Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [89]
“No matter how much grief I’ve brought you, Your Grace? I’ll not ask you for that cup.”
The gwerbret sighed and looked away, his face hard set against showing the grief he must have felt for a man he still thought loyal to him. His warband, however, and Lord Gwinardd’s crowded round to stare at Rhodry, a god touched man now and forever in their eyes. The bolder men reached out to dabble a forefinger on his gore-wet sleeve so they could mark their foreheads with a spot of his blood, Jill came pushing her way through the crowd.
“Otho, Jorn, take Rhodry back to your inn. Your Grace, I think me it would be very unwise to give the silver dagger his due in your hall Matyc’s clan worries me a fair bit more than the gods and their penchant for detail” She glanced at Rhodry. “I’ll just get my medicinals and join you there. That cut’s not so bad you can’t walk, not for a man like you.”
“I think I said somewhat like that myself.” Rhodry grinned at her. “Done, then.”
With the help of the dwarves, Rhodry made his way, though slowly, through the twisting streets of Cengarn. By then it was full noon, and the hot sun beat and danced upon the cobbles. Rhodry suddenly realized that the view swam round him, as if he looked through blown glass. Sweat stung his eyes. Dimly he was aware of townsfolk, stopping in the street to stare at their strange little procession. Every now and then he caught a murmured word, a guess about tavern brawls, mostly. At last they came to a hillside so steep it was half a cliff. Set right into it, between two stunted little pines, stood a wooden door with big iron hinges. Fussing and fuming about his wound and Matyc’s clan both, the dwarves led him inside to a stone hallway, lit with the eerie blue glow of phosphorescent fungi gathered into baskets and hung along their route.
The air, startlingly cool, blew around them in fresh drafts. After a couple of hundred yards, they came at last to a round chamber, some fifty feet across, scattered with low tables and tiny benches round a central open hearth, where a low fire burned and a huge kettle hung from a pair of andirons and a crossbar. Reflexively Rhodry glanced up to see the smoke rising to a stone flue set in the ceiling as well as a vent or two for fresh air. At one of the tables, a yawning innkeep stood polishing tankards with a rag. When Otho spoke to him in the dwarven tongue, he answered with a shake of his head and rushed off through one door.
“Just sit down, lad,” Jorn said. “Here. If you sit on the table, like, Jill will be able to work on you better.”
By then Rhodry was more than glad to do what he was told. His entire sleeve and the side of his shirt were soaked through with the slow ooze of blood. Carrying a silver flask and a tiny glass stoup, the innkeep came hurrying back.
“Drink some of this,” he said. “Warms a man’s heart.”
The pale gold liquor warmed Rhodry’s entire body, or so it seemed to him, with the bite of bitter herbs in raw alcohol, but he had to admit that once he’d choked it down, it left him feeling clearheaded and remarkably comfortable. In a few minutes Jill hurried in with a big burlap sack of medical supplies. She perched next to him on the table and sniffed the air.
“Well, no need for me to fix you herbwater if you’ve been drinking that,” she pronounced. “Let me cut that shirt right off you. Carra sent a new one for you as a thanks for aiding Otho, and it’s a good thing she did. She said to tell you that it’s one she sewed herself.”
“Then I’m twice honored,” Rhodry said. “And tell her I said that.”
Otho looked away fast, but there was no hiding the tears in his eyes.
Rhodry submitted to having Jill wash and stitch the wound while Otho and Garin talked urgently in Dwarvish. The innkeep took the bloody shirt away and returned with a big flagon and some goblets, full-sized this time. Mic poured mead all round, except of course for Jill, who waved the drink away.
“I think I’d best keep my wits about me,” she remarked. “Rhoddo, can you get this new shirt