Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [80]
In the morning, Rhodry’s guess about dweomer proved right. As soon as the sun rose, they followed the army’s tracks as it curved steadily south and east, heading away from Lin Serr, until all at once, out in the middle of a meadow, the trail ended as abruptly as if the army had been snatched away by birds and carried off. Perhaps, for all Rhodry knew, they had. Straight as a carpenter’s rule the muddy track ran, straight as a carpenter’s rule lay the end of it, with naught but grass beyond.
“This is exactly the way their trail started,” Arzosah remarked. “Back by Haen Marn.”
“Just so. Ye gods, it makes my blood run cold, thinking how much dweomer they must have! Though it’s Alshandra that’s doing this, if you ask me.”
“Who?”
“Evandar’s wife. She’s gone mad, and the Horsekin think her a goddess.”
“Living with Evandar would drive any female daft.”
Rhodry knelt down at the end of the trail and studied the grass. On one side, there was naught but trampled mud and horse droppings; on the other, tall grass, green and healthy, nodding in the noontime heat. In between, though, lay a thin stripe of grass turned brown—but not by hooves. It looked as if it had been touched by the first freeze of autumn, left all brown and parched, but still living. Baffled again, he shook his head and rose, wiping his hands reflexively on his brigga as if he’d touched something foul.
“Well, we can’t follow them, can we? Let’s head back to Lin Serr.”
“It’s a matter of obligations, and that’s that,” Envoy Garin said. “We signed a treaty with Cadmar of Cengarn for mutual aid in times of war. A time of war is what this is, and we owe him five hundred axmen and another hundred and fifty pikemen, all of them with supplies for forty days, and conveyance for the lot.”
“I’d never deny it,” Brel Avro said. “But what are we supposed to do? March our men into certain death? The city’s besieged good and proper, or so the scouts tell us. How are we supposed to reach Cadmar, eh? Just answer me that.”
In the shadow of an overhang of raw rock, the two dwarves were standing on the wide terrace outside the doors of the dwarvehold they both served, Lin Serr. Behind and around them on three sides, a huge horseshoe of gray stone rose, embracing a flat basin a good mile across. In front of them, on the other side of a broad terrace of pale stone, zigzag stairs led down the cliff face some hundred feet to this park land of grass and trees, crossed by a river. Hundreds of years past, dwarven workmen had dug the basin out of living rock and released the river from its underground caverns. The city itself, however, lay hidden in the cliffs and the heart of the mountains behind.
“You have a point,” Garin said at last, and reluctantly. “But Cadmar has human allies. He’s a well-liked man, and I’ll wager they’re mustering an army right now. Joining up with them’s the least we can do.”
Brel ran slow fingers through his beard, streaked here and there with a gray to match the stone.
“I don’t trust these men, Envoy. Never have, never will.”
“You don’t have to trust them. Our contingent can keep to itself, and I’ll be there to do any negotiating at councils of war and so on.”
“Hum. Well, maybe so. I—ye gods! What’s that?”
Garin looked up and gaped. A dragon was flying over the hills. With a peculiar motion—a beat of black wings, a leap, a glide—it flew high and steadily, closer and closer, until the dwarves could hear the thwack! of naked wings on still air like the beat of a slack drum. Just behind its neck, wedged among scales, perched a human rider.
“It’s Rori!” Garin whispered. “By the beard of the Thunderer himself, I never thought he’d do it, but it’s Rori.”
With the warleader right behind, Garin took off trotting down the stairs, zigzagging back and forth as the dragon circled, then landed out in the park land on a graceful glide. The two dwarves reached the ground just as Rhodry, his bow slung over his back, slid down from the enormous beast’s neck. Although Garin started over to greet him, the