A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [128]
“Well, that’ll be somewhat to the good.” Pertyc hesitated, struck by a sudden thought and then surprise, that he’d never had the thought until this moment. “You know, I wonder just how proud a man I am.”
“My lord?”
It took Pertyc a long time to answer, and in the end, the only thing that brought him round was his love for his children. While no rebel lord would ever have knowingly killed his daughter, terrible things happened in sieges, especially if they ended in fire. If Pertyc lost the battle but the rebels lost the war, Adraegyn of course was quite simply doomed. The king’s men would smother the boy, most like.
“Tell me somewhat, Ganno. Do you think you could find my wife?”
Ganedd stared openmouthed.
“Well, she won’t lift a finger for my sake,” Pertyc said, “but for Beclya and Adraegyn, she just might raise a small army.”
“I’ll do my best, my lord, but the elven gods only know where she might be, and the Westlands are an awfully big place. The sooner I leave, the better. Can you give me a guard and some packhorses? The less of Da’s stock that I use, the fewer questions Mam will ask.”
All that afternoon, while Ganedd gathered supplies, Pertyc agonized over the letter to his wife. Finally, when he was running out of time, he decided to make it as simple and as short as he could:
“Our children are in mortal danger from a war. My messenger will explain. For their sakes I’m begging your aid. I’ll humble myself in any way you want if you’ll just come and take them to safety.”
He rolled it up, sealed it into a silver message tube, then without thinking kissed the seal, as if the wax could pass the kiss along.
Just at sunset, Ganedd and his impromptu caravan assembled out in the ward, a straggling line of packhorses and mules along with two of Pertyc’s most reliable riders for guards and the undergroom for a servant. Pertyc handed Ganedd what coin he could spare and the message tube, then walked to the gates to wave his only true hope on its way until the caravan disappeared into a welter of dust and sea haze. As he turned to go inside, the ward flared with yellow light. Up on the tower the lightkeeper had fired the beacon.
• • •
In every warband, Maer reflected sadly, there was always an utterly humorless man like Crindd. If you said it looked like fair weather, Crindd saw rain coming; if you said a meal tasted good, Crindd remarked that the cook had filth under her fingernails; if you liked the looks of a horse, Crindd insisted that he had the legs to come up lame. On a bad day Crindd’s little black cloud of gloom could make even Garoic the captain groan under his breath.
“Ye gods,” Maer said to Cadmyn one morning, “I’d drown the man except it would give him too much pleasure to have somewhat go wrong.”
Cadmyn, an easygoing blond who was Maer’s only real friend in the warband, nodded with a faint look of disgust.
“True-spoken. We all used to mock him, but it wasn’t truly satisfying. He never seemed to notice, you see.”
“Really? Well, just you leave this to me.”
That afternoon Maer asked for and received Lord Pertyc’s permission to leave the dun, then rode over to Glaenara’s farm. Much to his annoyance, she was gone, and her brother-in-law refused to tell him where.
“Just what do you want anyway, silver dagger?” Nalyn snarled.
“To buy a pint of dried beans or peas from you and naught more. I’ll give you a copper.”
Nalyn considered, greed fighting with dislike.
“Oh, I’ll sell you a handful of pulse gladly enough,” he said at last. “But I don’t want you hanging round Glae.”
After dinner that night, two of the other lads kept Crindd busy in the great hall while Maer and Cadmyn sneaked out to the barracks. They stripped Crindd’s bunk of blanket and sheet, and while Cadmyn kept watch at the door, Maer sprinkled the dried peas over the mattress before he made up the bed again. When the time came, everyone in the warband went to bed full of anticipation. In the dark they could