Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [200]
Rhys flinched as if she’d slapped him. She paused just long enough for him to feel the sting.
“Not, at least, until Rhodry’s back home.”
Rhys started to speak, then turned and strode out, slamming the door so hard that the silver oddments on the mantel rattled. Lovyan allowed herself a small smile.
“I’m a warrior’s wife and a warrior’s daughter. And the war, Your Grace, has just begun.”
The sun was low in the sky when Rhodry came to the stone slab marking the border between the gwerbret-rhynnau of Aberwyn and Abernaudd. He paused his horse and contemplated the dragon carved on the west side and the hippogriff rampant carved on the east, then rode the last few feet across. For all the good it was going to do him, he was safe. Rhys’s men would never risk starting a war by pursuing him into another gwerbrets rhan and thus usurping that gwerbrets jurisdiction.
As the evening wind picked up from the sea, he shivered and pulled his plain blue cloak round his shoulders. His stomach was growling and knotting; he hadn’t eaten since the ill-fated feast of the night before. A few more miles brought him to a big farming village and the Gray Goat tavern, a thatched roundhouse with a stable out in back. As he dismounted, the taverner came out, a bulky blob of a man who reeked of garlic. He looked Rhodry over with a shrewd eye for the blazons on his shirt and worn spot on his belt where a scabbard should have hung.
“I’ll wager you got into a bit of trouble with the captain of your warband.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Naught. And a silver dagger in your belt, is there? Who pledged you to that?”
“Cullyn of Cerrmor.”
“Oho!” The taverner gave him a wide grin, revealing stubs of front teeth. “Then come in and welcome. You can work around the place, like, to earn your keep while you figure out what you’re going to do next. Here, lad, have you been flogged? My wife can give you a poultice or somewhat for your back.”
“I haven’t, but my thanks.”
“Good, good. At least your lord was a merciful man, eh? Well, put your horse in the stables. My name’s Gadd.”
“And mine’s Rhodry.”
Just in time, he stopped himself from calling himself Lord Rhodry Maelwaedd. That he only had part of his name left gave him a cold feeling, but at the same time, he was relieved at Gadd’s easy assumption that he was a disgraced rider. Outside of Rhys’s gwerbretrhyn, no one but the noble lords would know who he was, and once he left Eldidd, few of them would recognize him either. Without his name and his plaid, he would only be another silver dagger.
Apparently Gadd had a higher opinion of horses than he did humans, because while the stable was clean and well tended, in the tavern room the battered tables were slick with grease and the straw on the floor smelled like kennel bedding. The stew, however, that Gadd put in front of Rhodry was thick with meat and turnips, and the bread that went with it was fresh-baked. Rhodry gobbled while Gadd brought him a tankard of dark ale and pointed out where the open barrel stood.
“Dip out what you want. No doubt you’ll be drinking yourself blind tonight. Just do your puking out in the stableyard.”
Yet Rhodry stayed reasonably sober. As the place filled up with local farmers and their wives, he saw them watching him with the hungry curiosity of those to whom a fallen tree is a village event. Even though Gadd told everyone to leave him alone, Rhodry felt as vulnerable as if he were walking naked through city streets. He nursed a couple of tankards and huddled by the warmth of the hearth while he wondered if Cullyn truly would be able to get him some coin and a sword. Without a weapon, he couldn’t fight, silver dagger or no. The irony struck him hard. Before, he’d been the great lord, able to load Cullyn with honors; now, if he stayed alive, it would be only because Cullyn had befriended him. Out on the long road, Cullyn’s name meant as much as Maelwaedd did in the world he’d irrevocably left behind.
Rhodry had no hope at all that Rhys would ever recall him. The more their mother pressured him, the more