Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

Eventually he made a polite escape and returned to his chamber. He could never bring her to the dweomer now, because studying magic demands the sanest of all possible minds. Those who are the least bit unbalanced when they begin dweomer-study soon find themselves torn apart by the powers and forces they invoke. In this life, he knew, she would never have her true Wyrd. As he paced around his chamber, Nevyn suddenly began to tremble. He sank into a chair and wondered if he was ill until he realized that he was weeping.

The summer rains had turned the dun of the Wolf clan into a pool of muck. The gutted roofless broch rose in the middle of black mud, ashes, and charred timbers, all cracking on the cobbles, clogging the well, and stinking with the sickly-sweet stench of burning and rot. Here and there in the shade of the walls molds and mildews lay clammy, like diseased snow. Gweniver and Gwetmar sat on horseback in the opening that had once been the gate and looked it over.

“Well,” Gweniver said, “you’re a great lord now, sure enough.”

“Will Your Holiness partake of the hospitality of my splendid hall?” He made her a mock bow. “We might as well ride on and take a look at the village.”

“Truly. You won’t have time to rebuild Dun Blaedd before winter.”

They rode back downhill to the waiting army. Besides their own warband, about seventy men in all, they had two hundred of the King’s Men, led by Dannyn. Glyn’s generosity extended to a long baggage train of supplies and a contingent of skilled craftsmen to fortify whatever buildings they found still standing. As they rode across the Wolfs lands, Gweniver began to wonder if the demesne could be saved, because the bondsmen who worked the fields had all fled. Twice they passed the site of one of their villages to find the rough huts burned, as if the bondfolk had decided to show their contempt for their former masters as they escaped. The village, however, which had been held by freemen, still stood, even though the inhabitants were gone, driven in their case by fear of the Boar, not the Wolf. The weeds grew thick and green around the village well and down the paths. Under the apple trees the un-gathered fruit lay rotting like gouts of blood. The houses seemed to be crouching together, the shuttered windows sad eyes reproaching those who’d deserted them.

“I’ll be a fine lord indeed with no folk to rule,” Gwetmar remarked with a false-ringing jest in his voice.

“The villagers will come back in time. Send messengers to the south and east, where they have kin. As for your own lands, my friend, I think me you’ll have to be content with rents from free men—if you can find some who want to settle here.”

Gwetmar unceremoniously broke the padlock on the blacksmith’s house and claimed it as his own, simply because it was the biggest. With no time to build a proper stone wall, the master mason and the master carpenter decided on an earthwork and ditch to ring an inner palisade of logs. While the slow work got under way, the army rode constant small patrols along the border between the Boar and the Wolf lands. Yet it was a fortnight before the trouble came. Gweniver was leading a squad through deserted meadows when she saw, far down the road, a cloud of dust announcing that men rode toward them. She sent a messenger back to Dannyn and the main body of the army, then drew up her warband in battle order across the road.

Slowly the dust resolved itself into ten riders, coming at an easy jog. When they saw the squad, they halted and formed into a rough line. They were on their side of the border; the Wolves were on theirs; the situation hung on heartbeats as the leader edged his horse out of the pack to meet Gweniver halfway.

“Wolves, are you?” he said.

“We are. What’s it to you?”

The leader’s eyes flicked to her twenty-four men and counted hopeless odds. With a shrug he wheeled his horse and led off his troop in retreat. As they turned, she saw that one rider was carrying a shield blazoned with the green Wyvern of the Holy City.

“So,” she said to Ricyn, “I see why Glyn sent his men along with us.”

“Just that, my lady. Slwmar of Cantrae isn’t going to let this much land go without a fight.”

“We’d best get back and tell the others.”

Back at Blaeddbyr the ditch was finished and the earthwork piled up, though not yet tamped and reinforced. In a rough circle the logs for the palisade lay like a shark’s teeth on the ground just inside. Gweniver found Gwetmar and Dannyn talking with the master carpenter and led them aside to tell her news.

“So I’ll wager Burcan will know by sunset that we’re back,” she finished.

“Just that,” Dannyn said. “They know we couldn’t be at the ruined dun, so I’ll wager they ride straight here. We’d best meet them on the road. If we’re badly outnumbered, we’ll fall back to the village, and the earthwork will even the odds for us.”

“If we have to retreat,” Gwetmar joined in, “we should do it as soon as we realize we have to. We don’t want to get cut off.”

“Of course,” Dannyn said. “But you’re staying here to hold the village.”

“Now, just one moment! I intend to ride in defense of my own lands.”

“The intention is noble, my lord, but the thought is poor. The only reason that me and my lads are here is to keep you alive.”

When Gwetmar flushed in rage, Gweniver intervened.

“Don’t be a dolt!” she snapped. “How do we know if that child Maccy’s carrying is a lad or a lass? If you die in battle, and if it doesn’t live or suchlike, then there isn’t any Wolf clan until Maccy remarries. We’ll have to go through this whole cursed thing again.”

“Exactly.” Dannyn gave Gwetmar a smile that was meant to be conciliatory. “You produce the heirs, my lord, and we’ll get the land for them.”

On the morrow Dannyn woke the men early and led them out as the gray dawn was brightening, because if Burcan marched fast, he would reach the village by late afternoon. In the middle of the morning they crossed the border between the two demesnes and marched on through fields gone to weeds and wild grasses. Here and there they saw empty farmhouses, rotting in the weather. At noon they came to a large meadow with a thick stand of trees to one side. Dannyn sent out scouts, then let the main body rest their horses for a short while before he formed up the battle line. Two thirds of the men drew up across the road; the others hid among the trees, where they would wait until the battle was joined, then fall on Burcan’s flank.

They were waiting in the hot sun when the scouts came back, bearing the news that they’d met with scouts from the Boar. Gweniver turned to Ricyn with a smile.

“Well and good. They’re on their way. Remember to leave Burcan himself to me.”

“I will, my lady. And if I don’t see you alive tonight, then I’ll see you in the Otherlands.”

When she drew a javelin, her men followed her lead, the points flashing like a line of fire across the road. Again they waited, the horses stamping restlessly, the men utterly silent. Suddenly Gweniver felt a cold touch ripple down her spine. When she looked around, she saw her father, her brothers, and her uncles, sitting on shadowy horses as insubstantial as they, off to one side of the battle line. They watched her gravely, as silent as the living men while they waited to see either the victory or the death of their clan.

“Is somewhat wrong?” Ricyn said.

“Can’t you see them? Look. There.”

Utterly puzzled, he peered in the direction she pointed out, while the ghosts smiled, as if thinking that good-hearted Ricyn had changed very little since last they’d seen him. Just at that moment someone raised a shout. Down the road a cloud of dust appeared, the Boars, riding to the challenge. Some fifty yards away they halted and formed a rough wedge. There were about two hundred of them, and they thought that they were facing a warband of only a hundred and fifty. Dannyn edged his horse forward as Burcan did the same.