Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [11]
In a few minutes, what kin Dwaen did have left came down from the women’s hall; his mother, Slaecca, and his sister, Ylaena, with their servingwomen trailing after. Her hair coiffed in the black headscarf of a widow, Slaecca was pale, her face drawn, as if she were on the edge of a grave illness, every movement slow and measured to mete out her shreds of strength. Ylaena, pretty, slender, and sixteen, looked bewildered, as she had ever since the murder.
“Here, Mother, sit at my right, will you?” Dwaen rose to greet the dowager. “Cado, if you’ll oblige by sitting with my sister?”
Cadlew was so eager to oblige that it occurred to Dwaen that it was time he found his sister a husband. Although he glanced his mother’s way to see if she’d noticed the young lord’s reaction, she was staring absently out into space.
“Oh, now here, Mam, Da wouldn’t have wanted you to fill your life with misery just because he’s gone to the Otherlands.”
“I know, but I’m just so worried.”
“What? What about?”
“Dwaen, Dwaen, don’t put me off! I can’t believe that a man like Beryn is going to let this thing lie.”
“Well now, it’d be a grave thing for him to break the gwerbret’s decree of justice, and he knows it. Besides, he’s got his own sense of honor. If he kills me, there’ll be no one left to carry on the blood feud, and I doubt me if he’d do a loathsome thing like killing a man who had no hope of vengeance.”
Slaecca merely sighed, as if in disbelief, and went back to staring across the hall.
On the morrow, Dwaen and Cadlew took the gwertrae out to hunt rabbits in a stretch of wild meadowland some few miles from the dun. They had no sooner ridden into the grass when the dog raised a sleeping hare. With one sharp bark, it took off after its prey. Although the brown hare raced and dodged, leaping high and twisting off at sharp angles, the gwertrae ran so low to the ground and fast that it easily turned the hare in a big circle and drove it back to the hunters. With a whoop of laughter, Cadlew spurred his horse to meet it and bent over to spear the hare off the ground with one easy stroke. All morning, they coursed back and forth until the leather sack at Cadlew’s saddle-peak bulged bloody from their kills.
The chase took them far from the farmlands of the demesne to the edge of the primeval oak forest, dark and silent, which once had covered the whole southern border of the Gwaentaer plateau, but which in Dwaen’s time existed only in patchy remnants. At a stream they dismounted, watered the horses and the dog, then sat down in the grass to eat the bread and smoked meat they’d brought with them. Cadlew cut the head off one of the hares and tossed it to the gwertrae, who stretched out with its hind legs straight behind and gnawed away.
“Oh, a thousand thanks for this splendid gift,” Cadlew said. “I think I’ll name him Glas.”
“If you like, tomorrow we can take the big hounds and ride into the forest. We could do with some venison at the dun.”
“And when have I ever turned down a chance to hunt?”
Thinking of the morrow’s sport, Dwaen idly looked into the forest. Something was moving—a trace of motion, darting between two trees among bracken and fern. Even though the oaks themselves were just starting into full leaf, the shrubs and suchlike among them were thick enough. Puzzled, he rose for a better look. Cadlew followed his gaze, then with a shout threw himself at Dwaen’s legs and knocked him to the ground just as an arrow sped out of the cover. It whistled over them by several feet, but if Dwaen had been standing, he would have been skewered. Growling, the gwertrae sprang up and barked, lunging forward at the hidden enemy. Another arrow sang and hit it full in the chest. With a whimper, Glas fell, writhed, and pawed at the air, then lay still. Another arrow hit the grass and struck quivering not two feet from Dwaen’s head. He felt a cold, rigid calm: they were going to die. With neither mail nor shield, it mattered not if they lay there like tourney targets or tried to charge; it was death either way. Oh, great Bel,