“Rori?” Angmar’s voice, coming toward him. “Rori, be you there?”
His eyes filled with tears. He wiped them away on the back of his hand.
“I am,” he called out. “Do they need me in the great hall?”
“They do. To agree to the settling of the debt.”
When Rhodry picked his way through the rocks and joined her, she smiled at him, but so blandly that he knew she wished nothing of any import said aloud. He caught her hand and squeezed it.
“We’d best go back then, my lady.”
“So we should, my lord.”
Hand in hand openly they returned to the great hall, where a smiling Garin was standing by the hearth while Otho, Mic, and Enj sat drinking at the table. From the way Otho was belting the ale back, Rhodry assumed that the settlement had turned out high. With one last clasp of his hand, Angmar left him and went to her usual chair.
“Well, envoy,” Rhodry said. “And does the settlement strike you as fair?”
“It does, though Otho may have other feelings.” Garin paused for a grin. “There’s the quittance fee, of course, for the assumption of clan debt by the heir of Haen Marn, and then the indemnity we pay his mother, in case some evil thing befalls him, and the replenishment of Haen Marn’s stores for the provisioning of this expedition. All in all, it’ll amount to a nice pair of matched gemstones for the lady of Haen Marn to tuck away safelike. However, since Enj here insists that it’s best if you and he go alone, then Otho’s free of the indemnity for young Mic, so he’ll save a fair bit there.”
When Rhodry glanced at Mic, he found the lad on the edge of tears.
“Ah now, here, Mic, if you go and prentice yourself to Garin, there’ll be more excitements coming your way.”
“So the envoy and Uncle Otho say.”
“It truly be for the best,” Enj broke in. “Where we’ll be going, Rori, it’s too long a road to carry even half of what we’ll be needing upon it. Otho did tell me that you’ve got a good hand with a bow, and I’ve one with the fishing, but if the game be scant, feeding four or even three—” He shrugged to show the uncertainty of it.
Mic got up and stomped out of the hall.
“Lin Serr owes Gwerbret Cadmar a contingent of axmen,” Garin said and very softly. “I think me our Mic’s going to have more excitement than he’ll like, and soon.”
“No doubt we all will.” Rhodry felt suddenly profoundly weary. “Well, Otho, on the contingency that these fees he paid over promptly to Haen Marn, I hereby release you from your life’s debt to me in front of these witnesses.”
“Done then.” With a sigh Otho stood up to shake hands. “And I agree. When we return with the provisions, and that’ll be as fast as we can walk back and walk here again, the lady shall have her pick of the best gems I own.”
“And I’ll make sure he brings the best, too,” Garin remarked to Angmar. “I can’t return myself, but a man I trust will.”
“I do have faith in that, envoy, for always have you dealt fairly with me and mine.” She glanced at Enj. “You’ve done well.”
After the evening meal, while Angmar tended her daughter and the envoy and his party gathered provisions for their trek home, Rhodry and Enj walked by the lake. The last light, glancing between hills, sent shades of pale gold and faint color onto the quiet water of the shallows, while across by the farther shore, the mists were rising and gathering in the coves.
“One thing worries me,” Rhodry said. “Your mother’s safety while we’re gone. I’ve got enemies who might track me here, and if they do, they’re dangerous. Does Haen Marn have vassals or allies round here that might owe you men?”
Enj laughed.
“There be no other dun or settlement round here for miles and miles. But Haen Marn won’t be in any danger.”
“Are you sure? These enemies are utterly ruthless, not human nor dwarven, either.”
“Any enemy has to find a dun before they can be taking it, human or not.”
“Well, true spoken, but they’ll have powerful dweomer of their own on their side, powerful beyond anything I’ve ever seen before, certainly.”
Enj considered. Rhodry could just see him frowning down at the sand.
“I’ll just be going to say a good night to my sister,” he said at last. “And I’ll tell my mam what you’ve just told me.
Sometime later, Rhodry was sitting drinking with the dwarves when Angmar appeared at the door of the great hall. At her beckon he left them and joined her outside in the flickering spill of candlelight. By then the night wind had come up, sighing and snuffling round like some gigantic hound between the crooked trees.
“Rori, I would not have you worry about me and mine.”
“How can I not? I’d rather turn myself over to my enemies and be done with it than bring the slightest harm to you.”
“And would I not do the same for you?”
For a moment they stared at each other on the edge of anger. It was the closest they had ever come to admitting that their mutual comfort had turned to love. All at once she shook her head and smiled with a wry twist of her mouth.
“Haen Marn protects its own,” she said. “I mayn’t say how, because in part I know not how, but have no fear of it.”
“Well, then, that gladdens my heart.”
“I suppose it gladdens mine, but—”
“But what? These are evil times, my lady, and you need a shield over you.”
“No doubt.” Her voice shook. “But it be a baleful thing, the hefting of this shield. Pray, Rori, pray that never it be needful.”
Angmar turned and strode off, heading back to the tower. Later, when they were together in their bedchamber, neither mentioned his leaving at all.
At the morrow dawn Garin, Mic, and Otho carried their gear down to the boathouse. While the boatmen fussed round, preparing for the effort of not so much getting them out as getting back in again themselves, Rhodry stood on the jetty with the three dwarves from Lin Serr. Although a feeble wind blew, the day promised suffocating heat.
“You won’t be able to travel far today,” Rhodry remarked.
“Not if it’s like this outside,” Garin said drily. “Who knows if it will be or not?”
“Well, truly. At least most of your way will be down-hill.”
“Just so, just so.”
Leaving Mic and Otho to load their gear into the boat, Garin led Rhodry out to the end of the jetty. For a moment they stood watching the waves lapping round the pilings.
“I’ll wish you the best luck in the world, Rori,” Garin said at last. “I wish I could believe that you won’t need it.”
“My thanks. And I’ll wish you a goodly share of the same, my friend. In fact, I’ve been thinking. I should do more for you than wish luck.”
“If the Horsekin are on the move, we’ll all need a fair bit more than luck.” Garin glanced at the sky. “I wouldn’t mind having more faith in those gods you people are always swearing by.”
“Neither would I.” Rhodry reached into his shirt and pulled Othara’s talisman free. “Take this, will you?”
“What? And leave you exposed to enemy eyes? We don’t even need the thing!”
“You do, at that. Weren’t you the one who passed an ax through Alshandra’s back on the road to Lin Serr?”
Garin whistled sharply under his breath.
“I’d put that out of my mind, like,” Garin said. “Stupid of me.”
“For Othara’s sake alone, I’d have you take this stone.”
Garin hesitated, and it seemed for a moment that he was about to reach for the chunk of blue; then he shook his head no.
“From everything that Jill said back in Cengarn, and the loremasters said in Lin Serr, it’s on the important side, for all of us, like, to get this dragon found. There are other envoys, if worse comes to worst.”
“But I—”
“Noble gestures are all very well, but it’s the winning of this war that’s important.” Garin paused for a grin
. “Silver dagger.”
Rhodry smiled, more than a little ruefully, and settled the talisman back inside his shirt again.
“Besides,” Garin went on. “Without you along, we dwarves can travel fast, and we can travel sneaky, like, too. I’ve been warned, and for that I thank you, so fear not. This hag of an Alshandra will have a good job of it, finding us, dweomer or no. Even Otho would wager a nice bit of coin on her failing.”
“Well and good, then.”
“Now as for you, will you be leaving today?”
“We won’t, though as soon as we can. We need to ask Avain’s help, and there’s no rushing the lass.”
Behind them the helmsman sang out in Dwarvish. When Garin held out his hand, Rhodry clasped it,
“May we meet again,” Rhodry said. “But don’t wager coin on that.”
Garin merely nodded in a grim sort of way and strode off down the jetty to board. Rhodry waved as the boat pulled away, then turned and walked back to the island rather than watch them go.
Over the next few days Rhodry and Enj spent much time working over their gear, testing ropes, greasing canvas, drying beef and suchlike, and even more sitting with Avain in her tower room. She would fold Rhodry’s ring in one hand as she peered into her basin, and judging from her flood of words, she found the dragon easily so long as she was clutching its name. As she talked, Enj would write the occasional word on a waxed tablet—landmarks, he told Rhodry, some he knew, some he didn’t.
“You can’t expect her to judge the directions things lie, nor the distances between them, but when she speaks of a rock face that looks like grains of wheat, I do know that place. There be others, like this valley she calls the ‘Gods’ Soup Bowl,’ that never have I seen in my born days. But at least I know which way to head, and bit by bit we’ll piece out our route in our going.”
“With more than a little luck?”
“Just so.”
“It’s a cursed useful thing you can read and write.”
“My mam saw to it that I was taught letters, both in Dwarvish and in the language of men. They did send me to Lin Serr, when I were but a lad, to learn where there be priests and books. I lodged with Envoy Garin, you see, which is why I can speak your tongue a fair bit, or better than my mother, at least, for all that she learned what she knows of it from her own mother, down in the women’s quarters.”
During these last few days Rhodry and Angmar both worked hardest at pretending that their time together would last an eternity. When they were together during the day, they spoke mostly of the small doings of the island, as if nothing of more import than a caught fish or a servant’s twisted ankle existed in the world. Yet at night, they made love with a desperate greed, and despite the hot weather, they slept clasped in each other’s arms.
In the end, of course, the last morning came, a hot, dry dawn, good traveling weather and a betrayal. Rhodry woke and slipped out of bed without waking her to sit in the window seat and watch the brightening sky while he cursed his Wyrd. In a few moments, though, she felt him gone and woke, sitting up, yawning and smiling, glancing his way, letting the smile fade when she saw the sun outside. She got up and joined him, sitting down at an angle so they could see each other’s faces.
“Think you that the pair of you will find this beast?”
“Enj swears he will, now that he knows where to look, and I’ll take his word for it. Your son knows more about such things than your man does.”
“It be lairing north, he did tell me.”
“It does, and so if we succeed, we’ll be coming back this way.”
She smiled a little at that, hesitating, speaking again finally in a small voice.
“And after that? I know it be needful for you to leave again, as soon as ever you can.”
“It is, but I don’t want to go.”
“Ah. That were what I did wonder.”
They shared a brief smile that made her look as weary as he felt. The wind sighed through the open window with a damp scent of pine.
“It be not too likely that ever you’ll return that second time,” she said at length.
“It’s not likely that I’ll live to return.”
She swung her head round to stare at him, her lips half-parted.
“Forgive me. I should just hold my tongue,”
“Nah nah nah, Rori, what think you I be, some lass to live on false hope and dreams? This thing you speak of, the dweomer war, belt as bad as all that?”
“It is, and it’s only beginning. Angmar, please, believe me. If I thought there was any sound chance at all that I could return to you and Haen Marn, then I’d promise you I would.”
“It means much, knowing that. I’ll remember you saying this thing, when I think of you.”
“Ah, ye gods, don’t think of me! I’ll beg you: forget me the moment I’m gone. Find yourself another man, and don’t trouble your heart over me for one moment more.”
“In this we be alike, Rori. I will not promise a thing I cannot fulfill.”
When he held out his hand, she took it. He clasped her fingers tight in his, and for a long time they sat together, looking out over the lake without speaking, until they heard Enj calling to them from what seemed like an infinity away.
All through their last meal together her calm held, and seeing her strong he could be so as well. Even when he kissed her farewell, they smiled at each other and spoke of little things. But when the boat carrying him pulled away, turning toward the north shore of the lake, he looked back and saw her standing at the very end of the pier, doubled over with grief. He tossed back his head and keened, an animal howl of heartache that echoed rounds the lake louder than the thrumming of the brass gong.
At about the time Rhodry and Enj were taking ship to leave Haen Marn, Dallandra looked up through the bars of her cage in the Lands and saw that the tedious afternoon of her capture was still refusing to drag itself toward evening. She realized another thing as well, however, that she was finally beginning to recover her full complement of wits after the morning’s ordeal. She sat up cross-legged in the middle of her cage, sipped the water her captors had given her, and watched the camp below. In his cage, flat on the ground, the page was pacing back and forth for the few steps allowed him, either way.
Round the fire Lord Vulpine’s men had spent the past hour or so drinking, passing round big skins of whatever liquor it was that their leader had left them and guzzling the stuff so fast that it darkened their green tunics. By now the ursine fellows were stretched out snoring again, the human and the wolf warriors were singing together, and the vulpine contingent stared into the flames and smiled to themselves. In a little while they’d all be drunk.
Or they would have been if it weren’t for the herald, who was cold sober and sitting on the edge of the group, keeping a sharp eye on the guards and the prisoners alike. He sat with his staff across his knees, ready to poke or slap the warriors sober, and he kept up a running commentary of mingled disgust and warning, which they mostly ignored. If she’d been able to speak openly, Dalla suspected that she could have talked the old creature round to her side. He had some shreds of honor and decency, at least, some kernel of feeling for other souls that she could use as a counter to his fear of Lord Vulpine. But if she tried, the warband would doubtless take steps to silence her and the herald both.
When she stretched her sore arms above her head, the cage swung, creaking. The herald was on his feet like a shot, waggling the staff at her.
“Now don’t you go trying anything,” he snapped. “You just stay where you are.”
“I might as well. Now that I’ve disarmed your lord’s trap, my lord Evandar will doubtless come rescue me soon enough.”
The herald moaned and trembled his wattles so violently that she realized her random arrow had struck a target.
“The army’s gone off now, isn’t it? Where were they hiding? Somewhere nearby, I imagine, lying in ambuscade among the trees.”
The herald merely stared at her wit
h rheumy eyes. Those of the warband still awake had fallen silent to listen. The page as well stood clutching the bars of his cage and looking up at her with hopeful eyes.
“Evandar will come marching in here with his entire host, I should imagine,” Dallandra went on. “Hundreds and hundreds of them, armed and mailed, swords gleaming, and spears, too, all sharp and ready to cut you all into mincemeat. Oh, the lad and I will laugh to see it, your blood soaking into the ground, your heads all smashed in and bleeding, your guts hanging out, and all of you screaming for mercy and writhing on the ground.”
With sleepy grunts the ursine fellows sat up, scratching themselves and looking round baffled.
“You’re going to die,” Dallandra called to them. “My lord’s on his way, and he’s going to kill you all.”
They leapt to their feet, grabbing for weapons.
“Hold your tongue!” the herald screeched. “Don’t listen to her! Our lord would never let such a thing happen.”
“Hah! He’s not here to protect you,” Dalla said. “He’s gone off and left you as sacrifices to his brother’s wrath. It might go easier for him that way. Maybe by the time Evandar’s done torturing you, he’ll have a bit of mercy for your lord, Old Dog Nose himself.”
They stared, as ensorcelled by her tale as small children by a bard when he condescends to amuse them for an hour. Dallandra was honestly shocked that her crude and clumsy ruse was working; then she remembered that they had no mind in any real sense of that word, no reason, no logic, no introspection, no ability to analyze a situation or tale. She did her best to leer.
“I’m going to help him torture you. Let’s see. I shall heat a bronze knife in that fire and then lay the blade upon your flesh. It’ll stink when the metal sears you and scorches all your fur away.”
The wolf warrior screeched.
“Hold your tongue!” This time the herald’s voice wavered badly. “You lie, elven bitch.”
Days of Blood and Fire Page 41