Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [12]
“Shall we charge?” Cadlew whispered.
“Might as well die like men.”
Cadlew rolled free, grabbed a spear, and jumped to his feet with a war cry. As he did the same, Dwaen could almost feel the bite of the arrow bringing his Wyrd. But the enemy never loosed his bow again. When they took a couple of cautious steps forward, he saw nothing moving among the trees but a bird on a branch.
“Well,” Dwaen said, “I think me I’ve just been given a message.”
“Beryn?”
“Who else? I wager that if I’d been alone, I’d be dead by now, but no doubt he didn’t want to murder you with me. He’s got naught against you and your clan.”
“If he tries to kill you again, he’ll have to kill me first, but I’d rather it was in open battle.”
“It might come to that.”
Cadlew picked up the dead gwertrae and slung it over his saddle, but since Dwaen didn’t want his womenfolk alarmed, they asked a farmer to bury it for them rather than taking it back to the dun.
All that afternoon, even though he managed to make polite conversation with his guest and his family, Dwaen brooded. Lord Beryn’s lands were only about ten miles to the west, close enough for him to haunt the edges of the demesne in hope of catching his enemy unaware. Yet he couldn’t imagine Beryn using a bow instead of a sword, and besides, how had the old bastard known exactly when and where he’d gone to hunt? Not that he and Cadlew had made any secret of their plan—the question was how Beryn had heard of it, a question that was answered the very same night, when he went up to bed.
Theoretically, now that he’d inherited, Dwaen should have been using his father’s formal suite on the floor just above the great hall, but since he had no desire to move his mother out of her bed, he kept to his spare, small chamber on the third floor of the broch. When he came in that night, carrying a lantern himself rather than bothering a page, he saw a lump under the blankets on the narrow bed. He threw the covers back and found a dead rat, mangled, stabbed over and over to a blood-soaked mess, and stuffed into a neck wound was the tail feather of a raven.
With an involuntary yell, Dwaen jumped back, the lantern shaking and bobbing to throw wild shadows on the walls.
“Dwaen?” Cadlew’s voice came muffled through the door. “Are you all right?”
“Not truly. Come in, will you?”
When Cadlew saw the rat, he swore under his breath, then took the poker from the hearth and flipped the foul thing onto the floor.
“Beryn’s got a man in this dun,” Cadlew said.
“Obviously, unless that peddler who was here this afternoon was actually a spy.”
“Who would have let him come upstairs? Here, on the morrow, I’ll send a message home and tell them that I’m staying at your side.”
“You’ve never been more welcome.”
Dwaen gathered up his blankets and went to share Cadlew’s chamber, but he lay awake for a long time after his friend was snoring. Although he’d realized that Beryn would hate him for demanding justice, he’d never thought the lord would seek such a coward’s revenge. But he’s got no choice, he thought, because if he challenges me openly, the gwerbret will intervene. A traitor in his own dun! The thought sickened him, that one of his own men could be bribed against him. It might only be a servant, of course, but still, he was forced to realize that from now on, he could trust no one.
The round, thatched farmhouse sat behind a low earthen wall about a hundred yards from the road. Out in the dusty yard, a man was throwing a bucket of slop to a pair of skinny gray hogs. When Jill and Rhodry led their horses up to the gate, he lowered the bucket and looked them over narrow-eyed.
“Good morrow,” Rhodry said. “Would your wife happen to have any extra bread to sell to a traveler?”
“She wouldn’t.” He paused to spit on the ground. “Silver dagger.”
“Well, then, could we pay you to let us water our horses in your trough?”
“There’s plenty of streams in the forest down the road. But here, that forest is our lord’s hunting preserve. Don’t you silver daggers go poaching in it.”
“And who