Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [171]
Rhodry felt his eyes fill with tears beyond all his power to stop them. He could only shake his head and stammer until the gwerbret dismissed him out of sympathy.
By then, the sun was sinking low in the sky. Although men searched for any friends they knew to be left behind on the battlefield, everyone was too exhausted, and too many lords and captains were dead, for the army to mount an organized hunt for wounded. Rhodry helped one man with a broken arm inside the city walls, then wandered up to the dun, his mad search for Yraen forgotten as the battle fever deserted him. All through the ward lay wounded men, dying men, dumped there by comrades who could do nothing more for them. Over by the main well, the chirurgeons had set up a surgery of sorts, using the back of a wagon to lay the wounded on while servants rushed round, bringing kettles of water and helping tear bandages from whatever cloth they could commandeer. Off to one side, Dallandra was measuring out herbs by the handful and brewing them up in the vessels that servants brought her. In this chaos, she would have not a moment for a word with him.
Rhodry was about to go into the main broch and scrounge something to eat when he heard a boy’s voice calling his name. For a moment, Rhodry didn’t recognize the ragged child, his dirty face streaked with fresh tears, who came running across the ward. The boy stopped and stepped back as fast as if Rhodry had slapped him.
“It’s Jahdo, Rhodry,” the lad said, gulping for breath. “Is it that you’ve forgotten me?”
“What? I haven’t at that, lad. I wouldn’t say I’m truly myself now, that’s all. Where’s your master?”
“You haven’t heard? He were slain. They did attack us, and he did go down to the walls to curse them, but the man with the longbow did kill him. He were a bard, a true bard, but the archer did slay him all the same.”
“Oh, did he now?” Rhodry could hear his voice, cold, steady, a thing of pure hate. “Well, the archer’s dead, lad. I killed him myself, and not all that long ago.”
Jahdo stopped crying. He started to grin, then let the expression fade into bewilderment, and finally turned away, trying to wipe his eyes but only smearing the dirt on his face with a dirtier sleeve.
“What’s so wrong?” Rhodry said.
“I know not. Truly it does gladden my heart that Meer be avenged. He were Gel da’Thae, and vengeance will make him sing, when they come to tell him in the Deathworld. Surely someone will tonight, there be so many men dead.”
“That’s true enough, and the war not over yet.”
“Not over?”
“Well, lad, we have to harry the routed Horsekin. We don’t want them coming right back, do we now? We’ll be leaving in a couple of days.”
“Oh. Rhodry, may I come with you?”
“What?”
“I could be your page, like, and learn to fight. It be needful that I find some kind of place.”
“But lad, you’ll never make a warrior. You could be killed.”
“Well, I do doubt that ever will I see my home again anyway, not with Meer gone, and me naught in everyone’s eyes.”
“No man knows what another’s Wyrd has in store for him. Your tale’s a sad one, but there’s naught I can do to—hold a moment. Jill told me once that she’d promised Meer you’d get home.”
“But she be dead, too, in the saving of us all.” Silent tears welled and ran. “And Meer be dead, and here I have naught and am naught, not like at home. This be a harsh place, Deverry, whether or no you do cut off people’s heads like the Slavers did. And so I thought, it be needful for me to learn to be harsh, too.”
“Hush, lad! For her sake and Meer’s both, I’ll honor her promise. I’ll see what we can do about getting you home once the war’s over.”
Jahdo grinned and stammered thanks in a joy that was the first clean thing Rhodry had seen all that long day.
“How many men have we lost?” Garin said.
“Seventy-some dead outright,” Brel Avro said. “We’ll lose a few of the wounded before morning, I’ll wager.”
Garin swore under his breath, but only feebly. His legs were melting under him, it seemed, and his heart knocked against his lungs. He sat down hard on the floor