Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [71]
“Well, his pride wouldn’t let him wait.”
With a sigh, Glyn sat down at last.
“So many men who’ve served me have come to grief,” he said. “There’s no end in sight, either. By the gods of our people! Sometimes I think I should just let Cantrae have the wretched throne and be done with it, but then everyone who’d died for me would have died for naught. And my loyal friends—Cantrae might slaughter the lot.” He paused for a weary, twisted smile. “How many people here at court have told you that I’m going mad?”
“Several. Are you? Or are they merely mistaking sanity for madness?”
“I’d prefer to think the latter, of course. Ever since Danno died, I’ve felt besieged. I could talk to him, and if he thought I was babbling like a fool, he’d say so. Now what do I have? Flatterers, ambitious men, jackals, half of them, and if I don’t throw them enough scraps of meat, well, then, they bite. If I try to ease my mind of some dark thought, they cringe.”
“Well, my liege, their lives depend on you, after all.”
“I know. Oh, ye gods, I know that so well! I wish I’d been born a common rider. Every man in the court envies the king, but do you know whom the king envies? Gweniver’s Ricyn. I’ve never seen a happier man than Ricco, farmer’s son or not. No matter what he does, no matter what happens to him, he calls it the will of his Goddess and gets a good night’s sleep.” Glyn paused briefly. “Do you think I’m mad? Or am I just a fool?”
“The king has never been a fool, and he would be happier if he were mad.”
Glyn laughed in a way that suddenly reminded Nevyn of Prince Mael.
“Nevyn, I’d be most grateful if you’d rejoin my court. You see things from very far away. The king humbly admits that he needs you.”
Because he saw nothing but grief ahead of him, Nevyn wanted to lie and claim that the dweomer forbade him to stay. He liked all these people too much to stay aloof from their inevitable sufferings. Yet suddenly he saw that he had a role to play, that he’d deserted Glyn, Mael, and Gavra when he’d fled for his own selfish reasons.
“I’m most honored, my liege. I’ll stay and serve you as long as you have need of me.”
And so, utterly reluctantly, Nevyn received what many men would have killed to get: a position as a royal councillor with the personal favor of the king. It took him two difficult years to untangle the web of envy that his sudden elevation created, but after that time no one questioned his place. Everyone in the kingdom knew that the center of court power rested with this shabby old man with his eccentric interest in herbs, but few, of course, knew why.
And during those two years, and on into the third, the war dragged on, a sporadic thing of raids and feints.
The rain caught them a good forty miles from the main camp. A slantwise-driving storm, with a cold wind that cut through cloaks, turned the road to muck. Even though the situation was desperate, it was impossible for the horses to go at more than a walk. The one good thing about the rain, Ricyn reflected bitterly, was that it was slowing the enemy down, too. He made a point of saying so to the thirty-four men left out of the hundred fifty who’d ridden out. No one responded with more than a grunt. Ricyn rode up and down the line twice, spoke to everyone by name, yelled at the slackers and praised the few who had the least bit of spirit left. He doubted if it was doing any good. When he said as much to Gweniver, she agreed.
“The horses are in worse shape than the men,” she said. “We have to stop soon.”
“And if they catch us?”
Gweniver merely shrugged. Neither of them had the slightest idea of how far behind them the Cantrae warband was. The one thing they could count on was that they were being chased. The hard-won victory that had reduced their warband to this weary fragment was just the sort of battle that Cantrae would feel honor bound to avenge.
Close to sunset they met a pair of farmers, struggling