was a pronghorn skull! He ran his fingers over the horns, and was astonished when the one came off in his hand. Removable horns? How could this be? The black sheath fit neatly over the stubs on the skull itself. Cattle horn and sheep horn never came off like this. Was this some sort of anomaly? But no…both came off, without too much effort. Odd.

He stuffed the skull into a collection sack and kept walking. Siskin was with him, and would take off to try and catch the little crawlers that were everywhere. But they were fast, and knew all about airborne predators. They'd duck into a burrow like lightning. 

Ah, here were bones, probably from the pronghorn. Far ahead of him, he could see wherries, clustered and fighting on what was probably a fairly fresh kill. He wouldn't approach too closely, wherries could be dangerous. 

Gauging where he was going, he turned to the southwest, always keeping the dragons and their riders in view. Far off, he heard what he knew now were lions, roaring. What a thrilling sound, and yet one with dangerous overtones. So much of what he was seeing had been unknown! The Natural History book hadn't mentioned much of this. He didn't know why.

 Maybe lions had always made that sound, and the writers just assumed people knew it? 

Siskin came whirring back, cheeping. He got a vision of 'something pretty' from the fire lizard. 

"Show me, lad." he said.

The blue arrowed to a spot. K'ndar followed him, again, anticipating a wondrous find, but this time it was just rocks. 

But what rocks! Blue rocks, like his fire lizard! He knelt down. There were large hunks of blue rock, covered in dust and grass, but still, blue. This time he'd brought the trowel and dug up a large chunk of faded blue rock. 

He wished he had some means of identifying it. He'd never seen a rock like it. He dug it up and found more hunks, buried in the dirt.

This time, too, he'd brought some flags to mark the spot for D'nis and D'mitran to register. 

Funny how this fire lizard was so enchanted with colors. Were all fire lizards the same? He put several hunks of the rock in a separate collection bag. 

And this time, no horses in the area to steal the flag!

Which was odd, he reflected. This was the first day he'd not seen any wildlife other than wherries and the birds. 

Was there a wher den in the area? But he couldn't see the typical dirt mounds that showed where whers nested. Unlike dragons and fire lizards, that preferred to lay eggs on sand, whers dug deep holes for their eggs, and then would rest in the resulting bowl to incubate them.

Ahead of him, he saw another skull. And a large ribcage, yawning emptily to the sky.

It was that of a dragon. 

He'd never seen a dragon skeleton, or a skull, in his life. Dragons normally died by going between when their rider died. 

The remnants of a harness were on the skeleton. The carcass had been scavenged, judging by the scattered bones. It had been there for some time, the skeleton was bleached white by the sun and some of the bones had been gnawed on by other creatures. 

He examined the skull. Judging by its size, it was from a brown. 

He flagged it too. Maybe they could figure out where it had come from the harness?

There was no sign of a human skeleton. 

Maybe, maybe this is where dragons went to die. He always had wondered, was between always between? One came out of between, but there had to be a something on the other side, yes?

Hmm. He looked at the ground underneath the skeleton. More blue stones. But these were different. They were smaller, smoother, a lighter shade of blue.

 He picked up a handful. They were everywhere. Oh. It looked as if they'd been dug up. Ah, now he knew. Something had tunneled underneath the skeleton and these stones had been in the dirt. He put them into a sack. It must be blue stone day, he thought. 

Raventh, please pass on to D'nis and D'mitran that I've found an interesting skeleton

A what?

Bones. A skeleton is what the bones are called, like the herdbeasts or the bucks you eat.

Skeleton. Okay.

Funny, he thought, how he wondered if the dragons would get upset seeing the skeleton of their own kind. Some people were like that, he knew, fearful of seeing blood, or touching a dead person. 

All of us are coming, they are finished taking readings. They see the flag you put up behind you

This is more important

Three dragons, two with riders and equipment, came flying. It was always a thrill to see them coming right at one. They landed and K'ndar went to scratch Raventh's neck. 

The two men immediately saw the skeleton. They, too, were surprised. 

Why didn't you say it was a dragon?

Ummmm, I didn't know how you would feel about seeing a dead one.

It doesn't bother me. Everything dies. 

Can you tell who this was?

Raventh, along with Careth and Corvuth, went to sniff the skeleton. K'ndar and the two men stood by respectfully. The dragons spent an inordinate amount of time sniffing it. Corvuth ran his forepaws over the skull. Their eyes all whirled an uncertain green. They were obviously discussing its origins.

Not from our weyr. It's been here a long time. Maybe two years. 

"I agree with Corvuth, it's been here a while," D'nis said. 

D'mitran, kneeling, was examining the remnants of the badly dry rotted harness. The buckles were in decent shape.

"This looks like something from the North. See the difference in the buckles? We can't get quite that consistency in the metal, we don't have that specific ore. I think this stuff is brass. But I don't know, I'd have to have a smith look at it."

He cut off the buckles and put them in a collection sack. They took readings. K'ndar, belatedly, began to sketch the skeleton, took the data the two recorded. 

"Are you going to benchmark it?" he asked D'nis.

"No. All our benchmarks are separated by definite distances of 100 kilometers. This would throw it off. But…we can give it a number on a stake. I'm assuming you intend on coming back?"

K'ndar flushed. "Well, yes." 

D'nis said, "I can understand that. You've got a good eye and an even better head. So far I've been doing nothing but math and surveying, you're doing the biological surveying, which is just as important. I saw the other flag, what was that for?"

"Oh, I just found some really nice rock," he said, pulling it out of the sack.

"Hmm, that's lovely stuff. What do you intend to do with it?"

"I…I…well, honestly, I was thinking of giving it to Terylyn the potter, to see if she wants to make a pigment for her pottery."

"Let's get some more, then, because it might come in handy for other uses, as well. Some stuff like this can be used by the healers, for instance."

They walked over to the spot K'ndar had flagged. While D'mitran dug up more of the rock, D'nis put a number on a benchmark state. K'ndar was sketching and taking down the data when Siskin suddenly squealed in anger.

The dragons alerted. 

Lions

Lions are coming. Fast.

Before the men could react, all three dragons leaped into the air and flew towards the tall grass, roaring in unison. 

K'ndar saw the heads of half a dozen lions coming out of the tall grass, in a pincer formation.

Wish I had some firestone right now!

OK!

I will!

Raventh was talking to the other dragons. They split up into a triad of big, roaring airborne predators.

Before them, the lions stood their ground for a few moments. Corvuth, the bronze dived bombed them. One big male leaped into the air, swiping at the bronze. Raventh and  Careth came at him from both sides. He turned and ran, his pride following him, snarling all the while.  Once the cats began to run, the dragons chased them for a very long way.

"They were THAT close," D'mitran said, wiping his brow.

"Whew."

"That was scary, but they are so …amazing."

"Wow, did you see how fast they ran?"

"Yeah, but they didn't want to…did you see that big male! I thought he was going to take on Corvuth!"

"Going to? He DID!"

"You have to admit, that's a brave cat."

The dragons returned, obviously strutting and proud of themselves.

THAT was FUN!!

Are you kidding? That was scary. At least to me. Thank you.

D'nis looked at the other two. 

"Well, maybe this is the steppe's way of saying it's time to go home."

K'ndar regretfully agreed. But he promised himself to go back. To see lions.