Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [174]
“They’ll get used to me, sooner or later,” Arzosah called back over the beating of her wings. “We’d best not play this trick too often.”
“Just so. Let’s get back to Cengarn. Land up at the gwerbret’s dun.”
By the time they returned, the town was emptying out. In long weary lines, farmers trudged out the gates, driving their remaining cattle before them, carrying children on their shoulders and cages of chickens in their hands. They would find their houses burnt and their fields ravaged, but in their carts they had their ploughs and seed corn, more precious than gold here in the aftermath of siege. We came in time, Rhodry thought. They won’t starve, and they won’t be speared and butchered. When tears sprang to his eyes, he was shocked at himself, that he, a noble-born man no matter how far he’d fallen in the world, would be so proud of saving the lives of farmers, crude peasants all of them. But despite his bemused surprise, he felt like singing when he saw them heading home.
Arzosah landed on the roof of one of the lower brochs. Rhodry unharnessed her, then tied his gear and the harness into a neat bundle.
“Carry this down with you, will you?”
“I will. I’ll find a nice spot for us to camp. Would anyone mind if I ate some more of those dead horses, Master? I hate to see them going to waste.”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. But don’t eat any of the men, not human, not dwarven, not elven—not even the Horsekin. I don’t want everyone running to me and crying sacrilege.”
“Oh, very well, if you say so.”
“I do say so. And when you’ve done eating, you stay at our camp and go to sleep.” Rhodry held up the ring and caught the sunlight upon the metal. “Wait for me there.”
“I will, I will. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Walk round a bit. See where my new page has got to. Find some ale and drink myself blind.”
“Here, you’re still heartsick over Jill’s death!”
“Just so. Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
The dragon rustled her wings in a shrug, then seized the gear in her talons, bunched, and leapt into the air. For a moment, he watched her glide, heading for the battlefield and its rich harvest of horse meat, then climbed through the trapdoor and hurried downstairs through the silent tower and out to the ward.
Its doors flung wide in triumph, Cadmar’s main broch stood silent and empty. Rhodry found a page hurrying out and discovered why. To celebrate the victory, there would be a feast that night, but out in the meadows to the south of town, the only area that could accommodate the entire army. The servants and whatever town folk could be pressed into service had already rolled out the barrels of ale and carried down the various sacks of provisions. Except for the guards at the gates, the warbands had gone off for the grimmer task of helping bury the dead. Rhodry stood looking up at the towers and wished that Yraen were alive.
From inside the great hall, a harp trilled in a minor key, as if the bard were practicing a mourning song, but when he went to the doorway, Rhodry saw Evandar, his armor gone, sitting cross-legged on the table of honor up by the dragon hearth. The lap harp he played stood long and narrow in the trapezoidal elven style, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a pattern of seahorses and seaweeds. Drawn by the music, Rhodry joined him, but Evandar never looked up, merely frowned over his song as it began to take shape, a melody so filled with hiraedd that Rhodry’s eyes filled with tears. Evandar glanced up, saw him, and let the song die in a scatter of random notes.
“No need to stop for my sake.” Rhodry wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
“It’s Jill that makes you so sad, then?”
“It is, and Yraen, and every good man killed here.”
Evandar nodded, looked at the harp for a moment, then picked it up and tossed it into the air. Rhodry yelped, but long before it reached the stone floor the harp disappeared, as if it had fallen through some