Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [141]
“What the farmers didn’t take to the dun,” Yraen said, “the Horsekin have eaten by now.”
“I’d wager it,” Renydd said. “Huh—look over there. A cowherd’s hut, I’d guess, and still standing.”
More to give themselves a goal than for any real reason, they rode over to the circular hut, made of secondhand planks and dirty thatch. As they came close, they could smell the rot of a corpse. The horses tossed their heads and danced.
“I suppose we should go see how long ago he was killed,” Renydd remarked. “It’d give us some idea of the kind of patrols they ride, maybe.”
“Might just be a cow,” Yraen said.
“Huh! No such luck, I’ll wager. The rest of you stay mounted and on guard. Yraen and I will dismount and have a look.”
Sure enough, it was a man they found in the hut, stripped naked and staked to the dirt floor, hand and foot, with iron spikes. Rot had swelled him, insects covered him, but still they could see how he’d been opened up and his organs cut out to be placed to either side. Retching and gagging, Yraen and Renydd fled back to the patrol. If he’d eaten more recently, Yraen decided, he would have heaved, but as it was, he managed to control himself.
“Ye gods,” Renydd whispered. “Who would do that to some—some peasant, by the gods! He meant naught to them.”
“True spoken. Well, we’d better get on with our patrol, if this is the kind of men we’re facing.”
Toward evening, Yraen found himself summoned to the council, which had gathered round a rough map of the city someone had drawn in a patch of dirt. As best he could remember, Yraen drew in the positions of the Horsekin’s earthworks.
“They seem to have protected their eastern camp the most,” Drwmyc remarked.
“They have, Your Grace. Jill thinks that their leaders are camped up on that east ridge. There’s a lot of tents and banners there, anyway.”
“If things go badly,” Erddyr put in, “they could retreat straight into the hills.”
“True spoken, my lord,” Yraen said. “But these men don’t look like they retreat much.”
Drwmyc grunted once under his breath and went back to studying the map while the other lords crowded round. Since no one remembered to dismiss him, Yraen heard the rest of the council. The plan was simple: they would let the slower-moving carts, extra horses, and servants follow after the army, which would march straight for Cengarn. If they were met on the road, or if they lost badly in front of the town, they could fall back to a safer position with their supply train intact. If they could win and hold a position on the plain to the south and west of Cengarn, the supply train would catch up with them soon enough.
When the council broke up, Yraen walked through the camp and finally found Rhodry off at the edge of things. He was sitting at a small fire while the dragon slept nearby, though she opened one eye when Yraen approached. He sat down next to Rhodry and told him what he’d overheard.
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Rhodry said. “I wish I was riding with the army, though, instead of up in the sky.”
“You would. Think we can win?”
Rhodry merely shrugged. There was, Yraen supposed, nothing more to be said than that.
On the morrow morning, riding armed and ready for war, the army reached the siege. Rhodry and the dragon left first, flying so high that they seemed only a bird’s size in the sky. The horsemen jogged up the south road, traveling through burnt-out farms and past the occasional ruined village, until they crested a low rise and saw below them the broad plain leading up to the city. Yraen was expecting that the gwerbret would hold the army back behind this ridge to hide its size from the enemy, but Drwmyc waved them on. As they poured over the ridge and down,