Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [170]
With the fighting done, Rhodry turned the roan over to one of Erddyr’s men and walked into the Horsekin camp. It was a mad gesture, and he knew it, but he wanted to find Yraen’s body. The camp lay strewn, blood-soaked wreckage. In places, sheltered by an overhang or wagon, the fires still flickered among canvas and cloth; in others, smoke wisped above black slabs and tangles. Over everything hung stench—wool, hair, flesh, all charred and stinking wet from the unnatural rain of the night before. Corpses, both human and Horsekin, lay in pools of bloodstained mud. Here and there, dying horses staggered, trying to find their way home, or lay collapsed on the ground, struggling to rise.
Some yards in, Rhodry came to a blackened tent crumpled over a smoldering wagon. Half-smothered in the soaked canvas lay a man, moaning and struggling to free himself—a Horsekin slave, judging by his iron anklet. Rhodry knelt down and pulled him free, turned him over, and looked into a face that was more a boy’s than a man’s, a blond lad, his narrow face covered with blood from a cut over one eye, his chest crushed by the blow of some heavy weapon. He looked so familiar that Rhodry found himself searching for his name. The lad tried to speak, then gulped for air and died. Rhodry laid him down, closed his eyes, and knelt for a moment, trying to remember where he’d seen him before. At length, he realized that the slave merely reminded him of someone he used to, know, Amyr, a man who’d ridden in his warband, back in the days when he’d ruled as gwerbret, back before the secret of his elven blood had deposed him. And where had Amyr died? He couldn’t remember—in some battle or another—along with plenty of other men who’d sworn to him, no doubt, men whose names he’d forgotten at this lapse of time.
With a shake of his head, Rhodry got up. Above, the sky was clearing fast; a few white thunderheads piled and scudded, their towering palaces of cloud touched and turned golden by the late sun. He watched them for a moment, a promise of some paradise, forever unreachable, then walked on, hunting back and forth among the wreckage and the dead. The farther uphill he went, the less burnt the tents and the easier the hunting; he drew his sword and kept alert, because there were likely to be stragglers, hiding out and desperate. All at once, he heard someone call his name and turned to find Evandar, still dressed in his illusion of armor.
“The gwerbret’s asking for you,” Evandar said. “He’s at the south gate.”
Rhodry swore with every foul oath he could muster.
“What’s so wrong?” Evandar stepped back out of reach. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
“Yraen’s body.” Rhodry paused to run filthy hands through filthy hair. “You can call me daft for it, but I want to know how he died, and I want him properly buried.”
Evandar sighed, leaning on a spear, whether real or an illusion, Rhodry couldn’t tell.
“Do you know where he is?” Rhodry snapped. “I never know what you’ve seen or not.”
“He’s dead.”
“I mean his body.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t know.” Rhodry felt himself tremble, turned half away and rubbed his eyes hard on the back of his sleeve. “I don’t even know.”
“But it means much to you. Well, then. You go to the gwerbret. I’ll see what I can do.”
Before Rhodry could answer, he disappeared. Rhodry stood for a moment, looking round, wondering if he dared trust Evandar. Whether he did or not, there was no disobeying a direct order from the gwerbret. With one last shake of his head, he headed for the south gate.
Gwerbret Cadmar was sitting on the wet ground, his back to a broken wagon, with Drwmyc of Dun Trebyc kneeling on one knee beside him. Rhodry dropped to both knees before the lords.
“You called for me, Your Grace?”
“I did,” Cadmar said. “You’ve earned your hire ten times over, Silver Dagger, by fetching that beast. I wanted to thank you personally.”
“His Grace is most generous to an outcast man.”
“His Grace knows what’s fitting and due. At the victory feast, Silver Dagger,