Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [21]
“A crowd on the streets.” Lallyc knelt down and disarmed their prey.
By then, the noise had attracted a smallish crowd of its own.
“Naught to worry about, lads,” Rhodry called out. “This stinking swine was trying to rape this poor innocent lass. We’ll just take him along to the tieryn.”
Dwaen and half the dun were waiting by the honor hearth in the great hall. Although Vyna identified their prisoner as the man who met her regularly, nobody in the warband recognized him for a member of Lord Beryn’s troop. The tieryn questioned him, Rhodry mocked him, and Lallyc got in a few barbs of his own, but the prisoner never said a word, not even his name, merely smiled with faint contempt during the entire session. Finally, Lallyc glared at the man and rolled up a sleeve with exaggerated care.
“There’s more than one way to get a man to talk, Your Grace.”
“Not in my dun!” Dwaen snapped. “I know what you’re planning, and you can just put it out of your mind.”
“His grace is an honorable man,” Rhodry broke in, “but his life is at stake. Lallyc and me can just work him over someplace where you don’t have to watch.”
“You won’t! I won’t have a helpless man tortured. It’s against the will of the gods, and that’s an end to it.”
The prisoner looked at the lord with eyes poisoned by contempt.
“We’ll take you along to the gwerbret.” Dwaen seemed unaware of the look. “If you refuse to give evidence in the malover, then the laws state you can be put to death, and so we’ll see how long you keep your lips laced. Lallyc, get one of the men to shut him in a shed. Keep him under guard, and make sure he’s got food and water—decent food and water, mind.”
Later that afternoon, Lord Cadlew returned with ten men from his warband. As the two lords, with Rhodry in attendance, sat drinking in the great hall, Dwaen noticed Ylaena, halfway up the spiral staircase and hanging over the rail like a child trying to see what the grown-ups are doing down below. Apparently Cadlew noticed her, too, because he blushed for no discernable reason.
“There’s somewhat we’d best settle before we ride,” Dwaen said. “Do you want to marry my sister? She wants to marry you.”
Cadlew’s grip tightened on his tankard.
“I realize she’s far above me in rank, and never would I let such a thing come between us, Your Grace.”
“Don’t be a stuffy bastard. I have every intention of seeing you two betrothed if it pleases you both.”
“Oh.” Cadlew considered the ale in his tankard for a long moment, then got up, slowly and deliberately. “Perhaps I’d best speak formally to your mother.”
“It seems advisable, truly.”
Cadlew looked his way, started to speak, then merely grinned. He dashed for the staircase, though Ylaena was gone, doubtless back to the women’s hall to wait for her suitor there as the formality of the thing demanded. Dwaen watched him running up after her till he ducked out of sight onto the landing above, then turned to Rhodry.
“Well, there. If Beryn does manage to dispose of me, Cadlew will inherit through Ylaena, and Beryn will regret the day he ever made an enemy out of my friend.”
“I believe it, Your Grace. From what I’ve seen of Lord Cadlew, he’d get you a splendid revenge, but I’d just as soon he didn’t have to. I’ve been thinking about the precautions we should take once we reach the gwerbret’s dun. I haven’t forgotten that fellow in Caenmetyn who tried to hire me to kill you.”
“For all we know, Beryn’s planning on attacking us on the road. If he’s got one of his men watching the dun from a distance, he’ll know when we’re riding out and lay another ambush in the forest. That reminds me—where’s Jill?”
“Up in the women’s hall, Your Grace. She told me earlier that the local gossip was truly interesting, whatever she means by that.”
Like Dwaen, Jill had been wondering if Beryn was going to try another ambush, but the combined warbands, followed by six packhorses laden with gifts of food for the gwerbret’s hall, reached Caenmetyn without incident. Although Gwerbret Coryc’s provincial demesne was a poor one by gwerbretal standards,