A Time Of Omens Part 22

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 gra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 gra.s.s 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 whatever 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.

"Apprentices.h.i.+p 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 n.o.ble-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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 lords.h.i.+p'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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble-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 embarra.s.sed 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 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 n.o.ble-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 n.o.ble-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 G.o.ds!"

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?"

"Shus.h.!.+ 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 pa.s.sable 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 Seer says, in the book called On n.o.bility On n.o.bility, it does not become a n.o.ble-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 n.i.g.g.ardly old b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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.

On the other side of the bridge, Tewdyr, all red beard and scowls, waited with the remaining men of his warband and another n.o.ble lord with twenty-five men of his own. The two heralds walked their horses onto the middle of the bridge and conferred with a flurry of bows. A sack of coin changed hands; Erddyr's herald counted it carefully, then brought it back to his lord. With a grin, Erddyr slipped it inside his s.h.i.+rt and yelled at his men to let the prisoners through. Head held high, Lord Dwyn led his twenty men across to his father's side.

"Good," Renydd said. "Now we can get on with the real sport."

Back at the dun, the wooden carts were drawn up in the ward. Like ants bringing crumbs to a nest, a line of servants hurried back and forth to pile them up with grain and supplies. On the morrow, the warbands would be riding to help hold the siege at Lord Adry's dun.

"This Comerr's got a couple of hundred men at the siege," Rhodry told Yraen. "And we'll be bringing him eighty more. They tell me that Adry's got about ninety men shut in with him, so it all depends on how many Tewdyr and his other allies can raise. Huh-I'll wager Tewdyr's going to put up a good fight now. The old miser's got a thorn up his a.s.s good and proper."

"Did you see how the herald counted that coin? I'll wager Erddyr ordered him to do it."

"So do I. Most heralds have more courtesy than that."

Although Rhodry chattered on, Yraen barely heard the rest of it. Now that the war was finally upon them, he felt his own secret rising in his mind to turn him cold. Even though he'd won many a tournament down in Dun Deverry, even though the royal weaponmasters all proclaimed him one of the finest students they'd ever had, he'd never ridden to a real battle, not once in his young life. Considering the peaceful state of the kingdom's heartland, it was unlikely that he ever would have done so, either, if he'd rested content with his position in life as a pampered minor prince of the blood royal. The very safety and luxury of his life had always seemed shameful to him, a goad that had driven him out, seeking the long road and battle glory. Never once, until this icy moment in Lord Erddyr's great hall, had he considered that he might be frightened when the chance for that glory finally presented itself.

Yet, that evening it seemed his Wyrd was mocking him. Erddyr, of course, had to leave a fort guard behind him. He chose a few of the oldest and less fit men in the war-band, then told his men to dice and let the G.o.ds decide the rest of the roster. Yraen lost. When his dice came up low, he stared at them for a long while in stunned disbelief, then cursed with every foul oath he could remember. What was this? Was he doomed to spend his entire life safe behind walls no matter how hard he tried to break out? All at once he realized that Erddyr and Renydd were both laughing at him.

"No one can say you lack mettle, silver dagger," Erddyr said. "But if I make an exception for you, I'll have to make exceptions for others, and then what's the wretched use of dicing at all? Fort guard it is for you!"

"As his lords.h.i.+p commands," Yraen said. "But I just can't believe my rotten luck."

Down in southern Pyrdon, the crop of winter wheat had already sprouted. A feathery green dusted the fields bordering the river that Dallandra found when she appeared in the world of men. Judging from the direction of the sun as well as her scant knowledge of the country, the river seemed to lead northeast into the hills. She was well prepared for her journey, with Deverry clothes, a fine horse, and every piece of gear she might need-all stolen, a bit here and there from this town or that, by Evandar's folk. Her only salve for her raw conscience was Evandar's promise that they'd give it all back again when she was done with it. At her suggestion, they'd outfitted her as if she were Jill, the only model she had for a woman alone on the Deverry roads.

Leading a pack mule, laden with herbs and medicines, she rode past tidy farmsteads where aspens and poplars quivered with their first green buds. Behind the earthen walls, skinny white cattle with rusty-red ears chewed sour hay while they longed for meadows. In a lazy curve of the river, she found a town, some fifty round wooden houses scattered around an open square and set off from one another by greening poplar trees, where a gaggle of women in long blue dresses leaned onto their water buckets and gossiped at the stone well. Before they noticed her, she dismounted, gathering her nerve and wondering if Evandar's magic would truly hold against human eyes. When she looked at her own hands or her reflection in water, she saw her usual elven self, but he had a.s.sured her that others would see an old, white-haired human woman and nothing more.

Clucking to her horse and mule, she gathered her courage and walked over.

"Good morrow," she said. "Is there a tavern in this town?"

"There is, good dame. Right over there." A young woman smiled at her. "I don't mean to be rude, but how are you faring, traveling the roads all alone, and at your age, too?"

"Oh, I'm like an old hen, too tough even for soup."

The women all laughed pleasantly and nodded to themselves, as if wis.h.i.+ng for a life as long for themselves. Feeling a good bit more sanguine about her ruse, Dallandra led her stock across the village square to the tavern. In a muddy side yard she found the tie rail, then went in. The small, well-scrubbed tavern room was empty except for the tavernman himself, a young, dark-haired fellow with a big linen ap.r.o.n wrapped around his s.h.i.+rt and brigga.

"Good morrow, good herbwoman," he said. "Can I fetch you a tankard?"

"Of dark, and draw one for yourself and join me."

They carried their ale to a table by an open window to sit in the pale afternoon sun.

"I was thinking of riding up into the hills to gather fresh medicines," Dallandra said. "But a peddler I met on the road warned me about a blood feud brewing."

"Indeed?" The tavernman had a sip of ale and considered the problem. "Now, a fortnight past, we had a merchant come in with fresh-sheared fleece for the local weaver. He was from the hills to the east of here, and he was fair troubled, he was, about a feud in his lord's lands. Lord Adry, the name was. The wool merchant was telling me that the whole countryside could go up in a war just like tinder, he says, just like dry tinder in a hearth."

"Sounds bad, truly. But I've been looking for someone, and a feud would draw him the way mead draws flies. He's a silver dagger, an Eldidd man, dark hair with a streak of gray in it, blue eyes, the Eldidd way of speaking. Seen anyone like that through here?"

"I haven't, no, but if he's ridden this way, Lord Adry's feud is where you'll find him."

The trouble was, of course, that Dallandra had no idea exactly which way Rhodry had ridden. As far as Evandar had been able to tell from his scrying, the silver dagger was somewhere in this part of Pyrdon, but her main focus was the bone whistle, which spent most of its time in the dark of Rhodry's saddlebags. She was reduced, therefore, to asking round for information like any ordinary soul.

When she left the village, Dallandra crossed the river on a rickety wooden bridge and headed east for the hills and Lord Adry's dangerous feud. She camped that night in a greening meadow by a small stream, where she could water her horse and mule and tether them out to graze. From a nearby farmhouse she bought half a loaf of bread and an armful of wood for a campfire. Once it was dark, she built a fire without bothering to use kindling, called on the Wildfolk of Fire, and lit the logs with a wave of her hand.

Dallandra called up a memory image of the bone whistle, focused it sharply, and let her mind range over the Inner Lands to pick up its trail. She was in luck. All at once, in a swirl of flames, she saw not a memory, but a vision of the thing, lying in Rhodry's hands. He was showing it round to a circle of men standing near a campfire. When she expanded the vision, using Rhodry's eyes as her own, she saw that the campfire was only one of many, spread out in a meadow crowded with soldiers and horses, arranged in a wide arc of a circle. In the center of that circle she could just make out the dark rise of a towered dun. So Rhodry had found himself a hire, indeed, and seemed to be in the midst of a siege army as well. Unfortunately, Dallandra had no idea of where he might be, other than in a meadow in what seemed like hill country-a description that could apply to hundreds of miles of territory.

Irritably she broke the vision and got up to pace back and forth in front of the dying fire. So far, the tavernman's vague report of Lord Adry's feud was the only clue she had, but if all the lords in this part of the province were about to be drawn into it, Rhodry could be riding for any one of ten different men. At least a siege will keep him put in one place, she thought, and by the G.o.ds of both my people and of men, everyone for miles around will be talking about the thing!

After Lord Erddyr led his men out, his wife took over the command of the dun and the fort guard. Lady Melynda, a stout woman, was as gray as her husband, with quick-humored blue eyes. Whenever she smiled, she kept her lips tight together, a gesture that made her seem supercilious. When Yraen got to know the lady better, he realized that Melynda was simply missing the teeth in the front of her mouth and hated to show it. During the evening, the lady sat at the head of the table of honor, with her two serving women to either side of her. Across the great hall, the fort guard ate quietly, minding their manners in deference to the lady. The days pa.s.sed as slowly and silently as water running in a full stream, while the fort guard divided their time between keeping watch on the walls and exercising their horses, riding round and round the dun. Every now and then they would go perhaps a quarter of a mile down the main road, then gallop back fast for a bit of excitement.

After three days, the first messenger rode in, told Lady Melynda that the siege was going quietly, then rode out that same night on a fresh horse. The lady began an elaborate piece of needlework-a set of bed hangings, covered with interlaced tendrils and the red rose blazon of her husband's clan. Up at the honor table, she and her serving women marked out the vast stretches of linen in silence and sewed on them grimly and steadily for hours at a time. Yraen found himself thinking about his mother, even though he was ashamed of himself for doing it, and her own needlework projects, so like the Lady Melynda's, that helped her put griefs and disappointments aside. Most likely she'd started some new bed hangings or suchlike when the chamberlain had reported him gone.

On the fifth day, Rhodry rode back to the dun as Erddyr's messenger. He was so clean and well-shaven that Yraen and everyone else could figure out that the siege was dragging on without incident. While he ate a hasty meal at one of the riders' tables, the fort guard cl.u.s.tered round him and asked for news. There was none.

"Sieges are always tedious," Rhodry said. "I wonder what's happened to old Tewdyr and his lads?"

"Gathering allies, most like." Yraen hoped that he was saying something knowledgeable. "Doesn't Erddyr have any spies?"

"Probably, but no one tells me that sort of thing."

The fort guard all sighed in agreement.