Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [74]
While Obyn held the horse, the young priests came forward, struck flint on steel, and lit the kindling. Obyn watched narrow eyed: if the fire caught poorly, the day was cursed, and the sacrifice would have to be postponed. As the flames danced up bright and strong, the crowd sank to its knees.
Gweran took the chance to move well back to the edge. Since he had Aderyn with him, he wanted to be a good distance away when the horse met its Wyrd. As the chanting droned on, Aderyn twisted round to look over the crowd. Men on one side, women and tiny children oil the other, everyone who lived within twenty miles was here to beg the god to spare their crops. When Gweran looked over the women, he saw Lyssa and Cadda well to the back, Cadda with a scarf ready to hide her eyes. Acern was asleep in his mother’s lap. The chanting grew faster and louder as the flames rose high.
“Da?” Aderyn whispered. “This is a waste of a good horse.”
“Hush. Don’t talk at rituals.”
“But nothing’s going to happen till the full moon.”
When Gweran threatened a slap, Aderyn fell silent. A young priest took the nervous horses reins from Obyn, who stepped in front of the altar, raised his arms high into the air, and began to beg the god for mercy, his voice rising and quickening, faster and faster, until he cried out in a great sob of supplication. A priest blew on a brass horn, a rasping ancient cry down from the Dawntime. Then silence. Obyn took a bronze sickle from his belt and approached the horse, who tossed up its head in terror. When the brass horn blared, the horse pulled back, but the bronze sickle swung bright in the firelight. The horse screamed, staggering, blood gushing, and sank dying to its knees.
Aderyn began to sob aloud. Gweran threw his arms around him, pulled him into his lap, and let the child bury his face against his father’s shirt. He was wise to hide his eyes as the priests began dismembering the horse with long bronze knives. From his bard-lore, Gweran knew that in the Dawntime, the victim would have been a man, and that this horse represented the god’s growing mercy to his people, but the knowledge would have been no comfort to his tender-hearted Aderyn. The horns blew again as the priests worked, their arms bloody to the elbows.
At last Obyn cut a strip of bleeding meat and wrapped it in thick fat from the horse’s thigh. With a long wailing chant, he laid the sacrifice in the midst of the flames. The fat sputtered and caught, flaring up with a smoky halo.
“Great Bel,” Obyn cried. “Have mercy.”
“Have mercy,” the crowd sighed.
The young priest blew a great blare on the horn.
The rite ended soon after. Since Aderyn was weeping as if his heart would break, Gweran picked him up and carried him as he looked desperately around for Lyssa in the scattering crowd. Instead he found Nevyn, who was leaning against a tree and watching the flame-lit altar with a sour smile.
“Oh, here, here, Addo,” Nevyn said, the smile disappearing. “It’s all over now. It’s a pity, sure enough, but the poor beast is dead and beyond suffering.”
“They shouldn’t have,” Aderyn sobbed. “It won’t even do any good.”
“It won’t. But what’s done is done, and you’d best not talk of it right here, where the people can hear you. They need to think it will help.”
Slowly, Aderyn sniffled himself to silence, wiping his face on his sleeve. Gweran kissed him and set him down, taking his hand and drawing him close.
“Well, bard?” Nevyn said. “Do you think this will bring rain?”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But either way, the god will be pleased.”
“True spoken. And pious of you, truly.”
The old man walked off, leaving Gweran puzzled and more than a bit uneasy. As the crowd dispersed toward the village, Gweran finally