Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [46]
“Sooner or later they have to turn south to meet their ships,” he said. “Then we have them, if not before.”
“So we do. Here, if we take this prince alive, we’re going to have a nice prize to take home.”
“What? I’d rather have his head on a pike.”
“Don’t be a dolt. If we hold a prince of the realm hostage, we can stop these raids without swinging a sword.”
Dannyn whistled under his breath and looked up.
“Well, my lady, whatever I may have thought of your skill with a sword, there’s no doubt you understand war. Done, then. We’ll do our best to snare this prince like a rabbit.”
On the morrow scouts on the best horses rode ahead, wheeling and circling in front of the army like seagulls round a ship entering harbor. Just past noon they found the place where the raiders had camped the night before. Amid the flattened grass and the usual detritus of a big warband lay two fire pits and the scattered remains of beef bones. Two of the village cows would never come home again, but the tracks made it clear that the raiders were still traveling with about fifty head of cattle.
“And that’s their death warrant,” Dannyn cheerfully remarked. “We can travel faster, even with the wretched carts, than they can if they’re driving stock. Once we get close, here’s our plan. We leave the carts behind and ride out early to catch them on the road. The prince is going to be at the head of the line, of course, so we send a wedge of my best men straight into the line behind him and cut him off while the rest of the lads shove the line of march into their baggage train. You, me, and a handful of picked men go right for the prince and mob him. Try not to knock him off his horse. If he’s trampled to death, so much for our hostage.”
“Sounds splendid. It gladdens my heart that you’re including me and my men in this.”
“We need every man we’ve got. Even if one of them’s a woman.”
For the rest of the day Dannyn kept his army moving fast by riding in the rear and bullying the carters. Up in solitary splendor at the head of the line, Gweniver received the reports from the scouts and led the men where they suggested. By the time they camped, about an hour before sunset to let the horses graze, the scouts were sure that the Eldidd raiders were only some five miles ahead of them. Best of all, they hadn’t met any enemy scouts, a heart-warming bit of arrogance on the prince’s part.
While Gweniver and Ricyn diced for splinters of firewood at their campfire, she told him the news.
“Well, my lady, then we’ll have some proper sport on the morrow.”
“So we will. You’ll be riding with me when we go after the prince.”
He smiled and threw the dice, rolling a five that lost him the game. When he handed her two splinters, she remembered his handing her the first violets of spring, shyly, without ever saying a word, when he must have spent hours hunting for them. She wondered how she could have been so blind to never suspect that a common-born rider would love her for all these years.
“Are you going to throw?” he said. “I’m too far behind to let you weasel out of the game now.”
As she threw, she was thinking that she didn’t mind in the least when he forgot to call her “my lady” or when he yelled at her for doing something stupid. It was odd, considering that her brothers would have had him flogged for such impertinence. It made her wonder if, in her own way, she loved him too, but it was too late for such wondering. Now she belonged to the Goddess alone, and forever.
On the morrow the army rose with the dawn. Dannyn sorted the men out, picked temporary captains, and gathered up the twenty-five who would ride with him and Gweniver for their strike on the prince. The bright summer sun lay on green meadows when they rode. Gweniver felt perfectly calm, as if she were floating through the air instead of wearing nearly thirty pounds of mail. As she made a long, silent prayer to the Goddess, she began to smile. Since she’d put long hours