Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [102]
The people merely looked at her.
“Please?” Jill tried again. “Where’s Aderyn?”
They glanced at each other, their cat-slit eyes totally expressionless. Jill felt a little flutter of panic round her heart. All of them, even the women, were wearing long knives at their belts.
“Please, Jennantar told me to come here.”
One man glanced her way, but he said nothing. Jill wanted to turn and run, but they were standing close behind her, too. Then she heard Aderyn’s voice, calling out in their language, and the crowd parted to let him through.
“Jennantar said to fetch you,” Jill said. “A couple of your lads are fighting over somewhat.”
Aderyn swore under his breath. The camp, which only a moment before had seemed to understand not one word she said, muttered and swore at the news. Aderyn grabbed Jill’s arm and hurried her across the meadow, surprisingly fast for such an old man. When she glanced back, she saw the crowd trailing after them.
Back by the trade goods, Jennantar stood in between the two who wanted the sword, while Dregydd hovered nearby, clutching the sheathed blade in nervous fingers. As soon as they saw Aderyn, all three men of the Westfolk began to yell at the top of their lungs. Jill hurried over to Dregydd.
“They’re like this at times,” he said in a resigned tone of voice. “I’m glad the old man’s here to settle things.”
Yet it seemed that Aderyn’s efforts to do just that were proving futile. All the time that he talked in a soothing, patient voice, the two went on staring at each other, arms crossed tight over their chests, cat-slit eyes unblinking. With a shake of his head, Jennantar left the bad job to the old man and joined Jill. Around them the crowd grew, Westfolk and muleteers alike, and Wildfolk popped into manifestation in droves, grinning so hard that they bared pointed teeth.
“They’ve hated each other for years,” Jennantar remarked. “They’re not going to listen now.”
Eventually he proved right. Aderyn threw his hands in the air and returned to the crowd of Westfolk, who stamped their feet on the ground in a sharp rhythm. The two men slowly and methodically stripped off their tunics, tossed them on the ground, then drew their knives, which were about a foot long and slightly curved on one side of the blade. The blades winked in the sun as the pair dropped to a fighting crouch. Jill felt sick, wondering if she was going to see a man killed right in front of her. In dead silence the pair circled around one another, their strange eyes narrow, their jaws set. There was none of the ritual boasting and yelling that would have accompanied a fight between two Deverry men, just the quiet animal circling, a few quick feints, a few quick withdrawals, while the sweat sprang up on their bare backs and made their pale skin glisten. Around and around they went, until one made a charge, and the other held his ground. A quick scuffle, too quick to see—then one fell back with his arm gashed open from elbow to shoulder. Dregydd swore, but the watching crowd of Westfolk merely stamped on the ground again, and briefly. Aderyn ran to separate the combatants, who fell back willingly.
“It’s just to the first blood?” Jill said.
“It is,” Jennantar said. “My apologies. I forgot you didn’t know.”
The bloody knife still in his hand, the victor strolled over to Dregydd, who handed him the sword without a word. His head bowed, the loser stood alone, slumped in defeat, and let the blood run down his arm until Aderyn grabbed him and forcibly hauled him away.
“So much for that,” Jennantar remarked. “Until the next time they find somewhat that annoys them. One of these days, the first blood is going to be someone’s throat.”
When Jill looked at the man she’d been thinking of as a friend, she was caught all over again by his alienness as his smoky, slit eyes stared back unblinkingly. They truly are kin to the Wildfolk, she thought, and for the first time, she wondered if her father were right to think them dangerous. That night, as she listened to the music wailing from the Westfolk’s camp, she was glad to be