Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [67]
The long days they spent worrying about the foreign raiders began to get on everyone’s nerves as well. The women had heard all the reports of farms burned, families killed, pregnant women butchered by men little better than beasts. The threat hung large that these raiders might only be the advance scouts for an army. One particularly hot afternoon they found themselves squabbling over very little until Labanna took charge.
“I think it would do everyone good if we set about planning some sort of feast or entertainment,” Labanna said. “I’d best go down and consult with my husband, but this waiting must be hard on his riders, too.” She glanced Carra’s way, imparting a small lesson. “Morale, my dear, is very important out here in the border country.”
“I’ll remember that, my lady. If you’re going down to the great hall, may I come, too?”
“Of course, dear. Just call the others, and we’ll all go down together.”
In a crowd of women Carra made her way into the great hall to find it filled with the various warbands, all drinking hard and looking, indeed, grim-faced and tired. At the table of honor Prince Daralanteriel was sitting with the other lords, but when Carra started to run to him, Labanna caught her arm with a motherly hand.
“The men are discussing matters of supply and such-like, dear. We’ll just take the second table over here. It gets a bit of a breeze, anyway.”
Carra was forced to sit at the lady’s right hand and watch her husband from some ten feet away. He was a hand’ some man, Dar, exceptionally so even for one of the West-folk, with jet-black hair and pale gray eyes, cat-slit to reveal a lavender pupil. Yet it wasn’t his good looks that had snared her heart, but the way that he’d always been so kind to her, when she’d been unhappy in her brother’s dun. Now it seemed that he barely noticed she was there. She told herself that she was only being foolish, to say nothing of vain and selfish, but she’d left behind everything she’d ever known for Dar, her family and clan, a group of friends built up over her entire life, the familiar sights of her ancestral lands and those of her neighbors. Soon she’d be leaving the very country of her birth and her own people. When she wondered if perhaps she’d made a mistake, her heart thudded in sheer panic.
Eventually Labanna caught her lord’s attention and was summoned to join the gwerbret. In the great hall men came and went; servants rushed round trying to keep everyone’s tankard full; dogs barked and squabbled among themselves. When Labanna returned, the noble-born servitors came with her to discuss plans for a feast and a series of mock combats. As the great hall grew hot as well as thunderously noisy, Carra began to feel sick to her stomach.
“My dear?” Ocradda leaned over and touched her hand. “You look pale. Let me summon a page to escort you upstairs. I think a little nap would do you a world of good.”
“I think my lady’s exactly right,” Carra said. “And my thanks.”
Once she was back in her chamber, however, and lying down in the cool, she felt quite recovered. For a few moments she dutifully tried to sleep, then got up and wandered over to the window. When she looked down she could see all sorts of people scurrying round the ward. Probably Labanna had already set things in motion for this feast, a vast event