Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [159]
“She’s never been in a battle. How could Rhodry—I save his cursed life, and this is how he repays me. I swear it, if she dies, I’ll kill him. I don’t care what his ugly clan does to me for it. I’ll kill him.”
What might have been a boast from another man was the simple truth coming from Cullyn of Cerrmor. Nevyn felt trouble sweeping over them all like a breaking wave.
“I thought I liked the lad,” Cullyn went on. “I was fool enough to think I honored him.”
“Hush! You can’t do anything about it now, and you’re just upsetting yourself.”
“Hold your tongue, old man! I don’t give a pig’s fart if you’re dweomer or not. Just hold your tongue.”
At that moment he sounded so much like Gerraent that Nevyn nearly slapped him. Sharply he reminded himself that Cullyn was no more Gerraent than he was still Prince Galrion.
“I’m going to look at that wound whether you like it or not.”
“Go ahead. Just hold your tongue.”
Cullyn closed his eyes and pressed the side of his face down hard into the pillow. As Nevyn opened his sack of supplies, he was thinking about the coming trouble. Sooner or later, Cullyn would realize that Rhodry and Jill were besotted with each other. Would he fly into a rage and kill the most important man in Eldidd? And what of Jill? Would he keep her from the dweomer? Would his honor fail someday the way Gerraent’s had?
“Well,” Cullyn snapped. “Get on with it, will you?”
“I will. Just getting out a clean bandage.”
It was then that Nevyn was faced with severest temptation, the bitterest test of his entire dweomer-touched life, which had tested him so many times before. When he took the chirurgeon’s clumsy bandage off the wound on Cullyn’s side, he saw immediately that infection was setting in. The signs were so very small—just the slightest swelling at the edges of the torn flesh, just the slightest unnatural redness—that only he would have noticed. Obviously the chirurgeon hadn’t. He could ignore it if he chose. He could ignore it for just this one night, and by the morrow, when the chirurgeon came round again, the infection would have spread so far that not even Nevyn would be able to check it. He could stand there and let Gerraent die. His desire was like a burning in his whole body.
“By the hells,” Cullyn snarled. “Get on with it!”
“Hold your tongue! You’re in a bit of danger. I don’t like the look of this wound. Did that chirurgeon remember to wash his stinking hands?”
And the moment was over, but Nevyn would remember it for years, the time when he had nearly broken every solemn vow he had ever sworn.
“He didn’t,” Cullyn said. “Not that I saw, anyway.”
“Those cursed dolts! Why won’t they believe me when I tell them that foul humors linger on their filthy paws! I’m sorry, lad, but I’m going to have to take the stitches out and wash the whole thing with mead.”
Cullyn turned his head to look at him and did the last thing Nevyn would ever have expected—he smiled.
“Go ahead. The pain will take my blasted mind off Jill.”
“Wonder how long they’re going to stew in there, eh?” Sligyn said. “They should just surrender or sally, curse them.”
“Corbyn will never surrender,” Rhodry said. “He knows I’m going to hang him from his own gates.”
Sligyn nodded and stroked his mustache. They were sitting on horseback at the edge of the camp, looking up at the dun, where the green pennant flew in a stiff morning breeze.
“I hope to every god that Nowec takes my offer of pardon,” Rhodry went on.
“If the filthy sorcerer will let him, eh? Here, Aderyn tells me he’s keeping some kind of watch on the dun. Says he’ll know the minute that Corbyn’s men start preparing for a sally.” Sligyn shook his head in angry bafflement. “And then he had a jest on me, too. I say to him, how will you know, a scrying stone or suchlike? Oh, not that, says he, the Wildfolk will tell me. Eh! That’s what you get for questioning wizards.”
Rhodry forced out a brief smile. He didn’t care to tell Sligyn that the Wildfolk were real enough. He wanted to believe that Aderyn and Jill had been