Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [14]
“But could she rule the clan?”
“Of course not, but if I pick her the right husband—oh, listen to me! How am I going to get to the king to lay my petition? I’ll wager that the Boar’s riding this way right now to pen us up like hogs.”
Her prediction came true not an hour later. Gweniver was restlessly pacing around the guest house when she heard the sound of men and horses riding their way. As she ran toward the gates, priestesses joined her, yelling at the gatekeeper to close them up. Gweniver was just helping slam the iron bar into the staples when the horsemen arrived in a clatter of hooves and a jingle of mail. Ardda already stood on the catwalk over the gates. Trembling with rage, Gweniver climbed up and joined her.
On the flat ground below the temple hill, the Boar’s warband milled around as the men tried to draw their horses up into some kind of order. Burcan himself edged his horse out of the mob and rode right up to the gates. A man of solid years, he had a thick streak of gray in his raven-dark hair and heavy mustache. Gweniver had been raised to hate him, and now he had killed her clan. If she had been closer, she would have spat in his face.
“What do you want?” Ardda called out. “To approach the Holy Moon ready for war is an insult to the Goddess.”
“No insult meant, Your Holiness,” he called back in his dark, gravelly voice. “It’s only that I rode in haste. I see that Lady Gweniver is safe here with you.”
“And safe she’ll remain, unless you want the Goddess to curse your lands into barrenness.”
“What kind of a man do you think I am, to violate the holy sanctuary? I came to make the lady an offer of peace.” He turned in the saddle to address Gweniver. “Many a blood feud’s ended with a wedding, my lady. Take my second son for your man and rule the Wolf lands in the name of the Boar.”
“I’d never let kin to you lay one filthy finger on me, you bastard! And what do you expect me to do, swear fealty to that false king you serve?”
Burcan’s broad face flushed in rage.
“I make you a vow. If my son doesn’t have you, then no man will, and that goes for your sister, too. I’ll cursed well claim your land by right of blood feud if I have to.”
“You forget yourself, my lord!” Ardda snapped. “I forbid you to remain on temple land for another minute. Take your men away and make no more threats to one who worships the Goddess!”
Burcan hesitated, then shrugged and turned his horse away. Yelling orders, he collected his men and withdrew to the public road some distance from the foot of the hill. Gweniver clenched her fists so hard that they ached as the warband spread out in the meadow on the far side of the road, technically off the demesne that supported the temple but in a perfect position to guard it.
“They can’t stay there forever,” Ardda said. “They’ll have to go to Dun Deverry soon to fulfill their obligation to their king.”
“True spoken, but I’ll wager they stay there as long as they can.”
Leaning back against the rampart, Ardda sighed. Suddenly she looked very old, and very weary.
The civil wars had come about in this wise. Twenty-four years past, the High King died without a male heir, and his daughter, a sickly young lass, died soon after. Each of his three sisters, however, had sons by their high-ranking husbands, Gwerbret Cerrmor, Gwerbret Cantrae, and the Marked Prince of the kingdom of Eldidd. By law the throne should have passed to the son of the eldest sister, married to Cantrae, but the gwerbret was widely suspected of having poisoned the king and princess both to get at the throne. Gwerbret Cerrmor worked that suspicion to claim the throne for his son, and then the prince of Eldidd laid a further claim on the basis of his son’s doubly royal blood. Since Gweniver’s father never would have declared for a foreigner from Eldidd, the Wolf clan’s choice was made when the long-hated Boars supported the Cantrae claim.
Year after year the fighting raged around the true prize, the city of Dun Deverry, taken by one side