A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [69]
“I don’t. Melaudd’s other son will rage and bluster and try to call in alliances, but who’s going to join him after this? And he himself can’t have more than a handful of men left—the ones that stayed behind on fort guard, no more.”
“Good. We’ll leave marking the death-ground for later, then. I want to ride before the winter rains come in earnest.”
“Indeed? Ride where?”
“South.” Halaberiel gave him a tight and terrifying smile. “To wipe out that settlement west of Cannobaen.”
Aderyn stared in helpless confusion.
“I’ve learned somewhat today,” Halaberiel went on. “These bows of ours are good for bringing down more than the gray deer. Never again am I going to creep around and humble myself to the dog-vomit Round-ear lords. Eldidd they may have, but no more.” He threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Not one stinking cursed inch more, by every god of both our peoples!” Then he let his face soften. “My apologies, Aderyn. I forget that I’m talking about your folk. There’s no reason for you to ride south with us when we go. You and Dallandra can just rejoin the alar and wait for us there.”
Aderyn rose, staring blankly into the leaping fire.
“Unless you’ll be leaving us?” Halaberiel got up to join him. “Never would any man of the People nor a woman either stop you if you choose to ride away, even if you go right to our enemies and warn them.”
Aderyn turned and walked off, heading blindly for the meadow beyond the campground, only to stop abruptly when he reached it. Out on the flat the warbands were dancing, winding in long lines through a scatter of tiny fires. The People danced single-file, arms held rigid shoulder-high, heads tossed back while their feet skipped and stamped through intricate measures in time to the drum and harp. Over the music wailed voices, half a keen of grief tonight, yet half a cry of triumph. When the revelers drew close he could see sweaty, impassive faces bob by in a surge of quarter tones, wavering and rising like the firelight; then with a sway and shudder the dancers spun past and were gone. Halaberiel came up behind him and laid a paternal hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” the warleader said. “But that dun has to be destroyed. We’ll spare the women and children, of course, and every man’s life that we can.”
“I know.” Aderyn found his voice at last. “What can I say? I’ve already seen my people muster an army to attack you, haven’t I? If it weren’t for your longbows, they would have slaughtered you like cattle.”
“Just so. But you didn’t ride west to watch men die, either. Do you want to go back to Eldidd? I’ll give you an escort if you do.”
For a moment Aderyn wavered. Even though he’d promised Nananna that he’d stay, he knew that she never would have held him to the promise under these circumstances, when the action at Cannobaen might lead to a full-fledged war. If it did, he belonged with his own kind, he supposed. His revulsion welled up, almost physical: his own kind, who broke their word and murdered and swaggered and enslaved and stole other men’s land all in the name of honor? He saw then that he could never go back to Deverry and take up some sort of community life, not even as a healer and herbman. But what else was left for him? The life of a hermit on the edge of the wilderness? He could see himself turning into a recluse, hoarding his secret knowledge for its own sake until the knowledge turned bitter and drove him mad. Halaberiel waited patiently, his eyes shadowed in the flickering light.
“You’re my people now,” Aderyn said. “Here I stay.”
Then he strode forward and took a place at the end of a line of dancers. Although the only steps he knew were from Deverry ring dances, they fit in well enough as the line swept him away across the meadow. All through the long fire-shot night he swayed and bobbed to the wail and the pounding of the music until it seemed in his exhaustion that he had no body left at all, that he floated with the elven warriors far above the grassy meadow and the dark. Yet toward dawn, when he was stumbling toward his tent, Aderyn