Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [118]
“I do. I was a young man then and just come into your country.” Otho seemed to be about to say more, but he let his voice trail off and looked away. “Well, no use in standing round here, flapping our lips. Let’s get on our way.”
The longer they traveled, the more Rhodry grew inured to hiking in rough country, but still he tired early, stumbling along after the dwarves on blistered feet by the end of the day. Their route kept climbing, higher and higher toward the white mountains, which grew larger at the edge of the view. Finally, too, their luck with the weather broke, and it rained. Late one afternoon a storm came blowing up so fast that he first thought it dweomer, but the dwarves explained that the mountains spawned fast storms.
“It’ll blow over soon enough, too,” Garin said. “But we’ll make an early camp.”
Although tents were too heavy and bulky a luxury to bring on a journey like this, the dwarves did have lengths of coarse-woven linen canvas, smeared heavily with grease from sheep’s wool, that could be laced together and pegged out as a lean-to of sorts. Just as the clouds were piling black and swollen overhead, they found a rise of boulders with a couple of scraggly, twisted pines growing among them where they could sling their canvas and weight the edges with loose stones against the gathering wind. In among the boulders was a narrow space where they could cross-tether the mule as well, and give the poor beast a bit of shelter. Nearby a river, narrow but cut deep, threaded its way between rocks.“Going to be dark, and it’s going to be noisy,” Garin announced. “What if that storklike creature comes snooping round? Or somewhat worse? I say we stand watches, lads.”
Even Otho had to agree to that. Just as the first drops of rain began falling, in a round of broken twigs for want of straws Rhodry drew the longest and the last watch with it. Huddled under the scant shelter, they all spent a cramped and miserable night of it, but Rhodry managed to sleep, no doubt more than the others, simply because he was so tired. Even so, he was glad when Mic wakened him for his turn on guard. It was a chance to stretch and to get away from the smell of other people’s damp bodies and clothes, to say nothing of the rancid lanolin of sheep long gone.
Although the rain had stopped by then, the air was cold, and he was shivering as he picked his way down to the stream over the wet and uncertain footing. Since he was thirsty, he squatted down, fumbling for the tin cup tied to his belt. From behind him he heard a sound that might have been a footfall. Sheer warrior’s instinct brought him to his feet and spun him round just in time to see a gray shape rushing for him. As his hand went for the bronze knife at his belt, the thing stopped and hovered some ten feet away. It was roughly man-shaped, but its head was a lumpish affair with no features that he could pick out, elven sight or no. When Rhodry drew the bronze knife and flourished it, the creature snarled like a wolf and disappeared. Well, fancy that, Rhodry thought. Someone just tried to drown me. Behind him the river raced fast and swollen, with the occasional gleam of foam or bubbles in the broken light. He decided that his thirst could wait till the others woke.
Garin was first up, squirming out of the shelter just as a pale streak of silver in the east announced the rising sun. When Rhodry told him of the attack he considered for a long moment, running his hand through his beard.
“Well, now, I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “So they fear that bronze knife of yours, do they?”
“They always have before. Jill told me it has dweomer upon it.”
Garin nodded, combing busily.
“Don’t know what to do,” he said again. “Well, the thing is, we’re almost home. To Lin Serr, that is, the town where Otho and I were born and all that. I say we make a quick march there, fast as we can in this rotten weather.”
Rhodry glanced round at the silent, empty hills. Up among the pines anything could have been hiding, waiting.
“If we’d only gone by the main