Darkspell

by Katharine Kerr

  “It’s not nicked, is it?” she said.

  “It’s not, thanks be to the gods of war.” He sheathed it and laid the sheath down beside him. “Oh, my love, you’re too good for a dishonored man like me.”

  “I know it, but I love you anyway.”

  Grinning, he put his hands on her shoulders, stroking her, drawing her close.

  “I’ve never even thanked you properly for my ransom,” he whispered. “Come lie down with me.”

  As soon as his mouth touched hers, Jill could think of nothing but him, but later, when she lay clasped in his arms, both of them half-asleep, she felt fear ripple through her mind again. She was glad that they were safely inside a dun, with a small army around them.

  “As far as I can tell,” Alastyr said thoughtfully, “they’re about a day and a half’s ride ahead of us. Now that we’ve got a horse for Camdel, we should be able to push ourselves for speed.”

  “Just so, master,” Sarcyn said. “Can you reach her mind? We could send some spell to muddle her.”

  “It may come to that, but for now I’d prefer not to. Nevyn could detect that, you see.”

  Sarcyn did see. Although he’d been left behind in Bardek the summer before to tend to the master’s affairs there, he’d heard the reports about the Master of the Aethyr and his vast powers.

  “And here’s Rhodry again,” Alastyr went on thoughtfully. “I’ll have many an interesting thing to tell the Old One when we see him.”

  If we live to see him, Sarcyn thought to himself. He felt all their careful plans fraying, just as when a farmer loads too much in an old sack, and the cloth shreds away rather than simply rips. Yet he never would have dared voice such doubts to the master. Uneasily he looked round their camp, Camdel curled in a blanket like a small child, Gan sitting by the fire and staring into it, his mouth twisted, his eyes wide in terror. Alastyr got up and stretched.

  “Tell me somewhat, Sarco,” he said. “Do you ever have the feeling that someone’s scrying us out?”

  “I’ve had a thought that way, once or twice. Do you think it’s the Master of the Aethyr?”

  “I don’t, because if he knew where we were, he’d be after us like a snake striking. But if it’s not him, then—”

  Sarcyn shuddered, finishing the thought in his mind: then it had to be the Hawks of the Brotherhood. Half assassins, half dweomer-apprentices, the Hawks served the ruling council of the dark dweomer and enforced its commands. Although the Brotherhood was too loosely organized to have a code in any real sense of the word, it did require a means of dealing with traitors. The Hawks provided all the means any guild would need.

  “And why would they be watching us?” Sarcyn said.

  “I failed last summer, didn’t I?”

  “But the Old One laid no fault upon you.”

  “That’s true.” Alastyr hesitated, sincerely puzzled. “Then maybe it’s some minion of Nevyn’s?” Again the hesitation. “I’m going out into the darkness where I can meditate upon this.”

  As the master strode away, Gan looked up, watching him with numb eyes. He was so old, toothless, so twisted from hard work and scarred here and there from Alastyr’s rages, that Sarcyn wondered if the mute cared anymore if he lived or died. He found himself thinking of Evy, his beautiful sister, Evy—would slavery someday reduce her to a piece of human flotsam such as this?

  “Don’t vex yourself, old man. We’ll pull our chestnuts out of the fire yet.”

  Gan tried to force a smile from trembling lips, then went back to staring at the fire.

  “Well, I’ve sworn not to take a hire in this war,” Rhodry said, yawning. “So which way shall we ride?”

  “Oh, we could go east to Marcmwr,” Jill said. “This time of year there are always caravans going to Dun Hiraedd.”

  “Oh, ye gods, I’m sick to my heart of stinking merchants and their stinking mules! I wasn’t raised to be a nursemaid to a pack of common-born traders.”

  “Rhoddo, you’ve guarded only two caravans in your entire life.”

  “Two were too many.”

  Jill put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him.

  “If it’s bloodshed you’re after, there are bandits in those mountains. That’s why the caravans need guards.”

  When they left Ynryc’s dun, they rode east, heading for Marcmwr. The road climbed steadily through the hills, and they let the horses walk slowly. The grassy pastureland gave way to stands of the scrubby, twisted pines peculiar to this part of Deverry. As they rode through the dark, silent forest, Jill suddenly remembered the arm bracelet in her saddlebags.

  “Rhodry? A strange thing happened when I was on my way to Ynryc’s.”

  When she told the tale, he grew troubled.

  “Why didn’t you tell Ynryc about this?” he said at last. “That horse could have belonged to one of his allies.”

  “You’re right.” She felt a shudder of cold down her back. “Why didn’t I? I—well—I just forgot.”

  Rhodry turned in the saddle to look at her.

  “That’s a peculiar sort of thing to just forget.”

  “I know.” She shivered convulsively. “There’s dweomer at work here. Do you think I’m daft for saying that?”

  “I only wish I could dismiss it so easily.” He halted his horse. “We’d best get back to Ynryc with this tale.”

  Jill agreed, but as she was turning her horse, the gray gnome materialized in the road in front of her. The little creature was frantic, rolling its eyes and waving its hands at them to stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Jill said. “Shouldn’t we go back?”

  It shook its head so hard that it nearly fell over.

  “What’s all this?” Rhodry said. “Your gnome?”

  “Just that, and he doesn’t want us to go back. He’s terrified, Rhoddo.”

  The gnome vanished, then appeared again in Rhodry’s lap. It reached up and patted him imploringly on the cheek. Although he couldn’t see it, he could feel the touch.

  “Well, the Wildfolk saved my life once,” he said. “If he thinks that there’s danger behind us, I’ll take his word for it.”

  The gnome grinned and patted his hand.

  “Besides,” Rhodry went on, “we can turn the thing over to the tieryn in Marcmwr.”

  Shaking his head no, the gnome pinched his arm.

  “Do you want us to keep it?” Jill said.

  Relieved, he smiled and nodded yes, then vanished. Jill and Rhodry sat on their horses for a moment and stared at each other in bewilderment.

  “Here,” Rhodry said finally. “Let me just get my mail shirt out of my saddlebags. I wish to the gods that you had one.”

  “I think we should buy me one in Marcmwr. Since Ynryc was so generous about your ransom, we’ve got the coin.”

  “We do, do we? And here you’ve been telling me that we barely have a coin to our name!”

  “If you’d drunk it all away, I couldn’t buy mail now.”

  “True enough. Ah, you must truly love me, if you’d actually part with a coin for my ransom!”

  She leaned over and cuffed him hard on the shoulder.

  After Rhodry had armed, they rode out at a faster pace, both of them with sword in hand and shields ready at the saddle peak. The road snaked through the hills, always climbing. Rhodry kept looking back the way they’d come. His half-elven eyesight was an ally, she knew, because he could see much farther than an ordinary man and would spot their enemies long before the enemies spotted them. Ahead the mountains loomed, black with pines and streaked here and there with sandstone outcrops like the knuckles of a giant fist. Every little valley or canyon that they came to seemed to hide an ambush, yet always they passed safely by.

  Finally they climbed one last hill and looked down on a narrow plain, hemmed in by mountains to the east and hills to the west. Beside a river stood Marcmwr. About three hundred roundhouses clustered together in the middle of a large open space inside the high stone walls, as if they had shrunk togeth
er in fear, but in truth the open land served as pasturage for the horses and mules of merchant caravans.

  “I’ve never been so blasted glad to see a town in my life,” Rhodry remarked.

  “Me, either.”

  Yet she didn’t feel entirely safe until they rode through the massive iron-bound gates and saw the armed town guards standing around.

  “They almost turned back, curse them!” Alastyr snarled.

  “It’s that gnome of hers, master,” Sarcyn said. “I saw it warn them when I was scrying.”

  “Indeed? Then we’ll do somewhat about that.”

  It occurred to Alastyr that his feeling of being watched at times might simply have come from the gnome or other Wildfolk spying upon him. It was time, then, to set an example and scare them away.

  For two days Rhodry and Jill stayed in Marcmwr, in a crumbling inn by the north gate, the only one in this trade town full of inns that would sell shelter to a silver dagger. Since in a town that size there was no such thing as an armorer’s shop, on the first day there they rode to the dun of the local tieryn and haggled with his chamberlain for an old mail shirt for Jill. On the second Rhodry worked the town in earnest, looking for a hire. Finally he found one in Seryl, who had contracted to take a caravan of weapons and luxury goods to Dun Hiraedd.

  Dun Hiraedd was an odd sort of city and a new one, too, founded only eighty years before. Originally it had been given the splendid name of Privddun Ricaid, the “chief royal fort,” but the first warband garrisoned there dubbed it Fort Homesick, and the name stuck. Established by royal charter, it existed to provide a legal and military center for Cwm Pecl, a new province slowly being colonized by Deverry’s expanding population. In Jill and Rhodry’s time, the Far Valley was still a lonely sort of place, and it never could have paid enough taxes to maintain a gwerbret if the king himself hadn’t helped supply it. Every summer royal agents hired men like Seryl to take caravans of goods to the gwerbret’s city.

  Since Seryl was spending the king’s money rather than his own, he was generous about Rhodry’s hire, offering him a silver piece a week and making no quibble about feeding Jill and her horse as well.

  “And I’ll want you to round up four other lads,” the merchant said. “Twenty coppers apiece for them.”

  “Done, then. I shouldn’t have any trouble finding guards in a town like this.”

  Rhodry went back to the inn with a heavy heart. He had some very good reasons for never wanting to see Dun Hiraedd again, but since buying Jill’s mail had left them with only a handful of coppers, he was desperate for coin. The innkeep, a skinny fellow with greasy brown hair, was in fact waiting for him at the tavern door.

  “Well?” he snapped.

  When Rhodry handed him four pieces of the earnest money, the innkeep turned all smiles and went to fetch him a tankard of ale. The smoky half round of the tavern-room was crowded with young men who watched with great interest as he paid off his bill. They were a tattered lot, unwashed, poorly dressed and cheaply armed. All over the kingdom one found men like them, looking for a place in a lord’s warband, taking guard work while they did, all of them driven by the dream of battle glory that lies in the hearts of most Deverry men. Rhodry let them speculate for a little longer and sat down by Jill, who was nursing a tankard at a table where she could keep her back to the wall.

  “You found one?” she said.

  “I did. Guarding one of the royal caravans.”

  Distracted with some thought of her own, she merely nodded.

  “Is somewhat wrong?” he said.

  “I’m worried about my gnome.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He hasn’t come to me since we hit this stinking town, and while you were gone, I tried to call him. He’s always come to me before, but I couldn’t raise him.”

  “Oh, well, who knows what goes on in their little minds?”

  “This is serious!” Her voice shook with worry.

  “My apologies, then, but what possibly could have happened to him?”

  “I don’t know, but considering what we found?”

  She meant, of course, that there was dweomer all round them. Rhodry patted her hand to reassure her, but he could think of nothing comforting to say.

  Everywhere hung redness, and he could not move. He hated it, and he raged, desperately trying to move, until at last he felt merely hopeless. Although he had no words, he could remember pictures and feelings, of sailing free in his true home, of others appearing, ugly ones, twisted and cruel, who caught him and dragged him down. He remembered terror and a man’s voice chanting. Then there was only this redness, and he could not move. A picture of her face came to him. He was washed in terror and love, mingled to an ache. The only word he could say filled him: Jill, Jill, Jill.

  On a hot, airless morning the caravan assembled at the east gate. Jill kept Sunrise off to one side and watched as Seryl and Rhodry conferred about the line of march in the middle of a swirling, braying confusion. There were forty mules, laden with the king’s bounty, and fifteen muleteers, armed with quarterstaves, four guards with swords, and Seryl’s young manservant, Namydd. Rhodry disposed his men along the caravan, told Jill to ride at the head with the merchant, then took the dangerous rear guard for himself. After Seryl offered a prayer to Nwdd, god of traders, they ambled off under the hot sun while the mules brayed in protest. Ahead the mountains rose dark, streaked with pale stone, and as jagged as a mouthful of fangs.

  With the heat and the steep road, it took the caravan a full day to travel ten miles. Climbing steadily, the road twisted and snaked through the rocky hills and thick stands of twisted pines that offered a thousand good places to lay an ambush. When the caravan made camp for the night, Jill tagged along as Rhodry set three men on guard. Although she offered to stand a turn on the watch herself, he turned her down. He did, however, pick out three muleteers to augment the watch, but even though he had Seryl’s authority behind him, the men turned as sullen as their mules.

  “Listen, silver dagger,” one said, “you’re the one who’s paid to stay awake, not us.”

  “You’ll get plenty of sleep in the Otherlands if we’re caught by bandits. Are you following my orders or not?”

  “I’m not taking orders from scum like you.”

  Rhodry punched him in the stomach with his right fist and clipped him under the jaw with his left. Jill admired the way the muleteer folded in half and hit the ground like a sack of grain. Rhodry glanced around at the gawking circle of his fellows.

  “Who’s next to argue?”

  They looked at the man on the ground, then at Rhodry.

  “Well, now,” a man piped up, “I’ll take a turn on watch. When do you want us out there?”

  After a peaceful night the caravan moved out about two hours after dawn and began its slow climb to the dangerous Cwm Pecl pass, where more than one caravan had been slaughtered by bandits. Once they were through, the danger would lessen, because Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl, kept patrols of riders on his side of the mountains.

  “Now, bandits don’t usually attack royal caravans,” Seryl told Jill as they rode, “because they know the gwerbret will be out in force to hunt them down. After all, it’s his goods they’d be stealing.”

  Yet Seryl didn’t truly look reassured by his own words. When just at noon they reached the pass, Jill decided that it lived up to its evil reputation. About ten miles long, it was a sheer-sided gap strewn with enormous boulders that forced the line into single file.

  “It’s going to be hard on the stock,” Rhodry said. “But we’re not stopping until we’re through.”

  Even the mules seemed to smell danger in the air, because they kept walking fast without a single blow or curse from the muleteers. Rhodry kept moving up and down the line, speaking to each guard in turn. After a few miles in, the road began to widen, but still it twisted through piles of fallen rock. Every time Jill glanced at Seryl, he merely nodded her way, then returned to watching the road ahead. Finally Rhodry came up beside them.<
br />
  “Get back in line, good merchant. I’ll stay up here now.”

  “Expecting trouble, silver dagger?”

  He nodded, looking up at the boulder-strewn cliff top far above them.

  “I’ve ridden in enough wars to smell trouble coming,” Rhodry said. “I smell it now.”

  With a moan Seryl turned his horse out of line and headed back to a safer position. When Rhodry began unlacing his shield from his saddle peak, Jill did the same.

  “Do I have any hope of convincing you to get back and stay out of this?” he said, pulling a javelin.

  “None.” Jill glanced back and saw that he’d positioned all the guards directly behind them. “After I killed Corbyn, I never wanted to ride to war again, but by Epona herself, I’ll cursed well fight for my own life.”

  He gave her a tight smile, as if he’d been expecting no less. For another mile the road snaked on, growing slightly wider. The dust they were raising hung in the windless air like a banner to announce that they were coming. Jill felt a cold like a lump of rock in the pit of her stomach. She knew what riding to battle meant. In her hand her sword winked bright, the blade that her father had given her. Oh, Da, she thought, it’s a good thing you taught me how to use it.

  A little ways on, the road made a sharp turn, and Jill saw them, a pack of some twenty armed men, blocking the road about thirty feet ahead. Behind her the caravan turned into a shouting mob as the muleteers pulled the mules to a halt and tried to get through with their staves. With an automatic shout of his old war cry, “For Aberwyn!” Rhodry threw the javelin in his hand and drew his sword on the follow-round as the war dart arched up. Screaming, the bandits charged, but their leader’s horse staggered to its knees and fell with Rhodry’s javelin in its chest, rolling its rider under the hooves of his own men. Jill kicked Sunrise forward as Rhodry led his ragged handful of men out to meet the charge.

  They were outnumbered, sure enough, but the pass was too narrow for the bandits to mob them with their superior strength. The enemy were poorly armed, too, mostly wearing tacked-together bits of leather and splint, with only here and there a bit of chain. They had also never faced a berserker like Rhodry, who howled and yelped with laughter as he slashed into them. In utter silence Jill faced off with one man, slashed under his clumsy strike, and caught him full on his unarmored chest. Blood welled up through his shirt as he fell over his horse’s neck. The horse beside him reared, trying to avoid the corpse, but her battle-trained Sunrise merely danced by and pressed on. As the rearing horse came down, Jill gave a good strike at its rider. She stabbed him in the side just next to the edge of his leather cuirass.