Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [108]
Then Sarcyn knelt down beside him and began pulling off his brigga, reaching under him to unlace them and to fondle him. He struggled, thrashing like a caught fish, but the apprentice was too strong. Shivering in fear, he lay half-naked and stared up into Alastyr’s eyes while Sarcyn spread his legs apart and knelt between them. The old man began to chant in some incomprehensible tongue, a soft, rhythmic mutter that was the more frightening for being done so slowly, with such perfect control.
Then he felt Sarcyn’s hands grasp his buttocks. When he realized what was about to happen to him, he wanted to scream, but no sound would come.
In the gray, humid dawn, the camp began to wake—the men yawning and cursing, the horses rousing themselves and pulling at their tether ropes with soft snorts. At his guard post down by the stream, Rhodry sheathed his sword and rested his shield on the ground while he waited for the captain to come release him from duty. On the other side of the stream stood a crop of spring wheat, turning pale gold and ripe for the harvest. Summer’s here, Rhodry thought. My first cursed summer as a silver dagger.
Finally the captain released him with a shout and a wave. Rhodry hurried back to camp, dumped his shield beside his bedroll, and went down to the wooden carts to get his horse some oats and himself some breakfast. The twenty other men in the warband were already there. He took his place in the provision line behind Edyl, a square-faced young rider who was, so far at least, the only man in the warband who’d talk to a silver dagger.
“Morrow, Rhodry. I take it you didn’t see any enemies creeping toward us, or were you asleep out there?”
“Oh, it was easy to stay awake, what with the lot of you snoring and farting.”
With a laugh Edyl gave him a friendly cuff on the shoulder. Up at the cart Lord Gwivan’s portly manservant shoved himself in at the head of the line to fetch his lordship’s breakfast.
“How far are we from this Lord Daen’s dun, anyway?” Rhodry said.
“Just about fifteen miles. If these horse-dung carts don’t break down again, we’ll be at his side tonight.”
“Think we’ll get pinned in a siege?”
“Well, that’s the rumor, isn’t it? Let’s pray it isn’t true.”
Since he’d ridden into the middle of this war in the Auddglyn, Rhodry was still trying to sort out exactly what was happening. As far as he could tell, Lord Daen and a certain Lord Laenrydd had a feud going of long standing, and some little incident had set it off. Each lord had called in all their alliances to muster as big an army as they could. Rhodry had been hired by Daen’s ally Marclew, but since Marclew only owed Daen twenty-one men, he’d stayed at home and sent his son, Gwivan, to lead the warband. The shame of it ate at Rhodry constantly. Only last summer he’d been the cadvridoc of a large army; now he was just a silver dagger, hired to spare another man from riding to war.
They broke camp smoothly and were on the road by two hours after dawn. Half the warband ambled along with their lord at the head of the line; the carts jerked and jolted in the middle; the rest of the riders formed a rear guard. As a silver dagger, Rhodry rode at the very end and breathed everyone else’s dust. He found himself thinking about Jill and wondering if she was safe, back at the dun with the rest of the warband and, for that matter, the widowed lord himself. His jealousy was a constant riding partner, gnawing him, taunting him with memories of just how beautiful she was. When they’d ridden away together, he’d managed to forget that they’d be separated for weeks and months at a time, when he would have no way of knowing if she was faithful