Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [120]
She felt herself falling, tumbling, heard herself scream, too, in honest fear, then landed hard in straw and horse sweepings at Jill’s feet in the dim stables. She could only lie there, gasping for breath, feeling her ribs burn, while Jill flung up her hands and called out a strange invocation. The mists swirled, then vanished, choking off the cry of a hawk.
“She was waiting, then?” Jill said.
Nodding, Dallandra sat up, bracing herself with both hands.
“Did Yraen get through though?”
Dallandra nodded again, then got to her knees with a last gulp for breath. Jill caught her hand and hauled her to her feet.
“How long?” Dallandra gasped.
“Some while, actually. I’ve terrified the grooms.” Jill paused for a grin. “Telling them that they’d be blasted with magic fire if they so much as set one foot into the stables. They believed me, poor souls.”
Dallandra ran both hands down her sides.
“Naught’s broken,” she said at last. “But ych, do I smell of horses! I think me I’d best go look at my bruises in a bath.”
At about the time that Jill and Dallandra were leaving the stables, Yraen was reaching Dun Trebyc. He rode to the crest of a hill and saw below, all misty in the lowering sun, a walled city spreading on either side of a river that wound like a riband through a patchwork of farms. From his height, Yraen could pick out the cluster of gray stone buildings that had to be the gwerbret’s dun, four con-joined brochs standing in the middle of a walled ward, just outside the town proper on his side of the river. He sat for a moment to savor what was likely to be the last moment of peace left to him, then chirruped to his horse and rode downhill. As he trotted up to the dun, he pulled the silver message tubes out of his shirt and held them ready. At the gates, a pair of guards stood lounging against the nearby wall, yawning.
“I’m from Cengarn!” Yraen called to them. “For the love of every god, take me to Gwerbret Drwmyc!”
The two leapt to their feet as if they’d been poked with hot irons.
“Ride in, ride in,” one of them yelled. “I’m running right behind you.”
In a cobbled ward, half-full of tethered horses, Yraen dismounted just as the guard caught up with him, bellowing for pages. One lad took his horse, another ushered him through the huge oak doors of a broch tower. Inside, he found a great hall far larger than Cengarn’s and packed with men, some sitting on the floor for want of room at the tables.
“Messages, Your Grace!” the page called out. “Messages from Cengarn!”
Every man in the hall stood and cheered as Yraen strode over to the table of honor. He handed the messages over as he knelt at Drwmyc’s side.
“Is the siege lifted then, Silver Dagger?” the gwerbret said.
“I only wish, Your Grace. I managed to get through the enemy lines on a ruse and naught more.”
Drwmyc swore, then called for his scribe. The page gave Yraen a tankard of ale and a chunk of bread. Yraen drank half of the one right off, then sat back on his heels and more courteously began nibbling on the other. While the scribe read the letters out, the great hall fell into a desperate sort of silence with every person in it straining to hear. Yraen glanced round, idly counting up the fighting men, picking out those guests who seemed to be noble-born. The lords were scattered over the hall with their men, at this early hour, rather than assembled at the table of honor for the meal. All at once, he realized that one person seated at the table of honor was staring not at the scribe, but at him. His heart sank as he recognized her, Lady Graeca of Trev Hael, seated among four noble ladies down at the table’s end. Once, when he’d been but sixteen and she not much older, they’d been betrothed, but in the end her father had found her a better match than him among the lords of the northern border.
What was she doing in Pyrdon? Visiting some noble friend, he supposed, and caught there by the risk of war. She was still very beautiful, with her lustrous dark hair