A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [190]
“Indeed?” Cadmar said. “And would you mind telling us what that is?”
“Not at all, Your Grace.” She reached into her shirt and took out a stained and faded silk pouch, opened that, and handed over a thin bone plaque, a square about three inches on a side.
Rhodry stepped round to peer over the gwerbret’s shoulder. The plaque sported a picture, graved into the yellowed bone and stained with traces of color. Once, he supposed, the portrait had been as vivid as a flower garden, but even his utterly untrained eye perceived it as ancient, older than anything he’d ever seen, older, perhaps, than the kingdom itself. In such a skilled drawing that every hair, every fold of cloth, seemed real and tangible, the picture displayed the head and shoulders of a being much like the one that lay dead at their feet: the same mane of hair, the same ridged face and heavy jaw, but while indeed this face was tattooed, the marks were only rough lines and dots. Cadmar swore under his breath.
“Jill, where did you get this? What are these creatures?”
“I got it far south of Bardek, Your Grace, on an island where some of the Westfolk live. As for what, well, the elves call them Meradan, demons, but their own name for themselves is Gel da’Thae: the Horsekin.”
All the old stories he’d been trying to remember rose to the surface of Rhodry’s mind.
“The Hordes!”
“Just that, silver dagger.” Jill smiled, a brief twitch of her mouth. “His grace doubtless remembers those old tales about the cities of the Westfolk, the ones destroyed back in the Dawntime by demons? Well, destroyed they were, but by real flesh and blood.” She nudged the corpse with her foot. “This flesh and blood, Your Grace. Huh, they don’t seemed to have changed a great deal, have they? They’ve learned a good bit about tattooing, that’s all. They’re still as bloodthirsty.”
Cadmar nodded, his mouth grim, and handed back the bit of bone.
“And they’ve come east,” Rhodry put in. “That bodes ill.”
“You always had a gift for understatement, didn’t you?” Jill was putting the plaque away.
“But what do they want?” Cadmar said.
“I wouldn’t know for certain, but I’ll wager it’s the same things they’ve always wanted: land, slaves, jewelry and other such trinkets.” Jill looked up at last. “Look at his hands, Your Grace. See how some of his fingers have been cut off? Their warriors do that to themselves, you see, so they’ll be fit for no craft but war.”
Cadmar shuddered.
“And how do you know all this?”
“I read it in an elven book, written by one of the survivors of the Great Burning. That’s what they call the fall of the cities. It was over a thousand years ago now, but the elves remember it, clear as clear. I wish I could have brought you this book, for your scribe to read aloud in your hall. You and your men need to know what we’re facing.”
Cadmar threw up his head like a startled stag. Rhodry laughed aloud.
“Oh, my lady Death’s in for a fine time of it now. Her dun will fill with her guests, her tables feast thousands. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Jill?”
“I am. Your Grace, I pray to every god in the sky and under the earth that I’m wrong, but in my heart I know that the worst war that ever the Westlands have seen lies ahead of us.”
“And soon?” the gwerbret said.
“It will be, Your Grace. Very soon.”
Rhodry threw back his head and howled with laughter, choking and bubbling out of his very soul All through the shattered camp the warband fell dead-silent to listen, and not a man there felt his blood run anything but cold.
With all the prisoners and suchlike, it took the warband two full days to ride home. With Otho and a squad of dwarven axmen standing around her, Carra was waiting at the gates of Cadmar’s dun when they walked their horses up the hill. At first, in the dust and confusion, she found it impossible to tell one man from another, and her heart began pounding in dread, but Dar broke free of the pack at last and ran to her.
“Thank every god in the sky!” She flung herself into his arms. While she sniveled into his filthy