Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [118]
With the heat and the steep road, it took the caravan a full day to travel ten miles. Climbing steadily, the road twisted and snaked through the rocky hills and thick stands of twisted pines that offered a thousand good places to lay an ambush. When the caravan made camp for the night, Jill tagged along as Rhodry set three men on guard. Although she offered to stand a turn on the watch herself, he turned her down. He did, however, pick out three muleteers to augment the watch, but even though he had Seryl’s authority behind him, the men turned as sullen as their mules.
“Listen, silver dagger,” one said, “you’re the one who’s paid to stay awake, not us.”
“You’ll get plenty of sleep in the Otherlands if we’re caught by bandits. Are you following my orders or not?”
“I’m not taking orders from scum like you.”
Rhodry punched him in the stomach with his right fist and clipped him under the jaw with his left. Jill admired the way the muleteer folded in half and hit the ground like a sack of grain. Rhodry glanced around at the gawking circle of his fellows.
“Who’s next to argue?”
They looked at the man on the ground, then at Rhodry.
“Well, now,” a man piped up, “I’ll take a turn on watch. When do you want us out there?”
After a peaceful night the caravan moved out about two hours after dawn and began its slow climb to the dangerous Cwm Pecl pass, where more than one caravan had been slaughtered by bandits. Once they were through, the danger would lessen, because Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl, kept patrols of riders on his side of the mountains.
“Now, bandits don’t usually attack royal caravans,” Seryl told Jill as they rode, “because they know the gwerbret will be out in force to hunt them down. After all, it’s his goods they’d be stealing.”
Yet Seryl didn’t truly look reassured by his own words. When just at noon they reached the pass, Jill decided that it lived up to its evil reputation. About ten miles long, it was a sheer-sided gap strewn with enormous boulders that forced the line into single file.
“It’s going to be hard on the stock,” Rhodry said. “But we’re not stopping until we’re through.”
Even the mules seemed to smell danger in the air, because they kept walking fast without a single blow or curse from the muleteers. Rhodry kept moving up and down the line, speaking to each guard in turn. After a few miles in, the road began to widen, but still it twisted through piles of fallen rock. Every time Jill glanced at Seryl, he merely nodded her way, then returned to watching the road ahead. Finally Rhodry came up beside them.
“Get back in line, good merchant. I’ll stay up here now.”
“Expecting trouble, silver dagger?”
He nodded, looking up at the boulder-strewn cliff top far above them.
“I’ve ridden in enough wars to smell trouble coming,” Rhodry said. “I smell it now.”
With a moan Seryl turned his horse out of line and headed back to a safer position. When Rhodry began unlacing his shield from his saddle peak, Jill did the same.
“Do I have any hope of convincing you to get back and stay out of this?” he said, pulling a javelin.
“None.” Jill glanced back and saw that he’d positioned all the guards directly behind them. “After I killed Corbyn, I never wanted to ride to war again, but by Epona herself, I’ll cursed well fight for my own life.”
He gave her a tight smile, as if he’d been expecting no less. For another mile the road snaked on, growing slightly wider. The dust they were raising hung in the windless air like a banner to announce that they were coming. Jill felt a cold like a lump of rock in the pit of her stomach. She knew what riding to battle meant. In her hand her sword winked bright, the blade that her father had given her. Oh, Da, she thought, it’s a good thing you taught me how to use it.
A little ways on, the road made a sharp turn, and Jill saw them, a pack of some twenty armed men, blocking the road about thirty feet ahead. Behind her the caravan turned into a shouting mob as the muleteers pulled the mules to a halt and tried to get through