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 Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 8:21 pm
V'lay had been rushed to the Infirmary nearly as soon as Vinath's claws had touched Trine's Weyrbowl. It had been a haze of bandages and wooziness, blood loss and half-starvation and old wounds that had, apparently, begun healing improperly. He was severely bruised, possibly with cracked ribs, and the cuts from the wher (and the half-infected burns from the torch with which he had been bludgeoned) weren't exactly healing well, either. So V'lay had been Infirmary-bound, tended quite vigorously and generally ordered quite firmly into bed. He didn't like it at all, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.
They did allow him a short time each day to spend with his dragon, as Vinath had become a nervous wreck in the time he had been gone. The blue was haggard, vicious to those around him, and panicked if he wasn't in constant contact with V'lay. This made the initial fellis-haze problematic, but there simply weren't healers to spare to allow V'lay to be kept in ground weyrs for the time-being. The Infirmary was the only option. He hated it.
At least he was feeling well enough to sit up in bed, now, only slightly dazed from the minimal dose of fellis and generally quite aware of both his surroundings and the faint ache in his entire body. He had not had a good time of Benden, and ultimately, the entire episode had only solidified his belief that they needed to take the Wherholds back, even if they needed to destroy the entire mountain of Benden to do it.
We'll have time to think about that when you're better, V'lay. Vinath's voice in his head was slightly-groggy, but a happy sort - he had eaten for the first time since V'lay had been captured, and the food was a natural soporific. The dragon's near-contentment eased V'lay slightly, and he sighed to himself, settling back in the cot and staring at his hands. He didn't want to take any more time. The moment he was better, he'd be firebombing Benden, and Trine couldn't stop him. It was, as far as he was concerned, the only way to take back his home.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 8:45 pm
C’ross was permitted out of the infirmary a few days after his conversation with I’saak, subdued and badly hurting but nothing permanently damaged. He and Nimith had returned to the weyr that they shared with T’lon and Poth, and thanks to his promise to I’saak he was pretty well confined to the ordinary weyrling schedules. No more risking himself or his dragon until Nimith was old enough to fly and between them out of danger. That seemed reasonable enough: a fair compromise.
It still rankled him that he couldn’t help rescue the captives. C’ross couldn’t help but feel partially responsible. He’d been on the mission where so many of them had been taken: somehow he and Nimith, thanks to their speed and stealth, had made it out alive and relatively unharmed where so many others had not. What if he’d stayed behind to help the bluerider who’d saved him? Or if he and Nimith had tried to help one of the injured ones –
Then we would have been captives. It would have saved no one. Nimith’s voice in the back of his mind was calm, but fair. C’ross found himself trusting Nimith’s judgement more and more: the blue was unafraid to reprimand him when he was being foolish, so if Nimith agreed with him on a course of action, then that meant something more than just meaningless supportive words. He reached down and idly scratched Nimith’s headknobs and was rewarded with a low croon. You are due back to the healers to have your wounds checked, aren’t you? We could stop in the infirmary and visit.
It was true: C’ross and Nimith weren’t fully mended, and the healers had been quite stringent that they wanted to see him and his dragon again to make sure there was no troubling infection or scarring setting in. C’ross was privately quite sure that he’d notice if anything was starting to fester, but healers were healers. And it was… well, a useful excuse.
It didn’t take much work to find V’lay. Any healer in the infirmary could point him to the wounded man with the distraught blue. After only a short time, C’ross stood rather awkwardly in the doorway to V’lay’s room, Nimith at his heels, wishing he’d thought of what he was going to say beforehand. “V’lay? Hope I'm not intruding, but I… wanted to thank you. For what happened at Malvren.”
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 8:56 pm
For a moment, V'lay frowned, staring at C'ross with an expression of mild puzzlement. Then he put two and two together - the serious young man with the weyrling blue - yes, they'd been at Malvren, at that fiasco. He'd thought they had gotten out relatively unscathed, or at least that was what he had intended for them. Weyrlings, the pair of them, the dragon far too young to have been out on an adventure like that...but he hadn't remembered any severe injuries to the pair of them. And Faranth, he didn't even know the boy's name. "Bluerider," he said quietly, giving both C'ross and Nimith a short nod. "Come in, for Faranth's sake, don't just stand there in the door."
Gruff, a bit short, but the rider's expression had softened with the words, and he nodded to a chair to the side of his bed, shifting around so he was sitting up better and wincing at the pain in his ribs. The healers still weren't entirely sure if he had actually cracked anything, or if it had just been the bad conditions and the bruising that was keeping him in constant pain (V'lay himself had a wager, but he didn't have fancy knots from Fort to prove him right), but the fact remained that it wasn't pleasant. He grimaced, not particularly invested in hiding the expression from the blueweyrlings, and then fixed C'ross with a thoughtful, appraising gaze.
"Never caught your name, young man. But I thought you and your blue had got out better-off than how you're looking right now."
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 9:12 pm
C’ross took the chair gratefully, settling himself down stiffly with Nimith sphinxlike at his feet. For a moment his eyes flickered over V’lay’s injuries: taking in the bandages, the pained expression, the overall weary bearing of a man badly battered by hardship and deprivation. And there but for luck and a good turn of speed…
“It’s C’ross,” he told V’lay. “C’ross of Nimith.” He’d caught the rider’s name from the same healers who’d directed him here, although he still had no idea which dragon V’lay rode beyond the angry blue one. And he couldn’t quite meet V’lay’s eyes, looking rather abashed. Of course, V’lay had risked himself to get C’ross out safely and then this had happened.
“There was… another mission after the one at Malvren. We were trying to get Natai – you know, the rogue goldrider – we were trying to convince her to come to Trine before the sharding wherholders did her in. It wasn’t even supposed to be a combat mission. Diplomacy only.” He snorted, reaching down to gently rub at Nimith’s shoulder. There was still a faint lighter-colored mark there where a wher’s claws had raked him. “Ironic, really. We didn’t get hurt at all in the infiltration mission, and then we head out to have a nice chat with a goldrider and get ambushed by a pack of pissed-off whers.”
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Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:15 am
"C'ross of Nimith." V'lay repeated the name once, to solidify it in his head, and then gave C'ross a short nod and a slight smile. "V'lay - though you already know that - of blue Vinath. I've heard he's been a terror since I was captured, so you've probably at least seen him." He settled back again once C'ross had made himself comfortable, eyes fixed on the young bluerider as C'ross answered him.
"Fool girl," was all he said at first, gathering his thoughts together. The rogue goldrider...how far had Pern really fallen that they could possibly be allowing a sharding goldrider to wander around all willy-nilly, and how far had Pern fallen that they could allow eggs to be stolen. He scowled as he thought about it, watching C'ross and the young dragon at his feet. "It's her fault the scum had the chance to hurt you and yours," he said decisively, a frown settling on his face and drawing still-healing cuts painfully tight. "Doesn't matter if she agrees with it or not, can't have a sharding chit of a goldrider larking about out there, endangering herself and her gold and drawing all of Pern's attention. She'd have come back to Trine if she knew what's good for her."
It was followed by a dismissive little snort, and V'lay left off thinking about it. "Glad those scum didn't get you, though," he went on smoothly as he could, a short little nod for C'ross. "He looks like he's going to grow up to be a right stunning animal. And he's not stupid. Some babies are stupid. Some dragons never grow out of it." It was delivered matter-of-factly, with no cruelty. V'lay didn't mind that some dragons might not be as bright as others; Vinath was bright, but he wasn't a fighter. Some stupid dragons were fighters. C'ross...well, he might have been lucky and Impressed a dragon who was both at once and then some. It didn't matter.
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