A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [35]
“I can ride for a few hours tonight,” Nananna said. “I want to turn back east. If the Round-ear lord finds anyone, it had best be me.”
They made a hasty, sparse camp two hours later on the banks of the river that flows out of the Lake of the Leaping Trout. In the morning they forded the river and turned dead south through the grasslands. Enabrilia and Dallandra led the travois horses while Wylenteriel, Talbrennon, and one of their new recruits herded the stock in the rear. The other three rode in front, hands on sword hilts, eyes constantly sweeping the horizon, ready to ride between any Round-ear and Nananna. Toward noon, the trouble came. Dallandra saw a puff of dust heading toward them that soon resolved itself into six horsemen, trotting fast over the grasslands.
“Good,” Nananna said. “Let’s pull up and let them catch us. Dalla, you do the talking.”
Dallandra handed her the rope of the travois horse and rode up to the head of the line. The horsemen shouted and turned their horses, galloping the last half mile up to the alar. At their head was a heavyset blond man in the plaid brigga that marked him as an Eldidd lord; behind him were five of his warband, all armed and ready. The lord checked his men some twenty feet away from the alar and rode on alone to face Dallandra. He looked sourly over the small party; she could see him noting well the armed men—six of them, counting young Talbrennon.
“My lord! Shall we charge?”
“Hold your tongue!” the lord yelled. “Can’t you see the women with them? And one of them’s old at that.”
Dallandra relaxed slightly; so he had a bit of his kind of honor. The lord edged his horse up close to hers.
“Now, can any of you speak my language?”
Dallandra gave him a wide-eyed stupid stare.
“Eldidd.” He sighed and pointed to himself. “I’m a lord. I lost a bondsman. Have you seen him?”
“Bondsman?” Dallandra said slowly. “What is bondsman? Oh—farmer.”
“That’s right.” The lord raised his voice, as if she would understand if only he shouted. “A kind of farmer. He has a brand here.” He pointed to his cheek. “A mark. He’s my property, and he ran away.”
Dallandra nodded slowly, as if considering all of this.
“He’s a young man, wearing brown clothes,” the lord bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Have you seen him?”
“That I not. No see farmers.”
The lord sighed and looked doubtfully at the alar’s gear, as if a bondsman wrapped in blankets might be hidden on a travois.
“Which way have your people ridden? North? South?” He pointed out the various directions. “Do you understand? Where have you come from?”
“North. No see farmers. No farmers in north grass.”
“Well, you would have seen him out in those dismal plains.”
“The dis … what?”
“Oh, never mind.” The lord made a vague bow in her direction, then turned and yelled at his warband. “All right, men, we’re riding east. The bastard must have doubled back.”
As soon as the warband was out of sight, the alar burst into howls and cackles. Dallandra leaned into her saddle peak and laughed till her sides ached.
“Oh, a splendid jest,” Wylenteriel gasped with his perfect Eldidd accent. “No see farmer! By those hells of theirs, Dalla!”
“No speak good. Me simple elf. Hard of hearing, too.”
On a wave of laughter the alar rearranged their riding order and continued their slow trip south.
About four days’ ride west of Elrydd, Aderyn came to a tiny lake fringed with willow trees. In a nearby farming village were a woman ill with shaking fever and a man with a jaw abscessed from bad teeth. Aderyn made a camp on the lakeshore with a proper fire circle of stones, a canvas lean-to for covering his gear, and a neat stack of firewood donated by the grateful villagers, and rode daily into the village to care for his new patients. Once they were out of danger, he lingered to gather and dry wild herbs. On his tenth night there, as he was eating bread and cheese by his fire, he heard his horse whinny a nicker of greeting to some other horse, but one he couldn’t see or hear. When the mule joined in, Aderyn felt profoundly