A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [158]
The stables were round back and a good bit away from the house. Out in front of the long wooden building Nedd was watching Gwerlas drink from a bucket.
“Your Holiness? Most people think I’m daft because I want to ride after my Daralanteriel.”
“Mayhap you are, but what choice do you have?”
“None, truly. Not unless I want to get myself beaten first and married off to Old Dung-heap second.”
The dogs turned out to be a pair of males, more than half wolf, maybe, with their long sharp faces and pricked ears, and just about a year old. One was gray and glowering, named Thunder, and the other a pale silver with a black streak down his back who answered to Lightning. When the priest introduced them, they sniffed her outstretched hand with a thoughtful wag of their tails.
“They like you,” Perryn announced. “Think they do, Nedd?”
The boy nodded, considering.
“I’m going to give them to Carra. She’s riding west, you see, and she’ll need them along to protect her.”
Nedd nodded again and turned to slip back into the stables. He didn’t walk, exactly, so much as glide along from shadow to shadow, there one minute, gone the next.
“Uh, Your Holiness, can he talk?”
“Not very well, truly. Only when he absolutely has to, and then only a word or two. But he understands everything. Um, right, that reminds me. I’ve taught this pair to work to hand signals, and I’d best show you what they know. They’ll come to their names, of course.” He squatted down and looked at the dogs, who swiveled their heads to stare into his eyes. “You belong to Carra now. Go with her. Take care of her.”
For a long, long moment they kept a silent communion, while Carra decided that contrary to all common sense, the dogs understood exactly what he meant. Nedd came whistling out of the stable. He was leading a nondescript bay gelding, laden with an old saddle, a bedroll, a woodsman’s ax, and a pair of bulging saddlebags. Perryn rose, rubbing his face with one hand.
“What’s this? You’re going, too?”
Nedd nodded, glancing this way and that around the farmstead.
“You’ll have to ask Carra’s permission.”
The boy swung his head around and looked at her.
“You want to come west with me? Look, if my brother catches us, he’ll hurt you. He might even kill you.”
Nedd considered, then shrugged, turning to stare significantly at his grandfather.
“No use dying to keep someone who doesn’t want to stay, is there?” the priest said. “But you take care of the lady. She’s noble-born, you see. Don’t cause her a moment’s trouble, or Kerun will be livid with you. Understand?”
Nedd nodded a yes.
“Well and good, then. Run up to the house, will you? I’ll wager your mam is packing up a bit of that ham and bread for Carra to eat on the road.”
Nedd grinned and trotted off. Perryn turned to her with an apologetic smile.
“Hope you don’t mind him coming along. He won’t trouble you. Might even come in handy, because he likes having someone to do things for. Poor lad, it makes him feel useful, like. And he can show you how to work the dogs.”
“All right, but here, won’t his mother be furious that he’s just… well… leaving like this?”
“Oh, I doubt that. He’s like me and his uncles. We mostly come and go as we please, and there’s no use in trying to stop us.” He sighed again, deeply. “No use in it at all.”
Yet even so, they left by the back gate and circled round to hit the west-running road out of sight of the house. Carra took the lead, with the dogs padding along either just ahead or to one side of her as the whim took them, while Nedd rode a length behind like her servant, which he was now, she supposed, in his way. She only hoped that she could take care of him properly, and the dogs, too, though she suspected that they were feral enough to hunt their own food if need be. She had a handful of coins, copper ones mostly, stolen from her brother in lieu of her rightful dowry, but they weren’t going to last forever. On a sudden thought she turned in the saddle and motioned