Deverry - A Time Of War Part 26

'Traen!' Draudd called out. 'Jill was out here looking for you. Better be careful, lad. She'll be putting the evil eye on you or suchlike.' 'Oh hold your ugly tongue! Does she want to see me?' 'She does and right away. She'd be in the great hall, she said.' When Yraen walked into the hall, he saw Jill sitting at the table of honour. Since the gwerbrct and his lady were also there, he hesitated, wondering if he should approach, but Jill saw him and hailed him, waving him over. With a bow to the gwerbret he knelt beside her.

'Yraen, I've a task for you,' Jill said. 'I want to put a guard near Prince Daralanteriel's chamber. The chamberlain tells me that right next to it is a little room, for a servant, like, where you can sleep from now on. You'll be right at hand if there's trouble. And then, during the day, I want you to keep a watch on Princess Carramaena whenever she's not in the women's hall or with her husband.'

Yraen felt as if she'd slapped him across the face. He wanted to scream at her and tell that he was the worst man in the world for this duty, but how was he going to explain that being near the princess was a dagger in his heart, that he'd been fool enough to fall in love with a married woman? Jill hesitated, considering him with her piercing blue stare.

'What's wrong?'

Nearby the gwerbret and Labanna had paused, as if to listen.

'Naught,' Yraen said. 'It's just- ah, it's naught. I've just been saying farewell to Rhodry, that's all, and wondering if ever I'll see hirn again.'

'I see. I'd love to ease your mind, but frankly, I've been wondering the same thing myself. These aren't the best of times, Yraen, which is why I need a guard over the princess. You're as courtly as any man in the dun, after all, and I know I can trust you.'

'My thanks.' He swallowed hard. 'I'll do my best to deserve your trust.'

'Good. There's the chamberlain now. Go get your gear from the barracks, and we'll get you moved over to the broch,'

Yraen rose, bowed again to his Grace, and hurried off. He felt much as he had when he'd once been wounded in battle, a stunned disbelief that such could be happening to him, a cold shock that had left him feeling light-headed, as if he were going to drift into the sky. When he'd been wounded, however, the pain had started right after, giving him something to fight against, to focus upon and use to pull himself together and ride to safety. Now he had nothing to fall back on but his honour, a tarnished commodity, a dull blade indeed after so many years on the long road, and there was no safety, none, from the treachery of his heart. As he was cursing Jill and his luck both, Carra came down the staircase with her maid and a page hurrying after. For a moment he couldn't breathe, just from a hunger like fire.

When Dallandra woke again, she found herself trapped in a cage. For a moment she lay still, staring in disbelief at the view round her. Not only was she penned in a cubical cage made of branches lashed together, but this entire rickety structure was hanging from the limb of an enormous leafy tree. She could see it quite clearly through the slatted roof, an arch of branch, a canopy of leaves. Automatically she laid her hand on her throat and found the amethyst figurine still safe and present. When she sat up, aching in every muscle and tendon, the cage swayed. She grabbed the nearest bar and steadied herself while she looked round. Not far away hung another cage, made of the same roughly-trimmed branches, confining the young page, who was sitting all curled up with his head on his knees and his arms round his head, as if he were trying to make the world go away by pretending it didn't exist.

She looked down, through cracks between the tightly-lashed branches of the floor, and saw a rough sort of camp on the bare ground below and off to one side. Apparently her tree stood at the edge of a clearing. In the middle round a fire sat Evandar's brother and some six of his men - well, six of his followers, all of them as much animal as man, the wolf warrior with his long snout, the bears with their huge clubs of paws at the ends of human arms, another vulpine creature with a roach of hair like his leader's but purple elven eyes, a fellow with a human head but a bloated, misshapen body. They'd laid aside their armour and were dressed only in tunics of green cloth, bound at the waist with weapon belts, and low leather boots, so she could see the variegated fur they sprouted and sported on their legs and thighs. Nearby sat a being that Dallandra recognized. Hunch-backed and bald, he clutched a long staff, wound with ribands, that lay across his lap. His face was grotesquely distorted, all swollen and pouched, his skin hanging in great folds of warty flesh round his neck.

'Good herald!' Dallandra called out. 'Tell your lord that his prisoners require water.'

All of the men jumped and swore, slewing round to look up at her. Leaning on the staff, the herald hauled himself to his feet. The folds of flesh round his neck swung and rustled like dead leaves in a wind.

'My lord,' he said, and his voice creaked and rustled as well, 'Well-treated prisoners make for a better bargain in the end.'

The fox warrior grunted, considering, then snapped his fingers in a clear imitation of Evandar's gestures.

At his command a bronze flagon appeared, but it was all lumpy and distorted, as if the mould had been carved by the rawest apprentice at the smithy.

'Haul them down,' he said to one of the bear-like figures. 'Her first.'

The rope suspending the cage turned out to be lashed round the trunk of the tree. Growling and sweating the ursine fellow untied the knot, picking at it with clumsy claws, then reeled her down fast. When the cage smacked into the ground, and Dallandra yelped and grabbed the bars to save herself a fall, the warriors screeched and cackled.

'Oh, she's a fair one.' The ursine fellow shoved his stinking face close to the bars. His lips and nose were human under a dusting of brown fur, but his black eyes were tiny and seemingly lidless. 'Can we have her, my lord? Can we take her out and pa.s.s her round like wine? She'd be sweet, my lord, to soothe a man's itching with.'

Dallandra spat full into his face. When he snarled and swatted at the cage, the fox warrior grabbed his arm, hauled him round, and threw him down him onto the ground, where he howled curses until his lord kicked him in the head.

'Why would Evandar bargain for a broken thing?' the fox warrior snapped. 'Leave her alone! Do you hear me? If I find anyone's meddled with her, or with the page either, then I'll kill him. We want them whole and pretty for our bargaining.'

Moving sideways, keeping his lord's temper always in view, the herald sidled up to the cage and pa.s.sed the misshapen flagon through the bars.

'Keep it,' the fox warrior snapped. 'I'll make another for the lad. Huh, I can match your fine Evandar, I can, and call things from the air and weave them from the light, just as he can. Haul her up, and bring the page down.'

Dallandra clutched the flagon to her chest to keep it from spilling as the cage made its jerky way back up. Once it had stopped swaying, she drank in greedy swallows. They hauled the boy's cage down the same way, handed him in a flagon of water of his own, but at the fox warrior's order they left him sitting on the ground.

'You! Elven witch!' the warrior strolled under her cage. The lad stays down here, closer to me than to you. One hint of your wretched magicks, and 'I'll haul him out and torture him to death right in front of you. Do you hear me?'

The boy burst out sobbing and screaming. The wolf-like creature stuck a paw through the bars, grabbed him by the hair, and shook hard, which made him scream the more.

'Leave him alone!' Dallandra yelled. 'I'll do what your leader says.'

The wolf-thing threw the boy to the floor, but he did stroll away and let him be. When the fox warrior joined the others at their fire, Dallandra sat down on the floor of her cage and tried to think. How long had she been lying unconscious, first from the return to her normal size, then in her faint? She had no idea, none. She couldn't even begin to guess how much time had pa.s.sed on the physical plane since she'd left Jill. She rose to her knees, then wedged the flagon between two branches so that it wouldn't spill.

'Herald!' she called out. 'Has my lord Evandar been notified of this outrage?'

The old man trotted closer, looking up with pink and rheumy eyes.

'I've not been sent to him, my lady,' he said. 'My lord helieves that he should find us.'

'In other words you've set a trap for him.'

The herald moaned, wringing his long and claw-like hands together, 'Get over here!' the fox warrior called out. 'You've naught to say to her.'

Bowing, cringing, moaning under his breath, the ancient creature scurried away, but as he did so he shot a glance back Dallandra's way that she could only call apologetic. She crouched in the middle of the cage floor, to keep the structure balanced and level. She wondered if F.vandar would realize that she'd been taken by his enemies or if, when he found her gone, he would simply a.s.sume that she'd gone to help Jill. Perhaps the night princess would remember that she'd seen her and tell him so? Dallandra doubted it very much, that one of Evandar's folk was conscious enough for putting a memory together with a present danger and drawing a conclusion. She could only hope that his brother's ugly crew had left some clue behind them. Otherwise, she might rot there, bait in an unsprung trap, for aeons as men and elves measure Time.

PART FOUR.

Via

A figure most mixed in its influences, injurious to those figures it does fall between upon the map, but good in all manner of journeys and most beneficent indeed in the Land of Gold. Yet if it fall into the Land of Silver, it bodes great evil in matters of Love.

The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster

When Rhodry and the three dwarves finally left Cengarn, closer to noon than dawn, they headed northeast on a narrow dirt road that climbed and twisted its way round sheep pastures and coppiced woods. It took climbing only two of those hills for Rhodry to start wondering if he could endure this journey. Although he was more than used to wearing mail and carrying its particular pattern of weight, he'd never hauled a pack on his back before. Garin had fitted a sheep's skin across his shoulders before loading him up, but even so, the wood and canvas chafed, dug and s.h.i.+fted position constantly. Since he was carrying Dar's how, he couldn't hook his hands in the pack straps to steady the load as the dwarves were doing. Under the hot sheepskin he began to sweat, which made the chafing worse.

The real problem, though, was the walking. Rhodry had started learning to ride when he was three years old, on a little Eldidd pony, and from then on the major part of his waking life had been spent on horseback. His warrior's code, in fact, labelled walking as something fit only for peasants and other such inferior beings. By the time he'd grown into manhood, his legs had grown into the shape of a horse's barrel.

Now the uphill walk made his turned-out knees ache first, but his hips soon followed, especially when the pack began to rest heavy on his kidneys. While the dwarves strode on ahead with their short but straight and st.u.r.dy legs, he waddled after them, blistering his feet on the road and his back muscles on the pack as he fell farther and farther behind. Finally, when the dwarves were halfway up the third hill and Rhodry was just starting it, Garin called a halt. The dwarf waited until Rhodry staggered up to them before speaking.

'This won't do, Otho. It's unjust to expect our silver dagger to learn the ways of the road all at once, like. When we stop at the farm to pick up the supplies you bought, we'll have to bargain for a mule as well, to carry his pack and the extra food and suchlike. You can always sell it later on, when he's used to trekking and ready to try the pack again.'

Otho made a sputtering noise, but Mic nodded, agreeing with the leader. Rhodry felt like kneeling at Garin's feet and singing his praise like a bard.

'How much farther to this farm?' he said instead. 'I don't mind admitting that this mile or two's been a humbling experience.'

'Then it was worth somewhat, eh?' Otho said with a grin. 'Not far now, lad. Just keeping putting one tender elven foot in front of the other, and you'll get there, sure enough.'

Rhodry said nothing, but the silence cost him.

Fortunately the farm turned out to be reasonably close by. While Otho haggled for the mule, Rhodry sat down in the muck and swarming flies with his back against the cow barn and fell straight asleep. The sun was a fair bit lower when Mie shook him awake.

'Time to get on the road again,' the young dwarf said. 'We've finally got the mule loaded up the way Uncle Otho likes.'

Walking without a fifty-weight of gear and pack turned out to be a good bit easier, but even so, every muscle in Rhodry's legs ached by the time they were among the wild hills. He was honestly taken aback by how thoroughly his body had shaped itself to ride horses, by how unfit he was to travel any distance on his own two feet. The surprise turned him stubborn, and he forced himself onward, refusing to ask for a rest even when Garin glanced his way as if offering him the chance. As the road dwindled to a goat track, the pace slowed anyway, because they had to pick their way through rocks and brambles. When they paused to rest, Garin cut Rhodry's old sheepskin into strips and tied them round the mule's pasterns.

'This wretched mule is going to make it hard to travel at night,' Otho growled. 'I wish we'd never acquired the thing.'

'Hold your tongue.' Garin said. 'Killing the man you're trying to repay is no way to settle a debt, and that's that.'

Otho snorted once, then devoted himself to his bread and cheese. Rhodry wondered all over again where Garin's obvious authority had its roots; he'd never heard of the Mountain People having gwerbrets and lords, but there was no doubt that Garin expected to be obeyed like one. About average height for a dwarf, broad in the shoulders, narrow in the hips, with the dark, full growth of beard so prized by the men of his people, he stood with authority as well as spoke with it.

When they started off again, in the fading twilight, Garin took over leading the mule. By walking a bit ahead of it, and kicking the bigger rocks and obstacles out of its way, he managed to keep them all moving for some hours after dark, but they were travelling much slower than any of the dwarves liked.

When they made their camp, in a little valley between two hills, Garin and Otho walked a-ways away from the others and stood squabbling in their own language for a long time.

'They're arguing about whether it's safe to travel during the day,' Mic said. 'What do you think?'

'I don't know. One thing, though. It'll be a fair bit easier to use this bow I've been carrying in the daylight. I can't see as far or as finely in the dark.'

Mic trotted off to add this piece of information to the argument among the rocks. Rhodry unstrapped the baldric, placed the bow and the quiver beside his blankets, and sat down next to them to untie the bindings and pull off his boots. Garin had stressed the importance of airing out one's boots and keeping one's feet dry on these long marches. After he was done, Rhodry lay down, planning on a mere moment's rest, but he fell asleep, too tired even to eat. He did wake once, when the dwarves began tramping round the camp and spreading out their own blankets, but drifted off again straightaway. Yet in his dreams he felt eyes watching him, dragon eyes, human eyes, and he kept hearing a peculiar screech or cry that came from too great a distance for him to identify it. From one particular dream of a ruined city he woke just after dawn and found himself in a cold sweat.

All round him the dwarves were rolled up and snoring in their blankets. The mule, tethered out in a gra.s.sy spot, stood head down and drowsy. The sheltering trees round about rustled as the wind picked up, cool and welcome in what promised to be a hot bright day. Rhodry sat up, laying an automatic hand on the bow. Although he was wide awake, he could still sense the eyes from his dream. Or rather, he could sense one pair. Over the past week or so, he'd come to realize that there were two dream watchers. The dragon eyes considered him with curiosity, certainly, but it seemed an indifferent, utterly neutral gaze. The human eyes carried malice. It was malice he was feeling now.

He threw back the blankets to sit up and look round - no one there, and he realized that he'd never truly expected to see anyone, either. All at once the mule tossed up its head and snorted, turning on its rope to s.niff into the wind. Rhodry grabbed the bow and strung it, looping the bowstring into the notch at one end, hooking that end under his outstretched foot and pulling back against the brace of his own leg to shape the bow as he finished stringing it. That done, he stood, nocking an arrow and taking a few steps away from his bedroll. Slowly he turned round in a circle, looking everywhere for signs of a hidden enemy. He saw nothing, but the mule snorted again, dancing a little.

This time, when Rhodry looked among the trees he saw a figure watching him. At first he thought it a shepherd, because it wore tattered brigga and a rough s.h.i.+rt, all greasy and torn, but then it stepped out into the sunlight. Although the face was recognizably human, its body perched on a pair of legs as long and skinny as a stork's, its back bowed out, and its arms hung tiny from its sides. Its head rose long and narrow from a skinny neck, so that the warty, wattled face seemed to float in front of the rest of it.

'What do you want?' Rhodry hissed.

Its eyes glittered bright, and it grinned, exposing long yellow fangs of teeth. There was malice a-plenty in that smile, a twisted urge to rend and tear, perhaps, just for the joy of the bite. Rhodry swept up the bow and loosed. The bowstring sang; the arrow hissed and flew directly through the creature to rattle onto the rocky ground. Yet even though the arrow did no visible harm, the creature shrieked in agony as the steel-tipped shaft pierced it.

'Stay away, then,' Rhodry snapped. 'Be gone!'

It bared its fangs in a snarl and disappeared. For a moment the snarl seemed to hover on the air like a greasy stain, then hurried after the rest of it. Rhodry shuddered convulsively, then carefully, one step at a time, walked over to retrieve his arrow. When he knelt down he examined the ground round about, but he saw no footsteps in the dust.

He walked back to the camp to find the dwarves awake, throwing back blankets and scrambling up.

'What was that thing?' Mic burst out. 'I've never seen one of the Wildfolk like that before. It was so big.'

'Well, I doubt me if it was one of the Wildfolk.' Rhodry hesitated, wondering how to explain. 'But it wasn't really there, either. My arrow sailed right through it.'

'We saw that.'

The others waited, looking at him expectantly.

'I told you about Alshandra, didn't I?' Rhodry said. 'I'd guess it was one of her people.'

'What do they want with you?' Garin said.

'Cursed if I know.'

'We might all be cursed,' Otho broke in, 'if we can't figure it out.' All at once Rhodry felt dishonourable. For all his squabbling with Otho, he'd known the old man practically all his life, and he honestly liked his kinsfolk.

'Why don't you all turn back?' Rhodry said. 'Garin, tell me how to get to this Haen Marn place, and I'll try to find it on my own. This whole thing's just got a good bit more dangerous, and I feel like a shamed man for dragging you into it.'

'Hold your tongue, you stupid elf!' Otho snapped. 'Don't go dousing the wound with vinegar. You could have thought of that before we drove a bargain.'

Rhodry stared, utterly uncomprehending.

'Otho, one of these days I'm going to sew your lips shut, and life will turn much sweeter,' Garin said.

'Rhodry, listen. You saved Otho's life. We promised that in return we'd find you this wyrm. There's an end to it. We have a debt bond between us.' 'Well, what if I release you from the debt?' 'There is no release. A debt is a debt until it's paid.' All at once Otho got up and strode off, muttering something incomprehensible. When Garin and Mic exchanged significant glances, Rhodry remembered the story of their kinsman's exile.

'Well, you have my thanks from the bottom of my heart,' Rhodry said.

Garin smiled briefly, then turned to Mic.

'Get some food for all of us, will you? We've got a lot to do before we get on the road today '

Rhodry decided that indeed there was nothing more to say and went to lead the mule to water.

Over the next few days' worth of travelling, the land rose higher and higher in broken hills, gashed by steep ravines and white water creeks. Through the thin soil huge black boulders pushed like knuckles on a fist. In narrow valleys they found farmsteads, round thatched houses and barns barricaded inside earthworks, where dogs rushed to throw themselves against the gates and bark savagely as they pa.s.sed.

Now and again they saw a farmer or his wife, too, standing guard with flail or cudgel clasped in work-gnarled hands while these strangers walked on by. Grazing in what gra.s.s there was they saw goats, never cows, rarely sheep, and each flock was guarded by two or three boys, never a single lad alone, and a pack of dogs.

Late on the second day they pa.s.sed an entire fortified village, some twelve buildings surrounded by stone walls laced with timber. Brown and white goats grazed on the tops of the walls, which were covered with sod. At the gates stood armed guards, two young men dressed in the omnipresent coa.r.s.e brown cloth of this part of the world. One carried a sword, the other a dwarven-style battle axe, with a long shaft and deep-bitten curved blade. As the dwarven party pa.s.sed by, the pair went tense, ready to sound an alarum, no doubt, at the least sign of trouble.

'Did these people pay fealty to Lord Matyc?' Rhodry asked.

'Hah!' Garin snorted. 'I doubt me if they know he existed. You find people like this all along the Deverry border, a tough lot they are, hating lords and foreigners alike. My people do a little trading with them, now and again, but they don't have much we want, and they don't much like us, either.'

It was then that Rhodry realized they'd crossed the border between his native kingdom and the dwarven lands. Even though he'd known better in his mind, in his heart he'd always a.s.sumed that Deverry went on and on, right to the edge of the world, perhaps. He looked round at the glowering hills, dark with twisted pines, gashed with tumbles of rock down ravines, and realized that, indeed, this was a foreign land.

'But you know, that village, from what I can see of it, anyway, looks like a Deverry village, or more like a dun, with that big broch in the middle and all.'

'Well, these border folk, they came from Deverry, after those wars you had, over the true king and all that,' Garin said. 'They were on the losing side, I think.'

'They were,' Otho chimed in. 'After Maryn took the throne, a lot of the Cantrae lords fled to what you people call Cerrgonney, and when Maryn's grandson, I think he was a grandson? Well, one of Maryn's descendants, anyway, but eventually he followed them to Cerrgonney to impose his peace, and some of them, the most stubborn -ones, like, fled here.'

By then they were climbing a hill just beyond the village, and Rhodry paused for a look back. He could see clearly from this height into the compound, a thing of mud and pigs, small children running round half-naked among the chickens, wood houses with mangy thatch cl.u.s.tering round a broch built of piled stones caulked with mud. Yet flying from the broch was a crude pennant, whipping this way and that in the wind. Finally he got a look at it - a boar device.

'The final end of the enemies of the king,' Otho said with obvious relish. 'Stinking wh.o.r.eson b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

'You sound like you remember them,' Rhodry said.

'I do. I was a young man then and just come into your country.' Otho seemed to be about to say more, but he let his voice trail off and looked away. 'Well, no use in standing round here, flapping our lips. Let's get on our way.'