Deverry - A Time Of War Part 7

Jahdo tried to think of a really good insult, but at that moment the blond man grabbed Meer's arm.

'On your feet,' he snapped.

'You leave him alone!' Jahdo snarled. 'You treat him with respect, too. He be a bard.'

Although the blond man started to laugh, Rhodry hit him on the shoulder and made him stop. He walked over to Meer and knelt down in front of him on one knee.

'Does the lad speak true?' he said, and politely.

'He does. A bard I am, and a loremaster as well, to the twelfth level of the thirteen levels of the deepening well of knowledge, not that I'll ever see my homeland and my master again, most like, to complete my studies.'

'And the lad's your slave?'

'He is not that, but free born, travelling with me at my request.'

'Well and good, then.' Rhodry got up, turning to the blond man.

'Yraen, put your saddle on that white horse, because the bard and his lad will be riding in comfort.

You'll have to make do with bareback, unless you want to clamber into that pack saddle yourself and sh.e.l.l your own nuts.'

'What?' The man called Yraen was practically spitting. 'Have you gone daft?'

'A bard's a bard, lad, and due all respect.'

Laughing and calling out jeers, the other men in the squad gathered round to see what Yraen would say to that - nothing, as it turned out, because Rhodry caught his gaze and stared him down.

'Have it your way, then.' Yraen heaved a melodramatic sigh. 'You stinking b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Although Jahdo expected swords to flash, everyone merely laughed. Rhodry's laugh taught Jahdo the meaning of that old saw, that a sound could make your blood run cold. It was daft and furious, merry and murderous all at the same time, a high-pitched chortle that reminded him of ferrets in a rage. The rest of the men, however, seemed to take it for granted, as if they heard him laugh that way often. With a shake of his head, Yraen strode off to get the squad ready to ride. As Jahdo watched them, he wondered why the view had turned so hazy, wondered why he felt so trembly, all of a sudden. Then he realized that he was crying, the tears running down his face of their own accord. Still kneeling, Meer held out one enormous arm. Jahdo rushed to him and flung himself against the Horsekin's chest to sob aloud while Meer moaned and whimpered under his breath.

'Forgive me, Jahdo lad, forgive me, and may your mother forgive me, too!'

In a river twist the etheric water puddled like a mirror, slick silver, edged with green. Evandar knelt on the bank nearby and stared down at the surface, but his eyes moved, following a vision rather than contemplating himself. All at once he laughed and sat back on his heels.

'They have them,' he announced The bard and the boy, I mean. Rhodry and his squad have seized them upon the road. They're all heading off to Cengarn '

'I feel sorry for that poor child,' Dallandra said. 'He must be terrified.'

Evandar merely shrugged.

'Don't you feel anything for these people?' Dallandra burst out. 'You're moving them round like pegs in a game of Wooden Wisdom, knocking them off the board and ruining their lives. Don't you care?'

'I love you, and I love my daughter, and I love the memory of Rinbaladelan, the sea-coast city I was telling you about. Beyond that, my darling, no, I don't care. Not one whit.'

PART TWO.

Amissio

A good omen for the taking of prisoners, but otherwise, evil in all things, though with great hope of mitigation. If it should fall under the presidency of Tin, the ninth land upon our map, it signifies evil without any such hope, for in all matters pertaining to the G.o.ds and their worship, this figure works naught but ill and harm.

The Omenbook ofGwarn, Loremaster

Approached from the west, Cengarn loomed. The day when Jahdo saw it for the first time was beautifully sunny and fresh, too, as if the G.o.ds were mocking his fate and making sure he could see every detail of the Slavers' evil city. As usual, he and Meer, doubled up on Baki, were being led along at the rear of the squad. When it crested one last hill, the men spread out to rest their horses, and Jahdo could look ahead. Down below the view stretched out, the spa.r.s.e woodlands dropping to a valley of rolling meadows and green crops. Toward their side of the valley stood a solitary farmstead. Some way beyond that ran a stream, bordered with trees.

'The house be round, Meer, and there does stand this dirt wall, a mound like, all round it. I can see some cows, too, and it looks like they be white. It's kind of hard to tell from here.' Jahdo shaded his hand with his eyes. 'Oh! I do think that's the city.'

In the strong morning light he could pick out, far across the valley, three grey hills surrounded by what seemed to be stone walls, being as they were too smooth and circular to be cliffs. Spread across the hills were the tiny shapes of white-washed houses, all of them round, and some larger stone buildings. Over it all hung a faint haze - the smoke of cooking fires, most likely - out of which, at the top of the highest hill, rose a cl.u.s.ter of round stone towers with flat roofs, just like the ones mentioned in the old tales, as dark and grim and ugly as chunks of iron. When Jahdo described this view, Meer sighed, but he said nothing.

'It be not far.' Jahdo swallowed heavily. 'We should get there before noon.'

'To find out our fate at last. I can only pray that some kind and decent master buys you, lad. What happens to me is of no moment, for I am a broken man with no house or clan, but you have a life ahead of you.'

'Not much of one.'

Meer stayed silent. Over the past three days, as the squad rode for Cengarn, Jahdo had run out of tears for his lost family, his lost freedom. He felt numb, as if he'd been so ill with a fever for so long that life had receded to some far distance.

'Come on, lads!' Rhodry called out. 'Almost home.'

In a clatter and jingle of tack and hooves the squad jogged off downhill. When they came onto the flat, Jahdo got his first omen of what their welcome might be like. Just by the road a they saw a young girl, her blonde hair hanging in one long pigtail down her back She was wearing a dirty brown dress, cinched in at her waist with a length of old rope, and carrying a wooden crook, apparently to help her herd the cows.

At the sound of the horses' hooves and the jingle of tack, she turned toward the road and watched as the men rode by. When Rhodry made her a gallant bow from his saddle, she laughed and waved, until she got a look at Meer. At that she turned and ran screaming for the farmstead.

'Stop!' Rhodry called out. 'We won't let him hurt you.'

When the other men laughed, Jahdo remembered how he hated them. Although the girl stopped screaming, she kept running, darting inside the earth work wall. They could hear a gate slam, and dogs began barking hysterically - an entire pack, from the sound of it.

'Better trot, men,' Rhodry said, grinning. 'Let's get out of here before they set the dogs on us.'

Since they pa.s.sed the farmstead with no more trouble than the din of angry hounds, Rhodry called the squad to a walk. Apparently he was in no hurry to reach the city, for all that he'd called it home earlier, not on such a lovely day, perhaps, with songbirds warbling and the sun glinting on the stream. As they rode closer, Jahdo found himself thinking of the city as a storm cloud, floating nearer and nearer, rising high and dark on the horizon at first, then looming to fill the view. He couldn't decide whether he wished that they'd reach the city and get it over with or that Time would slow and they'd never quite arrive.

At length, though, they came to the West Gate, where a sheer rise of cliff, hacked smooth with tools and reinforced at the base with stone blocks, guarded a winding path up to the town. By tipping his head back Jahdo could just see the tops of the towers, rising over a dark grey wall at the brow of the highest hill. The gate itself stood partly open, a ma.s.sive thing of oak beams bound with iron strips and chains. In the shadows inside he could just make out a huge winch. Armed guards stepped forward and hailed the squad.

'So, silver dagger,' one of them said to Rhodry. 'You had a good hunt, I see.'

'Well, we've netted what Jill wanted, sure enough. Tell me somewhat. Are there a lot of people out and about in the streets today?'

'More than a few, it being so warm and all. Why?'

'I don't want the prisoners stoned and injured.'

Jahdo felt briefly sick.

'True enough,' the guard said. 'You'd best dismount, I'd say, and put them in the middle of you ' He jerked a thumb at Meer. The rumours have spread about that fellow you killed, and his kind's not exactly well-loved round here.'

Meet grunted, just once, but it was close to a sob.

'Don't worry, good bard,' Rhodry said. 'We'll get you through in one piece. Yraen, we'll wait here.

You go fetch Otho the dwarf. I'll wager he and his kin have ways through this city that are out of the common sight.'

Although he grumbled, Yraen dismounted and puffed off uphill to follow orders. A few at a time the entire squad dismounted as well, leading their horses through the gates. Opposite the huge winch was a small wooden guardhouse, and everyone drifted over in front of it to stand round gossiping with the guards about things that had happened during their absence. Meer stood stiff and straight, his hands clasped tight round his staff, his lips trembling. When Jahdo laid a hand on his arm to comfort him, Meer shook it off Rhodry noticed the gesture.

'I won't let anything happen to the pair of you,' Rhodry said. That's why we're waiting here.'

'It's not that what does ache his heart. The Gel da'Thae you did kill was his brother.'

The moment he spoke Jahdo rued it. Even though he was visibly trying to choke back the noise, Meer keened, just briefly before he forced silence. Rhodry winced and swore.

'Well, my apologies.' And oddly enough, he sounded perfectly sincere. "But Meer, your brother was doing his cursed best to kill me.'

'No doubt.' Meer let out his breath in a long sigh. 'You are a warrior as he was a warrior. Your kind lives and dies by a different code than we ordinary men.'

Jahdo noticed the squad looking at Meer with a trace of new respect. Rhodry seemed to be trying to find something further to say, but Yraen came bustling back with three men in tow, two of them armed and mailed, the third elderly with a long white beard, but all of them the shortest, stockiest people that Jahdo had ever seen. The shortest of all, though obviously a grown man, was just his height, though twice his breadth. Jahdo frankly stared until one of the axemen glanced his way with a scowl, frightening him into looking elsewhere.

'My thanks for coming,' Rhodry said. 'What do you think, Otho? Can we pa.s.s by one of your roads?'

'Up to Jorri, here.' Otho waved in the direction of the taller axeman. 'By the by, silver dagger, young Yraen had the cursed gall to remind me about that little matter of the coin. I'm waiting for somewhat to sell at a good price, and then I'll bring it to you, so stop your badgering.' He turned, looking Meer up and down. 'Ah, he's blind! I couldn't imagine what you were thinking of, asking us to take a spy up this way, but if he can't sec, then the secret's safe enough.'

Meer bared his fangs but said nothing.

'Can't bring the horses through.' Jorn stepped forward. 'What about having Yraen and the squad take'em up to the dun?' His voice turned contemptuous. 'You don't need twelve men to guard a blind man and a boy.'

'Ah, but they're wily, wily.' Rhodry was grinning. 'Yraen, the rest of you - I'll see you back in the great hall.'

Collecting the horses, including Baki and Gidro, the squad moved off, leading the stock up the steep hill.

As he watched, Jahdo realized that he was sorry to see them go. Even though he hated each one for helping capture him, they were at least familiar, men he'd grown used to in the horror of the past few days.

'Come round here.' Otho gestured at a twisting lane that led behind the guardhouse.

With Jorn in the lead they walked to the base of the hill just beyond the gates, where the slope had been cut to the vertical, then faced with stone blocks to produce an artificial cliff. When Jorn pounded on one block with his axe, a good quarter of this structure creaked back three inches to reveal a sliver of face and a suspicious eye.

'Ah, it's you already,' said a voice from inside. 'Stand back, and I'll open up.'

With much groaning and the crunching of dirt and the bouncing of pebbles the ma.s.sive door opened just far enough for everyone to slip in sideways, one at a time. The two younger men ushered them down a long, cool tunnel of worked stone, a good ten feet wide but a bare six tall, so that both Meer and Rhodry were forced to walk stooped. Once everyone was safely in, the doorkeeper seized an enormous lever and pulled. The door inched shut to groan into place so tightly that Jahdo could see not the slightest crack of sunlight round it. The only light, a sickly blue glow, oozed from phosph.o.r.escent mosses and fungi, gathered into baskets and hung from iron pegs in the wall. Jahdo shuddered, wondering if a rat felt this way, caught in one of his family's traps. Remembering how the creatures squealed and clawed when the trap splashed down and water rose to cover them made him want to weep.

'Come along, come along,' Otho snapped. 'Stop goggling, lad. Haven't got all day.'

The tunnel ran straight for some ten feet, then turned into a flight of stairs, climbing steep and narrow for an ordeal of hundreds of yards. Before they'd gone halfway up Jahdo's heart was pounding, and he fought for breath in the stuffy air. Once he stumbled, and his sore and sweaty hands slipped from the narrow stone ridge that did for a railing. For a brief moment he thought of letting himself fall backwards and plunge down to die, but Rhodry caught his arm and yanked him up.

'No hurry, lad,' the warrior said. 'Get your feet under you.'

Jahdo had no choice but to keep climbing. By the time they reached the top, everyone was panting for breath, but Meet was downright sobbing. Rhodry allowed them a few moments of rest.

'Tell me somewhat, lad,' Otho said. 'You seem to have great respect for this creature you serve. Were you raised among his kind?'

Jahdo started to tell him the truth; then it occurred to him to wonder if he truly wanted these people to know about his homeland.

'I was,' he said instead. 'But he be a bard, and it's needful that you respect him, too.'

Otho shrugged in insulting dismissal.

Another corridor, another stair, another ma.s.sive door - at last they came blinking out into the sunlight before another pair of guarded gates, as ma.s.sive and iron-bound as the first. Behind these rose the towers, as grim as a giant's clubs, stuck into the earth.

'There you are,' Otho said. 'We'll be heading back now.'

As the three dwarves started back into the tunnel, Rhodry called after them.

'Remember that coin you owe me, Otho.'

It struck Jahdo as viciously unjust that these people would be haggling over the ordinary details of their lives, something as petty as a gambling debt, probably, while they were dragging him off to slavery.

As they walked through the gates, Rhodry laid a heavy hand on Meer's shoulder, and Jahdo took the bard's arm, because his blind man's staff made a poor guide for leading him through the confusion in the vast ward. Cl.u.s.tering round the towers and the inside of the walls stood wooden sheds, mostly round and thatched. Incorporated into the outer walls were long rectangles of buildings, stables on the lower level, though Jahdo couldn't see into the upper. Scurrying round through the midst of this jumble were servants - tending horses, carrying things like firewood or sacks of what seemed to be vegetables, or even pulling a squalling goat along or driving a couple of pigs before them. Somewhere close by a blacksmith's forge rang with hammering; dogs barked; people yelled back and forth. Every now and then an armed man strolled by, knocking any servant in his way out of it.

'Straight ahead,' Rhodry barked. 'Quick like, before I find myself defending you. See that long straight building there past the pigsty, lad? That's where we're heading.'

Fear made Jahdo co-operative. He hurried Meer along while Rhodry kept a nervous watch behind them, and the various servants all shrieked at the very sight of them and rushed to goggle. When the armed men started jeering, Jahdo was more than glad to duck into the long stone structure, even if it did reek of the nearby hogs and something worse, too, an undertone of human filth. Inside he found a narrow pa.s.sageway, lined with doors, each with a small opening near the top and a heavy oak bar across to lock them.

'The dungeon keep,' Rhodry remarked, confirming Jahdo's worst guess. 'With luck you won't be here long.'

An elderly man, dressed in brown tatters that had once been clothes, came hobbling out of a room at the far end of the corridor.

'Prisoners of war,' Rhodry said to him.

'Put them here, silver dagger.' With arthritic hands he lifted a bar and swung a door back. 'Shove them right along.'

Jahdo helped Meer cross the high threshold, then stepped in after, his heart pounding as badly as it had on the underground stairs. He was profoundly relieved to find a small window, barred, on the opposite wall, and thick straw, reasonably clean, on the floor. In one corner stood a leather bucket, crawling with flies - otherwise, nothing, not so much as a blanket.

'I want them decently treated,' Rhodry was saying to the old man. 'Plenty of food, mind you, and clean water, and none of that mouldy bread, either. I'll be stopping by now and again to see that you've made it so.'

'It'll be done, it'll be done.'

The door eased shut, and the bar fell down with a thump, Jahdo could hear Rhodry and the old man squabbling down the corridor for a moment; then the old man returned.

'Lad, lad! I'm handing you water in through the window.'

A clay pitcher appeared in the slit in the door. Jahdo could just pull it through. A clay cup with a broken handle followed, and after that a loaf of brown bread, reasonably fresh.

'There,' the old man snapped. 'Cursed arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a silver dagger, giving an honest man orders like that.'