Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [170]
“You should get more sleep,” Yraen said abruptly. “You’re getting dark circles under your eyes.”
“Oh, and how can I sleep? Worrying about Dar, worrying about the whole town, really. Sometimes at night I walk round and round the women’s hall, and if you look out this one window you can just see over the wall. I look at the little fires the army has going, and I think that, well, I really do think sometimes that I should just go hand myself over to those creatures and let them kill me. Then they’d ride away and everyone would be safe.”
Yraen swung round and grabbed her wrist in one huge hand so hard that she yelped.
“Don’t even think of it. Don’t. Oh, ye gods, I’d tell Jill and have them lock you in your chamber if I thought you would.”
With a wrench she pulled her hand free.
“Do you think I’ve got no honor or shame of my own? Have you ever seen a town starve, Yraen? Have you? Well, I have, and I’d rather die than have that on my head.”
He was staring openmouthed. She choked back tears, surprised at how strongly the memories flooded back, beyond her power to wipe them away.
“It was a long time ago now, and I was but a child, but the winter came early that year and ruined the harvest. I mean, it wasn’t even a siege or suchlike, just the will of the gods, but by snow melt there was barely a stored handful of rotten barley left, not for lord nor peasant, not for the High King himself if he’d ridden our way, I remember being hungry, we were all so hungry that all you could think of was food, every day, waiting for the wheat to grow and turn milk-ripe, at least, so we could make a porridge of it. My father and my brother caught fish, and what little birds they could snare, and I wept to eat little swallows and sparrows, but I ate them. And in our village there was an old woman who starved herself to give what she had to her little grandson. Not a week after she died he got a fever and died, too, so she’d starved herself all for naught.” All at once she was sobbing, remembering. “And now there’s this whole dun, and a town, and all the folk roundabout facing that or worse, and ye gods, don’t you see? It would be better to hand me over than that. I’d rather die than have it on my head.”
She felt arms round her, drawing her close, holding her close to his chest while she sobbed. Yraen smelled so familiar, so like all the other men she’d ever known, of horses mostly and sweat and wood smoke, that she could pretend for a moment that he was Dar. She found herself wishing and praying that when she opened her eyes, some dweomer would have changed him for Dar, even as she forced herself to push him away, to shove away the comfort she so badly wanted.
“Yraen, I’m sorry,” she said, stammering. “I shouldn’t burden you with such black thoughts.”
She was shocked to find tears in his eyes. She fumbled in the folds of her kerchief, found a bit of rag, and blew her nose while he merely watched, unmoving on the bench, unspeaking.
“Well, don’t you see?” she said for want of anything better.
“I do.” His voice cracked. “I’m just—well, it—I’ve never known a woman more fit to be a princess than you.”
For a moment she was angry that he would fish a compliment out of what she saw as merely her duty; then she realized that he meant it. She blushed and looked away.
“My thanks.” She rubbed her damp face on her sleeve. “And I’m sorry I bawled like a calf.”
He smiled, again that bare twitch of his mouth, then rose to sit on the ground at her feet. Neither of them spoke until she decided that it was time to go in.
Late on the morrow, Jill was sitting in the great hall with Gwerbret