A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [110]
Rhodry woke early the next morning. Since the tavern room was cold, and the innkeep and his family not yet up, he lay awake thinking, watching the cracks round the shutters turn gray with dawn and listening to Yraen snore by the other side of the fire. A lad who actually wanted to be a silver dagger! A lad whom, he was sure, he remembered. From somewhere. From some time. From some other… his mind shied away from the idea like a horse from a snake in the road. Someone he had known, a long, long time ago and then again, not so long ago at all.
With a shake of his head Rhodry got up, moving as quietly as he could, pulled on his boots and grabbed his cloak, then slipped outside to use the privy round by the stables. As he was coming back, he lingered for a while in the inn yard. It had stopped raining, though the sky still hung close and gray, and he leaned onto the low wooden fence and looked idly down the north-running road, leading toward Dun Drw. The rhan’s chief city, it was, the capital of the gwerbrets who once had been kings. We remember the old days, here in Pyrdon, or so Merro had said. Maybe, Rhodry told himself, just maybe I do, too. Then he shook the thought away and hurried inside.
Back in the tavern he found Yraen up and busy. The fire was burning again, the lumps of sod neatly stacked to one side of the hearth; both bedrolls were lashed up and laid ready with the other gear by the door; Yraen himself was badgering the yawning innkeep about heating water for shaving. In the morning light Rhodry could see that the lad did indeed need to shave and revised his estimate of Yraen’s age upward again.
“Morrow, my lord,” Yraen said. “There’s naught for breakfast, our innkeep tells me, but bread and dried apples.”
“It’ll do, and don’t call me your lord.”
Yraen merely grinned. Over breakfast Rhodry tried arguing with him, snarling at him, and downright ordering him to go home, but when they rode out, Yraen rode alongside him. The lad had a beautiful horse, a dapple-gray gelding standing close to seventeen hands, with a delicate head but a barrel chest. When Rhodry glanced at its flank, he found the king’s own brand.
“A gift to my father from his highness,” Yraen said. “And my father gave him to me.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that you left with your father’s blessing, do you?”
“I don’t. I snuck out in the night like a thief, and that’s the one thing that troubles my heart. But I’m one of four brothers, so he’s got plenty of heirs.”
“I see, and you had no prospects at home, anyway.”
“None to speak of.” Yraen flashed him a sour sort of grin. “Unless you count riding in a brother’s warband as a prospect in life.”
Since Rhodry had once been in the same position, he could sympathize, though not to the point of weakening.
“It’s a better prospect than you’ll have on the long road. At least if you die riding for your brother, someone will give you a proper grave. A muddy ditch on the battlefield’s the best a silver dagger can hope for.”
Yraen merely shrugged. Whether eighteen or twenty, Rhodry supposed, he was too young to believe that he would ever die.
“Now look, I’m not going to stand you to the dagger and that’s that. You’re wasting your time and your breath, following me and begging.”
Yraen smiled and said nothing.
“Ye gods, you stubborn young cub!”
“Rhodry, please.” Yraen turned in the saddle so that he could see his unwilling mentor’s face. “I’ll tell you somewhat that I’ve never told anyone before. Will you listen?”
“Oh, very well.”
“When I was about fourteen, just home from serving as a page, my mother gave a fete. And one of her serving women has the second sight, I mean, everyone says she does, and she’s usually right if she outright predicts something. So she dressed up like an old hag and did fortunes,