The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [33]
Below him snow melted, and grass sprang up, green and lush. Flowers bloomed in an instant, dotting the lawns with white and yellow. In every direction, as far as he could see with a hawk’s long sight, Spring returned, laughing. The hawk cried out once, then broke from his spiral and flew steadily toward the forest at the meeting of the worlds. Shaetano was hiding somewhere, most likely in the part of the Lands that had once been his. Evandar intended to find him.
Down in Deverry, the same storm that was casting its etheric shadow over Evandar’s Lands raged over the northern territories. For three days snow trapped Dun Cengarn in a cage of white. The gwerbret’s men spent their days in the great hall near the two huge hearths and their ever-burning fires, though they made brief forays into the stables to tend their horses. Some even brought their blankets from the barracks and slept on the straw with the servants.
Rhodry stayed mostly among the company of Prince Daralanteriel’s escort of ten elven archers, the last of the large troop he’d assembled for the past summer’s war. With provisions so scarce at Cengarn, the prince had sent the rest of them home long before. Even though his kingdom lay in ruins in the mountains of the far west, by Deverry standards royal blood still ran in Dar’s veins, and he ate and sat at the honor table with Gwerbret Cadmar. Protocol, however, seated his men among the warband, under the captaincy of a pale-haired archer named Vantalaber.
Since the cold draughts bothered the Westfolk men less than it did the human members of Gwerbret Cadmar’s warband, they took the table nearest the back door—they were farther from the human stink that way, too, as the archers often remarked. Just like the human men, they diced to pass their time, although the elven game was a fair bit more complex. Each player took a handful of brightly colored wood pieces—cubes and pyramids both—shook them hard, then strewed them in a rough line. Counting the points amounted to another game in itself, with a lot of argument and token cursing from the other players. At times during these sessions one or another man from the warband would stroll over to the elven tables and watch their game, but they never asked to join, and no one invited them, either.
Every now and then a servant girl would come to the table to pour the men ale from a dented tankard or set out a meager basket of bread. One particular evening, Rhodry realized that it was always the same girl, a buxom little blonde, when she stopped for a moment to chat with one of the archers, Melimaladar, a dark-haired fellow whose eyes were a smoky sort of green, unusual even for one of the People. They whispered together, head to head, until something he said made her giggle, and she trotted off, still smiling to herself.
Vantalaber took a sip of the ale she’d brought and nearly spat it out.
“Ye gods, it’s watered!” the captain snarled, but in Elvish. “Thin as swill!”
“The dun’s running out,” Rhodry said in the same language. “Soon enough the steward will be breaking out the vinegar.”
“What? Why would anyone drink vinegar?”
“You don’t drink the stuff for itself. You just put a dollop in a tankard of well water. To make it safe, like.”
“Well, the way these people live in filth, I’m not surprised. But I don’t mean to insult all of humankind. Gwerbret Cadmar’s a fine man in his way.”
“He is that,” Rhodry said. “Though I worry about his health. He doesn’t have a son to inherit the rhan, and the last thing the Northlands can afford is a cursed feud over rulership.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What about his daughters?”
“Van, they can’t inherit. They’re women. If Cadmar were only a tieryn or a lord, maybe his vassals would back a daughter, but she could never rule as gwerbret.”
Vantalaber rolled his eyes in disgust.