Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [160]
The slow, hot day passed without Corbyn making a sally. At dinner the noble-born ate together and wondered why Corbyn kept postponing the inevitable. There was only one answer, that he hoped his sorcerer would eventually pull him out of this particular fire. For all they knew, Loddlaen might be able to send Rhys a message by magic.
“Aderyn would stop him,” Rhodry said.
“One hopes,” Edar said gloomily. “Who knows what the dweomer can do or not?”
Somehow no one volunteered simply to ask Aderyn, and in an uneasy silence, the council of war broke up. Rhodry got a clean shirt and went downstream from the camp to bathe. In the starlight he walked surefooted, then stripped off his clothes and plunged into the cool water. Getting reasonably clean soothed his nerves somewhat, but as he was dressing, he saw the two men of the Westfolk coming, as surefooted in the dark as he was. Calonderiel hailed him with a laugh.
“As clean as an elf, too, aren’t you?”
“Oh, by the hells! What did Jill do? Open her big mouth and spill the tale?”
“Of course,” Jennantar joined in. “We’re the ones who put her up to it. I’ve noticed a thing here and there, and I’ve been wondering about you, lad.”
Rhodry looked him over carefully. In the starlight Rhodry was color-blind like any ordinary man, and small details were blurred and lost, but he could see enough to find a certain kinship in the narrow build and long fingers he shared with Jennantar. Although both of them were heavily muscled, they were built straight from shoulder to hip, just as he was.
“Does it ache your heart, finding out there’s wild blood in your clan?”
“I can’t lie and say it doesn’t,” Rhodry said. “But I mean no insult to you.”
“None taken,” Calonderiel said. “Here, I’ve been searching my memory, and if I’ve got the tale right, one of our womenfolk ran off with a Maelwaedd lord named Pertyc.”
“That was the first Maelwaedd to be Gwerbret Aberwyn,” Rhodry said. “And it was a cursed long time ago, too. I wish now I’d listened better when the bard was reciting all those tales and genealogies about my ancestors. It doesn’t seem so tedious, all of a sudden.”
They both laughed, and Calonderiel gave him a friendly cuff on the shoulder.
“Come back to our fire with us,” Jennantar said. “We’ve been hoarding a skin of our mead, but this seems like a good time to break it out.”
“And I’ll wager you’ve always been able to drink any other under the table,” Calonderiel put in.
“I have at that. Is that another thing I share with you?”
“It is, and one of the best traits of the Elcyion Lacar, too. If you ask me, anyway.”
Elven mead turned out to be twice as strong as the human variety, and cleaner tasting, too, so that a man could drink more of it. The three of them sat by the campfire and passed the skin around silently while Rhodry decided that he liked his newfound kin. All his life he’d known that he was somewhat different from the men around him, and now at last he knew the reason. It was comforting to find out that there was a reason.
“Where’s Jill?” Rhodry said at last.
“Standing a turn on the night watch,” Calonderiel said.
“Oh, by the hells, she doesn’t have to do that!”
“She insisted,” Jennantar put in. “It’s not a silver dagger’s place to lounge around like a lord, she tells me.”
“And soon, no doubt,” Calonderiel took it up. “The lord cadvridoc will be inspecting the night watch, just to make sure none of them have fallen asleep on duty.”
“Hold your tongue,” Rhodry snapped. “Unless you want another knife fight.”
“After all the mead we’ve drunk, we’d doubtless trip right into the fire. Just a jest, and my apologies.”
The meadskin went round again in a companionable silence. And what of Jill? Rhodry asked himself.