A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [160]
That evening, Pertyc shut his gates again, posted guards, and called the rest of his men into the great hall. He ordered mead poured all round, then had the servants ceremoniously chop up the captured ram and feed it into the fire. The men cheered, calling out to him and laughing, pledging him with their goblets as the best captain they’d ever seen. Pertyc merely smiled and called back that they deserved all the glory. On the morrow he would make a grim speech, but for now he wanted them to taste their victory. The elves were another matter. Pertyc called them together out of the hearing of the rest of the men.
“You can leave tomorrow at dawn if you’d like, with as much booty as your horses can carry. There’s no need for you to see the defeat. The rest of the rebels are on their way here as fast as they can ride, or so Nevyn tells me, and they’ve picked up some reinforcements.”
“Well, Perro,” Halaberiel said. “That’s honorable of you and all, but we don’t ride into a race only to ride out again at the first taste of dust.”
“Are you certain? Look, you know enough about bowcraft to know that sixteen archers can’t repel an army of three hundred.”
“Not forever. But there’ll only be a hundred and fifty left by the time we’re done with them, if we have the least bit of luck.”
“Bound to have luck,” Calonderiel broke in. “The Wise One of the West is here, and so’s the Wise One of the East. Ye gods, if we’ve got so much evil luck coming our way that those two can’t turn it aside, then we’ll only fall off our horses on the journey home and break our necks.”
Late that night, once the wounded men were tended and asleep, Nevyn climbed up to the top of the tower. Since the beacon keeper was used to his eccentric ways by then, he merely said a pleasant “Good evening” and returned to chopping some of the continual firewood for the light. Nevyn sat down comfortably with his back to the guard wall and studied the fire, a splendid, large luxury for scrying. In a few minutes, a portion of the Cannobaen blaze turned into a tiny campfire, and round it paced Gatryc and Ladoic, talking in hushed voices. Nevyn focused his will and brought himself closer to the vision, until he could see Gatryc’s grayish face. Every time the gwerbret moved his arm, he winced and bit his lower lip. The wounds were infected, most like, Nevyn thought with a professional detachment. Nearby two of the men who’d ridden with Leomyr sat on the ground, slumped and exhausted. So the lords knew that Leomyr was dead and that if they wanted Adraegyn they’d have to come get him themselves.
Nevyn widened the vision until it seemed that he swooped over the countryside from a great height and found that the rebels were less than a day’s ride, perhaps twelve miles, away. What counted more was the king’s location. That search took a little longer, but eventually Nevyn spotted the royal army some fifty miles away, camped on the road just outside the western gate of Aberwyn. A flash of gloom cost him the vision. From what he understood of Halaberiel’s talk, their small squad of archers would be unable to turn back the newly augmented rebel army before they managed to ram open the gates. The rebels were warned, now, that archers with elven longbows held the walls, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come charging right in as Leomyr had. Well, if the king won’t arrive in time, Nevyn told himself, we’ll just have to slow the rebels up, then. The question is, how? He leaned back against the wall and considered the play of flames while he weighed possibilities.
All at once the wind gusted, and the lightkeeper swore and coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Cursed smoke!” he muttered.
Just in time Nevyn kept himself from laughing, because, of course, it wasn’t the poor man’s stinging eyes that were amusing him. He got up and bade the lightkeeper good night, wondering what the man would think if he knew his small misfortune might have just saved the entire dun. For this work, though, he would need privacy. He hunted up Aderyn, who took him to his chamber