Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [81]
The dun was beginning to come alive. Yawning servants ambled down the halls or stood stretching and gossiping in the great hall. Jahdo saw old Darro at the main hearth, lifting sods from the coals underneath.
“Have you seen Meer?”
The old man sat back on his heels and considered.
“Just a bit ago, lad, see him I did. Heading for the door, there.”
“He shouldn’t have gone out without me along.”
“Here, here, one of Lord Matyc’s riders was with him, talking all urgent like, so he’ll be safe enough.”
Jahdo hesitated, then decided that he simply had to go see for himself. He dashed out of the great hall, stood looking around the muddy ward for a moment, then heard a smothered giggle from just behind him. He spun round, but not fast enough. A wet and smelly burlap sack flopped over his head, and boys burst out laughing.
“Let me go!” Jahdo yelled. “It’s needful that I find Meer.”
Although he flailed about him with his hands and screamed in rage, they kept laughing and spinning him round. Later he would realize that with his voice muffled by the sack, they couldn’t even make out what he was saying. He could hear them, though, laughing as they began shoving him toward the kitchen hut as far as he could tell. All at once he was falling, hitting dirt hard. A slam and a clang sounded above him. He tore the sack off to find himself in the root cellar, sprawled among baskets of turnips. Above him the barred door, framed by cracks of light, hung closed, He leapt and shoved, but the big iron bar on the outside refused to give way.
“Let me out!”
He jumped again, scraped his hands, and screamed wordlessly, over and over for a good long while. No one seemed to hear. His tormentors, he supposed, were far away by now. He crouched for another spring, then caught himself. Shoving the door like an angry bull was going to do him no good at all. He was going to have to be clever like a ferret instead.
In the light from the cracks round the door he could see reasonably well. He began inching his way along the wooden walls, shoving baskets and sacks out of his way as he went, feeling for weaknesses and cracks that might open into another part of the dun cellars. Finally, in the darkest corner of the back wall, he found a long slit of a hole, probably where two walls came together on the other side. By falling onto his knees he could work his shoulders through-He shoved and squeezed, wiggled and swore, caught his shirt on a nail, swore louder—and heard an answering voice.
“Who’s that?” It was Cook. “Who’s scrabbling in there like a rat?”
“Me, Jahdo. Please, Cook, the other boys did shut me in the root cellar, and it’s needful that I do get out. Meer’s walking somewhere without a guide.”
“Ye gods! They’ll get a smack for that, they will.” Massive hands came through the crack and pried, splitting old boards. “It’s a cursed good thing that I was down here, isn’t it now? Try this.”
Jahdo squeezed through and found himself in the little cellar of the kitchen hut proper. With a bowl in one hand Cook stood beside an open barrel of salt; across from her a ladder led up to the light. Shouting thanks Jahdo ran, climbed, raced past startled serving lasses in the kitchen, and rushed, out of breath but too frightened to stop, across the ward. Panting and gasping, he headed for the dangerous wall behind the main broch, where Meer could easily take the wrong set of stairs and end up on the ramparts.
“Here, where’s your hurry?”
Rhodry was strolling toward him. Jahdo dodged him and kept running.
“Trouble,” he gasped out.
Sure enough, as he rounded the corner of a shed, he saw Meer way up above him on the main wall of the dun and standing next to a broken rail on a catwalk. Behind him stood Lord Matyc. For the briefest of moments Jahdo could have sworn that the lord had his hands raised to shove the bard over.