Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [69]
“Carra’s gone!” he burst out in Elvish. “I’ve looked all over for her. Her dog’s here, but her horse is gone from the stables.”
All the men near slewed round to stare at this foreign outburst. Swearing in two languages Rhodry swung himself clear of the bench and stood.
“Tell the gwerbret! We’ll get every man in this dun out scouring the countryside for her. By the Dark Sun herself, Your Highness, who knows what’s out there, waiting for a chance at her?”
Dar made a keening sound deep in his throat, then turned and ran back to the puzzled lords, who had all risen from their chairs to stare at his untidy progress through the hall. Every other person in it was whispering in a buzzing tide of speculation. Rhodry quickly translated Dar’s tale for the other riders, started to give Yraen an order, then stopped in sheer surprise. His friend had gone dead-pale.
“Do you know somewhat about this?” Rhodry snapped.
“What? Not in the least. What do you mean?” Yraen hauled himself to his feet. “I’m just—well—worried, that’s all.”
Terrified was more like it. For a moment Rhodry flirted with the implausible idea that Yraen might be a traitor; then the obvious occurred.
“Ye gods!” he hissed, “And a fine choice of a woman to fall in love with! She couldn’t get much more above you.”
Yraen swore and hit him in the ribs so hard that it hurt, Rhodry laughed, but under his breath to keep the others from hearing.
“No time to discuss the proprieties now,” Rhodry said. “Go saddle our horses, will you? I’m going to stick right close to Lord Matyc in this hunt. You do the same.”
Yet, in any event Rhodry and Yraen ended up separated, simply because not even one of the gods could organize a search party of over two hundred men without some confusion. Rhodry suspected, in fact, that Yraen had slipped away from him to avoid awkward questions. He reminded himself that tormenting a man like Yraen about a hopeless love affair was as much dangerous as cruel and put the matter firmly out of his mind.
When the search parties left the town, Rhodry simply joined Lord Matyc’s men without waiting to be asked. Just in case Matyc took this chance to arrange some kind of accident for the princess, he was determined to be near enough to stop it.
While Carra may have been headstrong at times, she was never stupid. Even as she plotted a careful route from stream to thicket to rocks to stream again, she made sure that she kept the towers of the town always in view and close in case she needed to make a strong gallop back to safety. With his bloodlines Gwerlas could no doubt have outrun most of the horses in the entire province if he’d had to; to make sure, she rested him often.
When she first heard the hunting horns blowing, she was riding well to the east of Cengarn down a little lane between two plowed fields. She rose in the stirrups, cocking her head to listen just as they came again—a lot of horns, spreading out from the direction of the dun. At first she wondered why the men would start a hunt so late in the day; then she realized that Dar must have called out the warbands to look for her. Her pleasure at her joke turned sour.
“They’re all going to be furious.”
Gwer snorted with a toss of his head.
It occurred to her that if she could stay undiscovered long enough, she might be able to cut round behind them and slip back inside unseen, where she could, perhaps, pretend she’d never left. She might have fallen asleep in one of the gardens, perhaps, where Dar might not have thought to look for her. It was worth a try. She turned back the way she’d come and began retracing her circuitous route, from cow shed to stream to thicket to duck pond, spiraling in toward the city gates. Although she heard horns and even saw, at a great distance, horsemen galloping by, no one ever came her way.
When she was in sight of the south gates, she paused, rising in the stirrups to peer at the walled town, marching up its hills and looming over her. She