Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [83]
“Shaetano!” Evandar called out. “My own dear blood kin! Well met, well met!”
With a growl, the fox warrior rode over and paused his horse beside Evandar’s.
“Any news of Alshandra and her bronze pack of rebels?” Evandar went on. “Here in the Lands, I mean. I’ve plenty of news of her doings down in the world of men.”
“I’ve seen her, sure enough, riding along at the head of her piss-poor excuse for an army.” Shaetano paused, glancing round at the men who used to ride in his. “You’ve mustered the lot of us, I see.”
“Every one I could rouse. This is war, brother, and that should gladden your heart.”
“So it does.” Shaetano pulled black lips back from pointed teeth in a grin. “And so what shall we do? Ride to the battle plain?”
“Do you truly think they’ll be drawn up ever so nicely to wait for us? Tonight, we ride the border.”
Under the light of a sudden moon, hanging pink and swollen near the horizon, the army cheered, waving swords and clubs alike. The wolf runners bared fangs and howled.
“Very well,” Shaetano said. “And where shall I ride in the army?”
“Here, next to me. You shall ride at my left hand, as Menw rides at my right, and at the feasting we shall sit together, too.”
“What? Am I to be honored, brother dear?”
“Not in the least. I merely don’t trust you at my back.”
On the morrow, just as the sun was rising over Lin Serr, a hundred dwarven warriors, led by Brel Avro himself, marched out |o bury the dead up at the pillaged farms. Although Rhodry offered to go with them, he could do nothing, truly, but intrude upon private grief. In the end, he decided to stay at the dwarvehold. By this time, Arzosah was famished, and he sent her out to hunt, with a strict command to bring her kill back to Lin Serr’s park land to eat it there. She flew off with a roar, leaving him to a private talk with Garin.
“I’ve tried to get the Council to allow you into the high city,” Garin said, sighing. “No such luck, I’m afraid. All they’ll give you is the run of the public hall here and the envoy’s quarters you had before.”
“I’ll go on sleeping outside. Allow me to spare your people my tainted elven blood.”
Garin winced and considered. They were standing just inside the huge double doors, carved with the history of Lin Serr, that led to the entrance hall, a cavern carved from living rock and lit by a bluish-silver glow. In the spill of sunlight through the doorway, Rhodry could just see, inlaid into the cavern floor, a circular maze that was big enough for a man to walk.
“I’d sleep better knowing you had a roof over your head,” the envoy said at length. “You’re too vulnerable out there. You’ve got enemies, you know.”
“Ah, Alshandra’s far away. Besides, I’ve got the talisman.”
“That’ll only protect you from scrying, not from someone using their own two eyes, like. What if this raven creature pops out of nowhere, takes a good look at you, and pops back to fetch Alshandra to do you harm? Come now. You told me how the raven met you on the road here. Well, what if she followed you down?”
Rhodry started to answer, then paused, caught by the truth of it.
“There’s the old watchtower,” Garin went on. “Our wyrm could nest on top of that, and you could camp in the old gatehouse, surrounded by heaps of iron.”
They both turned and looked out at the entrance to Lin Serr. The cliffs rose round in a horseshoe whose ends didn’t quite meet; at the gap to the south, a gentle slope of land rose from the park land and out to what was normal ground level, that is, level with the tops of the cliffs forming the artificial basin. Just inside, before