Who sent for help?

Cardiff. Fire-lizard message. T'gellan's called half the wing.

Tai vaulted between the last two neck ridges, and clipped the safety harness onto her broad belt.

I know where,the green dragon said and took off so quickly Tai's head snapped. They were barely above the trees when Zaranth went between.

They were back in the moist southern air, a half dozen other dragons erupting nearby.

Cardiff herder spotted the pride. A big one.

They had come out low above the rolling highland plateau where the Ancients had turned loose their grazers and ruminators, unable to transport more than breeding stock to the north. The herds had multiplied over the centuries and mutated slightly from their northern relatives, affording them some protection against the local parasites and poisonous plants. The MasterHerder had found the alterations "fascinating." Right now, a huge herd of mixed varieties was stampeding from the edge of the jungle where the predators lurked to ambush the unwary.

As a relatively new southern Hold, Cardiff did its best to oversee its grasslands, but the hundred or so herders could not always protect the far-ranging stock. Watched by no more than three or four men or women, the beasts covered wide tracts in their search for edible grasses. Thunder, lightning, or the occasional jungle fire could send them into terror-stricken stampedes, which occasionally ended with masses of them falling over cliff edges or into ravines. Now they had been spooked by felines. The southern continent had a lot of problems with the big predators, the product of an ill-advised zoological experiment by one of the Charterers. Like the abandoned herdbeasts, they had flourished, too, and ranged freely through the jungles, grasslands, and up into the southern foothills. Humans avoided the felines whenever possible; dragons were thrilled by the challenge of hunting them.

Zaranth was gliding silently and speedily toward the nearest herdbeasts, which had obviously been split off from the main herd by the canny felines. The predators were as apt to injure beasts, rendering them lame enough to attack later, as to kill outright. Tai had seen the result of such tactics, a wide pasture dotted with bleating, moaning animals, awaiting the pleasure of the cubs that the felines hunted for.

There! A tawny spot, one of the fast ones,Zaranth cried.

Tai caught the merest glimpse of the yellowish-brown form, bounding after the terrified herdbeasts. She grabbed her straps instinctively as Zaranth turned on a wing tip that just cleared one of the stunted trees that dotted the grassland. A shape leaped from its shadow, barely missing Zaranth's wing, and in spectacular leaps, made for the cover of the jungle. To flush a feline was unusual. Neither dragon nor rider would have seen it lurking in the shade. Of course, neither would the herdbeasts who were obviously the intended prey.

Zaranth hissed at so close a swipe; a small flame, residue of the most recent Fall, escaped, spurting after the beast.

Watch it, love! The hide's worth more unsinged,Tai cried.

Despite being large for a green, Zaranth had lost none of the agility that was her color's most valuable characteristic. She dove, with a burst of speed that took the breath out of Tai's mouth. Matching the rhythm of the feline's bounds, she caught it mid-leap. Tai felt Zaranth's heavy shoulder muscles convulse, then relax. She had a glimpse over her shoulder of the limp spotted body stretched out on the plain, its back broken.

The other one!Zaranth cried, spinning obliquely to her left and heading back up the plateau toward the first predator they had seen, who was now closing in on a herdbeast and unaware that its hunting partner had just been taken down.

The most successful-and safest-tactic was to come up behind a feline as Zaranth was now doing, keeping their shadow from warning the carnivore of pursuit. Now, just as the feline swiped its front paws at the herdbeast's galloping hindquarters, Zaranth's claws made contact and snapped its neck in one clean jerk.

Not bad hunting,Tai said, well pleased with a bag of two, both prime specimens and, unless Zaranth had singed the first one, quite saleable. Shall we continue?

Monarth says it is all in hand. A big pride, but a half wing is sufficient,Zaranth said as she circled back with her second kill, depositing it with an almost disdainful negligence beside the first. These,and Zaranth's tone was possessive, are mine!

No one will dispute it, but I get the skins.

And skinning was hard work. Tai's brief elation departed.

I'll help,Zaranth said.

If you promise not to drool all over me or lick while I'm working,Tai replied with mock severity. In the heat of the day, in an open field, there was no shelter at all from the pests that would smell blood and come for their share. However, she told herself, two pelts would be worth the discomfort.

She debated throwing the bodies over Zaranth's neck and taking them up to the cooler, swarm-free foothills to skin.

Once she was on the ground beside them, she discarded that idea. They were big brutes. She was strong, but these dead weights would be impossible to shift onto her dragon. The first one was smaller, of a different mix, with a mottled hide; the other was a tawny yellow-brown, with striped markings on its legs. Both were females with engorged dugs, and Tai sighed at the thought of yet more of these monsters maturing to savage herds.

She removed her jacket and hung it on a low bush, taking a well-honed knife from her boot.

"Lift the first one up, please!" she said, "and remember, you get the carcass faster if you hold still-and don't salivate all over me."

I know, I know,but Zaranth's mouth was very wet as she lifted the feline by the head so Tai could make the first incision at the base of the thick throat. One zip down, slit the legs. Zaranth did drool as she helped. Tai quickly worked up a sweat. To distract herself, she pondered once again about meeting F'lessan and his interest in astronomy. Was he going to make that his career After? Maybe she'd meet him again. Then she reproved herself. He was a Benden Wingleader, son of Lessa and F'lar, and despite the fact that he had quite earnestly said that green dragons were essential for every wing, their paths were unlikely to cross again. She concentrated on her task. Helpfully, the green idly moved her wings to deflect the swarms of insects drawn to the smell of blood and raw flesh. The most persistent attacked between wingstrokes.

It was dry work, too, in this heat and Tai regretted that she hadn't grabbed up her water bottle in her haste to answer T'gellan's summons. She took a deep breath as Zaranth rotated the feline so Tai could strip the pelt from the limp body. A mass of flying insects covered skin and skinners as Zaranth, fanning furiously and growling, lifted the carcass a length away.

Without Zaranth's wings, clouds of insects attached themselves to the blood on Tai's arms. She broke a wide leaf off a low-growing shrub and, beating the air about her, walked up the slight incline to see how the rest of the wing was faring before she started the backbreaking task of skinning the second feline.

Shading her eyes, she saw that two dragons were still aloft, chasing felines away from the safety of the thick vegetation bordering the plateau. She counted eight dragons on the ground, waiting for their treats to be skinned. Three more were already eating. Dust settling off to the northeast indicated that the herdbeasts, stupid as they were, had stopped running. It was a good-sized herd. Then she caught sight of bright-colored shirts and galloping Runners streaming down toward them: the Cardiff herders catching up with the stampede. Brave of them, she thought, since they could still be attacked by any of the remaining pride. One of them hailed Tai on the hillock and turned his mount toward her. Slung across his back were a short bow and a weyrhide carrier full of the sort of barbed arrows that would be needed to bring down felines.