Katharine Kerr - Sword of Fire

‘Oho! So you’re one of the rabble-rousers, are you?’

‘Is that how you see us? Rabble?’ She pulled her arm free. ‘My thanks for your aid, but I’ve naught more to say to you.’

Alyssa turned on her heel and stalked off.

‘Wait!’ He was calling out, trotting after her. ‘I meant no insult, fair maid. Just a jest of sorts. Here, look, if anyone’s rabble, it’s me.’

Alyssa stopped in the next pool of lamplight. She could still hear the screaming and the horses, but faintly now, as if the noise had both lessened and moved far away. Was the troop following the mob down to the collegium? If so, she’d best wait to go back, but here she was, a woman alone on a darkening street. And what of Rhys and Mavva? Were they safe? Her rescuer hurried up and made her a bow.

‘Forgive me?’ he said. ‘I’m afeared I know naught of your town’s politics. I’m from Lughcarn.’

For the first time she looked at him with some attention. A tall man, broad in the shoulders and well-built, he had a touseled mane of sandy-brown hair and, as far as she could tell in the flickering light, his eyes were blue. He wore ordinary clothes, a pair of breeches and tall boots, a linen shirt with flowing sleeves and over it a leather waistcoat. At his belt he carried an elven finesword at one side and at the other, a knife with a silver handle. A silver dagger. She recognized the three little spheres on the dagger’s pommel. No wonder he’d called himself rabble.

‘So, you guard the coach roads, do you?’ she said.

‘I do, and I’ve ridden a few barges, too.’

When he flashed her a smile, she realized that he was a handsome man in a rough sort of way.

‘Cavan of Lughcarn’s my name.’ He made her a bow. ‘At your service, my lady. May I escort you to the safety of your home?’

Alyssa hesitated, but he at least seemed gallant enough. Who knew what sort of man might be lurking in the riot-torn streets?

‘My thanks to you, good sir. My name’s Alyssa vairc Sirra, and I’d be grateful for your company. I’m in residence at the collegium. At Lady Rhodda’s Hall.’

‘Ah! One of our new lady scholars, then. And as beautiful as learning itself, from what I can see in this wretched lamplight, anyway.’

‘You, sir, have a tongue as silver as your dagger, but I’m not the sort to be cut to the heart. Shall we go, then, before the gwerbret’s riders come back?’

Together they hurried downhill through the twisting streets of the city. Townsfolk stood, watching the streets, in the doorways of shops and houses, at the gates of an inn here, a tavern there. Some held lanterns, which they raised high to peer at Alyssa and her escort. They called out hopeful names but shrank back disappointed as Alyssa and Cavan passed them by.

‘A fair many people came up to the gates,’ Cavan remarked. ‘I was having a pint in a tavern when I heard the excitement brewing, so I drifted up to take a look. Too much excitement, but meeting you, I had a silver dagger’s luck.’

‘Let’s hope it’s not evil luck. Silver daggers have been thrown out of Aberwyn for far less than consorting with rabble.’

‘Oh, now, here! Don’t keep holding that against me! I’m a stranger, and I knew not what I was saying.’

‘Well, true spoken. You’re forgiven.’

In the next pool of lamplight, he grinned at her, and despite herself, she returned the smile.

‘Lughcarn, is it?’ she said. ‘I hear they call it the City of Black Air.’

‘The smelter smoke is bad, truly, but we prefer to call it the City of Iron Men. But I don’t mean the noble-born by that. The iron trade and the guilds hold the real power there.’

‘Good for them! So, what brings you to Aberwyn?’

‘The trouble up on your northern border. Some of the lesser lords might be wanting to add a man to their warband.’

‘Oh, now, here! Do you truly think that silly feud will turn into a war? From what I understand, it’s over some hundred acres of land and one village.’

‘It’s not the land.’ Cavan shook his head. ‘It’s the honor of the thing. Gwerbret Standyc of the Bears wants land that one of Aberwyn’s allies claims. I don’t know which ally. No one farther east seemed to know. But anyway, the ally has appealed to your gwerbret. I did hear that. So now you’ve got two gwerbretion bellowing at each other like bulls in adjoining pastures. Neither’s going to back down.’

Alyssa felt like screaming in useless rage. The noble-born fought among themselves all the time, here on the western border of the kingdom. The common folk paid for those bloody battles with their taxes and the lives of their young men.

‘If we had true courts of justice,’ she said, ‘mayhap we could do summat about these stupid squabbles. Settle them by laws, not the sword. Bulls, are they? Cocks squawking in the barnyard, more like, over the juiciest worms!’

Cavan laughed. ‘You’d best not say that where Gwerbret Ladoic’s men can hear you.’

‘No doubt you’re right, good sir. Shall we go, then?’

When he offered her his arm, she took it, and they headed downhill.

The Scholars’ Collegia compound stood behind walls down near Aberwyn’s harbor. In the midst of narrow lawns and old oaks rose three separate broch complexes, each a tall tower joined round its edges by smaller towers like the petals of a daisy. Men students occupied the two tallest hives, as the students termed them, while the women’s college sat some distance away, caught between the kitchen garden and the back wall. Lady Rhodda Hall had grown from a small seed. Some three hundred years earlier, Lady Rhodda Maelwaedd had provided a bequest to a tutor charged with teaching women to read and write at Dun Cannobaen. The priests of Wmm at the nearby island shrines had taken up the idea and started a course of study based on Lady Rhodda’s library. Some ten women a year had finished the course and gone out to teach others, lasses and lads both. Slowly the knowledge of letters and learning had spread through Eldidd from the west.

Thanks to a much larger gift from Carramaena of the Westlands, the queen of the kingdom to the west of Deverry, plus endowments from various guilds, this scattered group had turned into a proper collegium some years back. Compared to the men’s collegia, which had noble patronage, it was still small and shabby, but Alyssa loved it all the same. She was always conscious of the great honor afforded her, that she’d been allowed to study the history of Aberwyn and Eldidd, as well as the philosophy of Prince Mael the Seer. Although her father served as master of the Bakers’ Guild for all Eldidd, her clan were commoners through and through.

As she and Cavan turned the last corner, they saw a crowd of men and horses standing around outside the collegium grounds. By the light of the lanterns that hung by the gates, Alyssa could just pick out the red and brown colors of the Fox clan’s livery.

‘Gwerbret’s men,’ Alyssa said. ‘I wonder if they’re waiting to arrest anyone who was part of the mob.’

‘Not a bad guess, alas.’ Cavan glanced around and pointed to the deep doorway of a nearby house. ‘Wait here.’

Alyssa stepped into the doorway and watched him from the shadows. Cavan strolled down the street and made a great show of looking around as if he were lost. Off to one side of the pack at the gates stood a fellow holding the reins of a pair of horses. Cavan stopped beside him with a friendly wave. Although Alyssa could hear nothing of their talk, she did pick up a pleasant burst of laughter. With another wave, Cavan strolled back to her.

‘They’ve come to take the gwerbret’s daughter back to the dun,’ Cavan said. ‘She doesn’t want to go with them. That lad with the horses told me that the vixen’s found a nice deep den.’