Chapter Title: and witnessed
Prompt: anger
Summary: Holders do not have a pleasant view of dragonmen in the long turns leading up to the beginning of the Ninth Pass. Ruathans do not have pleasant view of outsiders, after Fax. F'lar is both.
Inspired by the (admittedly entirely mental) admission that Lessa would be taken to the Wyer 'by sheer force if necessary' that F'lar makes in chapter seven of Dragonflight. It's the section beginning ''Lord of the Hold, your charge is sure/In thick walls, metal doors, and no verdure," because the chapters don't actually have numbers, per say. I had to count manually. Technically canon compliant, I think.
Up until I was doing the final edits/wiki-ing, I was entirely unaware that Lessa's father was named Kale. This has absolutely no relevance to the story, it just hit me upside the head when I discovered it.
Lessa's claim is heard. She makes it in full view of hold and croft. It would be strange if had not been, with the exposed location and volume she had chosen to speak at. Her voice is loud, her words clear and witnessed by each of the drudges, guards, croftfolk and holders gathered by the Hold's open doors.
Fax is dead. Ruatha's blood and legacy has reemerged to return the Hold to its days of preeminence.
But it is a singular claim, and she makes it caged in dragon's claws. And though the bronze's dragonman - the wingleader, slayer of Fax - acknowledges her claim, she is not released from the grip to set to rights and take up the running of the Hold as they expect she must be. The crowds excitement is quietened only by the weight of multifaceted dragongaze. Under the command of one of the Blood, how can Ruatha fail to prosper, just as it has withered away these last turns under Fax?
The dragons ride on Search, come to take away prettiest and most spirited of their daughters. The High Reaches have little enough of either, under Fax's rule, but the known criteria give them an indication, for all that she is held at a distance maintained by the presence of scale and claw. None, even the most keen-eyed, can tell her features, beneath the dirt of her disguise and with dragon to brave, save that she is delicate in the way of the old Ruathan blood. And if she has the Blood, she has spirit, spirit enough to rule. Who else would survive a full ten turns beneath Fax's very nose, and have him killed on the floor of her own hall?
But it is not to be.
The watch-wyer is killed. Their Lady - Lessa, whisper the oldest among their ranks, Lessa of Ruatha, youngest and now only daughter of he who was in his time Lord Kale over them - is released from the double clasp, and steps away, to send the rider winging on his way with their gratitude. He follows after her and the guardian leaps in defense and defeat.
The Lady Holder is taken aloft, and blinked away into the bright blue. The rest of the dragons remain on the heights. Watching. Waiting. Eying runnerbeasts and the scrawny mountainwherries that flock, half wild, in Ruatha's heights.
Her right to Ruatha is witnessed, accepted, but she is taken, denied, and her hold is given over to Fax's spawn. Ruathan folk are downtrodden, hard pressed - that is true. But they are also long of memory, and know now that Ruatha - Ruatha lives. The child is a sickly thing, says the birthing-woman, born too soon. Easy solution, if not for the dragons remaining. They can wait.
Ruatha lives. Fax does not.
Rukbat falls and Rukbat rises, and the farflung holds beholden to the Hold have not yet heard of their fortune, before a dragonman with no dragon arrives to continue as Ruatha's next Warder. He announces himself as Lytol, weavercraftsmaster of high reaches. Under dragoneye, they bow their heads and bid him welcome to the Hold. They have done so for many warders over the turns. He takes the greeting as his due, and sets about the management of the Hold's affairs.
That he is greeted by the remaining dragonriders with a mixture of pity and respect is no matter. Ruatha does not love her invaders.
He is a Weaver, and proves friendly to the crafts like none of the previous Warders, save perhaps the first. Yet he comes from High Reaches, the usurpers of Ruatha's crafthold's supremacy. And before High Reaches, he came from the same Wyer that took their Lady Holder.
They bend to his will willingly enough for it is sensible, but they do not anticipate it. Not as they would have Ruathan blood and dark hair.
With Fax gone, Ruatha prospers once more. Fields are cleared and planted, and the crop survives to harvest. Daughters fled to more forgiving Holds return, smallholders come with their marks and talents to trade. Gathers begin once more in the Holds of the High Reaches.
Spring lengthens into summer heat, and the fields bud green and fruitful.
Their produce is taken and carted off to be given as tithe to the Wyer. Protests are made, and some foodstuffs are withhold, but - their duty, Lytol says to his holders. Dragons feed from holder's toil. Such is tradition, laid out in the Duty Song. And Lytol is still a dragonman, even with no dragon.
The argument, reasoning and demanding (though mainly demanding, the malcontents are but small holders) would not work. All else remaining equal, Ruatha should be searching for a new Warder, and Fax's get be forgotten among the cottages clustering against Ruatha's cliff-face. And yet.
Ruatha prospers.
Their duty, they say to themselves. Their lady is in the Wyer, has won the golden queen. She is trapped yet, but once the beast is grown ... will have Ruathan rule in Ruatha once more.
What elders recall the Lady Gemma do little to moderate. She had been kind, when she visited, but one highborn hostage could do little once Fax had started his long swallowing up of the Holds of the High Reaches. Little need for tamping down on the speculation. Do not wish the child harm. Merely do not want him.
They are Ruathan. He is not their Lord. But if their work feeds their Lady, then they will be content under his rule. For as long as it lasts.