Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [53]
“She need not fear my attentions any longer,” Maryn said. “It's a sad thing, because she always seemed to like them well enough. But this madness—” He shuddered, deeply and sincerely. “The poor woman!”
Before Nevyn could gather his wits and speak, Maryn nodded to him and walked away, heading back to camp, leaving him to scowl at the unhearing stones.
“Well, I made a botch out of that!” Nevyn muttered. “Naught to be done about it now, I suppose.”
Long shafts of golden sunset fell among the trees and gilded the mossy stones that marked Brangwen's grave, so like the new cairn that marked Branoic's. Nevyn found himself wondering what body this soul would wear in its next life. He could only wait and hope to see, if indeed, the Lords of Wyrd should grant that once again their paths would cross.
Travelling on the Cantrae road did indeed prove faster than picking their way by farmers' paths. The army rode steadily northeast. Every now and then they passed a farm, ringed by ditches and wooden fences, where dogs would bark hysterically from behind closed gates. The owners had fortified themselves against the noble lords more than bandits, Nevyn supposed. They rode through long meadows as well, where in the distance they could see trails of rising dust where the famous horseherders of Cantrae were driving their stock far beyond an army's greedy reach. The one dun they passed stood empty—not a chicken nor a chair remained. Some lord had chosen to follow Braemys, Nevyn assumed.
Some two days later the army rode up to Cantrae, a compact walled town that once had sheltered a thousand souls. Maryn halted the army in a meadow some hundred yards from the stone walls. Nevyn joined him as he and the silver daggers rode a cautious hundred yards farther on. Once they'd left the army's noise behind, they could hear the wind sighing and the river chortling as it ran through the portcullis that guarded its channel through the walls. They rode up to the open gates and paused just outside. In their clear view down the main street of the town, all the way to the market square, no one and nothing moved.
“Ye gods,” Maryn said. “I didn't know silence could be so loud.”
Since Nevyn had received not the slightest warning of danger, he rode with the silver daggers when they walked their horses through the broad gates of Cantrae. Not one dog barked, not a person called out. The houses still stood, round under their heavy thatched roofs, scattered along curved streets as in any Deverry town. Here and there a wooden shutter banged in the wind.
“Gods protect!” Owaen said. “It creeps a man's flesh, all this quiet.”
“So it does,” Nevyn said. “They must have taken everything with them, cat and chicken, dog and cow.”
Owaen nodded and rose in his stirrups to look down the wide road ahead. The wind blew puffs of dust along in tiny whirlwinds. He sat back down with a shake of his head.
“If anyone were here,” Owaen announced, “they'd have come out to curse us by now, if naught else.”
“Let's get back to the army,” Maryn said. “Braemys was telling me the truth, all right. Cantrae needs a new gwer-bret, but it will take the winter to sort that out.”
“So it will, my liege,” Nevyn said. “But if we leave it unguarded, it would make a splendid shelter for bandits.”
“I was thinking much the same.” Maryn considered for a moment. “The vassal of mine who lives the closest is Lord Nantyn. If I left him and his men here, do you think he'd turn against me?”
“What?” Nevyn nearly laughed. “Proclaim himself gwerbret, you mean? With twenty-five riders and a stony field demesne?”
“My worrying sounds stupid now that you say it aloud. Very well. I'll hold a council tonight when we camp, and I'll appoint Nantyn and maybe another northern lord to keep an eye on the town for me.”
“Good. And then at last we can ride for home.”
“Just so. I'll mount a campaign against those bandits later this summer, but there's no need for you to come with us for that. No doubt you're weary of all this campaigning.”
“I am, truly.”
They