A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [121]
“Ye gods, man!” Danry said, grinning. “You’ve got the best hand with a bow in all of Eldidd.”
Pertyc merely smiled, thinking that his wife could best him without half trying. While Danry was forcing the dogs to lie down away from the kill, he set his foot against the doe’s neck and pulled the arrow out with both hands. Unbroken, it was worth straightening. As he examined the fletching for splits, he was thinking of his wife, remembering the stories she’d told him of wars long fought and over. His heart began to pound in a sudden gruesome hope. When he looked up to find Danry watching him, he felt as guilty as a caught burglar.
“Perro? I’ll beg you. Please join us.”
“I can’t. I’m too much of a badger, my friend.”
“Ah, by the hells! Well, so be it.”
Their afternoon was over, the last time they could love each other without the love turning to nightmare. Pertyc turned away before he wept.
Late that night, when the rest of the dun was asleep, Pertyc went up to his study and lit a pair of candles in a silver sconce. As a draft caught the flames, shadows flew back and forth across walls and filled his mind with thoughts of winter, his last winter alive, or so he was counting it. He was determined, though, that his death would cost his enemies a price as high as he could set it.
“And would it be a true dishonor,” he said to one of the stag’s heads on the wall, “to bring longbows back into Eldidd? I’ve always been told so. The question is, do I give the fart of a two-copper pig about the dishonor? Our rebels, my cervine friend, are being a good bit more dishonorable with their wretched plots.”
In the blown shadows the stag’s eyes seemed to move, pondering his logic, but he never did answer. Pertyc found his ancestor’s books, actually a collection of treatises, bound up for the clan in two volumes, stamped with the clan device on the pale leather covers, and massive things, weighing a good fifteen pounds each. He propped the second one up on the lectern, lit more candles, and stood to turn the pages. Touching the book was a comfort all its own, because it gave him palpable contact with his history, all those other Maelwaedd lords, going back a hundred years to the disclaimed prince himself. He doubted, though, that his clan would live after his own coming death. Once a rebel faction proclaimed Adraegyn royal, the High King would have no choice but to kill the boy.
“Ah, stuff the dishonor then!” he said to the stag’s head. “They’re murdering my lad, just by trying to put him on a throne that isn’t his. I’ve got every right to skewer as many of the miserable bastards as I can before the end. We’ll see if I can get those merchants to ride west for me—well, once they get themselves back home, anyway.”
Then he returned to his reading, which gave him a surprise of quite another sort.
In the morning, Danry took his leave, riding out at the head of his escort with a cheery wave of his hand and a jest for his last farewell. Pertyc had the groom saddle him up a horse, then rode straight to Nevyn’s cottage. As he walked through the garden, hot and hushed in the sunlight, Pertyc had the uneasy feeling that eyes were watching him, but although he peered into every shadow, he saw nothing but turned earth and growing things. When he knocked, Nevyn opened the door and ushered