A Time Of Omens Part 26

"Elven," he said at last, and then he tossed back his head and howled with laughter, his icy berserker's shriek.

Demanding an explanation from him in that mood was the furthest thing from Yraen's mind.

"I'll just go get some more firewood." He got to his feet. "Fire's getting low, and I wouldn't mind some light."

As he hurried off to the area where the provisions were stacked, Yraen was remembering all the old children's tales he'd fever heard about the people called the Elcyion Lacar or elves. If any such race did exist, he decided, Rhodry was the best candidate ever he'd found to be one of them, simply because he seemed so alien at his very heart.

When he went to sleep that night, Rhodry tucked the bone whistle into his shirt. Although he doubted very much if Dallandra would stoop to stealing it, he was expecting one of the strange creatures to take advantage of his weariness, and he put the bronze knife right beside his blankets, as well. Sure enough, he woke suddenly in the middle of the night at the sound of someone or something dumping out his saddlebags. When he sat up, grabbing the knife, whatever it was fled. He could see nothing but his strewn gear, and the whistle was still safely in his shirt. Moving quietly he got up, knelt and put the gear away again, then pulled on his boots for a look round and a word with the night watch. Although the camp was ringed by sentries, none of them had seen anything moving, either in the camp or out in the silent valley.

About halfway between two sentries, Rhodry paused, rubbing his face and yawning while he considered offering to stand someone's watch for them. From where he stood he could see the bleak lines of dead men, waiting under their blankets for their burying on the morrow. With a sharp sigh he turned away, only to find Dallandra walking toward him. In the moonlight he could see her quite clearly as a young and beautiful elven woman. With her long silvery-blond hair carelessly pulled back with a thong, she seemed no more than a la.s.s, in fact, but he'd heard enough tales to know who she was.

"Good evening," he said in Elvish. "Looking for me?"

"No, I just couldn't sleep." She answered in the same. "Ych, this slaughter! I feel like crying, but if I let myself start, I'd weep for hours."

"It takes some people that way, truly."

"Not you?"

"It did at first. I grew past it, as, or so I hope, our young Yraen will. If he insists on riding with me, he'll see plenty of this sort of thing."

She merely nodded, staring out over the field with her steel-gray eyes.

"Tell me something," Rhodry said. "You have dweomer, don't you? Every other man in this camp thinks you're an ugly old crone."

"That's Evandar's dweomer, not mine. I should have known that a man of the People would see through it. You've met me before, Rhodry, in a rather odd way. I think you might have seen me, anyway, even though I wasn't truly on the physical plane. It was a long time ago, when Jill and Aderyn pulled you free of that trouble you'd got yourself into."

Rhodry winced. Silver dagger or no, there were a few shameful things in his life that he didn't care to remember.

"I wasn't truly aware of much, then," he said at last. All at once a thought struck him. "Oh, here, I've sad news for you. Or did you know about Aderyn?"

"Is he dead then?"

"He is, of old age and nothing more."

Her eyes spilled tears, and she spun round, hiding her face in the crook of an elbow. When Rhodry laid a hesitant hand on her shoulder to comfort her, she turned to him blindly and sobbed against his chest.

"That hurts," she choked out. "I'm surprised at how much."

"Then forgive me for being the bearer of the news."

She nodded, pulling away, wiping her face vigorously on the hem of her shirt.

"I'll talk to you later," she said, her voice still thick. "I need a moment or two alone."

She strode off, walking so fast and surely, even in her grief, that he wondered at the blindness of men for believing in the dweomer cloak that Evandar had fashioned for her.

On a bed of blankets, Lord Comerr lay beside Lord Erddyr's fire. His face was dead-pale, his breathing shallow, and his skin cool to the touch-a trio of omens that troubled Dallandra deeply. While she changed the bandages on his wounds, Erddyr knelt beside her and did his best to help, handing over things as she asked for them. Comerr stirred once or twice at the pain, but he never spoke.

"Tell me honestly," Erddyr said. "Will he live?"

"Maybe. He's a hard man, and there's hope, but he's lost a terrible lot of blood."

With a grunt, Erddyr sat back on his heels and studied Comerr's face.

"Let me ask you a presumptuous question, my lord," Dallandra went on. "Have you ever thought of asking the gwerbret for his intervention? Lord Adry is dead, and Comerr close enough to it. Fighting over which of them will be tieryn someday seems a bit superfluous, shall we say?"

"True spoken. And they aren't the only n.o.ble lords fallen in this sc.r.a.p. I've been thinking very hard about sending that message."

"That gladdens my heart. Do you think the other side will submit?"

"They'll have cursed little choice if the gwerbret takes the matter under his jurisdiction. Besides, Nomyr's the only lord left on their side, and he's in this only out of duty."

"Didn't Adry have a son?"

"He does, but the lad's only seven years old."

Dallandra muttered an oath under her breath. Erddyr studied his mercifully unconscious ally.

"Ah, by the fart-freezing h.e.l.ls, it aches my heart to see him maimed like this."

"Better than dead. The arm wasn't worth saving, and I never could have stopped the bleeding in time."

"Oh, I'm not questioning your decision." Erddyr shuddered like a wet dog. "I think I'll take my chance to get him out of this while he can't speak for himself. I'll send messengers tomorrow."

"The G.o.ds will honor you for it. You know, my lord, I happen to have a letter of safe conduct with the gwerbret's seal upon it. You'd be most welcome to make use of it."

"My thanks a hundredfold. I will."

"I wonder if his lordship would do me a favor. I'd just as soon have my friend Rhodry out of this. Could you send your pair of silver daggers as the messengers?"

"Oh, I'd grant your favor gladly, but they'd be in worse danger there than here. You're forgetting that Rhodry is the man who killed Lord Adry. If any of Adry's men catch Rhodry on the road, they'll cut him down even if he's carrying letters from the Lord of h.e.l.l himself."

"I hadn't realized that, my lord."

Erddyr rubbed his beard and looked at Comerr, who tossed his head in his sleep and grunted in pain. Suddenly too weary to stand, Dallandra sat down right on the ground and cradled her head in both hands.

"A thousand apologies, good herbwoman," Erddyr said. "I never should have kept you here like this. You need your sleep at your age and all."

"So I do. Since my lordship excuses me?"

Yet, once she was lying down in her blankets, she found herself thinking about Aderyn instead of falling asleep. The surprise of her grief troubled her more than the grief itself, until she realized that she was mourning not so much the man himself, as what their love might have been if only Evandar and his doomed people hadn't claimed her instead. Another painful thing was Rhodry's news that he'd died of simple old age. Even though she'd spent a few months with him when he was already old as men reckon age, in her mind and heart she always saw him as her young lover with his ready smile and earnest eyes. Once more she wept, crying herself asleep, alone at the edge of the armed camp.

It took two days for the army to return to Comerr's dun, simply because the lord's life hung by a thread. Being jolted in a cart tired him so badly that every now and then the line of march was forced to stop and let him rest. At last, close to sunset on the second day, they rode into the great iron-bound gates, where Comerr's young wife waited weeping to receive her husband. Dallandra helped the lady settle Comerr in his own bed and tend his wounds, then went down to the great hall for a meal. Crowded into one side of the great hall, the men were sitting on the floor or standing as they ate. At the table of honor, Lord Erddyr dined done. When Dallandra went for a word with him, the lord insisted that she join him.

"What do you think of Comerr's chances now?" Erddyr said.

"They're good. He's lived through the worst, and there's no sign of either gangrene or lockjaw."

With a sigh of relief, Erddyr handed Dallandra a slice of bread and poured her ale with his own hands. Sharing a wooden trencher, they ate roast pork and bread in silence. Finally the lord leaned back in his chair.

"Well, naught for it but to wait for the gwerbret's answer to that message of mine. I wonder if Nomyr sent a request for intervention himself?" He held up a greasy hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. "Adry's dead, Tewdyr and his heir are dead, Oldadd's dead, Paedyn's dead, and Degedd's dead. Ah horses.h.i.t, I'm not sure I give a pig's fart about this war anymore, but I'll beg you, good herbwoman, don't tell another man I ever said such a dishonorable thing."

In two days the messengers returned with the news that the gwerbret was riding to settle the matter with his entire warband of five hundred men. Erddyr was to select twenty-five men for an honor guard and ride to neutral ground; Nomyr would do the same or be declared a traitor. Although Dallandra would have liked to have ridden to hear the settlement, her first obligation was to the wounded. Although a good half of the casualties had died during the long journey back to the dun, she still had some twenty men who needed more care than the servants could give them. Late that evening, when she was tending them in the barracks, the messenger sought her out; he'd been given a note for her at the gwerbret's dun.

"Can you read, good dame, or should I fetch the scribe?"

"I can read a bit. Let me try."

Although written Deverrian was difficult for her, the note was brief.

"Ah, it's from Timryc the chirurgeon! He's riding our way as fast as ever he can, and he's bringing supplies with him."

She was so relieved that she wept, just a brief scatter of tears while the messenger nodded in sympathy, glancing round at the men whose luck had been worse than his own. She could never tell him or any other human being that her heart was troubled more by revulsion than sympathy for all this gouged and shattered flesh, cut meat exposing splintered bone.

Close to midnight, Dallandra went for a walk out in the ward. By then the gibbous moon was already slouching past zenith. Most of the men were asleep, but she could see through the windows a few servants still working in the firelit great hall. Although she'd come out for a breath of air, the ward stank of dungheaps and stable sweepings, a pigsty and a henhouse. Mud from the spring thaw lay everywhere, slimy and half-alive with sprouting weeds and fungi.

For a moment she wanted to scream and run, to find a road back to Evandar's country no matter who might need her here in the world of men, to leave, in fact, the entire physical world far behind her. How could she condemn Elessario or any of the Host to this foul existence? Even the People, for all their long lives, suffered illness and injury and death out on the gra.s.slands; even they, for all their former glory, spent cold wet winters huddled in smelly tents while they rationed out food and fuel. Perhaps Evandar was right. Perhaps it would be better to never be born, to live for a brief while in the shifting astral world like flames in a fire, then fade away in peace, the fire cold and spent.

She looked up to the moon, waning now, only a bulbous wedge of light in the sky and soon to disappear into the darkness. Yet, in turn again, it would shine forth and grow till it rode full and high in the sky-a visible symbol of the waxing and waning of the Light, the sinking and rising of birth and death. Once Dallandra would have found comfort in meditating on such a symbol; that night in the stinking damp ward she was simply too weary, too sick at heart for it to seem anything but a sterile exercise.

"Evandar, I wish you'd come to me."

Although she only breathed a whisper, she'd surprised herself by speaking aloud at all. There were times when she could summon him by trained and concentrated thought, but that night when she tried she could only feel that he was far out of reach, off perhaps on business of his own rather than hovering near her in the country he called the Gatelands. Perhaps his brother had broken their truce? Remembering the fox warrior, wondering if some peculiar combat was being joined, made her shudder with a sick loathing.

"Evandar!"

No thought, no breath of his presence came to her, yet she was sure that she would know if he was dead or somehow being kept from her against his will.

"Evandar!"

She could hear her voice, the wail of a lost child. Yet she felt nothing but a vast lack, an emptiness where his presence might have been. She had no choice, then, but to face her melancholy alone.

In the vain hope of finding cleaner air, she started for the gates, only to find someone there ahead of her, climbing down the ladder from the ramparts. When he turned round, she could see with her elven sight that it was Rhodry, yawning as he came off watch. In the shadow of the dun she paused, hiding out of a weary reluctance to speak with anyone, but being a man of the People as he was, he spotted her and strolled over.

"You're up late," he remarked.

"I just finished with the wounded. By the G.o.ds of both our peoples, I hope that chirurgeon gets himself here soon."

"Shouldn't take him long. Shall I escort you to your luxurious chambers? I trust our lord found you a clean place to sleep, anyway."

"He did, though splendid it's not. One of the storage sheds." All at once she yawned. "I'm more tired than I thought."

Silently they walked round the dun and made their way behind the kitchen hut to the ramshackle thatched shed that was serving her as a bedchamber. Since like cats the People can't see in pitch-darkness, she had a tin candle-lantern, perched on an ale barrel far away from the heap of straw where she'd spread her blankets. When she lit the candle with a snap of her fingers, Rhodry flinched.

"You never truly get used to seeing that," he said, but he was grinning at her. "May I talk with you a little while? I'd like to ask you a few questions and all that, but I can see you're weary, so send me right away if you want."

She hesitated, but not only did he deserve answers, she quite simply didn't want to be alone.

"Not that tired. Bar the door, will you?"

She sat down on her blankets amid a scatter of her gear, and watched him as he sat by the barrel a few feet away. In the shadow-dancing candlelight she was struck by how good-looking he was, especially for a man who was half-human; somehow, in all the danger and hard work of the past few days, she simply hadn't noticed. In her dark mood the streak of gray in his hair and the web of lines round his eyes made him seem only more attractive. Here was a man who knew defeat and suffering both.

"Who or what is Evandar?" he said abruptly. "He's not a man of the People, is he?"

"He's not, and no more is he human. He's not truly incarnated or corporeal at all. Do you know what those words mean?"

"Close enough." He shot her a grin. "Not only did I spend a few years in the company of sorcerers, but I was raised a Maelwaedd. I've a bit more learning than most border lords or silver daggers either."

"Well, my apologies-"

"No need, no need. I don't suppose anyone else in this dun would know what you're talking about, except maybe young Yraen, and he wouldn't believe you."

They shared a soft laugh.

"But Evandar's only one of an entire host of beings, some like him-true individuals, I mean. The others are about as conscious as clever animals but no more, and there's even some who seem to have never truly evolved at all into anything you could call a man or woman."

"Indeed? And what about that badger-headed thing that keeps trying to steal this whistle?" Rhodry laid a hand on his shirt, just above his belt. "Is he one of Evandar's people?"

"He's not, but a renegade from another host, headed by Evandar's brother, and a strange thing that is." She shuddered again, remembering the sheer malice in the black and vulpine eyes. "I don't truly understand them myself, Rhodry. I'm not trying to put you off. You're probably thinking of the old stories, of how I left Aderyn hundreds of years ago, but you've got to remember that as Evandar's world reckons Time, I've only been there a month or so."

His lips parted in a soft "oh" of surprise.

"No more do I know what that whistle may be," she went on. "I suspect that it's not magical at all, but just a trinket, like that ring of yours."

"Now wait! If there's no dweomer on this ring, why does that female keep trying to take it back?"

"Alshandra? Evandar told me about your skirmishes with her. She doesn't truly understand what she's doing. I fear me that she's gone mad."

"Oh, splendid!" Rhodry snarled. "Here I am, chased round two kingdoms by a thing from the Otherlands and a mad spirit, and no one even knows why! I just might go daft myself, out of spite if naught more."

"I couldn't hold it to your shame, but it would be a great pity if you did. You're going to need your wits about you."

"No doubt. I always have, for all of my wretched life, except perhaps for those few years out on the gra.s.s. That's the only peace I've ever known, Dalla, those years with the People."

All at once he looked so weary, so spent, really, that she leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee.

"It aches my heart to see you so sad, but you've got a tangled Wyrd, sure enough, and there's naught that I or any other dweomerworker can do about that."

He nodded, putting his hand over hers, just a friendly gesture at first, but it seemed to her that a warmth grew and spread between them. His fingers, the rough, callused fingers of a fighting man, tightened on her hand. She hesitated, thinking of Evandar, but when she sent her mind ranging out, she could sense nothing but a vast distance between them. When Rhodry raised her hand and kissed her fingertips, just lightly, she felt the warmth spread as if it were mead, flowing through her blood. He rose to his knees, pulling her up with him. She laid her free hand flat on his chest.

"In a few days I'll have to leave this world and go back to the one I've made my own. If you ride with his lordship to the settlement, I could well be gone by the time you return, and by the time I come back to your world, a hundred years might have pa.s.sed."

"And would it ache your heart, to ride back and find me gone?"

"It would, but not enough to keep me here. In all fairness, you need to know that."

He smiled, but in the candlelight his eyes seemed wells of sadness.