Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [105]
“Of course!” Aderyn said. “Forgive me. I know nothing of matters of war. There’s one about five miles or so to the south and west. The walls were still there the last time I passed that way.”
“Splendid,” Cullyn said. “We might be able to hold them off long enough for Jill to get back from Cannobaen with some of the tieryn’s men.”
“What?” Jill snapped. “You can’t send me away!”
Cullyn slapped her across the face so hard she staggered.
“You follow orders. What’s two days’ ride for a lot of stinking mules should be one for a rider with a spare horse to share her weight. You’re riding to the tieryn and begging for aid. Do you hear me?”
“I do.” Jill rubbed her aching cheek. “But you’d best be alive when I ride back.”
The way Cullyn smiled, a cold twitch of his mouth, told Jill that he doubted he would be. For a moment she thought that her body had turned to water, that she was going to flow away and dissolve like one of the Wildfolk. Cullyn grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“You’re riding for the life of every man in this caravan. Do you understand me?”
“I do. I’ll take two of the hunters. They’re the best horses we’ve got.”
Jennantar saddled one horse and put the other on a lead rope, then held the bridle as Jill swung herself up. As she bent over to take the lead rope, their eyes met.
“I’ll see you on the morrow,” Jennantar said.
“I’ll pray that’s true.”
“Oh, we’ve got a trick or two to play on these piss-pot bandits. We’ll hold them off.”
All at once Jennantar flung his hands over his head and danced, just a few quick steps to some unsung music, and he was grinning like a fiend. Seeing him so battle eager was one of the strangest things on this strange day.
Getting the caravan on the road seemed to take an eternity. Cullyn kept on the move, yelling orders, as the men got the mules loaded and themselves mounted on the spare horses. During the march, he rode up and down the line, yelling and bullying everyone to ride as fast as they could, occasionally slapping the rump of a balky mule with the flat of his sword to keep it trotting. At last they came to the ruined dun, rising from the wild grass with all the loneliness of a cairn marking a warrior’s grave. Although the stone walls and the broch itself looked sound, the wooden gates and outbuildings had long since rotted away. Weeds and ivy ran riot in the ward. Cullyn herded the caravan inside.
“Get the mules and horses inside the broch! Feed them to keep them calm.”
When he saw his orders being followed, he ran round to the back of the ward and found the well. As he’d expected, it had fallen in and was choked with rubble as well as ivy. He ran back into the broch and detailed three muleteers to rush to the nearby stream and fill every pot and waterskin they had. Off to one side he saw Aderyn testing the rusty spiral staircase that led up to the second floor.
“It should hold my weight,” Aderyn announced. “I wouldn’t let a man of your size try it.”
“I doubt me if the floor above will hold anyone.” Cullyn glanced up at the rotten timbers.
“I have to try. I need a high place that’s also private. I can’t be scaring the men out of their wits with dweomer.”
Cullyn felt a bit queasy himself.
“Jill said Loddlaen is a lord’s councillor,” Aderyn went on. “Could he persuade his lord to send men to murder us?”
“It depends on how much this Corbyn honors him, I suppose, but it’s hard to believe. Do you think Loddlaen’s trying to stop you from hauling him in for that murder?”
“That was my first thought, but it doesn’t make sense. Yet I’ve never seen bandits out here, and I tell you, the men I saw were cursed well armed. Well, I’ll have another look.”
As nimbly as a squirrel, Aderyn scrambled up the creaking stairs. Cullyn hurried outside and saw the Westfolk down by the gate. They were unpacking gear from the travois, among it a pair of longbows, beautifully polished staves of some dark wood he’d never seen before, and as tall as they were.
“Archers, are you?”
“We are,