A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [139]
“Why don’t you just ride home?” Rhodry said.
He shook his head no and forced himself to go on eating.
“Why not?”
He could only shrug for his answer. Rhodry sighed, staring into the fire.
“I suppose you’ll feel like a coward or suchlike, running for home?”
“That’s close enough.” Yraen managed to find a few words at last. “I hate it, but it draws me all the same. War, I mean. I don’t understand.”
“No doubt, oh, no doubt.”
Rhodry seemed to be about to say more, but Dallandra came walking out of the shadows. She was wearing a clean shirt, much too big for her, and eating a chunk of cheese that she held in one hand like a peasant. Yraen was suddenly struck by the strong, purposeful way she strode along; if she were as old as she looked, she should have been all bent and hobbling, from the strain of her day’s work if nothing more. Without waiting to be asked she sat down next to Rhodry on the ground.
“Yraen here tells me you know our names,” Rhodry remarked, without so much as a good evening. “How?”
“I’m a friend of Evandar’s.”
Rhodry swore in a string of truly appalling oaths, but she merely laughed at him and had another bite of her cheese.
“Who’s that?” Yraen said. “Or wait! Not that odd fellow who gave you the whistle!”
“The very one.” Rhodry glanced at the herbwoman again. “May I ask you what you want with me?”
“Well, only the whistle your young friend mentioned. It’s a truly ill-omened thing, Rhodry, and it’s dangerous for you to be carrying it about with you.”
“Ah. I’d rather thought so myself. The strangest people—well, I suppose that people isn’t the best word—the strangest creatures keep showing up, trying to steal it from me.”
At that Yraen remembered the peculiar shadow that he’d seen out in Lord Erddyr’s ward.
“You really would be better off without it,” Dallandra said. “And Evandar never even meant to leave it with you. He’s been much distracted of late.”
Rhodry made a sour sort of face and glanced round, finding his saddlebags a few feet away and leaning back to grab them and haul them over. He rummaged for a few moments, then pulled out the whistle, angling it to catch the firelight.
“Answer me somewhat,” he said. “What is it?”
“I have no idea, except it feels evil to me.”
When she reached for it, he grinned and snatched it away, slipping it back into the saddlebag.
“Tell Evandar he can come fetch it himself.”
“Rhodry, this is no time to be stubborn.”
“I’ve a question or two to ask him. Tell him to come himself.”
Dallandra made some exasperated remark in a language that Yraen had never heard before. Rhodry merely laughed.
“Well, I don’t want to see you dead over this wretched thing,” the herbwoman went on. “So I’ll give you somewhat for protection.” She fumbled at her belt, where something heavy hung in a triangular leather sheath. “Here.”
When Rhodry took the sheath, Yraen could see a wooden handle—you couldn’t really call it a hilt—sticking out of the stained and crumbling leather. Rhodry slid the sheath off to reveal a leaf-bladed bronze knife, all scraped and pitted as if it had been hammered flat, then sharpened with a file like a farmer’s hoe.
“Ye gods, old woman!” Yraen said. “That wouldn’t protect anyone against anything!”
“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry snarled. “Better yet, apologize to the lady.”
When Yraen stared in disbelief, Rhodry caught his gaze and held it with all his berserker force.
“You have my humble apologies, good herbwoman,” Yraen stammered. “I abase myself at your feet in my shame.”
“You’re forgiven, lad.” She smiled briefly. “And I know it looks peculiar, but then, Rhodry’s enemies are a bit on the peculiar side themselves, aren’t they?”
“Well, the one I saw was. I mean, I didn’t actually see it, just its shadow, but peculiar’s a good enough word.”
Rhodry nodded his agreement; he was busily attaching the sheath to his belt at the right side to balance the dagger at the left. With a shake of her head the old woman got up, stretching her back and yawning.
“Ych, I’m exhausted,” she remarked. “Well, have it your way, Rhodry ap Devaberiel.