A Time of Omens (51 page)

“Never have I been so glad of one, Your Grace.”

“Me, too,” Yraen broke in. “I can still see that village in my mind, like, and that poor woman we found.”

“Pregnant, was she?” Cadmar turned to him.

“She was, Your Grace, and murdered.”

Cadmar winced.

“They’ve been doing that, you see. Killing the women with child. It’s almost as if… well, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if that’s why they’re here, to kill all the women carrying children. Every now and then one of the survivors heard things, you see. A lad who managed to hide under an overturned wagon told me he heard two of them say somewhat like: time to ride on, we’ve gotten all the breeding sows in this pen.”

Rhodry went sick cold, thinking of Carra.

“And who are they, Your Grace?” Yraen said.

“A band of marauders. Men like you and me, not Westfolk or dwarves. All the survivors have been clear as clear about that. They appeared last summer, started raiding the outlying farms. Bandits, think I, starving and desperate. We tried to track them down. That’s where I took this wound.” Reflexively he rubbed his thigh. “The bastards got away from us that time, but they didn’t come back. I thought I’d scared them off, but with the spring they showed up and worse than ever. I doubt me very much if they’re ordinary bandits. They’re too cursed clever, for one thing. And they’ve got good weapons, good armor, and they’ve been trained to fight as a unit.”

“Not bandits at all, then, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “They must have some kind of a leader. I don’t suppose any of the survivors got a look at him.”

“One or two think they might have. An enormously tall man, they say, all wrapped in a dark blue cloak with the hood well up, giving orders in an odd growl of a voice. All they saw clear like was his hands, huge hands with hair on the backs, and they swear up and down that he only had three fingers on each of them.”

Some fragment of lore pricked in Rhodry’s mind and made his blood run cold. He was too tired to remember exactly why, but he somehow knew that those missing fingers meant something, meant a great deal, and none of it good.

“You’re dropping where you sit, silver daggers,” Cadmar said with a grin. He hauled himself to his feet and motioned toward his warband. “Maen, Dwic, get over here. Find these silver daggers bunks and some clean blankets.”
He turned to Otho. “Good sir, would you care for an escort into town?”

“If you could spare a lad to show me the way to an inn, Your Grace, I’d be grateful.”

Yraen stared goggle-eyed as a page appeared to play servant to the dwarf and lead him away. At the door Otho turned and honored them with a cheery wave. It was the first time Rhodry had ever seen him grin.

“Well, I never!” Yraen hissed. “By all the gods and a rat’s ass, too!”

“I told you that anyone rich enough to hire us must be some sort of a personage, didn’t I now?”

Yraen was in for one more surprise. As they were leaving the hall, they passed the table where Daralanteriel’s escort was sitting, though Dar himself seemed to be lingering with his lady upstairs. At the sight of Rhodry all of the men leapt up, yelling his name, mobbing him round, slapping him on his back, and talking as fast as they could and all in Elvish. Rhodry answered in the same; as tired as he was, he was near to tears just from hearing that musical tongue again.

“And Calonderiel,” he said at length. “How is he?”

“As mean and stubborn as ever,” one of the archers said, grinning. “If he’d known you were on your way here, he’d have ridden east with us, I’m sure.”

Rhodry started to make some jest, then saw Yraen, watching all of this with his mouth hanging open. The gwerbret’s man seemed more than a little surprised himself.

“I’d best go,” Rhodry said to the archers. “I’ll come drink with you all later.”

When Rhodry extricated himself and rejoined him, Yraen started to speak, then merely shrugged and looked heavenward, as if reproaching the gods.

“Well, come along, then,” Rhodry said. “No use in just standing here, is there? Let’s go see what our new lord’s barracks are like.”

Quite decent, as it turned out. Made of good oak and freshly whitewashed, the barracks stood on top of the stables and up against the dun wall in the usual style. The bunks were solid, the mattresses new, and Maen issued them both good quality blankets.

“The gwerbret must be a grand man to ride for,” Rhodry said. “If he’ll treat a silver dagger this well.”

“He is.” Maen, a pale slip of a lad, stood for a moment looking them over. “Well, we need every man we can get now.”

Yraen growled under his breath, but Rhodry stepped in front of him.

“Thanks for your help. We’ll just be getting some sleep.”

Maen shrugged and slouched out of the room. Yraen ostentatiously spit onto the straw-strewn floor.

“I always warned you about the long road, didn’t I?” Rhodry suddenly yawned and flopped down on the edge of his bunk to pull off his boots. “Ye gods, I just realized somewhat. Otho never paid us.”

“Little bastard! Well, we’ll have it out of his pockets or his hide. Either one’s fine with me. Rhodry, those men. The prince’s escort, I mean. Uh, they’re not human, are they.”

It was not a question.

“They’re not, truly. Do you remember years and years ago, when we first met, and we talked one night about seeing things that weren’t there?”

“And Mael the Seer’s book, and the way he was always mentioning elves. I do. It aches my heart to admit it, but I do.”

“Well, then, I don’t need to say a cursed lot more, do I now?”

Yraen merely sighed for a no and busied himself with making up his bunk. Rhodry lay down, wrapped himself in his blankets, and fell asleep before he even heard Yraen start snoring.

When he woke, the barracks were pitch-dark and empty, but Jill was sitting on the end of his bunk. Her he could see in the silver cloud clinging to her, an ever-shifting light that hinted of half-seen forms. He stifled a yelp of surprise and sat up.

“My apologies,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’d give any man a turn, seeing a woman he once loved and all that glowing like the moon. Ye gods, Jill, are you a ghost or suchlike?”

“Close to it.” She paused to smile at him. “But spirits from the Otherlands can’t set broken legs and suchlike, so
you can lay your troubled heart to rest. I’m real enough. The light’s only the Wildfolk of Aethyr. I’m surprised you can’t see them. They’ve taken to following me around, and most times I don’t have the heart to shoo them away.”

“Well, I can see somewhat moving there, sure enough. It still creeps my flesh.”

Here he at last had the leisure to take a good look at her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s as usual, had gone perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, as he studied her, so that her eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak. It was as if her skin and blood and bone had all been replaced by some finer substance, some magical element halfway between glass and silver, say, or some sort of living silk.

“Have you been ill or suchlike?” Rhodry said.

“Very ill. In the islands it was, what they call the shaking fever. I’ve had it a number of times, now, and there’s no guarantee that I’m rid of it, either. They say that once it gets into your blood, it’s yours for life.”

“That aches my heart.”

“Not half as much as it aches mine.” She grinned with a flash of her old good humor. “I must look hideously old, I suppose.”

“You don’t look truly
here.
It’s like you’ve already left us for the Otherlands or suchlike.”

“In a way, perhaps, I have.”

“Ah. You know, you look like Nevyn used to. I mean, you’d think he was old, truly, and then he’d speak or do somewhat, and you’d know it no longer mattered in the least how old he was.”

She nodded, considering what he’d said.

“But here, where’s Yraen? And is the lass safe and well?”

“Safe, she is, and Labanna—that’s the gwerbret’s lady—tells me she’ll be back to her old self in a day or so. I was truly worried about that child she’s carrying, but the womenfolk say she’s not far enough along to lose it just from being tired and cold and suchlike. As for Yraen, he’s eating his dinner in the great hall. I came out to fetch you.”

Yawning and stretching, he found his boots and put them on.

“By the way, about Yraen,” he said. “Do you know who he really is?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“Some son of a noble house who went daft and ran off some years back, but I don’t know his real name, no.”

She laughed with a toss of her head.

“Well, then, maybe it’ll come back to you, sooner or later.”

“What? Are you telling me that I used to know him or suchlike?”

“Well, not to say ‘know’ him, not intimately or some such thing. You weren’t in any position to make a friend out of him.”

“Jill, curse it all! I’m as sick as I can be of dweomer riddles!”

“Indeed? Then what do you want to know?”

“For a start, how did you know where I was?”

“I scried you out, of course. In the fire and water.”

Rhodry felt profoundly foolish.

“Ah, curse it! Let’s just go to the great hall. I want some ale, I do, and the darker the better.”

“What? No more answers?”

She was smiling as if she might be teasing him, daring him, even, to ask her the questions that suddenly frightened him, no matter how badly he’d ached to know them before.

“Just one thing. Our Yraen? Does he have royal blood in his veins?”

“He does, at that, but he’s a long, long way from the throne, the youngest son of a youngest son. The kingdom won’t miss him. I’m glad you decided to pledge him to the silver dagger and let him follow his Wyrd.”

“I decided? Since when have I had one wretched chance at deciding anything, whether for me or some other man?”

“Well, that’s a fair complaint.” She laid a hand, as light as the touch of a bird’s wing, onto his arm. “You’ve been thrown about like a shipwrecked man at sea, haven’t you? But I think me that the land’s in sight at last. Let’s go join the others.” She stood up. “Cadmar’s having somewhat of a council of war, and I’ve told him he should include you in
it. And you shouldn’t be sleeping out here in the barracks, either.”

“Why not? It’s good enough.”

“That’s not the point. I might need you to watch over Carra.”

“Oh, here! Dar’s with her and twenty fighting men as well.”

“But they haven’t seen the dweomer workings you have or lived through some of your battles, either. Rhoddo, don’t try to tell me that you haven’t realized there’s dweomer at work here.”

“Very well, then, I won’t, though I will say that I’d hoped I was wrong. Do you know what these raiders want?”

“I’ve got an idea, but I’m hoping it’s a wrong one. I’d like to think it was only gold and slaves, but I have my doubts.”

“They’re not trying to kill Carra, are they?”

Jill winced.

“Her child, actually. Someone’s threatened to, anyway.”

“Who? We should tell the gwerbret, and he can drag the culprit to justice.”

“This culprit lives where the gwerbret can’t ride, but I doubt if I can explain.”

“Ye gods, I’m sick of being treated like a simpleton!”

“My apologies, Rhoddo, but the sad truth of the thing is, I don’t understand it all myself. This being lives—well, wait, you’ve met Dallandra, and so you know a bit of it already. She has an enemy who—”

“Alshandra! Am I right? The Guardian who drove me from the grasslands.”

“The very one. She’s sworn to kill Carra.”

“Crazed, isn’t she? Alshandra, I mean. She scared the wits out of me, babbling of her daughter and saying someone was trying to steal her away.”

“Oddly enough, she was right. Carra and Dar have done just that, not that they meant to. But I don’t know if these raiders are connected with Alshandra, or just some other evil come upon the land. Until I find that out, it’s hard to know exactly what to do.”

“That makes sense. Can’t fight an enemy when you don’t know his resources and allegiances.”

“Exactly.” Jill laid her hand upon his arm. “I’m glad
you’re here, I truly am. Great things are on the move. Carra’s Wyrd, your Wyrd—the Wyrd of the elven folk, too, maybe. I don’t know the all of it yet.”

“I see.” Not, of course, that he did. “Do you want to know another odd thing? That dog of Carra’s? Penyn gave him to her.”

Jill swore like a silver dagger under her breath.

“You know, that’s one of those little things that can mean a great deal, when you’re dealing with omens. So Perryn’s had a hand in this, has he?”

“Well, he sacrificed more than a dog, truly. That lad lying dead at the ford? That was his grandson. He was more than a bit simple, but it wrung my heart when he died.”

“No doubt.” Her voice turned sad. “Poor lad! Well, you’ll have your chance to avenge him on the morrow. Cadmar’s leading his men out with the dawn.”

“Good. If we strip the dun of men, will Carra be safe? Well, that’s no doubt a stupid question! Here we are, in the middle of a city.”

“Not stupid at all. That’s what I mean about your instincts, Rhoddo. True, an army couldn’t get at her here with the town gates shut, but a traitor might. I’m taking her to stay with Otho till the warband returns. Now,
there
she’ll be safe.” She hesitated briefly. “I don’t suppose you’d stay with her.”

“If you order me to, I will, but I want revenge, I do. For Nedd and those villagers both.”

She considered, straying to a stop in the dark ward. Ahead the broch loomed against the sky and spilled light out of its windows along with laughter and talk, a familiar scene, a familiar sound, yet with Jill there, Rhodry felt as if he’d walked through an invisible door into another world.

“Well, go with the gwerbret, then,” she said at last. “I want someone reliable to keep a watch over Dar, too. He’s bound and determined to take his men and ride with the warband, and I don’t much care to lose him, either.”

“Then I’ll keep an eye out for him. I must say I don’t mind having archers along. Come in cursed handy, they will, if we can find these swine.”