Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

“Da, are you all right?”

“Get away.” Cullyn rose and slapped her across the face. “Get away, Jill.”

Although Jill ran back, it was already too late. She’d seen what Cullyn didn’t want her to see—the rider lying face down in the grass with a pool of blood spreading from his throat and soaking into his soft blond hair. Blood smelled warm, sticky, and unexpectedly sweet. Abryn ran to meet her.

“Did you see?” His face was dead white.

Jill fell to her knees and began to vomit, kept it up until her stomach was sore. Abryn grabbed her shoulders when she was done and helped her stand. She felt as cold as if it were snowing. They walked back to the two ponies and sat down to watch the warband come back, laughing and crowing at the victory. Jill was so tired that she closed her eyes, but she could see the dead man like a picture, the blood spreading round him. Hastily she opened her eyes again. Cullyn left the warband and walked over.

“I told you to stay away,” he said.

“I just forgot. I couldn’t think.”

“I suppose not. What’s that on your mouth? Did you throw up?”

Jill wiped her face on her sleeve. He was still her da, her handsome, wonderful da, but she had just seen him kill a man. When he laid his hand on her shoulder, she flinched.

“I’m not going to slap you,” Cullyn said, misunderstanding. “I threw up myself the first time I saw a man killed. Ah, by the hells, another man dead over pig food! I hope our driveling fool ends this here.”

“Ynydd, you mean?” Abryn said.

“Him, too.”

The warband took the dead man’s body back to the dun for the tieryn to send to Ynydd in honorable return. Since the dead man’s horse had fled in the rout, Abryn had to give up his pony and ride behind Cullyn. When the riders tied the corpse to the saddle, Jill made herself look at it, flopping like her rag doll, not a man any more at all. She felt sicker than before. When they reached the dun, Glyn and the servants ran out to meet them. In the confusion, Jill slipped away, going around behind the broch and finding a quiet spot to sit in the shade of the ruined wall. She knew that Abryn would run to his mother, and she envied him bitterly.

She’d been there for some time before Cullyn found her. When he sat down next to her on the ground, she could hardly look at him.

“The herald’s riding out now to take that poor lad home. This corpse should end the thing. The honor of Braedd’s piss-poor warband has been avenged, and Ynydd’s had all the gas scared out of both ends of him.”

Jill looked at Cullyn’s hands, resting on his thighs. Without his heavy gauntlets, they looked like his hands again, the ones that gave her food and combed her hair and patted her on the shoulder. She wondered why she’d thought that they would have changed. He’s killed lots of men, she thought, that’s why he has all that glory.

“Still feel sick?” Cullyn said.

“I don’t. I didn’t think blood would smell like that.”

“Well, it does, and it runs like that, too. Why do you think I didn’t want you riding with us?”

“Did you know someone would get killed?”

“I was hoping I could stop it, but I was ready for it. I always am, because I have to be. I truly did think those lads would break sooner than they did, you see, but there was one young wolf in the pack of rabbits. Poor bastard. That’s what he gets for his honor.”

“Da? Are you sorry for him?”

“I am. I’ll tell you something, my sweet, that no other man in Deverry would admit: I’m sorry for every man I ever killed, somewhere deep in my heart. But it was his Wyrd, and there’s nothing a man can do about his own Wyrd, much less someone else’s. Someday my own Wyrd will take me, and I’ve no doubt it’ll be the same one I’ve brought to many a man. It’s like a bargain with the gods. Every warrior makes it. Do you understand?”

“Sort of. Your life for theirs, you mean?”

“Just that. There’s nothing else a man can do.”

Jill began to feel better. Thinking of it as Wyrd made it seem clean again.

“It’s the only honor left to me, my bargain with my Wyrd,” Cullyn went on. “I told you once, never dishonor yourself. If ever you’re tempted to do the slightest bit of a dishonorable thing, you remember your father, and what one dishonor brought him—the long road and shame in the eyes of every honest man.”

“But wasn’t it your Wyrd to have the dagger?”

“It wasn’t.” Cullyn allowed himself a brief smile. “A man can’t make his Wyrd better, but it’s in his hands to make it worse.”

“Do the gods make a man’s Wyrd?”

“They don’t. Wyrd rules the gods, too. They can’t turn aside a man’s Wyrd no matter how much he prays and carries on. Do you remember the story of Gwindyc, back in the Dawntime? The Goddess Epona tried to save his life, but his Wyrd was upon him. She sent a spear at the cursed Rhwmanes, but Gwindyc turned and took the spear in his own side.”

“So he did, and he didn’t even complain. But that lad you killed screamed.”

“I heard him.” Cullyn’s face went dead calm, just as it had in the battle. “But don’t hold it against him. I don’t.”

Jill thought for a moment, then leaned against his shoulder. Cullyn put his arm around her and pulled her close. He was still her father—and all she had in the world.

Close to nightfall, the herald returned. After conferring with the tieryn and the herald, Councillor Glyn sought Cullyn out.

“Lord Ynydd will sue for peace in the morning,” Glyn said. “And Tieryn Braedd will grant it.”

“Thanks be to the gods of our people! Here, Jill and I will be riding on in the morning.”

That night Cullyn let Jill sleep in the same bunk with him. She cuddled up to his broad back and tried to think of things other than the battle, but she dreamt about it. All over again she ran up to Cullyn and saw the dead rider, but when she looked up, Cullyn was gone, and Aiva stood there, just as Jill had always imagined her, tall and strong, with golden braids coiled about her head and a long spear in her hand. She was carrying a shield with a device of the moon in its dark phase. Jill knew that she couldn’t see the moon if it was dark, but in the dream she could. Since she refused to disgrace herself in front of Aiva, Jill made herself look at the rider. As she watched, his whole body turned to blood and soaked into the earth until there was naught but grass, growing thick and green. When she looked up, Aiva was smiling at her, and the moon on her shield was full.

Jill woke and listened to the comfortable sound of Cullyn snoring beside her. She thought over the dream to make sure that she remembered all of it. Although she wasn’t sure why, she knew it was very important.

II

For seven long years, ever since the lark omen down on the Eldidd coast, Nevyn had been wandering the kingdom and searching for the child who held his Wyrd in her soul. For all the power of dweomer, it has limits, and no dweomermaster can ever scry out a person whom he hasn’t seen at least once in the flesh. Trusting the luck that’s more than luck, Nevyn had taken his riding horse and his pack mule, laden with herbs and medicines, and lived by tending the ills of the poor folk as he traveled endlessly from place to place. Now, with another summer coming to an end, he was on the road to Cantrae, a city in the northeast corner of the kingdom. He had a good friend there, Lidyn the apothecary, with whom he could spend the winter in comfort.

The Cantrae road ran through endless grassy hills stippled with white birches in the little valleys. One particularly fine afternoon, he was traveling slowly, letting his horse pick its own pace while the mule plodded behind. He was lost in thought that was close to being a trance, musing over the woman he would always think of as Brangwen, even though she was now a child with another name. All at once he was startled out of his reverie by the clatter and pounding of a mounted warband trotting straight downhill toward him, about twenty men with the silver dragon of Aberwyn blazoned on the shields slung beside each saddle. They rode behind a young lad. One of the men screamed at Nevyn to get off the road and out of the way. Nevyn hurriedly swung his horse’s head to the right, but the lad rose up in his stirrups and yelled at the warband to halt.