Katharine Kerr - A Time of Justice

‘Do you care?’

‘I do. We females like knowing these things.’

‘Well, then, no, she wasn’t the only one. I loved someone named Jill when I was very young, but she left me.’

‘And that’s sad, too. Was it for another man?’

‘It wasn’t, but for the dweomer.’

‘Ah! Naught to be done about that! When it calls, you follow.’

‘So she told me.’

‘You sound bitter still.’

Rhodry shrugged and watched the river flow. He could see the rippling reflection of her massive head, watching him.

‘I’ve lost a mate,’ she said at last. ‘My heart didn’t die, me being female and all, but his loss wounds me still. For your Angmar’s sake as well as his, I’ll eat the first Horsekin we slay.’

It was, Rhodry supposed, an honour of sorts.

‘Then I thank you. Ah well, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve lost her – Angmar, I mean. It’s better she’s gone, for her sake.’

‘Well, if the wretched Horsekin had found Haen Mam –’

‘Just so. No doubt my one true love sent them. She’s the jealous sort, truly, which is why I’ve lost every woman I’ve ever loved. If I’d dared to go on spurning her, she would have sent Angmar to the Otherlands. She’s a great queen, you know, and she could have done it easily. I’ve been marked for her love from the beginning of my life, no doubt about that, and I’ve lost all her rivals.’

‘And just what are you talking about?’ The dragon swung her head round to glare at him. ‘What great queen?’

‘The one woman I’ve ever loved who’s truly loved me in return.’ Rhodry flung one hand in the air in salute. ‘My lady. Death. Oh, we’ve had a long fine affair of it, Death and I, and always have I served her well, sending her many a pretty gift from battle. Someday she’ll take pity on me, like she takes pity on all men, and let me sleep in her cold cold arms. I tell you, Wyrm, I begin to long for her more and more.’

Arzosah stared at him, her huge and alien eyes unreadable. At length he laughed, but it was just a normal sort of chuckle.

‘If you’ve drunk enough,’ he said, ‘it’s time to fly south.’

‘I suppose you’re going to put those nasty ropes round me again.’

‘I am. But not as many this time, because Enj will be staying here.’

‘Well, that’s one thing to the good, then. He’d get so beastly sick, and I was always afraid he was going to soil my scales with one of his ends or the other. Are you sure I can’t just eat him and put him out of his misery?’

‘Very sure. Now, come along.’

As Rhodry started to walk back to the camp, dweomer touched him as tangibly as a cold hand, then let go and vanished. He suddenly felt as if someone were watching or trying to watch him before this disembodied gaze swept on and disappeared. He swore aloud.

‘What is it?’ Arzosah snapped. ‘You’ve turned white.’

‘Let’s get out of here. Someone’s looking for us, just like Evandar said, and I don’t much like it.’

‘I don’t suppose any creature in its right mind would. Here! I just thought of somewhat. You’ve got that lovely talisman round your neck, so how did Evandar find us? Unless, of course –’ She paused for a clack of fangs. ‘Unless love guided him.’

‘Hold your black and ugly tongue, Wyrm, or I’ll order you into that river!’

Rhodry turned on his heel and strode back to camp, with Arzosah padding after in a rumble of laughter.

Every morning at dawn Jill would leave her chamber in the broch of the gwerbret’s dun. She’d trudge up the five floors’ worth of circling staircase and climb through the trap door onto the flat roof of the main tower, which had become an arsenal of sorts. All round the edge stood little pyramids of stones, ready for a last desperate defence, and bound sheaves of arrows wrapped in oiled hides to keep off the rain. While she caught her breath, she would look out and consider their situation. Like an island from a shallow sea, the three hills of the city of Cengarn rose from its besiegers, who spread out on all sides and camped just beyond bowshot from the town walls.

Cengarn lay in a beautiful situation for defence. To the north, across a narrow valley, lay broken ground lower than the city itself, and beyond that strip rose hills that would have taken two armies to secure against a counter-force. Even though the invaders had to place men on the north ground to complete their line, those troops were exposed and vulnerable. To the east, the broken ground became a long ridge, where white tents decked out with red banners stood. Jill suspected that the important leaders of the Horsekin sheltered there.

To the south and west the land fell away, leaving the city perched on the top of cliffs. At the western edge of town, where the dun itself stood, any climb up would require ropes and stakes, while to the south the road ran steep and narrow. Below the cliffs in those directions stretched a wide plain, where the bulk of the army camped, comfortable but vulnerable to attack when the relieving army finally arrived. To protect their men on the plain, the Horsekin were digging ditches and piling up earthworks, or rather, their human slaves were doing the digging and piling. Since they depended on their heavy cavalry and needed to ensure free movement for their own horsemen, they would never be able to make a solid ring all the way round the camp. Rather, they’d placed earthworks as baffles more than walls to protect vulnerable points.

Inside the city walls seethed potential chaos. Crammed into every valley among the three hills, lining every street, crowding every open space, townsfolk and refugees from the farms roundabout huddled amidst cattle and sheep, dray horses and chickens. They’d been living that way for weeks now, and the gwerbret’s town marshals had recruited some of the men from their lord’s warband to help keep order. Fights were breaking out, over food and water, though for now at least the town ran no danger of starving, and over space, a scarcity indeed. Filth, human and animal, was piling up, swept or carried down to line the inside of the walls. In a pinch, it could become another weapon, hurled by basket or catapult. Even up at the dun, which stood behind its own walls on the highest hill the stench rose thick. From long practice Jill could ignore it, but the threat of plague was another knife at the city’s throat.

She herself felt none too strong these days, nor did she look it. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s, was perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, so that her blue eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, she was shockingly gaunt, not that such was so unusual for a woman who was over seventy. What worried her was the shaking fever she carried in her blood, an unwelcome memento from a long-ago sojourn in tropical lands. Even though she was the greatest master of dweomer that the kingdom had ever seen, she could cure herself with neither magic nor the medicines known in those days. All she had to fight it was her strength of will.

Every day, before she began her magical work, she would try to scry out Rhodry. Normally, since she’d known him so long and so well, she would have seen his image simply by turning her mind his way; her vision would have appeared on any convenient dappled thing – the clouds in the sky, sunlight dancing on a bucket of water, trees tossing in a wind – with barely an effort on her part. These days, though, she could only summon a haze as thick and grey as smoke where an image should have been. Although she couldn’t know, she could guess that he wore some powerful talisman, whose bound spirit worked to hide him. On the morning that Rhodry took leave of Enj, though, her scrying just happened to coincide with Rhodry’s thinking about her, and for the briefest of moments she caught a glimpse of him.