A Time of Omens

by Katharine Kerr

  When out between the armies the two sides met, Dallandra nearly lost all her courtesy; with great difficulty she stifled a noise that would have been partly an oath, partly a scream. Although both the herald and the warrior facing them were shaped like men, and both were wearing human-style clothes and armor, their faces were grotesquely distorted, the herald all swollen and pouched, his skin hanging in great folds of warty flesh round his neck, while the warrior was more than a little vulpine, with pointed ears tufted with red for and a roach of red hair running from his forehead over his skull and down to the back of his neck, while his beady black eyes glittered above a long, sharp nose. The herald was bald and hunchbacked as well, though he did speak perfect Elvish with a musical voice.

  “What brings you to the battle plain, Evandar? My lord has committed no fault against you or yours.”

  “A fault he has done, good herald, against a man marked as mine, and all for the sake of a trinket dropped in my country and thus mine by treaty.”

  When the herald swung his head round in appeal to the warrior behind him, the swags and wattles of skin grated with a sound like dry twigs scraping over one another. The warrior acknowledged his gesture with a nod, then spurred his horse to the herald’s side. For a moment he and Evandar considered each other in silence, while the herald turned dead-pale and began to edge his mount backward. Dallandra noticed then that the ancient creature’s eyes were pink and rheumy.

  “Not one word of what you say makes the least sense,” the leader of the Dark Host said at last. “What trinket?”

  “A whistle made of some kind of bone,” Evandar said. “And dropped by one of your spies, I’ll wager. I gave it to a human man named Rhodry, and now one of your folk’s come sniffing round him to fetch it back.”

  “I know naught of what you say. Never have I owned or seen a bone whistle.”

  Evandar studied him with narrowed eyes while the herald fidgeted in his saddle.

  “Tell me this,” Evandar said at last. “Have ever you seen or accepted service from a man with a head and snout as flat and blunt as a badger’s, and him all hairy with gray far, who dresses as the Deverry men dressed when first they came into their new country?”

  “And what name does -he answer to?”

  “I don’t know, but he wears a twisted rod of gold round his neck.”

  “Then I know him, yes, but he’s no longer one of mine. Some of my people have broken from my rule and command, Evandar, just as, or so I hear, some have from yours.” All at once he grinned, pulling dark lips back from sharp white teeth. “Even your wife, or so the minors say,”

  “My liege!” With a little shriek the herald rode in between them. “If we’re here to prevent a battle, perhaps the harsh ways of speaking had best be laid aside,”

  “Go away, old man,” the fox warrior snarled. “My brother and I will solve this thing between us.”

  Dallandra caught her breath in a little gasp. Was this then her lover’s true kin and his true form? Sitting easily on his horse Evandar merely smiled at his rival, and he looked so truly elven at that moment, except perhaps for his impossibly yellow hair, that she found it hard—no, she refused—to think of him as anything but a man of her own people. Whimpering, the herald pulled back,

  “Women tire of men all the time.” Evandar remarked, still smiling. “Tend to your rebels, and I’ll tend to mine. Are you telling me that you hold no command over our snouted friend?”

  “I am. Just that. Some few have left my host, claiming they’ve found more powerful protectors elsewhere. At first I thought they’d gone over to you.”

  “No such thing, not in the least, The woman you spoke of told me about new and powerful friends as well”

  For a long moment they stared at each other, each man, if such you could call them, leaning a bit forward over his horse’s neck, their eyes locked as if they could read truth from each other in some secret way. Then the fox warrior grunted under his breath and sat back, shifting his weight and bringing up his spear to the vertical.

  “This is no time for feuding between us. I’ll give you a weapon against this rebel of mine.”

  “And I’ll offer you my thanks in return, but give it to this woman who rides with me, for she’s the one who’ll need it.”

  The warrior turned, pausing to look Dallandra over as if he’d just noticed her presence, then with another grunt tossed her the spear. She caught it in one hand, surprised at the length and the heft of it: good oak with a leaf-shaped bronze head, set by its tang into the wood and bound round with bronze bands.

  “Make that as short or as long as you please,” he remarked, then turned back to his brother. “Farewell, Evandar, and let there be peace between us until we settle this other matter.”

  “Farewell, brother, but I’d wish for peace between us always and forever.”

  The fox warrior merely sneered. With a wave of one hand, each finger tipped with a black claw instead of a nail, he wheeled his horse and headed back toward his army. With a roar like a flood racing down a dry ditch they all swung round and galloped off, raising a cloud of dust, shouting, screaming over the clatter of horse gear, till silence fell so hard that it rang louder than the shouts, and the dust settled to reveal an empty field, though the grass lay trampled and torn. Behind Evandar the bright host gathered, muttering their disappointment.

  “We ride for home,” he announced. “Dalla, that spear’s too large for you to carry into the lands of men.”

  He flicked his hand in its direction, then wheeled his horse round to lead his army away. Dallandra felt the spear quiver in her hand like a live thing. It shrank so fast that she nearly dropped it. She twisted it round and laid it across her saddle in the little space behind the peak, then fought to hold it down as it writhed and shriveled till at last she held a dagger and naught more. A strange thing it was, too, with a leaf-shaped blade of bronze stuck into a crude wood hilt. As she studied it she saw that the bronze band clasping the wood closed round the tang sported a graved line of tiny dragons.

  “Dalla, come along!” Evandar called out. “It’s too dangerous to linger here.”

  She slipped the dagger into her belt, then turned her horse and followed, galloping to catch up, dropping to a jog as they led their troops home to the meadowlands. All the way she rode just a little behind Evandar, and she found herself studying his slender back, his yellow mop of hair, all, in fact, of his so accurately portrayed elven form, and wondering just what he really did look like when no glamours lay upon him.

  “Tell me somewhat honestly, young Yraen,” Lord Erddyr said. “Is Rhodry daft?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, my lord, but then, I’ve known him less than a year, now.”

  “Well, I keep thinking about the way he sees things. Things that aren’t really there. I mean, I suppose they aren’t really there.” Erddyr let his words trail away and began chewing on his thick gray mustaches.

  As Time runs in our world, the winter solstice lay months in the past, though it was still some weeks till the spring equinox. Bundled in heavy cloaks against the cold, the lord and his not-quite-a-silver-dagger were walking out in the ward of Dun Gamullyn, where Yraen and Rhodry had spent the winter past as part of the lord’s warband. Although the sun had barely risen, servants were already up and at their work, bringing firewood and food into the kitchen hut or hurrying to the stables to tend the horses. Yawning and shivering, the night watch was just climbing down from the ramparts.

  “Ah, well, when the fighting starts, won’t matter if he’s daft or not,” Erddyr said at last. “And I’m willing to wager it’s going to start soon. Snow’s been gone for what? a fortnight now? And down in the valleys the grass is breaking through. Soon, lad, soon. We’ll see if you two can earn your winter’s keep.”

  “I swear to you, my lord, that we’ll do our best to repay your generosity, even though it be with our heart’s blood.”

  “Well-spoken lad, aren’t you? Especially for an apprentice silver dagger or wha
tever it is you are.”

  Erddyr was smiling, but his dark eyes seemed to be taking Yraen’s measure, and a little too shrewdly for Yraen’s comfort. All winter he’d done his best to avoid the lord’s company, an easy enough thing to do, but every now and then he’d noticed Erddyr looking him and Rhodry both over with just this kind of thoughtful calculation.

  “Apprenticeship is a good word for it, my lord. Well, I’d best be on my way and not distract my lord from his affairs any longer.”

  Erddyr laughed.

  “Very well spoken, indeed! That’s a nice fancy way of saying you want to make your retreat before I ask you any awkward questions. Don’t worry, lad. Out here in the west you silver daggers are valuable men, and we’ve all learned not to go meddling with your private affairs.”

  “Well, my thanks, my lord.”

  “Though, well…” Erddyr hesitated a minute. “You don’t have to answer this, mind, but you and Rhodry are both noble-born, aren’t you?”

  Yraen felt his face burning with a blush. Here was someone else who’d seen right through his secret, even though he’d been trying to act like an ordinary fellow.

  “I can’t answer for Rhodry, my lord,” he stammered.

  “Don’t need to.” Erddyr gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Well, I’ll let you down from the rack, lad. Go get your breakfast.”

  That afternoon, while Yraen and Rhodry were sitting together over on the warband’s side of the great hall, a weary messenger, his clothes all splashed with mud from the spring roads, came rushing in to kneel before Lord Erddyr. The entire warband fell silent to watch while the lord summoned his scribe to read the proffered letter, but they couldn’t quite hear the old man’s voice over the general noise of the dun. At length, however, the warband’s captain, Renydd, was summoned to his lordship’s side, and he brought the news back.

  “Our lord and his allies have had a bit of luck, lads. Oldadd took Tewdyr’s son and half his warband on the road, just by blind chance and naught more.” He paused for a grin. “Our lords are going to get themselves a nice bit of coin out of this, I tell you.”

  The warband broke out laughing and began heaping insults on the name and lineage both of Lord Tewdyr, a famous local miser. As all blood feuds were, the situation was complex. Along with several other noble clans, Lord Erddyr, Rhodry and Yraen’s employer, and his young ally, Lord Oldadd, owed various bonds of family and fealty to one Lord Comerr, who was feuding with a certain Lord Adry for many and various reasons, most of which went back several generations. Adry had allies of his own, the chief one being the aforementioned miser, Tewdyr, who was now going to have to ransom back his oldest son and some twenty of their men.

  Lord Erddyr spent the afternoon sending messages to all and sundry, and toward sunset Lord Oldadd and his war-band of forty escorted their prize into the lord’s dun. Since the nights were warming up, the horses were turned out of their stables, which became a temporary prison for the hostages, except of course for the son himself, Lord Dwyn, who upon an honor pledge became Erddyr’s guest more than his prisoner. During the dinner that evening, Yraen watched the noble-born at their table across the great hail. Erddyr and Oldadd laughed and joked; Dwyn stared at his plate and shoveled food.

  “He might as well eat all he can stuff in,” Renydd said with a grin. “His father sets a poor enough table.”

  When the warband roared with laughter, Dwyn looked up and glared their way. Although he was too far away to have overheard Renydd’s remark, he could no doubt guess that he was being mocked. Yraen started to join the general good time, then noticed Rhodry, sitting in the straw by the door and staring at nothing again. His eyes moved as if he watched some creature about the size of a cat; every now and then his mouth twitched as if he were suppressing a smile. Yraen got up and walked over, half thinking of telling him to stop. He was both embarrassed for the man he’d come to consider a friend and afraid that this daft behavior would get them both thrown out of the warband before the war even started. Eventually, whatever Rhodry thought he was watching seemed to take itself off, and the silver dagger turned his attention back to the men around him. When he caught Yraen standing nearby and staring at him, he grinned.

  “Beyond this world lies another world, invisible to the eyes of men but not of elves,” Rhodry said. “That’s a quote from a book, by the way.”

  “Of course it is: Mael the Seer. His Ethics, isn’t it?”

  “Just that. You’ve read it?”

  “I have. Oh. Curse it!”

  “What’s so wrong?”

  “I just remembered a thing that Lord Erddyr said to me this morning. He asked me if I—we, I mean, you and I—asked me if we were noble-born, and I wondered how he knew, but I suppose I’ve been acting like a courtly man. I shouldn’t even admit I can read, should I?”

  “Depends. Out here very few noble-born men can read, so I suppose it’d mark you as son of a scribe or suchlike.”

  “And what about you? You can quote from the Seer’s books, but I can’t believe that you were raised in a scriptorium.”

  “I wasn’t, at that.” Rhodry flashed him a grin. “But as to where I spent my tender years, I … oh, by the gods!”

  All at once he sprang to his feet and spun round, peering out the door, and his hand drifted of its own accord to his sword hilt. Yraen glanced back to find that, much to his relief, no one else had noticed. When Rhodry slipped outside, he followed, wondering if he was going daft himself for suddenly and somehow believing that Rhodry was in danger.

  Outside, the ward was dark, silent except for the noise spilling through the windows of the dun. Once Yraen’s eyes adjusted to the dim light from a starry sky and a sliver of moon, he saw Rhodry standing some five feet away. Otherwise nothing or no one moved, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.

  “Rhodry?” Yraen whispered it, even as he wondered why he was keeping his voice down. “What’s so wrong?”

  “Shush! Come here.”

  As quietly as he could Yraen stepped up beside him.

  “There,” Rhodry hissed. “By the cart. Can you see him?”

  Yraen obligingly looked. Some ten feet ahead of them stood a slab-sided wooden cart, tipped forward with the wagon tree resting on the cobbles. Its whitewashed side caught a square of light from one of the dun windows; Yraen could pick out the blurry shadow thrown by a tankard that someone had set on the windowsill. In the reflected light, he should have been able to see whatever it was that Rhodry saw… if indeed it was actually there.

  “I can’t see a cursed thing.” Yet still, he whispered. “Much less anything I could call a ‘him.’ What do you—”

  He stopped, feeling cold fear run down his spine. Although he saw nothing solid twixt the window and the cart, a shadow suddenly fell, a distinct silhouette, on the white square. It looked like a shadow thrown by a man standing sideways, except for the head, which was blunt and snouted. In one clawed paw it carried a dagger, raised and ready. In dead silence Rhodry drew his sword and flashed the blade in the light. The shadow wavered and distorted like an image seen on a still pond will bend and billow when someone throws a rock into the water. Yraen could have sworn he heard a faint and animal squeal; then the shadow disappeared. Chortling under his breath, Rhodry sheathed the sword.

  “Still think I’m daft?”

  Much to his surprise, Yraen found that he couldn’t talk. He shrugged and flapped one hand in a helpless sort of way.

  “I’ve no doubt that every man in this dun thinks I am,” Rhodry went on. “And you know, I wish I was. Things would be so much simpler that way.”

  Yraen nodded with a little gargling sound deep in his throat.

  “It’s spring. The roads are passable and all that. Why don’t you just ride home, lad?”

  “Shan’t.” Yraen found his voice at last. “I want the silver dagger, and I don’t give up on things I want so easily.”

  “As stubborn as a lord should be, huh? Well, as our Se
er says, in the book called On Nobility, it does not become a noble-born man to quail at the thought of invisible things or to run from what he cannot see merely because he cannot see it.”

  “I’m not in the mood for great thoughts from great minds just now, my thanks. I—here, hold a moment! What was that bit you recited earlier? Not to the eyes of elves, he said. I always thought elves were some sort of a daft jest or bard’s fancy, but…”

  “But what?” Rhodry was grinning at him.

  “Oh, hold your tongue, you rotten horse apple!” Yraen spun on his heel and strode back into the light and noise of the great hall. For the first time in all the long months since he’d left Dun Deverry and his father’s court, he was beginning to consider riding home.

  Over the next few days Yraen kept a jittery watch, but never did he see more evidences of hidden things or presences. Mostly he and Rhodry had little to do but sit in the great hall and dice for coppers with the rest of the warband while the negotiations went back and forth between Tewdyr and Erddyr in a regular spate of heralds. The gossip said that Tewdyr was trying to bargain for a lower rate of exchange.

  “What a niggardly old bastard he is,” Renydd said one morning.

  “Just that and twice over,” Rhodry said. “But in a way, he’s got a point. With a war on, coin’s as precious as men.”

  “It must look that way to a silver dagger.”

  There was such cold contempt in his voice that Yraen felt like jumping up and challenging him, but Rhodry merely shrugged the insult away. Later, he remarked to Yraen, casually, that causing trouble in the warband was a good way for a silver dagger to lose a hire.

  Soon enough, though, the men as well as the lords realized that Tewdyr was holding out for a very good reason. Late the next day a rider came galloping in with the news that Erddyr’s allies had marched and were holding Lord Adry under siege. Since Erddyr was required to join them at once, he was forced to lower his demands, at which Tewdyr finally capitulated and arranged the exchange. Early in the morning, Lords Erddyr and Oldadd took their full warbands and escorted the prisoners back to neutral ground, an old stone bridge over a deep-running stream.