Dragonseye by Anne McCaffrey Page A

sun streamed in, almost as if adding light to her resolve. She didn’t even go back to the room she shared with her three half sisters. Grabbing her jacket, she made for the paddock where the riding horses were kept. There was no one about in the yard: all were at work. Assignments had been given out over breakfast, and everyone had to show their father completed chores or there’d be no lunch break until they were.
    She didn’t even dare collect a saddle or bridle from the barn, because her eldest brothers were restacking hay—they’d done a sloppy job of it the first time around. She just grabbed up a leather thong. Since she’d had the most to do with the hold horses, she’d have little trouble managing any of them with just a lip rein.
    Bilwil would be the fastest. She had probably three hours before the midday meal, when her absence would be noticed. By then she’d be well up the track to the Weyr.
    With one look over her shoulder to see if she was being observed, Debera walked quickly—as if she were on an errand—to the paddock. Bilwil was not far from the fence that she climbed—the gate would be too near the vegetable garden where two half sisters were weeding. They loved nothing better than to report her “idling ways” to either their mother or her father. Two brothers were in the barn, the next pair out with her father in the forestry, and her stepmother in the dairy hold making cheese. Debera had been grinding wheat for flour when the cotter pin snapped. That’s what she’d been trying to find in the drawer, a nail or something to replace the cotter pin so she could continue her task. So Gisa wouldn’t miss her for a while to sound an alarm. For until flour had been made there’d be no bread, and Gisa wouldn’t want to turn that heavy stone, not pregnant as she was.
    Bilwil nickered softly when she approached him and grabbed his forelock. No one had bothered to groom him last night and his coat was rough with perspiration from yesterday’s timber hauling. Maybe she should take one of the others. But Bilwil had lowered his head to accept the twist of thong around his lower jaw. She could scarcely risk chasing a better-rested, less amenable mount about the paddock, so she inserted the rein, grabbed a handful of mane, and vaulted to his back. Would she be vaulting to the back of a dragon tomorrow? She lay as flat as she could across his neck, just in case someone looked out across the paddock, and kneed him forward, toward the forest.
    Just before they reached the intertwined hedging that marked the far boundary, she took one more look back at the hold buildings, its windows chiseled out of the very rock, the uneven entrance to the main living quarters, the wider one into the animal holding. Not a soul in sight.
    “C’mon, Bilwil, let’s get out of here,” she’d murmured, and kicked him sharply into a trot, heading him right at the fence, a point not far from one of the tracks through the forest.
    It was a good thing Bilwil liked to jump anyhow, because she’d given him only enough room to gather himself up. But he was nimbly over and had planted his left front foot, swinging left on it in response to her pull on his mouth and to her right heel as he brought his other feet down. In moments they were among the trees and quickly reached the track. Bilwil tried once to pull to the left, to go back to the hold, but she kicked him sharply and he went right. They were far enough from the hold so that his hoofsteps wouldn’t be audible—not unless someone had their ear to the ground, which was unlikely. Noses would be to the grindstones where hers no longer was. The thought made her grin, though she was not yet safe from discovery.
    As soon as the track widened she set Bilwil to a canter, enjoying the one activity in which she took any pleasure.
    She stopped several times, to rest her own backside as well as Bilwil’s . . . and found late berries to eat. She really ought to have snatched up