A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [96]
She flung her head back and howled like a wolf, then as suddenly as one of the Wildfolk she was gone, simply gone, vanished without so much as a puff of dust or a stirring of the torch flame. From right behind him Rhodry heard Calonderiel swear. He spun round.
“There you are!” Calonderiel was half laughing, half afraid. “By the Dark Sun, I’ve drunk myself half-blind! I didn’t see you, and here you were so close by that I nearly tripped over you! Must’ve drunk too much, that’s what it is.”
“I’ve never known you to pass on a skin of mead un-tasted, no.” Rhodry realized that he was cold-sick and shaking. “Uh, did you see that woman who was here just now?”
“Woman? No, I didn’t even see you, much less some female. Who was she?” “The woman we saw earlier, when we were talking with the king and his son. The one little Faren called strange.”
“Oh, her.” Calonderiel burped profoundly. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything, er, important.”
“Not in the least, my friend, not in the least. Huh, I wonder if Faren has a touch of the second sight or suchlike. We should have Aderyn take a look at the lad the next time we meet up with the old man.”
“I thought the Wise One would be here already, as a matter of fact. Um, why are you talking in Deverrian?”
“Am I? Well, I’m sorry.” He switched back easily to his adopted tongue. “That woman was speaking it, you see.”
“What woman?”
“The one you didn’t see. Don’t worry about it. Let’s get back to camp, shall we?”
When he went to sleep that night, Rhodry was glad that he shared a tent with a warband. Somehow he would have felt in danger if he’d been off by himself.
Close to dawn the entire camp woke in a swirl of yelling and cursing from the herd-guards. Rhodry pulled on his trousers and boots, then dashed outside, slipping on his shirt in the chilly night, to find the rest of the warband running for the herd of horses to the east of the encampment. From the snatches of shouted conversation he could figure out that something had panicked the stock.
By the time they reached the grazing ground, the mounted herders had rounded up most of the runaways. Rhodry found a horse that knew him, swung up bareback, and riding with just a halter joined the hunt for the others. Although he lacked the full night vision of the People, he could see far better than the average human in the dark, and certainly well enough to hunt for horses in moonlight. He found four mares and their half-grown colts, herded them into a little group, and brought them back just as the sky was turning gray in the east with the tardy autumn dawn. Riding out among the assembled herds were three of the women, counting up the stock with a call or a pat for every animal. Rhodry turned his mares into the milling mass, then found Calonderiel, mounted on his golden stallion off to one side, and rode up beside him.
“What was all this about?”
“Cursed if I know.” Calonderiel shrugged eloquently. “One of the boys told me that all of a sudden, the herd just went mad: neighing and rearing, kicking out at something. He said he could just barely see shapes moving, doglike shapes, but then they vanished. Some of the Wildfolk, I suppose, up to their rotten infuriating pranks. They know there’s naught we can do to them, blast them, and they probably thought it a fine jest to see us all riding round yelling our heads off.”
Rhodry saw no reason to disagree, especially since there was no particular harm done. Once the sun was up and the herds all counted, only three horses were still missing, and their tracks, heading off in three separate directions, were perfectly clear. Rhodry got himself some breakfast, then set off after one of the stragglers.
He tracked the lost horse all that morning, until finally, close to noon, he found the miscreant, a blood-bay gelding with a black mane and tail, peacefully grazing beside a narrow river. Clucking under his breath, holding out a nose