Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [116]
“I only wish I could dismiss it so easily.” He halted his horse. “We’d best get back to Ynryc with this tale.”
Jill agreed, but as she was turning her horse, the gray gnome materialized in the road in front of her. The little creature was frantic, rolling its eyes and waving its hands at them to stop.
“What’s wrong?” Jill said. “Shouldn’t we go back?”
It shook its head so hard that it nearly fell over.
“What’s all this?” Rhodry said. “Your gnome?”
“Just that, and he doesn’t want us to go back. He’s terrified, Rhoddo.”
The gnome vanished, then appeared again in Rhodry’s lap. It reached up and patted him imploringly on the cheek. Although he couldn’t see it, he could feel the touch.
“Well, the Wildfolk saved my life once,” he said. “If he thinks that there’s danger behind us, I’ll take his word for it.”
The gnome grinned and patted his hand.
“Besides,” Rhodry went on, “we can turn the thing over to the tieryn in Marcmwr.”
Shaking his head no, the gnome pinched his arm.
“Do you want us to keep it?” Jill said.
Relieved, he smiled and nodded yes, then vanished. Jill and Rhodry sat on their horses for a moment and stared at each other in bewilderment.
“Here,” Rhodry said finally. “Let me just get my mail shirt out of my saddlebags. I wish to the gods that you had one.”
“I think we should buy me one in Marcmwr. Since Ynryc was so generous about your ransom, we’ve got the coin.”
“We do, do we? And here you’ve been telling me that we barely have a coin to our name!”
“If you’d drunk it all away, I couldn’t buy mail now.”
“True enough. Ah, you must truly love me, if you’d actually part with a coin for my ransom!”
She leaned over and cuffed him hard on the shoulder.
After Rhodry had armed, they rode out at a faster pace, both of them with sword in hand and shields ready at the saddle peak. The road snaked through the hills, always climbing. Rhodry kept looking back the way they’d come. His half-elven eyesight was an ally, she knew, because he could see much farther than an ordinary man and would spot their enemies long before the enemies spotted them. Ahead the mountains loomed, black with pines and streaked here and there with sandstone outcrops like the knuckles of a giant fist. Every little valley or canyon that they came to seemed to hide an ambush, yet always they passed safely by.
Finally they climbed one last hill and looked down on a narrow plain, hemmed in by mountains to the east and hills to the west. Beside a river stood Marcmwr. About three hundred roundhouses clustered together in the middle of a large open space inside the high stone walls, as if they had shrunk together in fear, but in truth the open land served as pasturage for the horses and mules of merchant caravans.
“I’ve never been so blasted glad to see a town in my life,” Rhodry remarked.
“Me, either.”
Yet she didn’t feel entirely safe until they rode through the massive iron-bound gates and saw the armed town guards standing around.
“They almost turned back, curse them!” Alastyr snarled.
“It’s that gnome of hers, master,” Sarcyn said. “I saw it warn them when I was scrying.”
“Indeed? Then we’ll do somewhat about that.”
It occurred to Alastyr that his feeling of being watched at times might simply have come from the gnome or other Wildfolk spying upon him. It was time, then, to set an example and scare them away.
For two days Rhodry and Jill stayed in Marcmwr, in a crumbling inn by the north gate, the only one in this trade town full of inns that would sell shelter to a silver dagger. Since in a town that size there was no such thing as an armorer’s shop, on the first day there they rode to the dun of the local tieryn and haggled with his chamberlain for an old mail shirt for Jill. On the second Rhodry worked the town in earnest, looking for a hire. Finally he found one in Seryl, who had contracted to take a caravan of weapons and luxury goods to Dun Hiraedd.
Dun Hiraedd was an odd sort of city and a new one, too, founded only eighty