I don't own Pern - more's the pity!
I can't recall if the Healer Hall had knots of colour like the Harpers?
The clean up crews brought more than their tired and grubby selves. Danva was helping a stranger into the outhouses where buckets of hot water waited.
"Is Ana around?" he asked.
"It's no more than a sprain," the stranger said. "Give me a cold compress and a bandage, and I'll fix it myself."
"Awkward, to be bending to an ankle," Danva replied, and seated the man who subsided onto the bench, allowing himself a grimace of pain.
Andova put her head cautiously round the door, but no one had stripped off their clothing, and she came over to the stranger, giving him a quick assessing glance for status and allegiance. He wore good clothes, but with a worn leather jacket over all, and good boots.
"Fell over and turned his ankle or his knee, Ana," Danva said briskly. "Let me help you off with that jacket, I'll get it brushed and cleaned."
"I had to find the only mud patch in the whole field," the stranger said with a smile, and a lilt in his voice Andova could not place. Feeling over his right leg, she found a swelling in his knee and another on his ankle under the fine leather of the boot.
"Just a twist, as Danva said," she said briskly. "I'll make you a hot fomentation for the knee, and a strapping for the ankle. Will you bring him through when you've washed up, Danva? See if you can ease that boot off without cutting it."
"Yes, I'll do that."
Andova went to collect some of the pale yellow clay she used on men and beasts alike, warming it on the hearth in one of her special vessels marked with a double twisted line around an upright. Her stock of bandages was still good, but she made a mental resolve to loom some more when she had time.
"Here we are, cousin," Danva said. "I forgot to introduce you, didn't I? Andova, my cousin, eldest daughter of the Holder, this is Viman, who's staying over with Farmer Trid."
Andova nodded at the introduction, and watched as Viman rolled up his trouser leg. His skin was pale, as if he did not get out into the sun very much, but then this was not ten Turns ago, when there had been no Thread and a body could lie out in the sun during the day.
"Can I ask why you're staying with Farmer Trid?" she asked.
Viman shrugged.
"It was the first farm I reached after leaving my own place. I'm on my way back to Fort Hold, but I mistook the time, I was gathering leaves in the hedgerow."
Andova looked up at him, and was aware he was staring down at her as she knelt at his feet binding the swollen ankle. Was that admiration in his look? She doubted it, but then she was not expert in interpreting the looks of men, only their ills and complaints.
"Leaves? For food?"
"Just to see what's different in this valley - I never was through this way before, and there might be something useful."
"There's always a use to be found in herbs and such like."
"And you do the healing here?"
"Oh, it's not healing, that I do," Andova replied quickly. "I don't aspire to healing, but I can bandage a sprain and set a broken limb."
Kaval came in as she was finishing and washing her hands, folding the unused bandages, watching her father warily. He was a man who disliked strangers, but no one could be turned away when Thread might fall, and night was coming on.
"You are welcome to stay the night," Kaval was saying. "We'll send you on tomorrow when your leg is rested."
"Thank you. Farmer Trid - "
"Danva, my nephew, told one of their crew I was taking you in, our Hold being nearer. Let's get you into the main room, and find some klah and something to eat."
"I left my belongings at the farm - "
"They'll come over before you leave, don't fret over that."
Kaval put a shoulder under the young man and helped him out and Andova fussed over her basket and then put it away.
"What d'you think?" Sara asked as she checked the dishes for the main meal of the evening. "Seems a nicely set up young man, and that is not cheap clothing he's wearing!"
"No, I noticed. He's not a man who walks very much, or at least, not for long distances, either. Those boots aren't made for walking country ways."
Sara nodded. "Viman. Not a usual name, but then ours aren't usual either, are they? I wonder - if he comes from another branch of the family?"
"Are there other branches? I thought we all lived together, here, since - since I don't know when?"
Sara shook her head.
"Couldn't have done, stands to reason," she replied briskly. "There's a lot here now, but there must have been more in the past, who moved out and made their own lives elsewhere, or apprenticed themselves to Crafts somewhere. But I doubt if they remember, nor keep it alive, not like you and Kaval do."
Andova stared doubtfully at their cook housekeeper.
"Does he?"
"Oh yes. He might not speak about it much, but he knows it all, knows all the little songs and rhymes that keep it alive, and I'm told he went to Fort Weyr once, but it's difficult to count the Turns accurately any more, and he missed them who went forward."
Andova glanced quickly around, but no one seemed to listening; talking of themwhowentforwardwas something frowned at before strangers, but there was only one stranger in the Hold tonight, not counting the wives and husbands who had married into the family rather than taking family members out of it.
"Here - strike the gong - ready to dish up now," Sara continued, and Andova took the hint, and struck the gong in the hallway to summon the family to the evening meal, although from the rising babble of talk in the main room she thought they had all followed their noses already and were assembling in the huge dining room. She found she was looking forward to the meal, to finding out more about Viman, and perhaps they would have some news of other places, even a new song or two.
To her dismay, Kavla had seated Viman next to her, and she supposed she had to do the proper things as the eldest daughter of the Holder, calling the servers to serve him a large portion of meat, make sure his pottery goblet was well filled with the fiery beer they brewed in the Hold.
Her brothers were only 10, and like the other children above the age of 8, dined at a lower table with their mentors to watch their manners and quell too much boisterousness.
"That was a short fall of Thread?" Andova asked, groping desperately for something to say. "Nothing escaped the wing?"
"No, not a scrap," Viman said, taking some of the roasted roots being passed around, and a generous ladleful of thick sauce. "As you say, a short fall, but the Weyr Leaders have the falls all mapped out now, like the Old Timers did."
"I thought - that is - have you met any Old Timers?"
Viman shrugged. "They live in Fort Weyr, but you can see them passing to and fro sometimes. Sometimes they'll come to trade."
Andova studied him thoughtfully.
"You don't sound very grateful," she ventured at last. "At them coming forward, I mean?"
"What's to be grateful about?"
"Their arrival saved Pern, and they fight Thread for us."
"They tithe hard, so my father says, harder than he tithes to Ford Hold."
"But it will only be for fifty Turns or so, and then Thread will pass on again, and they can - they can - "
She frowned at her plate, and shrugged, and Kavla broke in with a question about Farmer Trid, and Andova could concentrate on her food, but she was wondering what dragonriders did when there was no Thread. According to the legends of the family, they upped and left their Weyrs and travelled forward in time to another Pass. But only, she reminded herself, if there was someone from that time to guide them through between.