“There he is!” Nedd shrieked. “With the trimmed shield.”
A burly man with mail but no helm was racing across the battlefield in retreat, the silver edging on his shield winking in the sunlight. At an angle Rhodry went after him, his laugh gone as he thought only of running, and soon he’d left the wounded Nedd behind. Naddryc was slowing, panting, gasping for breath. Then he stumbled, and Rhodry dodged round to cut him off. For a moment they merely stared at each other, panting while they got their breath back, Naddryc’s mouth working under his blond mustache.
“So,” Rhodry said. “Here’s the man who was going to kill women and children.”
Then the cold, mad chuckle took over his voice. As he lunged, Naddryc dodged back, flinging up his sword and shield. He parried gracefully, his shield a little high to protect his bare head, and made a quick thrust that Rhodry easily turned aside. Suddenly light flared in a drift of black smoke; someone had fired the tents. Rhodry feinted in from the side, then struck; Naddryc parried barely in time, jumped back, and began to circle. As Rhodry swung to face him, the murk reached them, smoke, dust, thicker than a sea fog. They both checked, coughing for a moment, but the smell of burning drove Rhodry mad.
With a choking, gasping howl he charged, as wild as an injured lion, striking, parrying, cursing, and coughing while Naddryc desperately tried to fend him off, rarely getting in a blow of his own as he parried with both sword and shield. Yet even in his madness Rhodry saw that the lord was tiring. He feinted to the side again, dodged fast to the other, and then back as Naddryc tried to follow—too slowly. Rhodry’s blow caught him hard on the side of the neck. With a ghastly bubbling scream he fell to his knees, then buckled as his life’s blood pumped out the artery.
Rhodry’s berserker fit left him, dropped away like a wind-caught cloak, but he was possessed by an even madder panic. Somewhere Jill was lying dead or wounded, somewhere in the burning. He knew it, even as he knew that he was being irrational. He heard Nedd yell his name, but he turned and ran toward the blazing tents in the same blind way that he’d charged Naddryc. All at once he heard hoofbeats and saw a horse emerging from the murk. Even flecked with soot, Sunrise’s pale gold coat still shone.
“Rhoddo!” Jill yelled. “Get up behind me! Naddryc’s horses are about to stampede.”
Rhodry sheathed his sword and swung up behind her. He was barely settled when she kicked Sunrise to a trot.
“What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you. I could hear you laughing and rode straight for the sound. Look behind us. Are they coming?”
When he glanced back, he could see little in the smoke and dust, but he did make out an orderly procession of horselike objects moving away from the burning camp.
“By all the gods! Someone’s gotten them out of there.”
“It must be Epona herself, then. When I rode by a few minutes ago, they were screaming and pulling at their tethers.”
She paused the horse and turned in the saddle to give him a puzzled look. He grabbed her and kissed her, remembered his irrational panic, and kissed her again. With a laugh she pushed him away.
“You’re breaking my neck, twisted around like this. Wait till we’re alone, my love.”
At that Rhodry remembered that they were in the middle of a battle, but as he looked around, somewhat dazed as he always was when the fit left him, he realized that the fighting was over. Naddryc had been so outnumbered that most of his men had been slaughtered and the fortunate few remaining taken prisoner. As they dismounted and walked on, leading the horse over the uncertain ground, he saw Nedd talking to Graemyn over Naddryc’s corpse.
“Come here, silver dagger.” Nedd hailed him with a shout. “Your Grace, this is the man who killed this bastard.”
“You’ll be well rewarded for this, silver dagger,” Graemyn said. “Indeed, well rewarded for everything you’ve done for me.”
The tieryn knelt beside the corpse, then took his sword two-handed and severed Naddryc’s neck in one swift blow. Rhodry’s stomach churned; it was an impious thing that he was seeing. Graemyn grabbed the head by the hair and stood up, looking at every man nearby as if challenging them to say one wrong word, then strode away, the head dangling in his hand. Even though the priests had long since banned the taking of trophy heads with mighty curses, the sight of Graemyn with his enemy’s head touched something deep in Rhodry, as one string of a harp will sound when another is plucked. Although Jill and Nedd were watching the tieryn in honest revulsion, he felt a certain dark satisfaction.
“I’d do no less to a man who threatened my wife and kin,” Rhodry said.
“Well.” Nedd considered this briefly. “He had provocation, sure enough.”
Before he went back to the dun, Rhodry knelt beside the headless corpse and methodically looted it of every small and valuable thing, coin, ring brooch, a gold-trimmed scabbard, and a silver belt buckle. This hire had drawn to an end, and a silver dagger had to think of eating on the long road.
When the fire broke out in the tents, Perryn was riding around the edge of the actual battle, rounding up wounded horses and leading them to safety outside the earthworks. The meaning of the spread of smoke didn’t quite register on him until the chestnut he was riding snorted nervously and danced. Then he remembered Naddryc’s horses, tethered behind the tents. With an oath he turned the chestnut and galloped straight for the camp. At first the horse balked, but Perryn talked to him, patted him, soothed him until at last he picked up courage and allowed himself to be ridden near to the fire.
Between the burning and the earthwork, horses were rearing, screaming with that ugly half-human sound a horse makes only in terror, kicking out at the grooms trying to save them as they pulled desperately at their tether ropes. Perryn wrapped his reins around the saddle peak and guided the chestnut with his knees as he rode right into the panic. Although the chestnut trembled and threatened now and then to buck, he kept moving as Perryn talked, pouring out the words, smiling his special smile, reaching out with his one good hand, patting a horse here, slapping one there, as if he were the stallion of a herd, who asserts his control with nips and kicks as much as affectionate nuzzles. The panic began to ebb. Although the horses were dancing and sweating with gray fear-foam, they fell in behind and around him in the swirling smoke. At last the grooms cut the last tether.
“Take them out!” one yelled. “And may the gods bless you!”
With a wave and a yell, Perryn led the herd forward at a calm jog. Circling around the inner earthwork, they swept free of the burning camp just as a rain of sparks and glowing bits of canvas began to fall. Perryn called out wordlessly, and they galloped out of the breach to the safety of the meadow beyond. When he looked back, he could barely see the dun, rising half hidden in the murk. With the horses huddled around him, he waited for a good half hour until the smoke diminished to a few wisps. As he was leading the herd back, Nedd came out on horseback to meet him.
“I was looking for you,” Nedd said. “I figured that you were the only man on earth who could have saved Naddryc’s horses.”
“Oh, er, ah, well, they trust me, you see.”
For a moment they merely stared at one another.
“Er, well,” Perryn said at last. “Did you think me slain in that first scrap?”
“I did, but now I see that I wasn’t so lucky.”
“I’m not rid of you, either.”
Leaning from their saddles, they clasped hands, and they were both grinning as if they could never stop.
Back at the dun, the cousins turned the horses over to the servants, then went into the great hall, where a conference of sorts was in progress at the table of honor. While the lesser lords and allies merely listened, Benoic and Graemyn were arguing, both red-faced and shouting.
“Now listen here!” Benoic bellowed. “You’ve made it cursed hard for Naddryc’s brother to settle this peacefully. What’s he going to say when he gets his brother’s body back in two pieces?”
“Anything he blasted well wants to say! What’s he going to fight me with? Ghost riders from the Otherlands?”
“And what about Naddryc’s allies? Were their mothers all so barren that they only had one son apiece? Don’t they have uncles to ride to their nephew’s vengeance?”
At that, Graemyn paused and began to stroke his mustache.
“If you want this thing over and done with,” Benoic went on in a normal tone, “you’d best send messengers down to Dun Deverry straightaway to plead for the high king’s intervention. If you do, I’ll back you in this war, for my misbegotten nephew’s sake if naught else. If you don’t, I’m pulling my men and Nedd’s out right now.”
Benoic had always had a splendid talent for blackmail.
“Done, then,” Graemyn said. “I’ll get the messengers on the road today.”
With a nod of satisfaction, Benoic rose and gestured for Nedd and Perryn to follow.
“Come along, lads. We’ve got wounded men to look in on and that silver dagger deserves some praise. He’s the one who slew Naddryc, eh? Hah! Just what the bastard deserved—cut down by a wretched silver dagger.”
Although his head was swimming with exhaustion, Perryn went along with them because he was afraid to tell his uncle how weak he felt. They found Rhodry standing by the door and drinking ale down like water while Jill smiled at him as if she were thinking he’d won the battle all by himself. Perryn sighed at the cruel injustice, that she would honestly love her arrogant berserker. He found her appealing, a lovely lass, half wild and wandering, with her golden horse that suited her so well, but she was also attached to the best swordsman he’d ever seen. Although he hated to admit it, Perryn was terrified of Rhodry.
“Well, silver dagger,” Benoic said, “you’ve earned your hire twice over. You always hear about people with the second sight seeing deaths, or shipwrecks, that sort of evil thing, but your touch of it has come in cursed handy.”
“So it has, Your Grace. We Eldidd men can be a peculiar lot.”
Although the others laughed at the jest, it made Perryn’s unease deepen. There was something odd about the silver dagger that he couldn’t put into words but that pricked at him, a discomfort much like the one that warned him he was straying from a true path. Rhodry was more than a danger to him; he was a reproach, or part of a curse, or—something. Perryn felt so baffled that he shook his head, a gesture that was a mistake. All at once the room seemed to spin around him, and a crackling golden fog rose out of nowhere. He heard Nedd call out, then fainted. Although he woke briefly when Nedd and Benoic laid him on a bed, he was asleep before they left the chamber. All that day he slept, and he dreamt of Jill.
On the morrow, every unwounded man in the dun rode out with the noble-born, ostensibly in honorable escort as they returned the bodies of Naddryc and his allies, but in reality as a warband in case Naddryc’s kin decided to continue the blood feud. Jill spent a long morning helping Graemyn’s wife, Camma, tend the wounded, a job that usually fell to the wives of Cerrgonney lords for want of enough chirurgeons in the province. When noon came, they were both glad of the chance for a wash and the time to sit down over a light meal of bread and cheese.
“My thanks for your aid, Jill. You know quite a bit about chirurgery.”
“My lady is most welcome. I’ve seen a lot of bloodshed in my life.”
“So you must have, following your silver dagger around like this. He’s certainly a handsome man, isn’t he? I can see how he’d turn the head of a young lass, I truly do, but do you ever regret riding with him? You must have left a great deal behind for your Rhodry.”
“I didn’t, my lady. All I’ve ever known in my life is poverty. Rhodry has never let me starve, and well, that’s good enough for me.”
Camma stared, caught her rudeness, then gave Jill a small smile of apology. Jill decided that it was time to change the subject.
“Lord Perryn’s wound seems to be healing well. I’m awfully glad. After all, Rhodry owes his life to him.”
“So do we all.” For a moment, Camma’s face turned haggard. “Well, his clan breeds stubborn men, the stubbornest in all Cerrgonney, I swear, and that’s saying a great deal.”
“It is. Do you know his clan well?”
“I do. His aunt and mother are both cousins of mine, or I should say, his mother was, poor lamb. She died some years ago, you see, but Perryn’s Aunt Gwerna and I often meet. Gwerna had the raising of him, truly. He was the last of seven children, you see, and his mother was never truly well again after his birth. She had a hard time carrying him, some bleeding and bad pains, and then he was in her womb only seven months, not nine.”
“By the Goddess herself! I’m surprised the babe lived!”
“So were Gwerna and I. He was such a scrawny little thing, but healthier than any other early babe I’ve ever seen. Since his mother was so ill, Gwerna found a wet nurse, and she made the lass carry Perro in a kind of sling right against her breasts and under her dresses day and night for the warmth, you see, and the lass sat by the fire all day and slept by it at night, too. I think that’s what saved him, constantly being kept warm for a couple of months.” She paused, considering. “Maybe it was his hard start in life that made him so odd, the poor lad. Gwerna always called him the changeling. He made you think of all those old tales where the Wildfolk steal a human babe and leave one of their own in its stead.”
Jill felt an odd wondering whether, if in Perryn’s case, the old superstition might be true, but the gray gnome materialized on the table and gave Camma such a nasty sneer that it seemed to be heaping scorn on the very thought. It sat down by the trencher of cheese and rested its chin on its hands to listen as Camma went on.
“It’s naughty of me to be telling tales on him, now that he’s a man and grown, but if you’d seen him, you’d understand, Jill. Such a skinny little lad, and that red hair of his was always like a thrush’s nest, no matter how much Gwerna combed it.” Camma smiled, taking a sincere pleasure in these memories of better times. “And he was always out in the hills or the woods, every chance he got. He used to sob every autumn when the snows came, because he’d have to stay indoors for months. And then, there was the time he ran away. He couldn’t have been more than eight. Graemyn and I rode to pay Gwerna and Benoic a visit, and one day Perryn got caught stealing honey cake from the kitchen. Well, every lad does that now and again, but Benoic got into one of his tempers. He was going to beat the lad, but little Nedd begged and begged his uncle to spare him, so Benoic relented. Well, the next morning, there was no sign of Perryn. Gwerna had every man in the dun searching for him, but the whole two weeks we were there, no one ever found him, and Gwerna was in tears, sure he was starved or drowned. I thought so myself. But then, when it was almost winter, Gwerna sent me a message. When the snows came, Perryn turned up at the gates, dirty and tattered, but well fed. He’d lived in the hills on his own for three months.”
“Ye gods! And what did he have to say for himself?”
“Well, he’d heard everyone calling him the changeling, and so he got it into his head that he should go live with the Wildfolk where he belonged. But I never found any, he says, the poor little lad. Poor Gwerna, she wept over that, and even Benoic stopped being so hard on him—well, for a while, anyway.”
Jill would have liked to hear more, but the object of these reminiscences came strolling over to the table. The gnome snarled at him, then disappeared.
“Perro, you should be in your bed,” Camma said. “One of the servants can bring you a meal.”
“It’s cursed dull, lying abed. I’ll be fine.”
Cradling his sling-supported arm, Perryn sat down across the table from Jill. Under his eyes were dark shadows like smears of soot.
“My lord,” Jill said, “you truly should be resting.”
“I’ll never mend shut up like a hog in a pen. I want to go out to the woods, sit out there for a while.”
Coupled with Camma’s tale, his request made an odd sort of sense. Out of d
uty to the man who’d saved Rhodry’s life, Jill saddled up his gray gelding, helped him mount, then led the horse out of the dun. Out in the fields, only part of the earthwork still stood; the day before, Benoic’s men had dumped the bodies of the slain into the ditch and filled it in with the mound above. They walked beyond this grim scar on the earth to the edge of the forest and found a spot among the scattered pines where the ground was cushioned with needles and the sunlight came down in shafts. With a sigh of pleasure, Perryn sat down, his back to a tree. He actually did seem stronger now that he was outside, with color in his face and life in his eyes.
“It’s splendid of you to trouble yourself over me, Jill.”
“Oh, hardly! I owe you many an honor for saving Rhodry.”
“You don’t, at that. I made that ride for Nedd’s sake and my own. What was I to do? Lie there and let them kill me? I wasn’t even thinking of Rhodry, so there’s no need for thanks.”
“I’ve never known anyone who thinks like you. You’re as scrupulous as a priest.”
“Everyone says that. I wanted to be a priest, you know. My uncle got into a temper over it, and my father just laughed.”
“Well, I can’t see Benoic allowing one of his kinsmen to serve Bel instead of the sword.”
“Oh, not Bel. I wanted to be a priest of Kerun, but I couldn’t even find a temple of his.”
Jill was quite surprised. She knew little of Rerun’s worship, except that he was one of the dark gods of the Dawntime who had been displaced as the temples of Bel and Nudd grew in power. The stag god was lord of the hunt, while Bel presided over the settled life of the growing grain. Vaguely she remembered that you were supposed to give the first deer taken in a new year to Kerun, but she doubted if anyone bothered anymore.
“He’s a splendid god,” Perryn remarked.