A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [169]
“Oh, and I suppose you’ve been close enough to the king to tell,” Yraen muttered.
Rhodry flashed a brief grin, shot through with weariness.
“Let’s get out of here.” Nedd spoke so rarely that all of them jumped and swirled round to face him. Although he was still pale, his mouth was set in a tight line, and his eyes burned with an expression that Carra could only call fierce. “Tell the gwerbret. We’ve got to.”
“So we should.” Rhodry glanced at Otho. “Looks like they headed south, anyway.”
“So I told our lady. Can’t turn back.”
“I’m on for the ride.” Carra thought of ancient queens and forced her voice steady. “I say we get to the gwerbret as fast as ever we can.”
“Done, then.” Rhodry looked up with a toss of his head. “Nedd, can you and Carra each carry one of the dogs? You can sling them over the front of your saddles, if they’ll allow it.”
Nedd nodded his head to indicate that they would.
“Good. We want to make speed.”
That night when they camped, Rhodry and Yraen set a guard with the dogs to help them. It became their pattern: rise early, tend the horses, then ride hard all day, making a late camp and a guarded one, especially once they reached the second stretch of forest, where no one slept much. The dogs were especially nervous, whining and growling, turning their heads this way and that as they rode. When they were allowed down they would trot round and round the horses and look up, every now and then, to growl or bark at the sky. Carra wondered if the raven were following them, somewhere above the sheltering trees. As they traveled steadily north, the land kept rising, and it turned rocky, too, with huge boulders pushing their way through the earth and stunting the black and twisted pines. The muddy track they were following wound and switched back and forth through the jagged hills until Carra wondered if they’d ever reach Cengarn.
Finally, though, on the third day after they’d found the ravaged village, they reached a road, made of felled trees, trimmed into logs and half-buried, side by side in the dirt. At its abrupt beginning stood a stone marker carved with a sunburst and a couple of lines of lettering. Carra was surprised to learn that Rhodry could read.
“Well, we’re not far now, twenty miles from Cadmar’s city.” He laid one finger on the carved sun. “This is his device.”
The country here was broken tableland. On the flat the pine forest grew all tangled round with ancient underbrush, like a hedge on either side of the road, only to break suddenly and tumble down a small gulch in a spill of green or reveal huge boulders, heaped and tumbled like a giant’s toys. When the sunlight was falling in long and dusty-gold slants through the trees, the road flattened out and straightened. As they traveled along at a steady walk, Carra heard a distant noise ahead of them, went stiff with fear, then realized that it was the sound of a river, racing and tumbling over rock. As the road snaked west, at the end of a leafy tunnel they could see both the river and a blessed token that some kind of human presence lay close at hand. On either side the riverbank had been cleared of trees and underbrush; the rocks out in the water itself had been hauled around and arranged to floor a level if deep-looking ford. But while they were still in the forest’s shelter, Rhodry threw up his hand for a halt.
“What’s wrong?” Carra said. “Can’t we camp here? I’d be so glad to see the sky.”
All at once the dogs began growling and squirming so badly that neither Carra nor Nedd could keep them on the saddle. They slithered down and rushed to the head of the line, bristling and snarling on the edge of barks. At their signal Rhodry began yelling at Carra and Nedd to get back into the forest. In a swirl of confusion they did just that, but