What was taking those wretched holders so long to organize themselves? Thread was well past. She could see no more dragonfire bursts in the sky. Then she heard the grate of metal and saw the hold door swing out, and she could not suppress her inadvertent gasp. Excitement raced through her veins, her senses heightened with a singing in her blood, and her hands reset themselves on dagger hilt and lash handle. She could feel the pounding of her pulses. She contained that energy as she counted the men and women who emerged from the safety of their hold. Good, they were trudging innocently out to do their duty, leaving behind one old uncle and two aunties to take care of the smallest children.

When the ground crew were out of sight down the hilltrack, Thella gave the signal to move toward the beasthold. From her spies’ reports she knew that the holders fed and watered their animals before Fall. No one was likely to check until the ground crew returned late that evening. She watched her raiders advance, all of them keeping low and pausing behind cover just in case someone did open one of the shuttered windows.

Dushik and Felleck reached the thick metal-clad door and carefully opened it just wide enough to admit them. Instantly the next group, five men led by Giron, slithered across the open ground and were safely inside. Thella joined the third group, and the fourth slid in behind with no trouble.

“Just look at this,” Felleck said, lifting handsful of the golden grain that they had come for. It was of good quality, Thella thought, noticing that no dust drifted away. Giron gave Felleck a prod in the ribs for unnecessary chatter. Felleck scowled, but he took the pail Giron gave him and began scooping grain into the sack that the dragonless man held open. The others worked in silence.

The grain that was disappearing into sacks and out of Kadross beasthold would enable her to load her runnerbeasts up with enough feed for raids at a safe distance from her main bases. She already had a large band of holdless folk to be fed and quartered that winter, but she needed more she could count on, strategically placed in the five Holds. Any dim-witted renegade could steal, but few could acquire exactly what they needed exactly when they needed it. Thella, Lady Holdless, could.

When Dushik caught her arm, she realized that she had been distracted from the progress of the raid. The last of the sacks was filled. Most of her men had filed out, heading for shelter where they would wait out any alarm. She took one of the remaining sacks and heaved it with a practiced motion to her shoulder. Dushik grabbed two, then turned to help her secure the bars across the door. They moved as fast as they could to the rocks. The return climb to the cave took longer, but they were well below the far ridge when Thella heard the rumble of drums.

“Calling Lemos Hold,” Giron surprised her by saying. So far she had been the only one knowledgeable about drum messages.

“Shards!” Thella stopped, listening hard to the sequences. But the ridges distorted the sounds, so she could not make out the content of the message. She could guess, though. She wiped the sweat from her face, furious at having the theft discovered so soon. She would have to alter her plans, move more cautiously to deposit the grain where it was needed.

Giron grunted. “No dragons’ll come looking today. Too tired,” he said. Adjusting the sacks on his shoulder, he continued his descent.

The next day, she had her raiders split up into groups of three and four, each group headed for a different destination. They had orders to try to hide the grain if they saw any signs of pursuit and then return to the main Hold by a circuitous route.

“My minor holds are constantly being raided,” Asgenar told T’gellan, bronze Monarth’s rider, who had conveyed the Lord Holder back to Lemos after the Fall. “Kadross is not the first to have suffered but probably the quickest to let me know.” He grimaced, crumbling the drummed message in one fist as he strode to the map on the wall of his office. “Grain today, harness there, blankets stolen where they dried at a streamside, tools from a miner’s hold, seasoned timbers carefully stored in a cavern that the holder was certain no one knew about. Little things, but it’s no longer minor pilfering by the holdless. It’s well planned and executed, and it’s beggaring my small holders.”

T’gellan scratched his head—though he kept his hair cropped short, his scalp still itched with sweat after a long Fall. He had been hoping to get himself and Monarth back to their weyr, and a bath, but Lord Asgenar was scrupulous in his duty to the Weyr, so T’gellan could not skimp the courtesies. He took another sip of the excellent mulled wine that had been served as soon as they walked into the Hold. The Fall—a fourth in the new pattern—had been right over Asgenar’s cherished forestry, and F’lar had borrowed extra riders from Igen and Telgar to be certain that the invaluable trees were adequately protected. There had been additional ground crews, conveyed in from “safe” areas, to be sure that whatever Thread might possibly escape the dragonriders in the air would never burrow in the forest. It had been a very properly managed Fall, on the ground and in the air.

“Kadross Hold?” the dragonrider said. “And while they were all out on ground crew? Just grain?” He joined Asgenar at the wall chart, noting the meticulous detail of the terrain, the contour and height of every ridge and hill, and the type and size of every forest plantation. He wished once again that Lords Sifer and Raid were half as well informed as Lemos’s young Holder.

Asgenar laid his finger on the spot, then moved it so that T’gellan could see the tiny numbers jotted in the square of the hold complex. “No, not just grain. Half their winter’s supply. Ferfar received the grain only yesterday morning. I’d sent two escort riders—at the carter’s request. He’s had trouble with holdless raiders recently and was fearful of a long, unprotected trek.”

“Someone spoke out of turn, d’you think? Or was the thief just lucky?”

“Thieves. They emptied four barrels, so there had to be a good few in on this,” Asgenar replied, gesturing for T’gellan to hold out his winecup to be refilled. “There have been too many—ah, how shall I put it?—timely thefts—to be good luck. These thieves know what they want and where to get it.”

“And no doubt in your mind that Ferfar is honest?”

“Not the day after receipt, with extra marks spent to insure safe delivery.” Asgenar gave a snort of disbelief. “The escort saw no one on the track, coming or going. And with Threadfall, who’d be on a trail?” He grimaced, having answered himself. “Clever thieves! With all the able-bodied members of the hold out on ground crew. We wouldn’t have known of it today, but Ferfar’s uncle needed something in the store and saw a spillage. He was on the drums immediately.”

T’gellan frowned, and at first Asgenar thought that the bronze rider would prefer to ignore the report. Then T’gellan looked him straight in the eye. “I’ve asked Monarth to tell everyone still airborne to do a low-level return. If they see any movement or anyone traveling, they’ll get a closer look and report it to me. Tell me, have you any idea where the thieves’d be headed? Men heavily laden with sacks of grain won’t be able to move quickly or far.”

“That’s another problem. All this part of Lemos, and well into Telgar—” Asgenar pointed at the various-sized brown stars that dotted the map “—is pocked with large and small caves. We mark any new ones we discover. There’re probably plenty we haven’t found. But my foresters report recent fires and occasionally buried trail supplies in off-trail caves. Far too frequently to be coincidence.” Asgenar rubbed at his face and then massaged the back of his neck. “I’m not of a suspicious nature, but there is a pattern, not in the raids themselves, but in what is stolen. Certainly more food and practical items than valuables. There are renegades somewhere in those mountains who are living very well without doing a stroke of work. I resent that. And so do my holders.”