A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [164]
“Even though he’s half-mad?”
Nedd pursed his lips and thought. Finally he shrugged the question away and went to open the door for her with a clumsy imitation of Rhodry’s bow. As she followed him out to the stables, Carra was both thinking that she’d never wanted to be a queen and wishing that she felt more like one.
Early on the morrow Yraen woke them by the simple expedient of standing under the hayloft and yelling. As they all walked back to the tavern for breakfast, he announced that he was riding north with them.
“Against my better judgment, I might add. First we take on this cursed little silversmith, and now our Rhodry starts babbling about Wyrd and dweomer and prophecies and the gods only know what else! He’s mad, if you ask me, as daft as a bard, and he drinks harder than any man I’ve ever seen, and that’s a fair bit, if you take my meaning, not that he shows his drink the way an ordinary man would, but anyway, I know blasted well I should be riding back east and finding some other hire, but when he gets to talking—” He shook his head like a baffled bear. “So I’m coming along, for all that he warned me I’ll probably die if I do. I must be as daft as he is.”
In the morning light Carra had the chance for a good look at him. He was a handsome man, Yraen, at least in the abstract, with regular features and a mane of thick golden hair to match his mustaches, but his ice-blue eyes were as cold and hard as the iron of the joke that stood him for a name. The dogs and Nedd watched him with a cold suspicion of their own.
“Have you known Rhodry long?” Carra said.
“We’ve ridden together this four years now.”
“You know, neither of you seem like the sort of men who usually turn into silver daggers.”
“I suppose you mean that well.” Yraen was scowling, but in an oddly abstract way. “Look, my lady, no offense and all that, but asking a silver dagger questions isn’t such a pleasant thing—for both sides, if you take my meaning.”
Since she did, Carra held her tongue against a rising tide of curiosity. Inside the tavern room Rhodry was sitting cross-legged on the floor under a window, shaving with a long steel razor and a bit of mirror propped against the wall.
“Be done straightaway,” Rhodry said. “Yraen, get the lady some bread and milk, will you? The innkeep’s drunk in his kitchen again, and she’s got to keep up her strength and all that.”
With a growl like a dog, however, Nedd insisted on being the one to wait upon his lady.
“I’ve been thinking,” Yraen said abruptly. “If the point of this daft adventure is finding our lady her man, why don’t we just ride straight west?”
“You’re forgetting Otho.”
“True enough, and that’s my point. I want to forget Otho. Can’t we give him his coin back?”
“We still couldn’t just ride west. The grasslands are huge, and there aren’t any roads, and we could wander out there for months till we starved to death.” Still a bit damp, Rhodry joined them at table just as Nedd and the bleary innkeep appeared with bread and bacon. “Cadmar of Cengarn buys horses from the Westfolk, and so we’re bound to find some of the People there—well, they’ll show up sooner or later, anyway. And then we can pass the message along, that Dar’s wife is waiting for him under the gwerbret’s protection.”
“Sounds too easy. You’re hiding somewhat, Rhodry.”
“I’m not. I’ve got no idea, none at all, of what might happen.”
“Then what’s all this babbling about Wyrd and dweomer?”
Rhodry shrugged, tearing bread with his long and graceful fingers.
“If I knew more, I’d tell you more.” He looked up with a sunny and inappropriate grin hovering round his mouth. “But that’s why I warned you earlier. Leave Otho if you want—leave us all. Ride east, and don’t give me or mine another thought.”
Yraen merely snarled and speared a chunk of bacon with an expensive-looking table dagger. At that point Carra heard someone swearing and cursing at the innkeep. The dogs laid back long ears and swung their heads toward the sound as the voice rose into a veritable litany of oaths, a bard’s memory chain of venom, a lexicon