Katharine Kerr - A Time of Justice

‘Splendidly generous of you, but not necessary.’

‘Go ahead, take him. He’s the last thing my father ever bought, and for all that he’s a splendid hunter, I’d just as soon have him out of my sight.’

Cadlew looked up with a troubled toss of his blond head.

‘Well, in that case I’ll take him with me when I ride home. My thanks, Dwaen.’

Dwaen shrugged and signalled the page, Laryn, to come pour more ale. The boy was the son of one of his vassals sent to the tieryn for his training, and raising him was now Dwaen’s responsibility. Even though it was over a month since he’d inherited, Dwaen still found it terrifying that he was the tieryn, responsible for the demesne and the lives of everyone on it.

‘You know,’ Cadlew said, and very slowly and carefully. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the death. I can’t help thinking you were a bit of a fool.’

‘Fine friend you are. Did you ride all this way just to twit me?’

‘Nah, nah, nah, my friend, and I call you that truly. I came to give you a warning. Lord Beryn offered you twice the gold of your father’s blood price. I don’t see why you didn’t take the lwdd and be done with it.’

‘Because I wanted my father’s murderer hanged. It should be obvious.’

‘But young Madryc was the only son Beryn had. He won’t forget this.’

‘Neither will I. Da was the only father I happened to have, too.’

With a sigh Cadlew drank his ale in silence. Although he felt his wound of rage opening, Dwaen could forgive his friend’s lack of understanding. Doubtless every lord in Gwaentaer was wondering why he’d pushed the law to its limit and insisted that the gwerbret hang Madryc. Most would have taken the twelve gold pieces and got their satisfaction in knowing that Beryn had impoverished himself and his clan to raise them.

‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ Dwaen said, choosing his words carefully, ‘It’s a wrong thing to take gold for blood when a man murders in malice. If it’d been an oath-sworn blood feud or suchlike, no doubt I would have felt different, but that drunken young cub deserved death.’

‘But it would have been better if you’d killed him yourself instead of running to the laws like a woman. Beryn would have understood that.’

‘And why should I add one murder to another when we’ve got a gwerbret not forty miles north of here?’

‘Ye gods, Dwaen, you talk like a cursed priest!’

‘If I’d had brothers I would have been a priest, and you know it as well as I do.’

In a few minutes what kin Dwaen did have left came down from the women’s hall, his mother, Slaecca, and his sister, Ylaena, with their serving women trailing after. Her hair coiffed in the black headscarf of a widow, Slaecca was pale, her face drawn, as if she were on the edge of a grave illness, every movement slow and measured to mete out her shreds of strength. Ylaena, pretty, slender, and sixteen, looked bewildered, as she had ever since the murder.

‘Here, Mother, sit at my right, will you?’ Dwaen rose to greet the dowager. ‘Cado, if you’ll oblige by sitting with my sister?’

Cadlew was so eager to oblige that it occurred to Dwaen that it was time he found his sister a husband. Although he glanced his mother’s way to see if she’d noticed the young lord’s reaction, she was staring absently out into space.

‘Oh now here, Mam, Da wouldn’t have wanted you to fill your life with misery just because he’s gone to the Otherlands.’

‘I know, but I’m just so worried.’

‘What? What about?’

‘Dwaen, Dwaen, don’t put me off ! I can’t believe that a man like Beryn is going to let this thing lie.’

‘Well now, it’d be a grave thing for him to break the gwerbret’s decree of justice, and he knows it. Besides, he’s got his own sense of honour. If he kills me, there’ll be no one left to carry on the blood feud, and I doubt me if he’d do a loathsome thing like killing a man who had no hope of vengeance.’

Slaecca merely sighed, as if in disbelief, and went back to staring across the hall.

On the morrow Dwaen and Cadlew took the gwertrae out to hunt rabbits in a stretch of wild meadow land some few miles from the dun. They had no sooner ridden into the grass when the dog raised a sleeping hare. With one sharp bark, it took off after its prey. Although the brown hare raced and dodged, leaping high and twisting off at sharp angles, the gwertrae ran so low to the ground and fast that it easily turned the hare in a big circle and drove it back to the hunters. With a whoop of laughter, Cadlew spurred his horse to meet it and bent over to spear the hare off the ground with one easy stroke. All morning they coursed back and forth until the leather sack at Cadlew’s saddle peak bulged bloody from their kills.

The chase took them far from the farmlands of the demesne to the edge of the primeval oak forest, dark and silent, which once had covered the whole southern border of the Gwaentaer plateau, but which in Dwaen’s time existed only in patchy remnants. At a stream they dismounted, watered the horses and the dog, then sat down in the grass to eat the bread and smoked meat they’d brought with them. Cadlew cut the head off one of the hares and tossed it to the gwertrae, who stretched out with its hind legs straight behind and gnawed away.

‘Oh, a thousand thanks for this splendid gift,’ Cadlew said. ‘I think I’ll name him Glas.’

‘If you like, tomorrow we can take the big hounds and ride into the forest. We could do with some venison at the dun.’

‘And when have I ever turned down a chance to hunt?’

Thinking of the morrow’s sport, Dwaen idly looked into the forest. Something was moving – a trace of motion, darting between two trees among bracken and fem. Even though the oaks themselves were just starting into full leaf, the shrubs and suchlike among them were thick enough. Puzzled, he rose for a better look. Cadlew followed his gaze, then with a shout threw himself at Dwaen’s legs and knocked him to the ground just as an arrow sped out of the cover. It whistled over them by several feet, but if Dwaen had been standing, he would have been skewered. Growling, the gwertrae sprang up and barked, lunging forward at the hidden enemy. Another arrow sang and hit it full in the chest. With a whimper Glas fell, writhed and pawed at the air, then lay still. Another arrow hit the grass and struck quivering not two feet from Dwaen’s head. He felt a cold, rigid calm: they were going to die. With neither mail nor shield, it mattered not if they lay there like tourney targets or tried to charge; it was death either way. Oh great Bel, he prayed, come to meet us on the misty road!

‘Shall we charge?’ Cadlew whispered.

‘Might as well die like men.’

Cadlew rolled free, grabbed a spear, and jumped to his feet with a warcry. As he did the same, Dwaen could almost feel the bite of the arrow bringing his Wyrd. But the enemy never loosed his bow again. When they took a couple of cautious steps forward, he saw nothing moving among the trees but a bird on a branch.

‘Well,’ Dwaen said. ‘I think me I’ve just been given a message.’

‘Beryn?’

‘Who else? I wager that if I’d been alone, I’d be dead by now, but no doubt he didn’t want to murder you with me. He’s got naught against you and your clan.’

‘If he tries to kill you again, he’ll have to kill me first, but I’d rather it was in open battle.’

‘It might come to that.’

Cadlew picked up the dead gwertrae and slung it over his saddle, but since Dwaen didn’t want his womenfolk alarmed, they asked a farmer to bury it for them rather than taking it back to the dun.

All that afternoon, even though he managed to make polite conversation with his guest and bis family, Dwaen brooded. Lord Beryn’s lands were only about ten miles to the west, close enough for him to haunt the edges of the demesne in hope of catching his enemy unaware. Yet he couldn’t imagine Beryn using a bow instead of a sword, and besides, how had the old bastard known exactly when and where he’d gone to hunt? Not that he and Cadlew had made any secret of their plan – the question was how Beryn had heard of it, a question that was answered the very same night, when he went up to bed.