Chapter 7
With still short days and inclement weather, Master Lynger was keen for the apprentices to have as much fresh air and possible; and the rule was that on fine afternoons they would go outside and catch up missed lessons in the evening between klah-and-cakes and supper. The apprentices appreciated these concessions though many sighed to bend over looms or sewing or knitting after overdoing their exercise!
Once the new skiers started falling over less, the aches reduced; but it was still tempting to do too much on the few days they might get out!
Janika being on the road to recovery, the girls had taken her out for a brief sled pull – Otaysa felt the fresh air would do her good – and had returned her to her grandmother, glowing with good fresh air and more alert than she had been, before they took themselves off for exercise. The boys had organised themselves meanwhile into two teams; which consisted of Brown Dormitory and such worthies of Bronze as cared to join in children's games – which was most of them – playing against the combined efforts of Blue and White dormitories. The more senior boys built a snow fort and the others were busy storming it. The Ranking girls stood around – at a safe distance – watching.
"Well it's too late to join in" said Amrys philosophically, watching Ankevor, attempting a flanking movement, being dragged bodily into the fort and captured; and Kyilin, having attempted a sally, run squealing with excitement back to the safety of the fort to be heaved over the side by willing hands to prevent his own capture.
"Walk down by the river?" suggested Kevanna.
"Why not?" agreed Amrys.
They had barely turned to the river when the little girl gasped in horror.
The sky over the western mountains was like shades from all dragons, predominantly harsh golden yellow and purply brown, with an all over metallic bronze sheen.
Amrys turned and cupped her hands over her mouth to give a quick yodel for attention; then she yelled,
"BLIZZARD! RUN INSIDE!"
Otelek, supervising, glanced over; and blew his whistle to reinforce her shout. Amrys grabbed the two nearest hands; she knew not whose.
"Hold hands and RUN!" she said.
"But why?" asked Bretine, though doing as she was told "It's going to show, but…"
"You've never been out in a blizzard. Don't talk!" snapped Amrys. It was hard going running on the frozen snow; there would be no breath to talk as well!
They were perhaps fifteen lengths from the Hall; and the first whirling, teasing, confusing flakes were on them before they had gone five lengths. Clareena tripped over a hidden stump and fell, gasping with pain and dragging on those whose hands she held!
"Kevanna, Lyssa, get to the Hall!" snapped Amrys "Bretine, you're taller, help me to chair her!"
Lyssa knew better than to take offence in being sent ff and grabbed her other friend by the hand to outrace the full fury of the storm. Bretine wordlessly made a chair with Amrys to lift the white-faced Clareena; and they struggled on.
With a shriek the blizzard was on them, buffeting them, surrounding them, nothing around but falling snow, yet the flakes swirling, sometimes even seeming to go up not down!
Amrys was grim faced; more than any of the others she knew that, as white-out descended on them, it was possible to walk right past the end of the Hall, or circle round and end up on the icy river! Yet they must not stop – for to stay still was death.
"Clareena, stay awake" Amrys spoke sharply, for the cold would more quickly strike the immobile girl; and the confusing swirl of the snow flakes, now all they could see, paradoxically dark against the all enveloping white, was hypnotic.
"I – I am so sleepy…." Clareena said. Her voice was barely audible in the scream of the blizzard.
"If you go to sleep you'll have to walk and make the pain keep you awake" Amrys shouted urgently "You MUST stay awake!" her own head was aching badly as the flakes danced and whirled. "Bretine, your right hand…is that the wall?"
Bretine, struggling dully on, reached out.
"Yes!" she said.
"We almost missed it by going parallel to it!" Amrys gasped. "Bretine, she's passed out; I have to keep slapping her….feel your way along and bring grown ups back to us!"
Bretine nodded and stumbled her way along the wall, disappearing from view almost immediately.
Amrys pulled Clareena into her arms and shook her.
"You MUST stay awake!" she said.
"You should let me die…it's all my fault!" moaned the other girl.
"Silly! How can the weather be your fault?" Amrys shook her again.
"No….no…the knitting….I burned your baby sister's clothes, I burned it all…I was so jealous…. I couldn't tell you but now I'm going to die I don't want you to wonder about the others…"
"Well you were a poor prune and no mistake!" says Amrys. "But you're NOT going to die! I shan't let you! It's all right, 'cos you're sorry about it!" Amrys had a moment of insight, realising that it was guilt that had sent Clareena sleepwalking in the first place. "C'mon….you must get up, we'll work our way towards them…. It'll be easier here in the lee of the wall…."
"I can't!" Clareena gave a little moan.
A grey shape loomed up.
"Girls?" the voice was muffled.
"Otelek! Oh Otelek, I think she's passed out!" said Amrys.
Otelek stooped to pick up Clareena passing her to someone behind him; then he picked up Amrys.
"I guess I could walk" the little girl said.
"But you need not" he said gently.
Amrys was sleepy, desperately sleepy; and knew enough to fight it until they were in the entrance hall, the lights of the glows a sudden shock after the white gloom of the blizzard; and sudden warmth.
Then she too passed out.
The two little girls knew nothing of being rubbed with rough blankets to get their circulation going, and being put into hot baths and straight to bed after that in the infirmary; so it was a surprise for Amrys to awaken in such unfamiliar surroundings.
Kevanna's mother Ellaia was keeping watch.
"Hello!" said Amrys. "What time is it? Kevvi and Lyssa did get back all right, didn't they?"
Ellaia smiled and put a finger to her lips.
"Yes, they're fine and so is Bretine; the Healer let her sleep in the dormitory. You and Clareena were the ones that gave us some concern though!"
"Poor kid, she twisted her foot" said Amrys, the memory of the more serious soul-pain of the other child coming flooding back to her too. "I say, has she been jabbering in her sleep about stuff?"
"About burning your work? Yes, the poor child is worrying most dreadfully."
"Oh dear!" said Amrys "Then the Master knows; I have to get up, Ellaia, and ask him not to send her away; 'cos she's not bad really, you know, just hurt and stupid and a bit of a coward."
"You stay right where you are young lady" said Ellaia. "The Master has no intention of sending her away; he reckons she's punished herself quite enough. And if you know about it and are prepared to forgive, she can stay here without any problem. The others are NOT to know; you are the one who lost most work."
Amrys nodded.
"And they're such kids too" she said seriously "Reckon they might not be able to see through the meanness to the reasons."
Ellaia hid a smile.
Amrys was the second youngest in the dormitory.
"I can talk to her and tell her it's all right" said Amrys "And I think the Master should tell her he's not going to send her away too. It'll make her sleep easier, you know!"
"Well after the frights and alarums you children have given him I fully intend to let the poor man sleep at least until the sun rises – or the time it ought to I should say – before I rouse him" said Ellaia "He's only just gone to bed and it's fully three hours before dawn!"
"I can go to her though" said Amrys "Where is she, behind the curtain?"
"No, that's Brollom; she's in the isolation room" said Ellaia "And no, he's not hearing any of this because he's well dosed on fellis to let him sleep through the discomfort. And you will lie down and rest for another hour and then eat breakfast or I will declare you feverish so you may not get up today. She's ill but not in such crisis that we need make YOU any iller!"
Amrys made a face; but there were tones of voice that one did not brook.
Clareena was tossing feverishly, moaning about Amrys' baby sister freezing to death in the blizzard because she had no clothes. Whether she had taken on Amrys' own conviction that the baby was another girl or whether she was confusing the unborn babe with Corrys it was impossible to say. Amrys did not care.
She scrambled into bed beside the little girl and took her hand.
"Listen to me, you poor prune! The baby has PLENTY of clothes my sister has grown out of! I was knitting an extra! And with the coat Journeyman Hetel made I'm almost done replacing it! Baby is going to be fine. We're ALL fine. And you've got to stop fretting and get on with plaiting our rugs!"
"Clareena my dear you will NOT be expelled" said Master Lynger "You must get well, my child; it is a new start for you!"
Amrys had filled in the Master and Otaysa on Clareena's previous experiences; she had previously treated it as a confidence, thinking it none of their business, but with the child's illness, they needed to know!
The matter of fact voices seemed to soothe Clareena; and once the fever abated somewhat the Healer was able to give her some fellis to sleep deeply.
When Clareena awoke, Amrys was sitting with her; predictably knitting.
"Ooh! Oh Amrys! You – you know – I did tell you?" Clareena cried out.
"Of course I know you clunch!" said Amrys "That brat Bettana really addled your yolk; I'd like to give her a fardling good shaking and a piece of my mind! Don't worry about what your silly self did; I've forgotten it. It wasn't my friend Clareena that did it, but a crazy mixed up kid hatched by a cruel tunnel snake called Bettana. I'm on the last bit of the cap, see?" she held it up. "And baby will be fine – and so will you!"
"The Master said he'd throw out whoever did it – does he know?"
"Yes he does; you talk in your sleep" said Amrys "So Otaysa heard it all and Ellaia; but he knows it wasn't really all your fault and he knows that you're dreadfully sorry, 'cos you are, aren't you?"
"Oh YES!" said Clareena fervently.
"Well, that's all that counts. Anyway, you already confessed to me outside; so he didn't have to find it out for himself because you did the right thing, even if it was a little late" reassured Amrys. "So he doesn't even have to go back on his word! 'Course you may be held down a turn; but there'll be no disgrace in that, everyone knows you've been ill which is the only real reason. I mean, you've partly made yourself ill 'cos you were worrying over not coming to me earlier; but the blizzard didn't help and we can let people think that's why you're ill. Plus the supposed overwork that everyone thinks made you walk in your sleep. That was worry too wasn't it?"
"Yes I suppose so" said Clareena "And – and you'll even still be my friend?"
"'Course I will" said Amrys. It had cost her some soul searching to be able to say that in a careless and friendly tone; but Amrys was not vindictive. And she knew – better than most! – how living at the mercy of a bully could make one feel quite addled! "Just promise me faithfully you'll never ever lie to me again" she added seriously.
"Oh I shan't!" promised Clareena, equally seriously "It's much too uncomfortable living in a lie!"
No accident had befallen any of the other apprentices; the 'old hands' had learned something in the previous turn of how the weather could change at a moment's notice; and had swiftly herded the new intake in, holding hands, with Jaid as a whipper-in, as Jeral said, for being used to the weather and well trained at Northfork by Tragen. A few youngsters had scoured cheeks from the first blast of the blizzard but nothing serious; the older ones knew to cover their faces quickly. So now did the new ones, if only from painful experience!
"We WORRIED about you!" accused Janika when Amrys was released from the infirmary into the tender care of her own friends.
"Oh can't have that!" laughed Amrys "It's YOU we're supposed to worry about!"
The shy little girl had settled in well enough to laugh at such teasing!
Kevanna was inclined to sulk a little because her friend was giving attention not only to Janika – which was fair enough – but to visiting Clareena in the infirmary, and who had been no friend to them at first! What was really rankling with Kevanna, however, was the picking of Bretine to help with chairing Clareena.
Kevanna had enough sense to get it into the open.
"Why didn't you ask me to stay with you to chair in Clareena?" she demanded "We've been friends the longest! Must you always choose weyrfolk over others?"
Amrys gave her an impatient look.
"Come and stand beside me" she said. Kevanna did.
"See?" said Amrys "You're more'n half a head shorter than me. And Lyssa may be as strong and a Ruathan burro but she's shorter yet, for all that she's older'n us. I'm a lanky piece; and Bretine's about my height. It's nothing to do with friendship; it's about common sense. We wanted to LIVE not play games, you know; and if I'd had to tire myself bending to your height, chances are we'd still be out there, 'cos we only just had the energy to make it as it was; and then three sets of parents would be mourning right now!"
Kevanna burst into tears.
"That's a cruel way to put it!" she accused.
"Cruel? It would be cruel of me to let my friend die because I chose her tender feelings over her life!" said Amrys. "You KNOW what the weather's like here; grant me the common sense I was born with and dry up do! You're my friend; and nothing's going to stop that unless you push me away by acting the crazy caprine at me!"
Amrys might have been a little blunter than she would have been had the first two and a half months of the Turn been a little less trying; but she also had learned that Kevanna needed blunt!
Kevanna cried; and Amrys gave her a hug.
"It's been a bit of a tempestuous start to the turn" she said with her usual litotes "When spring comes we'll all feel much better!"
Master Lynger certainly hoped so too!
Still, problems had been overcome; and with Amrys' knowledge of local weather, and a quick reaction to shout, no lives had been lost. But for all that, Lynger could not help having nightmares where all the boys – and especially the girls – had been unable to get in and were lost in a blizzard! At least the mystery of the burned work was solved; the Master had been wondering if he should have no option but to ask if a dragon would visit and read if truth was told or no as he re-questioned all the apprentices. Poor child, that Clareena; but Amrys would take care of her.
Lynger was fond of Amrys.
She was by no wise his most talented student; and nor was she precisely docile and well behaved! But she was a hard worker and filled with more common sense than many an adult. It was a shame, in a way, that when she was of age, in the reckoning of a local conclave, she must be confirmed Lady Holder of Rivenhill. Lynger would have liked to have seen her attain Mastery and teach in the crafthall!
He sighed.
At least he could probably persuade Lady Warder Rillys and Holder Corbin to let Amrys make Journeyman before she had to Hold.