Katharine Kerr - The Silver Mage

‘We can hope so.’ Her voice wavered.

‘You’re frightened, aren’t you?’ Rhodorix walked over to her.

‘Of course! Any sane person would be frightened.’

‘Well, true spoken. Fortunately, men like my brother and I were born insane.’ He grinned at her. ‘So we’ll protect you. Ranadar’s men are just as crazed as we are.’

‘I’ll hope so.’

‘Are any of them mad for you?’

Hwilli blushed.

‘I’ll wager they are,’ he went on. ‘May I escort you back to your chamber?’

‘You may not.’ She drew herself up like a great lady. ‘I’m going to join Master Jantalaber in the herbroom.’

‘Then I’ll escort you there, if you’ll allow me.’

She wavered, looking away, glancing back at him, then shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be seemly.’ She thrust the white crystal toward his hands.

Reflexively he took it. With her head held high, she hurried out of the chamber. With a yawn Gerontos woke and propped himself up on one elbow.

‘Huh!’ Gerontos said. ‘You never stop hunting, do you?’

‘Why not? We’ll be here the rest of our lives.’ Rhodorix walked over to him. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘Awake enough to hear you chattering away.’ Gerontos lay down again. ‘How long will we live, once the fighting comes our way? From the things Andariel’s been telling you –’

‘True enough, it doesn’t look good.’ Rhodorix paused to pull over a chair. ‘But once these men can fight from horseback, we’ll have better odds. They’re cursed good with bows, Gerro. Andariel set their arms masters to making javelins. He was talking about some kind of bow that they can learn to aim and loose from the saddle. That’ll give the Meradan somewhat new to worry about.’

‘And give us some hope. Good. Huh, I wonder if Hwilli has a sister?’ Gerro smiled at him. ‘Or at least, a friend who’s from our kind of people, a lass who’d favour a weaponmaster’s brother.’

‘I’ll ask her. It’ll be somewhat new to talk about besides your gimpy leg.’

At first Hwilli doubted that Rhodorix was courting her, not in the midst of the beautiful women of the People. Why would he want her, so plain and awkward? The other women knew how to smile in a wicked way and say witty things, how to hold their hands just so and how to look at a man they fancied slant-wise with just the right amount of invitation. She felt so sure that she’d look ridiculous that she never tried to imitate them. Yet Rhodorix spoke only to her, he smiled only at her, he kept asking to escort her places and giving her compliments.

‘Of course he’s interested,’ Nalla told her. ‘Doesn’t he follow you around?’

‘Well, he does, but –’

‘But what? If naught else, he’s a man of your people, and he’s new to our country. He’s not used to us like you are.’ Nalla laid a hand over her ear. ‘I’ll wager he thinks we’re all very strange and ugly.’

Wrapped in her envy as she was, Hwilli had never considered that possibility before.

‘Ask him,’ Nalla went on, grinning. ‘But if he says yes, he does think so, then don’t tell me.’

They were walking together on their way to the herbroom, where Master Jantalaber taught groups of students every afternoon. When they arrived, they found the long narrow room already half-full and the Master laying out herbs on the marble table. In one corner Paraberiel, a pinch-faced young man with moonbeam pale hair and emerald eyes, sat on a stool, but he was reading in the book that had no name on its cover rather than looking at the herbs or the herbal that sat open on the big lectern. With a smile Jantalaber called Hwilli and Nalla over to him.

‘There’s no need for you two to stay,’ he told them. ‘I’m going to review some very basic principles for the slowest pupils. Go amuse yourselves, if you’d like.’

‘Thank you!’ They said it together, glanced at each other, and laughed.

Nalla hurried off on some errands of her own, while Hwilli decided to go and see what the horse-riding looked like. She went outside to a cool afternoon that threatened autumn rain and hurried across the ward to the back wall. She climbed the ladder up to the catwalks and leaned between two merlons to look out.

Behind the fortress lay a long stretch of ground that had once been open and covered with grass. The horses had eaten the grass down to dirt, and masons were building new walls to enclose the area at each side and along the back. She saw no sign of the horses, however, or of Rhodorix and the guardsmen. Her disappointment clutched her so sharply that she felt tears rise in her throat. Oh don’t be so stupid! she told herself. It’s not like he’ll ever be interested in you anyway.

When she climbed down to the ward, one of the women servants hailed her. ‘If you’re looking for the riders,’ she said, ‘they took the horses out to the first terrace.’

‘Thank you,’ Hwilli said. ‘But I was just looking at the clouds. Do you think it will rain?’

‘Tonight, maybe. Winter’s on the way.’

Hwilli argued with herself all the way to the front gate of the fortress, but in the end she left and walked down the hill to a spot just above the first terrace, a narrow strip of tall grass that ran along the face of the mountain for some hundreds of yards. At one end, some of the men were harvesting the grass with scythes, while others laid it out in the sun to dry. Seeing the arrogant men of the prince’s guard working like farmers made Hwilli laugh aloud. They could barely handle the scythes, though they did keep at the task with a certain grim determination. Good! she thought. Let them see what my people go through to feed them.

At the other end of the terrace the horses were grazing in the grass, watched over by the fortress’s kennelmaster and his dogs. In the middle, where the grass had already been cropped short, Rhodorix stood by a wooden structure, vaguely horse-shaped, and talked to Andariel through the black crystal. In turn, the captain repeated everything to a semi-circle of guardsmen.

Eventually Rhodorix handed the white crystal to Andariel, who held the black. Rhodorix turned, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. Out in the herd of horses a golden horse nickered in answer. Rhodorix whistled again, and the horse trotted free of the herd and came straight to him. Even at her distance Hwilli could see how the guardsmen looked at him, worshipful, almost frightened by his command of the large and – to her – ugly beast.

The golden horse stood still when Rhodorix patted its neck and whispered to it. He walked a few steps back, then ran up and leapt for the horse’s back. It wasn’t a graceful gesture, more of a twist and a wiggle with a kick of one leg and a wave of his arms, but Rhodorix was sitting astride the horse’s back and holding the horse’s halter rope in one hand before Hwilli had quite seen what he’d done. The guardsmen all cheered, and Rhodorix, grinning, bowed to them from the horse’s back. He slid down again, and with a gentle slap on the horse’s rump, he sent it back to its herd.

Rhodorix pointed to one of the men, who walked forward. A few more instructions, and the guardsman took a deep breath, then trotted forward and leapt for the wooden horse’s back. He landed hard, stomach first athwart the wood, and slid right over and off, landing with a clumsy roll on the ground, where he lay gasping for breath. Andariel handed the crystals to Rhodorix, then hurried over to help the guardsman up. Clutching his stomach, the fellow hobbled off to join his fellows.

One at a time, the guardsmen resumed their futile attempts to mimic Rhodorix and leap onto the wooden horse. Some made it, barely, squirming and grasping at any part of the wood they could get their fingers on. A few slid off before they could get all the way on, some falling flat on their stomachs, some smack on their posteriors. Others ended up like the first guardsman and sailed right over. Hwilli could assume that many of them would end up limping into Master Jantalaber’s infirmary later, seeking poultices.