Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [91]
“Mad is what I calls it,” Mic snapped. “Starkly, ravingly, babblingly daft.”
“Otho, you know the dragon hearth in his grace’s hall?” Jorn turned on the bench to present Mic his back. “Well, Enj’s people carved it.”
“Ah, I see.” Otho nodded sagely. “Well, then.”
“Well then what?” Jill said. “It’s a beautiful bit of stonework, but what does that prove?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Jill,” Garin broke in, “for all your dweomer. It’s a thing that only the Mountain People would understand.”
Jill rolled her eyes heavenward, but she held her tongue. If Rhodry hadn’t been so tired, he would have howled in berserk delight. As it was, he found himself grinning.
“Fire mountains, vicious beasts, dwarven madmen— oh, it all sounds a splendid little journey you’re sending me on, Jill.”
She made a sour face in his direction.
“Hah!” Otho snorted. “Smirk all you want, silver dagger, but think of this, will you? If we take you on this fool’s errand, you’ll have to walk.”
“Walk?” Rhodry felt his grin disappear. “What do you mean, walk?”
“Just that. How do you expect horses to survive a trip like this? We might even end up traveling underground.” Otho held a hand upside down and made striding motions with his fore and middle finger. “So walking it is. I know what you elves are like. Tender little feet, all of you. Lost without a horse.”
“Otho, will you hold your ugly tongue?” Garin snarled. “You owe the man your life!”
“And it sounds to me like he’s asking me to give it right back to him, traipsing round the mountains, hunting dragons.” Otho drew himself up to full dignity. “Not much of a bargain, is it now?”
“You could pay Enj and his clan to accept your blood debt for you,” Jorn said.
“Hah! And what will they want for that? Every gem I own, no doubt. I’d be beggared!”
“Better than being dead, isn’t it?” Rhodry said, grinning.
Otho merely snorted in contempt at the very idea. Jill picked up her sack.
“I’d best get back to the dun. Things are bound to need some straightening out. Rhodry, I suggest you simply stay where you are, if our friends agree?”
All the dwarves but Otho nodded a yes.
“Splendid,” Jill went on. “I’ll have Yraen bring you your bedroll and suchlike later. Lord Matyc has a brother who’s honor-bound to look into this whole affair, you know. Which reminds me. Can you walk? I want a word with you, privatelike.”
Instead the dwarves withdrew to the far side of the big room to argue among themselves about the best way to approach this mysterious Enj. Jill hunkered down by Rhodry’s low chair.
“I asked you not to let this come to murder,” she hissed.
“Murder? You asked me to let it come under the laws, and that’s exactly what I did. A priest of Bel himself judged the affair, didn’t he?”
“True, but you leapt at the chance to have at Matyc with cold steel.”
“So? The man was a traitor.”
“We all thought the man a traitor. That’s not necessarily the same thing.”
He would have argued more, but his head was swimming from the drink, to say nothing of the wound. Jill stood up with a little shake of her head.
“Well, no use in discussing it now. I’ve got to get back. I’ll be back tomorrow, say, when you’ve had a chance to sober up.”
“Do that. Ye gods, you could at least thank me.”
She started to speak, then merely set her mouth in a tight line and turned away.
“Otho,” she called out. “See if the innkeep can find your savior here a bed that fits him, will you?”
Before Rhodry could think of what to say to her, she’d slung the sack over her shoulder and marched off. He yawned, yawned again, and fell asleep where he sat.
When Jill returned to the dun, she found the ward a shouting, surging confusion of men and horses. She slipped in the gates without being noticed and made her way along the curve of the wall until she could get round the mob and cross safely to the broch complex. In the doorway to the great