A Time of Omens (53 page)

Carra let go of lightning’s collar and sat down, feeling a little sick as she realized the truth. Someone had just tried to kill her, and she didn’t even know why.

Thanks to the support of his vassals, Gwerbret Cadmar led out close to two hundred men that morning, far too many to assemble in the ward of his dun. A long swirl of men and horses spread out through the streets of Cengarn, made their way out several different gates, then re-formed into a warband down on the plain at the base of the city’s hills. Although Rhodry and Yraen, silver daggers as they were, expected to ride at the very rear and breathe the army’s dust, one of the gwerbret’s own men sought them out and grudgingly informed them that they were to ride with his grace.

“It’s because of the sorceress, you see. She told our lord that you were the only one who amid follow her directions. Cursed if I know what she meant by that.”

“No more do I,” Rhodry said. “Jill has a fine hand with a riddle, I must say, and so blasted early in the morning, too.”

Yet soon enough he found the answer. They followed the rider up to the head of the line of march, where the gwerbret and his lords were sitting on horseback and conferring in low voices. Although Cadmar acknowledged them with a smile and a nod of his head, the two lords, Matyc and Gwinardd, merely looked sour. While they waited for the gwerbret to have time to speak to them, Rhodry glanced idly around, sizing up the men in the warbands. They all had good horses, good weapons, and here and there he spotted men with the confident air of veterans. Off to one side, waiting on horseback for the gwerbret’s orders, sat Dar and his archers, each man with his unstrung longbow tucked under his right leg like a javelin and his short, curved hunting bow close at hand on his saddle peak. Rhodry waved to Dar, happened to glance at the sky, and swore aloud. Hovering above was an enormous bird with the silhouette of a hawk but, as far as he could tell by squinting into a bright morning, of a pale silvery color. It also seemed to be carrying something in its talons, a sack, perhaps, of some sort. As he watched it circled and began to drift off toward the west. With a cold certainty he knew that Jill had mastered elven dweomer as well as the lore proper to humankind.

“Your Grace? Your pardon for this interruption, but we’re to ride west. Our guide’s just arrived.”

“Um, indeed?” Cadmar looked up automatically and saw the bird, hovering on the wind some distance off, too far for his human vision to judge its size. “What’s that? A trained falcon or suchlike?”

“Just so, Your Grace. Jill always did have a way with animals. No doubt she’s riding off somewhere with its lure. Or somewhat like that, anyway.”

“Whatever she thinks fit. Well, then, let’s ride. My lords, to the west!”

All that morning the hawk led them onward. At times she circled directly overhead, but only for brief moments, as if Jill were ensuring that she had Rhodry’s attention. Most of the time it kept so far off that only elven eyes could spot it, but always, in loops and lazy wind drifts, it
moved steadily west and down, as the hills round Cengarn fell toward the high plains. Gradually the terrain opened up to rolling hills, scattered with trees at the crests and thick with underbrush in the shallow valleys between. It was good country for bandits, Rhodry thought. They could hide their camps and their loot in among the scrubby brush, keep guards posted on the open crests, and send scouts along them, too, when they wanted to make a raid. He was blasted glad, he decided, that the gwerbret and his men had dweomer on their side in this little game of hide and seek.

As they rode, he had a chance to study the two lords riding just ahead with the gwerbret Gwinardd of Brin Coc was no more than nineteen, come to the lordship just last year, or so the dun gossip said, on the death of his father from a fever. Brown-haired and bland, he seemed neither bright nor stupid, an ordinary sort of fellow who was obviously devoted to the gwerbret. Matyc of Dun Mawrvelin was another sort entirely. There might well have been some elven blood in his clan’s veins, because his hair was a moonlight-pale blond, and his eyes a steel-gray, but he had none of that race’s openness or humor. His face, in fact, reminded Rhodry of a mask carved from wood. All day long, he rarely frowned and never smiled, merely seemed to watch and listen to everything around him from some great distance away. Even when the gwerbret spoke directly to him, he answered briefly—always polite, to be sure—merely thrifty to a fault with his words.

Once, when the lords had drifted a fair bit ahead, Rhodry had a chance at a word with Yraen.

“What do you think of Matyc?”

“Not much.”

“Keep your eye on him, will you? There’s just somewhat about him that makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Just how loyal he is to our grace.”

Yraen’s eyes widened with questions, but since the lords ahead had paused to let their men catch up with them, he couldn’t ask them.

There were still some four hours left in the day when the warbands reached the crest of a hill fringed with tall beeches. Rhodry saw the hawk circle round once, then dip
lazily down to disappear into a scrubby stand of hazels in the valley below.

“My lord?” he called out. “Jill seems to want us to stop here. There’s water for a camp. Shall I ride on down and see if she’s there?”

“Do that, silver dagger. We’ll wait here for your signal.”

Rhodry dismounted, tossed his reins up to Yraen, then strode on downhill on foot. Sure enough, he found Jill, in human form, kneeling by the streamside and drinking out of cupped hands. Though she was barefoot, she was wearing a thin tunic in the Bardek style over a pair of brigga. An empty sack lay beside her on the ground. It seemed to him that she was as light and fragile as the linen cloth.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m not.” Shaking her hands dry she stood up. “But I’ll beg a blanket from you for tonight, truly. The falcon can’t carry much, you see.”

“No doubt.” In spite of all the years that he’d lived around dweomer, Rhodry shuddered, just at how casually she took her transformations. “Ah, well, I take it we’re following the right road and all.”

“Just so. The raiders aren’t all that far. I thought the army could camp along this stream and rest their horses, then mount a raid. They’ve got guards on watch, of course, but no doubt you could send some of Dar’s men to silence them.”

“No doubt.” Rhodry smiled briefly. “Let me bring the others down, and then we’ll have a little chat with the gwerbret.”

“Very well. Oh, and tell Cadmar to forbid any fires. I don’t want smoke giving our prey the alarm. I’ll wait until you’ve made camp, and then I’ll fetch you and his grace.”

She gave him a friendly pat on the arm and headed off downstream, disappearing into the trees and brush beyond the power of even his elven eyes to pick her out. Dweomer, he supposed. Swearing under his breath, Rhodry hurried back to the gwerbret and the waiting army.

It turned out that the raiders were camped not five miles away. When Jill reappeared, about an hour before sunset, she led Rhodry and the gwerbret downstream for a ways, to the place where the water tipped itself over the crest of the hill in a gurgle and splash to rush down into a river far
below. By peering through the trees, they could see the river twisting, as gray and shiny as a silver riband in the twilight, across a grassy plain. Far to the west, a mist hung pink in the setting sun.

“There!” Rhodry said, pointing. “Smoke from camp-fires! Right by that big bend in the river off to the west, Your Grace.”

“Don’t tell me there’s elven blood in your veins, silver dagger!” Cadmar was shading his eyes with one hand. “I can’t see anything of the sort. Weil, I’ll take your word for it.”

“I’ve scouted them out, Your Grace,” Jill said. “About fifty men, all settled in by the river, as bold as brass, in a proper camp with tents and everything. They’ve even got a couple of wagons with them. For loot, I suppose.”

Cadmar swore under his breath.

“Well, we’ll cut them down to size soon enough. What about the prisoners?”

“They seem to be tied and chained off by themselves, between the camp proper and the wagons.”

“I say we ride before dawn. Won’t be easy, riding at night, but if we fall on them with the sun, we can wipe them out like the vermin they are.”

Although Jill took the blanket and the food that Rhodry had brought her, she refused to come back to camp with them. Rhodry escorted the gwerbret back to Lord Gwinardd’s side, then went looking for Yraen. He found him with Lord Matyc, near the edge of the camp. Since his lordship was telling Yraen a long involved story about the bloodlines of some horses, Rhodry merely waited off to one side. It seemed obvious that Matyc would have preferred to cut the matter short, but Yraen kept asking such civil questions, so very much to the point, that Matyc was forced to answer. Finally, and by then the twilight had replaced the sunset, Yraen thanked his lordship in a flood of courtesies and let him make his escape. Rhodry waited while Matyc picked his way through the camp, until he was well out of earshot.

“What was all that about?” Rhodry said.

“Maybe naught, but you told me to keep an eye on him. So after I spread our bedrolls out and suchlike, I went looking for his lordship. He was just leaving camp, you see,
over behind those trees there, and I would have thought he needed to make water or suchlike, except that he had his dagger out.”

“He what?”

“He was holding it in one hand, but up, like he was studying the blade. He’d turn it, too, with a flick of his wrist, like, and every time he did, it flashed with light.”

“Ye gods! You could signal a man that way, someone who was off to the west when the sun was setting.”

“Exactly what I thought, too.” Yraen’s smile was grim. “We couldn’t prove a thing, of course, and it could well be that I’m dead wrong, and it was just some nervous twitch like men will get, to fiddle with his dagger that way.”

“It could be, truly.”

“But I thought, well, if it’s nerves and naught more, he’ll feel better, won’t he now, for a bit of talk. So I kept him there, chatting about this and that, till the sun went down in the mists.”

“If I were a great lord, I’d have the best slice of roast pig brought to your plate at the honor table tonight.”

“But things being what they are, let’s go have some flat-bread and cheese. I’m hungry enough to eat a wolf, pelt and all.”

Later that evening Rhodry finally had a chance to speak with Dar alone. Dar may have been a prince, but he was also one of the Westfolk, and he went out to check on his horses himself rather than leaving the task to one of his men. Rhodry saw him go and followed him out to the herd, tethered down the valley.

“It’s good to see you again,” Dar spoke in Elvish. “We’ve all missed you, in the years since you left us.”

“And I’ve missed the People as well. Are things well with your father?”

“Oh, yes, very well indeed. He’s still traveling with Calonderiel’s alar, but I left it a while back. I can’t say why. I just wanted to ride on my own for a while, I suppose, and go from alar to alar, but Cal insisted on giving me this escort.”

“Did he say why? It’s not like the People, to give someone an honor guard just as—well, just as an honor.”

In the dim starlight he could see the prince grinning.

“That’s what I thought, too. But Cal said a dweomerwoman
had come to him in a dream and told him to do it, so he did.”

“Dallandra?”

“That was her name, all right.”

Rhodry shuddered like a wet dog. Great things are moving, indeed! he thought to himself. Dar looked away, a different kind of smile hovering round his mouth.

“What do you think of my Carramaena?”

“Oh, she’s lovely, and a good sensible lass.”

Dar’s grin deepened. He looked down and began scuffing the grass with the toe of his boot.

“But well, I hate to say this,” Rhodry went on. “But haven’t you let yourself and her in for grief? I mean, you’re young as the People reckon age, and you’ll live ten times her years.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Dar looked up with a snarl. “Everyone says that, and I don’t care! We’ll have what joy we can, then, and that’s all there is to that!”

“My apologies for—”

“Oh, you’re right, I suppose. But ye gods, from the moment I saw her—she was so lovely, standing there in the market, and she needed me so badly, with that wretched brother of hers, and I just, well, I tried to talk myself out of it, but I just kept riding back to see how she fared, to see if she was well, and—” He shrugged profoundly. “And you know what, Rhodry? She’s the first grown lass I’ve ever met who was younger than me. There was just something fascinating about that.”

Rhodry swore under his breath, but not for Dar’s love affair. The young prince had spoken the truth, that out among the elves, young people were becoming the rarity. How long would it be, he wondered, before the People were gone, and forever?

“Well, you two will have a fine daughter, anyway,” Rhodry said at last.

“A daughter? How by the Dark Sun do you know?”

“Call it the second sight, lad, and let it go at that. We’d best get back.”

Some hours before dawn the gwerbret’s captain moved through the camp, waking the men with whispers. In the fumbling dark they armed themselves and saddled their horses, then rode out while it was still too dark to move at
more than a slow walk. Not more than a few hundred yards from camp, Rhodry saw Jill, standing by the side of the road and waiting for them. He pulled out of line and went over to her, with Yraen tagging behind.

“That horse can carry both of us, can’t he?” she said. “It’s not like I’m wearing mail or suchlike.”

“Ye gods, you don’t weigh much more than a child these days, or so it seems. Are you coming with us?”

“As a guide. Let me mount, and then let’s go ride with the noble-born.”

Rhodry got down, settled her in the saddle proper, then swung up behind her. As they were catching up to the army, he reminded Yraen to watch Lord Matyc in the coming battle—if they were all going to be riding together when the charge came, it might be just possible for Yraen to keep him in sight. Jill led them downhill and across the grassy plain by a roundabout way, keeping to what cover there was.