The Horse Lord (25 page)

Khakkhur folded over the stench of his own ruptured intestines, and with a graceful sliding half-turn Aldric took up position at his side. Isileth swept up in both the Alban’s hands, paused momentarily and came whirring down.

“Hai!”

As if propelled by its own long spurt of blood, the barbarian’s head flew out of sight, while his body flopped like a puppet with its strings abruptly severed. It gave a single tremor and lay still.

Setting his foot between the corpse’s shoulders, Aldric surveyed the buccaneers with all the arrogance at his command. There was blood on his face, running slug-gishly from one nostril in a darkly crimson stream. The unblemished glint of his
tsalaer
covered what he guessed to be at least one cracked rib, and it hurt to breathe. Even so, he tried to hide the jabs of pain in case it gave some pirate bold ideas. Better that they think him made of iron, even if he had to drive his nails clear through his palms to convince them fully.

“Are there any more like this one?” he snarled. Nobody spoke. “Very wise. Then we’ll be going, captain. Don’t try to follow.”

As they retreated up the stairs, Aldric leaning on the Dragonwand and trying not to show it, all three kept their swords drawn in case of treachery. There was none—three bloodstained bundles were sufficient warning. Only the pirate captain took a step forward, his eyes fixed on Aldric until the Alban was lost to view. “I’ll remember you, swordsman!” he yelled at the darkness.

“Probably for the remainder of your life,” somebody replied. The pirate wondered what that meant. He did not see Aldric look back, good sense wrestling with honour-inspired guilt over the cunning trap he had laid. The young man was having second thoughts. Dewan sensed his change of mood, perhaps from some slight hesitation half-glimpsed in the glow from the hall below them, and grabbed one armoured shoulder before the
eijo
could do anything stupid. Such as shout a warning. He regretted his own comment which had caused this change of heart; one did not mock those condemned to death.

Then one of the pirates must have run his fingers through the treasure, for there was that musical chiming sound unique to minted gold and a burst of raucous laughter. Both noises then stopped abruptly and a vast steely grinding took their place.

Ymareth, Lord of the Cavern of Firedrakes, was awake once more.

Perhaps some trace of the charm of understanding remained with him even out of the dragon’s gaze, for Aldric found that he still understood the hissing speech which filled the silent cavern. As its meaning penetrated his brain, he cringed inside his armour and began to back away.

“Hear me,” said the huge, ominous voice. “Hear my will. Thee shall do only as I bid thee do. So. Forward all, one step. And again. Now. Tall man, thee alone will come a little closer…”

Aldric’s mailed hands flew to his ears, but could not reach inside his helm sufficiently to block the nauseating sounds which floated up the tunnel after him. Overwhelmed with revulsion and shame he sank on to the steps, racked by shudders which made his teeth chatter like those of a man with the ague. When Kyrin put one arm around him and helped him to his feet, warrior or not he came very close to breaking down. Dewan retired a tactful distance.

“Only a barbarian would not care,” the girl said; then, after a glance at the unmoved Vreijek, added, “or a professional. You are neither. But what you did was necessary.”

Aldric’s face went cold and bitter. “How much will that excuse away, do you think, before the world dissolves in fire? And some power calls
that
necessary?”

Kyrin stared at him for a long time, then shrugged expressively. “Who can say? I hardly think it matters now, do you? Lean on me a little, Aldric-ain, and we shall all get out of here.”

En Sohra’s
master had never laid much claim to being very brave, but he was a skilled and crafty seaman. After momentary panic when he discovered that he sailed the same stretch of ocean as a shipload of pirates, he did not waste time in tacking laboriously out to open water. Instead he put off the gallon’s longboat, secured with a towing-line to
En Sohra’s
bows, and filled it with irritated sailors before ordering them to “Row!”

There was a brisk south wind beyond the lee of Tech-aur Island, and after little more than two hours under full sail their anchorage had slipped away below the horizon. There had been no pursuit, but as the afternoon turned into evening a new problem appeared as the wind grew ever stronger. By nightfall the ship’s full sail had been stripped to a single topgallant on otherwise bare masts, and still she heeled ponderously as each comber smashed against her side.

At least the bullion in her hold made good ballast; though after every lurch the Elherran captain strained his ears to catch the first rumble of his cargo coming adrift. Not that he expected this to happen, having supervised the loading himself, but ignoring such a possibility would have been foolish in the extreme.

The storm began to die as swiftly as it had risen and stars appeared through rents in the flying clouds. Such sudden gales were common in Alban waters around spring and autumn and the captain had experienced them before; however, familiarity had not increased his liking for them. The sea took longer to calm down than the wind, and as
En Sohra
settled into an evil corkscrewing motion her master glanced towards the master-cabin and wondered how his passengers were faring. One of them, besides being wounded, had already looked sick when he came on board; the captain preferred not to contemplate how he must be feeling now.

Aldric felt sore.

Ignoring a constant and rather monotonous stream of abuse which flowed about his uncaring ears, Dewan probed the Alban’s wounded side as gently as he could. The gallon’s irregular pitch-and-roll—something impossible to balance against—meant that this was not really very gently at all, as a gasp and a series of quite original oaths seemed to prove. Finally he straightened and cleaned his hands on a wet towel, since water poured into basins spilled over almost at once in such a sea.

Aldric whimpered softly, unclenching fists and teeth. “You are not much of a doctor,” he managed at last.

“I only know some rudimentary field medicine, so what do you expect, comfort?” the Vreijek retorted waspishly. “Not that you’re much of a patient. It’s a mercy I won’t have to nurse you back to health.”

“Meaning what—and can I put my shirt on again?”

“Meaning there’s less wrong with you than you think or I feared—and no, you can’t; I have to bandage that mess first.”

“That mess,” as Dewan accurately described it, was the bloody purple welt where Khakkhur’s sword had landed. It ran across the
eijo’s
ribs from left armpit to mid-chest and, though there were no bones broken underneath it, there was plenty of
tsalaer-pattemed
broken skin above. After ar Korentin’s peeling away of armour and clothing, even without his subsequent accidentally-rough handling, it was bleeding quite impressively.

The Vreijek knew that Aldric would lose more blood from a clumsily-pulled tooth, but he knew also that the young warrior was suffering from shock as much as anything else. There was no doubt that the injury was painful, but when he started to think about such things Aldric would realise that had he not been already twisting aside he would have been split open like a lobster, armour or not. That was rough comfort, of a kind.

Ar Korentin, of course, had been punctured, slashed and dented many times in his career and regarded Al-dric’s wound as slight. He had said so to Kyrin, only to be informed that some people would call a severed limb a flesh wound and that if he could find nothing more constructive to say, would he please shut up or get out or preferably both. Tehal Kyrin, Dewan had thought both then and afterward, was quite a woman—even if not quite a lady.

“Your problem,” he continued sagely but unsympa-thetically, “is that on top of everything else you’re a dismal sailor.”

Aldric went slightly pale at the recollection of being sick that last time, long after his stomach had emptied; his side had felt as if it was tearing away from his body. “You don’t have to remind me,” he snapped. Then hiccupped and groped miserably for a bucket. The pain of Dewan’s surgery had diverted his mind and stomach for a while, but now
En Sohra’s
heaving was making him heave again in sympathy.

“I think if you could try to eat something you’d feel much better,” Dewan pointed out. The
eijo
doubled over his bucket and retched dryly, wincing as he did so. “At least if you had something to bring up, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“Dewan…” Aldric paused, then spat. “Dewan, for a King’s Champion, you make a first-class bastard.”

The door opened and Kyrin came in with an armful of bandages and several bottles balanced atop the heap. “Feeling better?” she asked pleasantly, then saw the bucket between Aldric’s knees. “Oh… Probably not. Still, the gale has blown itself out and those waves are getting smaller at long last.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Dewan grinned, “and Aldric’s
very
glad to hear it.”

The Alban laughed without much humour. It hurt.

“Most amusing. Kyrin can put these bandages on—so you go below and make sure the horses are all right. Dewan… at once, if you please. Out.”

With a mocking little bow, ar Korentin left.

Aldric sat quite still until the door was firmly closed, then got to his feet and locked it. As he gazed curiously at Kyrin, the girl looked away. “What’s wrong with you, Kyrin-ain?” he wanted to know.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“You must be… that’s a very lame excuse. Now Dewan’s gone, we can talk quite freely. So why won’t you?”

“Lift your arm and let me at that wound,” she said briskly, picking up a roll of bandage to avoid both his question and his eyes. Aldric sighed, then submitted to her ministrations with as much good grace as he could muster. He knew that anything but the most banal conversation would be impossible now, just so long as Kyrin had some other activity to hide behind.

By the time she had finished the young Alban’s torso was wrapped from neck to navel in strips of linen drawn so tightly that they made it hard to breathe. Even so, this did not stop him trying again to get an answer. “Kyrin—what’s the matter?” His voice, perhaps unconsciously, took on a sharper edge.

At that point the Valhollan took his breath away—and effectively stopped his questions—by sprinkling what felt like molten lead from a small bottle over his dressings. “Twice-distilled grain spirit,” she said by way of explanation. This was not what he wanted to know, but it did at least tell him why his ribs had just caught fire.

“You said once—” Kyrin began, her back towards him. She hesitated, set the bottle down and absently caught its sideways slither when the ship rolled. Then she turned and the words came pouring out.

“You said once that you’d tell me whatever I needed to know, however little that might be, but you’ve somehow told me hardly anything. Even when you were talking to your king, half of what you said was masked by hints and vagueness. I thought that this was a simple thing, a bloodfeud; I thought I knew what you were doing, and why you had to do it.

“I’m Valhollan. Tehal
ur’lim
Harek’s daughter. I don’t usually need to talk like this. But now… Aldric, I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

The
eijo
was silent, eyes hooded by his long lashes so that the thoughts which drifted through them were unreadable. Aldric was aware that what the girl said was true. He explained events quite clearly up to when he met Gemmel, but after that became reserved and taciturn. No, he corrected himself sharply: the word is secretive.

Of course there were obvious aspects to his situation.
Venjens-eijin
were permitted, indeed expected, to use any means which would further the completion of their oath. But they were not supposed to employ sorcery with anything like the freedom Aldric had already used, much less to the degree which he intended.

The fewer people who were aware of that, the better for his reputation.

He had caught something in King Rynert’s voice which seemed to imply that he, Aldric, was likely to be the next Talvalin clan-lord. Kyrin had noticed it too; she had actually called him
ilauem-arluth
on one occasion. Now while an
eijo
could take certain liberties with the honour he had deliberately set aside, it was always with the view that he should never do anything which would shame his clan if and when he rejoined it as a
kailin
. Any high-clan
arluth
displaying Aldric’s fondness for the Art Magic could well find himself under uncomfortably close scrutiny from both Cerdor and his peers. It was a delicate, devious business, doing what was required by Gemmel while appearing to do what was expected by tradition and the Honour-Codes.

As far as Ykraith the Dragonwand was concerned, Aldric had taken a deep breath and had half-lied about why he was fetching it from Techaur. The excuse sounded convincing—that he had foolishly offered anything in repayment to the old sorcerer who had healed him, and that when told to bring back the talisman he had been honour-bound to do so. Dewan had looked sceptical then and still seemed more than a little dubious now.

“If I remember rightly, Kyrin, you said you would accept whatever I chose to tell.”

“But you’ve told me nothing.”

“I made no promises one way or the other.”

“Then what… ?”

“I think that after all you’ve been through, you have the right to hear a little about what’s going on. More at least than ar Korentin; I wouldn’t consider giving him too many details.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust him.”

“Don’t trust your own King’s Champion? Then who can you trust?”

“Kyrin-ain, it’s because of what Dewan is that I cannot trust him with the whole truth. He’s a crown officer—what I have in mind goes against everything he represents, and I don’t know that he would act sensibly. Or rather, with my best interests at heart. The law can be very inflexible sometimes.”