A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [177]
“How did you get out of that little trap, silver dagger?”
“Well, Your Grace, this is the strangest bit of all, and I’ll beg your grace to believe me, because truly, if it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”
“Ah. Jill got you out of it, did she?”
It was Rhodry’s turn for the surprise. He stared open-mouthed, searching for words, while Cadmar laughed at him, a grim sort of mutter under his breath.
“She showed up here last fall, just in time to save this leg.” The gwerbret laid one hand on his twisted thigh. “The chirurgeon was going to cut it off, but our traveling herbwoman makes him stay his hand and then, by the gods! if she doesn’t go and cure the fever in the blood and set the thing in such a way as I can actually walk. Not well, truly, but it’s better than stumbling around on a wooden stump. And so needless to say, I was inclined to treat her generously. All she wanted was a little hut out in the wilderness, and I was more than glad to give her that and all the food she could eat and wood for warmth as well. She’s done many a fine thing for my folk over the winter. And of course, they all say she’s got the dweomer, and truly, I’ve seen enough now to believe it myself.”
“Well, Your Grace, I think she does, because she got us clear of the raiders and got us our horses back as well, and then she told us to come and tell you our tale. And so we have.”
Nodding a little, Cadmar leaned back in his chair and looked out over the hall. Off at their side his warband sat drinking in silence, straining to hear the story that these strangers were telling their lord.
“And did she say when she’d return to my dun?”
“She didn’t, Your Grace.”
“Imph, well.” Cadmar thought for a long moment. “Well, silver daggers, we’ll wait the day, at least. You need to sleep, and I’ve got to summon my vassals. Then we’re riding out after these bastards. Want a hire?”
“Never have I been so glad of one, Your Grace.”
“Me, too,” Yraen broke in. “I can still see that village in my mind, like, and that poor woman we found.”
“Pregnant, was she?” Cadmar turned to him.
“She was, Your Grace, and murdered.”
Cadmar winced.
“They’ve been doing that, you see. Killing the women with child. It’s almost as if… well, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if that’s why they’re here, to kill all the women carrying children. Every now and then one of the survivors heard things, you see. A lad who managed to hide under an overturned wagon told me he heard two of them say somewhat like: time to ride on, we’ve gotten all the breeding sows in this pen.”
Rhodry went sick cold, thinking of Carra.
“And who are they, Your Grace?” Yraen said.
“A band of marauders. Men like you and me, not Westfolk or dwarves. All the survivors have been clear as clear about that. They appeared last summer, started raiding the outlying farms. Bandits, think I, starving and desperate. We tried to track them down. That’s where I took this wound.” Reflexively he rubbed his thigh. “The bastards got away from us that time, but they didn’t come back. I thought I’d scared them off, but with the spring they showed up and worse than ever. I doubt me very much if they’re ordinary bandits. They’re too cursed clever, for one thing. And they’ve got good weapons, good armor, and they’ve been trained to fight as a unit.”
“Not bandits at all, then, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “They must have some kind of a leader. I don’t suppose any of the survivors got a look at him.”
“One or two think they might have. An enormously tall man, they say, all wrapped in a dark blue cloak with the hood well up, giving orders in an odd growl of a voice. All they saw clear like was his hands, huge hands with hair on the backs, and they swear up and down that he only had three fingers on each of them.”
Some fragment of lore pricked in Rhodry’s mind and made his blood run cold. He was too tired to remember exactly why,