Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [162]
“There are times when Jill can be a little dolt. Ah, ye gods, what did I expect, dragging her along with me? Oh, well and good, then. I’ll think about it, but if she’s killed—” He let the words hang there.
Nevyn raised his eyes to the heavens as if calling the gods to witness Cullyn’s stubbornness, then packed his supplies and left without another word. Cullyn lay awake for a long time, hoping that the siege would be a good long one. Maybe he would heal enough to ride there and pull Jill out before it came to battle. For all his rage, it would ache his heart to kill young Rhodry. Cullyn winced when he remembered how hard Rhodry had tried to pull him out of the mob—him, a rotten, lousy silver dagger. Many lords saw a silver dagger’s death as a convenient way out of paying him his hire and nothing more. And yet if Jill were killed—the thought made him weep, just a quick scatter of tears that he saw as shameful.
The letter from Rhys was brief and maddening.
“My lady,” it ran. “I understand that your cadvridoc still holds the siege of Dun Bruddlyn. Since Lord Talidd has brought me proof of Lord Corbyn’s continuing treachery, I will let you settle the matter by the sword if you prefer. Let me warn you that even your eventual victory may not quiet all the grumbling against you as long as Rhodry is your heir.”
Lovyan crumpled the parchment into a little ball. She was tempted to throw it into the messenger’s face, but after all, it wasn’t the young rider’s fault that his lord was an arrogant, pig-headed fool.
“I take it my lady is displeased?” Nevyn said.
With a little snort Lovyan smoothed the parchment out and handed it over.
“You may go,” she said to the messenger. “Have some ale with my men. I’ll have an answer for you soon.”
The lad scrambled up and made his escape from her wrath. Nevyn sighed over the message, then handed it back.
“Rhys is dead wrong about the grumbling,” Nevyn said. “Rhodry’s proven himself in this war.”
“Of course. He just wanted to infuriate me to salvage some of his wretched pride, and he’s done it quite successfully, too.”
They were sitting in the great hall, which was peculiarly silent. Only ten men, some of the recovering wounded, sat in a room fit for two hundred.
“Do you think I should ask Rhys to intervene?” Lovyan said. “It aches my heart to think of more men dying over this.”
“Mine, too, but if Rhys does disinherit Rhodry somehow, then all the men who’ve come to admire him will start grumbling. It might lead to another rebellion, and even more men will die in that.”
“True spoken.” Lovyan folded the parchment up neatly and slipped it into the kirtle of her dress. “I’ll calm myself, then send Rhys an answer, saying his intervention will not be required.”
Up at Dun Bruddlyn, the besiegers slipped into a routine that crawled by, tense and tedious at the same time. Since Corbyn might have sallied at any moment, everyone went armed and ready, yet there was nothing to do but polish weapons that were already spotless, ride aimless patrols to exercise the horses, and wager endlessly on one dice game or another. Although Jill tried to leave Rhodry strictly alone, it was impossible to avoid him in so small a camp. At times she would go to draw rations only to find him among the carts or come face to face with him as she walked back to camp after tending Sunrise. At those chance meetings he said very little and made no effort to keep her at his side, but every now and then, when they looked at each other, she would feel that she was drowning in the blue of his eyes.
By the seventh day of the siege, Jill felt that she just might go mad from this endless waiting for battle. As she admitted to Aderyn that night, she was quite simply afraid.
“Da says that anyone with any sense is always afraid before a battle. So I suppose