A Time of Omens (34 page)

“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.

“Apprenticeship 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 noble-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 rushing 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 lordship’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 noble 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 noble-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 embarrassed 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
, 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 noble-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 noble-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 gods!”

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?”

“Shush! 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 passable 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 Nobility
, it does not become a noble-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 niggardly old bastard 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 noble 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 shirt 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 ass 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 gods 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 lordship 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.