Daggerspell (39 page)

“I’ll make a poultice for that bruise. You won’t be able to ride unless we can get the swelling down. What about you, silver dagger? Do you need my aid?”

“I don’t, my thanks. Those young cubs of Corbyn’s can’t fight worth the fart of a two-copper pig.”

“Cursed modest, aren’t you?” Rhodry said. “Don’t listen to him, Nevyn. Without him, I’d be dead, and I know it.”

Nevyn looked up sharply and stared into Cullyn’s eyes. Cullyn felt as if the stare were searing his soul like hot iron, making him remember some old guilt or shame, a memory that faded as soon as he tried to capture it.

“Then it’s a fine thing you’ve done today, Cullyn of Cerrmor,” Nevyn said softly. “We’ll see if Rhodry can repay the debt he owes you.”

“I don’t want payment,” Cullyn snarled. “I know I’m
naught but a silver dagger, but I didn’t ride into that mob for coin.”

“That’s not what I meant at all.”

With a toss of his head, Cullyn strode away. Whether the old man was dweomer or not, he’d not let him mock.

The army was settling in around the baggage train. Cullyn was heading toward his horse to rub it down when Lord Sligyn caught up with him. His lordship’s mail was spattered with some other man’s blood, and his mustache was limp with sweat.

“I saw you pull Rhodry out of that stampede. My thanks, silver dagger.”

“None needed, my lord. I promised him I’d guard him.”

“Hah! Many an honor-sworn rider forgets his oath when it comes to dismounting in the middle of a mob. By the asses of the gods, man, you’ve got a great sight more honor than that piss-poor Corbyn.” Sligyn’s voice rose to a bellow. “You saw what happened. The coward! A base-born bastard’s trick, decoying Rhodry out there like that! The dishonor of the thing! Thank every god that you saw what was happening in time.”

“Not exactly, my lord. I was expecting somewhat like that.”

Sligyn’s mouth went slack in disbelief.

“A lord who’d slaughter a merchant caravan to trap an enemy is a lord without honor,” Cullyn said. “So when Rhodry charged, I was right behind him.”

When, at the dinner hour, the lords met for a council of war, Cullyn was invited by Peredyr himself to join them. Although by then Rhodry could walk and sit up, albeit with difficulty, Cullyn knew that he’d be as stiff as a sword on the morrow. Both Cullyn and Rhodry listened with rising fury as the other lords described the battle. None of them had been mobbed or even seriously threatened; they’d merely been blocked from riding to help Rhodry.

“What gripes my very soul,” Rhodry said, “is the way I never even saw Corbyn on the field. The little coward!”

“Wasn’t cowardice,” Peredyr said. “He doesn’t want to be the man who personally kills the gwerbret’s brother and the tieryn’s son. This way, if the time came to sue for peace, he could blame your death on the fortunes of war.”

“And that’s what he’s after, curse him and his balls both,” Sligyn broke in. “He’ll hammer at us until someone kills the cadvridoc, and then he’ll place his suit.”

“If I may speak, my lords?” Cullyn said. “Then there’s only one thing to do—kill Corbyn before he has a chance to sue for anything.”

“Blasted right!” Sligyn snarled. “When you see a dog foaming at the mouth, you don’t call the stinking kennel-man. You cut its head off.”

They drew close together to lay their plan. In the next battle, the lords would ride as a unit, with Rhodry safely in the middle and Cullyn and Sligyn at the head. Their best men would be round them to hold off the enemy while they coursed the field and found Corbyn.

“And I wager we’ll find him at the rear,” Edar said. “I’m going to tell my men to fight for blood, when it comes to facing Corbyn’s allies. No more of this dancing all around us while they parry. It’s time they saw what kind of a man they’ve allied themselves with.”

Sligyn stood up with a grim little laugh.

“I’m going to go talk to my captain. I suggest the rest of you do the same.”

When the lords dispersed, Rhodry kept Cullyn at his side and had his manservant bring both of them mead in wooden cups. For a while Rhodry stayed silent, downing the mead in big gulps as he stared at the fire.

“Lord cadvridoc?” Cullyn said at length. “It’s no dishonor to have a bodyguard when someone’s trying to murder you.”

“Ah, it’s not that that aches my heart.” Rhodry paused for another gulp of mead. “I was thinking of Caenrydd. Amyr told me that Caenno ordered him forward and took the rear by himself. He knew what that meant.”

“So he did. He pledged to die for you, and he kept his word.”

“But by the hells!” Rhodry turned to him, and there were tears glistening in the lad’s eyes. “Don’t you see that’s the worst of it? Here, I’ve never ridden at the head of a warband before. Oh, I’ve always been Lord Rhodry, but no more than my father’s captain, or Rhys’s extra man. In all the battles I ever rode, no one was dying for my wretched sake. I expected to die someday for someone else’s.”

“I’ve never met another noble-born man who troubled his heart about such things.”

“Then curse them all! By the hells, why did my uncle have to go and get himself killed? I don’t want his demesne.”

“I’ve no doubt his lordship will feel a good bit differently about that in the morning.”

“Oh, no doubt.” Rhodry stared moodily into his cup. “I’d be cursed and twice cursed before I’d let Rhys have it, anyway.”

“Here, I’ve got no right to be asking you this, but is your brother as bad a man as all that?”

“Not in the least, about anything but me. Oh, he’s just, generous, and brave—everything a stinking noble-born man is supposed to be, except when it comes to the matter of my affairs. Cursed if I know why he’s always hated me so much.”

Cullyn heard as much hurt as anger in the lad’s voice.

“Well, my lord, my elder brother was much the same to me. He’d give me a good cuff whenever he could get away with it, and it didn’t sweeten his temper to have Mam take my side all the time.”

“By the hells.” Rhodry looked up with an oddly embarrassed smile. “Of course you had a clan, didn’t you? Here I’ve been thinking of you as somewhat like the wind and the rain, always there, wandering the kingdom.”

“Nothing of the sort.” Cullyn had a cautious sip of mead. “My father was a shipwright down in Cerrmor, and a drunken bastard he was, too. I had to dodge him as much as I dodged my brother’s fists, truly. And when he finally did us all a favor and drank himself to death, the
priests of Bel got my mother a place in the gwerbret’s kitchen. I grew up in the dun.”

“And is that where you learned to fight?”

“It is. The captain of the warband took pity on the greasy scullery lad who was always playing with sticks and calling them swords.” Cullyn washed away his rising feeling of shame with the mead. “He was a good man, and then I had to break his faith in me.”

Rhodry was listening with a fascinated curiosity. Cullyn set the empty cup down and rose.

“It’s late, lord cadvridoc. If I may speak so freely, we’d best get ourselves to bed.”

He walked away before Rhodry could call him back.

Even for a Deverry man, Lord Nowec was tall, six and a half feet of solid muscle and broad bones. That night, he was an angry man, too, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and glowering as Corbyn and the rest of the allies laid their plan. Loddlaen kept a careful eye on him. Finally the lord stepped forward with an oath that was almost a growl.

“I don’t like this,” Nowec snarled. “I’m sick to my heart of all this stinking dishonor. That ruse this morning is enough.”

All the others turned to look at him with a flash of guilt in their eyes.

“Do we fight like men, or do we fight like filthy rabble?”

“Oh, now, here.” Lord Cenydd stepped forward, a paunchy man with a thick, gray mustache. “Which is more dishonorable—to use the wits the gods gave us, or to kill noble-born men when we don’t even have a feud going with them?”

“True spoken,” Corbyn put in. “Our quarrel’s with Rhodry and no one else.”

“Pig’s balls!” Nowec spat out. “You’re afraid of the gwerbret intervening and naught else. I don’t like it, I tell you, sneaking around like a pack of stray dogs creeping up on a townsman’s slop heap.”

The younger lords were wavering, stung by Nowec’s words, and Corbyn and Cenydd were unable to look him in the face. Loddlaen sent out a line of force from his aura and used it to slap Nowec’s aura, just as a child uses a whip to spin a top. The lord staggered slightly, and his eyes turned glazed.

“But my lord,” Loddlaen said in a soothing sort of voice. “If we drag out the war, we could kill Sligyn or Peredyr by mistake. That would be a grievous thing.”

“So it would.” His anger quite gone, Nowec spoke slowly. “I agree, councillor. The plan’s a good one.”

“Then no one has any objections?” Corbyn got in quickly. “Splendid. Go give your captains their orders.”

As the council of war broke up, Loddlaen slipped away before Corbyn noticed. He couldn’t bear the thought of sitting and drinking with his stinking lordship. As he walked through the camp, he noticed the men glancing sidewise at him and furtively crossing their fingers to ward off witchcraft. They were afraid of him, the mangy dogs, as well they might be—let them cower before Loddlaen the Mighty, Master of the Powers of Air! At the edge of the camp, he paused, debating. As badly as he wanted to get away from the army for a little while, he was quite simply afraid to go out alone with Aderyn so close by. Finally he went to his tent, ordered his manservant out, and lay down fully dressed on his blankets.

Noise filtered in, men laughing and talking as they strolled by, swords clanking at their sides. Once, Loddlaen’s trained mind had been capable of shutting such distractions out; now, they drove him to rage. Fists clenched at his side, jaw tight, he lay shaking, trying to close down his senses and let sleep come. He did not want to summon the darkness. All at once, he was afraid of it, afraid of the voice that would pour into his mind as smoothly as oil.

Yet, in the end, it came to him. He saw it first as a tiny black point in his mind; then it began to swell. He fought it, tried to fill his mind with light, tried to banish the dark with ritual gesture and curse, but inexorably it grew,
billowed, until he seemed to stand in a vast darkness, and the voice spoke to him, gently, patiently.

“Why do you fear me, you of all dweomermasters, Loddlaen the Mighty? All I want to do is aid you, to be your friend and ally. I came to sorrow with you, that so clever a plan went astray. You almost trapped Rhodry today.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend and naught more. I have information for you. That silver dagger is the key to everything. You have to kill him before you can kill Rhodry. I’ve been meditating and doing deep workings, my friend, and I’ve seen that the forces of Wyrd are at work here.”

“Well and good, but who are you?”

The voice chuckled once. The blackness was gone. Loddlaen lay there sweating for a moment and blessed what he had just cursed—the normal human noise of the army around him. Then he got up and left the tent to find Corbyn’s captain. He wanted to give him some special orders about this wretched silver dagger.

Cullyn came awake suddenly to find Sligyn hunkering down next to him. The wheel of the stars showed that it was close to dawn.

“Old Nevyn just woke me,” Sligyn said. “Corbyn’s army is getting ready to ride. Those dishonorable scum are going to make a dawn strike on us.”

“Oh, are they, now? Well, then, my lord, we’d best pull a trick of our own.”

When Cullyn explained, Sligyn roared with laughter and woke up half the camp. The provision carts were already drawn up in a circle some hundred yards from camp with the horses in their midst. Half the men readied the horses while the others arranged saddlebags and gear under blankets to look like sleeping men. Then the armed and ready warband hid in the circle of carts, each man crouched beside his horse. To the rear huddled the servants and suchlike; up in front stood the spearmen, ready to fill the gap in the circle once the horsemen rode out.

Cullyn took his place beside Sligyn just as the sky was lightening to a gray like mole’s fur. In the chilly dawn, the army trotted closer and closer across the wide meadow. The news whispered through Rhodry’s men—get ready to mount and ride.

At the far end of the meadow, Corbyn’s army drew up, paused for a moment, then began to sort itself out into a long line for the charge. Cullyn began to wonder if they would see through his ruse; if the camp truly was asleep, by now someone would have been wakened by the noise of the distant jingling of tack. Walking their horses, the army came on, then broke into a trot, on and on—and suddenly they were galloping, charging to the sound of horns and warcries straight for what they thought was the sleeping camp. Their javelins sped ahead of them into the fake bodies on the ground.

“Now!” Rhodry screamed.

There was an awkward shoving scramble in the narrow space as the warband swung itself into the saddle. Shrieking at the top of his lungs, Sligyn led out the squad of lords, and their men surged out after them in ranks of four abreast. Out ahead, the startled enemies were swearing and yelling as they tried to check the momentum of their charge and wheel to face this unexpected attack. As they galloped, Rhodry’s army sent their javelins on ahead of them. Horses reared and men screamed as Corbyn’s line broke into a disorganized mob.

“For Corbyn!” Cullyn yelled, and he glanced back to make sure that Rhodry was safely in the midst of the squad.

Sligyn wheeled his unit along the battle’s edge just as the main armies hit. Horses dodged and reared as the two lines passed through each other like the fingers of one hand woven through those of the other. The riders turned them and swung back to break off into single combats or the occasional clot of fighting. Cullyn stayed close to Sligyn as the lord led his squad around the field. Suddenly Sligyn howled in triumph and kicked his horse to a gallop. Taken by surprise, Cullyn fell a little behind as the
lord charged for his prey—a lord with a green and tan blazon on his shield. Cullyn heard Rhodry’s crazed berserker laugh sweep by him as the unit charged after Sligyn.