A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [191]
“Here, here, my love! I’m home safe again, just like I promised you.”
Otho snorted profoundly.
“Egotistical young dolt,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice. “Wasn’t you we were worried about.”
“What?” Dar let her go and turned to confront the dwarf. “What are you saying, old man?”
“I’m saying what I said, you stupid elven fop. Someone tried to kill your wife while you were running around the countryside playing warrior.”
Dar went dead-still.
“Well, but they didn’t,” Carra said. “I mean, that sounds stupid, but Otho and his men have kept me safe, really they have.”
“And for that they’ll have my undying thanks.”
She had never heard Dar speak like that, so low, so still, each word careful and distinct, and now he was trembling in rage.
“Where’s the man who tried to harm her?”
“Don’t know, Your Highness.” Otho’s manner changed abruptly. “He did it by stealth, and we couldn’t catch him.”
“When we do, I’ll kill him with my own hands.” He threw one arm around Carra’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Name your reward.”
Otho thought for a good long minute, then sighed.
“None needed, Your Highness. We were glad to serve your lady. But someday, mayhap, we’ll remember this, and call in a favor done.”
All around them men were dismounting in a welter of confusion. Pages and stableboys came running to take horses and unload gear, warriors strode by, heading for the great hall and ale. Dar’s archers gathered round like a dun wall to shut their little group off from the potentially dangerous commotion.
“Is Jill with you?” Carra said.
“The Wise One?” Dar said. “She’s not. She left us before we reached the city. There’s Rhodry, though. Look, right behind him, see that horse Yraen’s leading? We captured him from the raiders. He belonged to their leader.”
Carra looked, then caught her breath in a little gasp. Never had she seen such an enormous animal, fully eighteen hands high and broad, too, with a deep chest and huge arch of neck. A blood bay with white mane and tail, he walked solemnly, gravely, planting each big foot down as if he knew that everyone watched him. Rhodry turned his own horse over to a page, then worked his way free of the mob to join them.
“Otho,” Rhodry said. “I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
“You remembered, did you?” Otho looked sour. “Well, I owe you your hire, I suppose, though with all the trouble you got me into, that ambush at the ford and all, I don’t see why I should pay you one blasted coin.”
“Because if you’d ridden north without me and Yraen, you’d have been dead long before you reached the cursed ford.”
“That has a certain logic to it, truly. Well, I’ve got the coin back at my inn.”
“Good. Make sure you fetch it, then.”
And Carra was honestly shocked that a man like Rhodry, whom she was starting to consider as fine and noble as any man in the kingdom, would worry about a handful of coin.
That night in the great hall the gwerbret held a feast for their victory, and his lady made sure that it also served to solemnize Carra’s wedding in the human way. Before the bard sang his praise-song for the raid and the true drinking began, the gwerbret himself made a fine flowery speech and toasted the young couple with a goblet of mead. The bard performed a solemn declamation, cobbled together from other occasions, perhaps, but elegant all the same. Their arms twined round each other, Carra and Dar took turns drinking mead from a real glass goblet, traded all the way north from Bardek through Aberwyn. Although custom demanded that they smash the thing, it was far too valuable, and besides, as Carra pointed out to her new husband, she certainly wasn’t a virgin anymore anyway. With a laugh Dar agreed and handed the goblet back unharmed to the hovering seneschal.
Later, after the bardsong and the assigning of praise, after the mead and the feasting, the gwerbret called for music, and there was dancing, the circle dances of the border, half-elven, half-human, stepped out to harp and drum. For the ritual of the thing, Carra danced one with Dar, then sat down again