‘Not much, eh?’ Nevyn smiled briefly.
‘And you know—’ Gwairyc paused, surprised at his own thoughts. ‘In a way, my lord, you’ve become a friend of mine.’
‘Truly? I never thought I’d hear you say that.’
‘No more did I, when we first left Dun Deverry. You know, it doesn’t pay to make friends in a warband. You tend to lose them sudden-like, if you take my meaning. And the other lords at court—huh. They might flatter you to your face, but they’d put a dagger in your back if they could. But truly, it’s not a bad thing, having a friend.’
‘Most assuredly it’s not.’ Nevyn’s smile grew broader. ‘After all, we rode all this way so I could visit one of mine.’
Gwairyc met this friend of Nevyn’s not long after. Devaberiel returned on foot to collect Morwen and Evan. Leading their horses and mule, Gwairyc and Nevyn followed them over to the Westfolk camp. Waiting for them about halfway between the encampments were two men. One, a short, slender Deverry man, had deep set dark eyes, oddly large for his face, and grey hair that swept back from his temple in two peaks. He stood with his shoulders slightly hunched, allowing his arms to dangle at his sides. All in all, he reminded Gwairyc strongly of an owl. Nevyn tossed Gwairyc the reins of the horse he’d been leading and hurried to meet him.
‘Aderyn!’ he called out. ‘Ye gods, it’s good to see you.’
‘And it’s good to see you,’ Aderyn answered, smiling. ‘It’s been too long.’
They turned and began walking towards the camp, talking all the while so rapidly that Gwairyc had little idea of what they might be saying. The other fellow came forward and gave Gwairyc a friendly smile. At first Gwairyc thought him one of the Westfolk, because he had hair as pale as moonlight, but although his ears had a definite point to them, they were human-sized. His eyes were human as well, despite their dark violet colour. A half-breed, most likely, Gwairyc thought.
‘I’m Loddlaen,’ he said, ‘Aderyn’s son.’
‘And I’m Gwairyc, Nevyn’s apprentice.’
‘So I thought. Here, I’ll help you with your horses. You’ll be sharing my father’s tent, or so he told me, so let’s unload your gear first.’
‘Very well,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Do you live with your father?’
‘I don’t. I’ve got a small tent of my own.’ Loddlaen smiled, but his eyes seemed to flare with terror. ‘I’m somewhat of a solitary soul.’
As they led the horses across to the Westfolk camp, Gwairyc could look Loddlaen over. He had a thin face and large eyes like his father’s, and during the moments when he was silent, his eyes grew haunted, always open a little too wide, always darting back and forth as if he expected trouble to spring out of the grass. Gwairyc had seen similar expressions before, usually in the eyes of old men who’d lost kin and home to the wars and the reiving of the Cerrgonney rebels. They had looked upon events that no man should ever have seen—their daughters raped, their sons killed, their homes burnt—and they would never forget those sights. Gwairyc assumed that Loddlaen had lived through some great tragedy himself.
The Westfolk stitched their circular shelters together out of deerskins rather than proper canvas. Loddlaen showed him into one of the largest tents. Inside, Gwairyc could clearly see the wood frame under the skins, an ingenious arrangement of crossed sticks that would fold in key places when the time came to travel. Loddlaen helped him pile his gear and Nevyn’s near the door, then escorted him out to the horse herd. Although Gwairyc had often seen Western Hunters, as Deverry men called the Westfolk horses, he’d never come across an entire herd before.
For some moments he stood gazing upon them in utter awe. The smallest of them stood at least eighteen hands high and had deep chests and strong legs. They moved with grace, like ripples on water, long manes and tails flowing, heads held high as they surveyed the shabby-looking pair of mounts and the mule that were being turned into their ranks. They had delicate heads with slender muzzles and large eyes, deep set and dark, that watched the men with some intelligence. And the colours of their coats—silver, dun, rich blood bay, pure glossy black, and of course, the gleaming golden tan that Deverry lords coveted more than real gold—it took Gwairyc’s breath away.
‘They are beautiful, aren’t they?’ Loddlaen said.
‘Truly beautiful,’ Gwairyc said. ‘I can see why old Wffyn’s come all this way to get them.’
‘Indeed. And these are only the geldings and a pair of old bell mares. We never bring the breeding stock to the trading ground.’
‘That’s wise of you. Any Deverry lord would sell his bloodkin for a golden stud and a couple of golden mares.’
Loddlaen laughed, a sharp almost painful bark. ‘True spoken,’ he said. ‘We won’t need to hobble your stock. They’re doubtless glad to be among their own kind, and we’ve got mounted herdsman keeping watch, too.’
In Aderyn’s tent, Nevyn was waiting for them. The old man gave Loddlaen a pleasant smile and held out his hand, which Loddlaen shook as weakly and briefly as possible.
‘Dev’s taken Morwen into his own tent,’ Nevyn remarked. ‘There really isn’t anywhere else for her, I gather, but he wanted to make sure that everyone realized she was a nursemaid and naught more.’
‘Why would anyone have thought otherwise?’ Gwairyc said. ‘Ugly little mutt as she is.’
(Continued)
‘Ye gods!’ Nevyn rolled his eyes in disgust. ‘She’s a human being, lad, not just a face.’
Gwairyc turned to Loddlaen to ask his opinion on the matter, only to find him gone. ‘By the hells!’ Gwairyc said. ‘That lad can move fast and quietly when wants to.’
‘Indeed.’ Nevyn looked abruptly troubled.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Tell me somewhat. What do you think of Loddlaen?’
‘All I can offer you is a first impression.’
‘That’s what I want to hear.’
‘Well and good, then. Somehow he makes me pity him, but I’d never let him into any warband I captained.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’d get himself killed in the first scrap we fought. You can see that in a man’s eyes, when he’s had enough of life but doesn’t know it yet. The trouble is, he usually takes some other lad with him.’
‘I see.’ Nevyn considered for a long moment. ‘Another problem—Tirro. It’s going to take Wffyn a good long time to barter all his trade goods away. Keep an eye on that miserable creature, will you?’
‘Have no fear of that! There’ll be temptation all around him out here.’
Gwairyc had noticed the Westfolk children, who were all as beautiful and graceful as their parents, especially the little lasses. They ran wild through the camp, either in groups or pairs, playing games with various leather balls or running here and there with their packs of mongrel dogs. They seemed to lie down to sleep wherever they felt tired, and he noticed them begging for food from one adult or another whenever they felt hungry. Standing guard over all of them would be impossible, leaving him no choice but to keep his watch over Tirro instead. Sure enough, on their second morning at the trading grounds, a pair of silver-haired little girls with violet eyes came with their mother to look over the iron goods. Gwairyc saw them leaving the Westfolk camp and followed, an impromptu guard. While the mother asked Wffyn questions about some bone-handled knives, Tirro began joking and talking with the lasses, who knew some Deverrian. Eventually he got them to come for a little walk with him. When they were about twenty yards from their mother, Gwairyc strode over and intervened.
‘You!’ Gwairyc pointed at the girls. ‘Go to your mother.’
Their laughter stopped. They stared wide-eyed at Gwairyc for a moment, then glanced at each other.
‘Now!’ Gwairyc pointed at the mother. ‘Go!’
At that they took off running. Gwairyc turned his attention to Tirro. ‘Listen, you! While we’re here, you’d best behave yourself around these little ones.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’ Tirro drew his
scrawny self up to his full height. Gwairyc was tempted to grab him by the throat, but fear of ringworm stopped him.
‘As if you didn’t know, you slimy little loricart,’ Gwairyc said. ‘If I see you make one wrong move towards any little lass, I’ll kill you. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. Do you understand?’
Tirro went dead pale and raised a shaking hand to his throat. He gulped several times, then nodded his agreement, staring all the while at Gwairyc’s face.
‘Good.’ Gwairyc smiled, but grimly. ‘You Da’s not here to buy me off, and I wouldn’t take one cursed copper from him even if he was.’
Tirro nodded again. He reminded Gwairyc so strongly of a rat paralysed by a ferret’s gaze that Gwairyc was tempted to slit his throat and be done with him there and then. As if he read the thought Tirro yelped and broke, racing off towards the caravan’s tents. Good, Gwairyc thought. If he doesn’t fear the wrath of the gods, at least I’ve got him to fear mine.
‘What’s all this about the merchant’s apprentice?’ Aderyn said. ‘One of the women was down at the trading grounds this morning, and she told me that your Gwairyc seems to hate the lad.’
‘There’s good reason for it,’ Nevyn said, ‘but I gather that Gwarro has the situation well in hand. Little Tirro is entirely too fond of very young lasses.’
Aderyn stared, speechless for a long moment.
‘I doubt if anyone among the Westfolk shares that vice,’ Nevyn went on.
‘Not that I’ve heard of.’ Aderyn paused to make a sour face. ‘We value our offspring far too highly.’
‘As well you should. It does happen now and again in Deverry, especially down in Cerrmor. It’s a poisoned legacy from the Dawntime. The ancient Rhwmanes and Greggyns saw naught wrong with such nasty practices. It’s no wonder that our ancestors rebelled against their swinish ways.’
‘Just so.’ Aderyn shook his head sadly. ‘It’s a terrible thing for someone to force himself upon a child. They can’t defend themselves against someone twice their size.’
‘True spoken, but that’s not the worst of it, of course.’
‘Indeed? Um, I don’t recall the subject ever coming up during my apprenticeship.’ Aderyn smiled with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘And it gladdens my heart, too, that we never saw any such thing on our travels.’
‘Quite so,’ Nevyn said. ‘Well, you see, it’s the balance of etheric forces, or the complete lack of the balance, I should say, that should take place between two lovers. A child can’t possibly absorb or return any of the etheric energies released by sexual acts. So those floods of magnetic force burn the astral body the way fire will burn a child’s slender little fingers, and they leave the same sort of scars—deep ones, for life.’
‘Ah. It’s even more loathsome than I thought, then.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘I’d best warn everybody.’
‘I wonder about that.’ Nevyn hesitated, thinking. ‘If I thought one child here would suffer the slightest harm, I’d do the telling myself, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Tirro’s terrified of Gwairyc, and with very good reason. Gwarro’s threatened to kill him at the least sign of trouble.’
‘I’ll wager that Gwairyc would, too, without a moment’s thought.’
‘He would indeed, and Tirro knows it. I find this odd of me, but I rather pity Tirro.’
‘Ye gods, how could you? Why?’
‘Haven’t you noticed the way he grovels the moment a grown man says a harsh word to him? He’s always flattering the men around him, too, as if he’s frightened and will do anything to propitiate them. I suspect that when he was young, someone did foul things to him. As long as he works no harm, I’d rather he not be humiliated.’
‘Humiliation might be the best physick for his disease.’
‘Not truly. With some men, especially the honour-bound, being shamed is their worst fear. Prince Mael made a good comment about that in one of his books: ‘the threat of shame turns an honour-bound man into a paragon of virtue.’ With weak souls, though, humiliation drives them to worse evils. They’ll do anything for revenge, anything to make themselves feel powerful and beyond humiliating again.’
‘I’d not thought of it that way.’ Aderyn was silent for some moments. ‘Tirro strikes me as a very weak soul indeed.’
‘He strikes me the same. Besides, he’ll be leaving soon.’
‘True spoken. Well, I won’t say anything to the alar unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll keep an eye on him myself, though, just in case he outfoxes Gwairyc.’
Nevyn and Aderyn had spent the afternoon strolling along a stream away from camp. They’d been discussing a far more pleasant subject than Tirro, namely Aderyn’s attempt to restore the lost dweomer system of the seven cities, those fabled places in the far western mountains where the Westfolk’s ancestors had lived in civilized splendour. When the Horsekin swept down from the north, destroying everything they found, the refugees who managed to reach safety on the plains had been common folk, mostly farmers and herders. Only a handful of learned persons had come with them, and of those, only a few had studied dweomer. When Aderyn had come to the Westlands, some hundreds of years earlier, he had found dweomer workers who knew only a tattered body of lore, complete in a few areas but utterly torn and gone in others.
‘Still,’ Nevyn told Aderyn that afternoon, ‘you’ve done a truly impressive job of bringing together the fragments. It’s a fine piece of work.’
Aderyn blushed scarlet, and for a brief moment, despite his silver hair and deeply lined face, he looked like the young apprentice Nevyn remembered so well. ‘My thanks,’ he said at last. ‘I’m still missing some important elements at the core, but at least I can teach what we have. The more who learn it, and the more students who write it down, the better chance we’ll have of preserving it.’
Their stroll had taken them close to the Westfolk tents. A soft evening breeze brought them the smell of roasting lamb. In an unspoken understanding, they began walking briskly back. Even the greatest dweomerworkers grow hungry at dinnertime. At the camp’s edge, they came across Evan, playing with a little lad about his own age. The two children were sitting on a stretch of grass and rolling a leather ball back and forth. Morwen stood nearby, smiling a little as she watched them. The lads were giggling and chattering in Deverrian and Elvish both.
‘It won’t take Ebañy long to learn our language,’ Aderyn said. ‘He’s just at the proper age.’
‘So he is, if you mean Evan.’
‘I do. Ebañy’s as close a name to his old one as Devaberiel could think up. It means ‘winter wind’, a bit harsh, mayhap, but he recognizes it as his name already.’
Morwen looked up and saw Nevyn, then waved to him and smiled. Nevyn strolled over to chat with her, but before he could say a word, a swarm of older boys came racing up to the two little ones. Most of them ran right by, but a lad with night-dark hair and pale yellow eyes gave the ball a good kick, sending it flying far away among the tents. Both little ones began to cry.
‘You!’ Morwen reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. ‘Bring that back!’
For someone so small, she was remarkably strong, a legacy of all those hard years of farm work. The lad choked on the neckline of his own tunic, and, gasping, stopped in his tracks. Morwen gave him a good shake, then let him go.
‘Bring the ball back,’ she said. ‘Look! You’ve made them cry.’
‘Huh!’ The boy wrinkled his nose at her. ‘So what? One of them’s a stinking Round-ear brat, and you’re ugly as a dead frog.’
Morwen hauled off and hit him so hard across the face that he staggered. He yelped and flung up both hands to defend himself as Morwen closed in, swinging again, smacking him even harder. Blood spurted from his nose and upper lip.
‘Morri, stop it!’ Nevyn made a grab at her, but she danced away from him. He caught a good look at her face and saw that her eyes had turned as blank as any berserker’s.
With a shriek the boy�
�s mother came running, yelling in Elvish, pointing at Morwen and gesturing to Aderyn, who yelled back, apparently trying to calm the mother down while Nevyn dealt with Morwen, though why he thought screaming at the top of his lungs would be calming was beyond Nevyn’s power to guess. He made another futile grab at Morwen just as the outraged mother stepped in between her and the weeping boy. She raised a hand to slap back, and she was easily a foot taller than Morwen.
In an odd sort of calm Morwen ducked the slap, then charged, striking up from below with a fist and hitting the Westfolk woman precisely on the point of her chin. The woman staggered once and dropped to the ground. Morwen stepped back and came to herself. She’d woken from the berserker fit, which drew its power, Nevyn knew, from deep memories of this soul’s earlier lives. She clasped both hands over her mouth and stared at the prostrate woman. Aderyn flung himself down on his knees next to the victim, who groaned and turned over onto her back.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Aderyn said in Deverrian. ‘But let’s not move her just yet.’
More shrieks, more screaming—the entire camp seemed to have come running to watch. Both little boys were weeping in terror. Fortunately, the mother of Evan’s playmate was right at hand. She scooped up her child, paused to hurl insults at the prostrate elven woman on the ground, then carried her son away. Nevyn started to fetch Evan, but Loddlaen came trotting over and picked the boy up.
‘Let me, Wise One,’ Loddlaen said. ‘I’ll get Morwen out of here.’
‘My thanks,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’d best stay and soothe the situation.’
‘Oh, don’t let it vex you.’ Loddlaen settled Evan on one hip. ‘Doubtless the bitch and her pup both deserved it.’ He grabbed Morwen’s arm with his free hand and strode off, leading her away.
Utterly speechless, Nevyn stood staring after them. From behind him he heard someone laughing. He turned to see Gwairyc, his hands on his hips, shaking his head in amusement.
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