Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“Rhodry? A strange thing happened when I was on my way to Ynryc’s.”

When she told the tale, he grew troubled.

“Why didn’t you tell Ynryc about this?” he said at last. “That horse could have belonged to one of his allies.”

“You’re right.” She felt a shudder of cold down her back. “Why didn’t I? I—well—I just forgot.”

Rhodry turned in the saddle to look at her.

“That’s a peculiar sort of thing to just forget.”

“I know.” She shivered convulsively. “There’s dweomer at work here. Do you think I’m daft for saying that?”

“I only wish I could dismiss it so easily.” He halted his horse. “We’d best get back to Ynryc with this tale.”

Jill agreed, but as she was turning her horse, the gray gnome materialized in the road in front of her. The little creature was frantic, rolling its eyes and waving its hands at them to stop.

“What’s wrong?” Jill said. “Shouldn’t we go back?”

It shook its head so hard that it nearly fell over.

“What’s all this?” Rhodry said. “Your gnome?”

“Just that, and he doesn’t want us to go back. He’s terrified, Rhoddo.”

The gnome vanished, then appeared again in Rhodry’s lap. It reached up and patted him imploringly on the cheek. Although he couldn’t see it, he could feel the touch.

“Well, the Wildfolk saved my life once,” he said. “If he thinks that there’s danger behind us, I’ll take his word for it.”

The gnome grinned and patted his hand.

“Besides,” Rhodry went on, “we can turn the thing over to the tieryn in Marcmwr.”

Shaking his head no, the gnome pinched his arm.

“Do you want us to keep it?” Jill said.

Relieved, he smiled and nodded yes, then vanished. Jill and Rhodry sat on their horses for a moment and stared at each other in bewilderment.

“Here,” Rhodry said finally. “Let me just get my mail shirt out of my saddlebags. I wish to the gods that you had one.”

“I think we should buy me one in Marcmwr. Since Ynryc was so generous about your ransom, we’ve got the coin.”

“We do, do we? And here you’ve been telling me that we barely have a coin to our name!”

“If you’d drunk it all away, I couldn’t buy mail now.”

“True enough. Ah, you must truly love me, if you’d actually part with a coin for my ransom!”

She leaned over and cuffed him hard on the shoulder.

After Rhodry had armed, they rode out at a faster pace, both of them with sword in hand and shields ready at the saddle peak. The road snaked through the hills, always climbing. Rhodry kept looking back the way they’d come. His half-elven eyesight was an ally, she knew, because he could see much farther than an ordinary man and would spot their enemies long before the enemies spotted them. Ahead the mountains loomed, black with pines and streaked here and there with sandstone outcrops like the knuckles of a giant fist. Every little valley or canyon that they came to seemed to hide an ambush, yet always they passed safely by.

Finally they climbed one last hill and looked down on a narrow plain, hemmed in by mountains to the east and hills to the west. Beside a river stood Marcmwr. About three hundred roundhouses clustered together in the middle of a large open space inside the high stone walls, as if they had shrunk together in fear, but in truth the open land served as pasturage for the horses and mules of merchant caravans.

“I’ve never been so blasted glad to see a town in my life,” Rhodry remarked.

“Me, either.”

Yet she didn’t feel entirely safe until they rode through the massive iron-bound gates and saw the armed town guards standing around.

“They almost turned back, curse them!” Alastyr snarled.

“It’s that gnome of hers, master,” Sarcyn said. “I saw it warn them when I was scrying.”

“Indeed? Then we’ll do somewhat about that.”

It occurred to Alastyr that his feeling of being watched at times might simply have come from the gnome or other Wildfolk spying upon him. It was time, then, to set an example and scare them away.

For two days Rhodry and Jill stayed in Marcmwr, in a crumbling inn by the north gate, the only one in this trade town full of inns that would sell shelter to a silver dagger. Since in a town that size there was no such thing as an armorer’s shop, on the first day there they rode to the dun of the local tieryn and haggled with his chamberlain for an old mail shirt for Jill. On the second Rhodry worked the town in earnest, looking for a hire. Finally he found one in Seryl, who had contracted to take a caravan of weapons and luxury goods to Dun Hiraedd.

Dun Hiraedd was an odd sort of city and a new one, too, founded only eighty years before. Originally it had been given the splendid name of Privddun Ricaid, the “chief royal fort,” but the first warband garrisoned there dubbed it Fort Homesick, and the name stuck. Established by royal charter, it existed to provide a legal and military center for Cwm Pecl, a new province slowly being colonized by Deverry’s expanding population. In Jill and Rhodry’s time, the Far Valley was still a lonely sort of place, and it never could have paid enough taxes to maintain a gwerbret if the king himself hadn’t helped supply it. Every summer royal agents hired men like Seryl to take caravans of goods to the gwerbret’s city.

Since Seryl was spending the king’s money rather than his own, he was generous about Rhodry’s hire, offering him a silver piece a week and making no quibble about feeding Jill and her horse as well.

“And I’ll want you to round up four other lads,” the merchant said. “Twenty coppers apiece for them.”

“Done, then. I shouldn’t have any trouble finding guards in a town like this.”

Rhodry went back to the inn with a heavy heart. He had some very good reasons for never wanting to see Dun Hiraedd again, but since buying Jill’s mail had left them with only a handful of coppers, he was desperate for coin. The innkeep, a skinny fellow with greasy brown hair, was in fact waiting for him at the tavern door.

“Well?” he snapped.

When Rhodry handed him four pieces of the earnest money, the innkeep turned all smiles and went to fetch him a tankard of ale. The smoky half round of the tavern-room was crowded with young men who watched with great interest as he paid off his bill. They were a tattered lot, unwashed, poorly dressed and cheaply armed. All over the kingdom one found men like them, looking for a place in a lord’s warband, taking guard work while they did, all of them driven by the dream of battle glory that lies in the hearts of most Deverry men. Rhodry let them speculate for a little longer and sat down by Jill, who was nursing a tankard at a table where she could keep her back to the wall.

“You found one?” she said.

“I did. Guarding one of the royal caravans.”

Distracted with some thought of her own, she merely nodded.

“Is somewhat wrong?” he said.

“I’m worried about my gnome.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He hasn’t come to me since we hit this stinking town, and while you were gone, I tried to call him. He’s always come to me before, but I couldn’t raise him.”

“Oh, well, who knows what goes on in their little minds?”

“This is serious!” Her voice shook with worry.

“My apologies, then, but what possibly could have happened to him?”

“I don’t know, but considering what we found?”

She meant, of course, that there was dweomer all round them. Rhodry patted her hand to reassure her, but he could think of nothing comforting to say.

Everywhere hung redness, and he could not move. He hated it, and he raged, desperately trying to move, until at last he felt merely hopeless. Although he had no words, he could remember pictures and feelings, of sailing free in his true home, of others appearing, ugly ones, twisted and cruel, who caught him and dragged him down. He remembered terror and a man’s voice chanting. Then there was only this redness, and he could not move. A picture of her face came to him. He was washed in terror and love, mingled to an ache. The only word he could say filled him: Jill, Jill, Jill.