A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [120]
“Good,” Renydd said. “Now we can get on with the real sport.”
Back at the dun, the wooden carts were drawn up in the ward. Like ants bringing crumbs to a nest, a line of servants hurried back and forth to pile them up with grain and supplies. On the morrow, the warbands would be riding to help hold the siege at Lord Adry’s dun.
“This Comerr’s got a couple of hundred men at the siege,” Rhodry told Yraen. “And we’ll be bringing him eighty more. They tell me that Adry’s got about ninety men shut in with him, so it all depends on how many Tewdyr and his other allies can raise. Huh—I’ll wager Tewdyr’s going to put up a good fight now. The old miser’s got a thorn up his ass good and proper.”
“Did you see how the herald counted that coin? I’ll wager Erddyr ordered him to do it.”
“So do I. Most heralds have more courtesy than that.”
Although Rhodry chattered on, Yraen barely heard the rest of it. Now that the war was finally upon them, he felt his own secret rising in his mind to turn him cold. Even though he’d won many a tournament down in Dun Deverry, even though the royal weaponmasters all proclaimed him one of the finest students they’d ever had, he’d never ridden to a real battle, not once in his young life. Considering the peaceful state of the kingdom’s heartland, it was unlikely that he ever would have done so, either, if he’d rested content with his position in life as a pampered minor prince of the blood royal. The very safety and luxury of his life had always seemed shameful to him, a goad that had driven him out, seeking the long road and battle glory. Never once, until this icy moment in Lord Erddyr’s great hall, had he considered that he might be frightened when the chance for that glory finally presented itself.
Yet, that evening it seemed his Wyrd was mocking him. Erddyr, of course, had to leave a fort guard behind him. He chose a few of the oldest and less fit men in the war-band, then told his men to dice and let the gods decide the rest of the roster. Yraen lost. When his dice came up low, he stared at them for a long while in stunned disbelief, then cursed with every foul oath he could remember. What was this? Was he doomed to spend his entire life safe behind walls no matter how hard he tried to break out? All at once he realized that Erddyr and Renydd were both laughing at him.
“No one can say you lack mettle, silver dagger,” Erddyr said. “But if I make an exception for you, I’ll have to make exceptions for others, and then what’s the wretched use of dicing at all? Fort guard it is for you!”
“As his lordship commands,” Yraen said. “But I just can’t believe my rotten luck.”
Down in southern Pyrdon, the crop of winter wheat had already sprouted. A feathery green dusted the fields bordering the river that Dallandra found when she appeared in the world of men. Judging from the direction of the sun as well as her scant knowledge of the country, the river seemed to lead northeast into the hills. She was well prepared for her journey, with Deverry clothes, a fine horse, and every piece of gear she might need—all stolen, a bit here and there from this town or that, by Evandar’s folk. Her only salve for her raw conscience was Evandar’s promise that they’d give it all back again when she was done with it. At her suggestion, they’d outfitted her as if she were Jill, the only model she had for a woman alone on the Deverry roads.
Leading a pack mule, laden with herbs and medicines, she rode past tidy farmsteads where aspens and poplars quivered with their first green buds. Behind the earthen walls, skinny white cattle with rusty-red ears chewed sour hay while they longed for meadows. In a lazy curve of the river, she found a town, some fifty round wooden houses scattered