From the edge of the crowd someone called out, “The litter’s here, Your Holiness.” The mob parted and let four priests through. They carried a litter made of long poles with a blanket attached.
“No more to see here, lads!” the prince called out. “We need to get on the road.”
Murmuring assent, the men began to drift away, heading back to their various encampments. Dallandra turned her Sight upon the prince. His aura glowed strongly and clearly, a faint yellow heavily streaked with red, a typical coloration for warrior lords. Apparently Neb had ended the priest’s attempt at ensorcellment before Govvin had managed to sink his claws in deep. Govvin knew the techniques of ensorcellment, but he lacked power to put into his spell. She shut down the Sight, and as she started back to camp, Prince Voran fell in beside her.
“I wonder why the old man starves himself,” Voran remarked.
“He may just have worms,” Dallandra said. “But I’d guess that he fasts as part of a ritual. Prolonged fasting is supposed to give priests visions of their gods.”
“Ah, I see. I didn’t know that.” He smiled again, but ruefully. “If I’d known the old man had the falling sickness, I’d have minded my words a little more.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t blame yourself, Your Highness. You didn’t know, and besides, I’d say he deserves whatever he gets.”
“I’ll admit to having similar thoughts. Very well, then, and my thanks.”
With a pleasant wave, Voran strode off. He’s a strong man, Dallandra thought, and it’s a blasted good thing, too! Still, she decided that she’d best keep an eye on him from then on, just in case Govvin’s attempt at dweomer wasn’t as clumsy as it appeared.
The army had finished breaking camp and was assembling in the road when Arzosah finally returned. She swooped over the line of march, then settled into a nearby field. Dallandra and Salamander ran out to join her.
“My apologies for being late,” Arzosah said. “I seem to have overslept. Perhaps I shouldn’t have eaten both cows last night, but I did hate to waste any.”
“I take it they were delicious?” Salamander said.
“They were indeed. Grain fed and nice and fat.” The dragon licked her black lips.
“Grain fed?” Dallandra raised an eyebrow. “They eat well, those priests.”
“Or else they sell the cows for coin,” Salamander said, “but I’m not sure where the market would be. In big Deverry cities like Trev Hael, the wealthier merchants and guildsmen will pay more for better beef, but out here—” He shrugged his shoulders.
“They may barter them outright,” Dallandra said. “There’s a certain kind of man who eats his meat raw.”
“That’s true.” Salamander winced with a little shiver. “But something else has just occurred to me, to wit, taxes for the central temple down in Dun Deverry. Have you ever seen it? They’ve gilded the walls in a pattern of tree branches and oak leaves. The statues of Bel may be wood underneath, but they, too, drip with gold and jewels. The priests? Ah, the priests! Their simple tunics and cloaks are patched together from scraps. It’s just that the scraps are velvets and silks. The sickles they carry—”
“That’s enough,” Dallandra interrupted. “I see your point. Someone has to pay for all of that.”
“Indeed. And, as usual in this world, the coin’s extracted from the hides of those least able to afford it.”
“Which reminds me,” Arzosah said, “I took several turns over the temple on my way to the pasture. They’re up to somewhat, all right. When I flew directly over, I could feel—” She paused, and the black tip of her tongue stuck out of her enormous mouth like a cat’s while she thought the matter through. “I’m not sure what I felt, truly. It was a pulsing sensation, as if the etheric was beating like a heart. But I didn’t see any etheric sigils, nor any traces of astral domes, naught so obvious.”
“What about deformed Wildfolk?” Dallandra said.
“How can anyone possibly tell if Wildfolk are deformed?” Arzosah said. “They’re always ugly.”
“True, but the ones I’m thinking of usually have big fangs and claws, and they’re black as charcoal or shiny like beetles. A few even look like they’ve been flayed.”
“Ych!” Arzosah rolled her eyes in disgust. “I did see some small ugly things scuttling into the temple itself, but I just got a glimpse of them. They might have been dogs. I detest dogs. Too much noise and bone, too little meat.”
“It’s a puzzle, then,” Dallandra said.
“An enigma, amazement, conundrum, and riddle indeed,” Salamander said. “But I doubt me if we can linger here to solve it.”
“True-spoken, alas,” Dallandra said. “I’m more determined than ever to investigate that temple.”
“What?” Salamander said. “If Govvin’s marked you for his enemy, that’s going to be dangerous.”
“It may be, it may not. If Govvin’s the only person with dweomer knowledge up there, it won’t be.”
“And if there’s someone else, his teacher, perhaps?”
“Then it will be, but it needs doing anyway.”
“Well, you can’t do it right now. We’ve got to get back to the army, or they’ll leave without us.”
“I know that,” Dallandra snapped. “Arzosah, if you’ll just fly ahead? I wouldn’t put it past Honelg to lay an ambuscade. He’s most likely desperate enough to try.”
“Now that is a good thought,” Arzosah said. “He might also have sent a second batch of messengers, for all we know, in case the first lot ran into difficulties. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“A thousand thanks!” Dallandra said. “But tonight, when we camp, it would gladden my heart if you’d tell what’s happened to the silver dragon.”
“Would it?” Arzosah looked away. “I doubt that.”
“Here, is he still alive?” Dallandra’s voice was sharp with alarm.
“He is that,” the dragon said. “I’ll tell you more later. Perhaps.”
“But—”
Arzosah began to turn around, moving with her usual slow waddle, but Salamander still had to jump back to avoid her tail as it swung after her. She put on a bit of speed, reached the open field, then spread her wings, bunched her muscles, and sprang into the air. No one spoke until she’d flown away out of sight, heading north in the direction of Honelg’s dun.
“May her scales turn greasy and itch,” Salamander muttered. “Dalla, the way she keeps putting you off—it’s truly worrisome.”
“It is, indeed.” Dallandra said. “But she’ll tell us what she wants to tell us and when she wants to, not a moment before.”
Around noon Gwerbret Ridvar’s army rode up to Honelg’s village. Gerran wasn’t in the least surprised to find it deserted except for a handful of old women and young children. Dressed mostly in faded black, the women stood around the village well, with the children clinging to their skirts, and watched the army file in. No one either cheered or jeered, they neither scowled nor smiled, merely watched with wary eyes. They had, no doubt, seen plenty of trouble in their lives and seemed utterly unsurprised to see more.
The army stopped in a swirl of dust and confusion out in the road, but Gwerbret Ridvar rode on toward the women. Prince Voran urged his horse forward and blocked his way.
“This could be some sort of trap,” the prince said.
“It could, truly, Your Highness.” Ridvar paused, looking the women over. “But I doubt it.”
Ridvar stopped his horse a few feet from the crowd at the well. He leaned over his horse’s neck to speak.
“None of you nor your homes will be harmed,” he said. “Where are the others? Up in the dun for the siege?”
The women exchanged glances and kept silence.
“We’ll find out soon enough. Did they leave you any food?”
A stoop-backed woman with gray hair and only a few teeth shuffled forward to answer. “They did, Your Grace, enough for the children.”
“But not for the rest of you?” Ridvar turned in his sa
ddle and beckoned to his captain. “When we make camp, send back supplies.”
“Done, Your Grace.” The captain raised a hand in salute.
The women sighed, moved a few steps here and there, and turned to look at one another, in a rustle of clothing like wind in dry branches.
“What about the younger women?” Prince Voran called out. “I swear to you that no man here will harm them. If any do, they’ll answer to me.”
The old women exchanged more glances. The crone speaking for them seemed to be studying the blazons on the prince’s shirt and the various banners and pennants among the troops.
“Very well, Your Highness,” she said at length. “We’ll tell them they can come back to the village.”
“Do that.” The prince glanced at Ridvar. “Let’s ride on. I take it that we’re not far now from the traitor’s dun.”
“So the gerthddyn said.” Ridvar turned in his saddle and with a sweep of his arm, sent his men forward.
With their goal so close, the princes and the gwerbret led their army at a trot and let the clumsy carts and servants follow as best they might. In but a little while they rounded a curve in the road and saw the dun, squat and ugly in the midst of its defenses and walls. Like a scab on top of a pusboil, Gerran thought. He could see that the gates were shut. Archers, half-concealed behind the crenels, lined the top of the wall.
With shouts and a wave of his arm, Ridvar disposed his men and his allies. The warbands spread out, some riding left, some right, and surrounded the hill, but they took care to stay out of arrow reach. Since his daughter’s safety was at stake, Tieryn Cadryc and his men were given the position next to the gwerbret’s own, where they had a good view of the gates. At Ridvar’s call, Indar the herald rode up to his lord’s side. He carried a staff wound with variously colored ribands, the mark of his office, and a silver horn. When he blew three long notes, a horn answered him from inside the dun.
“At least the bastard’s willing to parley,” Cadryc muttered to Gerran. “That’s somewhat to the good.”
“It is, Your Grace.” Gerran rose in his stirrups for a better look. “They’re not opening the gates, though. Oh, wait! They’ve got a side portal.”
Carrying a beribboned staff of his own, a herald slipped through the narrow door and began walking down through the maze of walls and ditches. Indar handed his staff to the gwerbret, then dismounted and took the staff back.
“I’d best go to meet him, Your Grace,” Indar said. “I’ve got the terms of surrender well up in my mind, not that it will matter, I suppose.”
“Unfortunately, you’re most likely right,” Ridvar said. “Well, let’s give him his chance to turn them down.”
Indar trudged off, staff held high to ensure that the archers on the walls saw it. The elaborate earthworks seemed to swallow both heralds and hide them from sight. There was nothing for the army to do but wait and try to soothe their restless horses as the parley dragged on.
Finally, just as everyone’s patience was running out, Indar returned. He bowed to prince and gwerbret both.
“Lord Honelg refuses our terms,” Indar said. “He asks you to quit his lands. From what his herald told me, that’s the only answer he’ll give—quit his lands, and then he’ll consider a true parley.”
Ridvar turned red in the face and muttered a few foul oaths.
“I expected naught better, somehow,” Voran said. “What about Honelg’s womenfolk?”
“I pled for mercy upon them with all the feeling I could muster,” Indar said. “I followed the gerthddyn’s instructions, too, pointing out that womenfolk were especially treasured by his goddess, and that his little daughter represented a future hope for Alshandra’s fame and glory, should she live to spread the tidings about her goddess. The herald listened most carefully. There were even tears in his eyes at one point. He said that he’d present my message to his lord with great care. So, there it stands.” Indar shook his head with a sigh. “We can only hope that Honelg will listen.”
If Honelg did listen to his herald, there was no sign of it that afternoon and evening. Salamander kept a watch at the edge of the Westfolk camp. With his normal sight, he could see that men on guard stood behind the crenella tion at the top of the dun wall. Once a man who seemed to be Honelg himself appeared, walking restlessly round the battlements. Now and then Salamander would scry, but inside the walls he saw only things that he and the lords already knew.
As well as Honelg’s riders, the men from the village were patrolling on the walls or sitting in the great hall. Salamander recognized Marth the blacksmith, giving orders to a contingent of younger men as they stowed bales and barrels of provisions inside the dun. Out in the stables he saw cows and hogs instead of horses; apparently Honelg had sent his riding mounts away to some safe pasture. But Salamander never saw the herald, nor any sign of a beribboned staff. The dun’s women had shut themselves up in the women’s hall. He saw Adranna weeping, and the aged Lady Varigga apparently comforting her, holding her hand and speaking gravely, but he could hear nothing of what she said.
As the long summer twilight deepened, Salamander gave up his futile watch and went to find Dallandra. The two princes and the gwerbret had agreed that the Westfolk archers were such an important weapon that they should pitch their tents well behind the lines of the be sieging army. No one wanted to lose them to a unanticipated sally from the dun by a desperation squad. They’d found reasonably flat ground along a rivulet for the tents, but near an outcrop of rock from which sentries could see Honelg’s dun. Between them and it stood the Red Wolf encampment, also set back, while Ridvar and Prince Voran had disposed their men in the actual siege line circling the dun’s defenses.
Salamander wandered among the tents, asking the archers if they’d seen Dallandra, but none had. Finally, he met up with Calonderiel at the big campfire in the middle of the encampment.
“Where’s Dalla?” Cal said. “Do you know?”
“I don’t,” Salamander said. “I was hoping you did.”
Calonderiel made a growling sound under his breath. “One of the men tells me that she might have gone to the Roundear camp to talk with Voran and the other lords. I’m on my way to look for her.”
“Good idea. And if I see her first, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”
“Please do. I hate it when she just wanders off like this.”
Eventually, when the twilight had faded into night, Dallandra returned to the elven camp with Calonderiel shooing her along in front of him as if he were a sheepdog and she the prize ewe. Salamander hurried to meet them.
“Ah, there you are!” he said. “I see that Cal found you.”
“I was merely speaking with Ridvar and the princes.” Dallandra shot Cal a poisonous sort of glance. “I gave them some ideas on how Lord Oth might root out the Alshandra worshippers back in Cengarn.”
“I suppose it’s necessary,” Salamander said.
“Of course it is!” Cal joined in. “Do you want someone there to send a warning to Zakh Gral?”
“No, of course not. I doubt if anyone could, though. Most of them are probably servants, like Raldd the groom, or maybe some of the town’s craftsmen and the like, no one with the horses or the knowledge to find Zakh Gral.”
“Still, I refuse to take even the least bit of risk,” Dallandra said. “If the gwerbret hangs a hundred traitors when he gets back, that’ll be a terrible thing, of course, but I’ll do what I can for them then.”
“By the Black Sun herself! You’ve turned ruthless lately.”
“Of course.” Dallandra set exasperated hands on her hips. “Ebañy, don’t you realize what’s at stake here? Our very survival as a people out in the grasslands, that’s what. If we fail, if the Horsekin take over the plains, then the only elven culture left will be in the islands, and the only Westfolk left will be the ones who manage to reach those islands as refugees.”
For a moment Salamander couldn’t find the words to speak. “I see it now,” he said a
t last. “Somehow I hadn’t wanted to see it so clearly.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you for that,” Dallandra said. “Fortunately, Prince Voran and Ridvar both realize that if we fall, their western provinces will be next. They’re planning on fighting the Horsekin with every weapon they have. Voran just assured me that his father—that’s the high king himself—will see that the matter’s urgent. And that’s the only thing giving me hope.”
“Hope?” Calonderiel said. “Of course, but it’s also bringing obligations. Do you realize that, my darling? Prince Dar will be beholden to the Deverry high king from now on.”
“So?” Dallandra said. “Better beholden than dead.”
Cal laughed. “True,” he said. “You’re quite right.”
“You know,” Dallandra went on, “no doubt Dar could use your advice about handling our part of this siege. I have work to do in our tent. Ebañy, why don’t you come with me?”
“Now just wait,” Cal snapped. “What kind of work?”
“Dweomerwork. I wouldn’t need privacy for anything else.”
“Privacy, is it? With Ebañy right there?”
Dallandra merely stared at him for a long puzzled moment. Salamander, however, felt like running and hiding somewhere, anywhere, from the cold, suspicious look that Cal was giving him.
“Please,” Salamander said feebly, “don’t tell me you’re jealous of me.”
“Of course not!” Cal snarled and crossed his arms over his chest. “I just want to know what she wants with you.”
“His dweomerlore, you idiot!” Dallandra laid a firm hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I have to scry, and he knows what to do if something goes wrong.”
The Gold Falcon Page 43